Dear Money (15 page)

"India Palmer," a familiar voice called as I stepped from the restaurant into the street. The voice belonged to Darwin Smith, who was married to Theodor's tall and plump cousin Sally. He was a small, deliberate, bespectacled man who enjoyed telling people how to do things better in their lives. Only in New York, a city of eight million people, do you run into your cousin's husband by accident.

I loved to listen to Darwin when he'd go on to Theodor and me about how our lives would be so much better if we lived in the country. He could paint such an inviting picture that I really could envision us in Vermont, in a sweet antique farmhouse, the kids in public school, a barn for Theodor's studio, the attic for mine. I found it entertaining because it seemed Darwin wanted to be a savior, as if by saving just one person, he would consider his life worthwhile. Darwin spoke slowly, he walked slowly. He had a gimpy leg, partially paralyzed by a childhood illness. Actually, he was forced to drag his leg, but over the years he had done a good job of masking the effort so that it seemed only a slight limp.

"Darwin Deals," I said and kissed and hugged him, swallowing him whole he was such a petit man. "How are you?" Somewhere along the route to adulthood (at one time selling Italian sandwiches for a hefty price in his college dorm and other entrepreneurial escapades) he'd picked up the nickname Deals and was now so known to most of his friends.

"You get an early start," he said and examined his watch.

"Breakfast with a friend," I said.

"I didn't think writers did breakfast."

"This writer does. How's Sally?"

"She's well." Sally was a lawyer who defended white-collar felons, perps of hideous scandals usually involving enormous sums of money, and on occasion prostitutes from exotic countries, paid extravagantly with company cash.

"Any good cases?"

"Nothing too exciting. Your book? Is it out yet?"

"October sixteenth is the publication date."

"Reviews?"

"Too early for that," I lied. The prepubs should have been in by now.

"I look forward to reading it. I've been meaning to call you. I wanted to ask if you had a thousand dollars."

"Are you kidding me?"

"I'm not." He had to look up at me, since I towered over him. "You look beautiful. You've done something new."

"Just the hair. The older I get, the lighter it gets. A thousand bucks for what?"

"I want to help you," he said. Gold flecked his brown eyes, which were set a little too close together and made bigger and bug-like by the glasses. He kept his reddish hair slicked back in ripples with gel so it looked pasted to his scalp. His suit was light and a little too big for him. "Coffee is going to burst," he continued. "We've got an opportunity and I want you and Theodor to take advantage of it. There's going to be an eruption in the coffee futures market and we're going to get in on the ground floor with an option. It's going to explode. The price pressure is completely on target. I haven't seen anything like this since the early 1980s."

"You want me to trade coffee?"

"Buy a futures option. You're going to buy it for less than it will be worth, then sell. Simple. I'm telling you, it's about to shoot to the moon. I want you to come for the ride." Then he whispered. "I'm speaking about a good old-fashioned Wall Street tip. Coffee's where it's at. Explode," he said again and went on to explain the simplicity of the situation, of coffee calls and coffee futures and options and the right to buy 37,500 pounds of coffee without the requirement of margin deposits of cash, how together we, like surfers, were going to ride the wave and keep riding it all the way up to the moon. And just then he pointed upward into the September sky, to the pale and very full moon. "We're headed there. Coffee's going two hundred and fifty thousand miles high. Six weeks and a thousand dollars will become a quarter to half a million. I've worked out the numbers. It's a no-brainer."

He spoke with that passion of his, his desire to be the savior, and I felt then as I did about the farm in Vermont. I could see it as clearly as I could see the moon. But I did not understand the nuances he offered, that he carried on about at length, the simplicity or the complexity of how one thousand would become half a million. And yet I believed him, and it made me warm to his idea. Indeed, his enthusiasm seemed to make him grow. He had made plenty of money in the past in the commodities market, so I'd been told by Sally, usually when everyone else was losing money. "There are always one or two making money in a down market," he was fond of saying. In times when I'd been more concerned with art, he'd bored Theodor and me about corn and soy and sugar and pork bellies. He was married to a sane, smart woman. Sally was always proud of him and his accomplishments, always regaling us with his financial savvy. Somehow I did believe irrefutably in answers dropping from the clear blue sky to change one's fortune. And here was the preposterous Darwin Deals in the nick of time. And indeed, the moon was gorgeous up there, my empyrean of security. No creditors up there. Even Will's manuscript didn't feel so heavy in my arms.

In our Vanguard money market account, our savings, used for the big expenses, we had $1,927.58 left. Theodor had no idea. He also had no idea that the bills had gotten out of hand, that I was having a hard time juggling Peter to pay off Paul. He didn't know that the tuition was overdue, that American Express had not been paid this month, that the 0 percent promotion on the credit card that held our debt was coming to an end and the balance would need to be paid (or transferred again), that I hadn't paid the IRS estimated taxes for the entire year, not to mention New York State. I did not tell him that I had used just under $300 from my university paycheck (the income we drew on for our day-to-day expenses) to buy tickets to the new production of
Madame Butterfly
—heavily publicized as a sensation, not just of the season or the decade, but of opera history—even though Theodor had asked me not to. I loved opera. I could always find ways to justify theater tickets. For example, they could be a tax deduction, listed under the "professional viewings" category. And, I figured, if I canceled the cleaning lady twice, the tickets would be almost paid for.

I didn't tell Theodor any of this; I had not wanted to bother him with more fights. I had not wanted him to lose his focus. The sooner he finished the commission, the better off we'd be. But now another hope began to dawn, creeping in around the edges, taking me over slowly but completely. And it smelled like coffee, of all those beans, the rich, delicious smell, the oily beetle-like shape, the sheer quantity, the amassing of so many beans. Did he say 37,500 pounds? I would have them. I would be buying them for a low price and would have them, and once I had them, others would want them, want them badly enough that they would pay me a good deal more for them than I had paid. I thought of how many people loved to drink, needed to drink, coffee. Though I understood nothing, it seemed to make such perfect sense.

In this way I would make a handsome profit. In this way I would be able to work unburdened. In this way perhaps I would find my way back to storytelling. I wanted to find my way back. I understood that now. At all costs I wanted to find my way back to writing. I was a writer. I wanted to be writing. "Dreamers dream," my dear old professor Roger Salter once said, "and writers write." I wanted to make this work. I had fought for this. I will do this. And I realized just then how jealous I was of Will, terribly jealous—the ease with which he had let go.

The coffee, it did make sense. Indeed, the fates were with me. Will Chapman chose that restaurant so that I would be here at this exact time to run into Darwin Deals. I linked my arm happily in his and for a bit we strolled. Later, when I got home, I sent him a check, leaving us with $927.58, just a stick of wood floating up from the wreck of the family franchise.

O
CTOBER
16,
A DAY CHOSEN
by the marketing gurus at Leader Inc. Books. My publication day. On the proposed jacket, two sisters kissing. This, I am told by marketing, is alluring. Later, a man is added to the design. He sits in an armchair and appraises the sisters. "Sexy," I am told. "Sales are all about the jacket." On the back, blurbs from five best-selling female authors of women's fiction—commercial, less than literary but with that aspiration—sing the novel's praises. The pages of the book will have a rough-cut front edge.

It's been unseasonably cold. I'm wrapped in wool and white corduroys. I spend the morning at the university, teaching. In my first class a student comes late. Her story is due for submission. She's a pretty girl with long black curly hair and sharp features. She's been crying. Her dark brown eyes are puffy. The class stares at her. I don't interrupt what we are doing. She does. "I can't read my story to the class today," she says quietly, but nonetheless sucking the attention of the class to her.

The sense of privilege of these students always reminds me of my age. What they take for granted, my generation of students never would have—the display of personal drama, grubbing for grades, cell phones ringing during class, texting. "But you're due to read today," I say. "Please," she says, her mouth long and slack. "Why?" I ask. "It embarrasses me," she answers. I hold her with my eyes. She has already confessed to me in private that she's been having "psychological problems." All semester, my students have eyed me doubtfully as I have tried to find new ways to address certain irreducible laws of the writer's craft—that art is not random, that conflict and mayhem are not synonymous, for instance—but often they seem to stare blankly, as if to say, You're not John Grisham—what do you know?

Today's my publication day, I think. I want the kids to know it, to know they have a real writer teaching them. I get a jolt of joy, a high, because I've done it again. I've sent another book out into the world—the book, glossy and smooth and mine. Just looking at it, holding it, ignites the butterflies in my stomach. Yippee for me. Tonight Theodor is cooking me dinner at his Williamsburg studio to celebrate, the book party having transformed into a wine-and-cheese event at the Chapmans' after a reading in Tribeca on a later date. I have not yet seen Theodor's commission, the progress of it. "Dinner on the roof," he'd said to me, kissing me on the lips, holding me tightly in his arms. "No matter the temperature. Congratulations, my girl." The way he said "my girl" always made me feel sixteen.

The troubled student's eyes are laser-like, trained on me, awaiting my response. "We can talk after class," I say to her, and the class carries on. Another student reads a story. This one is about a dentist who suddenly realizes that the patient in his chair is a former girlfriend who dumped him back in high school. She is unaware of the connection, doesn't recognize the doctor behind his surgical mask. With his drill he takes his revenge on her face. I only half listen, like a shrink, I imagine, sitting across from her patients as they rattle off their endless tales of abuse. I don't need to listen; I know my comments—gratuitous violence and the implications, violence as pornography, not interesting, no complexity, who cares? Your job is to make us care.

My mind flits to a doorman in our building. A week ago, at forty-nine, he dropped dead of a heart attack. He loved to draw cartoons, cartoons worthy of
The Literary Review,
and I always thought how wonderful it would be if the magazine ran one of them: Doorman Becomes Famous Cartoonist. I had wanted to be his savior.

Today is my publication day! Fall light slants beautifully into the classroom while the drill does its business on the patient's face. I'm thinking, I'll send the doorman's family $1,000 if my book does well. I'm thinking, I'll ask the family for his cartoons, and I'll submit them myself to
The Literary Review.
I'm thinking, I'll get him an agent. I'm thinking of all the good I'll do with my money. I'll give April, the babysitter, permanent employment, guarantee her job for life. Such pondering was a favorite pastime. Ah, I would be good and generous at the task. The cleaning lady too, I would save her: employment for life. She's been with us since before the children were born. I'm loyal, I think to myself, brightening. I love being loyal. It's a fine quality. Karma, the world should be good to me.

Today is my publication day! The drill tears from the nostril to the lip, then up the cheek toward bone.
She had beautiful bone structure and he loved defiling it. He loved how easy it was to wreck beauty. Blood spurted everywhere, coagulating as it met the air.
The student reads with vivacity, a real sense of himself and the power of his work. He's a solid boy, like a football player, with fat eyes and a buzz cut. The woman is anesthetized but conscious, aware of what is happening to her but unable to do a thing about it. The coffee option is looking good. Darwin Deals has been phoning almost daily. "Up, up, up," he says. "A blight in Brazil. We're reaching the strike mark and we're going to keep surfing until ... India Palmer, you're going to be glad you know me."
Blood spurts like a fountain, oozy, from the once pretty chick's face. She's flailing her arms as if she could reverse the horror The horror!
If the book fails, there is always the coffee. It's a pretty day outside, if cold, the clouds booming across the sky. In this fashion, the class proceeds.

My students are serious, sweet, young, impossibly young. The strange boy reading with those fat eyes of his, I'm not sure he qualifies as sweet. To them, I am an old lady. They are pierced everywhere. One is stoned, eyes rimmed red. They wear clothes that look like pajamas. "The violence is well rendered," a student begins the critique. "You grossed me out," he offers as evidence of the writer's success. His name is Bob. On the first day of class he declared that Bob was his new name when he introduced himself: "My name is Bob. It used to be Malcolm Bennett Johnston VIII, but I think that's one too many Malcolm Bennett Johnstons. And I'm taking this class not because I want to write novels or fiction or stories—there's no future in that—but to learn how to write a good plot so I can make video games. That's where the money is." He looked me in the eye as if challenging me. "How long have you gone by 'Bob,' Bob?" I asked finally. He checked his watch and said, "Three minutes." Now he adds, "I love being grossed out." Hands shoot up, waving eagerly, stems in a breeze, and then all the students are a-chatter about what's wrong and right with the story: point of view and conflict and characterization, and is "the horror" referencing Conrad? They take the story and their responsibility to point out strengths and weaknesses quite seriously. The girl with psychological problems sinks in her chair.