She said she’d first been intrigued by me when she saw me sitting out there alone in my sailboat on the Hudson that first afternoon; anyone who would use lack of wind as an excuse to avoid the Battles could not be all bad, she said. I said I’d first been intrigued by her when she leaned over to look down the companionway hatch into the boat’s salon. I didn’t elaborate, but she grinned knowingly.
She admitted she resented me for being such a fool about Way and the love we’d found that first night in Lukedom, a love which I seemed to suppress when confronted with the possible loss of several million dollars. What was a few million dollars to a man who really loved her? Nothing, she said playfully.
After leaving the Battles without saying where she was going or what she was doing, she had felt martyrish, hoping that I was missing her, yearning for her, desperate for her, perhaps even launching a major quest for her. After two weeks, however, she began to feel like the lover who kills herself to make the beloved suffer. Lying in the grave of Brooklyn she began to have second thoughts. She decided that a trip back to the Battle penthouse where she might accidentally leave a phone number or address might perhaps be in order. Although lovers were expected to overcome numerous obstacles before winning the beloved, they needed occasional clues along the way. Women have been dropping handkerchiefs for millennia, who was she to break the tradition? Together we laughed.
After she cleared away the tea and brandy and our talk seemed to be flagging, she turned off all but one dim bedside lamp and climbed in under the sheets.
Feeling like a saint, but one who plans to give up sainthood at the earliest possible moment, I lay on my back beside her. It was a wonderful moment, because I knew one way or another bliss seemed inevitable. But then, unfortunately, I remembered the dice. In the same rash blind overconfidence that had afflicted Kim in Lukedom after our first night of lovemaking, I decided to consult the dice – in this case about how we should make love.
The die, never one always to make wise choices, picked the option that to honour Kim’s feeling that we should go slower this time, we would make love but without penetration or climax. As soon as the die had spoken I was over on top of Kim and we were intertwined in a blissful kiss.
I thought this command of infinite foreplay was marvellous – for about fifteen minutes. Then I began to have my doubts. Kissing and fondling are fine in their place, and no relationship should be without them. However, the Lord God had intended them as appetizers preparatory to the main course, and I was certain if I could get Miss Claybell to research the Old Testament with her usual thoroughness that it would be revealed that God had quite specifically listed what we were doing – or rather what we were not doing no matter how much we both wanted it – as a sin, if not a major Sodom or Gomorrah sin, then at least a minor plague sin.
Kim, writhing and gasping and groaning and generally doing everything that a woman could to make a desperate situation desperater, insisted, when I could get her to speak coherently, that we must follow the die choice, no matter how painful. That might be what her mouth was saying, I thought, feeling her hot rounded writhing female abomination of temptation, but the rest of her obviously agreed with me.
After about forty minutes my mind, ever obedient to the prodding of my prick, suddenly had a brilliant thought: Kim was testing me. If I really loved her I would take her here and now and show my love was more powerful than any plastic cube. With a great groan of satisfaction at the power of rationalization I spread Kim’s legs and plunged into her, an act that was greeted with unbridled enthusiasm by Kim’s body, even as her mouth mumbled something that came out vaguely like ‘Wah are u doon?’ It didn’t take long for us both to break the die’s command against climaxes, and I collapsed on top of her with feelings of relief and triumph: man is master of his fate and captain of his soul.
And victim of his animal appetites, as Kim pointed out to me when she had recovered sufficiently from her ecstasy to feel like uttering a rational thought. If I couldn’t follow a simple little dice option that was scheduled to last only a few hours what kind of a man was I?
‘A normal man,’ I answered, lying on my back with a contented smile.
‘Exactly,’ said Kim, sitting up with sudden animation. ‘You’re just like you always are, you’re just like everybody else, and there’s no challenge to grow, to change, to discover new aspects of yourself.’
‘I had discovered all the impossible levels of frustration I’m capable of,’ I said, ‘and wanted to pass on to new aspects of myself.’
‘I’m serious,’ said Kim. ‘You’re only going to be doing this dicing for a few weeks. The least you can do is do it right.’
Unfortunately, I found myself agreeing. I would show my father I could win, then drop the dice as a game I had mastered and moved on from.
Still, I was sure that if there were a God in heaven and He had seen what I had done, He was looking down on me with approval.
47
Despite their having had an up couple of trading days Larry and Jeff were still not welcome in the custodians’ rest room. So after Jeff told Larry that he’d been re-contacted by his insider X, they huddled in a booth at a local tavern frequented primarily by secretaries, maintenance men, couriers, and an occasional trader or two plotting some illicit scheme. Larry and Jeff ordered a couple of double bourbons and began their plotting.
‘This is what the dirty bastard told me,’ said Jeff, holding a single piece of paper in trembling hands. He was still violently bitter whenever he thought of how he’d been screwed by the post-election troop build-up. ‘On noon next Wednesday the Treasury is going to issue a report unexpectedly indicating that the economy is growing much faster than previous indicators had implied, that the recession is definitely bottoming and that the negative effects on the economy of the rise in oil prices are much less than previously estimated.’
Jeff looked up. ‘He says this will make the stock market bounce up at least twenty points and maybe more and make bonds probably sell off.’
Larry nodded, feeling a little disappointed. It was nowhere near the bombshell that the supposed peace initiative was, but still it was the sort of advanced information that for a futures trader or stock speculator could mean millions.
‘To double-cross the double-crosser,’ Larry began as Jeff waited for his response, ‘we have to figure a way to make the market do the opposite of what this tip is going to make it do. We can’t stop the release of the Treasury report – at least I assume we can’t – but we might be able to pre-empt it. After all, this news is only a minor hand grenade maybe good for twenty up points on the Dow. What we need is a small bomb that will be good for forty or fifty points on the downside.’
At first Jeff was smiling at the prospect of revenge, but then, when he realized that Larry was suggesting they manipulate the market, he was appalled. This was not straightforward insider trading – a religious recognition of man’s normal ignorance and thus an acknowledgement of the Gods. No, this was usurping the Gods’ power of controlling the markets. This was blasphemy! And illegal!
‘We can’t do that,’ he protested. ‘That’s market manipulation.’
‘It’s illegal.’ agreed Larry. ‘And it’s unethical, but it’s the only way we can get back at the bastard who screwed us.’
‘But if we get caught, we’ll be kicked off the Street for months!’
‘That may be true,’ said Larry, ‘but revenge will be ours. And there’s a lot can be done even off the Street with the profits we may make.’
‘But they’d be illicit profits,’ Jeff persisted in horror, ‘profits generated by altering the normal course of history.’
Larry studied Jeff, wondering where this sudden burst of morality was corning from. Here was a guy who had used illegal paid-for insider information to cheat three times and try to cheat a fourth, lecturing him on morality.
‘Men make history,’ he said. ‘In this case, us.’
Jeff took another long swallow of his bourb
on, but didn’t reply.
‘Look,’ said Larry. ‘Here’s how we have to think. Let’s suppose the tip was that Upjohn was coming out with unexpectedly lower earnings, a report that the insider thinks will lead to a 2 or 3 per cent sell-off. But just before the release of the earnings report we get a report on the wire that an Upjohn researcher has come up with a cure for the common cold. Bingo! The stock soars and no one even notices the earnings report until after it’s discovered that the common cold still lives.’ Jeff brooded.
‘We have to come up with something like that that’ll knock the whole market off its feet next Wednesday;’ Larry added.
‘We shoot the President,’ suggested Jeff suddenly.
Larry considered.
‘Possibly, possibly,’ he said. ‘Of course rumours about the President’s being shot are so common it’s like crying wolf too often.’
‘I mean really shoot him,’ persisted Jeff, his eyes showing a sudden enthusiasm for the project. Ever since the President’s failure to start a real peace initiative after the election had crossed him up, Jeff had had it in not only for X but also for the President.
Larry scowled.
‘Steady, Jeff,’ he said. ‘we’re only going to create a momentary illusion of reality that will have a profound momentary effect on the market, not try to really change the world. Besides, I thought you voted for Bush.’
‘I did,’ said Jeff. ‘That’s why I want to shoot him.’
‘Aim lower,’ said Larry. ‘Something less radical but almost as devastating.’
‘We give him Aids,’ suggested Jeff.
Larry considered it.
‘Aids might do it,’ he mused. ‘It’s so totally far-out and such a basic cultural fear that people will tend to believe it despite their common sense.’
‘I’ve got a friend that’s infected,’ said Jeff. ‘We could get him to give us some of his blood and take it to Wash –’
‘Jeff, Jeff,’ Larry interrupted, putting a soothing hand on the arm of his friend. ‘We’re not going to do anything to the President, do you understand?’
‘We’re not?’ said Jeff, looking let down.
‘No. We’re going to get something into the minds of Wall Street – stronger than rumour – that will make them sell stocks Tuesday morning. Something that will take long enough before being cleared up to wipe out X and let us make a little money on the opposite side.’
‘Oh.’
‘Now this week the President has a cold, so his health is somewhat on the public’s mind. Aids might be just the ticket.’
Jeff returned to his bourbon, apparently losing some of his interest in the discussion now that it was dealing only with illusion and not reality.
‘First, in the usual Street manner, we might on Monday float a few rumours that the President is more seriously ill than the While House is letting on. The Street will ignore them because such rumours are a dime a dozen – if a week passes without at least one rumour about a dying, dead, or almost assassinated President, then the Street starts to worry that he may really be ill.’
Larry, now talking more to himself than to Jeff, took a long slow swig of his bourbon.
‘But that plants the seed that we’ll make sprout on Wednesday morning,’ he continued. He stopped to lower his glass and stare directly at Jeff, who was poking his nose down into his glass as if dipping for a cherry or seeking the Holy Grail.
‘Somehow on that day,’ Larry went on, ‘we have to get it on the Reuters wire that the President’s press spokesman denies that the President has the Aids disease and insists that he only has the HIV virus – “in its earliest stages”. A While House investigation into the source of this leak is being made. The President’s doctors will hold a news conference at Bethesda Naval Hospital at 1 P.M.’ Larry paused.
‘Jesus,’ he concluded, ‘that should be good for at least sixty Dow points on the downside.’
Jeff held an ice cube up between his thumb and forefinger and examined it as if it might contain the Aids virus.
‘What do you think?’ asked Larry.
‘Who cares about money?’ said Jeff, still involved with his ice cube. ‘The world’s only real hope is to shoot the President.’
Larry began to realize that BB&P would soon be in the market for a new Assistant Trader.
‘Besides,’ added Jeff, lowering the cube to his glass, ‘you’ll never get anything on to a Reuters wire. If it could be done, it would have been done long ago.’
Jeff had a point. Larry didn’t know where Reuters originated but he was sure that putting a bogus story on their wire was next to impossible; otherwise it would have been done a hundred times by now. He knew that since the first caveman opened a stock exchange in 3,600 B.C. traders had been telling lies to manipulate the price of a stock or stocks they were interested in. Nowadays, with communications between cities and nations almost instantaneous, lying was more difficult than in the good old days. Then you might publish a lying story and before the slow pace of communication permitted its refutation have the market do what you wanted it to do. But today the ticker, the Reuters wire, and CNN and CNBC-FNN all had up-to-the-second live coverage of every lie. If a man just trying to make a decent buck threw out a rumour that the President had been shot, the next thing you knew there was the President live on CNN slashing away at a golf ball or jogging along a path looking like death warmed over. Why, it was so bad that a man might still be in the first paragraph of his lie when a spokesman was appearing on CNN refuting it. What this meant was that Larry had to create a lie that would make the refutation seem to be a confirmation – at least for a while. But how?
‘Any ideas?’ Larry asked Jeff, aware that Jeff probably wasn’t privy to his line of thinking.
‘It’s simple,’ announced Jeff, apparently following his own line. ‘You let the doctor do the talking.’
‘The doctor?’ echoed Larry.
‘The doctor,’ said Jeff. ‘No one can refute a doctor.’
After Larry let the die decide whether he should pursue this plan to thwart X and, thankfully, the die gave its permission, he called up Kim and told her he’d appreciate it if she would give him a hand in a little scheme he was working on. She met him in a coffee shop in midtown, and over hot chocolate and tea the two of them discussed possible scenarios. It turned out she had insider information that they could use. A doctor at a well-known midtown clinic used the computerized golf course at one of her spas every Wednesday and Friday mornings between ten and eleven. If they could find an actor who … And Kim knew an actor, a gay activist down on his luck who would leap at a chance to play a role that would screw the establishment. He’d even done guerrilla theatre work in the seventies. If they needed others this gay guy would be able to get them.
So drowning themselves in hot chocolate and tea they plotted and planned, plotted and planned. It was almost as good as sex.
But not quite.
FROM LUKE’S JOURNAL
Since we’re usually under the illusion that we know and have the truth, lying is a good habit to get into. By lying we’re freed from the illusion of being right. Whenever I think I’m a sage I cause nothing but misery, for myself and others.
Lying is held in ill-repute primarily because people usually lie to protect their old egos, rather than to create new ones. Lying to try to seem consistent, either with oneself or with others, is an act of fear. Lying to create something new – and therefore inconsistent with our usual selves – is an act of creativity and aliveness. The first builds more bars on the cage; the second bends them apart so one can walk free.
‘I don’t have any personal history,’ once said the Yaqui clown (and sage) Don Juan. ‘One day I found out that personal history was no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped it.’
48
On Tuesday morning at 10 A.M. in a small anteroom of the Manhattan Diagnostic Clinic a small press conference was held. About a half-dozen radio and television stations had sent crews when they
had received anonymous tips that a major story was about to break on President Bush’s health. Present also were reporters from several of the major daily newspapers and wire services. About thirty people were packed into the small room, which, as far as the clinic knew, was being reserved by their Dr Donaldson to give a small talk to interns on ‘The Pancreas: Then and Now’. The receptionist was a bit surprised at the sudden appearance of a crowd of excited reporters and camera crews but pointed them to the appropriate room. Far be it from her to know the precise value of the pancreas.
At 10 A.M. a dignified middle-aged man with a bushy grey beard and wearing a suit and a white coat entered the room, accompanied by a uniformed man whose stitched insignia identified him as an MDC security guard. The man went to the front of the room and stood behind the microphone that was already in place there. Cameras began flashing. Other mikes were shoved into the doctor’s face. He blinked out at the lights for a moment, looking a little overwhelmed by the spectacle.
‘My name is Dr Martin Luther Donaldson,’ he announced in a firm, dignified voice. ‘And I am chief pathologist here at the Manhattan Diagnostic Clinic. I am speaking out today because the White House effort to hide the truth about the President’s health is counter-productive to our country’s learning the truth about Aids and the normal lives people infected with the Aids virus may lead.’
The reporters leaned in closer, not quite believing what they were hearing.
‘From the President’s blood and tissue samples sent to us from Bethesda Naval Hospital I can say with total certainty that there is no truth to the rumour that President Bush presently has symptoms of the Aids disease.’