The Rare Event

by P D Singer

  Jon couldn’t repress the shudder. “Thank you.” They took their loaded plates to the couch, and Jon poked the remote. “The Yankees have a couple more games to finish the regular season; this should be good.”

  Davis took a bite out of his egg roll and nodded. “Might have to do some fast-forwarding if we’re going to get any sleep tonight.” Jon refused to read anything into that statement. It was merely a fact, if one started watching a baseball game after 10:00 p.m.

  They ate their way through the early innings, cheering, groaning, and flinging rice into the carpet when the Yankees pulled off a double play. Their food finished, Davis leaned back on the couch but couldn’t seem to find a comfortable way to sit, squirming sideways, folding one leg under him, and eventually getting to his feet. “Did you sit on this thing at all before you bought it?” He eyed the couch and disappeared to the back of the apartment, returning with pillows stolen from Jon’s bed.

  “What did I miss?” Davis tossed two pillows at his end of the couch and two at Jon’s and proceeded to punch his into the corner. “That’s better. Not good, but better.” He nestled in, his feet in the center of the couch, and Jon stared a little harder at the television than the 1-0 count for the current batter really warranted.

  “What’s been keeping you?” Jon asked, after Davis groaned that he’d stayed late at the office every night so far this week.

  “I came in late on this project; they brought me in especially to work on it, and there’s a big push to get it finished. I had an eight-inch shaft problem.”

  “Oh, really.” This would be an awfully good time for that batter to connect with the ball.

  “Not enough clearance—I needed more room for a bank of elevators.” Somehow, that explanation did nothing to remove the suggestive element that Jon was sure his traitorous mind was supplying. Davis pumped his fist and shouted for the pop fly the opposing team put up—he wasn’t making a pass, he was watching a ball game.

  The Yankees won, and after a bit of exulting, Davis flopped back against the pillows. “The recording was good, but nothing like the live experience. Last week’s game was a good time.”

  “It was.” Aside from Ricky and his meddling.

  “Think we could get tickets for the play-offs?” A yawn hit Davis in the last word. “The Yanks are ten games ahead.”

  “Might.” Jon thought of a fund client whom he’d call. “I’ll find out.”

  “Would you get two tickets, or three?” All traces of the yawn had left that question; Davis sat upright.

  “Three if Dad wants to go. Oh.” Jon looked sharply at Davis. “Ricky won’t be inviting himself again.” He turned away, unwilling to show Davis how much it hurt to say, “We broke up.”

  “Ouch.” Davis paused for a moment. “Did I create another problem for you?”

  “You might have affected the timing, but it was bound to happen.” Jon looked out the window at the checkerboard of light and dark on the building across the street; it took his eyes off his companion. “He… didn’t want the same things I want.”

  “He said you weren’t exclusive.” Davis spoke evenly, neutrally.

  “He wasn’t. Maybe I was the only one who broke up; maybe he hasn’t even noticed the difference.” Even as he spoke, he knew that was unfair, but the chastity reports Ricky’d given him every day this week were salt in the wound.

  “I’m sorry, Jon. You deserve better than that.” A big warm hand in the crook of his neck pulled Jon against Davis’s side. It would be only too easy to turn toward Davis, to hold him like a life raft while the waves of sorrow beat over him, but he didn’t. Neither did he pull away. He wanted to turn, he wanted to cling to the solid comfort that Davis offered, but he wouldn’t mourn Ricky in the arms of another man. But he didn’t pull away.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “GLOBALSKY is going to strike!” Logan looked up from the Bloomberg to the others, who were assembled for Thursday’s morning meeting and had been for some time: Edgar had only arrived within the past five minutes. The markets had already opened. Jon thought back to Geoff’s bond purchase. Yes, it was this airline.

  “Nope, they’re bluffing.” Kate, the firm’s expert on airlines, didn’t sound too concerned.

  “This doesn’t look like a bluff—they’re saying that’s a hard deadline.” Logan swung the monitor around so Kate could read it. Jon came to read over her shoulder.

  “Big bark, no bite. They don’t dare. The passenger planes in this country are flying at half capacity, four of the seven biggest airlines are in bankruptcy, including this one, and there flat out isn’t any room for management to move.” Short, lithe Kate stood up and hip-checked her way out of the knot of people that had gathered. “Where’s Geoff? Maybe he wants to buy some more bonds?”

  “He’s pretty heavily into them already. Does he have the cash?” Jon ran his fingers through his hair and his mind through his trading balances.

  “He might.” Kate planted her butt on Pramiti’s desk and thudded her Charles Jourdan-clad feet into a desk drawer. “I do. Hmmm.”

  The etched-glass door crashed open, letting panic in—Geoff Gorman pelted to the nearest desk, fumbling for his PDA.

  He’d already heard about the pilot’s strike, judging from his wild eyes and flying spittle. “I need the number for the market-maker on the bonds!” He dropped the device and tried to dial from a memory that failed him; he slammed the phone back into the cradle and then tried to dial again.

  “Relax, Geoff,” Kate advised, examining a long pink fingernail. “Give it an hour and the prices will have dropped.”

  “I know! I know! I need to sell, now!” He stabbed again at the buttons on the phone. “Damn it! I had the number in here—” Picking up his PDA again, he poked at the screen with a shaky finger.

  “The bonds are worth 53. Don’t sell them!” She bounced off the desk and tried to wrestle Geoff for the PDA. “You know that!”

  “They aren’t selling for 53, or even the 36 I paid for them!” Geoff lifted his hands far above his head, taking the PDA out of her reach but hampering his ability to operate it.

  “That’s temporary!” Kate yelled, managing to drown out even Edgar’s roar.

  “What are they now?” Edgar demanded, and Logan punched up the information.

  “Looks like a lot of them went by at 30, more at 26, and oh, man, that had to be a big fund unloading their share; that’s about a tenth of the total outstanding bonds right there, at 19.” Logan read from the screen, first into dead silence and then screaming.

  “Nineteen!” Geoff looked up at the device, ignoring Kate’s attempts to thwart him. “I gotta get out of that! Someone find the number for me!”

  “No, don’t!” Kate solved the problem of being a head shorter than Geoff by slugging him in the stomach. He doubled over, and she confiscated the PDA. “Come on, people, help me get him away from phones!” She tossed the device in the general direction of the group; Liu snagged it out of the air and backed out of reach. Corbin and Ricky captured Geoff’s arms.

  Dwight stepped in front of Edgar, whose face had gone purple. “Did you get puts on those?” Edgar screamed.

  “They’re debt instruments, I didn’t need puts!” Geoff struggled against his captors.

  “That’s right, and you bought them at 36 and they’re worth 53! Of debt—it gets paid back!” Kate shrieked.

  Jon joined Dwight as a barricade to Edgar, who tried to push past them, his face contorted. Jon gripped Edgar’s upper arm and willed him not to fight or hold a big grudge later. Dwight, more junior, more vulnerable, put his shoulder against Jon’s and planted his feet. Edgar hurled imprecations over their shoulders at his partner, struggling to get past them. “That’s a $3 million loss in a few minutes, you putz!”

  Bloodshed on the trading floor seemed like a distinct possibility. Kate put both hands against Geoff’s chest, pushing him backward, assisted by the two senior traders willing to manhandle their boss for a good cause.

 
; “Get him out of here!” Kate urged her helpers. “The executive bathroom, it’s got only the one exit!”

  “It’s also got a phone,” Corbin pointed out, dragging a struggling Geoff backward.

  “Not for long.” She pushed, the men pulled, and the entire knot of people disappeared through the swinging door. Kate emerged alone after a moment of yelling and crashing, carrying a telephone handset and a couple of cell phones. “Stay in there ’til you calm down, Geoff!” she yelled through the closed door. “Those bonds are worth 53!”

  “I’ll kill him!” Edgar bellowed, but his efforts to get past his guards didn’t seem entirely sincere, though he leaned up against his captors. Jon slid sideways, and Edgar would have hit the floor had Jon not been holding his arm—Dwight had taken his cue from Jon and twisted his shoulder to create a gap.

  “No, you won’t, Edgar. You’ve seen markets drop before.” Ricky wouldn’t be facing Edgar’s wrath, now that he’d covered his positions, Jon recalled with a grin he kept to himself. Geoff had the clout to survive a reversal of fortune, being a partner, just as long as Edgar had a chance to calm down.

  Grumbling his imprecations rather than shouting them, Edgar yanked his arm away from Jon and stalked off. The morning meeting was unnecessary—everyone knew the latest news.

  Jon and Dwight could find plenty to do, although both their attentions had been diverted from housing to the airline industry, and Jon had a couple of calls to make.

  “Ben—” He didn’t stumble over his advisor’s first name, relishing the honor paid him by the permission to use it. “Have you noticed any mayhem in the bond market this morning?”

  “Nothing I have my clients in has been troubled; why?” Jon could imagine Ben calling up numbers on his own terminal.

  “GlobalSky has a pilot’s strike looming and the bonds have tanked. One of the best airline analysts in the business swears that the strike is an empty threat and the bonds are worth about three times what they’re selling for at the moment.” The numbers scrolled by on the Bloomberg terminal—other airlines’ bonds were affected as well, and the prices had dropped, though not nearly as steeply. Jon picked out GlobalSky’s competitors in the transactions list, the prices all followed with negative changes.

  “Sounds like a dandy opportunity for a hedge fund, Jon.” Fleisher chuckled. “A tad risky for a trust fund, though.”

  “Not much of a risk—those bonds are so near zero now that the only way they could drop substantially is if every plane they own falls out of the sky at once.” Jon had known he’d have to talk Fleisher into this purchase; the advisor favored blue chips and solvent companies, bonds that paid interest and didn’t drop like stones with bad news.

  “Bottom fishing isn’t exactly considered prudent, Jon.” The humor in Ben’s voice let Jon hope. He leaned forward, as if he could impress Ben with his earnestness through the phone.

  “It’s more like picking treasure off the bottom of the bay; you just have to recognize it for what it is.” He wouldn’t press too hard. Instead he’d let Ben remember that other investments he’d suggested had worked out well, and he would not be so crass as to remind Ben that in a few short months, the client could walk.

  “And are you putting your own money where your mouth is?” Ben asked.

  “Most of my money is mingled with Wolfe Gorman’s, and yes, that is the next call I make.” Jon sat back, knowing he’d won. “I figured in the time I spent convincing you, the price might drop a little more.”

  “I suppose I could put some money into your horrible junk bonds. Not any overwhelming percentage of the total, mind you.”

  “It’s short term, Ben, use whatever loose cash is floating around.” Jon could say that, secure in the knowledge that he and Ben had arranged for rather a lot of loose cash.

  Ben laughed. Had he recalled that too? “I’ll take care of it, Jon. Go look after your hedge fund.”

  Hanging up the phone with intense satisfaction, Jon turned to Dwight, who had quietly assembled purchase forms without waiting to be told. “I filled in everything but the purchase price, Jon.”

  “Let’s find out what that’s going to be!” With one eye on the monitor, Jon dialed the market-maker for the airline’s bonds, a trader at a mid-sized old-money investment bank over on Seventh Avenue. The guy had to have been sweating bullets all morning, with millions of dollars of bonds coming at him, and he had to buy them all—that’s what the market-maker did, though he’d hope to sell them to someone else at a slightly higher price, or perhaps a vastly higher price, but that would not happen today. Now he’d get a call from Jon and be quite sure that he’d have to commit another chunk of his firm’s capital to bonds that no one else wanted. “Ho, Larry, GlobalSky convertibles, ten million.”

  “Seventeen, eighteen,” snapped back through the phone, the price for the seller, the price for the buyer.

  “Eighteen, buying.” Jon accepted the deal. He needed two more words.

  The market-maker’s shock was loud and clear at this buyer in a sea of sellers. “You’re done!”

  Dwight added the number to his forms, then handed the papers to Jon, who wrote his name with a flourish. “We just bought dollars for quarters, Dwight.”

  “How long do you think it will take to turn around?”

  “Probably not all that long, but hey, if it was totally predictable, there wouldn’t be the big score.” Jon waved him to the door. “Go make sure poor old Larry gets his money.” The 1.8 million bucks would be a drop in the market-maker’s bucket, but it was most of Jon’s available capital, unless he sold one of his other holdings. That was all right—the payoff would more than make up for the lack of daily excitement.

  “DON’T do this, guys!” Geoff struggled in his captors’ hands, but Ricky and Corbin were relentless and held him until Kate had confiscated their phones and the handset from the phone beside the couch.

  “What, don’t let you lose a fortune?” Corbin responded, edging between his boss and the door. Ricky hung on while Corbin darted to the door to latch it. They didn’t need Edgar bringing the fight in here.”It’s fallen fast and hard on some bad news that isn’t solid. Let everyone else panic.”

  “P-panic?” Geoff struggled with the word. “I’m not p-panicking. I just want to bail on those bonds.”

  “Kate says you don’t,” Ricky reminded him.

  “What does Kate know?” Geoff lunged away, forcing Ricky to grab the back of his suit coat to bring him to a halt.

  “Kate knows airlines; she knows their costs and their revenues, she probably knows what brand of coffee they serve on the transatlantic flights. If Kate says to hold those bonds, hold those bonds. ‘Buy on the bad news, sell on the good news.’ Good advice that no one wants to follow.” Corbin leaned against the door in a casual but immovable pose. “We can let him roam freely in here, Ricky.”

  “I could push the couch against the door.” Ricky thought he could move the behemoth by himself if he rolled the Oriental rug out of the way. “Stay put.” That was both to Geoff, who stood with slumped shoulders, and to Corbin, who couldn’t leave the door unguarded—Geoff might get a burst of energy. Some huffing and puffing and Ricky’d shoved the big brocade couch to within eighteen inches of the door.

  “You won’t have to hit the gym tonight,” Corbin joked. “And it won’t take two of us to babysit. I’ll go mind the store.” He slithered out the barely-wide-enough opening. Ricky thrust the couch the last foot and shot the bolt. The door would open enough to let things be handed in.

  “Have a seat; we might be here a while.” Dropping onto the red-patterned cushion, Ricky stretched out. He’d spent plenty of work hours on this couch, though not on guard duty.

  “I can’t believe it. This is mutiny. And disaster.” Geoff nearly fell onto the far end, ending with his head in his hands.

  “No, and no. We’re saving you from yourself. And Edgar.” He shifted sideways to look at Geoff. “If I let you out, he’d hurt you before you got to a phone.” T
he doorknob rattled; someone on the other side wanted in, and probably not to use the facilities. Both men jumped at the noise.

  “Great.” Geoff regarded both Ricky and the door balefully. “Mutiny, I tell you. I should fire your ass.”

  “Won’t you feel silly if you fired me and then the bonds popped back up after they resolve this strike threat?” Ricky didn’t feel particularly imperiled. The fight looked to have left Geoff.

  Ricky thought of Jon, out there with a wrathful Edgar, and knew that had Ricky’s stocks tanked, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. Geoff bought debt, Ricky bought equity—although Jon had used Russian bonds in his scare stories. “What’s the price?” Geoff suddenly bellowed to the door or its guardian on the other side.

  “Doesn’t matter; they’re worth 53!” Kate bellowed back. “And 36 even if they liquidate, which they won’t!”

  “The distance to zero is so small that it really can’t get much worse than it is right now.” Cold comfort, but all Ricky had to offer.

  “True, but I’d like to know.” Geoff took another deep breath. “That didn’t answer the question!”

  “That’s all you need to know!” The tapping of Kate’s heels faded away.

  “I am so screwed.” Geoff flopped back against the cushions.

  “Only if you sell. In fact—” Ricky tried to remember what Kate had said not too long ago. “If some other airline wanted to buy out GlobalSky, now would be a good time, if they had their financing together. That would chase the prices right back up, and then we’d let you out of jail.”

  “I wish.” Geoff fell silent.

  The time dragged out slowly—Ricky had never been one to hold still happily, but now, trapped with a morose companion and nothing else to do, he had to compose himself. Although….

  He pounded on the door. “Hey, somebody!”

  “Yes?” The answer came sooner than he expected, and the voice was Jon’s. “I brought you some bottles of water; can I pass them in?”

  Geoff didn’t try to rush the door when Ricky opened it the few inches possible and accepted the two drinks. “Thanks. Um, do you mind getting me some paper and a pencil?” He wouldn’t ask for the sketchpad in his second drawer; Jon might peek.