The Rare Event

by P D Singer

  Voices outside his door drew Jon’s attention—wasn’t he alone in the office by now? Apparently not—Dwight and Dr. Iggy were at it again, this time decorating the whiteboard with equations that featured a lot of Greek letters and capital R’s.

  “But if your beta is zero, and it has to be if the returns are for two different points in time, unrelated, and subject to real world events that can’t be predicted….” Dwight scribbled. “It doesn’t make sense to put that much money into it.”

  “That’s what I told them.” Dr. Iggy’s face was glum. “And they kept doing it.”

  “Now what are you working on?” Jon asked. The equations looked familiar, though he hadn’t used the more formal tools of economics since he’d graduated.

  “Trying to estimate the time of implosion of my job.” Dr. Iggy had his tie pulled away from his collar, and the pulse jumped in his throat.

  “I thought we were trying to establish Jensen’s alpha for your fund.” Dwight looked confused but hiked himself up to look confused in space he owned when Jon glanced at him.

  “Same thing, really. Because once we throw in the actual returns with a beta of zero, that alpha is going to be so negative that it will never see daylight.” Dr. Iggy took a look around the trading floor. “What’s it like to work here?” His eyes flicked the question from Jon to Dwight.

  “Erm, mixed.” Dwight’s lips thinned out. “Jon’s a good guy to work with; too bad he doesn’t run the place.”

  Run the—? Jon blinked. He wouldn’t mind drop-kicking that toad Edgar out the corner office window and making a few other changes in this slip-shod outfit; they could make a mint. That fantasy belonged with his earlier dream of getting back with a faithful Ricky.

  “What’s Araucaria into that’s working out badly?”

  Dr. Iggy shrugged. “I might as well tell you; it will be all over the papers eventually. Among other things, my fund trades energy futures. Made a fortune in ’05, and 2006 has been going okay until recently. The spread between March and April ’07 contracts has been steadily declining.”

  Jon thought about that a moment, trying to envisage a scenario where that would matter, and his days at the overly innovative outfit supplied the answer. “Long on March, short on April?”

  Iggy nodded. “The spread’s about seventy cents where it was over two bucks.” Dwight erased the symbols from the whiteboard and started doing three-digit math that would eventually need a lot of zeroes tacked on.

  “Ouch.” Jon wondered how many zeroes: Dr. Iggy’s outfit controlled assets about two hundred times larger than Wolfe Gorman Equities’ and could leverage that further. “You’re over here all the time because you’re essentially hiding from people who’re angry they didn’t take your advice?”

  That got some genuine mirth out of Iggy. “I could hide anywhere in the building, but I hide here for the quality of the conversation.” He turned amused brown eyes to Dwight and got a speculative look in return. “How bad is it going to be?”

  “I haven’t finished.” Dwight scribbled more. “But if we plug this back into Jensen’s alpha, we’ll have the answer to the other question.”

  “You’ve finished here, pal. I want to lock up.” Jon checked his watch again, then looked up to see the disappointment on the mathematician’s face. His new coolness didn’t extend to knowing what to do next, that much was clear. Jon pushed him the right direction. “Go figure it out over dinner.”

  “Yes, let’s do that.” Dwight looked an invitation to Iggy, who brightened.

  Dwight erased his figures from the whiteboard and extracted a legal pad from his desk. “Come, on, Iggy, I know where we can get some great tapas.” He flashed a quick wink at Jon as the two disappeared through the etched-glass doors into the hall. Dwight seemed less bulky and more assertive from the back—his posture was straight but not stiff, and he bent his head a little toward Iggy, a neat, trim figure who walked just a hair closer to his companion than colleagues usually did.

  Turning his key in the locks, Jon wondered how long it would take for the two to go from discussing alpha and beta to getta-some-a.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ANOTHER Jon-less Friday night—Ricky didn’t even consider going to the clubs. All he’d see were men who didn’t give one more rat’s ass about him than he gave about them. Men who had nothing to say to him beyond “Hips or lips?” Men who would take what he gave them without ever giving back, or giving back nothing more than an orgasm. If all Ricky needed was a warm place to put it, he had a right hand.

  He needed to move, to work out some of the poison of the week. Today had been a close call; he sweated out the dregs of the fear using the weights and machines downstairs in the health club. Dreams of shafting Edgar with some unexpected disaster had kept him going for years, but the reality…. Jon was right, Ricky would pay the most for that, and the steep drop in Intens’s price and his own credibility wouldn’t buy the kind of damage he longed to do the old pervert. He dropped the barbells with a clang, wishing they’d landed on Edgar’s foot.

  Jon had known that; Jon had made sure Ricky didn’t blow up. Didn’t cost himself more than he could afford to lose. At least with money. After trying to thank Jon with an embrace and being shrugged away, then trying to get Jon to agree to dinner and finding that Davis had gotten there first, Ricky counted the costs too high.

  He wouldn’t be hungry for an hour or more after his workout, though he sucked down a sports drink on the way to the shower. This was New York City—if he wanted food of any ethnicity, it was out there somewhere, though he wouldn’t look for Cuban tonight. He and Jon still hadn’t made it to Marimba’s, and he would neither eat there alone nor with any other companion. What were Jon and Davis eating? Had they gone to Allegra at last or chosen anything from a ball park hot dog to escargot? He had no idea where they might be, but he wouldn’t seek them out even if he knew. Meeting Brody at Allegra—“Been stood up?”—had shamed him, for chasing after someone who refused his company.

  Someone who had wanted more of his company than Ricky had been willing to give.

  Dry now and dressing only in his favorite blue low-rise briefs, Ricky found the frayed spot on the waistband where Jon had dragged them down with his teeth. He’d been embarrassed later and bought a replacement pair, but these were the right ones to protect Ricky’s ass from his black leather couch. He opened the current sketchpad, covered with men’s torsos from last night’s life drawing session. This being the city, there were probably sessions available even though it was Friday, but that would mean getting dressed and going out. The model had been nicely muscled, leaning on one arm and twisting to provide a profile over his shoulder. Ricky had drawn several small renderings, the last three with Jon’s face. A small caricature of a very duck-like human occupied one corner of that sheet. The instructor had quacked about classic poses.

  The last sheet had the most detail, a torso, each abdominal muscle shaded to definition, but not as he’d seen it posing before him. Ricky’s figure was more lightly muscled, not so broad in the shoulder, and had it a head, the hair would have been straight and stylishly cut, and the face fine-boned with high cheekbones and straight brows. He had pages of that face, full and partial, in his sketchbooks.

  Ricky roughed in a full-body outline, then tried adding one part he hadn’t spent much time on: genitalia. A lot of odd curves and shadows; he looked at his own groin, trying to capture length and roundness. Considering Jon’s body made his own react—his second sketch was very different from his first, though neither satisfied him. He never saw Jon from this angle. Craning his neck, he tried to look at his own erection from the side.

  Useless. His efforts were as unlifelike as the hands he’d decided to work on later. He could think about Jon or he could draw, but not both at once if he was modeling. Casting the pencils, grown noticeably stubbier, down to the floor, Ricky gave himself over to thinking of Jon. Sweet hollows and bulges danced in his mind’s eye; phantom hands drew over his skin, thou
gh the fingers were his own.

  Jon’s mouth, Jon’s tongue, Jon’s fingers—his own hands were a sorry, if lively, substitute, and nothing he could do for himself would mimic Jon’s frame draped over his, skin warm against skin. Ricky called up memories of teasing eyes and flicking kisses, of welcome and penetration. Bowing his spine to touch places Jon had once stimulated with skill and caring—he’d always thought about what Ricky liked, caressed with sure knowledge and experience. With knees drawn up to the sky and his mind full of pictures, Ricky clutched and spasmed, spurting his memories over his belly. He didn’t want to open his eyes, lest he see only the big blank wall over the couch, but his imagined companion slipped away, like the waves of pleasure that even now were receding into memory.

  Flopping back against the leather, Ricky considered the one knee still raised, leaning against the back of the couch. The other foot had dropped to the floor next to the pad, but he replaced it on the cushion, his thighs and knees becoming a frame for someone who had knelt between them many times but could only be conjured as a memory now.

  But Ricky could see Jon yet, kneeling and ready, excited, his hands cupping Ricky’s knees. His grip left only his fingertips visible, and the black leather couch, if Ricky put the picture low enough, would figleaf the parts that he did not yet have the skill to render. In fact…. Ricky popped up to look at the blank wall, inviting as an unmarked page, then lay back again to consider perspectives. If he kept his knees up like that, his legs would showcase the nude figure he’d place between them; the point of view would be his own as he lay expectantly on his back…. The lead of the pencil stroked over the paper Ricky retrieved from the floor. A cartoon for the larger work grew under his 2H and 4B—Jon would be with him yet.

  Ricky fell asleep with the pad against his chest, and in the morning he examined his rough-in. If he put a grid on the cartoon and another on the wall, he could mark the major points. It would be simple to blow up the picture to the life-size that he envisioned, rising up behind the black leather that had to be pushed away for enough room to work. Skill would be enough to add in the details, the curved shoulders and the yearning face that Ricky wanted so desperately to see leaning over him again.

  It would have to do until he could convince Jon to come back. He would have to convince Jon that he was worth coming back to.

  By Sunday afternoon, the charcoal that he’d dashed out to buy streaked over the once-white wall above the couch. If he managed to buy his own place, Ricky’d have to paint this over, but he’d only draw another on his new wall. Jon would hate being put on display like that, Ricky knew, but he wasn’t bringing home any random men who would see it. Those days were done—this was for Ricky’s eyes alone. And Jon’s—someday, someday soon, Jon would come to see it and know what Ricky had barely admitted to himself and couldn’t find the words to say aloud.

  “THESE theater seats are made for midgets,” Davis muttered, shifting his shoulders. Jon didn’t shush him; the music from the film was more than enough to cover a low voice, and it was the only complaint he’d made, even though the seats in the art-house theater were, indeed, uncomfortably narrow.

  Davis quit wiggling once he’d found a way to sit slightly sideways, letting Jon focus on the story. The French dialog had lost much of its wit in the translation to the subtitles, and Jon didn’t get some of the jokes; perhaps they required more cultural knowledge than he had. He was still puzzling out one comment when Davis started moving around again.

  There really wasn’t enough room for Davis’s shoulders if he sat squarely on the seat, a problem solved when he laid an arm on the back of Jon’s chair. The theater was chilly enough that Davis’s arm radiated heat by Jon’s neck, or was it only Jon’s awareness that radiated? Davis didn’t try to cuddle.

  Jon cursed his awareness of his companion and tried to focus on the French and verbs never mentioned in class. Seven or eight scenes later, Davis’s hand slipped to Jon’s shoulder, staying quiet and warm, not cupping. Jon left it—Davis was intent on the film and comfortable enough not to fidget. Jon wouldn’t disturb that.

  The film rolled on for another forty minutes, and after, they stretched the cramps out twice, once enough to move, the second out on the street where the motion doubled as hailing a cab. “Next time we’ll just perch on shooting sticks and be more comfortable,” Davis joked on the ride cross-town. Enough space to spread out was the main charm of the cab’s rear seat, which smelled of fried onion and spices left for a week. “Do you have some time tomorrow to look at a couple of lofts? I asked the agent for a showing at that first one, and she found a few others.”

  “One o’clock again?”

  “Ten. Might be easier if I stayed over with you.” Davis’s voice was casual, and his eyes, when Jon looked over to assess the subtext of that statement, only took in the lights and figures that were the nightlife on the streets of Manhattan.

  “Six-foot man on a five-foot couch—but you’re welcome to it.” Jon wasn’t willing to risk cuddling or letting his hands roam in his sleep, the way he’d been used to with Ricky.

  “Forgot about that. I’ll head back, else I’ll be having ibuprofen for breakfast.” Davis laughed, and Jon laughed with him, listening for, but not hearing, the sound of disappointment.

  Davis didn’t get out at Jon’s building, and waved off his attempt to pay. “I’ll get it. See you in the morning.”

  Jon stood at his building’s door, watching the cab’s lights recede uptown, wondering if he’d made another mistake.

  ARMED this time with a laser measuring device and a notebook, Davis and the realtor visited the lofts, three in different neighborhoods, in various stages of roughness. Jon could only watch as Davis investigated pipes, recorded dimensions, and worried aloud about the weight-bearing capacities of this beam or that. After shedding the agent, they found a little café for lunch and discussion.

  “That first one could easily take a mezzanine-style second floor,” Davis mused. “Nearly double the floor space.”

  “It would be easier to heat that way,” Jon observed. That was a problem he did not have with his little apartment, snuggled into the building like puppies in a pile and retaining rather more warmth than the pups. “And you’d be starting with pretty much a blank slate, although that’s going to cost in terms of finish work and attention.”

  “That’s where it’s good to be in the business.” Davis picked up his turkey panino, losing a slice of tomato out of the middle. “And I won’t even have to live with the dust; Aunt Jessica wouldn’t make me.” He slid the tomato, slick with Dijon mustard, into his mouth.

  Jon chased the last drops of minestrone around the bottom of the bowl, refusing to watch Davis lick his fingertips. “No, she wouldn’t. You aren’t going to have a problem putting the money together, are you?”

  “No, I’ve got the down payment, even if it’s more than I paid for my house in Philadelphia. Construction money isn’t a problem, either, but I’ll breathe a bit easier once I sell the house. Had some nibbles, but they’re contingent on getting financing.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard, if your buyers do it soon. Galacta and Corax have offices in the area, and they’ll lend to anybody.” Jon stopped—he’d just advocated doing business with firms he knew were shaky.

  “Why soon?” Davis peered at him from behind his sandwich. “Not that I want it to drag out, but still…?”

  “The credit climate’s easy now, but it’s going to cool markedly for everyone when the subprime lenders run into trouble.” Jon didn’t want to rehash all his research over a meal, and finished, “It’s ‘when’, not ‘if’. The signs are there.”

  Davis looked speculative. “Wonder how that will affect my clients.”

  “Quality borrowers can always get funds, but it will make a difference to their customers.” Jon patted his lips with the napkin. “Not sure how long it will take to trickle down.”

  “In that case, let’s go back to the loft issue. Thoughts?” Davis inquired.
>
  Jon considered. “That second one’s in a neighborhood that isn’t nearly as dangerous as it used to be.”

  “I was wondering about that. It would be more secure if it was a couple floors higher up. But really, Jon, which one do you like the best?” Davis bit the corner off the toasted focaccia.

  “The first one has the best location and the most possibilities, I think, but Davis, this is up to you. Get what you really want.” Not what someone wants to sell you, or the opposite of the last place you were happy. A loft wasn’t Jon’s dream, but if Davis liked the open spaces, that was what he should have.

  “Of course, but I want your opinion.” Davis reached for his iced tea glass. “Not just another set of eyes.”

  “Okay. It’s big. With a second floor, it will be huge.” Jon couldn’t help comparing the loft’s square footage with his own postage stamp of a place, or his parents’ apartment. “Do you really want that much space?”

  “I do.” Davis set his glass down and met Jon’s gaze. “I don’t intend to live alone all my life.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “LASKER’S up, WideWest is up; life is good.” Ricky had his feet up on Logan’s desk, his sketchpad in his lap. He didn’t bother looking at Edgar while he spoke, too intent on getting the line of Jon’s brow right. Life wasn’t nearly as good as he’d just declared—he’d spent his weekend alone, drawing, and Jon had spent his with Davis. What else had they done besides look at lofts? Had house-hunting turned into choices that had to be slept on? Slept on together?

  “The builders are up, the lenders are up, housing starts are down.” Jon didn’t outright say Ricky was wrong, but that was what he meant, why he’d pushed Ricky into buying the options. “Five months and twenty-five days on the puts. Life is going to reorganize.”