Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

But when, eventually, I didn’t die, and had started to feel a bit less awful, I reached down from the side of the couch to pick up the remote control panel, which was lying on the floor. I zapped the main TV into action and surfed through the channels. It took me a few moments to focus, and to realize that something was going on. I went to CNNfn, then to CNBC, and then back again to CNNfn. I looked at the corner of the screen to check the time.

It was 2.35 p.m. and since about 1 p.m. – apparently – the markets had been in freefall. The Nasdaq had already dropped 319 points, the Dow Jones 185 points, and the S & P 93 points, with none of them showing any signs of halting, let alone bouncing back. Both CNNfn and CNBC were providing minute-by-minute coverage from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, as well as from their respective studios – the main thrust of the story being that the tech-stocks bubble appeared to be bursting in slo-mo before our very eyes…

I went over to my desk and switched on the computer. I was curiously calm, but when I saw the quotes, and saw how far the share prices had plunged, I began to feel dizzy. I put my head in my hands and tried not to panic – and just about succeeded… probably by sparing a thought for all those traders down in Lafayette who as a consequence of following my leads would almost certainly have been wiped out as well. Though I was ready to bet that none of them had lost as much as I had, which was now more than likely somewhere in the region of a million dollars…

THE NEXT MORNING I WENT OUT to get the papers – as well as to do a provisions run to Gristede’s and the liquor store. The headlines ranged from things like OUCH! and NIGHTMARE ON QUEASY STREET to INVESTOR CAUTION AFTER MARKETS TUMBLE. The Nasdaq had rallied somewhat in the late p.m. – after a staggering lowest-point drop of 9 per cent – and was continuing to recover this morning. This was thanks to a few brokerage houses and mutual funds who’d seen the bottom coming and started buying on the dip. Some commentators were hysterical, talking about a repeat of Black Monday – or even of 1929 – but others took a more sanguine approach, saying that recent speculative excess in technology stocks had now been purged… or that what we had witnessed wasn’t so much a wide-spread correction as a cleansing action in the frothier parts of the Nasdaq. This was all very reassuring for the long-haul players, but not much consolation to the millions of small-time investors who’d bought on margin and then been annihilated by the big sell-off.

Poring over opinion pieces in the newspapers, however, wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t going to change the fact – for example – that my bank account had been cleaned out, or that I wouldn’t be able to trade any more at Lafayette.

Putting the newspapers aside, I looked at the bag of cash on the cluttered dining table and reminded myself, for the fiftieth time, that what was in that bag was the sum total of what I had left in the world – and that I owed it all to a Russian loanshark …

Gennady’s visit on Friday morning was going to be the next event of any significance in my life, but I certainly wasn’t looking forward to it. I spent the couple of days in between drinking and listening to music. At one point during this time – and more than half-way through a late-night bottle of Absolut – I got to thinking about Ginny Van Loon, and what a curious girl she was. I went online and searched through various newspaper and magazine archives for any references there might be to her. I found quite a lot of stuff, quotes from ‘Page Six’ and the ‘Styles’ section of the New York Times , clippings, profiles and even some photos – a sixteen-year-old Ginny out of her head at the River Club with Tony De Torrio, Ginny surrounded by models and fashion designers, Ginny with Nikki Sallis at a party in LA sipping from a bottle of Cristal. A recent piece in New York magazine repeated the story about her parents reining her in with threats of disinheritance, but the same piece also quoted friends saying that she had calmed down a lot anyway and was no longer ‘much fun to be around’. Ginny herself was quoted in an article as saying that she’d spent most of her teens wanting to be famous and now only wanted to be left alone. She’d done some acting and modelling, but had left all of that behind – fame was a disease, she’d said, and anyone who craved it was a moron. I read these articles over several times – and printed out the photos, which I stuck on my noticeboard.

Large chunks of time seemed to be drifting by now, during which I did nothing but idly surf the Net or sit on the couch and drink – becoming maudlin, confused, cranky.

When Gennady showed up on Friday morning, I was hungover. The mess in my apartment had gotten worse and I’m sure it didn’t smell too good either – though at the time that aspect of things wasn’t anything I was actually aware of. I was too miserable and sick to notice.

When Gennady arrived at the doorway and stood looking in at the chaos, my worst fear – or one of them, at any rate – was realized. I knew straightaway that Gennady was on MDT. I could tell from the alert expression on his face and even from the way he was standing. I knew, too, that my suspicion would be confirmed as soon as he opened his mouth.

‘What’s your problem, Eddie?’ he said, with a mirthless laugh, ‘are you depressed or something? Maybe you need some medication.’ He sniffed and made a face. ‘Or maybe you just need to get an air-conditioning unit in this place.’

It was clear even from those few sentences that his spoken English had improved dramatically. His accent was still quite strong, but his grasp of structures – grammar and syntax – had obviously undergone some rapid transformative process. I wondered how many of the five pills he’d already taken.

‘Hello, Gennady.’

I went over to the dining table, sat down and extracted a wad of cash from the brown paper bag. I started counting $100 bills, sighing wearily every couple of seconds. Gennady came into the room and wandered about for a while, surveying the mess. He came to a stop right in front of me.

‘That’s not very safe, Eddie,’ he said, ‘keeping all your money in a fucking paper bag . Someone might come in and steal it.’

I sighed again and said, ‘I don’t like banks.’ I handed him up the twenty-two five. He took it and put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He walked over to my desk, turned around and leaned back against it.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you about something.’

Here it came. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. But I tried to play dumb.

‘You didn’t like the treatment,’ I said, and then added, ‘It was just a draft.’

‘ Fuck that,’ he said, with a dismissive gesture of the hand, ‘I’m not talking about that . And anyway, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

‘What?’

‘Those pills I stole. Are you going to tell me you didn’t notice?’

‘What about them?’

‘What do you think? I want more.’

‘I don’t have any.’

He smiled, as though we were playing a game – which of course we were.

I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘I don’t .’

He pushed himself up from the desk and walked over towards me. He stopped where he’d stopped before and slowly reached his hand back into the inside pocket of his jacket. I was scared, but didn’t flinch. He took out something which I couldn’t see properly. He looked at me, smiled again and then with rapid a motion of his hand released the blade of a long flick-knife. He placed the tip of the blade at the side of my neck and moved it up and down, scraping it gently against my skin. ‘I want some more ,’ he said.