Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

It was the same thing that had happened the previous evening in my apartment. I had moved, but without being conscious of it, without registering that I had moved. It was as if I’d suffered a minor blackout – as if I’d trip-switched forward in some way, or click-clicked forward like on a faulty CD.

The previous evening was because of not having eaten – I’d been busy, distracted, food had taken a back seat. At least, that was the assumption, the rationalization.

Of course, I hadn’t eaten since then either, so maybe that was it. A little shaken, but not wishing to dwell too much on what had happened, I walked slowly along Fifty-sixth Street towards Lexington Avenue in search of a restaurant.

I found a diner on Forty-fifth Street and took a booth by the window.

‘C’n I get you, hon?’

I ordered a Porterhouse steak, rare, french fries and a side salad.

‘To drink?’

Coffee.

The place wasn’t busy. There was a guy at the counter, and a couple in the next booth up, and an old lady putting on lipstick in the next one up from that.

When the coffee arrived, I took a few sips and tried to relax. Then I decided to concentrate on the meeting I’d just had with Van Loon. I found myself reacting to it in two different ways.

On the one hand, I was beginning to feel a little nervous about taking up his job offer – which involved a nominal starting salary and some stock options, with whatever real money I made being on commissions. These would be from any successful deals that I recommended, brokered, negotiated, or, in the gnarled syntax befitting my current thought processes, participated in any phase of the negotiating of – like the MCL-Abraxas deal, for instance. But on what basis, I asked myself, had Van Loon been able to offer me such a deal? On the entirely spurious basis, perhaps, that I even had the slightest notion of how to ‘structure’ or ‘engineer the financials’ of a big corporate deal? Hardly. Van Loon had seemed to understand pretty unequivocally that I was an impostor, so he couldn’t be expecting that much from me. But what, precisely, would he be expecting? And would I be able to deliver?

The waitress arrived over with my steak and fries.

‘Njoy your meal.’

‘Thanks.’

Then – on the other hand – I had this clear vision in my mind of what a pushover Hank Atwood was going to be. I had read articles about him that used woolly terms such as ‘vision’, ‘commitment’, ‘driven’, and it just seemed to me that whatever the nature of that thing I had triggered in the others really was – I would have no difficulty in triggering the same thing in him. This, in turn, of course, would place me in a potentially very powerful position – because as the new CEO of MCL-Abraxas, Hank Atwood would not only have the ear of the President and of other world leaders, he would be a world leader himself. The military superpower was a thing of the past, a dinosaur, and the only structure that counted in the world today was the ‘hyperpower’, the digitalized, globalized English-language based entertainment culture that controlled the hearts, minds and disposable incomes of successive generations of 18 to 24-year-olds – and Hank Atwood, who I would shortly be making friends with, was about to be placed at the apex of that structure.

But then all of a sudden, without warning or reason, I’d swing back to thinking that Carl Van Loon was surely going to come to his senses and at the very least withdraw the job offer.

And where would that leave me?

The waitress approached my booth again and held up the coffee pot.

I nodded and she refilled my cup.

‘What’s the matter, hon? You don’t like your steak?’

I glanced down at my plate. I’d barely touched the food.

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I said, looking up at her. She was a big woman in her forties, with big eyes and big hair. ‘I’m a just little concerned about the future, that’s all.’

‘ The future ?’ she repeated, laughing out loud and walking away with the coffee pot held up in mid-air. ‘Get in line, honey, get in line.’

When I got home to the apartment, the little red light was flashing on my answering machine. I reached down and flicked the ‘play’ button and waited. There were seven messages – which was about five or six more than I had ever received on it before at any one time.

I sat on the edge of the couch and stared at the machine.

Click.

Beeep .

‘Eddie, this is Jay. I just wanted to let you know – and I hope you won’t be pissed at me – but I was talking to a journalist from the Post this evening, and I… I gave her your number. She’d heard about you and wanted to do a story, so… I’m sorry, I should have checked with you first, but… anyway… see you tomorrow.’

Click.

Beeep .

‘It’s Kevin.’ Long pause. ‘How was dinner ? What did you guys talk about? Give me a call when you get in.’ There was another long pause and then he hung up.

Click.

Beeep .

‘Eddie, it’s your father. How are you? Any stock tips for me? ( Laughter .) Listen, I’m going on vacation to Florida next month with the Szypulas. Give me a call. I hate these goddamned machines.’

Click.

Beeep .

‘Mr Spinola, this is Mary Stern from the New York Post . I got your number from Jay Zollo at Lafayette Trading. Erm… I’d like to speak with you as soon as possible. Erm… I’ll try you again later, or in the morning. Thank you.’

Click.

Beeep .

Pause.

‘Why you don’t call me?’ Shit, I’d forgotten about Gennady. ‘… I have some idea for that thing , so call me.’

Click.

Beeep .

‘It’s Kevin again. You’re a real jerk, Spinola, do you know that?’ His voice was slurred now. ‘I mean, who the fuck do you think you are, eh? Mike fucking Ovitz? Well, let me tell you something about peop-’ There was a muffled sound at that point, like something being knocked over. A barely audible shhhiit followed, and suddenly the line went dead.

Click.

Beeep .

‘Look – just fuck you, OK? Fuck you, fuck your mother, fuck your sister.’

Click.

That was it. End of new messages.

I got up from the couch, went into the bedroom and took off my suit.

Kevin I could do nothing about. He would have to be my first casualty. Jay Zollo, Mary Stern, Gennady and my old man I could deal with in the morning.

I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower and stepped under the jet of hot water. I didn’t need these distractions and I certainly didn’t want to waste any time thinking about them. After my shower, I put on a pair of boxer-shorts and a T-shirt. Then I sat at my desk, took another MDT pill and started making notes.

In the dimly lit library of his Park Avenue apartment, Van Loon had sketched out the problem for me. The bottom line, predictably enough, was that the principals in the deal couldn’t agree on a valuation. MCL stock was currently selling at $26 a share, but they were asking Abraxas for $40 – a 54 per cent premium, which was way above the average for an acquisition of this kind. Van Loon had to find a way of either reducing the MCL asking-price or of justifying it to Abraxas.

He’d said that he would have some material couriered down to my apartment in the morning, relevant paperwork that I really needed to have a look at ahead of Thursday’s lunch meeting with Hank Atwood. But I decided that before any ‘relevant paperwork’ arrived I needed to do some research of my own.