2
The plan, if one could call it that, was simply this: double up the bet and try again.
The yen had briefly risen to seventy-five – that is, one dollar could buy seventy-five of them – but this was an unsustainable price, Timothy explained. The yen, after all, had been falling for over three years. It had plummeted from a hundred and fifteen, down through the psychological barrier of a hundred, and then on down through ninety, through eighty, through seventy, without pause.
Everyone agreed the yen would continue to fall until it reached fifty, its natural level. That’s why Osiris had shorted the yen at sixty-nine; that is, it had bet that it would fall even lower than sixty-nine. Osiris sold three thousand futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Which meant that when the yen fell to fifty, Osiris would make a profit of seventy-one million dollars.
But the original wager had not exactly worked out. Almost the day after Osiris placed the trade, the yen had jumped back to seventy-five. Still, Timothy had explained to the Kid, this was not something to fear. This was typical, and moments like these separated men from boys. Indeed, this was a profit opportunity. So while everyone else was running for the exits, liquidating positions, calling in collateral, Osiris would be able to take advantage of the irrational market. It would double its bet, gambling now with six thousand contracts instead of three thousand, and would be able to make back all its losses, and then some.
So these were the instructions Timothy gave to the Kid. He ticked them off quietly and quickly, like a general to his adjutant under the hail of cannon. First, liquidate all stock positions in order to free up margin. Next, get Refco, Bear Stearns, Barclays, Citigroup on the line. Split the trade across four brokers. No front running.
‘And one more thing,’ Timothy added.
Jay had already turned to leave. He stopped at the door, his hand perched on the knob. He was eager to get moving, to place the trade, to start making money again.
‘We can’t alarm our investors,’ Timothy said.
The Kid removed his hand from the door. ‘Okay,’ he said. But he frowned.
‘We don’t want to tell them about this setback,’ Timothy explained, ‘not yet. We need to recoup the losses first. When the yen falls back down and we’ve broken even, then we’ll tip our hand.’
‘But Timothy,’ the Kid said, ‘we need to report our results. We send August statements to investors in two weeks.’
‘Yes,’ Timothy said. ‘But two weeks is a long time. Practically forever. You know what can happen in two weeks? Anything. So we’ll report then. No use alarming people about details.’
‘Okay,’ said Jay.
‘The thing is,’ Timothy continued, ‘if our investors find out that Osiris lost twenty-four million dollars, some of them might get antsy. They might pull their money out. And if they pull their money out, then we won’t have enough cash to sell six thousand contracts. You see what I’m saying?’
‘I think I do,’ Jay said.
‘What I’m saying,’ Timothy continued, ‘is that we won’t be able to make back the money for the other investors. So, really, it’s a question of fairness.’
The Kid said, ‘I see.’
‘Fairness for all the other investors,’ Timothy said again. This was an important point.
‘Okay,’ Jay said.
‘So let’s not talk to our investors now. No phone calls. No meetings. Just …’ He brushed a finger to his lips and let it float away, like ragweed. ‘Quiet.’
‘Okay, Timothy.’
Timothy smiled and winked. ‘See now,’ Timothy said, ‘this is a great learning experience. Now you’ll see how the world really works.’
The Kid nodded. He left the room – in too much of a hurry, Timothy thought – and got to work.
3
When he finished the remaining half-bagel, Timothy shuffled from his office to the reception area. At work for less than thirty minutes, he had already had a long day.
Osiris was on the twenty-third floor of the Bank of America building, the only tall building in Palo Alto. On a clear day like this one, when everyone else in San Mateo County was twenty floors below him, Timothy could observe his entire world without moving. He could see his own house, ten blocks north: an old Tudor surrounded by ornamental grasses and apricot trees. To the east he could see the Stanford campus, its red Spanish roofs and sun-colored brick, where hundreds of computer scientists scurried into classrooms and wrote the software he used to make money. To the south he could see Sand Hill Road, with its lawyers and venture capitalists and sloshing pools of cash, where investors sat in low-slung office buildings, sipping lattes and smiling at Timothy’s perfect money-raising pitches. He could see as far as the San Mateo Bridge and SFO, his portal to Manhattan, where a first-class ticket set him back eight hundred dollars but bought him as much decent cabernet as he could drink in five hours and dropped him thirty minutes from the Four Seasons.
He leaned against the wall of windows, his breath fogging his view of the Bay. Further out, the San Mateo Bridge, an ugly barrel of concrete, was shrouded in its own Bay fog.
‘It’s a beautiful day,’ said Tricia Fountain. Tricia was Osiris’ receptionist. She sat at the reception desk, in front of a wall that said in simple brass letters ‘Osiris LP’.
Timothy had hired Tricia six months ago, after interviewing a handful of other candidates. Those candidates included a middle-aged black woman with two kids, a Chinese man from Stanford who Timothy suspected was gay, and two fat women whose resumes Timothy failed to read.
No other candidate had Tricia’s qualifications. First, she was twenty-three. Second, she had bright blue eyes, dark hair, clear skin, and chiseled cheeks. Third, she dressed well. Today it was navy blazer over cashmere sweater, tight and blue, which displayed her body in a thoughtful, understated way. The way Tiffany’s displays engagement rings, Timothy had thought the first time he looked at her breasts. No point being gaudy about them. They speak for themselves.
‘Beautiful?’ Timothy said.
She was born in Orange County, and – beneath the Ralph Lauren blazer and stylish librarian glasses and fashionable bob in her hair – Timothy found that proud stupidity so common in people from the south of the state. For instance, the way she said, ‘Awesome,’ when discussing a matter that clearly wasn’t awesome in any way. Or the way she once admitted that she had no idea exactly what Timothy and Osiris actually did, and didn’t want to. Or the way Timothy often caught her looking at herself in the reflective brass letters that spelled OSIRIS on the wall behind her desk, without embarrassment.
He supposed none of this was surprising, since she had originally wanted to be an actress. That was a profession that Father had always warned him about. The story of how she came to Silicon Valley, fresh from UCLA, was never clear to Timothy. There’s a certain decorum required when a forty-seven-year-old man interviews a girl half his age. He can’t seem too interested – especially when an EEOC lawsuit might drop from the sky like a vengeful Thor’s hammer. Which was a shame, because the few details he did extract from her seemed interesting. Something about her father dying when she was twelve, an acting career that didn’t pan out, a spur-of-the-moment road trip north with a drug-addled boyfriend – who now apparently had disappeared into the Bay fog – and then, finally, an afternoon spent at the Stanford Coffee House, where the Kid had met her and suggested she come in to Osiris for an interview.
But however she got to Osiris, the important thing, as far as Timothy was concerned, was that Tricia was very pretty, and very unencumbered, and the sharp prickles of sexual energy he felt when seeing her each morning made the drive to the office exciting, and enlivened otherwise dull days.
Timothy turned to her.
She held up a pink phone message pad. ‘There were a few calls while you were in your meeting,’ Tricia said. She tore off the top sheets. ‘Tran called. He’s not coming in today. He’s running behind at another client, so he’ll come on Monday.’ Tra
n was their part-time computer consultant. He came in once a week to spend a few hours fixing all of the damage Timothy had managed to create in the preceding seven days.
‘Good,’ Timothy said.
‘Pinky Dewer called,’ she continued. ‘He said it was nothing important; just checking in.’
‘Great,’ Timothy said. As Pinky was the largest investor in Osiris – and now the largest money-loser – it was vital that Timothy have no contact with him until Osiris could fix the yen situation. He didn’t want to have to lie about how things were going. So that meant he would need to accidentally misplace Pinky’s message, perhaps under a pile of papers on his desk. Or maybe straight into the trash.
‘I’ll take that message.’ He reached across her desk and tried to snatch the papers from her hand. She held tight. His fingers grasped hers. She raised an eyebrow.
‘And,’ she said, ‘one more. Your wife called.’
Timothy lowered his hand. He tried to keep his voice neutral. ‘Oh?’
‘She reminded you about Friday. About Big Sur.’
He and Katherine had been planning a long weekend at the Ventana Inn to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary. Originally she had wanted to spend two weeks in Hawaii, but somehow, with a wink and a smile and just the right soothing words, he had managed to talk her down to just three days a mere ninety miles away.
If yesterday Timothy was ambivalent about the trip, today he was dreading it. Certainly, he loved Katherine. He couldn’t imagine being without her. But just because you love someone doesn’t mean you want to be locked in a rustic cabin with them for three days. When had anniversary celebrations become misdemeanor sentences?
He already knew how the trip would play out: three days of hurt looks and quiet barbs, of forced smiles and trying to be the husband he knew he ought to be, but couldn’t. And now, on top of it, there was the small detail that his hedge fund was tottering on the verge of ruin, that his entire reputation and career depended on whether a gaggle of Oriental men in Tokyo woke up in a good mood.
Tricia said: ‘She said don’t forget to bring your work home tonight. You’re leaving tomorrow.’ They would be driving down to Big Sur on Friday, and then Timothy would take a three-day weekend.
‘Okay,’ Timothy said.
‘You don’t sound very excited,’ Tricia said.
‘I am excited,’ he said dully.
‘I wish someone would take me to Big Sur,’ Tricia said. She peered at him over the top of her glasses, pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.
‘I would offer,’ Timothy said. ‘But then what would my wife say?’
‘Would she have to know?’
They had flirted like this before. It was harmless, Timothy assured himself. Just a distraction, to keep the workplace interesting.
‘Something to think about,’ he said. He snatched the phone messages from her hand – this time she didn’t resist – and turned to go back to his office and stare at the price of the yen.
4
When he arrived home at four o’clock in the afternoon, the yen thankfully had fallen to seventy-four, and Katherine was having a glass of chardonnay on the back patio. Each of these facts encouraged Timothy equally. With the yen moving in the right direction, perhaps he could enjoy his long weekend with Katherine after all. And that she was having a drink on her own instead of waiting for him at home like a cat anticipating a piece of string, was also a sign that she might be in a good mood, and that their weekend might turn out pleasant.
He slid open the glass door to the patio and walked up behind her. She didn’t turn. ‘You’re home late,’ she said. She reached across the table and took a sip of wine.
Timothy followed his wife’s gaze into the back yard, to figure out what she was staring at. Whatever it was, it was more fascinating than her husband, because nearly a half-minute passed, and Katherine still hadn’t turned around. Alas, he saw only: an apricot tree, still fruitless and barren after many summers; a sixty-dollar clump of ornamental grass from the Arestradero Nursery; and a rock garden studded with bits of moss their landscape designer had assured them was ‘interesting.’
He sighed. He put down his briefcase on the slate patio. He leaned over and kissed her neck. ‘Happy anniversary,’ he said.
She turned around, finally, and looked up at him. ‘You remembered.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you did call my office to remind me.’
‘But that was hours ago,’ she said. Her tone was bright, her smile warm, as if she really might be delighted.
‘I didn’t get any flowers,’ he said, figuring preemption now was safer than disappointment later. ‘And your gift – I’ll give it to you this weekend, at Big Sur.’
‘How spontaneous,’ she said. Not quite an accusation, and not quite angry. Just disappointed. That would be a fitting epitaph on her tombstone, he thought:
Katherine Van Bender
1958 –
Disappointed
Things had been different once. They had met when Timothy was at Yale and Katherine at Smith. Timothy’s was the first co-ed class in New Haven, but after an early rush of giddiness about the possibilities co-education would bring, Timothy and his friends were soon disenchanted. The women that ventured into the Ivy League those early years were selected, disappointingly, for their academic records and intellectual prowess, not for their beauty or accommodation. The girls at nearby Smith, in contrast, with their stylish looks, sunny dispositions, and tradition of snaring Yale men, were more eager to please. And so, over the years, Timothy and his friends ventured regularly to Smith – sometimes once or twice a month – to enjoy a party, or to test a particularly promising double- or triple-date.
That was how he had met Katherine. He and his roommate, Chauncey, made the ninety-minute drive to Northampton one weekend because a friend promised an off-campus Smith party that would be remembered for years to come. And while the weekend was remembered, it wasn’t for the party. That night it rained, curtains of water, breaking previous New England records. When Timothy’s Olds blew a tire on Route 10, he insisted Chauncey stay dry in the car. ‘No point in both of us getting wet,’ he volunteered, secretly hoping that perhaps Chauncey might feel the same way, and might be quicker to grab the door handle.
But the roommate proved slow on the draw. So, hunched over a jack, on the side of a dark road in Massachusetts, Timothy’s blazer soaked, his hair dripping, he stolidly replaced the tire with a spare. Thirty minutes later, with water in his shoes and his shirt clinging coldly against his chest, he and Chauncey found the party. Within a half-hour, Timothy decided he was miserable. He was cold and wet, and his shoes squished like sponges when he walked.
He quietly left the party and drove to a diner, where he would warm himself with hot coffee before returning for Chauncey and the ride home. It was there that he saw her. She was sitting next to him – one table over, alone – sipping a hot chocolate while she read a book (Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier). She was clearly a Smith girl: her clothes (peasant skirt, v-necked blouse) said rebellion, but the peaceful, good-taste, moneyed kind, as if the sans culottes had stormed the Bastille merely to install new, less fussy flatware. She was blonde, freckled, fresh-scrubbed, carefully manicured, with her hair parted neatly in the center and loose strands gathered by a barrette.
How she differed from the other Smith girls Timothy had met was this: instead of glancing down shyly at her book, she looked up and stared at Timothy directly, tilting her head, as if considering something important. Then, without breaking eye contact, she said: ‘You look absolutely miserable.’
‘I was miserable,’ Timothy said, and then unleashed his practiced Melt-the-Smith-Girl’s-Defenses smile. ‘Until about thirty seconds ago.’
‘My goodness,’ she said, and returned a smile of her own. ‘That has got to be the most incompetent line I’ve ever heard.’
That first encounter summed up Katherine perfectly: direct, clever, outwardly friendly, but with strong bones of ange
r under her skin – and the ability to slap him into place without warning.
That night she took him back to her apartment (which was rather forward, he thought, as he followed her car), and offered him a dry sweatshirt and pants that belonged to a man (the name of the original owner he never learned). He expected something else – at least a kiss, maybe more – but she ended that fantasy quickly by saying, as she handed him the dry clothes: ‘These will remain on for the rest of the night.’
But she said it with a smile, and that was all it took. Perhaps it was this moment when Timothy decided that this woman enchanted him. She was a mystery, with nothing at all easy about her, in any sense of the word. Every aspect of her was slightly peculiar, from her diction (she enunciated every syllable and sounded like a cross between Kate Hepburn and Queen Elizabeth) to her features (overall quite pretty, but feature-by-feature odd: a nose too aquiline, a chin too prominent, so that when she walked she looked like the prow of a ship). Even her socioeconomic class was an enigma – and these things mattered to a man like Timothy – she dressed, and spoke, and carried herself as if she had money; but every now and then, by accident, she stumbled, and it was as if, for a moment, the beautiful heiress at the black-tie ball bent over to reveal a dowdy tattered slip.
Timothy still remembered one of those incidents. It happened early in their courtship, during an afternoon date at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hand in hand they strolled through the gallery of French pastellists, and they stopped at Ducreux’s portrait of the Count of Bougainville. Katherine read aloud the placard beside the painting, but instead of pronouncing it correctly (‘boo-gin-ville’), her French was all wrong; she said, ‘bow-gin-villa,’ like a tacky restaurant in Little Italy with red and white table cloths.
And the oddest thing of all, which Timothy still recalled even twenty years later, was not that her French was wrong, or that perhaps she had read more of the language than she had opportunity to speak aloud – but that he insisted on correcting her, there in the museum, in public – with other museum-goers beside them, listening.
Switchback Page 2