Blown

by Mark Haskell Smith

  He made another croaking sound.

  She put the bottle in his left hand, which, oddly enough, wasn’t tied to anything. He held the bottle to his lips and let a trickle drop onto his tongue. The water tasted sweet, like candy. A tremor ran through his arm and he was afraid he might spill it. He took another sip, then he glugged from the bottle and water leaked out of his cracked lips onto his face.

  “Easy.”

  He nodded—he didn’t want her to take the bottle away—and cleared his throat. “Thank you.” He took another sip and said, “I thought I was going to die.” Neal looked at her with what he hoped was an appropriately grateful and sincere expression. “My name is Neal. Neal Nathanson.”

  “You want something to eat? Neal?”

  Neal tried to read her expression. She wasn’t smiling. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  He watched as she walked through the companionway and stepped into the galley. He took another sip of water. The liquid slid down his throat and he could feel it bringing him back to life. He was going to be all right. He looked for the duffel bags. They were stacked on the deck, right where he left them. Except for the one he lit on fire, they were all here. Mission accomplished.

  Losing the boat was the only downside. He’d have to explain that somehow. Maybe write it off as a travel expense. Otherwise, he’d done his job. He might even get a bonus this year. Maybe he could vacation in Paris. Eat a croissant. Meet a handsome Frenchman named Patrice.

  He tugged at the plastic tie and it cut into his skin. He winced. What had he done to deserve that? He wasn’t dangerous.

  Then it occurred to him that maybe she was.

  Neal felt a sharp pain in his ankle. Then another one. He opened his eyes and saw the woman holding a couple of plates. She was kicking him.

  He didn’t remember falling asleep. The sun was higher in the sky, blinding him.

  “I caught a wahoo yesterday,” she said.

  He took the plate with his left hand and set it on his lap. A plastic spork was balanced on the edge. The smell of the pan-seared fish caused his stomach to knot and growl, and his saliva glands erupted, a thick strand of drool bursting out of his mouth. He looked at the fish, the rice and beans on the side, and briefly considered saying a prayer. Not that he was religious. He’d never believed in a higher power or karma or a sentient and benevolent universe. That was illogical, imaginary-friend thinking and he was a rational person, someone who believed in science. But all the same, he was feeling thankful, more thankful than he’d ever felt about anything in his life; he was happy to be alive.

  Neal stifled a sob and said, “Wahoo.”

  She sat across from him in the cockpit, resting her arm on the tiller, and sporked some food into her mouth. Neal took a small bite of fish and chewed it. It was delicious. The best food he’d ever tasted. He balanced the plate on his knee and leaned toward it as far as his restraint would let him. If his hand hadn’t been lashed to the railing, he would’ve buried his face in the food and wept for joy. Instead he reminded himself to go slow. Chew thoroughly. He didn’t want to overwhelm his system.

  He smiled. “This is so good. Seriously.”

  She didn’t respond, just stared at him.

  Neal took another bite, a bigger one, and looked around. It was a small boat, smaller than the one he’d lit on fire, and it had a big pink stripe down the middle and a matching one on the sail. The sail wasn’t doing much, hanging there in the lack of breeze, and Neal saw a block of logos, the trademarks of corporations, festooned across it. He recognized the mermaid, the iconic apple with the bite taken out of it, the names of a Korean electronics manufacturer and a German car company.

  “Are you in a race?”

  She didn’t respond. She just kept staring at him as she ate. Neal couldn’t hold her gaze. She was too intense, or maybe he was too tired. Either way, he turned and looked out at the ocean. They were, it seemed, in the middle of nowhere. The sea totally calm.

  “Where are we?”

  She didn’t reply. Neal shifted. He was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable about his predicament. He could see that she was thinking about something. Sizing him up. Maybe she was considering all the different ways she could prepare and eat him.

  Neal felt a shiver run up his spine. “Can you untie me?”

  She finished her last bite and banged her plate against the hull, knocking the remaining rice into the ocean. She put the plate down and took a swig of water from a canteen. Then she looked him right in the eye:

  “Tell me a story, Neal. Tell me about the money.”

  PREVIOUSLY, ONSHORE …

  Bryan LeBlanc had never met a bigger bunch of assholes.

  Sure, they were smart and hardworking. Strivers, you’d call them—the kind of people who worked eighty hours a week and never complained. They’d sit at their desks for days staring at multiple monitors—images flickering and flashing and scrolling—lined up in the open-plan office like dairy cows at milking stations, hooked to machines that sucked the life out of them. And they loved it.

  They had no social life to speak of. No friends outside the business. They were surfing the algorithm, riding the markets in new and ever more complex machinations, shooting the tube to wrest lucre from the system and deposit it in the treasury of their employer. They would pull all-nighters, forget to sleep. Crank the outcomes. Crunch the numbers. And after the numbers had been crunched and victory tasted, they’d shower in the gym. Whatever it took to make their nut, to get their bonus, to taste some of that sweet honey. They saw themselves as the heroes of the free market, the US Marines of capitalism. They were the few, the proud, the completely full of themselves. This was the corporate culture encouraged by the big shots at InterFund.

  Why would they dedicate themselves so ferociously to their jobs?

  A sane person might wonder.

  Bryan considered himself a sane person. But he knew why they did it.

  The answer—and this came as no surprise to anyone—was to be rich. And not just rich enough to have a nice house and go on cool vacations and eat at trendy restaurants. The goal was to be superrich, the kind of wealthy where you got to bully and humiliate your fellow human beings. The kind of rich where you had butlers and drivers and cooks and a private jet, where you could drink champagne and get your cock sucked by your trophy wife on your way to play a round of golf with the president of the United States of America. That’s what these assholes were after. They wanted privilege and access—the access to more money and the privilege to take it for themselves. That’s why they sat in front of their computer monitors, bleary-eyed and amped up on a cocktail of Adderall or Ritalin and whatever was the benzodiazepine du jour. That’s why they left it all on the field and gave 200 percent and strove to dominate from above. It baffled Bryan that they would say these things, like they meant anything, as if they were actual measurements of competence and not just mantras of the deluded. But they did say these things. They bundled and bought and swapped and sold and shorted and traded.

  And then they high-fived each other.

  Bryan looked at the monitor on his left. He had seven screens on his desk streaming business news and market reports from around the world, with several dedicated to his foreign exchange trading, and one where he could check his emails and follow political news streaming through various feeds he subscribed to.

  When he tried to explain what he did to other people in the company, or even his clients, he could see their eyes glaze over in less than sixty seconds. Foreign exchange trading was a complex transaction and required attention to minutiae: the weather reports, political maneuverings, and the random comings and goings of people in far-flung places like Bangladesh and Botswana, Berlin and Buenos Aires—the kinds of things that most people couldn’t be bothered with. Bryan had spent his youth in his bedroom playing video games on his Xbox and PS2, and this wasn’t much different; all you needed was the ability to stay single-mindedly focused on the screen for hours and to have
fast fingers when it was time to pounce.

  Most brokers liked simple deals: IPOs and stock surges. The shorthand of buy, hold, sell. People didn’t want to look at the tiny details that made up the big picture. That was like doing math, and math was hard. So if you were someone who was adept at this, someone with an eye for the connectivity of small details to the wider world, you had an edge, you could find an opportunity and exploit the fuck out of it.

  Which was how the whole global financial meltdown happened in the first place.

  “I don’t know if you know this, but there’s something called sunlight where you’re going. You’ll need this.”

  Bryan looked up from his screen as Seo-yun Kim, his boss and the managing director of the foreign exchange division, handed him a bottle of sunscreen.

  Bryan read the label. “I didn’t know they made an SPF 110.”

  “It shows I care.”

  Bryan smiled. “I like your scarf.”

  She tugged at the bright red scarf wrapped around her neck. “My fiancé gave it to me. He said it makes him happy when I wear it.”

  It was a departure from her typical uniform of a black suit and white blouse. Seo-yun took the scarf off and held it out at arm’s length, as if it were contaminated. Bryan laughed. “I’m guessing it doesn’t make you happy.”

  She dropped it onto his desk. “My happiness isn’t the reason he gave me a scarf.” She flipped her fingers through her hair. “Can I get you to leave your desk for some sushi?”

  Bryan nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They sat at the counter and, not for the first time, Bryan wondered why sushi restaurants were always austere. The food was simple, with almost no embellishment, just rice and fish with a skid mark of wasabi. So why did the restaurant match the food? What was that about?

  He watched as Seo-yun expertly used her chopsticks to place a slice of pickled ginger in her mouth without smudging her lipstick. She turned to him. “I’m here for the ginger. I don’t really care about the fish.”

  A waitress brought a cold beer and poured it into a glass.

  “Sorry. Beginning my vacation early,” Bryan said.

  “I’m jealous.”

  “You’ll get your honeymoon soon enough.”

  That brought a groan from Seo-yun. “This wedding is going to kill me.”

  Bryan raised an eyebrow. He hoped Seo-yun would continue talking. Although they’d worked together for almost four years, he didn’t know much about her. She was considered something of an anomaly in the company, an eccentric and a loner who people said was “on the spectrum.” She had risen to a position of power in the firm because she was amazing at her job; she had an almost intuitive grasp of what was happening in the world and could make connections that he couldn’t even see. And he was good, excellent even, at reading the data and making calls. Seo-yun was in a different league. Some colleagues hated working with her and tried to undermine her. But Bryan admired Seo-yun’s talent and liked her management style. She was direct. She didn’t play games. She had a complete lack of charm that he found charming. They weren’t close friends, but they got along well and had an easy professional relationship. Out of the office she kept to herself. Her personal life was a mystery. He didn’t even know her fiancé’s name.

  The sushi chef placed a blue crab hand roll in front of each of them. Seo-yun hesitated, as if she might say more about her impending nuptials, but instead she stuffed half the hand roll into her mouth and bit down hard.

  Bryan didn’t say anything. He watched as she chewed.

  Seo-yun reached over and picked up his beer. She took a long sip. “Sorry. Wasabi.”

  “Happy to share.”

  She suppressed a burp and said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me, but ever since I agreed to get married I haven’t felt the same.”

  “That’s normal, I think.”

  “Really?”

  Bryan nodded. “Isn’t that why people do it? So they don’t feel the same after?”

  Seo-yun finished his beer. “Control is a funny thing. Who’s in control. How you control yourself. So many decisions.” She sighed. “It’s hard to find any pleasure in it.”

  On their walk back from the sushi restaurant, Bryan told Seo-yun that while he was gone his holdings were all automated: if currencies fluctuated outside certain ranges, trades would be triggered automatically. Barring a financial catastrophe like the near default in Greece or some sort of war breaking out, everything should be on cruise control. She told him she’d cover if there was a problem, and that while she didn’t enjoy vacationing herself, she wanted him to have a good time. He’d obviously been stressed out the last few months.

  “Stress kills,” she said.

  It was true. He’d been on a roll, pulling in millions for the company and making his name as a producer, a rainmaker, an AT-fucking-M. In the corporate hierarchy, Seo-yun was his boss, but she was smart enough to let him do his own thing. She never looked over his shoulder or ran an audit. That was what made her a great manager. It was also her weakness.

  Back at his desk, Bryan watched the euro oscillate. There was no reason for it to behave that way, nothing that he could see. But money was weird. Sometimes it did what it wanted and you had to be willing to go along for the ride.

  He looked at his phone and saw that it was five o’clock. He put his computer to sleep and slipped into his suit jacket. He pulled his tie tight around his neck. The dress code was another thing he hated about his job. Why wear an expensive suit to look at a computer all day? He could do the job in his underwear. Honestly, he’d prefer to do the job in his underwear. The suit was just another piece of the bullshit they were selling. The power suit. Dress for success. Fuck you.

  He closed his office door, listening for the click of the latch locking behind him, and gave his assistant a nod. Then he walked past the bullpen—a place that sometimes gave off the waft of body odor and ass—without looking at the young traders hustling their next buck, busting their butts for bottles of single malt Scotch and weekends in Vegas. Bryan knew they hated him for leaving at five. But they knew he was in before them, dealing with currency trades from Europe, so they couldn’t be too snarky. Besides, it’s not like he cared what they thought; he wasn’t coming back.

  Seo-yun Kim was not stupid. She knew that she was difficult or awkward or special—whatever word they wanted to use to say that she wasn’t interested in the usual bullshit. She was good at logic and numbers. She liked systems. What she didn’t like were people who got emotional. Too much emotion was detrimental. Emotional people made bad decisions. Naturally, she recognized emotion when she saw it or heard it or read about it. At work she was clinical and analytical—you can’t deal with vast volumes of capital if you get caught up in feelings. That’s when you start making mistakes. But most people did get emotional and she was adept at reading how these feelings might affect the value of a particular currency. Brexit was a good example. The pound might have lost 17 percent of its value overnight, but she saw it coming and made some serious bank for the firm. She was not stupid.

  She also had an uncanny ability to compartmentalize her life. At work she was organized, rigorous, and serious. She didn’t hang around the break room gossiping or dropping humblebrags like the other employees. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t socialize from time to time. There were people whom she was friendly with—maybe not friends, but they would have lunch together occasionally. And as much as she hated the expression happy hour, she would sometimes join her colleagues for an after-work cocktail. She liked to keep her personal life separate from her business life. Did that make her a bad person?

  It was an easy walk from her office to the Rector Street subway station. From there she would jump onto a train, hop off at Prince Street, and in a few minutes be at her condo in West SoHo, located in a parcel of Manhattan carved out by real estate speculators trying to create a market for wealthy young strivers. It worked. Seo-yun loved her building, a converted factory with lar
ge windows and exposed brick—it was high-end living with an artsy edge. When she first visited the model apartment, she had tried to buy it just the way it was. The real estate agent gave her the number of the interior designer and Seo-yun had her apartment designed to look like a replica of the model. It wasn’t cozy; it was modern and clean. Her parents visited and said it “lacked Seoul.” They sent her a traditional Korean ink brush painting of mountains and blossoming trees along a tranquil river that now dominated her living room.

  She didn’t understand her friends’ and parents’ insistence that she needed to make it more her own. Why did it need to reflect her personality? She lived with her personality 24/7; she didn’t need to come home to it after work.

  For a few years she had brunch every Sunday with some of her classmates from graduate school. They were all successful women, but as a few got married or moved away, their numbers had dwindled. Now it was Seo-yun and Stacy and Annie, a lesbian couple who’d been together since college. The conversations had become domestic. They used to talk about politics and sex and music, but now she found herself getting drawn into their personal disputes, as if she were a licensed therapist, as if she cared where they bought their summer home. She wondered if she would still go to brunch after she was married.

  Why was she getting married?

  She was attractive in a kind of intimidating way, so she never had a problem getting men interested in her. It was her personality that they found problematic, her tendency to be bluntly honest, when all they wanted to hear was a soft lie. If you don’t want to hear the truth, don’t ask: “Was it good for you?” Her parents were afraid she wouldn’t find anyone who would overlook her special personality, and it wasn’t like the thought hadn’t occurred to her too. So when her boyfriend asked her to marry him, she thought, Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?