Kapitoil (14 page)

“I am not feeling well,” I said.

She continued petting my forehead. “Just stay still.”

We stayed like that for a few minutes and my breathing deepened. “Do you think some slow music will help?” she asked, and I nodded.

I closed my eyes and focused on the words of the singer on the stereo she said was named Leonard Cohen, and it helped reroute my brain from panicking. The line “Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm” especially helped because I had to mentally link the two images, and it was a logical connection I had never previously considered, and after he sang that I opened my eyes and Rebecca’s hair was now hanging down on the pillow like falling black water and covering everything else around my face like a cylinder and all I could see was her face looking down at me, and my body felt more stabilized.

“Who produced these paintings?” I asked.

“My brother,” she said. “He’s studied art since he was little.”

“Zahira is artistic as well.” I didn’t know what else to say in that position. “But my father discouraged her from taking classes like that when she was young.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “Girls can do whatever they want here.” She removed the cloth from my forehead. Then she lowered her head and her hair touched my face like feathers. Her eyes fluctuated quickly from my eyes to my chest, and her warm breath moved over me, and my heart accelerated again.

I said, “Rebecca,” because the silence felt like shallow breaths again, and she didn’t answer, so I said her name again and she said, “God, it’s been a while,” and I wasn’t certain what she was referring to but I had an idea, so I said, “Then possibly—”

Before I could finish my sentence, which was going to be “Then possibly we should first discuss this situation from other angles,” she sat up and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is a mistake.” She kept saying the word “mistake” to herself as she stood up and moved away from the bed.

I said I was feeling enhanced and should go home, even though I was perspiring again, and tried to find my coat. The pile was large, and Rebecca stood there while I searched. She said, “You must think I’m a real shithead,” which almost made me laugh after I had analyzed the word, but because I didn’t know how to respond I looked around while I continued feeling through the pile and saw her blue wool hat on her desk.

I said, “That is a nice hat,” and she said, “My mother knitted it for me,” and suddenly I became very sad thinking about her mother producing a hat for her, even though there is of course nothing truly sad about it for her, but I could feel pressure behind my eyes, so I refocused on the pile and finally found my coat at the bottom and said I would see her on Monday and walked out while holding it, and I exited the party without saying good-bye to anyone and took a taxi home.

bong = device for inhaling marijuana

Manhattan project = term for atomic bomb project (not necessarily a project in Manhattan)

obscurantist = a person who withholds data from others

par-tay = different pronunciation for “party”

performative = a statement that also produces an action

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 9

On Tuesday I was making some trades in my office when someone knocked on the door. The person knocked very softly as if waking a child, and I didn’t hear it the first time, because it was raining loudly outside.

“What’s up?” Rebecca asked when she entered, which I didn’t know how to answer, because
(1)
she was the one to search for me, and
(2)
I never know how to respond to that question, since
(a)
people don’t truly want to know exactly what you are doing at the moment and
(b)
I couldn’t tell Rebecca even if she did want to know.

So I said “Nothing,” which makes people think you are boring, but I had no other ideas and I was slightly nervous.

“You’re allowed to decorate here,” she said.

“I do not own many objects.”

“Still, a picture or something. Some personality.” She was now standing across from me at the desk even though there were two empty chairs there. The sky outside was the color of smoke, which made the interior seem even less decorated. “It’s pretty dead.”

“Maybe you can lend me one of your brother’s paintings,” I said, and immediately I regretted it.

“Yeah,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about that. Not about the paintings.” She picked up a pen on my desk and moved it in her fingers like a conductor of a symphony holds a baton. “So, the other night, I was pretty drunk and all, and I think I may have done or nearly done certain things that could be considered somewhat inappropriate by some given the context of our professional relationship.”

It was difficult for me to follow the meaning of her sentence but I could understand it from her expression and how she focused on the pen.

“So, basically I’m saying that I wanted to make sure you didn’t get the wrong impression or anything.” She looked at me for the first time since she had entered the room. “Still friends?”

The rain had stopped, and in fact the sun was now out, but I wished it was still raining. It felt as if someone had turned up the gravity inside my chest, the opposite of feeling high, and without looking at her I slowly said, “Still friends.” I understand on a logical level how all real-world systems have finite resources and can partially satisfy only some consumers, and therefore the desires of two parties are sometimes incompatible. But it is still difficult to understand on a nonlogical level.

I heard her put the pen on my desk. “Great. Well, that’s all I wanted to say.” Then, to be polite, she asked me how work was proceeding, and I again responded like a robot, and she left, and I looked at the sunlight pouring into my dead office until I decided to concentrate on my work.

dead = lacking decoration or personality

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 14

The next two days I worked very late and was home only to sleep. My apartment had many luxuries but I was the solitary person using them, and that can grow boring, e.g., many times I was listening to the radio on the stereo and wished I could play the song for Zahira, but when I remembered she wasn’t there, I didn’t want to listen anymore.

Kapitoil was humming at near-optimal efficiency. We were restricting our daily investment so we would not cause market turmoil, and Mr. Ray didn’t state any specific projections, but I calculated that if we continued at this rate for the next year, Schrub’s quants revenues would increase approximately 30% over the previous year.

Then on Thursday morning I received an email from Mr. Schrub’s secretary. I was so stimulated when I saw her name in my inbox that I spilled my cranberry-blueberry juice on my desk and it left a small red puddle. She wrote:

I almost called Zahira to tell her the news, but it was too expensive to connect to Qatar during the workday. And I couldn’t tell anyone in the office because it would produce envy and they would question why Mr. Schrub was requesting my company, so I told my mother in Arabic so no one would understand me if they heard. I don’t truly believe she is observing me, but it’s nice sometimes to pretend she is.

I replied that the terms were acceptable, and she responded with further data about the car service. I asked:

She wrote that it was. I removed Barron’s business card from my wallet. It was easy to find because it was the only one I had received in New York so far.

When I made my reservation with Barron he didn’t mention if he remembered me, but maybe that was because he was very busy and couldn’t talk for long.

At noon on Friday I saw Rebecca in the kitchen. She was emptying packets of false sugar into her coffee. “Hey,” she said.

“Hello,” I said.

“Any weekend plans?” she asked.

“I have a busy weekend planned with friends,” I said, which was at least partially true. “What about you?”

She stirred the coffee with a plastic straw without looking at me. “Nothing special,” she said. “Have a good one.” She walked past me and out the door. I should have said that I was instead going to try to compensate this weekend for work I had neglected. But maybe it’s better I didn’t. When people lie they often have to lie again to cover the first lie, and they continue for many iterations in a chain.

Barron was on time, and as I got into the car I said, “It is my pleasure to meet you again, Mr. Wright.”

“You, too,” he said, and although I know that people reciprocate that to be polite, it sounded more authentic with his voice. “Heliport, right?”

“Yes. It will be my first time on a helicopter.” I added ASAP, “When you took me to the Yankees game, I forgot to call you after the game. My employer drove me home.”

“That’s cool. People forget all the time. I still get paid.”

“No, it is not cool,” I said. “It was my bad.”

He turned his head and looked at me even though he was still driving. “Okay,” he finally said. “Nice suit, by the way. Fits you right.”

Barron turned down the sun-protector, and again I saw the picture of his daughter taped to it. I asked how she was progressing. He said she was excelling in school and he thought she would soon be smarter than he was. I told him I thought the same thing about my sister. “Although for now I want her to think I am more intelligent, so that she continues to try to impress me in school.”

He laughed and said, “You’re all right. You’ve got a unique sense of humor. It’s subtle, but you’ve got one.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I will work to make my sense of humor less subtle.” This was possibly the reason no one else found me humorous. Then I said, “It must be enjoyable to spend time with your family after a week of work.”

Barron scratched the back of his head. His haircut was close to his skull, but many white hairs blended with the black ones. “It is. Sometimes it’s not. But mostly it is.” His eyes angled at me in the mirror. “You have any family here?”

I looked out the window, because suddenly it felt like tears were under the surface of my eyes and waiting to appear like perspiration on a Coke can. “No,” I said. I remained in that position to avoid Barron and because we were now near the East River and I always enjoy observing the water. My father used to teach me swimming at Al Wakrah beach on Saturdays. He was a powerful swimmer, and I learned quickly, although I was never as strong in the water as he was. He didn’t take Zahira, and of course my mother never went although I derived my broad shoulders from her and I believe she would have been efficient in the water as well. We stopped going when she became ill.

We arrived in a few minutes at the heliport, which had a landing pad in the shape of an L on top of the river, a large building behind the small parking lot for cars, and spaces for 12 helicopters, although just five were currently there. I thanked Barron. “Call me when you need a ride to the White House,” he said, and I laughed and complimented him by saying he had a non-subtle sense of humor.

In a few minutes Mr. Schrub’s limo entered the parking lot. The driver, Patrick, exited and opened the rear door for Mr. Schrub. He nodded at Patrick while he held a briefcase in one hand and talked on a cellular, and Patrick returned to the car and waited.

When Mr. Schrub was next to me, he said on the cellular, “John, I’m going to have to go—I’m with an employee,” which was both stimulating, because I always enjoy when anyone mentions that I’m a Schrub employee, especially Mr. Schrub himself, but also disappointing, because he didn’t refer to me by name. He closed the cellular and put down his briefcase and shook my hand. “Glad you could make it, Karim. I hope the late invite wasn’t a problem?”

I told him it wasn’t and that I was grateful for the opportunity to see more of the U.S. “Greenwich isn’t exactly how the other half lives. But it’s a good place for getting to know someone—it’s not always so easy in the city,” he said. I was glad he stated his reason for inviting me, because I didn’t know if we were going to discuss business over the weekend, but then I got nervous because it meant I would have to discuss myself, and my background and opinions are not nearly as original as Mr. Schrub’s.

Then he met with the pilot, who wore a blue uniform with gold buttons and a cap and had a thick black mustache, and they discussed some issues about the flight that I couldn’t hear, and Mr. Schrub informed me we were ready.

The helicopter was much larger than I anticipated. It looked like a minivan with a skinny nose, an elongated tail, and blades on top. The rear had six leather seats opposite each other the color of yogurt, and in the front were two seats for the pilot and a copilot, although when I saw there wasn’t one, Mr. Schrub said, “Don’t worry—if Mike passes out, I know how to land.”

Mr. Schrub and I faced each other, next to the windows, and linked our seat belts. After Mike toggled many switches and talked on the radio system, there was a sound like a powerful windstorm and the helicopter vibrated and it was like we were a vegetable pulled out of the dirt and finally we smoothly partnered with the air.

The sun was down now and the water below us was black, and I visualized that we were like the Schrub hawk, only the helicopter was not carrying the
S
and
E
, but Mr. Schrub himself and me, and for a second I also visualized a potential day Schrub Equities would have the name Schrub Issar.

I became very fearful as we flew higher and I didn’t look out the window anymore, because a helicopter doesn’t feel as stable as an airplane. Mr. Schrub could detect I was nervous and said, “I’ve flown this route hundreds of times, Karim. It’s perfectly safe.” When we were high enough, the helicopter moved north and I let myself look out the window. The overview was more beautiful than it was on the airplane, because we were at sufficient altitude to get the big picture of the city but also close enough to see details like cars and people moving through streets like liquid through channels, and it’s always preferable to have a macro and micro perspective simultaneously. E.g., when I’m on the street, New York seems so large, but now in the air I was reminded of how minimal Manhattan truly is, unless you consider the third dimension of height.

“Take a look, Karim,” he said. We were traveling over downtown now. “That city is ripe with possibility. It’s made for young men like you.”

Below us the cars advanced in traffic like lines of ants. “I have never had problems with working hard,” I said.

“It’s not always just about working hard,” he said. He looked like he was about to say something else, but stopped and removed his laptop from his briefcase and said he had to do some work, and told me I could use the portable DVD player and whatever movie was inside that his sons had been watching. He also mentioned that his sons might be joining us this weekend, and I said I was looking forward to meeting them. “I’m more looking forward to having them meet you,” he said.

We bypassed the ultraviolet lights of Times Square and the Schrub logo and my building and the angular skyscrapers in midtown and then the quiet trees of Central Park and the shorter buildings uptown like young children at the knees of their midtown parents, then Harlem and its blocks of iterating apartments and the George Washington Bridge’s white lights like points on a parabola, and then we flew east along the coast and the ground below wasn’t as bright anymore, and the last unique object I could make out was a large ship exhaling black smoke into the air that Mr. Schrub said was littered with garbage and was probably heading to a landfill in Connecticut, and when I couldn’t see anything anymore I powered on the DVD player and the movie
Armageddon
, which I had heard of in Doha.

Soon we were above large houses with long slanted driveways like snakes and empty swimming pools and fields. We zoomed toward a concrete square with lights around its perimeter far behind one of the houses that was shaped like a large U, but then approximately 200 feet above the ground we decelerated and landed very gently, as if we were tucking a child into bed.

The helicopter powered off and the blades stopped, and Mike helped Mr. Schrub exit. I jumped down without aid, which was foolish because I slightly hurt my ankle. Mr. Schrub asked Mike to take my luggage inside after he checked over the helicopter and to leave it with someone named Irma. Then we walked off the concrete and onto a path of small stones on a grass field and toward the house.

His house was not as big as some of the other houses I saw from the air. Its walls were white stone and it had a white roof which in a few areas was conical. In the rear, white columns extended from a wooden floor and formed a shelter, and we bypassed an empty swimming pool and a tennis court. It was like a larger version of Mr. Schrub’s apartment building: very luxurious but not boastful.

Mr. Schrub promised that I would get a full tour later but that for now he was hungry. When we approached the rear of his house, a black man in a blue uniform was sitting on a chair. “Hello, Thomas. This is Karim Issar,” said Mr. Schrub, and I shook hands with him. “He has full clearance this weekend.”

Thomas opened a heavy black door for us and we entered the house. The room had as much space as a hall for concerts, with a crystal-and-gold object with false candles attached to the high ceiling, a staircase with a gold railing, dark wood furniture I could see my face in, and a large carpet with a pattern like an expensive tie.

Mr. Schrub led me into the kitchen, which was the size of my living room, and a man who looked Eastern European was sitting at the marble counter in the middle and reading a magazine. His name was Andre, and Mr. Schrub told me I could ask him to fix me anything I wanted. While he waited for me to decide, Mr. Schrub said he was in the mood for a steak and potatoes and salad. I was craving lamb kofta, but if I ordered it I would have to ask if the lamb was halal, which it probably wasn’t, and it would take a long time to prepare and possibly Andre didn’t have all the ingredients, so I ordered a salad.

“That’s all you want?” Mr. Schrub asked. I said I had eaten a filling lunch and was not very hungry.

Andre told Mr. Schrub that Mrs. Schrub was dressing for dinner and would be down soon. “I’m afraid it’ll be a casual affair tonight—just the three of us,” Mr. Schrub said. “The boys will be joining us tomorrow.” Then he told me I could wash myself in the restroom in my bedroom, and the maid Irma showed me where it was upstairs. My luggage was already present and the bedroom was larger than the bedroom in my apartment even though it was for guests. When I was finishing, someone knocked on my door. It was Mrs. Schrub, and I recognized her from pictures on the Internet of the Schrubs at social events. They looked as if they could be siblings, because they were both very tall (although she is approximately ten years younger), except that she had short blonde hair. She wore a pearl necklace and a long gray dress and high heels. I was glad I was in one of my nice suits.

She shook my hand. “You must be Karim,” she said.

“You are definitely Mrs. Schrub,” I said.

She smiled and looked as if she didn’t know what to say for a moment, then told me to call her Helena and offered to tour the house with me before dinner. She displayed many rooms to me, and after seeing all the expensive furniture in them, they looked similar to me, but possibly that’s because I don’t have mastery in interior decoration, e.g., in the same way that Mrs. Schrub couldn’t observe differences between C++ and JavaScript. But Mrs. Schrub informed me she had decorated the house herself and described the objects in detail, e.g., a “Louis the 13th armoire” in the master bedroom she had acquired from an antique dealer in Vermont, so I said each room was beautiful, which was true, except I was also afraid to touch anything in the rooms, and if you’re afraid or unable to touch or utilize something it makes it less beautiful to me, and although the rooms were littered with decorations, in some ways they still seemed dead.