A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism (32 page)

"I guess so." Not a lie. "The job wins because it has to." He said this, he knew, like a soldier repeating an oath under duress. The thing to know, the only thing, was that the oath had been arranged specifically for moments like this. The particular circumstances didn't matter. And while Gabriel might not have believed just then that the job would win, now that he was beginning to feel that he loved Lenka enough to abandon the promise of the Calloway Group for her, he knew that once he got back to New York, life would remind him of the point of the oath.

"This job means that much to you?" she said.

"I think so. I really wish it didn't. I believe that even though I love her, I can love another woman. I don't believe that I will ever have a work opportunity like this again. And maybe she and I can find a way to stick it out or to get back together when I'm done."

"Oh? When will you be done?"

"Two or three years. I want to save a lot of money, Mom. They're paying me very well. I want to save such a heap of money that I don't have to think about money so much."

"So, you want to live like I do?"

He nodded. His mother was not stinking rich, by any means, but she'd been earning six figures for a long time, had paid off her debts dutifully, and probably had fewer money concerns than 99.9 percent of the people on the planet. To her, money was largely a nonissue now. She couldn't buy a Rolls-Royce or an enormous yacht, but she wouldn't want such things anyway. She had enough money to do more or less what she wanted.

He said, "I don't know what to tell you."

She replied with what seemed, at first, like a platitude. "You can't let yourself become your job." This was beneath her, he'd thought, but then he saw what she meant:
Don't break your back trying to impress me, or anyone else, because I have managed to win those kinds of battles and I'm here to tell you that the payoff is poor.

"So I should quit my job and move to Bolivia?" He said it like it was a joke, but he was really looking for her permission, her stamp of approval on the potentially ridiculous notion. That he was doing what she had just recommended he not do—seeking her approval—was inescapable. He needed advice on this.

"No," she said and it smarted slightly. It was disappointing. Maybe she was just trying to placate him, or trying to make him feel better about his ambitions? Neither, apparently—she went on: "I'm glad that you love this woman, but you can't just quit every new opportunity in favor of something more shiny. You have to see this through. If on the other end of it you decide to come back and be with her, great. But you can't be reckless with these things that the fates offer. They offered you your job first. Respect it."

"So, if I were to get fired, then maybe I should consider doing something like that?"

"You're not going to get fired, are you?"

"Of course not. I'm just saying—"

She nodded. They were near her hotel now.

After dropping her off, he rode home in a taxi and processed her message. He was overly vulnerable to her advice, he knew—one of the hazards of being the only child of a solo parent.

By the time he made it to his hotel he'd managed to convince himself that it was basically beside the point. He'd made his move. Now it was a question of how the dominoes fell, and they did not seem to be falling in his favor. So he was looking for a plan B, an indefinite stay in Bolivia and some kind of life with Lenka.

That his mother had not unequivocally embraced this option bothered him, naturally. The problem was with the mechanics of his lie to her, she might disrespect a job as an analyst for a cuddly equity firm contemplating installing solar panels in the desert, but she wouldn't have disrespected a feral animal like Calloway, a company that whipped giant sums of money around the globe based on a secret mixture of cold math and lukewarm leads.

In the business center, Gabriel checked the news and saw no story about Santa Cruz Gas. A glance at after-hours trading showed that the numbers were unchanged. He was losing. He went upstairs and lay in bed, trying not to think about what he would do once he was fired. Specifically, he tried not to think about moving to Bolivia, but he found himself mesmerized by the question of what kind of apartment he could rent for a thousand dollars a month.

He called Lenka's cell phone, and when she didn't answer, he left a message:

"Hey, I realize it's late." He spoke in a low, gentle voice, trying to mask his excitement. "I was calling because I wanted to know if you had any thoughts on how much it would cost to rent an apartment in La Paz. Also, I wanted to know if you were going to be at the meeting tomorrow, because it turns out that I'll be there with my mother. So, anyway—I suppose that's it." He paused, tried to think if he was missing anything. "I'm excited for you to meet my mother. I hope you've had a great trip. I love you. Good night."

He hung up.

An hour later he got a text message from her:

pleased to hear everything is good. wont be at meeting. bring yr mom to my house l8er? xolv

His reply:

will bring mom @ night or b4. cant wait 2 c u 2mrow. xxxx

Still unable to sleep, he went back downstairs at four thirty and looked up apartments in La Paz. It turned out that one could rent a very nice house, fully furnished, in a gated community in south La Paz for $1,400 a month. If his scheme somehow worked and he was nonetheless fired in the next couple months, he'd have made off with $500,000, and he could easily earn 5 percent, or $25,000 a year, on that. He could live comfortably, indefinitely, in La Paz on the interest. It wouldn't be quite the way out that he had sought, but it would be, nonetheless, a way out. Even if the scheme didn't work, he could coast for a couple years. Maybe he could write a book?

The first light of day was already itching at the sides of his eyes when he noticed that it was 5:47. Beyond the window, the city was gasping awake, its earliest engines grinding in their labors. Furtive horns hiccupped below the window.

Upstairs, he showered, shaved, and dressed. Newly spruced and back in the elevator again, only a little delirious from the lack of sleep and still hopeful that he could present a healthy image of himself, he noticed that his right eyelid was quivering. Oh well.

After he'd picked up the largest cup of coffee available from Café los Presidentes Ahorcados, he returned to the business center. He sent his mother a text message saying he'd be at her hotel at ten, two hours before they were due to meet Evo. They'd get a bite to eat, maybe.

Once more, he looked at his e-mail. Nothing. The news: there was none. Drearily, woozily, he grazed on information from
cnn.com
and
nytimes.com
and the rest, while his stomach squealed and bleated in the background. He lay down on the carpeted floor for a moment. Closed his eyes, but didn't sleep. Then, in the minutes leading up to the opening bell, he checked the futures on SCZG one last time.

It was down 7 percent.

He blinked. Befuddlement yielded to disbelief, which yielded, in turn, to bright hope. He was wide awake now. The digit was red: 7.0%. He exhaled a groan and then refreshed the browser. The number held. His itchy eyeballs trained on the screen and his eyes opened wider than they had in days. He hurriedly typed in the tickers of several major multinational gas companies. They were set to start flat, or barely down. He raced over to other websites to verify the numbers. It was true. His follicles tickled across his neck and arms as thousands of hairs stood up in unison; he stood up too, and covered his mouth. His mind ran blank for the first time in days.

He ran his fingers through his hair, sat down again. Refreshed the browser. The price had ticked down a few more cents in the last minute. It was at negative 7.6 percent. He leaned back in his chair, wiped tears out of his eyes.

It had worked.

THE STOCK OPENED 12.6 percent below the previous day's closing price as insiders continued unloading shares. Judging by the size of the initial drop, Lloyd Pingree himself must have been dumping his shares. The selloff picked up speed in the first half hour as other hedge funds started shorting the shares.

Gabriel's phone rang. He glanced at the screen and saw that it was his mother calling from the Ritz. She wanted, no doubt, to arrange plans for their breakfast. He didn't answer.

After she'd left her message he sent a text:
Work probs, not available, c u @ evos @ noon.

He stayed in the business center for another hour, refreshing his browser periodically. The price continued steadily downhill. Prices of other companies overexposed to the Bolivian situation, including a Chilean silver mining company called ANVI that had about a third of its operations in Bolivia's Oruro department, were also sagging more than their multinational competitors'. Any business that drew a significant amount of income from Bolivian natural resources was now considered toxic. Investors who'd been indirectly betting on Bolivia's long-term prosperity were fleeing en masse on Gabriel's rumor.

At 10:32 Edmund published a brief on
IBI's
website saying that there was a run under way on companies exposed to Bolivian mining and gas operations; it was a result of reports that Evo had developed a workable plan for expropriating foreign gas within his first year. Though it was only a couple of paragraphs long, the online editor recognized that they were breaking the story, so it was given a prominent spot on the site.

For Gabriel's purposes, that signaled the tipping point. Anyone with an indirect interest in Bolivia would be dumping shares by now. Automated trades would be triggered by the falling prices too, spurring further and more automated sales, forcing the price down even further. The rest of this adventure would be brief. It would be over by the end of the day. From here on out, his performance would depend on timing. He needed to pay close attention to the moments.

Within twenty minutes of the posting of Edmund's piece, the price of Santa Cruz Gas had tanked so far that the spreads on E-Trade grew to more than 10 percent. There had been an avalanche of sell orders. Investors were looking for a floor and not finding one.

By eleven o'clock, shares were down 76.6 percent. Gabriel was due to meet his mother and Evo in an hour.

Seven minutes later, when the price started bouncing erratically, Gabriel picked up the phone and called E-Trade. As quickly as possible, he keyed through to the options desk. A woman answered this time.

"Good morning," she said. "How can I help you?"

"I'd like to cover a short position."

"Well, I'll be happy to do that for you. Can I verify your account number, please?"

In six minutes, he was out.

At the end of the conversation, the woman said, "Congratulations."

"Oh." He cleared his throat. "Thanks." He hung up, refreshed his browser once more, and stood-he stuffed his hands in his pockets, stared at the screen while the computer processed his request. The page materialized once again. The balance was $110,762.55.

He'd made almost fifty thousand dollars in less than two hours. And he was just getting started. The real profits were still to come. At this rate, he'd end the day near five hundred thousand dollars. All he had to do now was reverse the direction of the rumor. All he had to do was correct his "mistake."

First, though, he needed a moment. He needed to do this interview with his mother and Evo, for one thing. He had forty-five minutes before he was supposed to meet them. He'd be back by one, at the latest, and then he'd buy Santa Cruz, all long, and call Edmund and the others.

He could buy long now, of course. That was what he was supposed to do. If someone were to find out that the rumor was false and word of the mistake were to circulate, he (and Priya) might lose out on the reascent. But he worried that it would seem more suspicious, from a legal standpoint, if he went directly from a pure short to a pure long. In any case, the stress of this was too much for him. He was sweating, practically hyperventilating there in the business center. He needed to collect himself.

Up in his room, he did twenty pushups, pounded a bottle of water. He caught his breath for a minute, staring out the window at the Casa Cultura, Lenka's former employer. It was a squat concrete building that looked like an aboveground bunker. He was excited to see her now: the scheme was paying off, thanks to her. She wouldn't be impressed, so he'd hold it back, if he could. What it meant, though—that he'd be wealthy when and if he was fired, when and if he moved to Bolivia—well, he couldn't explain that to her either. She'd be repulsed by what he was doing. Better to just shut up about it. The outcome would be the same, either way.

He lit a cigarette and cracked a window. He put on a suit and a nice shirt, no tie—Evo wasn't interested in ties—and went downstairs.

In the business center, he found that the price had bottomed out at an 81.08 percent decline and then bounced to a loss of 72.99. By now, dozens of investors in New York and around the world were trying to get in touch with Evo's people to confirm or deny the rumor. The press might be pursuing the rumor too, but not with anything like the ferocity of those investors. By the time Gabriel met with Evo, he'd likely have heard the rumor himself.

Gabriel was due to meet his mother at the palace in twenty-five minutes. He was supposed to go back in and buy as much Santa Cruz stock as he could afford, then ride the return lift all the way back up past its starting price. But he hesitated. The first half of his ploy had gone off so well, and it was such a relief to be in the clear for the time being, that he decided to wait. He could do it after the interview. It was a difference of an hour or two, assuming the rumor wouldn't already be corrected by Evo or Lenka or someone else. If it was corrected, he'd just say he'd been wrong. He'd lose the opportunity to ride at least part of the return bounce to parity, but there were worse things. And, honestly, it had been exhausting so far. He felt in the midst of a spiritual marathon.