You are full of shit, Theo thought. Adam Smith was about making capital work for society, not the other way around. But it was pointless arguing with someone who was in love with the sound of his own voice.
“Wow. So you think supply-demand explains everything?” Maleficent snorted. “You know what? Half the world’s problems are caused by people like you who try and break down a vast, mysterious phenomenon into glib sound bites.”
“And the other half are caused by people like you who cling to outdated ideas,” Green Face shot back, determined to have the last word.
Theo pressed his fingers into his temples. The bickering was giving him a headache. He noticed Mathias had bailed from the group and he considered doing the same.
“Besides,” Green Face continued, “if Afterlife Dollars weren’t real, would big banks be investing in it?”
Theo gulped down his drink.
“What do you say, Grim Reaper?” Maleficent asked.
Theo blinked. “What?”
“Are Afterlife Dollars real?” Maleficent studied him with dark, probing eyes.
No, they aren’t. Banks are only investing in them to engineer a price rise.
That’s what he should’ve said. But he couldn’t, because he’d pushed these words so far down his throat that they were now entombed under the towering weight of lies and glib rationalizations.
“Excuse me.”
He hurried back to the kitchen. His hands shook as he filled his cup with more vodka and gulped it down.
Big banks wouldn’t be investing in Afterlife Dollars if it weren’t for real.
In all the time he’d been selling Afterlife Dollar investments to his clients, he hadn’t reckoned with this: the industry giving credence to a lie, helping it spread. Was that the reason for the nightmares and insomnia? Because some part of his subconscious knew this?
He downed another shot of vodka, then filled his cup. He staggered into the living room, drink in one hand, the other leaning on the scythe as if it were a walking stick. The room shimmered with fuzzy outlines and discordant voices. Someone called out his name from the blur. A familiar face stared through a veil: dark hair, high cheekbones, femme-fatale eyes. A bloodstained bridal dress draped her slender frame.
“Valerie.”
“I’d like you to meet Jan,” she said.
It was him. The gorilla from her Facebook photos. His thick arm was looped around her waist, the broad face lit by a smile, as if he could read Theo’s torment. Next moment, he rubbed it in by planting his lips on hers. She closed her eyes and welcomed his mouth.
Theo looked away, but the picture was already in his eyes and the mind was running with it, turning this snapshot into a short film. Jan’s big hands wandering all over a body that once slept next to Theo’s. Fingers slipping under the dress and a moment later, twirling a G-string. Then Valerie on all fours, back arched, dress hitched up over her waist as Jan fucked her.
Theo hurriedly finished his drink and went back to the kitchen.
11.
THEO OPENED HIS EYES TO YELLOW LIGHT, bright and beautiful, like daubs in a Van Gogh painting. It poured into the room in angled shafts, spreading in a pool along the white floorboards and climbing up the chest of drawers. And that could mean only one thing.
Sleep! At last! He bounced and sat up, but the joy was cut short by a blinding pain in his skull. He clutched his head and grimaced.
What happened last night?
He tried to remember, but all his memory offered was dismembered flashes: running into Mara, conversing with Mathias’s friends, bumping into Valerie and her new boyfriend. After that, a vast expanse of black.
So was that all it took to cure the insomnia? Getting plastered?
The phone rang on the bedside table. Theo answered.
“You’re alive!” Mathias exclaimed.
“Just about,” Theo croaked. “I don’t remember a thing.”
“I’m not surprised. You were on a mission. You were hilarious.”
“What do you mean, hilarious?”
“You were so messed up by Valerie, you went around asking chicks for a revenge fuck.”
“No!” Theo cringed.
“The funny thing is, it almost worked. You were making a pretty good pitch, but you were too sloppy to close the sale. Too drunk. Then after a while, you went dark. You went around telling everyone not to buy Afterlife Dollars. How it was total bullshit. You even had a go at one of my friends.”
“Which one?”
“Aaron. The guy with the green face. The two of you almost came to blows.”
Theo grimaced with embarrassment. “Shit. I’m sorry. Can you please say that to him? That I’m terribly sorry?”
“Don’t worry. The guy’s a dickhead. But at that point, I thought it might be a good idea to bring you home.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s the least I could do after all the entertainment you provided. By the way, what’s this Afterlife Dollars thing?”
“Some shit happening at work. I can’t bear to talk about it right now.”
“Fair enough. I’ll leave you to it. Happy hangover.”
After the call with Mathias, Theo put the phone away and berated himself. After nearly drowning at the Last School Day party seventeen years earlier, he’d resolved never to get blind drunk again. He made up for his lack of an off switch by devising various strategies to ensure moderation: one and one (one glass of water after every drink), tactical spew, setting alarms, ordering taxis in advance. By and large, these had served him well. Until Mathias’s party.
But that wasn’t just some mad drinking binge. It had occurred after weeks of insomnia, followed by a series of events: the encounter with Mara, the conversation with Mathias’s friends, the shock of seeing Valerie with the other man. Everything coming together to create a perfect storm. And let’s not forget the end result: sleep. For the first time in weeks.
He felt it coming on again, swaying down through the air in the room like a parachute bearing relief supplies. He slid down in the bed, eyelids growing heavy as his head struck the pillow, a smile spreading across his face as he drifted off. Beautiful sleep. Back again in less than twenty-four hours.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the recesses of his skull, he heard a voice:
Big banks wouldn’t be investing in Afterlife Dollars if it weren’t for real.
But he pushed the voice away. Because for now, the desire for sleep overpowered anything his conscience could throw at him.
WHEN HE OPENED his eyes, the room was cloaked in darkness. Outside the window, apartments were hunched in the Sunday gloom. People were finishing dinner, doing laundry or watching another mindless talent show. Theo sat up, disoriented with the jet lag of going to hell and back.
According to the clock’s milky digits, he’d slept for eight hours and fortyseven minutes. This on top of the previous night. The feast after a famine.
He sprang out of his bed, feeling half human for the first time in weeks. Downstairs, he frowned at the state of the kitchen: the precarious tower of dirty dishes in the sink, crumbs and stains on the steel countertop, condiments and sauce bottles littered everywhere, the oven clock still showing summer time. The very fact that these things were bothering him was another sign of returning normalcy.
He was about to embark on a cleaning mission when he noticed something unusual: his laptop on the dining table, a long cable snaking from its USB port to a video camera on the tripod.
The phone vibrated in his pocket. A text message from Mathias.
“Check Facebook.”
He went to the computer and hit the space bar to awaken it from sleep mode. A Facebook page emerged from the black of the screen saver. He gaped when he saw it.
“Theo van Aartsen posted a video. 1:07 a.m.”
He hit play, his heart convulsing with dread. A moment later, he was looking at himself in the Grim Reaper costume, standing in the same spot he was in now, his bla
ck shape contrasting with the white of the pantry door as he solemnly addressed the camera:
“Hey there. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the Grim Reaper, the harvester of souls. The last person you’ll see before you die. Not in this instance, of course. Because although I’m more a stay-in-the-shadows-and-sneak-up-behind-you than a post-a-video-on-Facebook type of guy, there’s something I need to get off my chest.
“Afterlife Dollars? Really? I thought you people were smarter than that.
“First of all, just so we’re all clear, there’s no such thing as an afterlife. No shopping malls, beach resorts, amusement parks or any of the other bullshit you see in those TV adverts. When I kiss you goodnight, that’s it.
“Second, to all those big banks investing in Afterlife Dollars and perpetuating this lie: if you’re going to make money fishing in my lake, then at least have the decency to cut me in. Let’s talk profit sharing from Afterlife Dollar investments. Because without me, this racket wouldn’t be possible. How about sixty? Too much? Okay, fifty? Forty?
“You know what? Forget it. Keep your stinking money. I’ve got no use for it. Just stay the hell out of my territory, okay?
“Get off my turf.”
Theo gasped when he saw the number beneath the video player. 1,217,836 views.
He stared, hand on mouth. How could he not remember any of this?
He exhaled through his nose. Then chortled, which soon progressed to loud laughter, echoing in the empty room. When things were bad, you cried. But when they were this fucked, you had to stand back and applaud the irony: all the things he’d been doing to muzzle his conscience, and this happened. There was something perversely funny about this denouement—being date-raped by your own conscience.
12.
ANOTHER GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP. EVEN BETTER than the one before. The kind of sleep you’d wake from to find you were missing a kidney. The result of going to bed not fearing the worst, because the worst had already happened. And that morning, Theo was luxuriating in the knowledge that for the first time in fourteen years, he didn’t need to be up at five a.m. to check the markets. No need to be at his desk for the seven a.m. meeting with the research team. And no Miguel.
He was a free man. Fucked maybe, but free.
The first thing he did after rising was hunt for his jogging clothes. They were in the closet, neatly folded, ready to taste sweat after a long time. He covered himself from head to toe, ensuring his pocket was stocked with tissues. Then he set off in the chilly morning air.
After finishing a lap in Vondelpark, where he inhaled razors with each breath, he crossed over to Grachtengordel. A city with gabled buildings and centuries of ghosts was waking up to another day. Cyclists with steaming breath pedaled doggedly into a wall of cold. Men in bright vests guided dumpsters into narrow lanes. The canals were quiet and still, yellow elm leaves floating like lily pads amidst the houseboats.
He cut a zigzag through the narrow, cobbled streets, admiring his surroundings as if he were seeing them for the first time. The fairy-tale buildings of Spiegelkwartier with blue-and-white Delftware vases in the windows. The spear-shaped buildings on Prinsengracht, leaning this way and that, crowned by an assortment of bell, neck and step gables: fashion statements of a golden age, each telling a story. Then the grand merchant houses of Herengracht, with large windows and history quietly subsumed in the masonry of greys, browns and reds.
There was nothing that screamed grandeur in the egalitarian skyline. No tall cathedrals, domineering castles or monuments that tried to impose an ideology or dogma. And that’s why he’d chosen to put down roots there after short stints in New York, London and Singapore. Because the city didn’t try to mold you, or suck you into a vortex of humanity and spit you out. It just let you be.
The bells of Noorderkerk signaled he was entering the gentrified streets of Jordaan. He counted eight rings. At this time, in a parallel universe, he’d be trapped in a meeting room that was either too hot or too cold. In that universe, the catheter plugged into his chest would slowly be draining his soul. The realization gave his faltering lungs a second wind, carrying him past the canal district to the wide streets of Haarlemmerbuurt.
Finally, he stopped at a pier and gasped loudly with his hands on his knees. His limbs ached with the pain of an out-of-shape body that had been pushed to its limit. But he was enjoying it like he’d enjoyed everything else the morning had bestowed upon him.
On the other side of the harbor, cranes swung amidst the box-shaped buildings of Amsterdam North, a city in the throes of growing pains. A blue-and-white ferry, bound for Centraal, threaded a straight line between the buoys.
Theo leaned toward the edge. The tea-colored water, sloshing at the barnacled piling, stirred something in the depths of his memory. The night he nearly drowned.
He recalled the rush of sobriety upon hitting the cold water. The panic when alcohol had erased memory of the front stroke. Limbs flailed wildly as he wrestled with a river that was a shape-shifting mass with strength and will.
He fought the blackness beneath his waist that was dragging him under, with every available ounce of strength. But muscles choking in carbon dioxide tired quickly.
Water gushed into his mouth and nose, filling his lungs. Feet turned to deadweights and he sank like a stone, panic gone, angst gone, mind blank yet lucid, completely at one with the river that was swallowing him. Black dissolved to white when he closed his eyes. Voices floated through his consciousness, wispy and familiar. He plunged through pleasant depths, fully aware that these hallucinations were machinations of an oxygen-starved temporal lobe, one last high before the big sleep. But the bliss of emptiness was so sublime, he wished he could’ve bottled it.
Surrender. What a beautiful feeling.
THE TOWERS OF World Trade Center Amsterdam blinked at each other in the afternoon sun. The steel-and-glass facade rose from the ground like a thirty-foot tidal wave, frozen in its apogee. Theo entered through the revolving doors, clad in a navy puffer jacket and jeans. It was the first time he’d arrived at these premises in anything other than a grey suit and tan brogues. There was a dress code for coming to work, but none for getting fired. As he walked down the corridor, one step behind his reflection on the polished floor, he felt a tingle of nerves for the first time in the day. That he was going to get fired was a forgone conclusion. The question was what kind of horrors the lawyers were going to visit upon him.
Inside the arcade, the Italian cafe was winding down after the lunchtime rush. The man in the dry-cleaning shop hunched over the counter, absorbed in a magazine.
The escalator delivered Theo to a skylit lobby adorned with artworks and trees in oversized pots. A security guard with a sharp buzz cut rose behind a granite desk. He motioned for Theo to stop, and blurted into his walkie-talkie. Theo glanced nervously at the ceiling, half expecting a SWAT team to rappel down and pin him to the floor.
A few moments later, another guard came to fetch him, a muscly Middle Eastern man with the humorless expression of an official at a border crossing. He escorted Theo through the gate to the bank of lifts.
The lift shot up like a rocket bound for the moon before decelerating to a swift halt. “Sixteenth floor,” crowed the speaker above the button panel. “Dead man walking” might have been more appropriate.
The door opened noiselessly, blowing a draft of toxic air into his face. The receptionist glanced up from her computer. He felt her eyes follow him as he entered the corridor behind her desk. Outside the boardroom, a group of people from Fixed Income stopped conversing and stared at him.
In some ways, he’d been dreading this more than facing Miguel, the judgement from colleagues, the bemused glances, the whispers of contempt behind his back. And yet right at that moment, as he walked through the office, he felt no desire to run away and hide in a hole. Quite the contrary—his mouth turned up with a benevolent smile as he peered into the calcified souls that filled the cubicles around him. They were trapped there in this
gilded prison. He no longer was.
Soon, they arrived at a large glass office in the northwest corner of the building. The woman guarding it had sharp bangs and all the friendliness of a door bitch. Go in, she gestured.
Theo steeled himself with a deep breath and pushed the door open. The room was bigger than it appeared from outside, a cavernous grey chamber washed by the low afternoon sun. A blood-red electric guitar autographed by Eddie van Halen hung on one wall, its polished pickup blinking at a gold-plated AK-47 on the opposite wall. The weapon allegedly belonged to a slain Mexican cartel boss, an odd choice of collectible when you considered Miguel’s father was murdered by drug lords. Then again, maybe not so odd.
The Colombian was seated behind a large, curving desk, attired in a crisp white shirt and a tie that set off his yellow eyes.
“Sit,” he ordered, eyes on the computer.
Theo lowered himself into the chair and studied the sparse desk: a table lamp, document trays, an old-fashioned pen stand angled precisely at forty-five degrees. A photograph of Miguel holding a shotgun across his chest, posing beside a dead lion.
A sour taste rose in Theo’s mouth. His gaze moved from the person in the photo to the one sitting across the desk. Miguel stopped typing and stared at Theo, steepling his hands under his chin.
“I thought you were going to play me a song,” Theo said. “Hit the Road Jack.”
Miguel sneered. “A bit gay.”
“You can’t say things like that in this day and age. It’s not appropriate.” Theo said, even though failure to adhere to political correctness was the least egregious of the Colombian’s sins.
“Never mind my homophobia. Let’s talk about you.” Miguel inhaled sharply and opened his drawer.
“You know, I had one of these made for you,” he said, holding a star between his thumb and index finger.
“What is it?”
“Ninja star. Even has your name on it. I was going to give it to you today.” The Colombian scowled and threw the personalized corporate trinket back in his drawer.
Dead Money Page 24