The Road Narrows As You Go

by Lee Henderson

  I’m a cartoonist, not an informant.

  I know why you won’t turn. You’re laundering money for him, aren’t you? We’ve seen bank records. Listen, come clean. Help us nab Frank and we can help you.

  I don’t know one smidgen about Wall Street, or Law Avenue for that matter. Alls I know’s doodles. Doodles Road. That’s where I belong. I’m going to find a way to make a gag out of all this, and you.

  Yet another beautiful man interrupted them. This one’s hazelnut skin was covered in a satin sheen of perspiration, and he wore only a muscleshirt and jeans under his dirty white apron. Are you Wendy Ashbubble, by any chance?

  She touched her turban. Why yes, yes, I am, she said generously. What can I draw for you? Buck or Murphy? You remind me of Buck.

  Your takeout is ready, he said.

  Help us … Quiltain took the cuff of her jacket in his fist. Help us indict Frank Fleecen.

  She must have given them her name. Beet red, she took the bag from the dishwasher and told the waitress to put the whole thing on Chris, then pulled out of his grip and ran out into the street.

  Make sure nobody tails us, she told the taxi driver. When she checked the traffic behind them, his face was right up against the window. Heart beating wildly, she was losing her mind, overwhelmed by the smell of cranberry sauce and gravy on her sandwiches wafting up from inside the warm paper bag on her lap.

  We had this idea for the opening shot of her Christmas animation. She was breathing heavily into the phone as she listened to us update her, her way of soothing her nerves after the latest encounter with the SEC agent. The idea we pitched her required we paint a panoramic background of the entire vacant lot where her characters lived and parts of the neighbourhood surrounding it, big enough to zoom in and out of without requiring a cut, and we would use the existing character animation over top of this new celluloid. The thing about animation is that every frame is an edit, so the trick is to make it look continuous. Our solution was to source a massive sheet of celluloid the size of the living room so the rostrum camera could sweep its way over the world of the characters in a kind of rolling dolly shot that zooms in to the character’s level and zooms out again to a bird’s-eye for full effect. We compared it to the effect of those long, unedited shots in Coppola’s and Altman’s films, and Orson Welles before them.

  Timeout, Twyla. Did you say for the opening scene? Holy crackers, get Rachael on the line … Rachael, what in blazes is going on? Twyla gave me palpitations just now. My brains are quivering like jelly. I leave for two days and you all want to scrap the beginning and start all over? For a fancier background? We’re halfway there. Thirteen minutes. More than halfway. No time to turn back.

  Wendy was calling us from a payphone next to the elevators in the bustling marble lobby of Hexen Diamond Mistral’s office on Wall Street. In a minute she would go up and see Frank, taking a surprise bag of seasonal takeout to share. The sauces were beginning to drip through the bottom of the paper bag.

  Delicately, we went over the rationale for this ambitious new idea. The complexity would reveal itself in the final angle as the camera swoops up to follow Nicki the funky parrot over the vacant lot to see the world from a bird’s-eye view, this painted landscape twisting and turning—the magic trick would click for audiences. Yes, challenges lay ahead. But the disorientation of the idea was the perfect way to set the mood for the rest of a story full of reversals. If we worked hard we would be done the painting by the time she got home—a lie we firmly believed. All we would need to do after that was reshoot the footage.

  How is Biz? she said, changing the subject.

  Once this week we slept through the night, and at breakfast we all realized it was because Biz had not woken us up screaming. She still slept in Wendy’s room, but had started going upstairs to her own suite to make headdresses for her upcoming drag show, a loose adaptation of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell.

  Biz is a New Orleans of one, Wendy said. Look, I gotta run, my sandwiches just spilled all over the marble floor.

  Wendy heard the four o’clock bell ring on Wall Street and was taken back body and soul to elementary school. Amid the curses and howls and demands and pleas of the brokers and salesmen on the office floor, a sudden and total silence preceded the bell, as all the brokers’ phones stopped ringing, and all the shouting matches paused, and at precisely four in the afternoon, a five-second fire alarm trilled through every room, cubicle, and hallway on each of Hexen Diamond Mistral’s seven leased floors at the top of the Masonic Bankers Trust Company Building. The entire office of Hexen Diamond Mistral blew up into celebrations. Paper flew into the air as if typewriters had exploded. Whooping men celebrated their earnings, twisting and turning their secretaries in the air screaming, Payload! Spazzes. Some fellow at the far end of a row of cubicles in a blue shirt with a white collar and suspenders pushed his chair out from his desk, pulled off his tie, and started to run towards them down the aisle, screaming Hexen was up twelve—four points over the market. I’m a millionaire, he gagged and, after turning a lemony green, fainted straight off his feet. Five minutes later, as the festivities dissipated and the eye of the party’s storm passed over the group, Frank whispered to Wendy, I wish I could kiss you.

  Go for it, coward.

  But at that moment Frank’s cellphone began to chirp and he said, Hell—hello? Not now. And simultaneously businessmen of all stripes started to crowd around them and, buzzing with the queasy adrenaline of newfound riches, congratulated and thanked Frank and paid homage to the man with the Midas touch. Then another round of mentally deranged screams and howls interrupted them further when the Barrie-Teynte Index was announced. Bankers, cellphones, real phones, computers, and all the men started howling and barking again.

  Arf arf! said Wendy. Aroo! Aroo!

  Okay okay, I get the picture, Frank said. You think we’re all greedy shitbags.

  Aren’t you going to answer your phone?

  He answered the phone again. No, not now. Call me back tomorrow. He said to Wendy, See? You’re my focus. Now let me introduce you to some of my favourites among this crew of some two thousand pirates who made this one of the biggest days in Hexen’s history and the biggest score of my career.

  Frank studied a subordinate’s computer screen. He said, According to the Barrie-Teynte Index, the high-yield bond market closed at a record high volume today.

  Point five one, Frank told her, as if these numbers were the pride of a father. All thanks to the hurricane of my deal with Shepherd Media hitting ground on the market this afternoon.

  Frank told the story of how a hundred years earlier, Hexen, Diamond, and Mistral were just three banking men with a polio-riddled scrivener in a single office on the ground floor of 14 Wall Street, investing and hypothecating money. But slowly, year by year, bond sale after bond sale, trade after trade, the bankers moved up from the literal ground floor until, a century later, here they were: Hexen Diamond Mistral leased the entire top seven floors of the Bankers Trust Building and employed over two thousand people. The Dow Jones, Frank told her, was at a hundred and five when the Bankers Trust was constructed, and now we’re surrounded by skyscrapers to scale with today’s Dow at twelve hundred. In effect, Hexen paid up front for these skyscrapers to be built, as the tallest of them were built on the largest loans. Right here. Right here in this office tower, the American boom was born. There’s more money being made here, bought here, sold here, and cashed in here than anywhere else in the world. All the casinos in Vegas combined make a tenth of what’s earned in this office. Whoever makes the market on Wall Street controls America’s free market.

  You haven’t said if you like my turban. Wendy cocked her head.

  You look beautiful, you do. I’ve never seen you in such an exotic outfit. You’re sexy in that turban.

  You like it? She tipped her hips and touched the weave on her head.

  It suits you. You’re not interested in my story, are you?

  Of course I love your origins, F
rank. Your world tour and story. That’s why I wore this. To turban you on.

  You do. You do, Frank said.

  Who doesn’t heart New York? she smiled and clicked her heels. She gave his arm a squeeze. I’m wanting less bonds and more sex.

  He covered his heart with his hand and pinched his knees together. You just made me go hard.

  I thought money made you hard.

  This, right here where you are standing, Wendy, is the centre of the free market. Don’t you think that’s sexy?

  Yeah, but can a free market have a centre?

  And instead of pushing her towards some quiet place behind a Xerox machine or into an empty cubicle so he could ravish her top to bottom, Frank dutifully introduced her to this fatted, stained-tie-wearing inscrutable bonds salesman and that ulcerous, squawking belligerent cyclops, the day trader. This cursing yammering young portfolio manager, that hammer-fisted derivatives analyst concussing his own forehead over a bad play on a brokerage. Frank said, Don’t worry, Karl, I’ll cover you. Put a reassuring hand on the middleman’s shoulder-padded suit and then moved Wendy along to another junk associate sucking on the tip of his tie. How are you, Rice? Frank waved a hand and the man shrunk away as though Frank was about to slap him.

  Frank’s a sheer genius, the men all agreed as they snapped their suspenders and scratched at the telephone sores on their chins.

  It’s gold at the price of graphite, another man told Wendy of the bonds business.

  A thousand and one men in the choir: Frank is a financial genius. A genius. A genius. A radical. Rearranging the particles of American finance.

  I’m serious, said an old hypothecator.

  Ursurious? I’m serious! said Wendy, and it took the traders a moment to laugh. I just learned that word the other day.

  Fenton and Outcault, two master gurus of the old school, Frank said.

  Outcault was black. Fenton was pale green.

  These shitbags can sell an icecube to an Eskimo, Frank obsequied, sell sand to a camel.

  Frank’s the shitbag who can sweet-talk a songbird into flying straight down his throat, said Fenton or Outcault.

  Shitbag? said Wendy.

  Frank shrugged and said shitbag was a cultural thing, term of endearment in the offices on Wall Street.

  That is us, two sclerotic old shitbag hypothecators, said Fenton, pushing back his chair and bowing from that seated position. He was the latter-cubicled of the gentlemen, and he pointed to Wendy with an orange finger covered in Cheetos dust, then waved her off just as soon as she approached him. Debt-nabbit, he said and squinted his glasses up the bridge of his nose, is this really the cartoonist we sell so much of? Well! Pardon my French, well. Be still, my bleeding pacemaker. You’re the girl? Never remember to look at the section with the comics, sorry. Can’t keep track of which one’s Mutt and which one’s Jeff.

  Okay, now let me ask you a question, Wendy said to the two gentlemen. You both strike me like good-natured, well-raised, and intelligent men with loads of success and experience under your belts.

  If by success and experience you mean bankruptcies and near suicides, then, yes.

  So what makes Frank here so different from you two? I know he’s super. But tell me why he gets all the attention.

  Outcault said, You don’t go around wondering why you aren’t Frank. You go around praying he’s on your side. Having Frank in the office is like being in possession of a dragon.

  Fenton said, But listen, here’s an example of Frank’s work ethic. A lot of financing is billable by the hour, okay. So the more hours of work, the more you bill, the more money you pump from the client. Around here we’re always competing to see who’s racked up the most billable hours in a week, a month, a year. The more the better, right, okay. So Frank here, he is the man. Soon as he gets his hands on some client accounts, his hours are absurd. He’s the Neil Armstrong of billable hours. Billing an average of ninety hours a week. Average. Frank always billed more hours to his clients than anyone in the office. Anyone. And it was no bullshit. He was here before anyone and he left after everyone. He had three shifts of secretaries—like doctor’s interns—to keep up with his hours. So one day he billed a client thirty-seven hours in a twenty-four-hour day because he worked without a break through multiple time zones en route from a client’s many homes and offices. Thirty-seven hours in a twenty-four-hour day. No one had ever billed thirty-seven hours in a twenty-four-hour day. No one had ever even thought of that, let alone had the bullballs to pull that.

  Moving on from memory lane, said Frank. Enough flattery. And all this from the first man in the firm to crack a million in sales in a single day.

  In eighteen ninety! Fenton said with a dismissive wave of his hand. In more recent times, I was the one that made us all a fortune holding on to all those oil stocks through the seventies.

  Oh, wait, before you go, said one of these two. He picked up a contract from his desk and handed it to her. Miss Wendy, could you sign on this dotted line here and save me UPSing it all the way to Frisco and having you UPS it all the way back.

  Wendy made a show as she adjusted her glasses to read the fine print. Okay, says here this is for Lupercal Incorporated and subsidiaries. Seven, eight, twelve, twenty-seven pages, gee-golly, Wendy said and shot Frank a glance. Should I read through this? I mean—can’t just sign. What’s this contract for?

  Another bona fide deal with our lucrative friends over at the everexpanding empire of Lupercal Incorporated, said the old man. This is another Central American one—says you agree to let Lupercal’s brandspanking-new factories in Colón, Panama—all set to flip the switch and start making all your future beach toys, keychains, wallets, hairbrushes, lunchpails, and—list goes on and on …

  So she did sign.

  I know kids high-five these days, said Fenton, but I’ve got osteoporosis in my hand.

  Now with that all taken care of, said Frank in a singsong voice that placated the two wizened hypothecators, shall we move on from the ol’ fogeys?

  Seems like the more contracts I get the less work I need to do, she said.

  There’s always more work, said Frank. My father said, If work doesn’t pile up on your to-do list then you obviously aren’t working hard enough.

  The cellular phone hanging from Frank’s hip rang once, and he pressed a button and said, I’m not going to answer that.

  Not? What’s the point of a cellular phone you never answer?

  You’re here. I never answer a chirp when you’re with me.

  Then put down the walkie-talkie, why don’t you? Toss the brick.

  A pinstripe-suited man with a broken nose and long sideburns, constantly laughing and nodding as he cupped one chin over the receiver of his phone as he shook Wendy’s hand. Men with skin like boiled lobster shell and a vascular approach to conversation that depended more on hand signals than a high vocabulary. Side bets, poker games, day trades, bond sales, calling each other shitbags, never walking or leaving one’s desk except to piss, shit, windmilling their arms around like drowning men trying to save themselves from death with a telephone cord and a Rolodex, the habits of sorely neglected children, gambling circles formed as soon as the market closed, impromptu, around a deck of cards or handful of dice. A bonds executive who introduced himself as Glassman and wouldn’t let her hand free of his two-clammy-fisted shake greeting her.

  Is this the Replicant body I keep hearing about in magazines? Did I say that out loud? laughed Glassman. And the turban, nice touch. Gee, I hope I’m not embarrassing you.

  Wendy sucked in a breath of Ruthvah.

  We must be going, Glassman, but we’ll catch up later, said Frank and ushered Wendy into another whole wing of desks starting behind a glass wall.

  That guy is a tit-talker, she told Frank.

  A what? Glassman? He’s a top seller. Probably earns half a million a year.

  Yeah? He told me I had a Bally’s body. Are you jealous?

  As soon as I find out what that means I’m goi
ng to knock the stripes off his shirt, said Frank and mashed a fist into his palm. Want me to fire him?

  Forget Glassman. Forget them all. Let’s ditch this male chauvinist palace for somewhere more horizontal, where things are more equal between the sexes. My hands all over your naked body. I’ll give you head and vice versa.

  Can’t now, no, god, no time for— Don’t torture me, said Frank, motioning for the wristwatch on the end of her slender arm. Time’s a-ticking. This is a big celebration for us. We’re making history today, Piper and Hexen and me and you.

  She was affronted by Frank’s rectitude, but let herself be led towards an onslaught of silver- and gold-pinstripe suits with astronautical shoulder pads, and the swearing, sweating men who wore them.

  All these highstrung Manhattan businessmen chewing on their tongues and cuticles as Frank flirted with the idea of learning a few of the names of these minions, for the sake of illustration, as he toured Wendy through his vast empire. Suits in metallic colours, as if sewn with aluminum thread. Every fashionable shoulder pad on the market and ample widths of the wing-tipped yoke on the blazers. Invisible clouds of Ruthvah. They applauded the dealmaker, the rainmaker, paid homage to the grand wizard from the West Coast in the room. Frank. Men sold bonds for a scrap metal consortium because of Frank, men bought and sold bonds for a maker of vitamin C, sold plastic, sold hotels, sold milk, sold salt, sold sugar, sold maple syrup reserves, men in blue shirts with white collars and skinny ties, red pinstripes and white suspenders like clowns screaming millions and millions! to whoever was on the other end of the phone, phones galore, ringing, pulsing, thrumming, flashing, men hustling potato chips on the market, Strays merchandise, pork, mortgages—all the shitbags of capitalism, stock traders, bond salesmen, underwriters, clerks, and secretaries—all because of Frank. The market was closed but the workday was far from over. Computer screens and reams of paper and cursing shitbags was all she could see. A rack of telephones flashed like flight simulators on every desk with multiple conversations going as multiple others waited on hold as the men fingerpunched more people for two-way, three-way, seven-way, nine-way conference calls. Hands-free headsets. The men dialed numbers they ferreted out of the plumage of giant Rolodexes that perched like birds on every man’s desk. Rolodexes with the business cards of owls, vultures, hawks, eagles, Wall Street’s predators and carrion hunters. Grey massage balls in the men’s hands squeezed into merciless oblivion only to bounce back to original shape. Sell. Buy. Warner Brothers. Lupercal. LBO. IPO. TKO. Her mind kept flashing to the criminal conspiracies Chris Quiltain planted in her imagination. Chris’s voice in Chambers restaurant: Help us … help us indict Frank Fleecen.