Frank felt good. His adrenaline was really flowing. All morning he’d been marching in and out of his office, ordering Rosie and Jason to phone here, phone there, get this, send for that, then marching back to phone someone himself. It was one of those days when he could stare out his office window overlooking lower Manhattan and New York Harbor and feel like a king.
He loved this new crisis. He loved the way it was driving the market down, just as he’d known it would; loved the way it made people edgy, nervous, scared shitless.
A few things had gone wrong during the day—Neil’s report about the bent propeller shaft, the overbooked flights to Washington, Jim’s panic, a real estate deal falling through—but he shook them off like so much dandruff. He was making thousands of dollars an hour by selling short, and by tonight he’d be aboard Vagabond in the Chesapeake and the whole world could blow up and he wouldn’t give a damn.
After he’d talked to Neil and Jimmy at noon and eaten the lunch Rosie brought in for him, he’d put in a call to his broker. As he waited he leaned back in his huge leather chair, his phone at his ear, his long, lanky body stretched out comfortably. He was a good-looking man in his mid-forties with thinning gray hair, warm dark eyes, and an easy grin. His face was deeply creased from his habitual smile.
“Hi, Al,” he said after he’d gotten through. “Selling panic still in full swing?… Down thirty-four points! Jesus, that’s even worse than I thought. Or better.” He laughed shortly, then listened. “Okay, good. Look, I think there’s going to be a turnaround sometime late today—this thing can’t look any worse than it does right now—so I want to take my profits on most of my shorts. Give me the quotes… . Right. Okay. I want to cover the U.S. Home at… what’d you say it was at now?… at 24 then, the Datapoint at 55, and the Microdyne at 30. Got it? All the shares… Yeah, I’ll hold the other two short positions…
“I’m flying down this evening… I’ve got the radiotelephone on the boat, but I don’t like to think about stocks or real estate while I’m at sea. I’ll phone you later today if I haven’t left and we’ll see what we did… Yeah? Thanks. I’m no genius. I just know that with the jerks who end up running countries things have to get very bad before anyone can figure out a way to make ’em better… Okay, Al thanks.”
Well, well, welclass="underline" even Al seemed worried about a war, poor bastard. Hell, New York City didn’t have anything to worry about. It was such an archetypal center of capitalist decadence the Russians would probably want to preserve it as a historical park for their tourists: porno shops here, Harlem there, Wall Street next… They wouldn’t nuke New York; hell, it would destroy itself in just a few more years.
Frank got up and paced back and forth across the deep rust-colored carpet and then buzzed Rosie to see if Jason had gotten back yet with the propeller shaft from Hempstead. No, but he was on his way. Let’s see, what else for the boat? The new charts of the Chesapeake—he had them. And the bag of specialties Norah had gotten him from Flynn’s delicatessen: caviar, cashews, some of Flynn’s incredible cheeses, two loaves of good bread, and Norah’s own fantastic pies: the sort of stuff Neil never got on board no matter how many times he was told. It was Neil’s one great flaw: he shopped and cooked as if he were feeding a reform school.
But Jesus, was he lucky to have gotten him as captain. Imagine, a naval officer! The guy sailed a couple of thousand miles with as little fuss as most men went to the corner drugstore. He loses his engine to a freak accident and will still probably make it on schedule.
Oh-oh. He hadn’t gotten through to Jeannie Forester yet about the change in plan.
He returned to his big chair, buzzed Rosie, and waited for her to place the call. He felt a warm glow of anticipation for that throaty, sexy voice of hers, sexy especially because she didn’t really mean to be sexy. For two years now Jeannie had become the only thing that ever took his mind off business, and he was aware that whenever he thought of her he fell victim to an almost adolescent melancholy and longing. They’d been friends for five or six years and he knew she must be aware that he’d developed feelings for her beyond friendship. But she wasn’t so much rejecting his feelings as kind of ducking and letting them slide past her.
“Frank, hi,” he heard her say. “Everything still on for the sailing?”
“Hi, Jeannie. Sure,” he replied, smiling at nothing. “Only I’ve had to change my plans for getting to the boat.”
“Are you still coming here this evening?”
“No, that’s just it. I can’t get a flight into Washington, but I got one to the Eastern Shore—Salisbury—and I’m meeting the boat at Crisfield—that’s just across the bay on the eastern side.”
“I know. You want us all to meet you there?”
“No, no. We’ll sail over to Point Lookout and pick you up. Unless something goes wrong, we should still get there late this evening.”
“That’s great. I’m sorry you’re not going to be here though.”
Frank felt himself flush slightly with pleasure. “We’ll see so much of each other in the next ten days, you’ll probably remember with great fondness your last evening without me.”
Jeanne laughed. “I like you, Frank,” she countered, “but I confess I’m a little nervous about spending that much time on the bay. I prefer water to be in a glass or a bathtub.”
“Baloney.”
“No, it’s true. Now that you’ve finally got me to sail with you I’m going to be the worst kind of landlubber.”
“You’re a terrific swimmer,” said Frank.
“Only when I can see both the bottom and other end of the pool,” she replied. “Hold it a sec,” she added, and her next words were spoken to someone in the room with her. “What’s that, Rita? No. In the second drawer, I think. With the clippings from the Post… Sorry, Frank, where were we?”
“What was that all about?”
“My antinuke group is meeting here today,” she answered. “Emergency meeting because of the Arabian mess.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” said Frank, made uncomfortable by the subject. Jeannie became too emotional about any kind of war scare. He thought of making a joke about her group’s being sure to stop the war for at least ten more days so they could finish their cruise, but stopped himself. “It’s a tough situation,” he finally said lamely.
“I’ve lost heart,” she replied with unexpected weariness. “We haven’t accomplished anything in these four years. And now it’s really hopeless. I feel like a fool for even trying.”
“Well, maybe that’s good,” Frank said. “Shows you need a vacation.”
“I suppose so,” she replied after a pause. “Some of my friends think I’m going off to fiddle while Rome burns.”
“No, you don’t,” he said firmly. “You’ve promised me. Let Rome burn.”
“I know, Frank, I’ll be there. Tonight, I hope, or tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“At Point Lookout.”
“Fine. What, Rita?… Okay. Frank, look, I guess I’ve got to go. I’m looking forward to the sail and… I’ve got to go.”
“Sure, Jeannie. See you soon.”
“Bye, Frank.”
Frank lowered the receiver slowly back onto its cradle and sighed, feeling that ridiculous tingling she somehow created in him. Then he shook his head and grunted. Why did she bother with that anti-war stuff? Peace groups had been marching and protesting for five years, but peace demonstrations never stopped a war and never would. They only weakened the unlucky country that let them get too influential.
Sighing again, he leaned back in his chair, rocking slightly, looking out at the sky above the harbor past the twin Trade towers. He had finally gotten her to go sailing with him though. In the past he’d invited her and her husband, Bob, and always ended up getting stuck with just Bob. It was strange. An outdoorsy woman like Jeannie, good swimmer, tennis player, hiker—why the aversion to water? Or was it her way of resisting him? He knew that he liked her a lot more than was good for either of them, but he hadn’t done much about it so far. But now for ten days they’d be together on Vagabond.