Above the Ether

by Eric Barnes

  Rings on their fingers. This can only end in sadness.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Investor

  The checkerboard tile floors still lie flat at the street corner. The walls of the small buildings are gone. Only the ground floors now remain. It’s a small town, rural, with three tile floors, each one covering the entirety of the lots where they were built.

  Commercial buildings long ago destroyed. By tornado or inattention or storm. There’s no way to know for sure.

  Few people are left in this town. The courthouse square is overgrown. A deputy wanders out of the courthouse itself, using a fire exit. The main doors have swollen shut from so much leaking rain.

  Near the highway, just a few miles from here, the shopping center glows all day and night. Cars and trucks and even tractors, they make their way to the parking lot. Drawn there, forced there, this collection of shining, massive boxes is the center of this town’s commerce.

  Decades in the making. Now reality across hundreds and thousands of rural and forgotten places.

  She never thinks about why she pays people to have sex with her. She doesn’t question it. Debate it. Doesn’t feel guilt or shame or insecurity.

  She likes the way she has sex.

  So she keeps on doing it.

  Outside her window, clouds of dandelion seeds float through the air.

  She asks her analysts about a coastal country on the other side of the world.

  The analysts run through metrics on the history of developments along that country’s shoreline. Small towns, large resorts, fishing villages, massive industrial ports. All built in areas easily identified as at risk. At risk of flooding in some sort of disaster. A typhoon or an earthquake. But also at risk from the slowly rising water.

  “Who are the insurers on the big developments?” she asks. She’s turned completely to her window. Watching the dandelions blow by, a near fog of white seeds, or are they spores, she wonders, but doesn’t need to know.

  The analysts list the names of the insurance companies that protect billions of dollars in large investments along that coastline.

  She says, “I want contracts against them all.”

  The dandelion clouds begin to blow straight up, riding a thermal or a breeze. They’ve been blowing through the city for days.

  She didn’t like the man she had last night. He moved too fast. He was too loud. It left her less satisfied than before she’d started. She’d returned to her apartment early. Going home instead to be alone.

  “The rural provinces,” she says. “The poor cities along the coast. Do they issue their own debt?”

  She hears the faint tapping on the laptop keyboards. Quiet, though. As if the analysts knew to buy laptops as silent as this room in which they work.

  “Yes,” one of the analysts says. “Many billions’ worth.”

  “Bet against it,” she says.

  She’d like to have that young man again. With his story of wearing his cousin’s dress. She’ll make a call soon. And stop by a store on the way home. Buy him something nice to wear.

  The analysts move through other countries along that coast. Near the equator. The conversation about one of the island nations takes nearly a full hour. The opportunities are just that large.

  “Tomorrow,” she says, “we need to focus on the near term. What we’re discussing now is all for the future. Tomorrow, I want to focus on today.”

  The dandelion clouds start to shift again, beginning to blow west, then down, but for a moment, as the direction of the wind changes, the dandelion clouds outside her windows have stopped moving, frozen in place sixty stories in the air, each white seed suspended here; she stares from one to another and to another. Held in place. As if time has stopped. And for that moment she thinks that she could identify each seed, all of the millions of them, she could study and remember each one.

  The heat lifts them again, they move upward, even higher into the sky.

  “Herbicides,” she says. “Who knows anything about herbicides?”

  The suburbs all have a chosen facade. Mostly tan or mostly brown, mostly wooden or mostly brick. The convenience stores distinguished from the doctors’ offices only by the small signs allowed to be hung discreetly on the front of buildings.

  A dull and numbing ubiquity parading as an understated, planned aesthetic.

  Teenagers roam in family cars, buying beer behind the gas station. Buying painkillers behind the mall. Finding half-finished subdivisions abandoned during a banking crisis, now shelters for small parties, forced sex, addictions some will try to conquer before there’s a worse descent.

  Schools overflowing with more students than they can handle, fed by a constant influx of corporate transfers, young couples, people fleeing the problems of the cities, be they real or just imagined.

  She never thinks about the morality of making money off natural disasters. The rules say she can. There’s nothing about what she does that is illegal.

  Her job is to make money. Increase it. Multiply it. Add to the pile she and her team and her company already have.

  She doesn’t question this.

  She’s very good at it.

  So she makes as much as she possibly can.

  She didn’t always make her money off these disasters. For years, she made it other ways. But the disasters kept presenting themselves. More times than she could ignore.

  She’s already made the company a billion dollars off the disaster in the Gulf. But her bosses have long since learned not to congratulate her on any investment that pays off. Over the years, each of them has done that once. Showing up in her office and starting to clap or even cheer.

  She winced. She looked away. Asked finally, “Is there anything else you came to say?”

  Now, they only wander by. Trying hard to seem casual.

  This time, the oldest one comes by her office. Gray hair. Tan. Big class ring. Gold wedding band. His wristwatch might cost fifty thousand dollars. He’s come into her office. Sits on her couch. Trying hard to be quiet. But he isn’t quiet. Not by nature.

  That he is so obviously trying to be quiet somehow makes him louder.

  “Yes?” she says. Turning to him. Hand on the elevated desk.

  “Good week,” he says.

  In a moment, she says, “Yes.”

  He pauses. Nods. Soon says, “I went through the new additions to your portfolio.” Again, he pauses. He shifts loudly. “With anyone else, I wouldn’t allow such risk.”

  “Is it the risk?” she asks. “Or the prospect of making money off such terrible things?”

  He shifts in place again. Glances around the room. It’s almost empty except for the couch and three chairs and her elevated desk. On the walls are huge photographs of old cities captured in the night, lit bright with electric streetlamps, cars and trolleys and horse-drawn carriages all crowded along broad avenues.

  “Well,” he says now. “They are certainly terrible possibilities. But it’s not as if you created these possibilities. And,” he starts, laughing suddenly, “it’s not as if we want these things to happen.”

  She hates the abrupt, disruptive sound of awkward laughter.

  She says to him, “Of course we want these things to happen. It’s an assumption in the model.”

  He looks around. Smiling obviously.

  She hopes he doesn’t laugh again.

  “That sounds almost evil,” he says finally, lightly, trying to joke.

  She shakes her head. “I don’t believe in evil.”

  “Not a churchgoer?” he asks, the awkward smile. Again, he shifts in place.

  “No,” she says.

  He nods. He doesn’t speak for a long moment. But he continually repositions his feet and arms.

  “We need to dress up the new portfolio,” he says finally. “Not change it. But put some other types of investments in there. In case some regulator, some detective, a reporter, looks at it more closely than we’d like.”

  She says, “You want to adorn it
with the appearance of greater hope.”

  He stares at her. The awkward smile fades. He’s not sure how to take what she has said.

  Most people around here, she knows, they joke. This is all a game.

  “I suppose,” he says, looking away. “Yes.”

  “Send me your suggestions,” she says. “I see no need for this. But, as long as you don’t undermine the model’s inherent purpose, certain changes may be fine.”

  His voice is louder suddenly. Not loud. But louder. “Would you ever want to talk about all this over a drink?” he asks.

  She stares at him. “No.”

  He nods. He looks around. In a moment, he says, “I’ll have someone send suggestions.”

  She shakes her head. “I won’t look at them unless they come from you.”

  He’s quiet.

  “Just this week, I have made you a massive amount of money off the deaths of many thousands of people in the Gulf,” she says. “Around the world, we’re betting on the resultant deaths of many, many more. There’s a ratio, in fact. A correlation between the number of dead and the amount of money we will make. The correlation is not linear. It’s exponential. Returns that grow by several orders of magnitude as the death toll rises. I can show it to you if you’d like. It’s right here on my computer. But if you don’t approve of this reality, if you don’t want me operating in this territory, you will need to tell me so. Tell me. Clearly. Say it,” she says. “Say it now.”

  He stares at her. Even though, she realizes, he very much does not want to.

  She says to him again, “Say it now.”

  He stands. Looks around the room. “Okay,” he says. “Yes. I will send you my suggestions.”

  “Anything else?” she asks.

  He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says.

  It’s another minute before he leaves.

  But she’s already turned back to her computer.

  Vast walls of scaffolding built within the city itself, pipes and wooden platforms not intended to aid in repairing the deteriorating buildings but erected only to protect passersby from the crumbling facades of the stores and apartments and skyscrapers they walk past.

  Whole city blocks fenced off, chain-link, razor wire, public housing built many decades ago to cordon off the poor and brown, housing that’s decrepit now, wasted, and no one can justify its use.

  Whole neighborhoods, for miles, not a grocery store, no real food for sale, just brightly packaged sustenance. Small children eat it in their strollers.

  She’s bought a dress for him. A white one. And his own bra and panties. Pink. With small flowers. He is a beautiful boy. Sixteen, probably. Though he promises he is older.

  She’s dressed him, applied eyeliner. She paints his lips a darker pink. Adds a little shine. She has perfume for him. She combs his long hair out, lays it across his shoulders.

  He sits watching her. Only breathing slowly.

  She says to him, quietly, “I want you to feel pretty.”

  His legs are shaven. His whole body is. He’s taken care of that on his own.

  “Stand,” she says.

  She is behind him as he stands at the mirror. She takes his hands, moves them up and down his body. Across the cool material of the dress. The bra beneath it. She guides his hands to the dress’s hem. Lifts it slightly. Finds the panties. Runs his fingers along the thin top edge, letting his fingers slide inside them.

  She lays him down on the bed. She wears jeans. A loose T-shirt. She puts her hair up, pinning it behind her head.

  She spreads his legs. Pushes the dress up to his belly button.

  “Do you wish you were a girl?” she asks him.

  He says, “Sometimes.”

  “Do you wish that I could fuck you?” she asks.

  “Yes,” he says.

  She unzips her jeans. Slides them off. Takes off her underwear. But leaves the T-shirt on.

  She’s between his legs. He’s hard and she moves him so that his legs are spread but he can be inside her. She pushes, her hips working him.

  He lets his head fall back as she does this. His knees rise. She unbuttons the dress so she can see his bra. Pushes one cup down. Sucks on his bare nipple.

  “And when,” he whispers, pausing, leaning back even more, his legs spread as his knees move, “when is the first time you had sex?”

  People have asked. But she has never answered. Just guided them on to whatever she wanted next.

  But she likes this boy. How quiet he is. How pretty he is. How he lets her dress him up. How he lets her fuck him like he is a girl.

  “I was twenty-five,” she says. “No one had ever tried. Or ever offered.”

  “That’s not possible,” he says.

  She rocks forward and back, steadily, again and again.

  “Yes, it is,” she says. “Back then I wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t beautiful. I was just very plain.”

  “You’re not plain,” he says. “You’re beautiful.”

  “Yes,” she says, sliding a bra strap off his shoulder, taking a moment to suck lightly on his nipple, speaking words between each lick or kiss, “I am now. But I wasn’t then.”

  He rocks back, with each push, legs spread, eyes closed. Panties pulled aside, dress pushed up and bra askew. He’s a girl. He feels it. She does. He’s a girl.

  “And so,” she says quietly, “I read a book. And while I read I touched myself. Which I’d done. But this was different. The book had prostitutes in it. A man who bought them. Brought them to his apartment in a building high up in the sky. Every night. And I touched myself. And came. But this time, for the first time, I realized I could come again. Four or five or six times. I could come as many times as I wanted.”

  He’s breathing hard. Lying back. Eyes closed. Being fucked. He’s always wanted to be fucked.

  “And the next night I went online,” she says. “Found a place. And ordered up a man.”

  He’s breathing even harder.

  She leans close to him, near his ear, working him. This time, it’s all for him.

  She whispers, “Can I come inside you?”

  His lips move. But he doesn’t speak.

  “Can I come inside you?”

  His lips move. No words. He nods. Nods again. “Yes,” he finally whispers, more breath than word. “Please come.”

  Beach communities destroyed. Not by hurricanes or earthquakes or even by massive waves. Instead, the beach is simply moving. Slowly disappearing into the surf. Rows of houses that were once located a block or two from the beach are now, years later, positioned on the beachfront, their porches looking out on the remnants of other homes, built tall on massive stilts, now battered by the surf.

  Homes of the very wealthy, or rented by the rich, or rented by the middle class, the working class. Escapes for each of them. A place to escape their normal lives.

  The front steps of the houses all descend, staircases that meet the waves. The houses, in the sunset, forty of them in various stages of destruction, they are an almost beautiful backdrop, silhouettes of what once was, the sun behind them slowly dropping out of view.

  She’s gotten quite focused on that boy. Seeing him a few times a week. He lets her dress him. His shaved body gets smoother every time, so that the panties she slides onto him and the bra she clips at his back and the dress she buttons carefully, it all makes him feel like a girl. His hair is long. She gets to brush it. And when he comes inside her, his legs spread, rocking back as she pushes against him, every time it’s instead like she’s come inside of him.

  So she’ll see him again.

  She folds investments into the model. Municipal debt swaps, the shorting of insurance stocks. The concepts are simple. She’s not entirely sure why more people are not doing this.

  Maybe it’s the idea that something about this is deeply wrong.

  Maybe there’s a feeling that this must ultimately be illegal.

  Probably at least some people would find this to be quite scary.

  Her
analysts list the company names. City names. Provincial capitals. Population stats and demographics.

  “And so where are we on short-term options?” she asks eventually.

  “We have agricultural scenarios,” one analyst says.

  “The death of home landscaping services?” she asks him.

  He shakes his head, pausing, then smiling some.

  She likes it that he found her to be funny.

  “There’s not enough of a market in home services,” he says now. “Too small. But in food there’s a market we should like. We have a model that anticipates escalating growth in pricing. But also there’s the entirety of the supply chain. Warehousing, grocery stores, restaurant supply, fast-food franchising. Costs will increase, in some cases very dramatically.”

  She nods. On her screen, she’s moving through the model that they’ve sent her. In a moment, she says, “Yes.”

  “You’ll see calculations for here and for abroad,” another analyst says.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “And there’s land,” says another analyst. “So that we have a series of targeted purchases—insurance, commodity contracts, muni debt, water rights, and land leases—all tied to key stages of an inevitable loss of farmable or livable land.”

  She stares at the numbers. Calculates on her screen. Runs scenarios in her mind. In a moment, she says, “Yes.”

  Outside her window, the sky is turning dark.

  “Also,” one of the analysts is saying, even as the woman turns to watch the storm moving quickly toward her window, “I saw a story about a city. An industrial city. West of here. And how it’s been abandoned.”

  The woman is standing very close to her window now, feeling the heat emanating from the glass, the sky turning black, rain starting now, and lightning. “I’ve heard of the place,” she says. “But if it’s already been abandoned, what is there to bet against?”

  “Actually, there are two halves to the city,” the analyst says. “Twin cities, really. And the other half, which is still populated, there are signs. It’s starting to fail as well.”

  The storms, they come quickly. Dark and filled with lightning, and she assumes the tornado warnings have started to ring out. “How long could one half survive,” the woman says, watching lightning flashes that seem mere blocks away, even as thunder vibrates silently against the window, “while the other half continues to fail?”