I looked up and saw that Van Loon was handing me something. I reached across the desk to take it. What he was handing me was the yellow legal pad that I’d used the previous Thursday to write out the option values on.
‘I want you to expand these projections and do them up on the computer.’ He cleared his throat. ‘By the way, I’ve been looking at them and I’ve got a couple of questions I want to ask you.’
I sat back now and stared at the dense rows of figures and mathematical symbols on the first page of the legal pad. Even though it was all in my own handwriting, I had difficulty making any sense of it and felt that I was looking at some strange form of hieroglyphics. Gradually, however, what was on the page reconfigured itself before my eyes into something vaguely familiar, and I saw that if I could only concentrate on it for an hour or two I’d probably be able to decode it.
But with Carl Van Loon sitting directly opposite me now, and ready to ask questions, a couple of hours wasn’t really an option. This was the first serious indication I’d had that my strategy of minimum dosage was only going to be good for one thing: keeping the headaches at bay. Because none of the other stuff was happening, and I was becoming increasingly aware of what it meant to feel ‘normal’. It meant not being able to influence people and make them anxious to do things for you. It meant not being able to run with your instincts and invariably be right. It meant not being able to recall minute details and make rapid calculations.
‘I can see a couple of inconsistencies here,’ I said, in an attempt to head off Van Loon’s questions. ‘And you’re right, we were rushed.’
I flicked over to the second page and then got up from my chair. Pretending to be focused on the projections, I walked around for a bit and tried to think of what I was going to say next – like an actor who’s forgotten his lines.
‘I wanted to ask you,’ Van Loon said from his desk, ‘why is the life of the… third option there different from the others?’
I looked around at him for a second, mumbled something and then went back to the legal pad. I stared at it intently, but my mind was blank and I knew that nothing was going to suddenly pop into it that would rescue me.
‘The third one?’ I said, stalling for time, flipping the pages over.
Then I just flipped all the pages back again and put the pad under my arm. ‘You know what, Carl?’ I said, looking at him directly now, ‘I’m going to have to go over these carefully. Let me do them up on the computer at home like you said and then maybe we can-’
‘The third option, Eddie,’ he said, raising his voice suddenly, ‘what’s the big fucking deal? You’re not going to let me ask you a simple question?’
I was standing about five yards now from the desk of a man who had appeared on dozens of magazine covers – a billionaire, an entrepreneur, an icon – and he was shouting at me. I didn’t know how to respond. I was out of my depth. I was afraid.
And then, luckily, his telephone rang. He picked it up and barked, ‘What?’
I waited a second before turning around and moving away to let him speak. My hands were shaking slightly and the nauseous feeling I’d had earlier came back.
‘Don’t send those ones,’ Van Loon was saying into the phone behind me. ‘Check with Mancuso before you do anything – and listen, about the delivery dates…’
Relieved to be off the hook for a while, I drifted further down this huge room, towards the windows. These were full-length, with a west-facing view that was partially obscured by hanging blinds. I would tell Van Loon when he got off the phone that I had a migraine or something and that I couldn’t focus properly. He’d seen me write the stuff out on Thursday and we’d talked about it in detail, so he could hardly doubt my command of the material. The important thing now, for me, was just to get out of there.
As I waited, I glanced around at the office. The top part was dominated by Van Loon’s enormous desk, but the rest of it had the airy and austere feel to it of a waiting-room in an Art Deco railway station. By the time I got to the windows, I had the impression that Van Loon was far behind me, and that if I were to turn around he’d be a figure in the distance – his voice barely audible, droning on about delivery dates. At this end of the room there were some red leather couches and low glass tables with business magazines scattered on them.
As I stood at the windows, peering through the hanging blinds, one of the first things I noticed – in among the familiar cluster of midtown skyscrapers – was a glimmering shard of the Celestial Building over on the West Side. From this perspective, it seemed to be huddled in among a dozen other buildings, but if you looked closely you could see that it was further back than the others, and that it actually stood alone. It seemed incredible to me that I’d been in the Celestial a couple of days before, and had even contemplated buying an apartment in it – and one of the costlier units at that…
Nine and a half million dollars.
‘Eddie!’
I turned around.
Van Loon was off the phone and approaching from the other end of the room.
I braced myself.
‘Something’s come up, Eddie. I have to go. I’m sorry.’ His tone was all friendly now, and when he arrived at where I was standing, he nodded at the yellow legal pad under my arm. ‘Do up that stuff and we’ll talk. As I said I’m away until the weekend, so that should give you enough time.’ He clapped his hands together suddenly. ‘OK, you want to have a look at our trading floor? I’ll call Sam Welles and have him show you around.’
‘I think I’ll head home and just get stuck into this, if you don’t mind,’ I said, and nudged my arm forward.
‘But it’d only take-’ Van Loon paused and stared at me for a moment. I could see that he was puzzled, and probably felt a mild antagonism towards me, just as he had earlier, but he clearly didn’t understand why this was happening to him and wasn’t sure how to handle it.
Then he said, ‘What’s the matter with you, Eddie? You’re not going soft on me, are you?’
‘No, I-’
‘Because this shit isn’t for the faint-hearted.’
‘I know that, I just-’
‘And I’m out on a limb here, Eddie. No one knows about this. You fuck up on me, you talk about this – my credibility is blown.’
‘I know, I know.’ I indicated again to the pad under my arm, ‘… I just want to get this right.’
Van Loon held my gaze for a moment and then sighed, as if to say, ‘Well that’s nice to know.’ Then he turned around and started walking back towards his desk. I followed him.
‘Call me when you’re done,’ he said. He had his back to me now, and was standing at the front of the desk, consulting something, a diary or a notebook. ‘And make it no later than Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.’
I hesitated, but then realized I’d just been dismissed. I walked out of the office without saying another word.
On my way home, I stopped off at a Gristede’s and bought a few large packs of potato chips and some beers. Back in the apartment, I sat at my desk, got out the thick folder of stuff Van Loon had sent me the previous week and assembled my notes. I thought if I could come to grips with all of this material, I’d be OK. I’d be as informed and up-to-date as I had been when I’d impressed Van Loon with my proposal for structuring the buy-out deal.
I kicked off with the set of MCL-Parnassus quarterly reports in the folder. I laid them out on my desk, opened the first pack of chips and bottle of beer, and started reading.
It took me about two hours of assiduous page-turning before I could admit to myself that not only was this material stultifyingly boring, it was also largely incomprehensible to me. The problem was simple: I couldn’t remember how to interpret this kind of stuff. I had a look at some of the other documents, and although these were slightly less dense and impenetrable than the quarterly reports, they were no less boring. But I persevered, and made sure that I read everything – or, at least in the sense that my eye passed over every word and every line, didn’t miss anything.