Limitless (18 page)

I don’t know.

I never got the chance to find out.

A few moments later, a friend of Van Loon’s appeared from across the room and sat at our table. Van Loon introduced me and we all engaged in small talk for a few moments, but pretty quickly the two older men got to discussing Van Loon’s Gulfstream, and I was happy to fade into the background. I could see that Van Loon was agitated, though – torn between not wanting to let me out of his immediate sphere of attention and not wanting to disengage from the
conversation
with his billionaire crony. But I was already gone, my mind drifting into a contemplation of the impending arrival of Hank Atwood.

From the various profiles I’d read of him, something had become clear to me about the Chairman of MCL-Parnassus. Even though he was a ‘suit’, a grey corporate executive who mainly concerned himself with what most people thought of as the tedious business of numbers and percentage points, Henry Bryant Atwood was a
glamorous
figure. There had been larger-than-life ‘suits’ before him, of course – in newspapers, and in the early days of Hollywood, all those cigar-toting moguls who couldn’t speak English, for example – but it hadn’t taken long, in the case of Hollywood, for the ivy-league accountants on the East Coast to step in and take the reins. What most people didn’t understand, however, was that since the
full-steam
-ahead corporatization of the entertainment business in the 1980s, the centre of gravity had shifted again. Actors and singers and supermodels were still glamorous, sure, but the rarefied air of
pure
glamour had quietly wafted its way back in the direction of the grey-suited moneymen.

Hank Atwood was glamorous, not because he was good-looking, which he wasn’t, and not even because the product he pedalled was the very stuff of people’s dreams – the genetically modified food of the world’s imagination – Hank Atwood was glamorous because of the unimaginably huge amounts of money he made.

And that was the thing. Artistic content was dead, something to be decided by committee. True content now resided in the numbers – and numbers,
large
numbers, were everywhere. Thirty-seven million dollars for a private jet. A lawsuit settled for $250 million. A $30 billion leveraged buyout. Personal wealth amounting to
something
in excess of
$100 billion
…

And it was at that point – while I was in the middle of this reverie of infinite numerical expansion – that things started to unravel.

For whatever reason, I suddenly became aware of the people sitting at the table behind me. They were a man and a woman, maybe a real-estate developer and an executive producer, or two trial lawyers – I didn’t know, I wasn’t focused on what they were saying – but there was something in the tone of the man’s voice that cut through me like a knife.

I leant backwards a little in my chair, simultaneously glancing over at Van Loon and his friend. Set against the walnut panelling, the two billionaires looked like large, predatory birds perched deep in some arid canyon – but ageing ones, with drooping heads and rheumy eyes, old buzzards. Van Loon was involved in a detailed explanation of how he’d been driven to sound-proofing his previous jet, a Challenger something-or-other, and it was during this little
monologue
that a curious thing happened in my brain. Like a radio receiver automatically switching frequencies, it closed out Carl Van Loon’s voice, ‘… you see, to avoid undue vibrations, you need these isolator things to wrap around the bolts that connect the interior to the airframe – silicone rubber isolators, I think they’re called …’ and started receiving the voice of the guy behind me, ‘… in a big hotel downtown somewhere … it was on a news bulletin earlier … yeah, Donatella Alvarez, the painter’s wife, found on the floor of a hotel room, she’d been attacked apparently, blow to the head … and now she’s in a
coma
– but it seems they’ve got a lead already – a cleaner at the hotel saw someone leaving the place early this morning, someone with a limp …’

I pushed my chair back a little.

… someone with a
limp
…

The voice behind me droned on, ‘… and of course her being Mexican doesn’t help with all of this
stuff
going on …’

I stood up, and for a split second it felt as if everyone in the restaurant had stopped what they were doing, had put their knives and forks down and were looking up, expecting me to address them – but they hadn’t, of course, and weren’t. Only Carl Van Loon was
looking up at me, a mild flicker of concern in his eyes suddenly lurching into overdrive. I mouthed the word
bathroom
at him, turned away and started walking. I went quickly, moving between tables, and around tables, looking for the nearest exit.

But then I noticed someone approaching from the other side of the room – a short, balding man in a grey suit. It was Hank Atwood. I recognized him from magazine photographs. A second later we were passing each other, shuffling awkwardly between two tables, grunting politely. For a brief moment we were so close that I could smell his cologne.

I got outside on to Fifty-second Street and took in huge gulps of air. As I stood there on the sidewalk, looking around me, I had the sense that by joining the busy crowds out here I’d forfeited my right to be in the Grill Room, and that I wouldn’t be allowed back inside.

But right now I had no intention of going back inside, and about twenty minutes later I found myself wandering aimlessly down Park Avenue South, consciously suppressing my limp, racking my memory to see if I could recall anything. But there was nothing … I
had
been in a hotel room and could even see myself walking down an empty hotel corridor. But that was it, everything else was a blank.

I didn’t
really
believe, though … I mean … I didn’t … I
couldn’t
…

For the next half-hour, I walked – cutting left at Union Square, then right on First – and arrived back at my building in a complete daze. I walked up the stairs, holding on to the notion that perhaps I’d been hearing things in the restaurant, that I’d imagined it – that it had simply been another blip, a
glitch
. In any case, I was going to find out pretty soon, because if this thing really had happened, it would still be on the news, so all I had to do was tune in to the radio, or switch on one of the local TV channels …

But the first thing I noticed when I got into the apartment was the little red light flashing on my answering machine. Almost glad of the distraction, I reached down at once and flicked the ‘play’
button. Then I just stood there in my suit, like an idiot, staring out across the room, waiting to hear the message.

There was the low hum as the tape rewound, and then – click.

Beeep
.

‘Hi … Eddie. It’s Melissa. I’ve been meaning to call you, I really have, but … you know how it is ….’ Her voice was a little heavy, and a little slurred, but it was still Melissa’s voice, still
Melissa
, disembodied, filling up my living-room – ‘Then something occurred to me, my brother … was he
giving
you anything? I mean – I don’t want to talk about this over the phone, but …
was he
? Because …’ – I heard ice-cubes clinking in a glass – ‘… because if he was, you should know something … that stuff …’ – she paused here, as though composing herself – ‘that
stuff
– MDT-whatever – is really,
really
dangerous – I mean, you don’t know
how
dangerous.’ I swallowed, and closed my eyes. ‘So look, Eddie, I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong – but … just call me, OK …
call me
.’

A
TV NEWSCAST AT TWO O’CLOCK
confirmed that Donatella Alvarez, the wife of the Mexican painter, had received a severe blow to the head and was now in a coma. The incident had taken place in a room on the fifteenth floor of a midtown hotel. There were few details given, and no mention was made of any man with a limp.

I sat on the couch, in my suit, and waited for more,
anything
– another bulletin, some footage, analysis. It was as if sitting on the couch with the remote control hanging limply in my hand was actually doing something, but what else was I going to do that would be any better? Phone up Melissa and ask her if this was the kind of thing she’d had in mind?

Dangerous?

What – as in severe blow to the head dangerous? Hospitalization dangerous? Coma dangerous? Death dangerous?

Obviously, I had no intention of phoning her up with questions like these, but a part of me was riddled with anxiety none the less. Had I really done it? Was the same thing – or something like it – going to happen again? Did Melissa’s ‘dangerous’ mean dangerous to others, or simply dangerous to
me
?

Was I being hugely irresponsible?

What the
fuck
was going on?

As the afternoon progressed, I concentrated intently on each news bulletin, as though by sheer force of will I could somehow alter a key detail in the story – have it not be a hotel room, or have Donatella Alvarez not be in a coma. Between the bulletins, I watched cookery shows, live courtroom broadcasts, soaps, commercials, and was aware
of myself – unable to help it – processing and storing random bits of useless information. Lay the chicken strips flat on a lightly oiled baking tray and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Call toll-free NOW for a 15 per cent markdown on
The GUTbuster 2000
home work-out system. On several occasions during the afternoon, I glanced over at the phone and considered calling Melissa, but each time some override mechanism in my brain kicked in and I immediately found myself thinking about something else.

By six o’clock, the story had begun to flesh out considerably. After a reception at her husband’s Upper West Side studio, Donatella Alvarez had made her way to a midtown hotel, the Clifden, where she received a single blow to the head with a blunt instrument. The instrument had not as yet been identified, but a key question that remained unanswered was this: what had Señora Alvarez been doing in a hotel room in the first place? Detectives were interviewing all the guests who’d attended the reception, and were especially
interested
in speaking to an individual named Thomas Cole.

I stared at the screen for a couple of seconds, perplexed, barely recognizing the name myself. Then the report moved on, and so did I. They gave personal information about the victim, as well as
photographs
and interviews with family members – all of which meant that before long a very human picture of the 43-year-old Señora Alvarez had begun forming itself in the viewer’s mind. Here,
apparently
, was a woman of rare physical and spiritual beauty. She was independent, generous, loyal, a loving wife, a devoted mother to twin baby girls, Pia and Flor. Her husband, Rodolfo Alvarez, was reported to be distraught and at a complete loss for any explanation as to what might have happened. They showed a black-and-white photograph of a radiant, uniformed schoolgirl attending a Dominican convent in Rome, circa 1971. They also showed some home-movie footage, flickering images in faded colour of a young Donatella in a summery dress walking through a rose garden. Other images included Donatella on horseback, Donatella at an archeological dig in Peru, Donatella and Rodolfo in Tibet.

The next phase in the reporting consisted of political analysis. Was this a racially motivated attack? Was it connected in some way
to the current foreign policy débâcle? One commentator expressed the fear that it could be the first in a series of such incidents and blamed the attack squarely on the President’s bewildering failure to condemn Defense Secretary Caleb Hale’s intemperate remarks – or alleged remarks, since he was still denying that he’d actually made them. Another commentator seemed to feel that this was collateral damage of a kind we were simply going to have to get used to.

All through the afternoon, as I watched these reports, I clocked up a bewildering number of reactions – chief among them disbelief, terror, remorse, anger. I vacillated between thinking that maybe I
had
struck the blow and dismissing the idea as absurd. Towards the end, however – and after I’d taken a top-up of MDT – the only discernible thing I could feel was mild boredom.

By mid-evening, I was quite detached from everything and
whenever
I heard a reference to the story, my impulse was to say
enough
,
already
, as though they were talking about a new mini-series on a cable channel, something adapted from an over-hyped magic-realist pot-boiler …
The Dreadful Ordeal of Donatella Alvarez
…

A little after 8.30, I called Carl Van Loon at his apartment on Park Avenue.

Although the disbelief, terror, etc. of earlier had been uppermost in my mind for a good deal of the afternoon, another part of me had been riddled with anxiety of a different kind – anxiety about having blown my chances with Van Loon, about the extent to which this glitch, this operational malfunction, was going to interfere with my plans for the future.

As a result – and waiting for Van Loon to come to the phone – I was quite nervous.

‘Eddie?’

I cleared my throat. ‘Mr Van Loon.’

‘Eddie, I don’t understand. What
happened
?’

‘I got sick,’ I said – the excuse coming to me automatically – ‘there was nothing I could do about it. I had to leave like that. I’m sorry.’

‘You got
sick
? What are you, in first grade? You rush off without
saying a word? You don’t come back? I’m left there looking like a jerk, making excuses to Hank fucking
Atwood
?’

‘I have a condition, a stomach condition.’

‘Then you don’t even bother to call?’

‘I needed to see a doctor, Carl. In a hurry.’

Van Loon was silent for a moment.

Then he sighed. ‘Well … how are you
now
?’

‘I’m fine. It’s taken care of.’

He sighed again. ‘Are you … what? … I don’t know … are you getting proper treatment for this thing? You want the names of some top consultants? I can …’

‘I’m fine. Look, it was a once off. It’s not going to happen again.’ I paused for a moment. ‘How did the meeting go?’

This time Van Loon paused. I was out on a limb now.

‘Well it was a little awkward, Eddie,’ he said eventually, ‘I’m not going to lie to you. I wished you’d been there.’

‘Did he seem convinced?’

‘In outline, yeah. He says he feels it’s something he can bring to the table, but you and me are going to have to sit down with him and go over the numbers.’

‘Great. Sure. Of course. Whenever.’

‘Hank’s gone to the coast, but he’ll be back in town on …
Tuesday
I think, yeah, so why don’t you come into the office some time on Monday and we can set something up.’

‘Great – and listen, Carl, I’m sorry again, I really am.’

‘You sure you don’t want to see
my
doctor? He’s—’

‘No, but thanks for the offer.’

‘Think about it.’

‘OK. I’ll see you on Monday.’

I remained standing by the phone for a couple of minutes after the call to Van Loon, staring down at an open page of my address book.

I had a nervous, jumpy feeling in my stomach.

Then I picked the phone up and dialled Melissa’s number. As I waited for her to answer I could have been back in Vernon’s
apartment
– up on the seventeenth floor, still at the beginning of all of
this, still in those last shining moments before I recorded a message on her answering machine and then went rooting around in her brother’s bedroom …

‘Hello.’

‘Melissa?’

‘Eddie. Hi.’

‘I got your message.’

‘Yeah. Look … erm …’ – I got the impression that she was composing herself – ‘… what I said on the message, that just occurred to me today. I don’t know. My brother was an asshole. He’d been dealing this weird designer thing for quite a while. And it occurred to me about
you
. So I started worrying.’

If Melissa had been drinking earlier on in the day, she seemed subdued now, hungover maybe.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, Melissa,’ I said, having decided on the spot that this was what I was going to do. ‘Vernon didn’t give me anything. I’d met him the day before he … er … the day before it happened. And we just talked about stuff … nothing in particular.’

She sighed, ‘OK.’

‘But thanks for your concern.’ I paused for a moment. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

Awkward, awkward, awkward.

Then she said, ‘How are
you
?’

‘I’m fine. Keeping busy.’

‘What have you been up to?’

This was the conversation we would be having in these
circumstances
– here it was – the inevitable conversation we would be having in these circumstances …

‘I’ve been working for the last few years as a copywriter.’ I paused. ‘For Kerr & Dexter. The publishers.’

It was the truth, technically, but that’s all it was.

‘Yeah? That’s great.’

It didn’t feel great, though –
or
like the truth, my days as a
copywriter
for Kerr & Dexter suddenly seeming distant, unreal, fictional.

I didn’t want to be on the phone to Melissa any more. Since we’d renewed our acquaintance – however fleetingly – I felt that I had already entered into a consistent pattern of lying to her. Going on with the conversation could only make that worse.

I said, ‘Look, I wanted to call you back and clear that up … but … I’m going to get off the phone now.’

‘OK.’

‘It’s not that—’

‘Eddie?’

‘Yes?’

‘This isn’t easy for me either.’

‘Sure.’

There wasn’t anything else I could think of to say.

‘Goodbye then.’

‘Bye.’

In need of immediate distraction, I flicked through my address book for Gennady’s cellphone number. I dialled it and waited.

‘Yeah?’

‘Gennady?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s Eddie.’

‘Eddie. What you want? I busy.’

I stared at the wall in front of me for a second.

‘I’ve got a treatment done for that thing. It’s about twen—’

‘Give me this in the morning. I look at it.’

‘Gennady …’ He was gone. ‘
Gennady?
’

I put the phone down.

Tomorrow morning was Friday. I’d forgotten. Gennady was coming for the first repayment on the loan.

Shit.

The money I owed wasn’t the problem. I could write him out a cheque straightaway for the whole amount, plus the vig, plus a bonus for just being Gennady, but that wouldn’t do it. I’d told him that I had a treatment ready. Now I had to come up with one, had to have one for the morning – or else he’d probably stab me
continuously until he developed something akin to tennis elbow.

I wasn’t exactly in the mood for this sort of thing, but I knew it would keep me busy, so I went online and did some research. I picked up relevant terminology and worked out a plot loosely based on a recent mafia trial in Sicily, a detailed account of which I found on an Italian website. By some time after midnight – with suitable variations – I’d knocked out a twenty-five-page, scene-by-scene
treatment
for
Keeper of the Code
, a story of the Organizatsiya.

After that, I spent a good while searching through magazines for real estate ads. I had decided that I was going to phone some of the big Manhattan realtors the following morning and finally kickstart the process of renting – maybe even of buying – a new apartment.

Then I went to bed and got four or five hours of what passed for sleep these days.

Gennady arrived at about nine-thirty. I buzzed him in, telling him I was on the third floor. It took him for ever to walk up the stairs, and when he finally materialized in my living-room he seemed exhausted and fed up.

‘Good morning,’ I said.

He raised his eyebrows at me and looked around. Then he looked at his watch.

I had printed out the treatment and put it in an envelope. I took this from the desk and handed it to him. He held it up, shook it, seemed to be estimating how much it weighed. Then he said, ‘Where the money?’

‘Er … I was going to write you a cheque. How much was it again?’

‘A
cheque
?’

I nodded at him, suddenly feeling foolish.

‘A
cheque
?’ he said again. ‘You out of your fucking mind? What you think, we are a financial
institution
?’

‘Gennady, look—’

‘Shut up. You can’t come up with the money today you in serious
fucking
trouble, my friend – you
hear
me?’

‘I’ll get it.’

‘I cut your
balls
off.’

‘I’ll
get
it.
Jesus
. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘A
cheque
,’ he said again, with contempt. ‘Unbelievable.’

I went over to my phone and picked it up. Since those first couple of days at Lafayette, I had developed extremely cordial relations with my obsequious and florid-faced bank manager, Howard Lewis, so I phoned him and told him what I needed – twenty-two five in cash – and asked if he could possibly have it ready for me in fifteen minutes.

Absolutely no problem, Mr Spinola.

I put the phone down and turned around. Gennady was standing over at my desk, with his back to me. I mumbled something to get his attention. He then turned to face me.

‘Well?’

I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘Let’s go to my bank.’

We took a cab, in silence, to Twenty-third and Second, where my bank was. I wanted to make a reference to the treatment, but since Gennady was obviously in a very bad mood, I judged it better not to say anything. I got the cash from Howard Lewis and handed it over to Gennady outside on the street. He slipped the bundle into the mysterious interior of his jacket. Holding up the envelope with the treatment in it, he said, ‘I look at this.’