“That’s a shame,” she said. “Girls can do whatever they want here.” She removed the cloth from my forehead. Then she lowered her head and her hair touched my face like feathers. Her eyes fluctuated quickly from my eyes to my chest, and her warm breath moved over me, and my heart accelerated again.
I said, “Rebecca,” because the silence felt like shallow breaths again, and she didn’t answer, so I said her name again and she said, “God, it’s been a while,” and I wasn’t certain what she was referring to but I had an idea, so I said, “Then possibly—”
Before I could finish my sentence, which was going to be “Then possibly we should first discuss this situation from other angles,” she sat up and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is a mistake.” She kept saying the word “mistake” to herself as she stood up and moved away from the bed.
I said I was feeling enhanced and should go home, even though I was perspiring again, and tried to find my coat. The pile was large, and Rebecca stood there while I searched. She said, “You must think I’m a real shithead,” which almost made me laugh after I had analyzed the word, but because I didn’t know how to respond I looked around while I continued feeling through the pile and saw her blue wool hat on her desk.
I said, “That is a nice hat,” and she said, “My mother knitted it for me,” and suddenly I became very sad thinking about her mother producing a hat for her, even though there is of course nothing truly sad about it for her, but I could feel pressure behind my eyes, so I refocused on the pile and finally found my coat at the bottom and said I would see her on Monday and walked out while holding it, and I exited the party without saying good-bye to anyone and took a taxi home.
bong = device for inhaling marijuana
Manhattan project = term for atomic bomb project (not necessarily a project in Manhattan)
obscurantist = a person who withholds data from others
par-tay = different pronunciation for “party”
performative = a statement that also produces an action
JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 9
On Tuesday I was making some trades in my office when someone knocked on the door. The person knocked very softly as if waking a child, and I didn’t hear it the first time, because it was raining loudly outside.
“What’s up?” Rebecca asked when she entered, which I didn’t know how to answer, because (1) she was the one to search for me, and (2) I never know how to respond to that question, since (a) people don’t truly want to know exactly what you are doing at the moment and (b) I couldn’t tell Rebecca even if she did want to know.
So I said “Nothing,” which makes people think you are boring, but I had no other ideas and I was slightly nervous.
“You’re allowed to decorate here,” she said.
“I do not own many objects.”
“Still, a picture or something. Some personality.” She was now standing across from me at the desk even though there were two empty chairs there. The sky outside was the color of smoke, which made the interior seem even less decorated. “It’s pretty dead.”
“Maybe you can lend me one of your brother’s paintings,” I said, and immediately I regretted it.
“Yeah,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about that. Not about the paintings.” She picked up a pen on my desk and moved it in her fingers like a conductor of a symphony holds a baton. “So, the other night, I was pretty drunk and all, and I think I may have done or nearly done certain things that could be considered somewhat inappropriate by some given the context of our professional relationship.”
It was difficult for me to follow the meaning of her sentence but I could understand it from her expression and how she focused on the pen.
“So, basically I’m saying that I wanted to make sure you didn’t get the wrong impression or anything.” She looked at me for the first time since she had entered the room. “Still friends?”
The rain had stopped, and in fact the sun was now out, but I wished it was still raining. It felt as if someone had turned up the gravity inside my chest, the opposite of feeling high, and without looking at her I slowly said, “Still friends.” I understand on a logical level how all real-world systems have finite resources and can partially satisfy only some consumers, and therefore the desires of two parties are sometimes incompatible. But it is still difficult to understand on a nonlogical level.
I heard her put the pen on my desk. “Great. Well, that’s all I wanted to say.” Then, to be polite, she asked me how work was proceeding, and I again responded like a robot, and she left, and I looked at the sunlight pouring into my dead office until I decided to concentrate on my work.
dead = lacking decoration or personality
JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 14
The next two days I worked very late and was home only to sleep. My apartment had many luxuries but I was the solitary person using them, and that can grow boring, e.g., many times I was listening to the radio on the stereo and wished I could play the song for Zahira, but when I remembered she wasn’t there, I didn’t want to listen anymore.
Kapitoil was humming at near-optimal efficiency. We were restricting our daily investment so we would not cause market turmoil, and Mr. Ray didn’t state any specific projections, but I calculated that if we continued at this rate for the next year, Schrub’s quants revenues would increase approximately 30 % over the previous year.
Then on Thursday morning I received an email from Mr. Schrub’s secretary. I was so stimulated when I saw her name in my inbox that I spilled my cranberry-blueberry juice on my desk and it left a small red puddle. She wrote:
Mr. Issar,
Mr. Schrub would like to invite you to his estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, this coming weekend. Car service will pick you up at the office at 5 p.m. on Friday and deliver you to Downtown Manhattan Heliport, where you will meet Mr. Schrub and proceed by helicopter to Greenwich. A car will return you to your residence on Sunday afternoon. Please let me know at your earliest convenience if these terms are acceptable.
I almost called Zahira to tell her the news, but it was too expensive to connect to Qatar during the workday. And I couldn’t tell anyone in the office because it would produce envy and they would question why Mr. Schrub was requesting my company, so I told my mother in Arabic so no one would understand me if they heard. I don’t truly believe she is observing me, but it’s nice sometimes to pretend she is.
I replied that the terms were acceptable, and she responded with further data about the car service. I asked:
Is it possible for me to arrange my own car service?
She wrote that it was. I removed Barron’s business card from my wallet. It was easy to find because it was the only one I had received in New York so far.
When I made my reservation with Barron he didn’t mention if he remembered me, but maybe that was because he was very busy and couldn’t talk for long.
At noon on Friday I saw Rebecca in the kitchen. She was emptying packets of false sugar into her coffee. “Hey,” she said.
“Hello,” I said.
“Any weekend plans?” she asked.
“I have a busy weekend planned with friends,” I said, which was at least partially true. “What about you?”
She stirred the coffee with a plastic straw without looking at me. “Nothing special,” she said. “Have a good one.” She walked past me and out the door. I should have said that I was instead going to try to compensate this weekend for work I had neglected. But maybe it’s better I didn’t. When people lie they often have to lie again to cover the first lie, and they continue for many iterations in a chain.