by P D Singer
“That sucks.” Edgar for a boss was bad enough. “Can’t you get him off when you renew?”
“Maybe if I commit to another two-year term. Or maybe not, and then I’m stuck.” Ricky shredded his arithmetic and tossed it in the trash. “I want him to be dependent on me to make lots of folding green, not me dependent on him for a place to live.”
“Leaving your positions unhedged risks you depending on him just to have a job, Ricky.” Understanding why Ricky would take on the exposure didn’t mean it was a good idea. “You’re worse off than before if it blows up.”
“You start every new position out thinking it’s going to blow up.” Ricky favored Jon with a sour look.
“It’s an acknowledgement of the way the world works, Ricky. Rare events happen. Sometimes smart people don’t connect the dots in time, or someone does something truly out of the blue. Remember what happened to the markets after 9/11? I just want you to protect yourself from the risk of a Black Swan event.” Aghast that he even had to explain this to a trader of Ricky’s experience, Jon reached for arguments that wouldn’t seem like an attack.
“So you think I’m going to blow up. That’s not a vote of confidence.”
“Black Swans do happen, and it has nothing to do with my confidence in you.” Actually it did, or more accurately, it had to do with Jon’s confidence that Ricky—or anyone, really—would recognize the signs of a truly enormous and devastating loss about to happen. “It happened to Jesse Livermore, it happened to the Bass brothers, hell, it happened to John Maynard Keynes. How about Long Term Capital Management?” Russian bonds dropped from 75 to 10 in a matter of weeks, bringing LTCM and damned near the entire world economy to its knees back in ’98. Ricky’d been twenty-five then, already working for Wolfe Gorman, and should remember what a disaster that had been. Jon recalled it vividly. “That guy Niederhoffer, down the street, he’s blown up on a scale this whole fund can’t even begin to match, and he’s not stupid by a long shot. I don’t want it to happen to you.”
“I don’t want it to happen to me either, and I’m going to do just the opposite. I am going to make great steaming piles of money, and you aren’t going to convert me to your investing philosophy, so stop trying. It’s dull.”
Oh, crap. He’d gone too far and triggered the word of doom. Dullness, in Ricky’s world, was unforgivable. Too late, he might as well push on. “I just want you to protect yourself from the risk.”
“You want to protect yourself from every sort of risk, and you want to protect me too. That’s a lot like being kept in a cage, Jon. Condoms even for oral sex, stop-loss orders on a new stock position, what next? Monogamy and money market accounts?” The brightness had gone out of Ricky’s face, replaced with storm clouds.
“None of that is a cage, Ricky.” Oh man, he’d really stepped in it if Ricky invoked a word that he’d shot Jon down hard for even mentioning.
“You don’t see the bars.”
“Bars can keep bad things out as well as keeping something in.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be kept in, anyway.”
No, Ricky had never suggested limiting himself to one man, and Jon would not spend the time now to think about why he remained faithful to a player—he had a financial disaster to stave off. “I’m not trying to keep you in, Ricky. I’m trying to keep you from blowing up.”
Spinning around in his chair, Ricky gave Jon a slit-eyed glare. “That won’t happen. I’m not going to open a position in some company where it could all go bad really fast before I’ve even had a chance to make the big buck. I pick them better than that.”
Jon swallowed hard and tried again to speak reason. “Just because you have a particular need for money doesn’t mean the market’s going to go your way.”
“It has been.” Ricky slapped the Bloomberg off. “And I’m not going to forfeit sixty to eighty thousand bucks a trade if I don’t need to. My lease is up in a few months.”
Cold fear grew in Jon’s gut. “Ricky, even if it takes a little longer to make enough, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t do anything I need to do to be sure Edgar can’t appear in my living room with every right to be there?” A bubble of froth appeared in the corner of Ricky’s mouth. He dashed it away with the back of his hand. “You’ve been a trader from the minute you walked through the door here, you’ve never had to—”
“No, I haven’t.” Jon cut him off. “And you didn’t, either; you could have walked.”
“I could have walked away from my one chance to get some real wealth. Sure. Spoken like a man who’s never lacked for funds. Not all of us were born with silver spoons in our mouths.” The hate in Ricky’s eyes pushed Jon back a step. “You’re the one man here Edgar can’t ruin, and I don’t see you doing a thing about him.”
“I—” Jon stopped. There was nothing he could say to that.
“Because he doesn’t affect you personally, right?” Ricky rocked forward in the chair and jumped to his feet, glaring down on Jon. “Because it’s much easier to do the right thing by supporting the arts and donating money than taking a stand a lot closer to home?” A bitter laugh. “And I can’t take a stand until I’m out of that lease.”
There were other ways to get out from under Edgar’s thumb, Jon wanted to say, but Ricky kept talking. “You’re always going on about rare events. Making a score this big is a rare event, though not as rare as it used to be, and I am going to enjoy it. You better make other dinner plans, because I just decided that I’ll be going to the club. Without you.”
Chapter Two
TIMING. It was always timing. It was a given that very few could time the stock market except by luck, and it wasn’t one bit better in relationships. Jon berated himself for screwing things up so spectacularly with Ricky.
Why, oh why had he pursued the fight when all Ricky wanted to do was celebrate? Enjoy the triumph? Feel like the King of Wall Street for a few hours? They could have gone to Marimba’s, feasted on ropa viejo and camarones enchilados, washed them down with limonadas rosadas, and wobbled happily back to bed. After Ricky was properly fed and fucked, then Jon could have brought up the awful topic. As it was, Ricky’d grown angry enough to bring up every single source of tension between them.
Regrets followed Jon like mongrel puppies up the subway stairs and across the street to the sandwich shop. Roast beef on rye was a lousy substitute for the Caribbean flavors he’d had his mouth set on, but he was too disheartened by his failure to get through to Ricky to go out alone, and there really wasn’t anyone else’s company he wanted tonight.
Trudging past the elegant Art Deco building that lay between the subway stop and his apartment, Jon looked up long enough to punish himself. His eye went unerringly to the window on the fourth floor where once, long ago and in a more magical time, Cameron would have been looking down. Ten years had passed since he’d seen Cam framed in the graceful arches with the tulip cornices, watching for Jon’s return.
Today’s fight with Ricky had nothing on the bitterness with which Cam had driven Jon from their home. At least Jon had no confusion over the source of Ricky’s anger, not that he’d apologize for coming from a moneyed family nor for urging a fiscally sane policy, or even for wanting their relationship to be exclusive. As for Edgar, the sourness in Jon’s gut reminded him that he’d turned a blind eye to wrongdoing. Ricky’d been mistaken in one respect—Jon wasn’t immune to Edgar’s revenge.
But Cam’s accusations had no basis in anything Jon could fathom. He’d been totally faithful, yet Cam had called him a cheater, and when he’d asked why, Cam had screamed, “Liar!” and thrown Jon out. Looking up again at what had been his home, Jon saw how the New York haze had taken the gleam off the stone facade, newly restored when they’d lucked into that apartment, and wished time would take the last of the sheen off his heartache.
He’d left pre-war elegance behind in his pain, choosing a one-bedroom apartment in a modern glass and aluminum high rise on the next block. The starkness had reflect
ed his state of mind then, and he’d grown accustomed to it, but now the sterile architecture only emphasized what was missing in his life.
Ricky loved it, of course. The metal and glass looked like progress and modernity to him. Not that he slept there more than once or twice a week.
Collecting his mail and waving wearily at the doorman, Jon passed over the pink-and-black-flecked granite floor to the elevators. Dancing backward to avoid getting tangled in the leash of the micro-dog that sprang out of the open elevator door in its haste to get outside at last, Jon muttered a greeting to the woman who restrained it. He saw his neighbors infrequently, and this evening, that was the way he wanted it.
Home at last. Jon let himself into the twelfth-floor apartment, opening drapes to illuminate the living room. Reconsidering that once he’d seen the blocky white retro fifties couch and the lime green rug, he drew them back about halfway to avoid highlighting a setting he’d let other people pick out for him.
He’d let the decorator have more of a free hand in choosing modern furnishings than he should have, he thought for the twentieth time. He’d fled Georgian bookshelves, overstuffed couches, and Oriental rugs when he’d taken his last leave of the Art Deco apartment, surrounding himself with a household meant to be opposite in every way.
It had worked. From warm, cozy, and loved to sharp, severe, and alone, Jon had gotten exactly the opposite of what he’d had. Now he was tired of it, and even Ricky didn’t like the giant rectangle of a couch.
“You are ugly,” Jon told the couch. “Stupid square corners that don’t fit the human body. Your days are numbered.” He’d find a decorator who understood comfort and could make it blend with the building.
The mail didn’t bring any joy—half of it went straight to the trash. A few bills, a list of silent auction items for the Friends of the Opera fundraiser, which he’d have to look over, and a reminder from Ben Fleisher to make an appointment. Jon glanced up at the landscape with the three figures in eighteenth-century court dress playing some sort of game. He’d bought the painting—or rather, his trust fund had bought it—on Fleisher’s advice and with his assistance. Jon and his financial advisor had spent quite a lot of money at the auction of a failed hedge fund’s assets, but not nearly as much as the fund had paid. Few of Jon’s holdings were this attractive, but the painting would be far more at home in the building down the block. Setting the note aside to call during business hours, he slit open the next envelope.
It contained a calendar of Harvard alumni functions, mostly in the Cambridge area, but quite a few in New York City. Jon tended to skip the events that involved socializing all night long, tired of getting polite brush-offs and sometimes the outright cold shoulder. That had started after he and Cam had split up, and Jon suspected people were taking sides.
An in-depth discussion of statuary to be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Jon ticked as a definite go-to, but scratched it off when he saw the chair for the event was Spencer Willingham. He wouldn’t give Spencer the chance for a snub, or worse. Spencer wasn’t taking sides about Cam—he had his own grudges, and Jon wasn’t about to find out in public if his old friend’s fury had relented. Another horrible mess Jon couldn’t explain, though he had often wondered if it was tied to Cam’s accusations, though why…?
The note from his “Aunt Olivia” he wanted to trash, but he’d have to find a polite refusal instead. “Jon, darling, it’s been so many years since we were all together. Please consider joining us at the estate for Thanksgiving. Your parents will be here again, it will be like when you, Spencer, and Davis were young. Bring your sweetie and stay in the guest house. We’ll have old Cinnamon reshod. She’ll take good care of a novice rider….” Jon remembered Cinnamon as a handful, prone to skittering sideways at imaginary rabbits, but that was ten years ago, and the mare had surely mellowed. Aunt Olivia clearly didn’t know what had set her son’s hand against Jon, or had forgiven him for it, but no, Jon would not be spending the holiday with the Willinghams.
He set the note aside to answer later, propped against some books and held upright by his little collection of shells, combed from the beaches at Fire Island. Sand dollars, razor clams, and a bit of sea glass, each a memento of a glorious weekend when Jon had had Ricky all to himself. If the pile could have been higher, perhaps he wouldn’t feel the need to have a pile at all.
Good thing he didn’t have a pile of souvenirs of the other weekends, when Ricky had gone out to his shared rental alone but hadn’t stayed that way. Or other nights, when Ricky’d wanted to go out but hadn’t taken Jon. That stack would probably break the bookcase as well as Jon’s heart.
Now Ricky wouldn’t be here tonight and maybe not for a couple more nights because he was celebrating with his club buddies. Why did monogamy have to be such a dirty word? Jon would be more than happy to settle in with Ricky and lead the kind of life that a couple of wealthy, imaginative gay men could have in New York, sampling all the richness the city had to offer. Even the dance clubs with the overloud techno music would be okay if he was with Ricky, as long as they were leavened with symphonies and art galleries.
But Ricky wasn’t having any of that dream, or at least not yet. “I like my freedom,” he’d say, and Jon would hear the unsaid, “more than I like being with you.” A small part of Ricky was all he had, and tolerating Ricky’s other adventures was the price of having it. Bitterness swelled in Jon’s throat for having other adventures to tolerate tonight, when they should be together toasting the day’s successes, all because Jon had tried to look out for Ricky’s best interests.
He hung his suit in the closet, trying not to notice that none of the tailored clothing within belonged to Ricky, and dressed in some soft exercise pants and a T-shirt. At least he’d eat his lonely sandwich to the sound of the Yankees tonight, because Ricky wasn’t around to object to watching a baseball game.
TURNING from Wall Street trader to life-of-the-club material meant gelling his hair into careless waves and changing from an expensive suit to a black shirt with artfully ripped-off sleeves that Ricky wouldn’t button anywhere near the throat. He’d eat the takeout sushi before it got any warmer, and there would be noshes later. He tucked a credit card and some neatly folded bills into the hip pocket of his tight jeans and found the condoms and sachets of lube that better not explode before he needed them.
The air-conditioning in his gleaming glass and hardwood apartment kept the beads of sweat from reforming on his lip and forehead after he’d showered. Even the short walk from the subway to the front door had popped the sweat out. New York was his dream city, but the heat, even in mid-September, was a nightmare. If he had any sense, he’d be at the beach, not here.
There was a summer rental on Fire Island that was one-quarter his, and Ricky’d meant to take Jon up there this weekend. Now he didn’t know. It wasn’t really fair to snarl about every damned thing in the universe like it was all Jon’s fault, but Jon had no idea what it was really like. His choices were probably all real choices, where he could say no and stay on Wall Street instead of doing the books for an auto parts chain. But a guy like Jon wouldn’t ever hear “a moment of your time?” He could afford to be cautious. Damn Edgar.
Ricky threw the sushi tray into the trash and considered the relative merits of hitting Sharkie’s or Tad’s. Sharkie’s—it was Thursday, that meant Georgie Boy was running the music.
Either way, he’d need to hop another cab into the Chelsea area, because he’d be a melted puddle of goo after walking just one of those long New York blocks.
His cell phone sat on his dresser, sleekly suggesting that he should pick it up and call Jon. Apologize. Ricky’d been way too rough, mostly because Jon was right, but….
He could call Jon even now and go on with their planned evening, without the Cuban food. Mojitos and salsa dancing would still be a fine night out, and he could convince Jon to keep his mind on the fabulous trade and the music. A little groping to the beat and Jon couldn’t think about much besides where
to get private, anyhow. He was funny that way—the backroom was way too public for Mr. Buttoned-Down Hogenboom.
How had Jon managed to laugh today about their boss catching them in a celebration? He’d been mortified at the time, and it had taken exactly one good trade to demand the latch on the door as his bonus. Ricky didn’t care about getting caught so much as he cared about Jon losing the spirit of the escapade.
The phone went into a pocket, Jon’s number undialed. Ricky checked his watch, the stainless steel, wafer-thin Concord that wouldn’t precipitate a mugging but would advertise to those who knew that he had four thousand bucks to wear on his wrist, and decided it was late enough to find a party and early enough to enjoy it.
Now he was going to have to watch his mouth around his little gang, not let too much of the firm’s business into the open. For sure, he couldn’t actually mention his numbers—the boys tended to think that it was all Ricky’s to keep, and got demanding.
The cab dropped him at Sharkie’s, where the doorman waved him through with a flourish. The air conditioner struggled with the heat from the outdoors and from the massed bodies, men swaying, gyrating, and shaking to the music. One hundred twenty beats a minute, it would go all night or until someone slipped the DJ enough money to put on something slow and sensuous. Ricky wove his way through the crowd, looking, but not too hard, for any of his buddies who might be around, and for any fresh faces he might want to dance with later.
Heads turned as he went by, no new thing. He’d chosen his apartment building with an eye to the amenities; he wanted the gym handy, and it didn’t get much handier than the basement at home. He tightened one arm up just enough to ripple the muscles and pretended not to notice the two men on barstools swivel around to watch.
“Heya, Ricky!”