Kapitoil: A Novel

by Teddy Wayne

  I look to see if Dan responds to the fact that Jefferson called him an ethnic insult and also that he called himself black, but he merely smiles and remains on the couch.

  Then Jefferson powers on his DVD and television and inserts a movie and plays it mutely. It is in Japanese, and it is about another obsolete soldier in a dark blue uniform in an area of Japan he does not know who carries only a magical sword for protection.

  Jefferson retrieves a takeout menu from his small kitchen area and withdraws three Sapporo beers from his refrigerator. He drops the menu on his coffee table, next to four separate stacks of The New Yorker and The Economist and Architectural Digest and Gourmet magazines.

  “I’m gonna shit-shower-shave,” he says before he exits the room. “Order the sushi boat for three, some Asahis, and get the sea urchin with quail eggs. Say it’s for me, and they’ll add this goma-shio sesame salt that doesn’t condescend to gaijin palates.”

  I do not understand why he orders additional beer if we have more Sapporo here, but I remain mute and watch as the Japanese soldier travels independently on a country road through a snowstorm and fights a team of men who launch a surprise attack.

  After Dan orders, he asks how I like my job. I do not want to indicate that I am soon advancing, so I say, “It is enjoyable.”

  He laughs. “Very diplomatic. You can admit it’s beneath you—I won’t rat you out.”

  I get up and examine the sword so he reroutes the conversation. “I wouldn’t touch that,” Dan says. “It’s from the 18th century, and Jefferson has an aneurysm if anyone breathes on it.” He puts his fingers over the buttons on the remote control without pressing any of them. “He can be kind of a cocksucker sometimes.”

  When the Japanese deliveryman with an earring in his left ear arrives, Dan and Jefferson do not let me pay for the food. I eat the sushi that is vegetarian, and it is flavorful, but too expensive if it’s mostly rice. I also drink three beers total and Dan and Jefferson drink more as we watch the movie. We leave before we can finish it, which disappoints me, because the soldier’s enemy has just stolen the magical sword from him and I am curious to see if he can recover it.

  When I stand up my head feels filled with helium. Possibly it is because I just watched the Japanese soldier, but I also feel that I could defend myself against a team of attackers, and although of course I do not say it, that I am the cream of the cream programmer at Schrub and have won Mr. Schrub’s confidence after just three weeks.

  We taxi again, even though the address is on 20th St. and 5th Ave. and the subway is probably faster. “You’re our guest, Karim. You should never have to touch your wallet,” Jefferson says when I try to pay. “It’s the Japanese way.” He asks for a receipt and winks at me. “Besides, we’ll expense it.”

  We walk to a cathedral on the corner of the street, and when we turn the corner, many young people are on line behind a velvet rope to enter it. My clothing is not as sexy as anyone else’s and they will see that I do not belong here, and my body vibrates even though it is not very cold, but I am glad I am with Dan and especially Jefferson, who does look like he belongs, even though he is the shortest man on line. He bypasses the line and talks to the guard at the front, who is a very large black man in a green coat that looks like it is inflated with air, and points on a piece of paper the guard holds. In a minute he waves for us to join him.

  Jefferson leads us inside the tall wood doors. It is a true former cathedral. I cannot see well and it is warm and smells like alcohol blended with perspiration and I do not know what song is playing, but it has a robust drumbeat that pains my ears. Next to the stained glass windows are paintings of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and attached to the wall in the back of the dance floor is a ten-foot cross with toggling lightbulbs around its edges.

  Jefferson finds another man he knows approximately our age with blond hair spiked like an electrocardiogram. They both put out their right hands in a class of handshake and they touch the other person’s back with their left hands as if they are hugging slightly.

  The man extends his hand to me like he did with Jefferson, and I do the same handshake/hug. “I am Karim,” I say. “Glad to meet you.”

  “Andy Tweedy,” he says, although he is already looking at Jefferson. “What are you guys drinking?”

  Jefferson says, “Screwdrivers.”

  Andy stops a waitress who wears a minimal skirt in a green and red pattern with long socks that reveal her upper legs and a white shirt with a collar that reveals her stomach. “Set them up with a VIP table and bottles for ‘Nailed to the Cross,’” he says.

  The waitress leads us through the main floor, which has bright blue lights and some people dancing, although not many yet. We ascend some steps, and many people observe us as we elevate above them. A muscular white guard in a priest’s costume detaches another rope for us. I have never accessed a highly privileged place like this before, and now I am vibrating not because I am nervous but because I am so stimulated.

  On the second floor she takes us to a small table that overviews the dance floor and has a cushioned red bench around it. Most of the other tables on this small second floor are also occupied, usually with several men and sometimes a few females also with the men.

  Before the waitress leaves she smiles at Jefferson, because he is the most handsome of us and looks like the chief member of our cluster, except that his ears angle out like satellites. We sit down, and Dan rests his legs on the barrier over the dance floor. “Congrats, Karim. You’re a Very Important Person now,” Dan says.

  And I do feel VI.

  Jefferson stands up and scans the floor. “I fucking detest this place,” he says. “Up to our ears in Maries and Joeys fresh off the LIRR.”

  The waitress returns with a tray that has one bottle of vodka inside a bucket of ice, a bottle of orange juice, and three glasses. She angles over to pour the vodka in our glasses and displays her breasts, which are very tan and three-dimensional in a way I have seen exclusively on television or in pictures.

  Jefferson asks her for extra glasses, and after she leaves Dan mixes us drinks and says, “She can get it, Smithy. You’re a machine.”

  “Not my type. You can take her.”

  “Out of my league.”

  “Don’t talk that way, sweetheart. She’s just pumped full of silicone and teeth whitener. And that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Look at me. I’m a goddamn dwarf. But at the end of the day, it’s all about confidence. People are waiting for someone else to lead them.” Jefferson is also more confident in the office, and he makes a better impression on coworkers than Dan does, who often avoids looking people in the eye and shakes hands weakly and speaks quietly to anyone outside of our pod. “And so what if she rejects you? If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” He looks closely at Dan and decelerates his words and points his index finger on each syllable. “If you believe it, you can achieve it. Put that on your wall in the fucking pod.”

  He raises his glass and says, “To Dan the ladies’ man,” and Dan says, “Don’t mock me, I’m not in the mood,” and Jefferson says, “I’m not mocking you. Women have wet dreams about rich guys your height,” and then we all crash our glasses and drink, and Jefferson and Dan guzzle theirs rapidly, so I guzzle mine, and then Jefferson kisses Dan on the cheek and calls him a “handsome bastard.” The drink is robust and difficult to swallow, but when I finish it Dan mixes me another one, which is easier to consume, and I again have a mental image of myself as the Japanese soldier.

  They observe the dance floor and assign ratings to different females from 1 to 10. They say an overweight female is “the worst” and is “four 40s deep,” and rate her a 1, which means 1–10 is a poor scale, because it assigns a point even when someone is “the worst” and there exists only a 9-point total range.

  A friend joins the overweight female, and she is additionally overweight, and Dan says she’s “even nastier” and also assigns her a 1, even though if she is in fact
inferior, then she should receive less than 1 (or the first female’s rating should retroactively rise slightly). This is why the Y2K bug is happening: Humans usually do not anticipate what comes next after what initially seems to be the limit, so they programmed their computers to function up to the year 1999 and not 2000. Even Jefferson and Dan, who are resolving this problem nonstop, did not consider the maximum-limit issue in this context. But possibly it is because they have been drinking alcohol, and also they are not the most considerate people.

  Then Jefferson stands at the railing and points to an Asian female on the floor he has just rated a 9.3. She looks and he holds up the vodka bottle. She shakes her head, but he takes the bottle downstairs with him and refills her glass and the glasses of her two friends who are also Asian. After they talk for a few minutes he leads them upstairs. He introduces them to Dan, who he says is a vice president at Schrub. He puts his arm around me. “And this is Karim. He’s from an oil family in Qatar, and is here on vacation.”

  The female sitting next to me is named Angela Park. Her arms are thin and elongated like pencils and she wears purple makeup above her eyes. She says she is in public relations for a fashion company. “It must be great not to have to work for a living,” she says.

  I wish Jefferson did not say this, because now I have to maintain the lie, which I only do because not lying would damage his reputation. “It is relaxing,” I say.

  Angela receives a call on her cellular, and I whisper to Jefferson, “Why did you say I am from an oil family?”

  “Play along. This is a golden opportunity,” he whispers. He adds, “Besides, truth is relative.”

  Angela ends her telephone call and asks me questions about my family. I provide the basic details, such as the names of my father and sister and uncle, but when she asks what they do, I say, “If I told you I would have to kill you,” which I heard on a comedy television show the previous night, even though I didn’t find the threat of murder amusing, but the audience did.

  She laughs and places her hand on my leg. I feel myself rising.

  “It’s strange how you’re from Qatar, and my family’s originally from Korea, and now we’re meeting in New York,” she says. “That’s so random.”

  “Americans frequently misuse the word ‘random,’” I say. “Merely because an incident is unlikely does not mean it is random. I believe that if we were able to analyze every variable of the current situation, which is of course impossible, we could determine that our meeting was in fact predetermined. Therefore, when people say something is ‘so random,’ they should truly say that it is ‘so destined.’”

  She smiles but does not respond to my observation. Instead, she says, “I feel badly that we’re not talking to the others.”

  “Is your tactile sense operating inefficiently?”

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “You used the adverbial form of ‘I feel bad’ to express a negative emotion and said ‘I feel badly,’ which means your sense of touch is performing poorly.”

  Again she smiles and says nothing. I certify that that is the last time I will note anything about usage or grammar to an American.

  Jefferson is kissing his female and Dan is whispering in the ear of his female. So I whisper in Angela’s ear, “I am not used to being around someone as beautiful as you.”

  “Really?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “If someone told me a week ago that I would be sitting with someone like you at a place like this, I would not have believed them.”

  Angela smiles and removes her hand from my leg. “You’re sweet,” she says, and she looks at her friends. “I have to go to the ladies’ room.” She leaves the VIP area and goes downstairs, and I wait for her to return. Dan is still talking to his female, and although she does not appear as interested in him as Jefferson’s female is in Jefferson, I look straight ahead so that I am not infringing upon their privacy.

  In ten minutes she has still not returned, and then Dan’s female receives a call on her cellular, and she taps her other friend and says something to her that I cannot hear, and then they stand up with Dan and Jefferson and go downstairs. They all dance together very closely, and Angela joins them and dances with them as well, and although I am of course not very invested in Angela, I still feel foolish for what I told her and my chest feels like someone has punched me in it and left his fist there.

  I want to leave, but someone has to protect the vodka and orange juice, as there is still approximately 25% of it left, so I wait another 15 minutes at the table. When another song begins and they still do not return, I go downstairs.

  I do not have Jefferson’s or Dan’s telephone numbers, but I do not want to disturb them now, and I especially do not want Angela to see me again, so I escape through the dance floor, which is highly bottlenecked and difficult to divide, and exit past the guard outside and the people on line, which is now quadruple the original length, and walk to the N train and wait a long time for it, then take it home, and pray and record my journal until I feel normal again, and before I finish, without attempting, I load an image in my brain of Rebecca, who is probably sleeping right now.

  1,000-mile view = future outlook

  at the end of the day = in conclusion

  aneurysm = expansion of a blood vessel that often results in sudden death

  big hit = major loss/major success (in baseball as well)

  come with = come with (but the object of the preposition is not necessary)

  don’t sweat it = be careless about a problem

  gaijin = Japanese term for non-Japanese person

  golden opportunity = opportunity with great profit potential, monetary or nonmonetary

  have a blast = enjoy yourself

  hum = function well

  level with = be transparent with

  lion’s share = majority

  LIRR = Long Island Rail Road

  Maries and Joeys = nicknames for the class of people who take the LIRR

  out of one’s league = a romantic higher-up

  plough money = invest money

  rat out = reveal highly privileged information

  she can get it = a female has romantic interest in you

  shit-shower-shave = consecutive actions a man performs before a nightclub

  VIP = Very Important Person

  JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: OCTOBER 26

  I wake up exhausted and spend more time in the shower than normal, and I arrive at work a few minutes late when everyone else is present. When I enter the pod and sit down, Dan says, “What’s up, player?” and extends his fist horizontally to me without looking, as he often does with Jefferson.

  “Good morning,” I say, and I roll my chair forward to him and contact our fists and then roll backward to my desk, except one wheel is misaligned and I have to pause and readjust before resuming.

  Kapitoil performs well and we slowly increase our investments, although we are careful not to create market fluctuations. At noon I receive an email:

  Mr. Issar,

  This is the secretary for Derek Schrub. Mr. Schrub would like to know if you are free to play racquetball at 3 p.m. today (he has already spoken to George Ray). Clothing and equipment will be provided.

  I try to contain my stimulation in front of my podmates by clapping my hands together softly under the desk, as this presents a golden opportunity to become acquainted with Mr. Schrub. In addition, now I know why Mr. Schrub smiled at the racquetball analog.

  When I am ready to leave, I put Kapitoil on automatic trades and pick up my briefcase. “Where are you going?” Dan asks.

  “I am meeting with another Schrub team member,” I say, which is true. “I want to discuss the Doha operations and the cost-cutting measures my supervisor there, Mr. Sayed, took. E.g., we saved 7% in telephone costs by metering employees’ personal calls, and 12% in productivity costs by blocking various email websites. Mr. Sayed, whose first name is Sadik, which means ‘full of truth’—”

  Dan pl
ugs in his earphones.

  I take the subway uptown to 59th St. and walk east along the border of Central Park to his apartment. There is a doorman outside who is white and has whiter hair. I tell him I am there to see Mr. Schrub. “I work at Schrub Equities,” I say, which is now strange to say because I am saying it at Mr. Schrub’s residence and not his business.

  “ID,” the doorman says, with an accent that I believe is Irish. He looks at my Schrub ID, calls on a telephone inside, and directs me to take the elevator up to the athletic complex on floor 13.

  Instead of wood and brass and gold like inside my lobby, this one does not appear as quality, which initially surprises me. There is white marble with pink veins like the sky at sunset, and the walls and ceilings have frames of regular plaster. The classier buildings do not have to attempt so hard to look classy, just as Mr. Schrub does not have to shake hands with too much force.

  I receive clothing and equipment from the reception desk and change, then go to the court and wait several minutes, but Mr. Schrub does not appear. I am glad I am about to play racquetball so I have an excuse for perspiring. To reroute my brain I challenge myself with a problem: How many racquetballs can fit inside a racquetball court?

  1. The court is 20 feet wide and 20 feet high and 40 feet long, so there are 16,000 cubic feet of space for the ball to pass through. In inches, this is (16,000)(123).

  A. I estimate the diameter of a racquetball ball is approximately 2.5 inches. If I create a box that fits 2 balls by 2 balls by 2 balls for 8 balls total, then the box is 5 inches in each direction, or 53 = 125 cubic inches.