I open my eyes and stare up at the ceiling. After a second or two, sounds crowd in, morning traffic, a thumping bass beat, voices from the apartment next door, voices from the street below. I roll sideways off the bed and get up.
I look around. Where’s Kate?
I find her in the living room. She’s about to go out and is all dressed up. I stand there in my boxers and T-shirt, looking at her. She always dresses well, but in a casual way. This is a notch or two above that, not quite on a par with my insane upgrade, but still, I’m taken aback.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing.’
I see a flicker of irritation in her expression. She was obviously hoping to get out the door before I woke up.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have that thing,’ she says.
I stare at her, not so much confused by what she’s referring to, or by her reluctance to engage with me, as entranced by the unfamiliar hint of colour around her eyes.
‘What thing?’
‘I told you, that interview. It’s today.’
‘Oh.’ I nod. ‘Of course. The website thing, yeah. Sorry.’
She hesitates, with her hand on the door, as though she’s waiting to be released.
Does she hate me now? I wouldn’t blame her.
I move forward a little. She tenses.
‘Good luck with it,’ I say.
‘Yeah.’
I give her a peck on the cheek. ‘You know, they’ll be lucky to get you.’
She half smiles. I think that’s what it is. Though it could be something else, a look of pity, of incomprehension, of disgust even. I’m not sure.
And then she’s gone.
I go into the kitchen and put on some coffee.
It’s been five days since that little encounter at the Tyler Building. And two since I quit my job at Barcadero. Not showing up was bad enough, but not calling in? Not getting back to them? Holy shit, for a kitchen guy, even a lowly one, that was unconscionable. They would have fired me anyway, so I just figured I’d save them the trouble.
I don’t know what Kate thinks about this – though I suppose I might have a better chance of finding out if I actually told her. I’m just sort of assuming that she’s figured it out because, well, I’m here most of the time now. For her part, she’s taken to leaving the apartment every day, and I’m never sure where she goes, so I suppose – in some twisted, fucked-up, non-sustainable way – we’re even.
What I’ve been doing with my time is a lot of online research – background reading, interviews, profiles, financial reports. I’ve been immersed in it, day and night, but the frustrating thing is that whatever I’ve learned is all on the surface. I’ve absorbed terms and vocabulary, names, dates, references, memes, factoids, but do I really understand any of it, do I have the ability to pull it all together, to gestalt it up into a convincing Teddy Trager? I doubt it. I might have thirty seconds of material, a minute maybe. After that, I suspect I’d run dry. But I guess there’s only one way to find out.
I shower and shave, then suit up. Twenty minutes later I’m on the subway, and then, like a scene change in a dream, I’m back. As usual, what I do is walk, block after block, Sixth Avenue, Fifth, Madison, the high forties, the low fifties. I almost fall into a mindful state, what you might even call a trance, and if every now and again I end up near the Tyler Building, so be it. I’m open to anything, to any encounter . . .
At one point, my phone goes off. It’s just before midday. I stop at a corner and look around. I’m on 53rd and Sixth.
I reach into my pocket.
‘Yeah?’
‘Danny, I got it.’
I have to think for a second. She got it. Got what? Oh, the interview, the job. That’s actually great. I need to say it. ‘Kate, wow . . . I’m—’
But I stop there, my heart starting to race, because I’m also looking straight ahead along the sidewalk.
‘Teddy?’
And holy shit if that isn’t Doug Shaw coming towards me.
‘Danny!’ This is in my ear. ‘Are you there?’
‘Yeah,’ I whisper, ‘I’m here.’
I respond to Shaw with a nod.
Getting closer, he says, ‘Come on, Teddy, we need to talk.’
‘Did you hear me, Danny? I said I got it. They were really nice, and it’s actually going to pay a bit better than I thought, but I’ll probably have to—’
‘Wait . . .’ Shit. ‘I’ve got to go, Kate. Sorry.’
I slide the phone away from my ear, ending the call and flicking it to silent.
‘Teddy,’ Shaw says, right in front of me now, practically in my face. ‘Teddy, Teddy, Teddy.’
‘Yeah?’ I say, nervously, close enough to peer into his eyeballs.
‘It’s a bit early, but what do you say we get some lunch?’
Next thing I know he’s got an arm out, and seconds later a yellow cab is pulling up at the kerb. As we’re getting in, Shaw says, ‘I’ve been craving some of that blood-sausage thing Jacques does.’
My heart stops racing at this, nearly stops altogether.
Before he even utters a word to the driver, I know what’s coming.
‘Forty-fourth Street.’
*
The short cab ride to Barcadero passes in a flash. I’m sitting beside my supposed business partner, impersonating his business partner, and all I can think about is what awaits me at my former place of employment. Shaw does all of the talking, but I don’t actually listen. All I catch is the word ‘sign’. He says it more than once, his voice low and gravelly. He’s also wearing a distinctive cologne. That’s what I get. That’s the sum total of what I’m able to process.
And I don’t open my mouth once.
Shaw pays. Then we’re on the sidewalk outside Barcadero. We head for the entrance, and, depending on who’s doing front-of-house today, this might all come crashing down within the next thirty seconds. We go inside, and, while the place isn’t busy, it isn’t empty either. Croatian, sapphire-eyed Karina, one of the daytime hostesses, glides over to us, smiling.
‘Mr Shaw, Mr Trager, how nice to see you today.’
I look at her directly. There’s nothing. But then, why would there be? Have we ever even spoken? Why would Karina pay any attention to some surly jerk like me who works in the kitchen? No, I think, the real trouble here will be with the server, or maybe the wine guy. I know most of them, and they know me.
Without checking her list, Karina just leads us into the main room and – I hadn’t even thought of this – over to the corner table. Before I know it, I’m sitting there, settling in, afraid to look up, afraid to look at anything – at the pick-up window, at the menu, and, most of all, at Doug Shaw, who has just put his reading glasses on and is doing something with his phone, sending a text or checking his email.
I close my eyes for a second. What the fuck am I doing here? I need to be outside, on the street, walking, moving.
‘Gentlemen, how are we today?’
Oh God. This is Brian, an intense, wiry guy from Boston. I’ve had several conversations with him, even had a drink with him once. He’s a physics major and intimidatingly smart. I may as well just give up right now.
‘This is a quickie,’ Shaw is saying, as he removes his glasses. ‘I want that blood-sausage thing. I want the kale with apple and pecorino salad. And water’s fine.’
I look up. Brian is staring at me. But, again, there’s nothing. He’s just waiting for me to tell him what I want to eat. I don’t understand what this is. Some kind of psychological syndrome? Perception based on predetermined expectations? A form of confirmation bias? Danny Lynch doesn’t wear a suit, he doesn’t come to Barcadero with Doug Shaw, therefore people here aren’t even going to see him?
‘Sir?’
Or is it that I look that different?
‘Teddy, we haven’t got all day.’
Shit.
I glance down at the menu. I could make it easy and say I’ll have what Shaw is having, but that might be weird. Besides, I know this menu.
And so does Teddy Trager.
‘Let me have the . . . hamachi and artichoke. Water as well. Thanks.’
Then he’s gone. And I realise something. Now is the hard part. So what if people here recognised me. That would have been awkward, humiliating even, and, let’s face it, exposure would have been the end of the road. This thing, on the other hand – whatever it turns out to be – is still in play. I look Shaw directly in the eye now, maybe for the first time since he walked up to me on the street all of, what was it, fifteen, twenty minutes ago? He holds my gaze, and with an intensity that I find really unsettling.
But I decide to dive in. ‘You said we needed to talk, Doug. So let’s talk.’
Then it occurs to me that maybe he already said whatever he wanted to say in the cab, when I wasn’t listening, when I was so overwrought with nerves that I couldn’t even hear him. I also wonder why he had to approach me on the street like that, when it’s my understanding, from stuff I’ve read online, that he and I – he and Teddy – both have offices on the seventieth floor of the Tyler Building.
‘I don’t know if I can talk to you, Teddy, not any more. That’s the problem. You’re going off on these batshit crazy tangents all the time now, and . . . frankly, you have me worried.’
Shaw is unprepossessing in appearance, but up close like this there’s something compelling about him, a nervous energy, a sort of magnetism.
‘I don’t know what to tell you, Doug.’
‘Look,’ Shaw says, ‘you know I get it, right? The great Teddy Trager? He doesn’t just think outside the box, he eats, sleeps, and shits out there too. He’s a visionary, has all these grandiose ideas, and, fine, some of them fly, some of them don’t, whatever, so believe me, I do get it, you need space, and time, a bit of latitude . . . but Jesus Christ, you’re losing sight of what got us to where we are, Teddy. I mean, what’s happening with this PromTech deal? We’re just going to let that one slide too?’
As Shaw speaks, I avoid his eyes, stealing glances instead at his shirt collar, at his watch, at his soft, manicured hands, at the texture of his suit, but at the same time my mind is racing, I’m thinking, and so rapidly that it can’t be conscious. What I must be doing, I guess, is trawling through some mental database of stuff I’ve read, searching for a match, a loose thread to pick up and spin an answer out of. Shaw is watching me closely now, and I have to say something. Because grunting or nodding along won’t cut it for much longer.
‘Come on, Doug,’ I say, tugging at my own jacket lapel, ‘I wear a suit to the office every day, what more do you want? I’m supposed to worry about volatility in the markets now as well? About earnings, and price ratios? You want me to get excited about some new start-up? Why? So we can take their game-changer of an idea and suck the life out of it, reduce it to an efficient revenue stream? Well, I can’t do it. My heart’s not in it any more.’
I’m aware that Trager and Shaw have their differences, and, while I’m vague on the details, this seems to be at the core of it. It’s an argument I’ve seen rehearsed again and again in interviews and magazine profiles.
‘Fuck your heart, Teddy, where’s your brain? Where are your balls? Our business runs on confidence. You don’t need me to tell you that. So for the two of us to be seen squabbling publicly about this – or, by the way, about anything – is . . . is . . . it’s like we’re dysfunctional, like the company is, I mean, Paradime. That’s how we’re being perceived. And it can’t go on or it’ll destroy us.’
I have a pretty good idea of what Trager’s counterargument might be, but the very fact that I do strikes me as odd. Because if I, as an ordinary member of the public, know what it is – if it has filtered that far out into the ether – how come Trager and Shaw are still having this conversation? Is it that the matter remains unresolved? That they’re going around in circles on it? That there really is an element of dysfunction here?
‘What will destroy us, Doug,’ I say, barely able to believe the exasperated tone I’m adopting, ‘is this insane notion of infinite economic growth. I mean, what’s our big game plan? Make more money? Seriously? Is that all we’re ever going to use our energy and creativity for? We talk about leadership and innovation and fostering fresh ideas, but the only thing that companies like Paradime really want to do is fatten these new ones up for IPOs so we can strip them to the bone afterwards.’
Shaw sits back and stares at me. ‘Wow.’
I wait a second. ‘What?’
He gives his head a quick shake. ‘Nothing, it’s just . . . the blood sausage. I can smell it from here.’
At which point Brian arrives from behind me with our orders. There’s a moment or two of business with plates and cutlery and napkins, during which I try to gauge Shaw’s reaction to what I just said, or even if it counted as a reaction at all. Needless to say, I’m not hungry, and the artfully arranged food in front of me looks deeply unappetising, almost like something from a Surrealist painting. It also occurs to me that I might have gotten a detail wrong – maybe you strip companies to the bone before an IPO?
‘So, Teddy,’ Shaw says, after his first couple of bites, ‘that was a nice little speech and all, but you didn’t answer my question.’
Which was?
Holding my fork over the plate, eyebrows furrowed, I try to remember, the delay now as much about avoiding the food as working out how to respond to Shaw.
‘PromTech?’ he says, nudging me along.
‘Yes.’ I put the fork down. ‘You want . . . you want me to sign.’
‘Of course. But what I really want is harmony. What I really want is for Paradime to show a united front. Is that so much to ask?’
I have no idea what to say, because, let’s face it . . . harmony, a united front, it sounds reasonable, but is that what Trager would think? I have to admit I’m lost here, and skating on very thin ice. I don’t know PromTech either, or what their deal is. Actually, I can’t even believe I’m having a conversation with Doug Shaw. The thing is, I find all of this thrilling, but part of the thrill is knowing I’m only ever a few seconds away from everything imploding. Because what if Teddy Trager were to call Shaw up right now on his cellphone, or to walk in the door of the restaurant? Or how about this? What are the odds – if I actually make it through lunch here – that when Shaw goes back to the office, the first person he meets, wearing a different suit and talking about going for lunch, is Teddy Trager? Pretty high, I’d imagine, so in a way does it really matter what I say? Where I take this?
‘Well, you see,’ I say, picking up my fork again, ‘that’s exactly what I’m talking about, Doug. PromTech. We need to wean ourselves off this kind of thing, I don’t know, these . . . sugar-rush start-ups, these . . .’
Shaw laughs for a second, then shakes his head. ‘Are you drunk? These start-ups are our bread and butter for Christ’s sake.’
‘Yeah, but . . . it’s . . .’ I’m floundering now. ‘It’s all short-term thinking, it’s—’
‘Okay, okay, okay.’ Shaw waves this away, dismisses it. Then he says, ‘Tell me. How’s Nina?’
‘Nina?’
‘Yeah.’ He takes another bite. ‘Tall chick? Good-looking?’ He smiles. ‘What’s going on with you guys?’
I want to throw a counter jab here but realise I know nothing about Shaw, if he’s married, gay, attached, whatever. I don’t know anything about Nina either. But I do remember reading this one thing.
‘We’re good,’ I say. ‘She keeps telling me she wants a baby, though.’
Shaw nods his head. ‘Yeah, I can see that. You should go for it. Nothing like a kid to give you a little perspective on things.’
Lost for a response, I manoeuvre a small slice of the hamachi onto my fork and raise it to my mouth. I feel sick, but pop it in anyway. As I’m chewing the food, I look at Shaw, but he’s already cleared his plate and seems distracted now. He keeps glancing around, checking his phone.
When it comes time to leave, I have a brief moment of panic. Brian arrives with the cheque, Shaw is texting, and it looks as if I might have to pull out my wallet, which is worn and faded and only contains a photo of Kate, two maxed-out credit cards, a Metro card, and twenty dollars in cash.
But without looking up from his phone Shaw reaches out and grabs the cheque.
A few minutes later, standing on the sidewalk in front of Barcadero, I still feel a little sick and know instinctively that getting into the cab Shaw is hailing will end badly, so I tell him I have a ‘thing’, an appointment, that it’s nearby, a couple of blocks east, and that I’ll be around . . . maybe later, maybe tomorrow.
As the cab pulls up, Shaw says, ‘Just remember who you are, Teddy. Remember what you are.’ He opens the door, and holds it for a moment, gazing along the street. Then he turns to me. ‘And let’s keep our eyes on the real prize, okay?’
He gets in, and I stand there, watching, as the cab pulls away again and disappears in traffic.
*
I go straight home and, without changing out of the suit, grab my laptop, sit at the kitchen table and start researching PromTech. It turns out they’re just what you’d expect from the name, a tech start-up . . . robotics, drones, quadrotors, nano solutions, all that stuff. They operate out of a lab in New Jersey, probably some windowless, stinky, oestrogen-free geek pit, but the guys there must be cooking something up because it seems that Paradime – or Doug Shaw, at least – really wants to fund them. After that, I look up Shaw, and the first thing I find is a Bulletpoint.com profile by Ray Richards with the header ‘The Other Side of Paradime’. It describes Shaw’s legendary deal-making skills and goes into detail about his activities prior to, during, and after the late-nineties dot-com bubble. It also transpires that he’s married and has a very young daughter, with a second one, from a previous marriage, in high school. He does a lot of charity stuff and likes Broadway musicals. None of this does anything to quell the sick feeling in my stomach. I found Shaw weird and his attitude opaque.
But towards the end of the piece, he is referred to as ‘probably the one man who knows Teddy Trager better than Teddy Trager knows himself’, and it concludes with the observation that Shaw’s only real rival in Tragerworld is Nina Schlossmeier.
So I switch my focus to her.
I hit Google Images first, predictably, but man, there’s plenty to look at – glamorous Nina wearing Tom Ford, casual Nina in a windbreaker on the side of some mountain, Nina at a web summit, Nina on the red carpet. She’s a native New Yorker, brought up in Tribeca, but her parents, both artists, are German. She speaks the language, it appears, along with Russian, Italian and Japanese. A couple of years ago she founded Pincer, a search-engine app, and built the proprietary algorithm herself. Although she has led the start-up to profitability, the company is apparently still small, and Trager has had no direct involvement in it.
I look her up on Twitter and scroll through her feed for a while. Then I search around for some video and find a YouTube clip from an interview she did for a TV profile of Trager. In it, she talks quite frankly about her relationship with him.
‘It’s not easy, that’s the first thing, because a guy like Teddy can’t be tied down, you know, his head won’t let him, it’s taking him in too many directions at once. But I understand that, and I support him. I mean, what am I going to do?’ She laughs here, leaning towards the interviewer, her laugh full and generous. ‘Rein him in? You try it. Good luck with that. Listen, every day with Teddy is a challenge, every day is an adventure . . .’
I pause the clip and linger over the still of Nina on the screen. How long would I last talking to her? Lunch with Doug Shaw was a strain, but would I even get through five minutes with Nina? Someone who expects me to make every day of her life an adventure? It’s preposterous. And it’s not just that she’s out of my league in the crass sense of her being too good-looking for me. What did that profile say? She built the proprietary algorithm herself? She speaks fucking Japanese?
Yeah.
Still, I can’t look away and am sort of mesmerised by her now – the expression in her eyes, her intelligence, her overall quality of ‘highness’. Whatever that means. High cheekbones? High German? (High Anxiety?) I eventually take a screen grab of the frame and print it out. It’s on plain paper and the quality isn’t very good, but I lay it down on the table next to the laptop and glance at it every now and again as I continue reading and following links, burrowing down into a rabbit hole I have no idea how I got into or how I’m going to get out of.
At some point (I’ve lost track of time, but it must be late afternoon), I hear a key in the latch and look up to see Kate coming in. She sort of slopes through the door, flicks it closed, and leans back against it. She’s still dressed up, which is when I realise that I am too (and inexplicably, it must seem to her). Then I remember how I ended our phone conversation earlier.
Mid-sentence.
In the street.
Mid her sentence.
Bad enough doing it so abruptly, but not calling her back? There’s no excuse that’ll undo that, and I’m not going to try. Besides, I have a sudden feeling that what happened earlier might not even be on her agenda any more.
‘What are . . .’ She’s still leaning against the door and has a quizzical look on her face. ‘What . . . no, why aren’t you at work?’
I hesitate, but then just say it. ‘I quit.’
‘Oh.’ She furrows her brow. ‘You quit?’
‘Yes.’ I don’t know what I can add to that.
‘Well, that’s nice. I guess. For you.’
She stands there staring at me, looking a little confused, as though I’m out of focus or something, and then I get it, I am out of focus, because she’s shit-faced, or approaching it.
‘Why are you wearing that God-awful suit again, Danny? Did you have another interview?’
‘No,’ I say, shaking my head (and shock-absorbing the ‘God-awful’), ‘I didn’t.’
Pushing back at the door, she launches herself gingerly across the room. When she gets to the table, she reaches over, and before I can stop her, before I realise what she’s doing, she picks up the printed screengrab of Nina Schlossmeier. After studying it for a couple of seconds, she says, ‘So, who’s your girlfriend?’
‘It’s no one.’
‘Oh, come on, Danny.’ She’s swaying slightly on her feet now. ‘I’m sure the nice lady wouldn’t like to hear you say that. She’s very cute.’
I find the sudden collision here between reverie and reality unnerving, which maybe explains how I’m able to say what I say next. ‘Kate, have you been drinking?’
Her response is a grunt mixed with a laugh. ‘Oh, I think you could say that.’ Staring at me, she holds up the sheet of paper again. ‘So. Who is this?’
‘It’s no one.’ I roll my eyes. ‘Jesus.’
Then, within seconds, we’re arguing, full-on, about the picture, about the phone call, but eventually about everything . . . money, commitment, the apartment, our future together, when (or if) we’re ever going to have a kid. It’s no surprise that we end up there, since the question is something we’ve discussed so many times before.
‘I DON’T KNOW, KATE.’
But when I say this, when I shout it, I simultaneously bang my fist on the table, causing Kate to recoil, as though from an explosion, and something in the room changes, there’s a dynamic shift – in temperature, or mood, or even at some molecular level – because right in front of me Kate recovers, she regains her equilibrium and almost visibly sobers up. She sits down at the table, looks into my eyes and starts trying to engage with me, rationally, to connect. Fighting back tears, she describes a recent conversation she had with Harold Brunker about the complex nature of PTSD and how it can present in a whole variety of ways.
‘. . . so maybe, I don’t know, maybe it could help explain—’
I swallow. ‘Explain what?’
She shakes her head in what looks like disbelief. ‘You, Danny . . . explain you, and what’s been going on. You haven’t been yourself lately, you need help, you—’
I bang my fist on the table again and stand up. ‘What, so this is the support I get?’
‘Danny.’
‘You go sneaking off to Harold fucking Brunker and talk about me behind my back? You diagnose me? What’s next? More medication? A straightjacket?’
Kate deflates, seeming tired all of a sudden, and maybe halfway back to being drunk – but not empowered drunk this time, not smart-ass drunk. More the drained, addled kind.
‘No, Danny, of course not.’ She looks up at me. ‘But you . . . you’re not alone, you know . . . listen, they say at least ten or twelve per cent of returning—’
‘Oh please, Kate, you have no idea about any of this, no idea what you’re talking about at all.’
I take the sheet of paper from the table, the picture of Nina. I crumple it up into a ball and fling it across the room. My anger is real, but there is an element of misdirection to it, of calculation. Because I don’t want to talk about this stuff, I can’t, I’m too far gone in the other direction – and while I might not know where that direction leads, it’s more real to me now than anything happening here in this room.
Which is why I have to leave it.
I close my laptop, pick up my phone and head for the door. As I’m going out, I look back. Kate is still sitting at the table, slumped forward now, her head in her hands.
*
I go to a bar on Second Avenue, thinking that if she can drink in the afternoon, then so can I . . . except that now it’s late afternoon, early evening really, and the place I’ve come to is filling up with a noisy after-work crowd.
Besides, I don’t really want a drink.
I order a club soda and sit at the bar with my phone. Within a minute I’m scrolling through Nina Schlossmeier’s Twitter feed again. Most of it is incomprehensible to me, references to tech stuff, Pincer updates, links to articles, as well as the occasional jokey or personal tweet. I go back to the top. This is her most recent one, from three hours ago: Totally stoked for @pollylabelle’s opening at the Carmine tonight. Be there or be polyhedral. I google the Carmine. It’s a gallery in Tribeca, off Hudson, about fifteen blocks from here, give or take.
I nurse my club soda for another twenty minutes or so and then leave. I walk across town, moving slowly, block after block, a warm tinge of dusk seeping into everything. When I get to the Carmine, the place seems fairly quiet and dark. It’s barely recognisable as a gallery, and, apart from its big windows, looks more like a warehouse or an abandoned factory.
I stand in a doorway across the street, watching, waiting. But soon, and as though I’m somehow conjuring it up, lights come on inside the gallery, then town cars and limousines start arriving, and people appear from everywhere, hipsters, arty types, collectors, critics, photographers, so that within minutes, literally, the joint is jumping, and Polly Labelle’s opening is in full swing.
Nina Schlossmeier’s entrance is unmistakable. She emerges from the back of a black SUV, alone, and glides inside. I watch from my post across the street as the energy of the event, the heat of the room, seems to coalesce around her. I realise I’m in the grip of some kind of fever now and that nothing will satisfy me except one thing.
To be there, in the room, standing next to her.
I keep glancing around, checking my phone, delaying, expecting Teddy Trager to appear, but as each minute passes I become more firmly convinced that he isn’t going to. So on an impulse I propel myself forward, cross the street and walk straight into the gallery. I continue moving, like a targeted drone strike, until I’m in Nina’s direct line of vision.
‘Teddy,’ she says, as I close in. ‘Oh my God, I thought . . .’ Then she smiles and holds up her glass.
I’m unsure how to read this, but I think it’s okay. And in what feels to me like only a few seconds, a glimmer, the next twenty or thirty minutes disappear down some weird sinkhole, part dream, part hallucination. Nina parades me around, introducing me to one bizarre group of people after the next, then introducing me to Polly Labelle herself and getting me to pledge what will easily be the biggest sale of the night, and the centrepiece of Polly’s exhibition, The Circle of Willis. I nod along, saying, ‘sure, sure,’ my throat so dry I feel I’m on the point of asphyxiation. Then, slightly panicked, I pat my jacket up and down to imply that I’ve left my wallet at home, but this just cracks Nina and Polly up.
After that, I find myself being led by the hand and taken through a maze of hallways and corridors to a cramped, dimly lit back office, where Nina shuts the door, locks it, and turns to face me. Leaning forward, she takes a firm hold of my belt and, before undoing the clasp, whispers in my ear, electrifyingly, ‘Teddy, I’m so glad you made it tonight . . .’
*
In another glimmer, I find myself rolling off a hastily cleared mahogany desk, and, as Nina reassembles herself in the corner – muffled, distant music thumping in the background – I notice for the first time that the walls of this little room are eerily adorned with dozens of framed black-and-white photos of the city’s high-society gallerati, most of whom I don’t recognise, though out of the corner of my eye I do spot De Niro, and there’s Mario Batali, and there, in front of me now, wielding a champagne flute, looking directly out – looking, in fact, it seems, directly at me – is Teddy Trager.
I feel a rush of guilt here, but also, as I glance over my shoulder at Nina, of dread, because in the afterglow of such intimacy how will it be possible, I wonder, for us to talk to each other, to even look at each other, without the truth becoming immediately apparent. But a combination of Nina’s phone going off, a burst of raucous laughter out in the hallway, and a strange forward momentum sweeps us back into the main exhibition space.
At a certain point, Nina is whisked away for photos with Polly, and I slip outside. It’s ostensibly to get some fresh air, but once I start moving I can’t stop, driven forward by a dynamo of thoughts spinning inside my head, a flickering blooper reel of the past half hour, the past few weeks. Was that me trying to negotiate a garter belt? Was that me cheating on my girlfriend? Was that Danny Lynch stalking some billionaire tech guy he bears a resemblance to – stalking the man like an overexcited web rat who’s ventured out of his mom’s basement? Jesus. At the end of the block, on the corner of Hudson, I look back towards the gallery and feel dizzy. I keep walking, but it doesn’t take me long to realise that I’m heading back the way I came, that I’m heading east . . . that I’m . . .
What? Going home? Back to the apartment? To Kate?
After what just happened?
On West Houston, I hail a cab and tell the driver to go uptown. I get him to stop at 57th and Sixth, and for a while I circle the area. I’m still operating on nervous energy, but I eventually slow down and come to rest on a stretch of the sidewalk directly opposite the Tyler Building. I give it a few minutes, then cross over, step onto the plaza, and head straight for the entrance. The security guy lets me in, no questions asked, and within seconds I’m in the elevator and surging up towards the fabled seventieth floor. I wonder who’ll be up here. Maybe Teddy Trager? Who knows? If he is, though, wouldn’t the security guy have been puzzled just now? Whatever. I don’t really care any more, and perhaps there’s even a part of me that hopes Trager is up here, that we’ll get to look each other in the eye, and even talk.
When I emerge from the elevator, the first thing that hits me is the coruscating Manhattan nightscape. I walk – almost stumble – across reception, and apart from the Paradime logo, which is everywhere, I can’t really focus on anything.
‘Mr Trager?’
I turn, and a young man is standing next to me with a bottle of chilled water on a small silver tray. I look at him for a moment and then take the bottle. It’s actually quite welcome. I hold it against my cheek, close my eyes and exhale. Then I open my eyes again and look around. The place isn’t deserted, as you might expect, but it’s not busy either. Most of the offices are visible through lightly frosted panels or walls of glass. I can see Doug Shaw, for example, in his huge corner office, slumped behind a desk. He’s on the phone, facing away from reception.
The young man is still standing next to me, and I turn back to him. This is going to be a weird question, but I ask it anyway.
‘Which office is mine?’
A barely perceptible twitch is all he reveals of his surprise. ‘Of course, Mr Trager. Please, follow me.’
As he leads the way, I open the bottle of water and take a long slug from it. Trager’s office is similar to Shaw’s. It’s on the opposite corner of the seventieth floor and is bigger than everything around it. The young man holds the door open for me.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he says, ‘but Mr Shaw asked me – again – to leave those papers for you to sign. They’re on your desk.’
I mumble something, dismissing him with a nod. I head straight for the desk, settle into the swivel chair behind it and just . . . swivel, slowly, rhythmically. Because this is it, this is the seat of power. This is the heart of Paradime’s corporate empire.
But what happens next? Where do I take this?
And how long before someone calls security?
I glance around the office and, after a moment, catch sight of my reflection in a large window opposite where I’m sitting. Disconcerted, I lean forward in the chair and gaze at the image. Is that who I’ve become? That guy? A venture capitalist, a speculator with a portfolio in the billions?
I lean back in the chair and swivel some more.
Though how hard can it be, right? As work, I mean. You sit around all day making phone calls, reading quarterly reports, trying to pick winners, signing shit? The truth is, I’m not sure you’d get a cigarette paper between one of these VC guys and your average degenerate gambler studying racing forms at Belmont or Saratoga.
Just then my eye falls on a neat stack of papers in front of me on the desk. I stare at it for a while. I pick a few pages up and flick through them. It’s no surprise that the name PromTech jumps out at me, though nothing else I see here makes much sense. It’s financial jargon, legalese. It’s a contract.
But now it’s my job, as well. At least in theory.
So – I find myself wondering – is PromTech a winner? Does it have form? I look around for something to write with. I scan the desktop, then rummage through a few drawers. I soon find a very elegant silver fountain pen.
But how does this guy sign his name?
I go through a bunch of other stuff in the drawers and eventually find something with Trager’s signature on it. I copy it out several times on a separate sheet of paper and end up doing it quite well. Then I identify where in the documents I have to sign. There are twelve places, but spread out over three separate copies of the contract. In each place, Doug Shaw has signed, as have two others, people from PromTech, presumably.
I hold the pen suspended over the first page.
Fuck it. Here goes.
I sign twelve times, getting faster as I go, and when I’ve finished, I toss the pen back onto the desk.
There. Action.
Or forgery, more like. Malicious personation, fraud. Whatever it is, it should get me a decent slice of jail time.
I lean back in the chair now and close my eyes.
Fuck.
Is this what I wanted? Power? Wealth? Respect? When all that could possibly be on offer was just the fleeting illusion of these things? The shiny surface of them? What a jerk I’ve been – indulging this fantasy, going on this inverted and insane tour of duty, behaving recklessly.
Stupidly.
And meanly.
I open my eyes and take out my cellphone. Swivelling again, I call Kate and, after a tense initial exchange, ask her to just listen to me. Then I tell her – solemnly, almost whispering – that I’m really sorry, that my head is a mess, that I’ve done some fucked-up things, and that, yes, maybe I do need some kind of help, treatment, therapy, whatever, but that more than anything else in the world I don’t want to lose her, I don’t want to lose the future we have together . . . that I love her . . .
‘Well, then,’ Kate says, audibly stifling tears, ‘get off the phone and come home, you moron.’
This is a huge relief to me, and after I put the phone down I sit for a while in the stillness of this empty office, taking it in, processing it. But when I’m ready to leave, to get out from behind the desk, I look up and see, through a layer of frosted glass, the blurry but unmistakable figure of Doug Shaw approaching from the far side of reception.
I flop into the chair again and sigh. Are we at the end of the line here? Are the security guys on their way over too?
Shaw soon appears in the doorway. He stands there for a moment, looking in.
‘You okay, Teddy?’
‘Yeah.’
But I’m not, and this is weird. I let the mask slip there by making that call to Kate, and I feel as if Shaw should somehow know this and be using my real name.
Calling me Danny.
He enters the room and walks over to the desk, almost sidles up to it. He eyes the documents. I glance at them myself, having more or less forgotten about them. He picks a wad of pages up, simultaneously slipping on his glasses, and flicks through them. He cracks a thin smile.
‘You signed them?’
I nod again, but don’t say anything.
‘Well, that’s an interesting development.’
But he seems a lot more than interested. He seems excited, and maybe a little agitated, or even confused. He picks up the rest of the pages and shuffles them all together. Holding them against his chest now, he moves away from the desk and across the room. When he’s at the door, he turns and looks back.
‘I’m glad you did this, Teddy.’ He pauses. ‘And stick around, yeah? I’m going to make a couple of calls. Then I think we need to have a proper talk. And maybe a drink? To celebrate?’
‘Sure.’
After Shaw leaves, I stand up. What the fuck did I just do? Greenlight the PromTech deal? Okay, on one level, cool . . . but on another, does it matter, and do I really care? No. Teddy Trager would have signed in the end, he would have succumbed, that seems inevitable to me, because after a certain point with these people money isn’t about what it can get you any more, it’s all just numbers, and the acquisition of it becomes its own motivating force . . . a little money, a lot, an obscene amount, what’s the difference? It’s a joke. Whereas I don’t even have enough of the stuff (it’s just occurring to me now) to get a cab ride home, having blown most of my last twenty bucks coming up here.
But at least I have a Metro card.
I go to the door, and hover in front of it. I’m nervous. I don’t want to be seen, but reception is pretty much deserted now, so I head straight for the elevators. As I’m waiting for a car to arrive, I look back over at Shaw’s office. It’s hard to tell, but there seems to be something going on, a flurry of activity. Shaw himself is on the phone again, pacing up and down, staring at the floor as he talks. The young man who greeted me with the water earlier is standing near the door, consulting a tablet. And a young woman is leaning over the front of Shaw’s desk. She appears to be rearranging some papers.
An elevator car pings open, and I slip inside.
I have no idea what just happened up here, what’s real any more, what isn’t, but as I descend to ground level and make my way out of the building and along the street to the nearest subway stop, and as I sit on the train, and then walk the last few blocks to my building, I know I’ve had enough, that I’m done here, that it’s over. But an inevitable consequence of this realisation is that my sense of desperation reboots. Because making up with Kate on the phone like that? The rush of emotion? The flood of honesty? The declaration of love even? None of that is going to pay the rent or clear the bills. None of that is going to ward off a future of shitty, soul-sapping jobs . . . a future in which people like me and Kate are disposable, in which we’re little more than monetisable data points in some algorithmic sequence. And is that what I want? For her? For me? For the kid we’ve so often nearly conjured up in conversation? A life of attrition? A future that is circumscribed, constricted, already bankrupt?
Is there any choice?
When I’m about half a block from my building, I slow down, almost to a crawl, not because I’m changing my mind or having second thoughts. . . . it’s because up ahead I see something that obliterates any possibility of thought. Parked along the kerb there is a distinctive-looking, ultramarine-blue sports car, and leaning against it is a man who’s about my height and build.
I stop, and he turns to look at me.