Paradime (12 page)

After that, I find myself being led by the hand and taken through a maze of hallways and corridors to a cramped, dimly lit back office, where Nina shuts the door, locks it, and turns to face me. Leaning forward, she takes a firm hold of my belt and, before undoing the clasp, whispers in my ear, electrifyingly, ‘
Teddy,
I’m so glad you made it tonight . . .
’

In another glimmer, I find myself rolling off a hastily cleared mahogany desk, and, as Nina reassembles herself in the corner – muffled, distant music thumping in the background – I notice for the first time that the walls of this little room are eerily adorned with dozens of framed black-and-white photos of the city’s high-society gallerati, most of whom I don’t recognise, though out of the corner of my eye I do spot De Niro, and there’s Mario Batali, and there, in front of me now, wielding a champagne flute, looking directly out – looking, in fact, it seems, directly
at
me
– is Teddy Trager.

I feel a rush of guilt here, but also, as I glance over my shoulder at Nina, of dread, because in the afterglow of such intimacy how will it be possible, I wonder, for us to talk to each other, to even look at each other, without the truth becoming immediately apparent. But a combination of Nina’s phone going off, a burst of raucous laughter out in the hallway, and a strange forward momentum sweeps us back into the main exhibition space.

At a certain point, Nina is whisked away for photos with Polly, and I slip outside. It’s ostensibly to get some fresh air, but once I start moving I can’t stop, driven forward by a dynamo of thoughts spinning inside my head, a flickering blooper reel of the past half hour, the past few
weeks
. Was that me trying to negotiate a garter belt? Was that me cheating on my girlfriend? Was that Danny Lynch stalking some billionaire tech guy he bears a resemblance to – stalking the man like an overexcited web rat who’s ventured out of his mom’s basement?
Jesus
. At the end of the block, on the corner of Hudson, I look back towards the gallery and feel dizzy. I keep walking, but it doesn’t take me long to realise that I’m heading back the way I came, that I’m heading east . . . that I’m . . .

What? Going home? Back to the apartment? To Kate?

After what just happened?

On West Houston, I hail a cab and tell the driver to go uptown. I get him to stop at 57th and Sixth, and for a while I circle the area. I’m still operating on nervous energy, but I eventually slow down and come to rest on a stretch of the sidewalk directly opposite the Tyler Building. I give it a few minutes, then cross over, step onto the plaza, and head straight for the entrance. The security guy lets me in, no questions asked, and within seconds I’m in the elevator and surging up towards the fabled seventieth floor. I wonder who’ll be up here. Maybe Teddy Trager? Who knows? If he is, though, wouldn’t the security guy have been puzzled just now? Whatever. I don’t really care any more, and perhaps there’s even a part of me that hopes Trager
is
up here, that we’ll get to look each other in the eye, and even talk.

When I emerge from the elevator, the first thing that hits me is the coruscating Manhattan nightscape. I walk – almost stumble – across reception, and apart from the Paradime logo, which is everywhere, I can’t really focus on anything.

‘Mr Trager?’

I turn, and a young man is standing next to me with a bottle of chilled water on a small silver tray. I look at him for a moment and then take the bottle. It’s actually quite welcome. I hold it against my cheek, close my eyes and exhale. Then I open my eyes again and look around. The place isn’t deserted, as you might expect, but it’s not busy either. Most of the offices are visible through lightly frosted panels or walls of glass. I can see Doug Shaw, for example, in his huge corner office, slumped behind a desk. He’s on the phone, facing away from reception.

The young man is still standing next to me, and I turn back to him. This is going to be a weird question, but I ask it anyway.

‘Which office is mine?’

A barely perceptible twitch is all he reveals of his surprise. ‘Of course, Mr Trager. Please, follow me.’

As he leads the way, I open the bottle of water and take a long slug from it. Trager’s office is similar to Shaw’s. It’s on the opposite corner of the seventieth floor and is bigger than everything around it. The young man holds the door open for me.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he says, ‘but Mr Shaw asked me –
again
– to leave those papers for you to sign. They’re on your desk.’

I mumble something, dismissing him with a nod. I head straight for the desk, settle into the swivel chair behind it and just . . .
swivel
, slowly, rhythmically. Because this is it, this is the seat of power. This is the heart of Paradime’s corporate empire.

But what happens next? Where do I take this?

And how long before someone calls security?

I glance around the office and, after a moment, catch sight of my reflection in a large window opposite where I’m sitting. Disconcerted, I lean forward in the chair and gaze at the image. Is that who I’ve become?
That
guy? A venture capitalist, a speculator with a portfolio in the billions?

I lean back in the chair and swivel some more.

Though how hard can it be, right? As work, I mean. You sit around all day making phone calls, reading quarterly reports, trying to pick winners, signing shit? The truth is, I’m not sure you’d get a cigarette paper between one of these VC guys and your average degenerate gambler studying racing forms at Belmont or Saratoga.

Just then my eye falls on a neat stack of papers in front of me on the desk. I stare at it for a while. I pick a few pages up and flick through them. It’s no surprise that the name PromTech jumps out at me, though nothing else I see here makes much sense. It’s financial jargon, legalese. It’s a contract.

But now it’s my
job
, as well. At least in theory.

So – I find myself wondering – is PromTech a winner? Does it have form? I look around for something to write with. I scan the desktop, then rummage through a few drawers. I soon find a very elegant silver fountain pen.

But how does this guy sign his name?

I go through a bunch of other stuff in the drawers and eventually find something with Trager’s signature on it. I copy it out several times on a separate sheet of paper and end up doing it quite well. Then I identify where in the documents I have to sign. There are twelve places, but spread out over three separate copies of the contract. In each place, Doug Shaw has signed, as have two others, people from PromTech, presumably.

I hold the pen suspended over the first page.

Fuck it. Here goes.

I sign twelve times, getting faster as I go, and when I’ve finished, I toss the pen back onto the desk.

There. Action.

Or forgery, more like. Malicious personation, fraud. Whatever it is, it should get me a decent slice of jail time.

I lean back in the chair now and close my eyes.

Fuck
.

Is this what I wanted? Power? Wealth? Respect? When all that could possibly be on offer was just the fleeting illusion of these things? The shiny surface of them? What a jerk I’ve been – indulging this fantasy, going on this inverted and insane tour of duty, behaving recklessly.

Stupidly.

And
meanly
.

I open my eyes and take out my cellphone. Swivelling again, I call Kate and, after a tense initial exchange, ask her to just
listen
to me. Then I tell her – solemnly, almost whispering – that I’m really sorry, that my head is a mess, that I’ve done some fucked-up things, and that, yes, maybe I do need some kind of help, treatment, therapy, whatever, but that more than anything else in the world I don’t want to lose
her
, I don’t want to lose the future we have together
. . . that I love her . . .

‘Well, then,’ Kate says, audibly stifling tears, ‘get off the phone and come
home
, you moron.’

This is a huge relief to me, and after I put the phone down I sit for a while in the stillness of this empty office, taking it in, processing it. But when I’m ready to leave, to get out from behind the desk, I look up and see, through a layer of frosted glass, the blurry but unmistakable figure of Doug Shaw approaching from the far side of reception.

I flop into the chair again and sigh. Are we at the end of the line here? Are the security guys on their way over too?

Shaw soon appears in the doorway. He stands there for a moment, looking in.

‘You okay, Teddy?’

‘Yeah.’

But I’m not, and this is weird. I let the mask slip there by making that call to Kate, and I feel as if Shaw should somehow know this and be using my real name.

Calling me Danny.

He enters the room and walks over to the desk, almost sidles up to it. He eyes the documents. I glance at them myself, having more or less forgotten about them. He picks a wad of pages up, simultaneously slipping on his glasses, and flicks through them. He cracks a thin smile.

‘You signed them?’

I nod again, but don’t say anything.

‘Well,
that’s
an interesting development.’

But he seems a lot more than interested. He seems excited, and maybe a little agitated, or even confused. He picks up the rest of the pages and shuffles them all together. Holding them against his chest now, he moves away from the desk and across the room. When he’s at the door, he turns and looks back.

‘I’m glad you did this, Teddy.’ He pauses. ‘And stick around, yeah? I’m going to make a couple of calls. Then I think we need to have a proper talk. And maybe a drink? To celebrate?’

‘Sure.’

After Shaw leaves, I stand up. What the fuck did I just do? Greenlight the PromTech deal? Okay, on one level,
cool
. . . but on another, does it matter, and do I really care? No. Teddy Trager would have signed in the end, he would have succumbed, that seems inevitable to me, because after a certain point with these people money isn’t about what it can get you any more, it’s all just numbers, and the acquisition of it becomes its own motivating force . . . a little money, a lot, an obscene amount, what’s the difference? It’s a joke. Whereas
I
don’t even have enough of the stuff (it’s just occurring to me now) to get a cab ride home, having blown most of my last twenty bucks coming up here.

But at least I have a Metro card.

I go to the door, and hover in front of it. I’m nervous. I don’t want to be seen, but reception is pretty much deserted now, so I head straight for the elevators. As I’m waiting for a car to arrive, I look back over at Shaw’s office. It’s hard to tell, but there seems to be something going on, a flurry of activity. Shaw himself is on the phone again, pacing up and down, staring at the floor as he talks. The young man who greeted me with the water earlier is standing near the door, consulting a tablet. And a young woman is leaning over the front of Shaw’s desk. She appears to be rearranging some papers.

An elevator car pings open, and I slip inside.

I have no idea what just happened up here, what’s real any more, what isn’t, but as I descend to ground level and make my way out of the building and along the street to the nearest subway stop, and as I sit on the train, and then walk the last few blocks to my building, I know I’ve had enough, that I’m done here, that it’s over. But an inevitable consequence of this realisation is that my sense of desperation reboots. Because making up with Kate on the phone like that? The rush of emotion? The flood of honesty? The declaration of love even? None of that is going to pay the rent or clear the bills. None of that is going to ward off a future of shitty, soul-sapping jobs . . . a future in which people like me and Kate are disposable, in which we’re little more than monetisable data points in some algorithmic sequence. And is that what I
want
? For her? For me? For the kid we’ve so often nearly conjured up in conversation? A life of attrition? A future that is circumscribed, constricted, already bankrupt?

Is there any choice?

When I’m about half a block from my building, I slow down, almost to a crawl, not because I’m changing my mind or having second thoughts. . . . it’s because up ahead I see something that obliterates any possibility of thought. Parked along the kerb there is a distinctive-looking, ultramarine-blue sports car, and leaning against it is a man who’s about my height and build.

I stop, and he turns to look at me.

Teddy Trager steps forward from the car. Within seconds we’re in front of each other – three feet apart, right there on the sidewalk. At first, all I can do is stare at him. I’m aware of traffic sounds, of people passing by in either direction, of the suit he’s got on, but mostly I’m aware of his face, its familiarity, its growing strangeness, its sudden unreadability.

‘So, tell me,’ he says, breaking the silence. ‘What’s your next move?’

I don’t know what to say here. I don’t
have
a next move. All along, this has been an extended trance, a fever dream. I shake my head slightly but don’t say anything.

‘Well?’

A part of me wants to reach out and touch his face, check if it’s real – to check if
he’s
real.

‘There is no move,’ I say eventually.

‘Come on.’ His voice is soft and measured. ‘You must have something in mind.’ He makes a gesture with his hand. ‘I mean . . . all of
this
?’

What does he mean? Is he referring to
my
suit? I’m not getting into that with him. I’m self-conscious enough as it is. Besides, I have more immediate concerns. Like how he knows who I am and where I live. Like what
his
next move is. But my mind is tripping over itself now, and the question I manage to ask, in a whisper, is as basic as it gets.

‘What is this?
What’s going on?
’

Trager shrugs. ‘Nothing really. It’s just that . . . I know a lot of people, as I’m sure you’re aware, and I thought . . .’

‘Yeah?’

‘I thought I might be able to help you in some way.’

‘
Help
me?
Look, Mr Trager, where did you—’

He holds a hand up to stop me, and then nods at his car. ‘Come on, let’s go for a drive, cruise around for a bit, talk.’ He pauses. ‘And by the way, it’s Teddy.’

I feel sick. Is this
happening
?

Leaning back slightly, I look to the left and up at our building. I look at our fourth-floor window. Where Kate is waiting for me, right now.

I’m assuming.

I turn back and look at Trager, barely able to focus. What if I’d come home, I wonder, walked up the stairs, opened the door, and peered in to see
him
there, with Kate reassembling herself in the corner . . . a muffled bass thumping through from the next apartment and the kitchen table swept clear, everything strewn on the floor . . .

‘How about it, Danny?’

‘Okay,’ I say.

I’m nervous, but as I follow him over to the car, I feel an unexpected rush of excitement. I’ve read about how he likes to drive around at night, how that’s when he does his best thinking, so there’s no reason why this shouldn’t at least be interesting. I settle into the passenger seat and Trager starts the car. It hums softly to life, takes off, and soon we’re on First Avenue, heading uptown.

Trager does most of the talking and seems to know a lot about me. When he mentions Gideon and Afghanistan I must act surprised, because he picks up on it.

‘Don’t you realise,’ he says, ‘how easy it is to accumulate data about someone, once you get a line on them?’

‘But how did you get a line on
me
?’

‘A simple tail at first, a bit of surveillance, a background check. You didn’t exactly make it hard.’

I swallow.

They’re watching you like you’re a video game, Danny.

I look at Trager. ‘Yeah, but when did you—’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Was it your driver? That day outside the Tyler?’

‘Yes. But
I
could have spotted you just as easily.’

And he’s right, I suppose. I was there a lot. ‘So, what did . . .’ I’m not sure how to frame the question.

‘What did I
think
?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I . . .’

But then he goes silent for a while, seems to be giving the question serious consideration. We pass 23rd Street and get a run on the lights. Then, after he turns west onto 34th, he starts talking again, riffing on the idea of doubles, the doppelgänger. ‘So what exactly is it, a ghostly replica? An evil twin? A foreshadow of something awful? A foreshadow of
death
?’ He shakes his head. ‘No, that’s all bullshit, because you know what, Danny? It’s a coincidence, pure and simple, I’m your lookalike, you’re mine, and there’s no mystery to it. We weren’t separated at birth. We’re not clones. Okay, we’re pretty much identical, but the one thing we
don’t
have in common is the same genes.’ He pauses. ‘Now what are the odds of that?’

I don’t think he’s expecting an actual answer.

‘Well, let me tell you. Given the component parts of the human face, and the possible variations in their structure and arrangement – distance between the eyes, for example, width of the nose, shape of the cheekbones, skin texture – given all of that, the figure, apparently, is one in a billion, or a little under.’

I want to say
holy shit
, but I just nod.

‘They’ve made huge advances in this recently,’ he goes on, ‘in face-recognition technology, retinal scanning, biometrics. I think Paradime even owns a company that does this, but the point is, with
seven
billion people walking round the planet, what do you know?’ He waves a hand back and forth between us. ‘It’s like we have a winning lottery ticket here . . .’ He seems excited, energised, as if this is a game or a puzzle to be solved. He keeps talking, getting into the science of it, the math, probability theory, even briefly sketching a couple of what I assume are supposed to be equations in the air directly in front of him. Then he gets into psychology, the nature of identity, of repression and alienation, he mentions Freud and Lacan, he talks about virtual avatars and the influence of video-game technology. I get fairly engrossed in what he’s saying, and when I sort of snap out of it for a second to look around, I’m alarmed to see that we’re on the Hudson Parkway, moving north, and moving pretty fast too.

I want to ask him where we’re going, but I don’t want to interrupt his flow either. He’s the same charismatic Teddy Trager I’ve seen in multiple YouTube clips, but up close like this the experience is different. It’s more immediate, and a lot more compelling.

‘So that’s what we have here, Danny, it’s just one of those things in nature, a weird anomaly – and don’t get me wrong, I think it’s truly amazing – but it
can
be explained. It doesn’t have to be magic, or a metaphor for something else. I mean, we have science. We understand now that a clap of thunder isn’t the roar of an angry god. We don’t worship the sun any more.’ He pauses. ‘We’re rational beings, right?’

Weirdly, I think he
is
expecting an answer to this one.

‘Yeah, sure. Of course.’

After another silence, he says, ‘I researched all of this, after you popped up on my radar. I got curious. But I guess what I’m wondering now is, how do
you
feel about it? Because it seems to me like you’re maybe a little confused, or . . . thrown off balance by what’s happening.’

I look at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That suit you’re wearing, for instance. Quitting your job. The fact that you’ve been more or less stalking me.’ He clears his throat. ‘My guess is that—’

‘Sounds like
you’ve
been stalking
me
.’

‘No, no,’ Trager says, shaking his head, ‘that was in reaction to what
you
were doing. Look, my guess here is that you’ve been under a tremendous amount of pressure lately, still are, in fact, and that this . . . this thing, whatever it is, has sent you – and understandably – into something of a tailspin.’

‘
What?
That’s . . . ridiculous.’

‘Oh, you’re
not
under pressure? Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘No . . . I mean, okay, I
am
, but . . .’

‘Afghanistan, right?’ He turns to me for a second, then looks back at the road. ‘There was a situation at the base, people got killed, there’s legal fallout, Gideon are screwing with you, the banks won’t leave you alone, you’ve got debts, you can’t find work, whatever . . . look, I get it.’

Am I hearing this right? He
gets
it?

‘Okay, Danny, that probably sounds a bit rich coming from someone like me . . . but I mean it. And when I said I might be able to help? I meant that too.’

I consider this for a moment. ‘Help how?’

‘There are various ways.’ He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘And believe me, Danny, I know how to do it. I run a couple of foundations. I gave away four hundred million dollars last year.’

I’ve read about his charity work all right, but none of it really sank in. It didn’t seem that interesting at the time.

‘Why would you help
me
?’

He shrugs. ‘Isn’t it obvious?
Look
at us. The thing is . . . I feel . . .’

‘What?’

He waves a hand in front of him, as though trying to summon an answer from thin air. ‘Well, I feel a sense of responsibility. Is that insane? And despite what I said earlier about being rational . . . I have to confess something.’ He laughs. ‘I’m finding this incredibly weird. Aren’t you? Not only do I
feel
like I’m talking to myself, I look at you and realise that I actually
am
.’ He laughs again. ‘And
you
are too, right? I mean, like it or not, we have something here, we’re connected in some way. So of course I’m going to try and help.’

I’m confused. My initial resistance to Trager is quickly breaking down. He’s charismatic and forceful, there’s no denying that, but he seems sincere too. Is that possible? Or is it just that he mentioned money a moment ago and I
want
to believe he’s sincere? I look around again. We’ve left the city well behind us now and the Hudson has become the Saw Mill. Where are we going? Someplace upstate?

Trager shakes his head, and shrugs. ‘Sorry to talk about money like that, by the way. You must have thought I was trying to impress you or something. I wasn’t.’

‘I know.’ Now I actually am warming to him. ‘I’ve read about your foundations,’ I say. ‘I’ve read quite a bit about you, in fact.’ I pause. ‘I’m a good stalker. Attentive.’

‘I wouldn’t expect anything less.’

We let this little icebreaker work its thing for a while. Trager focuses on the road, and I focus on the car’s interior, on the rich, creamy leather upholstery and the polished mahogany trim.

Then he says, ‘You know, the thing is, I more or less made my money by accident. It was all about timing, all about being one of those special-ed übergeeks who comes along with a really cool idea at
just
the right moment. In my case, I’m talking ten, twelve years ago . . . I was young, I was naive, the markets had a hard-on for anything tech-related, investors were circling. What could go wrong?’

‘But you did well.’

‘Yeah, I did well, by
any
standard, but man, when that spigot opens up and starts gushing out money, there’s no way of stopping it, and it changes everything.’

‘How so?’

‘You end up playing the game, whether you want to or not. You end up sitting across boardroom tables from people who spend every day of their professional lives behaving like cornered rats.’ He turns to look at me for a second. ‘What, you think if you put on an expensive suit it’ll all be nice and civilised? Like that’s some form of protection? This is a war zone. Forget Afghanistan. Forget Iraq. Forget
Vietnam
. You want the real
Apocalypse Now
, watch Bloomberg News, read the
Wall Street Journal
.’ He exhales loudly in exasperation. ‘I gave this talk at a university once, a few years ago, you can see it on YouTube, it was meant to be a kind of mission statement where I tried to lay out an alternative vision for all of this stuff. But you know what? No one took any notice, because the ironic thing is, the richer you get, the less people actually listen to your words, all they can hear is the sweet fucking ker-
ching
of your money . . .’

‘But isn’t that what you do? Invest in companies? Aren’t you a money
guy
?’

‘Yeah, I am
now
, but that’s because I have so fucking much of the stuff. It becomes its own self-replicating system. It takes you over. It’s a trap.’ He makes a snorting sound and bangs his hand on the steering wheel. ‘I know, I know, you should have
my
problems, right?
Jesus
. Tell me to shut up.’

‘No, no, I’m . . . I’m . . .’ Enthralled, is what. But I’m not going to say
that
. ‘It’s okay, go on.’

And he does. ‘So lately I’m doing some work with this company called Prometheus Technologies, right? PromTech. And it’s incredibly exciting, the ideas that are spinning around that place, you’d love it, it’s like DARPA on steroids, or CERN, big data, adaptive systems, the singularity, AI, longevity, biometrics, remote DNA tracking –
that’s
a revolution right there – but you know, take your pick, it’s all long-view stuff. I mean, these guys are essentially redrawing the map, or it’s like they come from the future or something. But you know what their problem is? They haven’t got enough money. It’s insane, almost hilarious. And they want
us
to fund them, and officially we, as in me and my partner, want to fund
them
, but you know what? I’m not going to fucking allow it, because we’ll just end up infecting them with our own special brand of toxic shit.’

Staring at the road ahead, I feel as if my heart is being slowly dipped in liquid nitrogen.

‘You see, here’s the thing,’ Trager goes on, ‘one of the products they have in the pipeline is a new type of VR game console, they’re calling it the LudeX, and it’s pretty amazing, but still, it’s just a fucking game console, it’s a toy.’ He waves a dismissive hand in the air. ‘With money behind it, though, it’ll burn through the hype cycle and dominate the market, I know it will. I also know from experience that that kind of success will destroy PromTech, it’ll sideline all their other ideas and distract them from the bigger picture.’

‘Your partner,’ I say, almost in a whisper, ‘that’s . . . Doug Shaw?’

‘Correct. Now, he’s really anxious to get his hands on the LudeX, because he sees the potential in it. He had the contracts drawn up weeks ago and has been bugging me to sign them, but I’m not going to do it. I’m
not
. I made that mistake once before in my life, and it’s not going to happen again. I don’t care. I mean, how rich can you be? It’s absurd.’