Suddenly a young man, far too young for the role, arrived in the waiting area. A slight, bespectacled, pale, nerdy-looking type quietly put forth his small, clammy palm, and shook hands with both men before leading them to an elevator. He inserted a key that brought them up to an unmarked floor, to what was known quite simply as the “Operations Room,” a huge space that resembled a trading floor. It was an unexpected scene. There were no traders on the floor, no hustle and bustle, no hand signals, and almost no sound, except for the clicking of keyboards. This wasn’t the riotous zoo that Ted and Steve knew well from their work; this was simply a huge room filled with hoards of informally dressed traders manning computer screens.
“Pretty casual, huh?” asked their guide.
“Casual, indeed!” replied Ted. “A lot quieter than my office.”
“That’s what everyone says. By the way, I’m Mike.”
“Hey, Mike,” continued Ted. “Do you get lots of visitors?”
Mike, wiser apparently beyond his years, didn’t reply. “The real action is in the conference rooms. I’ve heard yelling from inside them on more than one occasion.” Mike paused for a moment, and then looked into Ted’s eyes as they walked towards one of the conference rooms. “And crying.”
“That’s reassuring!”
Just as Ted uttered those words, there emerged a large, puffy, pink-faced man with a Yasser Arafat-style beard. His round, red face bore patches of uneven bristles that looked to have been trimmed with some version of a weed-eater. Mike didn’t stay for the introductions, but instead just faded away into the endless expanses around them.
“Steven Fraser,” said the monument of a man who usurped this young assistant. “You must be Ted.”
Steven Fraser shook Ted’s hand with his plump paw and a firm grip, and then turned to Steve.
“Steve? Steven.” Steve looked at him as though he were meeting his adversary for the semi-final match at Wimbledon. As though in search of a warmer connection, Steven Fraser held onto Steve’s hand and repeated himself. “Good afternoon, Steve, Steven Fraser.”
Steve’s eyes narrowed further, and he nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Steven Fraser indicated the way into the room, and then led them, with a dexterous wobble of his huge stomach, as though he was working to avoid scraping the doorframe.
Before them lay one of the principle control rooms that hovered at the very epicenter of the contemporary, material world. It was appropriately business-like, cold, and, amazingly, empty. Ted and Steve had imagined various scenarios for this meeting, including discussions with the president himself, surrounded by a host of advisors. In none of these scenarios were they alone with a six-foot-five, obese, somewhat-bearded man inside of a conference room, on a floor of a building occupied solely by young people staring intently into cyberspace while dexterously playing on their keyboards, like so many travel agents inside of an airport.
“Let’s get down to business, shall we?” Fraser folded his hands in front of him on the desk and looked at the two men.
Steve looked over at Ted, who was staring intently forward, looking increasingly ominous. “Was this the guy?” His eyes seemed to inquire.
The play in this room was obvious. They needed to assess if Steven Fraser would, or even could, send the right message to the head of the treasury and the feds. On the trading floor they now occupied, the US government purchased thirty to forty billion dollars of long-term US government bonds, and another twenty to thirty billion dollars of mortgage-backed securities every single month, for a total of around six hundred billion dollars per year. Even the slightest shift in spending, enacted as White House policy, could redirect resources in ways that could change outcomes in markets around the world.
In fact, the effects of actions taken in this room affected the value of the dollar, the rise and fall of interest rates, the amount of subsidies paid to bank and other private institutions, and, by extension, the movement of the entire stock market. Any shift in their actions were recognized, felt, and acted upon, in regards to US government assets totaling more than five trillion dollars. The amount is so staggering relative to the overall world economy that the last time the head of the treasury department had whispered, possibly to test the waters, that they would need to wind down this stimulus program in order to return the treasury to its traditional role, the stock market had dropped 550 points in thirty-six minutes.
“I’m really sorry about your friend.” Steven Fraser seemed intent upon penetrating Steve’s armor, in order to start the conversation. Steve had no intention of relaxing his guard, and so, as Ted drew Fraser’s gaze to him, the scene took on a distinct good cop / bad cop feel.
“We are still reeling,” started Ted. “Senseless.”
Fraser turned to Ted. “You think so?”
It was Ted’s turn to adopt a statuesque pose, a powerful tool in an arsenal that had served him well over the years of negotiating financial settlements.
“Yes,” he uttered finally. “Random. That’s what the Metro guy said.”
“Police?”
“Yah.” Ted looked over at Steve, waiting for his move, but he was stock-still.
“Anything else? Where’s the body?” Fraser seemed to be just feigning interest, still assessing.
“They won’t release it,” said Ted. “I’m heading to Nashville tomorrow.”
“Next of kin?”
“He was pretty much alone in the world. Some distant family in the Philippines, nobody here, and his parents are both dead.”
“Hm.” Fraser added this to the list of details, this being clearly something he didn’t know. Since it appeared to be significant, it must have been related to the treasury’s sense of Tom’s motive. “And so you wanted me to address, what shall we call it, this stimulus?” Fraser looked over at Steve, since a one-syllable answer might start the conversation.
Ted, of course, answered the call, in order to save Steve for a more perspicacious moment. “That’s right, right, exactly. That’s actually what we called it.”
“Is it still going on?”
“Manufacturing you mean?” asked Ted.
“Manufacturing, yes, and distributing.”
“No. Unless you want us to continue.” The question of how humor might work here was unclear, and if it flew, Ted would have a much stronger set of cards to play.
Steven Fraser moved his large body forward into the table, confident, apparently, that he now possessed what he needed. “No, that won’t be necessary. And doing so would complicate matters. Further, complicate matters further.”
“That was the plan,” said Steve.
Fraser turned abruptly towards Steve in the face of this reply. “Okay. Done. Now what?”
Steve calmly moved his left hand towards his right breast pocket and pulled out a small pocketbook, bound in leather and tied. He dexterously untied the leather strands and ceremoniously opened the little book, as though his own Native-American tribe had sent him as a messenger to a divine task. “This is the list. You don’t need to change the quantity of your investments, you just need to change the recipients.”
Fraser smiled, snidely. “Is that all? Let’s see it.” Steve slid the list over to him, and looked to catch Ted’s eye. Ted raised his eyebrows and looked to Fraser’s gaze.
With his rather nasal voice and cocky demeanor, Fraser scanned the list quickly. “Are you making these suggestions as a voter?”
Steve resumed his steely gaze.
Fraser looked from one to the other. “This is why you are here? This is the product of your labor? For this you risk a lifetime as a guest to the US prison system? I’m not so sure I understand.”
“This shouldn’t be difficult,” said Steve, assuming a well-rehearsed tone of pure condescension. “You can’t ruffle the market’s feather.”
“More than just that!” exclaimed Fraser.
“But we’re not asking you to do so. We have contributed several billion—”
“Billion?”
Fraser looked at Steve in amazement. “Billion? You guys forged several billion dollars? Wow.” He smiled broadly. “Now I am impressed!”
“We contributed several billion dollars to charities and causes we support.”
“You guys support the projects?” asked Fraser.
“We support the people in the projects, unlike this bloody country.”
“Well, we could have a debate about that, Steve!”
“Not to the degree that you should. And every dollar, every single dollar that we put into circulation stayed close to where it had arrived. Not offshore, not in bank accounts of—”
“Of people like you?” said Fraser.
“Right, not in the bank accounts of people like us, and not FROM the bank accounts of people like us either,” said Steve, angrily.
“The president is well aware of this.” Fraser dropped the words like a bomb, and it continued scattering bits of metallic implications through the room for several long moments after detonation. The pause was palpable, tangible, almost edible. “It’s a lot, more actually than he knew.”
“Consider it a reelection contribution,” said Ted.
“That sounds like bribery.”
“It’s what you said, Fraser, it’s a stimulus,” Steve declared. “This country expects that stimuli have to come from the wealthy, that it’s Bill Gates who will vaccinate everyone in Africa, and Guggenheim who built the museums in order to save us all the trouble. It shouldn’t be like that. You,” he paused, “this administration can flick a few levers and shift allocations into things that matter.”
Fraser looked down the list once again. “The Department of the Interior?”
Steve suddenly looked animated. “The Department of Indian Affairs. They have a few bills to pay, and a few recipients waiting for checks. If you look on the next page, there’s a list of treaties, signed by the US government, but as yet not honored. We have helped out with a few of them, but now we want to fulfill our obligation to those people who were here before the white man, and who were slaughtered for the favor.”
Fraser turned the page over and found a long list under the heading of “List of Treaties Between the United States and Native Americans, beginning in 1778 with the treaty with the Delaware tribe, and following along through treaties with the Chickasaw, the Six Nations, the Wyandot, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Shawnee, the Creeks, the Oneida, the Potawatomi, the Apache, the Comanche, the Kiowa, the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and others, sometimes by tribal appellation, sometimes by the place where the treaties were signed.
“Every one of those treatises was broken, in some way or another. We want them fixed.”
“I will have to bring this to . . . well, you know, the appropriate authorities. But we have much more to talk about!”
“Yes, actually we do,” interjected Ted. “We have some unwritten treatises as well, for the environment. It’s on the next page.”
Fraser flipped the page, and then flipped forward to the others, each replete with detailed facts and figures. He closed the book. “I appreciate this. The president appreciates this. You’ve risked around twenty-five lifetimes in prison, and it looks as we’d expected, rather selfless.”
Ted looked at Steve, who was simply staring forward, into, and through, Steven Fraser.
“And,” continued Fraser, “naïve. But you knew this as well. You are going to spill the beans, a few days before the election, and spin it whatever way you need.”
“That’s about it, in a nutshell,” said Ted. “This is not an act of aggression, Mr. Fraser, it’s a stimulus plan that we’re helping to fashion. We’ve even provided the money to subsidize it.”
Steven began to laugh, eventually rather uproariously for the circumstance. “I suggested I handle this myself,” he began, pausing to wipe the tears from his eyes, “because this is what I had imagined to be the case. And everything we’ve said to one other today wasn’t said, and this meeting never happened. I took you in for questioning, and we are now going downstairs for a private luncheon.
Ted and Steve sat motionless.
“You aren’t quite sure if this is a victory. It’s not. But you are going to walk out of here, unlike your friend Tom.”
Ted jumped up. “Did you?”
“We did nothing. The point is, that you were supposed to be three, and you are two.”
Ted sat back down.
“On the other hand, you have a friend, a very convincing friend, who will be working with us after we win this election. Provided, that is, that we win this election. She came to us with offers we could hardly refuse. One of them was to place her former boss, John, in our dining hall, along with his partner, or wife, Tina I think it was. They insisted to bring some other assistants as well, um, Nathanial I think it was, and John, or Johnny, I don’t recall. Maybe he was the son of the head chef? Whatever, we easily accepted,” he patted his midriff, “and I have a suspicion that my lunch break may last a whole lot longer than it does now, if you know what I mean!”
Ted grinned, knowingly.
“Yup, it’ll be a whole new day around here! John used to have a restaurant in New York City, just down the street in fact. Actually, I know that you know the place, because I’ve seen you both there before. Anyhow, I rather liked it,” he pointed down to his wide berth, “rather more than I should. And I’m going to like it a whole lot more now that it’ll be part of the perks for working in this place. Oh, and speaking of perks, there is some other guy, too, who is supposed to join the staff, after his wife has her child.” He grinned. “Real advantage to working here, we have great benefits, even a leave of absence for expecting parents. And the other person, well, let’s just say that she will be joining the cabinet.” Fraser looked at Ted.
“Who will, you mean Jessica?”
“Jessica, yes, Jessica. She will be providing raw materials essential to the US government and to the many companies that use those materials to build things, you know, like computers and cellphones.” He grinned. “And since these materials, well, come from the ground, as it were, she’ll be working for us in the capacity of a new cabinet post, as secretary of the environment.”
Ted and Steve sat, dumbfounded.
“Smile! It’s a victory!” continued Steven Fraser. “Or at least I’d like to think it’s a victory for all of us, all Americans. I just hope the voters see it that way. In the meantime, your bills will circulate for a short while longer, maintaining their stimulating effect until they are incinerated, along with every piece of paper money currently in existence. And your friend Jessica will ensure, to use her words, that our particular treaty is honored. For this, you have her to thank, and me. We need to iron out a few things, including the production of some actual wallpaper that looks like money, and to do so we’ll be using the help of some soon-to-be legal Chinese workers.”
Ted smiled.
“Ah!” exclaimed Steve as he stood up. “A smile! How about you, Steve?” Steve stared at Steven Fraser with the eyes of an ancient warrior and grinned a grin of relief and pride. He then brushed his hand up across Ted’s back, almost an embrace, but more like a sustained nudge. It was the strongest show of affection he’d ever offered to his friend.
“I’m starved for a stately dish,” said Fraser. “Sorry if I’m not saying it right, but from what John told me, it’s really good, and called, what did he say? ‘Oeuf de Fabergé.’ Yah, that’s it. Oeuf de Fabergé. What kind of a name is that?”
Steven Fraser rose and headed for the door, inspired it would seem by the thought of the impending feast. Maybe this would be the one that would finally prohibit his passage through the conference room door so that he could go home and engage in something other than this dreadful job.
As the two friends rose to join him, Ted turned to Steve and silently whispered, “Steve, we should suggest that Jude write about all this. He could write a bloody novel based on that name!”
“Yah,” returned Steve, as he reached into his breast pocket for his sunglasses. “True. B
ut which one? Fabergé, or just Oeuf?”
“I don’t know, whichever one came first!”
About the Author
Robert Barsky paid some of his college bills by working in restaurants in Cape Cod and Montreal, and after graduating he moved to Switzerland to pursue a career in skiing, supporting himself by working in an upscale hotel bar. He now enjoys cooking for his wife and his college-aged children, and writing about language, literature and revolution. He is the author of eight books, including biographies of Noam Chomsky and Zellig Harris. This is his first novel, and he is excited (egg-cited?) to work on the next one.
Notes
[←1 ]
Doug Duda, “Poached Eggs at the Revolution,” Eggs in Cookery, Devon, Prospect Books, 2002. Image at:
http://www.mis-recetas.org/receta/foto/0000/0884/grande/arzak.jpg.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Notes
Hatched Page 30