“I use the volatility indexes,” she admitted. “You kind of have to.”
I nodded. “That was one of the inspirations for the IPPI. I like the way it’s trying to describe the future with its number.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, because it collates all the rates that paper due in the next month are going to get. So it’s kind of a month out. I wanted to do the same for the intertidal.”
“Read the tea leaves, tell their fortune.”
“I guess?”
“While things keep falling apart.”
“Yeah, that’s the balance, both things are happening. So it’s hedge heaven. You have to play both sides.”
“But now you’re shorting it.”
“Yes, I think the long is too long, like I said. It’s a bubble. Of course in a way that’s good, as I said. More to collect when it pops. So I’m pushing that angle too, keep on buying put options.”
“So you are spoofing!”
“No, I really buy them. I do flip them sometimes, just to help keep it all going until I’m ready.”
“So you’re front-running.”
“No no. I don’t want to do that.”
“So it’s like those accidental spoofers. You really do think it’s going up. But I thought you said it wasn’t going to continue.”
“But people think it is. It’ll go up until it pops, so I want it to keep going up.”
“Until you’re ready.”
“You know what I mean. Everything in place. Meanwhile, it’s a case of the more the merrier.”
She laughed briefly. “You’d better watch out, though. If the crash is too big, there won’t be anyone left to make good on your shorts.”
“Well,” I said, startled. “That would mean everything. End-of-civilization kind of thing.”
“It’s happened before.”
“Has it?”
“Sure. The Great Depression, the First Pulse.”
“Right, but those were finance. End of a financial civilization.”
“That’s all it would take, in terms of you losing everyone who could pay you off.”
“But they keep coming back. The government bails them out.”
“But not the same people. New people. The old people having lost out.”
“I’ll try to dodge that fate.”
“I’m sure you will. Everyone does.”
She shook her head, smiling a little at me—at my optimism? my confidence? my na?veté? I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t used to that particular smile being aimed my way, and it made me a little uneasy, a little irritated.
We got to Pier 57 and I slipped the zoomer into one of the last slips in the marina, and we joined the crowd in the bar. Amanda was there with John and Ray, and they greeted us happily, Amanda with a start and then a knowing smile as she saw us come in together. It was nice to cause that start, as it’s never pleasant to be dropped. But we were friends and I smiled back, pleased to be paired with Jojo in the eyes of my friends. Inky was slinging it behind the bar and the clouds over Hoboken were going pink and gold above a brassy sun bronzing the river. High tide and high spirits.
After a drink we all retired to the rooftop restaurant and ate over the water in the twilight and then the dusk. A trio in the corner was playing Beethoven’s “Appassionata” sonata on pan pipes, red-faced and hyperventilating. It was warm for November, even a little sultry, and the steamers and mussels, pulled right out of the filtered cages underneath us, were tasty, as were Inky’s concoctions, which we had brought along with us to the table. The gang was having fun, but something felt different to me. Jojo was talking with Amanda on the other side of her from me, and of course Amanda was enjoying that; but they were not friends, and I felt a little coolness emanating from the J-woman that I could not show that I felt, not in front of the others. So I chatted with John about the events of the week, and we agreed that things were getting interesting with the new state attorney general taking over, said to be a real sheriff, though we both had our doubts. “They’re always just a touch second rate,” John said, to which I nodded. “You go from creation of value to destruction of value, you get a different kind of personality involved. It’s not as bad as the rating agencies, but still, it’s pretty bad.”
“But this guy used to be finance,” I said. “We’ll see if he turns out to be a little more savvy. Or savage.”
“Savvy and savage, that would be the scary combination.”
“True, but we’ve had some like that before. The caravan will move on.”
“True.”
Eventually all the courses had been eaten, the drinks drunk, and as before, Jojo and I were by far the soberest in the bunch. Overhead the stars blurred and swam, but it was because of a slight mist rising off the river, not anything internal to our mentalities. For the others it could have been a Van Gogh starry night, judging by their peals of laughter.
Paid the bill. Down the riverside walk to the marina, into the bug, out onto the river. Stars reflected in the sheeting black water under us. Oh my, oh my; my face was hot, my feet cold, my fingers tingling a little. In the underlight from cockpit and cabin door, Jojo looked like Ingrid Bergman. She had experienced a major orgasm at my touch, right out here; I felt the tingle of that memory, the start of a hard-on. “Want a drink?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Actually I’m feeling kind of beat tonight, I don’t know why. Would you mind if we just took a turn and headed on home pretty soon?”
“You don’t want to just drift out here? We could drift down past Governors Island and come up the other side.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You’re shorting me!” I blurted.
She looked at me as if I had just said something very stupid. Or as if she felt sorry for me. Suddenly I realized I didn’t know her well enough to have any idea what her look meant or what she was thinking.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to joke,” I said, again without intending to say it—without reviewing it in advance.
“I know,” she said, with a little tightening at the corners of her mouth. She was watching me closely. “Well,” she said, trying for lightness, “everyone hedges, right?”
“No!” I said. “Enough of that!”
She shrugged, as if to say If that’s what you want. “And so …?”
“So …” I didn’t know what to say. I had to say something. “But I like you!”
Again she shrugged, as if to say So what. And I realized I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was really like.
I turned the bug in toward shore. The few lit buildings ahead of us made the West Village look like a mouth that had lost most of its teeth.
“No, come on,” I said, again surprising myself. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
She shrugged yet again. I thought she wasn’t going to say more, and the pit of my stomach dropped down and clutched my scrotum tight, yanked my balls up into me. Then she said, “I don’t know—I guess it’s not really working for me. I mean you’re a nice guy, but you’re kind of old school, you know? Trade trade trade, a little bit of semiaccidental spoofing, hoping for a big short … like it’s all about money.”
I thought that over. “We’re in finance,” I pointed out. “It is all about money.”