Limitless (26 page)

‘Let me come and talk to you, Carl, face to face. If you’re not satisfied after that, I’ll back off. You won’t hear from me again. I’ll sign confidentiality agreements, whatever. Five minutes.’

Van Loon paused for a full thirty seconds. In the silence, I could
hear him breathing. Eventually, he said, ‘I’m at home. I’ve got
something
on later, so if you’re coming round, come round
now
.’

I had Van Loon back onside within ten minutes. We sat in his library, drinking Scotch, and I spun out an elaborate tale for him of an entirely imaginary condition I was supposed to be suffering from. It was easily treatable with light medication, but I had reacted adversely to a certain element in the medication and this had resulted in my erratic behaviour. The medication had been adjusted, I’d completed the course and now I was fine. It was a thin enough story, but I don’t think Van Loon was actually listening very closely to what I was saying – he seemed, rather, to be mesmerized by something in the timbre of my voice, by my physical presence, and I even had the feeling that what he wanted more than anything else was just to reach over and touch me – and be, in a sense, electrified. It was a heightened version of how people had reacted to me before – Paul Baxter, Artie Meltzer, Kevin Doyle, Van Loon himself. I wasn’t complaining, but I had to be careful about how I dealt with this. I didn’t want it to cause any interference, or to unbalance things. I figured the best way to harness it was to keep busy, and to keep whoever I was exerting an influence over busy as well. With this in mind I swiftly moved the conversation on to the MCL–Abraxas deal.

It was all very delicate, Van Loon said, and time was of the essence. Despite a number of hitches, Hank Atwood was anxious to proceed. Having devised a price structure to bring to the table, the next step was to propose who should get the top jobs, and what shape the new company should have. Then it would be on to meetings,
negotiations
, bull sessions – the MCL-Parnassus people with the Abraxas people – ‘… and
us
in the middle.’

Us?

I took a sip from my Scotch. ‘Us?’

‘Me, and if it works out,
you
. Jim Heche, one of my senior
vice-presidents
knows what’s going on, my wife knows – and that’s about it. Same thing with the principals. Hank’s just brought in a couple of advisers, he’s being very cautious. That’s why we want this thing wrapped up in a couple of weeks, a month tops.’ He drained the
whisky from his glass and looked at me. ‘It’s not easy keeping the lid on something like this, Eddie.’

We chatted for another half hour or so and then Van Loon said he had to go out. We arranged to meet the following morning at his office. We’d have lunch with Hank Atwood and then set the ball rolling in earnest.

Van Loon shook my hand at the door and said, ‘Eddie, I sincerely hope this works out. I really do.’

I nodded.

On the way from the library to the main door of the apartment, I’d glanced around, hoping to catch sight of Ginny …

‘Just don’t let me down, Eddie, OK?’

… if she was at home.

‘I won’t, Carl. I’m
on
this, believe me.’

But there was no sign of her.

‘Sure. I know that. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

The lunch with Hank Atwood went very smoothly. He was impressed by my command of the material relating to the deal, but also by my wide-ranging knowledge of the business world in general. I had no problems answering the questions he asked me, and I even deftly managed to turn a few of them back on Atwood himself. Van Loon’s relief that things were finally working out was palpable, and I could also sense he was pleased that my performance was reflecting well on Van Loon & Associates. We’d gone to the Four Seasons again, and as I sat looking out over the room, fiddling with the stem of my empty wine glass, I tried to recall the details of what had happened the last time I’d been there. But I soon had the weirdest feeling that what I was conjuring up, like a misremembered dream, was
unreliable
. It even occurred to me that I
hadn’t
been there before, not really, but had constructed this memory from what someone had told me, or from something I’d read. However, the sense of distance from that other time which this created was welcome – because I was here
now
, and that was all that counted.

I was enjoying it, too – though I only picked at the food and didn’t have anything to drink. Hank Atwood relaxed quite a bit as the lunch
progressed, and I even saw in him a little flicker of that needy reliance on my attention that had become such a feature of earlier, similar relationships. But that was fine. I sat there in the Four Seasons and revelled in the heady atmosphere, reflecting occasionally – when I reminded myself who these men were – that what I was
experiencing
could well have been the prototype for an extremely
sophisticated
virtual reality game.

In any case, this lunch was to be the start for me of a busy, strange and exciting period in my life. Over the following two or three weeks I got caught up in a constant round of meetings, lunches, dinners, late-night confabulations with powerful, tanned men in expensive suits – all of us in search of what Hank Atwood kept referring to as ‘vision lock’, that moment when the two parties could agree on a basic outline for the deal. I met with various sorts of people – lawyers, financiers, corporate strategists, a couple of congressmen, a senator – and was able to hold my own with all of them. In fact, somewhat to the alarm of Carl Van Loon, I became, in a couple of respects, pivotal to the whole thing. As we approached the critical mass of vision lock, the few of us who were actually in on the deal became quite pally, in a corporate, cliquey kind of way, but I was the one who provided the social glue. I was the one who was able to paper over the cracks between the two markedly different corporate cultures. In addition to this, I became utterly indispensable to Van Loon himself. Since he couldn’t bring in his usual teams of people to work on the deal, he increasingly relied on me to monitor what was going on and to digest and process huge amounts of
information
– from Federal Trade Commission regulations to the intricacies of broadband, from appointment times to the names of people’s wives.

While all of this was going on, I managed to do other stuff as well. I made it most days to the Van Loon & Associates gym to burn off some of my excess energy, spending time on different machines and trying to do an all-round work-out. I managed to keep track of my Klondike portfolio and even got a little action in on the company trading floor that Van Loon had told me about. I bought a cellphone,
which was something I’d been meaning to do for ages. I bought more clothes, and wore a different suit every day – or, at least, rotated six or seven suits. Since the act of sleeping didn’t feature too
prominently
in my life any more, I also got to read the papers and do research, sitting at my computer – late at night, and often deep into the night …

Another part of my life, and one that I couldn’t ignore –
unfortunately
– was Gennady. Given that I was so busy in this
increasingly
blurred continuum of waking time, I slipped into an easy routine of supplying him with a dozen tablets each Friday morning, telling myself as I handed them over that I’d address the issue before the next time, that I’d take steps to contain the situation. But how? I didn’t
know
how.

Each time he came, too, I was shocked by how much he’d changed. That smack addict’s pallor had gone and there was a healthy glow to his skin now. He’d had a haircut, and had started wearing suits as well – though they weren’t anywhere near as nice as mine. He’d also taken to arriving by car, a black Mercedes something or other, and had guys waiting for him downstairs. He had to let me know this, of course, and more or less directed me to look out of the window and down at his entourage, waiting on Tenth Street.

Another thing Gennady did which annoyed me, was to shake one of the pills out into his hand the moment he got them, and then pop it into his mouth – right there in front of me, as though I were a coke-dealer and he was checking out the product. He also used to dispense the rest of the pills into a little silver pillbox he had, which he kept in the breast-pocket of his jacket. He’d pat this part of his jacket and say, ‘Always be prepared.’ Gennady was an asshole and I physically couldn’t bear to have him in the room. But I was
powerless
to stop him, because he obviously
had
moved up in the Organizatsiya, so how did I even begin to deal with
that
?

What I did was compartmentalize it, deal with it at the time and then move swiftly on.

I seemed to be doing a lot of that these days.

Mostly, though, my time was spent huddled in various offices and conference rooms of the Van Loon Building on Forty-eighth Street,
with Carl and Hank Atwood and Jim Heche, or with Carl and Jim and Dan Bloom, the chairman of Abraxas, and
his
people.

Late one night, however, I found myself alone with Carl in one of the conference rooms. We were having a drink, and since we were close to agreeing a deal, he brought up the subject of money,
something
he hadn’t mentioned since that first night in his apartment on Park Avenue. He passed a comment about the commission rate we’d be getting for brokering the deal, so I decided to ask him outright what my share would be. Without batting an eyelid, and distractedly consulting a folder on the table, he said, ‘Well, given the scale of your contribution, Eddie, it won’t be anything less than forty. I don’t know, say, forty-five.’

I paused, and waited for him to go on – because I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant. But he didn’t say anything else, and just continued staring at the folder.

‘Thousand?’ I ventured.

He looked at me, and furrowed his eyebrows. He seemed slightly confused.

‘
Million
, Eddie. Forty-five million.’ 

I
HADN’T ANTICIPATED
earning that kind of money so quickly – not having imagined, in the first place, that the MCL–Abraxas deal would be so lucrative for Van Loon & Associates. But when I thought about it, and looked at other deals, and at the way these things were
structured
, I realized that there was nothing unusual about it at all. The combined value of the two companies concerned would be
somewhere
in the region two hundred
billion
dollars. Based on that, our brokerage fee – point something of a per cent – would yield, well … handsomely.

I could do plenty, I thought, with that kind of money. I devoted quite a while to thinking about it, in fact, but it didn’t take me long, either, to feel aggrieved that I wasn’t in possession of any of the money
now
. It took me even less time to get working on Van Loon for an advance.

When he put the folder aside and I had his attention again, I explained to him that I’d been living on Tenth Street and Avenue A for about six years, but that I felt it was time for a change. He smiled awkwardly at this, as if I’d told him I lived on the moon – but he perked up considerably when I added that I’d been looking at a place in the Celestial Building over on the West Side.

‘Good. That sounds more like it. No disrespect, Eddie – but I mean Avenue A, what the fuck is
that
all about?’

‘Income levels, Carl.
That’s
what it’s about. I’ve never had enough money to live anyplace else.’

Obviously thinking he’d put me in an awkward position, Van Loon
mumbled something and looked uncomfortable for a moment. I told him I
liked
living down on Avenue A and Tenth Street, and that it was a great neighbourhood, full of old bars and weird characters. Five minutes later, however, I had him telling me not to worry, that he’d arrange financing immediately so I could buy the apartment in the Celestial Building. It’d be a routine company loan that I could settle later, further down the line, whenever. Sure, I thought, nine and a half million dollars – a routine loan.

I phoned Alison Botnick the next morning at Sullivan, Draskell, the realtors on Madison Avenue.

‘Well, Mr Spinola, how
are
you?’

‘I’m fine.’

I told her I was sorry for having run off that day, making a joke out of it. She said, oh, not even to
mention
it. Then I asked her if the apartment was still on the market. It was, she said, and all the work on it had just been completed. I told her I’d be interested in seeing it again, that day if possible, and in talking to her about entering a bid.

Van Loon had also said he’d write a reference letter for me, which would probably make it unnecessary for Sullivan, Draskell to pry into my tax returns and credit history – and would mean, if
everything
went well, that I could sign the contracts almost immediately and move in.

This had now become the controlling dynamic in my life –
immediacy
, acceleration,
speed
. I shifted rapidly from scene to scene, from one location to another, with little sense of where the joins met. For example, I had to see several people that morning, and in different places – the office on Forty-eighth Street, a hotel uptown, a bank down on Vesey Street. Then I had a lunch appointment with Dan Bloom at Le Cirque. I squeezed in seeing the apartment again after lunch. Alison Botnick was waiting for me when I arrived up on the sixty-eighth floor – almost as though she hadn’t left since my last visit and had been waiting patiently for me to return. Barely
recognizing
me at first, she was then all over me, but within about five minutes, probably even less, I had put in a bid at a small but strategic amount over the ask price and was gone – back to Forty-eighth
Street and another meeting with Carl and Hank and Jim, to be followed by cocktails at the Orpheus Room.

As this last meeting was wrapping up, Van Loon took a call at his desk. We were now very close to announcing the deal, and everyone was in an upbeat mood. The meeting had gone well, and even though the hardest part lay ahead – seeking Congressional, FCC and FTC approval – there was a real sense of collective accomplishment in the room.

Hank Atwood stood up from his chair and strolled over to where I was sitting. He was in his early sixties, but looked trim and wiry and very fit. Even though he was short, he had a commanding, almost threatening presence. Landing a gentle punch on my shoulder, he said, ‘Eddie, how do you do it?’

‘What?’

‘That extraordinary recall you’ve got. The way your mind processes everything. I can
see
it working.’

I shrugged my shoulders.

He went on, ‘You’re on top of this thing in a way that I find almost …’

I was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

‘… almost … I mean I’ve been in business for forty years, Eddie, I’ve headed up a food-and-drinks conglomerate, I’ve run a movie studio, I’ve seen it all, every trick in the book, every kind of deal there is, every kind of guy you can meet …’

He was looking directly into my eyes now, standing over me.

‘… but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like you …’

I wasn’t sure if this was meant as a declaration of love or an
accusation
, but just then Van Loon got up from his desk, and said, ‘Hank … someone here to say hello.’

Atwood turned around.

Van Loon had stepped away from his desk and was walking across the room towards the door. I stood up from my chair and moved behind Atwood. Jim Heche had wandered about half-way down the room and taken out his cellphone.

I turned to face the door.

Van Loon opened it and motioned to whoever was there to come in. I could hear voices outside, but not what they were saying. There was a brief exchange, followed by a short burst of laughter, and then – a couple of seconds later – Ginny Van Loon appeared in the room.

I felt a quickening in my chest.

She pecked her father on the cheek. Then Hank Atwood raised his arms, ‘
Ginny
.’

She came towards him and they embraced.

‘So, you had a good time?’

She nodded, and smiled broadly.

‘I had a blast.’

Where had she been?

‘Did you try that
osteria
I told you about?’

Italy.

‘Yeah, it was
great
. That stuff, what was it called,
baccalà
? – I loved it.’

The north-east.

They went on chatting for the next minute or so, Ginny focusing all her attention on Atwood. As I waited for her to disengage and – I suppose –
notice
me, I watched her closely, and realized
something
that should have been obvious to me before.

I was in love with her.

‘… and it’s really cool how they name streets after
dates
…’

She was wearing a short grey skirt, a dusty blue cardigan, matching top and black leather pumps, all stuff she’d probably bought in Milan on her way back from Vicenza or Venice, or wherever she’d been. Her hair was different, too – not spiky any more, but straight, and with a bit at the front that kept falling into her eyes, and that she kept having to flick back.

‘… Twentieth of September Street, Fourth of November Street, it
resonates
…’

She looked over and saw me, and smiled – surprised and not surprised.

Van Loon said, ‘I guess history is pretty important to them over there.’

‘Oh, and what are we,’ Ginny said, turning suddenly to her father,
‘one of those happy nations that hasn’t got any history?’

‘That’s not what—’

‘We just
do
stuff and hope no one notices.’

‘What I—’

‘Or we make it up to suit what people
did
notice.’

‘And in Europe that’s not what happens?’ said Hank Atwood. ‘Is that what you’re telling us?’

‘No, but … well, I don’t know, take this Mexico shit that’s going on at the moment? People over there can’t believe we’re even
talking
about invading.’

‘Look, Ginny,’ Van Loon said, ‘it’s a complicated situation. I mean, this is a
narco
-state we’re dealing with here …’ He went on to paint what had been in a dozen newspaper editorials and op-ed pieces recently: a vast fevered mural depicting instability, disorder and impending catastrophe …

Jim Heche, who had drifted back up the room, and had been listening closely, said, ‘It’s not only in
our
interests, Ginny, you know, it’s in
theirs
, too.’

‘Oh, invade the country to save it?’ she said, in exasperation, ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’

‘Sometimes that’s—’

‘What about the nineteen-seventy UN injunction,’ she said, her voice accelerating rapidly, ‘that no state has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal affairs of any other state?’

She was standing in the centre of the room now, ready to fend off attacks from any quarter.

‘Ginny, listen to me,’ Van Loon said patiently. ‘Trade with Central and South America has always been crucial to—’

‘Oh,
Jesus
, Daddy, that’s all
spin
.’

Looking like his daughter had just kick-boxed him, Van Loon threw his hands up.

‘You want to know what
I
think it’s about?’ she went on, ‘I mean
really
about?’

Van Loon looked dubious, but Hank Atwood and Jim Heche were obviously interested, and waiting to hear what she had to say. For
my part, I had retreated to the oak-panelled wall behind me and was watching the scene with mixed feelings – amusement, desire,
confusion
.

‘There’s no grand plan here,’ she said, ‘no economic strategy, no conspiracy. It wasn’t thought out in any way. In fact, I think it’s just another manifestation of irrational …
something
– not exuberance exactly, but …’

Losing patience a little now, Van Loon said, ‘What does
that
mean?’

‘I think Caleb Hale had a couple of drinks too many that night, or was maybe mixing booze with his Triburbazine pills, or whatever, and he just lost the run of himself. And now they’re trying to gloss over what he said, cover their tracks, make out as if this is a real policy. But what they’re doing is
entirely irrational …’

‘That’s ridiculous, Ginny.’

‘We were talking about history a minute ago – I think that’s how most history
works
, Daddy. People in power, they make it up as they go along. It’s sloppy and accidental and
human …’

The reason I was confused during those few moments, as I stared over at Ginny, was because in spite of everything – in spite of how different they looked and how different they sounded – I could so easily have been staring over at Melissa.

‘Ginny’s starting college in the fall,’ Van Loon said to the others. ‘International studies – or is that
irrational
studies? – so don’t mind her, she’s just limbering up.’

Tapping out a quick timestep in her new shoes, Ginny said, ‘Up yours, Mr Van Loon.’

Then she turned and walked over in my direction. Hank Atwood and Jim Heche converged, and one of them started speaking to Van Loon, who was back sitting at his desk.

As Ginny approached where I was standing, she threw her eyes up, dismissing everything – and every
one
– behind her. She arrived over and poked me gently in the stomach, ‘Look at
you
.’

‘What?’

‘Where’s all the weight gone?’

‘I told you it fluctuates.’

She looked at me dubiously, ‘Are you bulimic?’

‘No, like I said …’

I paused.

‘Or maybe schizophrenic then?’

‘What is this?’ I laughed, and made a face. ‘Sure it’s not
medical
school you’re going to? I’m fine. That was just a bad day you caught me on.’

‘A bad day?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hhmm.’

‘It
was
.’

‘And today?’

‘Today’s a good day.’

I felt the impulse to add some sappy comment like
and it’s even better now that you’re here
, but I managed to keep my mouth shut.

A brief silence followed, during which we just looked at each other.

Then, from across the room, ‘Eddie?’

‘Yeah?’

It was Van Loon.

‘What was that thing we were talking about earlier? Copper loops and … AD-something?’

I bent slightly to the left and looked around Ginny, over at Van Loon.

‘ADSL,’ I said. ‘Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Loop.’

‘And …?’

‘It permits transmission of a single compressed, high-quality video signal, at a rate of 1.5 Mbits per second. In addition to an ordinary voice phone conversation.’

‘Right.’

Van Loon turned back to Hank Atwood and Jim Heche and continued what he was saying.

Ginny looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

‘Ex
cuse
me.’

‘Let’s get out of here and go somewhere for a drink,’ I said, all at a rush. ‘Come on, don’t say no.’

She paused, and that flicker of uncertainty passed over her face again. Before she could answer, Van Loon clapped his hands together and said, ‘OK, Eddie, let’s go.’

Ginny immediately turned around and moved off, saying to her father, ‘So where are you lot going?’

I slumped back against the oak-panelled wall.

‘The Orpheus Room. We’ve got more business to discuss. If that’s OK with you.’

She made a dismissive puffing sound and said, ‘Knock yourselves out.’

‘And what are
you
doing?’

As she looked at her watch, I looked at her back, at the soft dusty blue of her cashmere cardigan.

‘Well, there’s something I’ve got to do later, but I’m going home now.’

‘OK.’

The next short while was taken up with
goodbyes
and
see you laters
.

Ginny drifted over to the door, waved at me, smiled, and then left.

On our way down to the Orpheus Room a couple of minutes later, I had to shake off an acute sense of disappointment and refocus my attention on the business at hand.