Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

I straightened up again and leant back against the window.

‘Come and have a wholesome juice with me then.’

She looked directly into my eyes. Hers were bright blue – sparkling, cerulean, celestial.

‘I can’t.’

I was going to push it, ask her why not, but then I didn’t. I got a flickering sense that she was a little uncomfortable all of a sudden, which in turn made me uncomfortable. It also struck me that feelings of panic probably came in waves, and that while an attack might abate, it might just as easily come back. I didn’t want to be around here if that happened, even with Ginny.

‘OK, look,’ I said, ‘thank you very much. I’m really glad I bumped into you.’

She smiled. ‘Are you going to be OK?’

I nodded.

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Absolutely. Thanks.’

She patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘OK, so long, Eddie.’

A second later she was walking away from me across the lobby, her little doctor’s bag swinging by her side. Then – enveloped suddenly into the crowd – she was gone.

I turned to face the huge window behind where I was standing and saw myself reflected in its bronze-tinted glass, people and cars outside on Forty-eighth Street passing right through me as though I were a ghost. In addition to everything else, I now found myself in the inappropriate position of being disappointed that Van Loon’s daughter apparently refused to see me as anything other than a genial associate of her father’s – and a pedantic, panic-stricken, overweight one at that. I left the building, made my way over to Fifth Avenue and started walking downtown. Despite these grim thoughts, I somehow managed to keep things under control. Then, as I was crossing Forty-second Street, something else occurred to me, and I shoved my hand out, on impulse, to hail a cab.

Twenty minutes later I was taking another elevator, this time up to the fourth floor of Lafayette Trading on Broad Street. This had been the scene of earlier triumphs – days of excitement and success – and I figured now there was no longer anything to stop me from trying to re-create that . I didn’t have the advantage of being full-thrust on MDT, OK, but neither did I care any more. My confidence had taken a bruising, and I just wanted to see how well I could do on my own.

There was a mixed reaction when I walked into the room. Some people, including Jay Zollo, went out of their way to ignore me. Others couldn’t help smiling and doffing their baseball caps in my direction. Even though I hadn’t been there for a while and didn’t have any positions open, my account was still active. I was told my ‘usual’ spot was taken, but that others were available and I could start trading immediately if I wanted to.

As I took my place at one of the terminals and got ready, I could feel a curiosity growing in the room about what I intended to do. There was a definite buzz now, with some people looking over my shoulder, and others keeping a close eye on things from the opposite side of the ‘pit’. It was a lot of pressure to be under and when I found that I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed, I had to admit to myself that perhaps I’d been a little hasty in coming here. But it was too late to pull out.

I spent a while studying the screen, and gradually it all came back to me. It wasn’t such a complicated process – but what was complicated, of course, was choosing the right stocks. I hadn’t been following the markets of late and didn’t really know where to look. My previous strategy of short-selling, which had been heavily dependent on research, wasn’t much use to me either, so I decided to play it safe on my first day back – I decided to go with the prevailing wisdom and buy tech stocks. I bought shares in Lir Systems, a risk-management services company, in KeyGate Technologies, an Internet security outfit, and in various dot-coms, Boojum, Wotlarks!, @Ease, Dromio, PorkBarrel.com, eTranz, WorkNet.

Once I started I couldn’t stop, and thanks to a combination of recklessness and fear, I ended up emptying my bank account, spending everything I had in the space of a couple of hours. Matters weren’t helped by the artificial, game-like nature of electronic trading, nor by the dangerous sense I increasingly had that the money involved wasn’t real. Naturally, this storm of activity attracted a lot of attention in the room, and even though my ‘strategy’ was about as unoriginal and mainstream as you could get, the rate and scale of my trading obviously gave it a curious shape – a colour, a character – of its own. Before long, as a result, people started following my lead, watching my every move, channelling ‘tips’ and ‘information’ out from my workstation. There was an urgency about the whole thing – no one wanted to get left behind – and I soon had the impression that lots of the traders around me were borrowing heavily or renegotiating leverage on their deposits.

The dizzying Net stocks boom still had the power, apparently, to disorient and whipsaw anyone who dared to get near it – and this included me , because although I’d landed here today on the back of my reputation, of my previous performance, I was now beginning to realize that this time around not only did I not know what I was doing, I didn’t know how to stop…

Eventually, however, the pressure became too much for me. It kick-started another panic attack, and left me no choice but to just grab the envelope and go – without even closing out my positions. This caused some degree of consternation in the room, but I think most of the Lafayette traders had come to expect the unexpected from me and I managed to get away without too much hassle. A good number of the stocks I’d bought had already gone up by tiny margins, so no one was worried or nervous – they were just unhappy at letting what they saw as an über trader escape from their midst. On my way down in the elevator, my heart started palpitating again and when I got out on to the street I felt really horrible. I walked down Broad Street to the South Ferry Terminal and then over to Battery Park, where I sat on a bench, undid my tie and gazed out at Staten Island.

I remained there for about half an hour, taking deep breaths and fielding dark, unsettling thoughts. I wanted to be at home, on my couch, but I didn’t want to go through what was required to get there, which was negotiate the streets again, and the people, and the traffic. But after another while I just stood up and started walking. I went over to State Street and managed to get a taxi at once. I slumped into the back seat, clutching the envelope, and as the cab inched its way forward through the traffic, up past Bowling Green on to Broadway, and then past Beaver Street and Exchange Place and Wall Street itself, I had a fleeting impression that something quite odd was happening. It was difficult to put my finger on what it was exactly, but there was a very jittery atmosphere in the streets. People were stopping and talking, some whispering conspiratorially, others shouting across cars, or from the steps of buildings, or into cellphones – and in that curious way people have when some dire public event has taken place, like an assassination or an upset in the World Series. Then there was a break in the traffic and we surged forward out of the financial district, leaving behind whatever it was I’d picked up on. Soon we were crossing Canal Street and then a few moments later turning right on to Houston, where it was business as usual.

When I got home, I made straight for the couch and flopped down on to it. The taxi ride had been unbearable and once or twice I’d come close to having the driver stop and let me out. Lying on the couch wasn’t that much better, but at least I was in a familiar, controlled environment. For the next hour or so, I vacillated between thinking that the attack would pass, and thinking that… no , I was going to die – here, today , right now, on this fucking couch…