With Henry’s enormous trades, I’m earning commission both when they are bought and when they are sold and that should make me, Stone, and Kathryn happy. I think of the truckloads of returned inventory and how many other subprime players have the same issue. What about the really big banks, the Merrills, the Bear Stearns, and the Lehmans? What are they doing with their inventory? What if every pension fund and investor wanted to sell this stuff all at the same time and we had to return everyone’s money simultaneously? Does Feagin have that sort of money in its account? Do any banks? Banks don’t actually sit there with the cash in a vault. We sit with electronic notes and promises of an ability to tap cash when needed, but what if everyone demanded it at the same moment?
Kathryn Peterson isn’t rattled by this turn of events. Whenever I go up to her land of make-believe money, the floor has the nervous hush of people waiting for their flight to be canceled. Everyone wants words of assurance from someone in charge, but nobody’s in charge. The traders on her floor are subdued and their moronic antics seem forced, almost melancholy. Monty’s birthday party seemed to have happened years ago. Tension is making people jittery, with the exception of Kathryn, but when I try to meet with her, she claims to be busy.
When I review the McElroy escape account, the lack of liquidity we have is almost incomprehensible. I have Feagin Dixon stock I’m not allowed to sell. I have a CeeV-TV position in a deal that hasn’t closed. My salary is paid by a bank with extreme risk on its balance sheet. If Feagin had to pay out cash to everyone trying to sell subprime back to us, what would that do to our own stock price?
All employees are supposed to pretend that it’s business as usual. When a client calls and asks questions about our liquidity we have a party line about insurance and backstopping and repeat that there’s nothing to worry about. The tension is tight like an overstretched guitar string.
I have a gripping need to speak to someone in the real world, someone in a job not related to this. I need a girlfriend who teaches or runs a bakery but I have none. The closest I have is Elizabeth, who works for a start-up where I don’t understand what she does, but I’m desperate. She was my best friend from college, though she gave up on our getting together months ago. I ask her for another chance and hope she’ll pick up the phone.
CHAPTER 33
Front Running
ON SATURDAY MORNING Elizabeth offers me a limited chunk of her time on neutral turf. She’s not one to spend an endless afternoon in a germ-infested indoor gym or on a cold playground. We meet at a high-end brunch place filled with beautiful people who all seem to be experiencing some kind of postcoital tristesse. I’m bringing the only kids who will be in this place and as any parent of young kids can foresee, this is a commitment to failure.
I jam the stroller through a too-tight door and catch the mystified face of Owen. This is not Central Park, he seems to say. I can let myself feel a little set up by Elizabeth, and Owen maybe feels a little set up by me. His face is asking me what I’m thinking.
There’s another tidbit that makes this plan an assured fail: meeting at 10 a.m. I mean, yes, Elizabeth is probably freshly rolled from her boyfriend’s bed, but we McElroys ate breakfast three hours ago, had a midmorning snack, and are headed for a nap in an hour. We don’t do brunch. We don’t even know what that is.
Elizabeth is married to her work, a career that consists of cranking up social media interest for her clients’ companies. She is paid handsomely for what really is her intuition and ability to notice trends. She’s an expert on the human mind and its varied desires, and she’s so good at this because she never stops studying men—her data are always virgin and her honesty makes her a valuable friend.
“Isabelle . . . It’s been . . . like, a month!” she proclaims for all fellow diners to know. She leans forward to kiss my cheeks and the thinnest cashmere scarf brushes my neck. It feels like a thousand-dollar scarf.
“Or six months or whatever,” I say, taking in her übercool yet classy look. She takes in my look too.
“What’s that?” she asks, pointing to my little muffin belly. Yoga pants are slimming but when you toss a long white shirt over the show, it clings to the spandex. It’s not my best look.
“These pants make me look fat so I wore them for you,” I say dryly.
Elizabeth shakes my kids’ hands, being clueless that they aren’t twenty-one. She never brings them gifts or makes silly voices or fart noises on their bellies. She never even tells them they’ve gotten big. She’s one of my best friends and probably doesn’t know my kids’ names. I love her for this because she really only cares about me. The surveys of human life she seems to constantly be conducting don’t include children.
“What’s his name?” I ask, reaching out my hands to imply that I’ve taken in her whole look. Her face is glowing with pheromones. She’s tall like me but with some Polynesian Hawaiian thing in her genes. Her skin is just enough olive to be exotic, her teeth are vibrant and white, and she’s always rocking some fabulous jewelry. She wears jeans on Saturdays that are the three-digit-price-tag kind. You don’t know why they cost so much but they just look better and someone like Elizabeth knows how to wear them. When we were single and walking into rooms together, all heads turned toward our tallness and youth. Now when she stands to hug me, the room turns as expected but all eyes are for her. I’m not sad to give her a solo. I just take note of it.