by Jane Smiley
I wanted to do that too.
When we came back half an hour later, the price was at 397. Marcus said, “Okay, George, buy what you can.” George picked up the phone.
We sat there through the rest of the morning, through lunch, and through the early afternoon. After bottoming out at about 395, the price rose all the rest of the day. We laughed and joked and jumped up and down from time to time. I went out into the parking lot once and smoked an imaginary cigarette to ease the tension, sure the price had dropped in my absence. But it hadn’t. When I came back in, without any supervision on my part, it had risen another three dollars. Sometimes the three of us stared at the screen and shouted, “Up! Up!” and it went up. We tried that three times, and got to feel we had an intoxicating power. We shouted a lot, actually, making big loud noises and stomping around. It was fun, like being at a football game where your team was scoring one touchdown after another. At two-fifteen, even though it hadn’t yet dipped, Marcus said to George, “Okay. Take the profit.” George placed the call. We sold at 436, only two points above where the market had begun that morning, but I had made seven hundred fifty dollars or so, less the broker’s commission. It was nice. It was my mortgage payment for a couple of months. It didn’t take me long to figure out that if I had put all $62,000 dollars of my savings into the gamble I would have made six thousand on the deal instead of seven hundred and fifty. Ten percent in a few hours. It was very interesting.
As we went up to the office, Marcus at first didn’t say anything, but then he said, “Don’t be seduced. I’m not kidding. Not every day is like this.”
“Well, obviously not.”
“Some days are better!” He guffawed, and I did too.
The next day was Tuesday, and then it was Wednesday, the last Wednesday in the year. I hemmed and hawed and hemmed and hawed. I was to go to Gottfried’s second closing at eleven, so rather than going to the office first, I hemmed and hawed around my apartment. Just before leaving, though, I got out my checkbook and wrote a check for $60,000. The closing was uneventful, or maybe I just didn’t care about the events, because whatever they were, they did not stick in my mind. Just before one that afternoon, the last Wednesday afternoon in the year, I got to the office. Marcus’s car was in the parking lot. So was George’s. So was Jane’s. Everything normal. I got out and walked across the ice, which was pretty slippery, though sanded and salted. My knees were knocking. I passed the gold traders’ offices without looking in and walked up the stairs. I opened the door. Jane was at her desk. She smiled at me. Mike was changing the supply on the water cooler. He said, “Hey, Joe. How’s it going, man?” I gestured toward Marcus’s office. His door was closed. Jane nodded. I knocked and went in. Marcus was leaning back in his chair, reading some paper, but he looked up with a grin when he saw me and his chair fell forward toward the desk. “Hey, man,” he said.
I had my hand in my pocket on the check. I fingered it and brought it out and laid it in front of him. I said, “Let’s try this. Let’s try it together. I’ve got the capital and you’ve got the instincts.” It seemed the obvious thing to do, nothing more obvious.
He looked at the check and then at me and then back at the check. He was no longer grinning. He said, “You mean it?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, then. But don’t tell Jane. This is private.”
“I think so too.”
He came around the desk and we opened the door and went out into the office. I felt like we were running, but really we were acting very cool. If anything, Marcus was even more good-natured than usual. Jane said, “Are you leaving? I thought you were going to be around all afternoon.”
“Joe and I are going out to the farm. Gottfried has run into some problem.”
“Can I go?” said Mike. “I’d like to see how it’s coming.”
“No,” I said. “Gottfried will be much less receptive if there’re too many people around.”
We closed the door behind us before he could reply.
But when we got down to the gold traders’ offices, George was out. Then he came back and Marcus sat down in front of the screen and said, “I don’t like it today.”
“I haven’t traded a thing today,” said George. “Market’s way up. You never can tell what it’s going to be like at the end of the year.”
“That’s true,” said Marcus. We sat around the office, idly checking the numbers for a while, but then Marcus said, “Well, some of us have to actually do some work,” and he got up. I followed him out of the office. In the hallway, he said to me, “George is right. The end of the year can be a bad time. We’ll wait and see. And, of course, people who have profited over the year often take their offsetting losses. When we should have done this was around the tenth–twelfth of the month.” He shrugged. “But, you know, when we do do it, it will be fun.”
I nodded. He said, “You got that check?”
“Yeah.” I patted my wallet.
“A personal check is going to take some time to clear. If we want to do this this week, you have to go to the bank and get a bank draft made out to me, like this one. I’ll put it into an account at George’s office. I have an account in my own name, with nothing in it. But I’ll change that into both of our names. Here.” He handed me a card. “Put your social security number on there.”
I wrote my number on the back of one of his business cards.
He said, “We’ll see how it goes over the next couple of days.”
“I still think that was a helluva day Monday.”
“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Say, do you want to really go out to the farm?”
“I was out there yesterday. Gottfried is doing fine, but you know, he hasn’t been paid.”
“I’ll go up and get Jane on it right now.”
“All right. I’ll go to the bank.” At the end of the day, I handed him the bank draft. He looked at it and put it into his wallet.
Thursday was no better, according to both George and Marcus, and when I looked at the screen myself, I could see that they were right—prices declined over the course of the day. Marcus left to do an errand. George said to me, “You don’t have to stay in for just a few hours. You can go more long-term than that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But the price is high, compared to what it’s been over the year. I just put everything away myself, all in cash for the time being. But I hate having things in cash. Cash loses value so fast when you’ve got this kind of inflation. I had this funny dream this year. I’ll never forget it. I had this wad of cash in my pocket, in a money clip, the way my grandfather used to carry his money, and I took it out and laid it out in my hand, and you could barely see the printing, and even as I watched, the green just faded to white. I was terrified! I woke up and said to my wife, ‘I’ve just had this dream about inflation!’ Oh, we laughed!”
Friday was December 30. We went down to the gold traders’ office early, before nine. When the market opened, the price was still up, though not quite as high as it had been the afternoon before. Marcus seemed depressed and George seemed distracted. I said, “We aren’t very psyched for the game, guys.”
“Oh, Linda and I had another go-round this morning, and I guess you’ve seen Jane.”
“I didn’t notice anything with Jane.”
“That’s because you have dollar signs in your eyes. Do you ever feel surrounded by women?”
“No.”
But George nodded.
“Jane. Linda. Amanda. All cut from the same cloth.”
“Which cloth is that?”
“Well, the female cloth. ‘I’m mad.’ ‘What about?’ ‘You don’t know?’ ‘No, I don’t.’ ‘Think about it.’ And then you’re sitting there inventorying your possible sins, and you know there are plenty of them. The only question is, which ones does she know about and which ones doesn’t she? So you decide that the problem is you were lying in bed last night right next to her and, very quietly, you beat off, and she must have been awake rather than asle
ep, so that’s the one. But it’s very important to be cautious, so you say, ‘Really, I can’t think of anything. I want to know, I really want to know,’ and she says, ‘You really don’t remember yesterday when I was bringing all those groceries in from the car, and you just sat there in front of the TV even though I asked you twice to help me?’ Oh, yeah! That! Don’t remember a thing about it. So, I said, ‘Oh, I am sorry, dear, I guess I was preoccupied and didn’t hear you’ and she says, ‘You were? You were that preoccupied? What about . . . ? Is something wrong I should know about?’ That sort of thing. And then Amanda comes in and says, ‘Justin is picking his nose and eating it! Aren’t you going to stop him?’”
“Glad I got boys,” said George.
Marcus said, “At least Jane is going to go to our sister’s house without me this year. Linda and the kids and I are going to her family. They live near a ski area, so I’m going to spend the whole time on the slopes.”
“When will you be back?”
“Monday evening. Monday afternoon if the weather looks bad. Believe me, I want to be right here first thing Tuesday morning.”
We watched the screen. It was as if the numbers didn’t know how to change. After about half an hour, Marcus said to me, “Let’s do this Monday. First trading day of the New Year. I bet things will be quite up and down and we can turn it over a little.”
Actually, I was relieved to put it off. We went up to the office. Jane seemed fine to me. She was wearing an especially attractive outfit, a sort of rose-colored suit, but not too bright, very flattering to her skin tone, which I told her. She laughed and said in a friendly, pleased way, “Well, I just bought this at an after-Christmas sale. Maybe I’ll wear it every day. I love it.” And she reached up and tweaked me affectionately on the cheek. I said, “Marcus says you’re going away for the weekend.”
She glanced at Marcus, then nodded. “How about you?”
“I’ll be right here.”
“You should go somewhere.”
“I’m waiting for that billion, I guess.”
She laughed.
Marcus came out of his office about five minutes later. It was maybe ten-thirty. He said, “I’m off then.”
I said, “Have fun skiing.” Jane’s eyebrows rose, then she composed her face again. Marcus nodded and went out, letting the door slam behind him. I said, “Don’t Linda’s folks live near a ski area?”
“Oh, yeah. But Marcus is a terrible skier. I’m surprised that’s what he’s planning to do all weekend. I hope he gets back here in one piece. Say, Joe, you aren’t getting into any deal with him, are you?”
“I’m already in a deal with him, as you know.”
“But other than that?”
I definitely didn’t want a third party in on this. I said, “No, of course not.”
She said, “Well, good. Have a Happy New Year.”
Her tone seemed unusually warm, which I found a little embarrassing, so I just thanked her and went into my office. A few minutes later, I heard the outer door open and close, and I was alone in the office. Our business for the year was done, and, I thought, it hadn’t been easy, had it?
CHAPTER
30
SUSAN AND I WENT OUT for New Year’s Eve with some of her friends. They were younger than I was by about ten years. We went to a couple of clubs and danced, then back to her place. We went quietly and affectionately to bed. It was cold, and she wore a light blue flannel nightgown and socks. When I was unable to fall asleep, I thought because of the food we’d eaten late, she said, “Let me do this,” and she stroked my forehead. I thought of Marcus as I fell asleep with my arms around her. I was planning to tell him that his first instinct about her had been right, and we didn’t need to worry about the other stuff after all. I suppose it took me until about noon to wake up and get moving. Susan and I lolled in bed, a lazy Sunday in front of us. We ate some muffins she had baked, with dried cranberries and orange peel in them, another something I had never tasted that tasted good. And her coffee wasn’t Maxwell House, either, but ground fresh beans she’d ordered from New York.
It was a bright, sunny, cold day, and I got into my car at Susan’s and I drove through the brilliant countryside. I was ruminating pleasantly on how rich I was going to be. Later in the afternoon, I dropped by my parents’ house and cleaned their furnace filters and changed the element on their electric hot-water heater. I swept their walk. We hadn’t had any snow in over a week.
For dinner, I made myself a ham sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. When the phone rang, I looked at the clock. It was seven forty-two. I picked it up. On the other end of the line was Betty, whom I was not expecting. She said, “Joey.”
“Yes. Hi, Betty.”
“Joey. Have you seen Felicity?”
“No. I mean, I saw her Christmas Eve day, but I haven’t seen her since.”
“How did she seem?”
“Fine. I actually thought how fine she seemed.”
“Well, no one has seen her since Friday morning. She didn’t come home last night or call. Hank is worried. I’m a little worried myself.”
“Felicity seems like she can take care of herself.”
She said, “I think it’s over with Hank.”
“Well, Betty, when I talked to her last, she said that not only didn’t she understand why she was married to Hank, she didn’t understand why anyone was married at all.”
“She said that to me too.”
“What did you say?”
“Well, I think I said something very unhelpful and obtuse, like, ‘Oh, Felicity, for goodness’ sake.’”
“What does Leslie say?”
“She hasn’t heard from her either.”
“Where’s her car?”
“Gordon says we should call the state police and have them look for her car.”
“What about Hank?”
“Hank knows she’s left him, but he isn’t willing to admit it yet.”
“I’m sure she’ll get in touch by morning, Betty. I don’t feel like anything has happened to her.” That was right, wasn’t it?
“Oh, of course,” said Betty. “But it makes me nervous, because we went through this with Sally. We didn’t hear anything for two days, and then we heard from the police. Felicity knows that. She would surely avoid worrying us if she could.”
That was a thought I could not get past, so I just said, “I don’t know, Betty. Keep me informed.”
Patience was the only option. I went to a movie by myself. There was something about this Felicity thing I couldn’t discuss with Susan. She was too cool. She would point out some detail in a way that would be both insightful and irrefutable. I was sorry Marcus wasn’t around, because I knew he would have plenty to say.
By the time I went to bed that night, I had more or less reassured myself, but I lay awake anyway. I thought two things. One was that she was too smart to get into trouble and the other was just an image of her face, ready and accepting, the sort of face that might tempt someone to give her trouble.
Monday night, Betty called me again. She said, “You’ll never guess. They found her car parked at JFK.”
“JFK airport?”
“Yes. The parking ticket was in it. Stuck behind the visor.”
“So she went somewhere?”
“Somewhere. The car is fine. It was locked. Maybe she just wanted to get away. Gordon says she’ll come back. The police don’t really want to pursue the matter any further, and Hank doesn’t either. I guess he doesn’t want to hound her into saying that she’s leaving him until she makes up her mind, if that’s what’s going on.”
“I think that is what’s going on, Betty. I really do. She went somewhere to make up her mind. We should just be patient.”
“I keep feeling that if she had married you, she wouldn’t be doing this.”
“There’s no way to know that, Betty.”
“I knew you were seeing each other last year.”
“Was it that obvious?”
&nb
sp; “Not to anyone else. But, yes, to me.”
“She was afraid of what you might say.”
“Then maybe she underestimated me.” She sighed. Then she said, “Okay. Well, okay. I won’t worry.”
“I’m sure when Marcus gets home, he’ll have some idea about what to do, or a connection somewhere that will lead right to her.”
“Where is he?”
“They all went skiing.”
“I hope so. I mean, obviously what’s needed is patience more than anything else, but that’s the hard part.”
“I know she’s fine, Betty.”
At 2 A.M. Tuesday morning, my phone started ringing and ringing. I thought of Felicity and woke right up. But it wasn’t Felicity, or Betty either. It was Linda Burns. She said, “Joey. Joe. Where is Marcus?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t seen him since you guys got back.”
“Back from where?”
“Back from your trip. Didn’t you go to see your folks?”
“Yes. But Marcus didn’t come along. He stayed here to do work.”
“He did?” Maybe I was still asleep, I thought, because I sounded very dumb. I said, evenly, “He told me all of you were going and would be back tonight.”
Her voice got more penetrating. “His clothes are gone. About half his clothes from the closet in our room. And there’s just a note that says I’ll call you and call Joe.”
“Did you call Jane?”
“Yes. There’s no answer at her place. The kids and I went over. It’s dark there and the dog is gone.”
“Wouldn’t she take the dog to her sister’s?”
“Jane didn’t go to Mary Rose’s house or to Katie’s. I saw both of them this weekend. I drove down with the kids. That was part of my agenda, so they could see the kids. I was fit to be tied with Marcus because I was supposed to do all this relatives stuff on my own.” Now, she sounded conversational, matter-of-fact, almost cool.