Colin Harrison - Afterburn

"It trades at about twenty-five."

She shook her head. "No, no, it's closer to thirty-four."

"Jesus, I had no idea."

She'd started with lots of two thousand shares, Ellie told him, selling them whenever the stock moved up a dollar or two, buying back when the stock fell two dollars or more. The volume on Manila Telecom, Charlie knew, was huge, so it was easy to jump in and out of the stock. Some days, Ellie said, she made a few thousand dollars, other days lost a bit. She'd moved up to orders of five thousand shares and even a few of ten thousand. Because the stock had moved in a classic upward sawtooth motion, just as Teknetrix's had, it was hard not to make money once you fell into the rhythm of the thing.

"How much?" Charlie asked.

"Well, I got it up to almost three hundred thousand, actually."

Why did this cause him so much pain? "You turned sixty-two thousand into three hundred in what, five or six months?"

"I did, and I'm pretty excited about it. No wonder men are always talking about the stock market."

"Who is going to pay the capital-gains taxes on all that?"

She smiled. "You are, mister."

He studied her face. "I guess I am."

"Vista is almost full. I just went ahead."

"That's what you call it, Vista?"

"Sure."

"We're locked in?"

She nodded. "Everything. It's a beautiful house, Charlie."

"How much? No-don't tell me yet."

"It sets us up, Charlie. We don't have to go now. But it's there, it's ready. We can move bit by bit if we want. I had to do it this way, don't you see? You never would have agreed to go anywhere. I just had to do it this way. I know you too well, sweetie."

Not well enough, he thought bitterly, not well enough to know that after thirty-eight years of marriage I am erecting a gigantic lie that obliterates your tiny Vista del Muerte fib, I am resisting your kindly management of me, my dear wife, I will not be taken that way, I will not be shot out of the sky like that, not without my own secret consolation.

After Ellie had taken her sleeping pills (how many? more than usual?), he tightened his tie and washed his face. Impossible to sleep; he wanted to be in Shanghai now, hollering at Anderson to get the factory started again. Ellie didn't understand the urgency, or if she did, she didn't care. Teknetrix was an ugly beast to her, a thing that ate at Charlie when he could be playing golf or traveling. It depressed her, in fact, that he still cared so much about the company. She's trying to pull me out of it, he thought, watching her make soft humming noises to herself as she waited for the pills to plow her under. At times he found the sounds endearing, as if she were trying to keep up her side of a conversation while desperately tired, and other times her utterances seemed to represent her inability to retreat from the endless obsessive conversation with her set of friends. Talking, always talking, discussing each event and disaster and intrigue and tragedy, maintaining the soapless opera over the phone and tea and lunches at their favorite Japanese restaurant, weaving the talk in a relentlessly female way, the men in their lives-for he had overheard Ellie on the phone-reduced to gray-haired boys whose enthusiasms and preferences were indulged but of no interest compared to other topics, such as mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, nieces, and babies. The older he became, the more convinced he was of the absolute, unresolvable differences between men and women. Yet how strange and frustrating that he understood Ellie better than ever, and she him. They knew each other so well that they no longer spoke really but communicated by the exchange of symbols, each dense with meaning. Teknetrix. Apartment. Bed. Pills. Friends. Office. Daughter. Air Force. Breakfast. House. Penis. Funerals.

I'm tied up here, he thought, trapped in this apartment, in Ellie's head, in Ming's cleverness. He needed movement, action, he needed to escape to Shanghai, zap the factory back on schedule, get the R amp;D guys to hammer out a manufacturing protocol for the Q4, flash the company forward. Fire up the sales department, send out a bunch of press releases, talk up the sector analysts. Announce a new product line, pop up the stock price. He'd lay it all out in a meeting of the senior staff the next day, then boom off to China, boom home. Burn, baby, burn.

In the kitchen he left Ellie a short note- Out for walk, couldn't sleep, back soon, have the phone — on the odd chance that she woke up. She wouldn't, though, not gobbling pills like that. He summoned the elevator in the foyer and listened to it grind softly upward. The door opened.

"Evening, Mr. Ravich," said Lionel, an old candle of a man, the shoulders of his uniform snowy with dandruff.

"Evening," Charlie answered. "Couldn't sleep. Thought I'd take a walk."

Lionel nodded, the soul of discretion. Saw everybody-happy couples who argued, children who punched their mothers, afternoon visitors who left with wet hair, dowagers who forgot their teeth-but noticed no one. Was paid well for it, too. They descended in silence. In the lobby the night doorman, whom Charlie rarely saw, lifted two fingers and gave a soft nod as Charlie passed. On the case here, sir. They'd seen your exit. If the police came by and wanted to know if you were in or out, they could give an answer. Mr. Ravich-he left a few minutes after eleven, sir. If Mrs. Ravich called downstairs, they could give an answer. What happened after Charlie left was another matter. It wasn't on their tab.

I need a drink, he thought as he passed from the air conditioning into the warm night, a drink that will knock the top of my head off so that I can sleep. He turned left at the corner of Fifth Avenue, made his way south under the trees toward the Pierre. He'd just ease in there and see if the bartender who made the good gin and tonics was on duty. An old guy dressed like an admiral. Nice appetizers, too. Maybe a piece of cake. He'd taken his father there once, and the old man couldn't quite handle a cup of potato soup, couldn't keep from spilling on his shirt. The bar wasn't usually very crowded. Not enough foot traffic, no restaurants nearby, younger people intimidated by the gold leaf and face-lifts. On a Monday night, the place would be quiet, and he could sit down with the phone and beat up Anderson.

A minute later, he nodded at the doorman in top hat and white gloves and stepped inside, back into coolness. A bank of pillowy chairs led inexorably to the bar itself. Sleepy businessmen and a couple of racquet-club types with their Greenwich wives sat listening to the singer at the piano moan of love lost. A few unattached women with shiny little purses sat at the bar. The piano player turned a page of music. The hour was late, the lighting subdued, the mood narcotic. Nothing happening, Charlie muttered to himself, safest place in the world.

The night was still too warm and she heard piano music outside the hotel bar and the doorman in the maroon uniform and gray top hat smiled at her, and this seemed reason enough to drift in through the doorway, as she had drifted into two or three places already that evening, the Carlyle, the Mark, the Plaza, a bit of chat with whoever was there, accepting a drink and a cigarette and a business card but soon to move on, letting the cards flutter out of her hand, soon to slip into the next place, that place, this place, the Pierre. The men looked affable and distracted, the women appeared to be wives or trouble. A couple of tall blondes floated through, dressed rather too well. Several of the men studied her as if she might be someone they didn't yet know. She shimmied down into an overstuffed chair and asked the waiter to bring her a Campari, and while she sat listening to the piano, she overheard the dignified older businessman next to her talking into his phone.