Limitless

by Alan Glynn

  ‘It’s a … smart-drug,’ I said, ‘I don’t really know what’s in it.’

  ‘It makes you smart?’

  I held out my hands. ‘Well, yeah. Hadn’t you noticed?’ I was going to say something to him about his English and how it had improved, but I decided against it. He might get offended at the idea that I hadn’t thought his English was good to start with.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘it’s amazing. What’s it called?’

  I hesitated. ‘Er … MDT. It’s called MDT. It’s a chemical name, but … yeah.’

  ‘MDT?’

  ‘Yeah. You know, score some MDT. Do some MDT.’

  He looked at me for a moment, dubiously, and then said, ‘Tuesday.’

  He went out into the hallway, leaving the door open. I remained sitting in the chair and listened to him clumping down the stairs. When I heard the door of the building banging closed I stood up and went over to the window. I looked out and saw Gennady pacing along Tenth Street towards First Avenue. From the little I knew of him, the lightness in his step seemed, to say the least, uncharacteristic.

  *

  Looking back now – from the dead stillness of this room here in the Northview Motor Lodge – I can see that Gennady’s intrusion into my life, his attempt to muscle in on my supply of MDT, had quite an unsettling effect on me. I had lost nearly everything and I resented the idea that someone could so easily destroy what little there was left. I hadn’t wanted to take MDT at full throttle any more because I was scared of surrendering myself to another blackout, scared of being open again to that same level of darkness and unpredictability. But neither did I want to just give up and leave everything behind – and especially not for a circling vulture like Gennady to pick at and tear apart. Besides, the idea of Gennady on MDT seemed a complete waste to me. Suddenly the guy was able to speak comprehensible English? Big fucking deal. He was still a bonehead, a zhulik. MDT wasn’t going to change someone like him. Not the way it had changed me …

  *

  On foot of this realization, I decided I had to make one last effort. Maybe I could salvage something from the situation. Maybe I could even reverse it. I’d make another call to Donald Geisler and plead with him to talk to me.

  What harm could it do?

  I rooted out Vernon’s black notebook, found the number and dialled it

  ‘Yep?’

  I paused for a second and then rushed into it.

  ‘This is Vernon Gant’s friend again, don’t hang up, please … five minutes, all I want is five minutes of your time, I’ll pay you …’ – this came to me on the spur of the moment – ‘… I’ll pay you five thousand dollars, a thousand dollars a minute, just talk to me …’

  I stopped, and there was silence. As I waited, I stared over at the brown paper bag on the table.

  He released a long sigh. ‘Jeesus!’

  I didn’t know what this meant, but he hadn’t hung up on me. I decided not to push it. I remained silent.

  Eventually, he said, ‘I don’t want your money.’ He paused again, and then said, ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘Thank you … very much.’

  He gave me the address of a café on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope in Brooklyn and told me to meet him there in an hour. He was tall and would be wearing a plain yellow T-shirt.

  I had a shower and shaved, knocked back a quick cup of coffee and some toast, and got dressed. I picked up a cab straightaway out on Tenth Street.

  The café was small and dark and nearly empty. Sitting alone at a table in the corner was a tall man wearing a plain yellow T-shirt. He was drinking an espresso. Beside his cup, neatly stacked, he had a pack of Marlboros and a Zippo lighter. I introduced myself and sat down. From his greying hair and the lines around his eyes, I reckoned that Donald Geisler was about fifty-five years old. He had the tired, gruff demeanour of someone who’s been around the block a few times, and probably a few different blocks at that.

  ‘OK, then,’ he said, ‘what do you want?’

  I gave him a quick and heavily edited version of events. At the end I said, ‘So what I really need to know about is dosage. Or, failing that, if you’ve heard of an associate of Vernon’s called Tom, or Todd.’

  He nodded his head, pensively, and then stared at his espresso cup for a few moments. As I waited for him to gather his thoughts, or whatever it was he was doing, I took out my pack of Camels and lit one up.

  I’d smoked more than half of the cigarette before Geisler spoke. It occurred to me that if we were supposed to be sticking to the five-minute rule, we were already way over time.

  ‘About three years ago,’ he said, ‘three and a half maybe, I met Vernon Gant. I was an actor at the time, with a small company I’d co-founded five years before that. We did Miller and Shepard and Mamet, that kind of thing. We had some success – especially with a production of American Buffalo. And we toured a lot.’

  I knew immediately from the tone in his voice, as well as from the languid narrative route he appeared to be taking, that despite his earlier protests, he was in this for the long haul.

  I discreetly ordered two more espressos from a passing waitress and lit up another cigarette.

  ‘Around the time I met Vernon was also when the company decided to change direction and mount a production of Macbeth – which I was going to take the lead in. And direct.’ He cleared his throat. ‘At the time, meeting Vernon seemed like a piece of really good luck – because here I am scared shitless at the prospect of doing Shakespeare and this guy is offering me … well, you know what he was offering me.’

  Geisler’s delivery was slow and deliberate, his voice like gravel. It was an actor’s voice. I also got the impression, as he went on, that he had never spoken about this stuff to anyone before. His account of the early days of MDT was much fuller than Melissa’s had been but was essentially the same. In his case, he’d received the pitch from Vernon, been unable to resist and after a couple of 15mg doses had memorized the entire text of Macbeth – thoroughly intimidating his cast and crew in the process. He’d then gone on, over the early rehearsal period, to take a further dozen pills, an average of about three a week. The pills were unmarked, but Vernon’s partner, a guy called Todd, had shown up one day with Vernon and explained the dosage and something about what was in MDT and how it worked. This Todd character had also asked Geisler questions about how he was responding to the drug and if he’d been experiencing any adverse side-effects. Geisler had said that he hadn’t.

  Two weeks before opening, and under intense pressure, Geisler had cleaned out what he had in the bank and upped his intake to six pills a week – ‘Nearly one a day,’ he said.

  I wanted to ask him more about Todd and what he’d had to say about dosage – but at the same time I could see that Geisler was concentrating really hard and I didn’t want to interrupt his train of thought.

  ‘Then, in the few days before we were due to open, it happened – my life fell apart. From a Tuesday to a Friday. It just … fell apart.’

  Up to this point, Geisler had kept both his hands under the table and out of view. I hadn’t thought anything of it, but now as he moved his right hand up and reached out to take his espresso cup, I saw that his hand had a slight but noticeable tremor. I thought at first that it might be a symptom of alcoholism, a morning-after shake, something like that, but when I saw him leaning forward, gripping the cup to make sure he got it up to his lips without spilling any of the coffee, I realized that he was probably suffering from some neurological disorder. He replaced the cup, very carefully, and then put himself through the laborious process of lighting a cigarette. He did this in silence, pointedly making no comment about the difficulty he was having. He knew I was watching, which almost turned it into a kind of performance.

  Once he had his cigarette on the go, he said, ‘I was under a lot of pressure, rehearsing fourteen, fifteen hours a day … but then … before I know it, and out of the fucking blue, I’m having these periods of memory loss.’

 
I stared at him, nodding my head.

  ‘I lost track of what I was doing for hours at a time.’

  Barely able to contain myself, I kept saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, go on, go on.’

  ‘I still don’t know what I got up to, exactly, during these … blackouts, I suppose you’d call them … all I know is that between the Tuesday and Friday of that week – and as a result of what I got up to – my girlfriend of ten years left me, the production of Macbeth was cancelled and I was thrown out of my apartment. I also ran over and nearly killed an eleven-year-old girl on Columbus Avenue.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  My heart was racing.

  ‘I went to Vernon to try and find out what was happening to me, and at first he didn’t want to know, he was scared, but then he contacted Todd and we met up. Todd was the technical one – he worked for a pharmaceutical company. I could never figure out what their story was, but it soon became clear that Todd was siphoning this stuff out of the labs where he worked and that Vernon was just the front man. It also emerged that Vernon had mixed up a batch of tablets and had been dealing me 30- instead of 15mg pills, which meant that my dosage had shot up dramatically without me knowing it. Anyway, I told Todd what had happened and he said that I needed to combine the MDT with something else, another drug, something to counteract the side-effects. That’s what he called these blackouts – side-effects …’

  ‘What was the na—’

  ‘… but I told him I wasn’t taking anything else, that I wanted to stop, and to get back to normal. I asked him if I could do that, if I could just stop – without there being any other adverse side-effects, and he said he didn’t know, he wasn’t the FDA, but that since I’d been on such a high dosage he wouldn’t recommend stopping outright. He said I should probably reduce my intake gradually.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Which is what I did. But not systematically, not according to any known clinical procedure.’ ‘And what happened?’

  ‘I was fine for a while, but then this started …’ – he held up his hands – ‘… and then … insomnia, nausea, chest and sinus infections, loss of appetite, constipation, dry mouth, erectile dysfunction.’

  He threw his hands up, this time in a gesture of despair.

  I didn’t know what to say to him, and we were both silent for a while. I still wanted answers to my original two questions, but at the same time I didn’t want to be insensitive.

  After a moment, Geisler said, ‘Look, I’m not blaming anyone but myself. No one forced me to take MDT.’ He shook his head, and went on. ‘I guess I was a guinea pig, though, because I bumped into Vernon about a year later and he told me they’d sorted out any dosage problems they’d been having, that dosage had to be individually adjusted – customized, he said.’ A sudden look of anger came into his face. ‘He even suggested I might like to try it again, but I told him to go fuck himself.’

  I tried to nod sympathetically.

  I also waited to see if he was going to say anything else. When it appeared that he wasn’t, I said, ‘This Todd guy, do you know his surname? Or anything about him? Which company he worked for?’

  Geisler shook his head.

  ‘I only ever met him two or three times anyway. He was very circumspect, very careful. He and Vernon were some act, I’ll tell you – but Todd was definitely the brains.’

  I fiddled with the pack of Camels on the table beside my espresso cup.

  ‘One more question,’ I said. ‘When Todd told you that you needed to combine the MDT with something else, with another drug, to counteract the side-effects, the memory loss … did he say what that drug might be?’

  ‘Yes.’

  My heart jumped.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I actually remember it very well, because he kept on about it, telling me that it would take care of the problem, that he’d just worked it out. It was a product called Dexeron. It’s an antihistamine and is used for treating certain allergies. It contains some … thing, some agent, that reacts with a specific receptor complex in the brain and in a way, he claimed, that would prevent the blackouts from happening. I don’t know exactly. I don’t remember the details of what he said. I don’t think I understood it at the time. But apparently you can get it over the counter.’

  ‘You didn’t ever use it, though?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see.’

  I nodded my head, as though I were considering this – but all I was thinking about now was getting out of there as fast as possible and getting to a pharmacy.

  ‘… anyway, then, after Janine left me and I was kicked out of the company,’ Geisler went on, ‘I tried to pick up the pieces, but that wasn’t so easy, because of course …’

  I drained my coffee and desperately tried to formulate an exit strategy in my head. Even though I felt sorry for Geisler, and was horrified at what had happened to him, I really didn’t need to hear this part of the story – but I couldn’t just stand up and leave, either, so I ended up smoking two more cigarettes before I found the courage to say that I had to go.

  I told him thanks and said I’d get the check on the way out. He looked at me, as if to say C’mon, sit down, have another cigarette, drink some more coffee, but then a second later he waved a hand at me, dismissively, and said, ‘Oh, go on, get out of here. And good luck. I suppose.’

  *

  I found a pharmacy on Seventh Avenue, a few doors up from the café, and bought two packs of Dexeron. I then took a cab home.

  Once in the apartment I made straight for the bedroom closet and took out the MDT pills. I wasn’t sure how many to take, and I deliberated on it for quite a while. I eventually decided to take three. This was my last chance and it would either work or it wouldn’t.

  I went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. I swallowed the three MDT pills in one go, and then took two of the Dexeron. After that, I went in and sat on the couch, and waited.

  Two hours later, my CDs were back in alphabetical order. There were also no more crushed pizza-boxes to be seen in the apartment, or empty beer cans, or dirty socks … and every single inch of surface space was polished and gleaming …

  PART FOUR

  [ 22 ]

  OVER THE WEEKEND, I stuck to this new dosage regime, and monitored my progress fairly closely. I decided not to go out, just in case anything went wrong – but nothing did go wrong. There were no clicks or jumps or flashes, and it appeared that whatever was in the Dexeron actually worked – which wasn’t to say that I was in the clear, of course, or that I wouldn’t ever be having another blackout again, but it definitely felt good to be back. All of a sudden, I was confident, and clear-headed, and buzzing with ideas and energy. If the Dexeron went on working, my future path was laid out in front of me, brick by brick, and the only thing that I had to do was follow it, undistracted, unrepentant. I would re-acquaint myself with the MCL–Abraxas material and then I’d go and smooth things over with Carl Van Loon. I’d get trading again and make some money, and move into the Celestial Building. I’d eventually extricate myself from involvement with people like Van Loon and Hank Atwood and set up an independent business structure of my own – the Spinola Corporation, SpinolaSystems, Edinvest, whatever.

  I couldn’t get Ginny Van Loon out of my mind as I entertained these thoughts, and I tried now to slot her in at some appropriate point along the way. She resisted, however – or the idea of her resisted – and the more resistance there was the more agitated I became. Eventually, I put these feelings aside, compartmentalized them, and moved on to the MCL–Abraxas material.

  I read through all of the documents, and marvelled at how I hadn’t been able to understand them before. It certainly wasn’t the most exciting material in the world, but it was still relatively straightforward. I re-acquainted myself with how the Black–Scholes pricing model worked and did up the projections on the computer. I ironed out any difficulties there’d been, including the discrepancy in the third option that Van Loon had pointed out to me that day
in his office.

  The other thing I did over the weekend – apart from a hundred sit-ups each morning and evening – was to get back into some serious news consumption. I read the papers online and watched all the major current affairs shows on TV. There was very little mention of the Donatella Alvarez murder investigation, other than a brief appeal for anyone who might have witnessed anything to come forward – which meant, presumably, that the police had come up with no leads on Thomas Cole and were now clutching at straws.

  There was quite a lot of coverage of the Mexico story. A number of high-profile attacks had taken place – on tourists, and on US citizens, chiefly businessmen, living in Mexico City. One company director had been shot dead and two others had been kidnapped and were still missing. These incidents were being directly linked to the foreign policy debate that was raging in the press – and in which the ‘i’ word was now routinely being used. What had yet to be plausibly constructed in the public mind, despite talk of safety concerns for US citizens, not to mention threatened Mexican expropriation of foreign investments, was a rationale for any invasion that might take place – but they were clearly working on it.

  I also looked at how the markets had been performing since the big drop in tech stocks the previous Tuesday, and did some preliminary research for the coming Monday morning – which was when I planned to re-activate my account with Klondike.

  *

  Late on the Sunday evening, I was restless and decided to go out for a while. It was only when I hit the warm night air, and started walking, that I understood just how much better I really felt. Unlike before, I now had a strong physical sense of MDT, an almost buzz-like tingling in my limbs and head. At the same time, I didn’t feel intoxicated in any way. I just felt fully in control of my faculties – stronger, more awake, sharper.

  I went to a few different bars, drank soda water and talked all night long. In each place I went to, it only took me a few minutes to start up a conversation with someone and then a few more after that to attract a circle of listeners around me – these people apparently fascinated by what I had to say, as I talked about politics, history, baseball, music, anything that found its way into the conversation. I had women coming on to me, too, and even some men, but I had no sexual interest in these people and tactfully deflected their advances by raising the polemical temperature of whatever discussion we were involved in. I am aware that this might make me sound obnoxious and manipulative, but it really didn’t play that way at the time, and as the night marched on and they all got drunker, or more wired, and eventually started dropping out, I felt more invigorated, and – frankly – like some kind of minor god.