The Rare Event

by P D Singer

  THIS weekend was on the calendar to be on Fire Island with Ricky, and Jon hadn’t filled the schedule with other activities. Perhaps he should have; the free time weighed on him.

  Scanning the bookshelves, Jon couldn’t settle on a title; he was too wound up to read. The small pile of shells in front of the collection of essays on evolution did draw his hand. Each one marked a weekend at Fire Island with Ricky; Jon rubbed a finger over the smooth sand dollars, flipped the razor clam shells to check their barely pearlescent undersides, twisted the green sea glass to catch the light. He’d never brought the mermaid’s purse back—it hadn’t dried enough to travel.

  It would be one less memento to pack away. Jon found the gray velvet box that had once contained jewelry but for the last eighteen years had held his few keepsakes. He lifted the lid to expose a few letters, two keys, one to a hotel room and the other to the apartment down the block where he’d lived with Cam, whose name was engraved inside the platinum ring hiding under a concert ticket stub. The box couldn’t hold all his beachcombings—Jon chose one perfect sand dollar and the green glass to keep, closing the lid over the small treasures. The rest of the shells he discarded, wishing he could fling them back into the sea.

  He had so very little to show for his time with Ricky.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “PUTS to cover, just like Jon’s,” Ricky reassured Edgar at the meeting on Monday. Jon leaned against Dwight’s desk on the other side of the trading floor, and the news softened his face. Ricky could capture it now on his pad, a few brief strokes and some smudges; he worked quickly to preserve the one expression of approval he’d gotten in more than a week. “It’s a waste of a hundred grand; Lasker and WideWest are both up. So is Intens.”

  Edgar frowned at the word “waste” but let it go. “I’d rather you covered than risk another collapse like our airline bonds.” He glared around the room, fixing his errant partner with the hairy eyeball of doom; Geoff didn’t look impressed. “Which, by the way, are at what now?”

  Logan had the Bloomberg booted up. “Twenty-two.”

  “Relax, Edgar. The pilots’ union will back off, probably before Friday,” Kate, queen of the airlines, advised from her makeshift throne, which doubled as Chloe’s desk. Geoff sat in the chair by her knees. “With everything I made from covering my shorts last week, we’re at a wash, and it will be a combined profit given a bit more time. You could cash all that out, throw it on the floor, and roll in it; that should take your mind off the bonds.” She massaged Geoff’s shoulder, projecting “united front.”

  “Anyone want to roll with me?” Edgar asked, but there were no takers. “No? Then reinvest all that money, darling; make it grow.” He beamed his jowly smile around the room, stopping at an analyst’s desk. “Trade wisely, boys and girls. Vaughn, a moment of your time?”

  Ricky scowled. That jackass Geoff didn’t do a thing, and Edgar had free rein with the junior staff. Ricky didn’t believe for a minute that Geoff was as powerless as he’d made out, but then, Ricky had submitted for far longer than he’d wanted, and he considered himself more than Geoff’s equal, if not quite as rich. Shit. The hand that wrote the checks ruled the world.

  Trading accounts swelled that week, at least for Ricky; his stocks inched up, and Jon’s options went further out of the money. Ricky checked Intens’s price and sent Logan hunting for obscure patent information that they might have been filing; rumors of a breakthrough in production had been a major reason he’d bought the company. It kept Logan out of his hair and let Ricky appear busy any time Jon looked his way.

  Jon didn’t look often. He kept that office door closed, and Dwight ran in and out, dressed unusually crisply. The “due dilly” magic Jon had performed on him rankled; if Davis wasn’t enough, did he have to polish up someone who was actually starting to look like a possibility? Found himself a little diamond in the rough? Dress him, groom him, exercise him, and show off the grateful bastard, who would never look aside because Jon had made him what he was? Where was that Dr. Dipshit when you needed him? Shoving Iggy at Dwight would get one thorn out of Ricky’s side.

  Ricky wondered if he’d rubbed off on Jon in a way he didn’t like. Faithful Jon, growing himself a harem, while Ricky spent his evenings drawing, working out, and deciding that he hated everyone at the clubs? Like last night at Sharkie’s.

  HE’D bypassed his little posse, still stung by Dustin’s assessment, and brushed off all the others who approached. Of course he only wanted to play; no one here was permanent-fixture material, no one here had anything to say that he wanted to hear. This was company to be lured with a few words or a smile, perhaps with a beer or a handful of fried food. Ricky nursed his drink at the bar, asking himself why he was there.

  “Not playing with your usual friends tonight?” The voice came from behind Ricky—he turned to see the speaker. The older man with the paunch that Ricky once called Looky-Lou put his hand on Ricky’s shoulder. “I’ll buy you another drink, and you can tell me how vapid and boring they are.”

  “No, thanks.” Ricky drained the last of the lemon vodka and stood up. “Nothing personal, but I’m out of here.” He left the glass and the man at the bar.

  So Looky-Lou figured the right bait for Ricky was alcohol and sympathy. There was no right bait tonight.

  AND now here was new-look Dwight, come to bother Ricky with something. Ricky stashed his sketchpad in his desk drawer. “What?”

  “Jon thought you might want to look at the Wednesday paper.” He offered the news, folded over to show an advertisement circled in red. “It’s the Wichita Gazette.”

  “I want yesterday’s cow-town news why?” Ricky gave the page the once-over.

  “Because it’s a forerunner of tomorrow’s headlines.” Dwight didn’t accept the paper, though Ricky jabbed it at him. “Jon says to keep it.” He left again, and Ricky wouldn’t call him back.

  Before he dropped the paper in the trash, Ricky took another look. The circled ad was one of WideWest’s, offering low rates and a little more. “New home, new life—we’ll help our borrowers find jobs!”

  He took another look. This was not mortgage lending as Ricky understood it. He dropped the paper in the trash, then punched up WideWest’s price. Still higher than when he’d bought it. Jon was such a worrywart.

  “GOOD trip?” Ricky was more than a little surprised that Geoff had disappeared again after the airline fiasco, but he hadn’t been seen since Tuesday. Of course, Geoff could fret no matter where he was; he didn’t have to do it at the office.

  “Yeah. I went out to Colorado to put the condo on the market.” Geoff picked up a Wall Street Journal from Dwight’s desk and turned to the real estate listings. “The ad will start next week.”

  “Are you tired of skiing at Wapiti Creek?” Corbin looked up from the group Bloomberg, where he and Pramiti were flipping channels.

  “No, I just decided I wanted something better.” Geoff scanned the competing properties in the paper.

  Great, find something more expensive, maybe Edgar will hire another couple of pliable analysts to help you pay for it. Ricky wanted to spit.

  Miranda pulled back with surprise. “Better? Sleeps eight, granite kitchen, two fireplaces, and skis out to the Wildflower lifts; what more could you want?”

  Geoff looked up to answer, but it was Ricky’s eyes, not Miranda’s, that he met. “‘Something better’ doesn’t have to mean fancier real estate.”

  “Stop!” Corbin commanded, swatting Pramiti’s hand away from the Bloomberg. “Ricky—you own Intens; you’d better see this.”

  But it was nothing Ricky wanted to see: disaster danced all over the screen. A burning chemical plant flared over scrolling text that supported the voice-over. “An explosion, believed to be a terrorist attack against a production plant in Romania….”

  Pramiti split the screen, reducing the picture but not the scope of the disaster, and dragged Intens’s stock ticker into the small window. “It’s dropping fast!”

&
nbsp; Ricky froze only for an instant but dove for the phone on Logan’s desk. Four million borrowed dollars burned with the plant, two million fund dollars turned to acrid smoke, and Jon’s admonitions rang hollowly in his head. The phone rang under his hand, but he’d committed to picking it up, intending to dial, and the incoming call got clapped to his ear.

  “Intens sold; you can come get the paperwork for Ricky.” The nameless voice from Clerical skipped all the pleasantries.

  “Really.” What? He swallowed every question, unwilling to expose his ignorance to the nameless one or to all his colleagues, who swiveled back and forth between the Bloomberg and him.

  “Twenty-two.” Pramiti read from the scrolling stock list to a chorus of gasps and groans. “Twenty-one point eight.”

  “Yes, Logan; you bring instructions, we follow instructions, now come get the paperwork.” Nameless one sounded bored. “Tell Ricky it sold at twenty four and a quarter.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He hung up the phone, too shocked to correct her about his identity. Fuck! What the hell happened?

  “Twenty-one point one,” Pramiti read off to the expanding group. Dwight and Jon had emerged from the office, wild-eyed, and now Edgar burst from his corner office to the trading floor.

  “Don’t just stand there, sell the damned stock!” he screamed.

  “Twenty point eight,” Pramiti droned.

  “Bite me, Edgar.” Ricky stood straight and confident. “Already taken care of.”

  “And…?” Edgar’s face had turned an alarming shade of red; Ricky wondered distantly if he could prolong his report until either he figured out what was going on or Edgar stroked out, but the old man’s arteries might be more resilient than they looked. Anything was possible today.

  “Twenty-four and a quarter. We lost two points.” Ricky shrugged. Two points wasn’t nothing, but it wasn’t a disastrous loss, just part of the game. Now if he only knew what the rest of the score was….

  “Two points? Only two points?” Edgar shook Pramiti’s arm—she provided another update.

  “Twenty point two.”

  “Yes, Edgar, twenty-six and a quarter minus twenty-four and a quarter is two points.” Ricky forced himself to sound unconcerned and turned back to the monitor. “How bad is the damage?” The flames raged yellow, orange, and red among pipes and valves.

  “They’re saying that the surrounding towns have to be evacuated.” Jon glanced up. “They’re bringing in emergency teams from the capital.”

  “Two points,” Edgar breathed. “Only two points! Good man!” He threw his arms around Ricky, squashing him a little too tightly to catch the knee Ricky aimed to his groin, and got shrugged off. Edgar’s exclamation brought attention from Romania back onto a trading floor in New York City, but the celebrations were mild compared to the bacchanalias that greeted the successes of the weeks before. Eyes kept flicking back to the screen, though Ricky accepted the embraces, back-thumping, and occasional kiss, working his way through his colleagues until he was standing next to Jon.

  “Washroom,” Ricky muttered into Jon’s ear, too low to be heard over the low-level exclamations.

  “No,” Jon muttered back.

  “What happened?” Ricky mouthed, and Jon nodded.

  “Nineteen and an half,” Pramiti called out.

  Taking Jon’s hand, Ricky led him off to the one spot where they were guaranteed privacy for as long as they wanted. Fighting him only a moment, Jon trailed behind. Of course, snickers and giggles chased them behind a closed door, but Ricky shot the latch and fell onto the couch. Jon sat beside him on the next cushion, not close enough for their thighs to touch.

  “What the fuck just happened?” Jon was the only one Ricky would trust with his confusion, and probably the only one with the answer.

  “A Black Swan event.” Jon spoke calmly. “That part of the world’s been pretty quiet lately.”

  “I got that much.” Ricky rubbed his temples. “I mean, what happened that Intens sold at 24.25?” The world had taken off without him—could Jon possibly explain how?

  “You weren’t ever supposed to know about that.” Jon slumped forward, his elbows on his knees. He looked at the carpet.

  Jon was keeping secrets! Heat bubbled in Ricky’s gut—why wouldn’t he need to know if it concerned his own trading? Yet disaster had sidestepped him, not rolled him under, so Ricky spoke softly. “Just tell me.” He let the rage get lost in the math—Intens could now be well below the last price Pramiti quoted and still not sold.

  “You signed a stop-loss at 24.5. Guess the price fell right past it, the way it went into freefall.”

  “When did I do that?” He had not; he’d bitched about doing it, yelled at Jon for suggesting it.

  “You figure it out.”

  They sat quietly for a time, and Ricky pieced the bits together, recalling a clipboard wielded by Jon’s pet. “Suppose I should read what I’m signing.”

  “If you did, you’d be out two million or more right now. Maybe now you’ll take care of things yourself?”

  Ricky was suddenly aware that he had taken care of things by himself far too often in recent days, and that he and Jon had never sat on this furniture fully clothed for so long. Nothing about Jon suggested that he’d be willing to unzip now. Not even Ricky’s agreement softened him.

  “Everything else is covered, and I think we’ve had our allotment of disasters for a while.”

  “They don’t come on a quota.” Jon stood up and adjusted his sleeves. Ricky rose too and, feeling greatly daring after getting shot down so often, took Jon in his arms. It was like hugging an oak plank.

  “I’m not starting something, Jon—this is ‘thank you’.” Ricky rested his cheek against the dark blond silk of Jon’s hair. “You saved my ass.” His cock was rising within his clothing, but Ricky didn’t thrust his hips against Jon’s, afraid of scaring him off.

  “It’s a nice ass, worth saving.” Jon softened a bit, and Ricky felt hands at his waist. “You save it yourself next time; you know how.”

  “I’ve been saving it for you.” With Jon in his arms, Ricky let the innuendo escape, and could have bitten his tongue—Jon pushed him away. “I know, you’ve said we aren’t seeing each other, but… what are you doing tonight? I’ll take you to dinner.”

  “Already have plans.” Jon unlatched the door and disappeared.

  Probably with that jerk Davis, or maybe Dwight, who didn’t look so dweeby these days. But Jon wasn’t unmoved, Ricky knew, and savored the memory of Jon’s erection brushing his, only a moment ago.

  JON glanced once more at the knot of people surrounding the Bloomberg, muttering about the attack on the Intens plant and what it meant for the company. The stock would be available for a song shortly, and might even have a dead-cat bounce in the price, but this situation was in no way comparable to the effect of the pilot’s strike on the airline bonds. Even now, the bonds had recovered a few points, leaving Jon’s position, if not Geoff’s, in the black, but the strike was a threat and resolvable even if carried out. The burning chemical plant was true disaster, for the company and for the countryside where its operations lay.

  No, Intens wasn’t going to recover any time soon, and Jon could only marvel that Ricky hadn’t exploded with wrath. Perhaps he’d be angry later; Jon thought ruefully that he had no right as a trader to have interfered with Ricky’s purchases, nor any right now as a lover to have protected him. Yet proud Ricky, who’d lashed out every time Jon had tried restricting him in any way, had thanked him.

  Jon shut his office door to consider those thanks. Cursing his traitorous penis, standing up from the scent of Ricky’s skin and the warmth of his hands, Jon arranged himself more comfortably within his clothing and leaned back in his chair. The brief embrace had wakened his desire again—he could be on that couch still, with his clothing undone and Ricky’s mouth on his cock, a condom and a packet of lube close to hand.

  Ricky could have pushed for that, but he hadn’t—he’d let go at the fir
st sign of resistance, and only asked him to dinner.

  After, he could watch Ricky buzz off to the clubs, to find another moment of climax with some nameless man.

  But he’d said…. Could he trust that Ricky had done as he’d claimed, that he’d passed the juicy opportunities by? Ricky was a terrible liar; he’d stumbled all over himself trying to convince Davis of his love of opera and baseball, but he never got any practice at it, preferring to tell the truth and damn the consequences. Could this be the truth?

  And why couldn’t it have been the truth before?

  The sad bad thoughts and a stack of printouts from Fannie Mae kept Jon busy far longer than he expected. When he looked up from another table of worrisome figures that only buttressed his and Dwight’s conclusions, it was to call good night to Kate, who knocked on his door. “We’re out of here! You staying all night?”

  Jon glanced at the disc of stainless steel engineering on his wrist—the markets had closed twenty minutes ago, and there was nothing left to keep the traders late on a Friday night.

  “Not much longer. You go, I’ll lock up.” He’d stay another few minutes, just to make sure he didn’t see Ricky again. If Jon started to believe Ricky about his new sexual temperance, he might not have the strength to fend off his ex-lover a second time. Or the need, whispered a small voice inside. Jon tried to silence the voice with a memory of the fresh hickey on Ricky’s neck, but it suggested, then you’d never see that again.

  He never wanted to see other men’s marks on his lover again, and how could that ever be, with Ricky? He slammed the printout down on the desk. Another hour of being alone with his thoughts loomed before it was time for dinner with Davis, and the movie they’d planned to see would cut the need for conversation.