Limitless (22 page)

I got up and went over to the desk. I stood for a moment, gazing at the ceramic bowl on the shelf, but before I even reached out to touch it I knew that something wasn’t right. I had a sense of
fore-boding
, of alarm. I took the bowl in my left hand and looked into it. The alarm quickly turned to panic.

Unbelievably, there were only
two
tablets left in the bowl.

Very slowly, almost as if I’d forgotten how to move, I sat down in the chair at my desk.

I’d put
ten
tablets into the bowl a couple of days before, and I’d only taken three of them out since then. So where were the other five?

I felt dizzy, and gripped the side of the chair to steady myself.

Gennady
.

When I’d finished on the phone with my bank manager the other day, Gennady had been standing here at the desk, with his back to me.

Could he have taken some of the tablets?

It didn’t seem possible, but I racked my brains trying to visualize what had gone on, what the exact sequence of movements had been. And then I remembered – when I’d picked up the phone to call Howard Lewis, I’d turned my back on him.

A couple of minutes drifted by, during which the mind-bending notion of Gennady on MDT sank in. How long would it be, I thought, before the stuff made its way on to the streets, before someone worked out just what it was, reproduced it, gave it a marketable name and started dealing it in clubs, in the backs of cars, on street corners … micro-doses cut with speed at ten bucks a pop …? I didn’t really imagine things would go that far, I suppose – not yet, not if Gennady only had five doses. But given the nature of the MDT hit, it would be safe to assume that once he’d tried it out the first time he’d be unlikely to exercise much restraint with the rest of it. He’d also be unlikely to forget where he’d come across the stuff in the first place.

I took one of the two tiny pills out of the bowl and using a blade divided it neatly in half. I swallowed one of the halves. Then I just sat at the desk, thinking about how my situation had changed so
radically over the previous three or four days, how it had started to fall apart at the seams, to convulse and haemorrhage and slip towards the recurring, the chronic, the terminal.

Then, about twenty minutes after that again, in the slipstream of this downward moodswing, I noticed out of the blue that my headache had lifted completely.

F
OR THE NEXT FEW DAYS
, therefore, I only took half a pill each morning with breakfast. This dosage brought me as close to ‘normal’ as it was probably possible to get under the circumstances. I was apprehensive at first, but when the headaches didn’t come back, I relaxed somewhat and allowed myself to think I might have found a way out, or, at the very least – with a stash of nearly seven hundred such doses in prospect – plenty of time in which to
look
for a way out.

But of course it wasn’t that simple.

I slept until nine o’clock on the Monday morning. I had oranges, toast and coffee for breakfast, followed by a couple of cigarettes. Then I had a shower and got dressed. I put on my new suit – which wasn’t that new any more – and stood in front of the mirror. I had to go into Carl Van Loon’s office, but all of a sudden I felt extremely uncomfortable about having to go anywhere dressed like this. I thought I looked strange. A while later, as I made my way into the lobby of the Van Loon Building on Forty-eighth Street, I was so
self-conscious
that I half expected someone to tap me on the shoulder and tell me it had all been a terrible mistake, and that Mr Van Loon had left instructions to have me escorted from the building if I happened to show up.

Then, in the elevator to the sixty-second floor, I started thinking about the deal I was supposed to be brokering with Van Loon – the Abraxas buyout of MCL-Parnassus. I hadn’t given any thought to it for days – but now, as soon as I tried to recall any of the specifics, the whole subject became a blur. I kept hearing the phrase
‘option value pricing-model’ in my head, hearing it over and over – option value pricing-model, option value pricing-model – but I had only the vaguest notion any more of what this meant. I also knew that ‘the build-out of a broadband infrastructure’ was
important
, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. It was like waking up after a dream in which you’ve been speaking a foreign language only to find out that you don’t speak the language at all, and barely even understand a word of it.

I stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby area. I walked over to the main desk and stood for a moment, waiting to catch the receptionist’s attention. It was the same woman who’d been here the previous Thursday, so when she turned to me, I smiled. But she didn’t show any sign of recognition.

‘May I help you, sir?’

Her tone was formal and quite chilly.

‘Eddie Spinola,’ I said, ‘for Mr Van Loon.’

She consulted her diary and then started to shake her head. She seemed to be about to tell me something – maybe that Mr Van Loon was out of the country, or that she had no record of my
appointment
– but just then, walking slowly from a corridor to the left of the reception desk, Van Loon himself appeared. He looked sombre and as he put a hand out to greet me I noticed that his stoop was more pronounced than I’d remembered.

The receptionist went back to what she’d been doing before I interrupted her.

‘Eddie, how are you?’

‘I’m fine, Carl. Feeling much better.’

We shook hands.

‘Good. Good. Come on in.’

I was struck again by the size of Van Loon’s office, which was long and wide, but decorated very sparely. He went over to his desk and sat behind it. He indicated that I should sit as well.

He sighed, and shook his head for a moment. ‘OK, look Eddie,’ he said, ‘that thing in the
Post
Friday was not good, not the kind of publicity we want associated with this deal, yeah?’

I nodded, unsure about where this might lead. I’d half hoped
that the article might escape his notice.

‘Hank doesn’t know you, and the deal is still under wraps, so there’s nothing to worry about, yet. I just don’t think you should show your face down at Lafayette any more.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Keep a low profile. Trade here. Like I said, we have our own trading room. It’s discreet and private.’ He smiled. ‘No fucking
baseball
caps.’

I smiled at this, too – but I actually felt quite uncomfortable, and nervous, as if I could very easily throw up.

‘I’ll have someone show you around the floor later.’

‘Yeah.’

‘The other thing I wanted to tell you, and maybe this is a good thing, is that Hank won’t be here tomorrow. He’s been delayed in LA, so we’re not going to have that meeting until … probably until the middle or even the end of …
next
week.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ I mumbled, finding it hard to look Van Loon in the eye, ‘it’s probably … like you say, it’s probably a
good
thing, no?’

‘Yeah.’ He picked a pen up from his desk and fiddled with it. ‘I’m going to be away, too – until the weekend at least, so it gives us a little breathing space. We were rushed on Thursday in my opinion, but we can go at our own pace now, hone the figures, put a really air-tight package together.’

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.

I finished all of the chips and beer and ordered up Chinese at about ten o’clock. Shortly after midnight, I finally caved in and went to bed.

The next morning I made a quick and terrifying calculation. It had taken me eight hours the day before to read what previously I’d read in about forty-five minutes. I then tried to recall some of it, but could only summon up fragments, generalities. Previously I’d been able to remember all of it, back to front, inside out.

The temptation at this stage to take a couple of MDT pills was very strong indeed, but I persevered. If I went back full-thrust on MDT, I would only end up having more blackouts, and where would that leave me? So the pattern remained the same over the next couple of days. I stayed at home and waded through hundreds of pages of material, only leaving the apartment to get stuff like potato chips and cheeseburgers and beer. I watched a good deal of TV, but
studiously avoided newscasts and current affairs shows. I kept my phone unplugged. I suppose at some level I created the illusion for myself that I was coming to grips with the material, but as the days passed I had to admit that very little of it was sinking in.