“Fear?”
“Fear of what deep down a person—a bright person like you—knows is real. Real as real can be.” The bum rubbed the top of his sign, gently, petting it almost. “As real as you coming to me. As real as those coins coming up heads. As real as the stocks that hit this week. As real as what you see on my sign. Are you going to ignore what’s real, what’s right there before you? Are you going to let logic deny you your wish? Your dream come true? Aren’t you due a good break in life, young fellow?”
A break? Yes, he figured he was due. With two dead parents and all the cruel hurt that festered from that wound and that which had prefaced it, certainly some fortuitous interest had been earned on that loss. Some favoring dividend. And the wish? The dream? Yes, he’d wished for riches, and he’d dreamed for so many years of the day he’d come to Wall Street to make his fortune. But never had anything like this crossed his mind as a way to that end. An end that, he was believing more with each passing day, would be reached somewhat sooner than he’d anticipated, thanks to—
“Donzerly light, my young friend,” Sign Guy said, speaking where only thought had been intended.
Jay stared at him, and as he did he was surprised to feel himself calm. Just a bit at first, and no way near anything approaching an expected state of placidity, but still it came. From apprehension to anxiousness, and from there to wariness, and down further to a state of reluctant wonder, but not acceptance. Not quite yet.
“Donzerly light,” Jay said for himself, and dredged from memory that line. That one silly line. Oh say can you see by the donzerly light...
Yes I can, he thought. Yes I can.
“Dreams can come true,” Sign Guy told him. “Why not yours?”
And for the first time in days, in many days, the questions that had come with every occurrence of new and fantastic happenings did not seem to matter. At least not as much as the truth of the matter—that, if things carried on, his dream would come true. He would be rich, which more importantly meant he would never be poor. Never, ever be poor. Hell, Old Man Mitchell might even bump him straight from junior broker to account manager, or maybe even account executive, because with his ability, with this ability... Man! It was almost too much to comprehend.
But was it too much to accept? he wondered. Was it? Did it have to be?
“Your friends are waiting,” Sign Guy said, and Jay glanced at his watch. As he did the bum reached up, very slowly this Friday eve, and turned the inexpensive timepiece his way for examination. He shook his head. “You are definitely going to have to upgrade. May I suggest a Rolex like my most recent giver?”
Jay snickered, equal parts nerves and good humor behind the expression. “You may.”
Sign Guy let go his wrist and said in a familiar way, “You’ll promise me something, brother?”
“What’s that?”
“Just one promise?”
“What?”
“You won’t ignore the possibilities.”
“Possibilities?” Jay asked. “What does that mean?”
Sign Guy’s smile doubled on itself again. “It means what it means.”
Eight
What It Means
“Think of the possibilities,” Jude said, and Jay stared at him as if all the truths of the universe had bloomed before his eyes. He stared, yes, and he smiled. Smiled in an obvious and almost giddy way. “What? What’s so funny?”
Funny? What could be funny. They were all at their regular table at BK’s, half naked nymphs were on the turning stage doing their nasty thang. Steve and Bunker were ogling the gyrating babes and Christine Mellinger, who’d strutted slowly in this night wearing some one piece yellow dress that must have been grafted to her body. And Jay and Jude, well, they were huddled over their eighth round of drinks because Jude had motioned his buddy close as though to share of some conspiracy. As it was, that wasn’t far off the mark.
“Nothing’s funny,” Jay said, the word ringing in his head as echoes from two different voices. The parting words from the grinning bum, and now from his best buddy. Possibilities. Possibilities that should not be ignored, or so said the happy homeless genie who’d granted his wish, a wish he’d barely made outright, but which he harbored completely nonetheless. Then again, who didn’t want to be rich?
...don’t ignore the possibilities...
Right, Jay thought, and swallowed another gulp of whiskey, adding to the substantial drunk he’d built this night already. Another one for the books, boys, and another one for Carrie to needle him about.
Needle, needle, needle. Well, dammit, it was worth a little nagging. Peck away, hen, ‘cause Jay was sloshed and damn glad he was. Hell yes. Hell if it wasn’t good to be sloshed this night, because he surely was living in fucking wonderland, oh yes. He damn sure was.
“Not a damn thing,” Jay added, punctuating his reply and still smiling in that slightly bewildered, slightly reckless way. Lost in familiar space. One cylinder missing. Going downhill fast with bad brakes. Oh, man, it was the night of the day of the week that had turned his world upside down. It had been leaning a little since their previous gathering at BK’s, but, man, now the whole shebang was on its head. On its crazed and happy head, all because he’d wished for riches without knowing he was wishing for riches. And from that...
‘I give you my thanks...’
And how, Jay thought upon the recollection. And how.
“Then why the hell are you grinning like that?” Jude asked, perturbed.
Why? That was easy. Because grinning was good, Jay thought. Grinning could be very good. People (he was people, right? sure he was, sure) who grinned were a-okay good, his drunken brain decided, because they granted big ol’ wet dream wishes, didn’t they? Yessiree they did, all right! And why did they do that? And how? Well, pesky old questions like them had been relegated to the trash heap of wasted worries somewhere deep within. Right in there with all the other ‘irrelevant shit’, thank you very much, Mr. Jude Duffault. “I’m a happy guy. I got reason to be happy, don’t I?”
“Grady?” Jude said very seriously, leaning close to his friend, close enough that the sweet vapor of whiskey off Jay’s breath tweaked his nose. “Would you wipe that silly fucking thing off your face and listen to me.”
“I’m listening.” But the silly fucking thing stayed right on his face.
“I want to say something to you. Something serious.”
“Say away,” Jay said happily, happy thoughts in his head, happy smiling faces beaming in the blur of his mind’s eye. Oh, happy day, man, and he didn’t give a damn why or why not it was a happy day, or what happy possibilities there might be on this happy day, because it was all too damn fantastic to be real, wasn’t it?
But it was all real, and wasn’t that the most fantastic thing of all! Wishes did come true after all!
wishes, wishes, coins, and wishes, money swims in the sea like fishes
And wasn’t that a crazy little ditty spun from nowhere with some nonsense trailing from it (swims in the sea like fishes, boys, okay, whatever...). Happy nonsense, though, Jay thought, and that made it a-okay on this fine day...night...whatever. Anything happy. Everything happy this night was okey-dokey fine.
Jay beamed and sipped his drink. Sipped it hap-hap-happily.
“Serious, Grady, okay?”
Jude had called him ‘Grady’ how many times now with not a ‘farmboy’ to be heard high or low? Shit, the Judester was shooting straight and serious here. “You have my undivided attention, Mr. Duffault.”
Jude pointed a crooked finger at his friend, though it likely appeared angled that way because of seven whiskeys—or somehow, without anyone knowing it, and without any scream to mark the occasion, Jude had suffered a bloodless compound fracture of his right index finger—and spoke as low as the throbbing music would allow. “You’ve gotta start thinking about something, buddy.”
“Possibilities,” Jay slurred obligingly. And happily.
“There’s heat all over you, buddy,�
� Jude said, two ‘buddys’ in a row convincing Jay even further that his friend had burned some major brain cells thinking on whatever he was thinking. “Major heat.”
“Heat?” Jay repeated, the one syllable dragging slow and thick past his lips. He wasn’t getting it. Not yet, anyway.
“As in you’re hot as the fucking sun, Grady. Hot as hot gets.”
“I’m hot?”
Jude nodded soberly, though he was about as far from sober as one could get and still be awake. “You are on fire, Grady. Every day. Monday—bang! Tuesday—bang! Wednesday, Thursday, today—bang, bang, bang!” Jude smiled a bit himself now, though there was something more to the happy crack upon his face. Something beneath it that wasn’t at all happy. Something that was...hungry. Hungry like an animal that had caught the scent of blood on the wind. “You’ve got something, buddy, and I don’t know what it is, but it damn sure IS. That’s the straight line, man. You are H—O—T hot.” Jude swigged the last of his GT and wagged the same crooked finger at Jay as before. “And you ain’t cooling down.”
“I’m not?” Jay asked, for the sake of asking. He was curious. Curious why Jude would be so sure that his streak was going to go on. And on. And on. Why would Jude think that, believe that? Why?
“No, you’re not,” Jude said, and motioned for the waitress to head on over for round eight.
“How do you know?” Jay pressed his friend, and watched as Suzy came their way. Pretty Suzy. Suzy with the wiggle. Suzy from the sign. Suzy on the sign. Suzy in the sign.
Hey, Suzy, what’s your sign? He thought of asking this, of tossing her the most clichéd pickup line ever crafted, just for kicks, but thought of it only. Didn’t say it because Jude was talking, and talking up a drunken storm, his volume rising to eleven every now and then until he’d catch himself and lower it a notch.
“One day?” Jude said. “Two days? Three days? Maybe. But two times on Wednesday? And three on Thursday?” He shook his head. “No. This ain’t some little lucky streak. It ain’t, and you know it.”
And Jude was right about that. Right as rain.
“Okay, I’m hot and getting hotter. So?”
“So?” Jude responded, incredulous and ready to slap his friend for not getting it. But he didn’t, not with Suzy getting to their table. He tempered his manner and ordered politely, for he and Jay only. Steve and Bunker were way too enthralled by the sight of Christine Mellinger sucking the diet soda from her glass through a fat straw to be torn away for this. Every once in a while she’d throw them a glance, like a plantation master of old tossing scraps to grateful slaves. And even once or twice—twice, Jay thought, though it might have even been three times (three times? right, Grady, in your... well, dreams did come true, now, didn’t they?)—she had given him a glance. Or a look, maybe. It had seemed long enough to be an outright look, but then that was beyond dreaming of, even. Wasn’t it? “You can’t get drunk enough to miss what I’m talking about, Grady.”
“Possibilities,” Jay said, and swept his hand grandly before him, almost knocking over his drink. He grabbed it with surprising deftness, considering, and said, “Tragedy averted.”
Jude leaned close once again. “We could do it, you know.”
“We could?” Jay asked, leaning in as well. “What could we do?”
Jude swallowed an exasperated breath. “Go it on our own, dummy.”
“On our own?” Jay repeated, his narrowed gaze perplexed. That was what the Judester was talking about? That was the ‘possibilities’?
“Yeah,” Jude said, nodding in an intimate way, a way meant to confirm, to suggest. “You, me.” And quieter now, though anywhere else it would have approached a shout. “Steve and Bunk. We could.”
“You mean...leave S&M?”
“Start our own place. Hang out a shingle. People with money are always looking for someone better to manage it. And with what you’ve got going, man, we’d have to fight ‘em off once word got around.”
Jay stared at him, said nothing for a moment, then took a long, head back swallow of whiskey. “The four of us, you’re talking about. Did you all hash this out before telling me, or something?”
“No, buddy.” Jude glanced at Steve and Bunker, then back to Jay. “They’ve got no idea. I haven’t said a thing to them about it. This is just you and me talking about what I’ve been thinking about.”
“You, me, and them?” Jay asked, checking to see if he had this right. This ‘possibility’.
“We can do it, Grady,” Jude said, nudging, assuring, playing the cheerleader, rah-rah-money-money-sis-boom-bah!
“We signed agreements,” Jay reminded him. And they had. Every junior broker had, promising to stay with Stanley & Mitchell for two years in exchange for the training they would receive. “We can’t just walk away.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because...”
And Jude knew what his friend wanted to say, not through any power similar to the bum’s. No, he just knew Jay. Knew the farmboy. “Loyalty?”
“They did hire us. They did give us jobs.”
“Fuck loyalty,” Jude countered. “Loyalty means shit in this relationship. Do you think Old Man Mitchell would think twice before laying our asses off if times went bad for his precious firm? Do you?”
Even drunk, Jay only had to think on that for a second. “I guess not.”
“I assure you he would not. This is a business, Grady, not a marriage.” Jude then rubbed his fingertips to his thumb. “Green—that’s what it’s about.” He took a long, long drink, draining his glass, and put his empty down hard on the table. “That’s what it’s all about.”
Nine
Hotshots
Jay wasn’t surprised when, after the close of trading on Monday, he was informed that Mitchell himself wanted to speak to him in his office at six. His streak had carried on through the week and, as it turned out, into the next, and Jude’s suggestion of striking it out on their own had slipped to a back mental burner over the weekend. Sure, it might be one of the possibilities the bum had urged him not to ignore, but this seemed a more likely scenario to latch onto. Because people in the office were talking. Talking him up. Making innocent little cracks about him having the Midas touch. Mumbles outside of the office were beginning as well, he’d heard. His newfound ability was getting him noticed, so why wouldn’t the old man want to take a gander at him, and put his old fat arm around him, and give him an ‘atta boy’ for the good work.
The old man, though, seemed to have a different take on the matter entirely.
“I don’t like hot shots,” was what Mitchell said once Jay was seated and facing his desk. The statement knocked the satisfied little grin from the young man’s face like an unexpected slap, which pleased Mitchell to no end. He nearly smiled himself, one of many things (walking without a cane, getting out of bed sans assistance, etcetera) he hadn’t done in years. In the end he simply shook his head at his very young, very naive employee and belched, the sound rolling from him like distant, surly thunder. “Like ‘em about as much as gas.”
“Sir, I don’t—”
“Of course you don’t,” Mitchell rasped, dragging a handkerchief the size of a small bath towel across his nose before plunging it back into some unseen pocket hidden by the desk and the ample breast of his jacket. “Young shits like you never do. Not these days, you don’t.” He looked past Jay, maybe past more than that, more than here and now, and said solemnly, “In the old days you would have understood.”
Mitchell was old Wall Street. His office was mahogany, the furniture stiff leather and straight backs, and a faint scent of old, aromatic cigar smoke floated about the space like an undertone of an age gone by. It might have been 1950 if one could not look out the long, floor to ceiling window that was mostly hidden behind thick, somber drapes, and see the Wall Street of the day.
And it was to this window that the Old Man, without warning, went, lifting his bulk from the wide chair behind the wide desk and coming around so that Jay
could see all of his girth. He was massive. Four hundred pounds easy, maybe five, though after a certain point Jay wondered if it was possible to judge one’s weight visually. When you were as obese as Horace J. Mitchell, how fat you were didn’t seem to matter any more. You were simply enormous, and grotesque, and the finest custom-tailored suit wouldn’t change that. The charcoal number he was wearing, cut like the age of the office with narrow lapels, high waist, and weak shoulders, draped him like the loose folds of some dead outer skin. He seemed not to wear it as much as it seemed to shroud him.
God, he was big. Jay watched him head for the window, stout cane in hand, the majority of his weight leading the way. His belly jutted forward like the blunted prow of some sleek submarine. So prominent was it that Jay was struck by a curious, disturbing thought. A sad thought: the old man hadn’t seen his dick in years. Maybe reflected in a mirror, but considering the sag in his gut even that was doubtful. Son of a bitch, Jay thought, feeling pity for the old bastard for the first and last time.
Once at the window Mitchell stood in silence and stared out, down at the darkening street and the insect-like throngs scurrying about.
Jay stood and turned to face his boss’s wide back.
“Hotshots don’t...” Mitchell didn’t finish the statement, not then. He retreated to silence once more as his head turned slowly right, eyes tracking up the Street. Looking toward Trinity Church, it seemed to Jay. It was as though he’d disconnected from the moment, from the exchange he had initiated, and drifted off as he gazed blankly at the church. But after a moment his lapse of connection ebbed, and he was back, and he hobbled his bulk around to face Jay in a motion reminiscent of a semi trying a three-point turn. “Expectations, you young fool.”
Jay’s brow folded down, puzzled. “Sir?”
Mitchell jabbed a stubby finger at Jay. “People think you’re a hotshot, they expect it. And when you’re no longer so hot...” He shook his bald and spotted head, jowls wagging. “Hotshots always disappoint, and I don’t like disappointing my clients. Consistency, young man. Good old, stable, ten or twelve percent a year. That is what keeps people happy. That...”
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