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‘All right,' Timothy said, out loud. He left the hotel and climbed back into his BMW.

When he returned to the art gallery he had a story ready, about how he asked the front desk for the sunglasses, and even bribed a housekeeper to let him into the room to search, but that they were nowhere to be found.

But he did not need the story. Katherine was standing in the parking lot, waiting for him. Under her arm she held a framed painting wrapped in newspaper. On her face she wore her sunglasses.

Timothy stopped the car beside her. She leaned over and put her elbows on the open window frame.

‘You're going to kill me,' she said. She tapped the bridge of her sunglasses. ‘I found them in my pocket.'

Timothy shook his head.

‘Are you mad?'

‘Get in,' he said. They didn't talk for the first twenty miles, but by the time they reached Monterey, Timothy decided that he had been silent long enough, and so he asked her what she wanted to eat for dinner.

7

When Timothy returned to work on Monday morning at a quarter past nine, Tricia was not at the front reception area. Instead there was a man underneath Tricia's desk, bent over, with his blue-jeaned ass in the air.

‘Hello,' Timothy said, to the ass.

‘Oh.' The man knocked his head against the desk as he stood. It was Tran, their computer consultant. He was thin and Vietnamese, and he looked like he was seventeen years old. ‘Hello, Timothy,' Tran said.

‘What's happening in the world of technology today?' Timothy said, disappointed that during his triumphant return to the office after a long weekend, he was being greeted by his computer technician, and not Tricia.

‘Disaster,' Tran said, in a heavy Vietnamese accent, staccato and guttural. ‘Contingency plan.'

‘Okay, Tran,' Timothy said, nodding. ‘Keep up the good work. Where's Tricia?'

‘Coffee,' Tran said, as he went back to work beneath her desk.

Timothy walked on, toward his office. Jay appeared in the hall and swept along behind him.

‘Hi, Timothy,' Jay said. ‘The yen's down to seventy-two, thank God.' And then, remembering: ‘Oh, how was your weekend?'

Timothy said: ‘Fine, fine.' He wanted to stop talking about it before Tricia returned from her coffee run. He entered his private office and held the door open for Jay. He closed the door behind them. ‘What's Tran doing out there? I never understand a word he says.'

‘We talked about it last week. You gave your okay. He's installing a network backup system. In case there's a disaster, you
know? A fire, or theft? We'll back up the computers each night, and then rotate the backup media off-site once each week. That way, worst case scenario, we'll only lose a few days' worth of data. It's part of our Investor Agreement with Granite Partners. They require disaster contingency planning by all the funds they invest in.'

‘Okay, whatever,' Timothy said. Technology was really the Kid's specialty, after all.

Timothy removed his suit jacket and hung it behind the door. He said, ‘Tell me about the yen.'

‘I've heard reports that the BOJ is buying dollars. Now they're suddenly concerned that their exports are uncompetitive because of the strong yen.'

‘Okay,' Timothy repeated. All he cared was that the yen was moving down, and that was Good. At the current level of seventy-two, Osiris had a paper profit of – he tried to do the math …

‘We're up three million dollars now,' Jay said. It was as if the Kid had read his mind.

‘That's a start,' Timothy said.

‘The only thing is,' Jay said, ‘that we're fully margined. I mean fully margined. If the yen moves against us, or if any clients want to withdraw cash, then we're screwed.'

‘Who said anything about withdrawing cash?' Timothy asked.

‘No one,' the Kid said. ‘I'm just saying.'

On Timothy's desk, his phone rang. It was the internal ring tone – warm and quiet – which meant it was an intercom call from Tricia. He clicked on the speakerphone.

‘Yes?'

‘Hi, Timothy,' Tricia said.

‘Hi,' he called out. It was hard to be flirtatious on a speakerphone. And with the Kid standing right there …

He reached over and picked up the handset. ‘How are you?' he said, as plainly as he could.

‘Timothy, I have Pinky Dewer on the line,' she said into his ear, warmly. ‘He says he's in town.'

‘Please tell him I'm in a meeting and take a message.'

‘Okay, Timothy.' She hung up.

‘Pinky Dewer's in town,' Timothy explained to the Kid.

‘How long can we keep avoiding him?'

‘Depends. When's his flight home?'

The Kid nodded and left. Timothy reached below his desk and turned on his computer. He waited for it to boot, and then called up a five-minute chart on the Japanese yen. The sharp green lines spiked downward, little phosphorescent needles. Each tick down represented a million dollars. That was the kind of technology Timothy appreciated.

Before lunch, Timothy's phone rang softly again. The text display said: ‘Station 1. Tricia Fountain.' Timothy picked up.

‘It's me again,' she said. ‘I have a Mike Kelly on the line. He's from Union Bank Private Banking.'

‘Okay, put him on.'

There was a soft click and Tricia's voice was replaced by a man's, phlegmy and hoarse. ‘Mr. Van Bender?'

‘Yes, Mike. Please call me Timothy.' Mike Kelly was Timothy's point of contact at Union Bank. He took care of Timothy's banking: traveler's checks, credit cards, lines of credit, the jumbo mortgage on his home. Timothy had called him on the car phone during the ride to work. He'd told Mike to transfer two hundred thousand dollars from his general account to Katherine's checking account, so that his wife could begin her redecorating project.

Timothy asked: ‘Did you take care of that matter for my wife?'

‘I did,' Mike Kelly said. ‘That's actually the reason I'm calling.' He sounded hesitant, uncomfortable. Timothy had met him twice in the past – once a year ago, when Mike visited Osiris' office to have Timothy complete a new signature card, and once during Christmas, when Mike personally delivered a gift basket filled with champagne, fruit cake, and caviar. Bankers were terribly appreciative at Christmas time if they earned point two-five percent of all assets.

‘I want to make sure you are aware of something,' Mike Kelly continued. ‘I feel a bit uncomfortable calling like this, but it is a service that I feel obligated to provide, as your Union Bank representative.'

‘Okay, okay,' Timothy said quickly. Much more banker talk and he would fall asleep right there on his desk. ‘What's going on?'

‘We transferred the funds from your general account to sub-account 0812 as you instructed. Ten minutes later, we received further direction from your wife, to wire those same funds to another account.'

‘To whose account?'

‘That I don't know,' Mike Kelly said. ‘It's a Citibank account. For further credit to, let's see … Armistice LLC.' He rattled off an account number.

‘Who's Armistice LLC?'

‘I don't know.'

‘How much did she wire?'

‘One hundred and fifty thousand dollars.'

‘Jesus Christ,' Timothy said. So much for his instruction not to spend the money like a drunken sailor.

‘Mr. Van Bender, I want to make sure you understand something. Since you are both co-signers on the account, it's not a violation of our privacy policy to inform you of this transaction. At Union Bank we pride ourselves on our care and discretion. Typically we have very strict rules about what we can reveal about account activity. We take those rules very seriously. I hope I haven't overstepped any lines here.'

‘What's that?' Timothy's mind was occupied by figuring out how Katherine could spend over a hundred grand in less than ten minutes.

‘I said: Since you are both co-signers on the account, it's not a violation—'

‘Right, right,' Timothy said quickly. ‘I understand. That's fine.'

‘Would you like me to call our wire transfer department and see if there's still time to stop the transfer? There's a chance we could catch it.'

Timothy sighed. ‘No … no.' He thought about it. ‘I'm sure it's nothing terrible. Probably the decorator, or contractor, or who the hell knows. Either that, or she's in hock to her London bookie again.'

Mike Kelly was silent on the line.

‘I'm just kidding, of course,' Timothy said. ‘Her bookie is not based in London.'

Mike Kelly chuckled.

‘Mike,' Timothy said, ‘I appreciate your bringing this to my attention. I will be sure to thrash my wife later tonight.'

Now in the proper spirit of things, Mike chuckled again, ‘Okay, Mr. Van Bender. Okay, Timothy. You do that.'

‘Cheers,' Timothy said.

‘Cheers, Mr. Van Ben—'

Before Mike Kelly could finish, Timothy hung up.

He dialed Katherine. The phone rang. No answer. Where could she be? Probably buying lunch at Spago for her decorator. While he sat in his office, pondering financial ruin.

There was a knock on his door.

‘Come in,' he said.

Tricia entered the room, balancing a cardboard egg-box with two coffees. ‘I brought you some coffee,' she said, and pushed the door closed behind her with her shoulder. With Tricia's appearance, Timothy's anxiety about Katherine vanished.

‘You're the best,' he said. She wore tight red cotton jodhpurs and a black turtleneck, with a silver choker around her neck.

‘How was your weekend?' she asked. She removed one cup of coffee from the cardboard box and placed it on the desk in front of him. He wondered: who was the second cup of coffee for? She answered the question by opening the lid and taking a sip. It was her own. Had she really brought two cups of coffee into her boss's office so that she could join him for a little coffee-break banter? This was daring, he thought, suddenly feeling the rush of blood to his penis, the constriction in his throat, the prickles of excitement on the back of his arms. Tricia leaned against the corner of his desk, practically sitting on it now, the soft rounded wood pushing against the back of her thighs. Those tight red pants were just feet away from him.

She sipped her coffee, and continued her line of questioning. ‘Did you rekindle the magic?'

It took him a moment to realize that she was asking about the
anniversary weekend with his wife.

He said, ‘I bought her an expensive diamond necklace for our anniversary. That seemed to rekindle things pretty well.'

‘Jewelry will do that.'

‘What makes you think we need rekindling?'

She smiled, pulled a strand of dark hair behind her ear. ‘I'm sorry. I just thought, you know, being married for fifteen years …'

‘Twenty years,' he corrected her.

‘Twenty? Wow. That seems like a long time.'

‘Hmm,' Timothy said, noncommittally.

She pushed herself back further onto his desk, and was sitting comfortably on it now, her back at an angle to him. She sipped her coffee.

‘And how about you?' Timothy asked. He felt like a schoolboy, nervous that he needed to fill the silence, to say something clever. ‘How's that boyfriend of yours?'

‘What boyfriend?' Tricia said.

‘You know, the one you drove to San Francisco with. From LA? You told me about him.'

‘I did?' For an instant, she seemed surprised that he knew anything about her personal life. Then her face went blank and she said flatly, ‘He's gone.'

‘Gone?' What did that mean? he wondered. That he left her? That she dumped him?

‘Gone,' she said simply. She took another sip of her coffee and stared straight ahead.

Timothy looked at the smooth skin at the back of her neck. Her skin was pale and tight, like a child's, with soft blonde peach fuzz shaped like an arrow pointing down her back. Did she dye her hair black? he wondered.

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' Timothy said.

‘Are you really?'

‘No,' he said, ‘I guess not.'

She folded one leg over the other at the knee, then bounced it gently up and down. She turned to him and smiled over her shoulder. ‘Listen,' she said. ‘Tonight after work, I'm going with some friends for drinks at the BBC. Why don't you come?'

‘Sort of like adult supervision?'

‘It'll be fun,' she said. ‘They're nice.'

‘What would my wife say?'

‘I wouldn't tell her,' Tricia said. It wasn't clear to Timothy if this was advice or a promise.

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘Let's see how the day goes.'

How the day went: badly.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, Timothy was staring at the yen chart on his computer screen, using his limited telepathic powers to wish it downward. It had now sunk to a little above seventy one, which meant that Timothy's huge gamble was paying off. Osiris was up three and a half million dollars. If the yen kept plummeting at this pace, in a matter of a week or two he'd be able to cover his position and end his bet with a profit, and none of his investors would be the wiser.

His intercom rang. It was Tricia. ‘I have Pinky Dewer here,' she said.

‘Take a message,' Timothy said.

‘No,' she said quietly. ‘He's
here
, in reception.'

Timothy hung up the phone. He grabbed his jacket from the back of his office door and slid it on. He fixed his cufflinks, straightened his tie.

In the liquid-asset food chain, Timothy was a carnivore, wealthier than most of the people he saw or talked to during the course of a day. He was wealthier than the clerk that served him coffee in the morning at University Café. He was wealthier than Frank Arnheim, his nouveau riche lawyer at Perkins Coie, who had spent fifteen grueling years climbing to the rank of partner. He was wealthier than his pretty assistant, Tricia, and his young Jewish employee, Jay. He was wealthier than his wife – their prenuptial agreement guaranteed that. He was wealthier than virtually anyone he saw, or talked to, or even thought about. This is what it means to be wealthy: to be assured that no matter what room you enter, and no matter who rings on the phone, you can outspend any person, and solve any dispute in your favor.