Эмили Мандел - The Glass Hotel

“Haven’t we all.” The corridor was several degrees colder than the conference room, the wintry chill of Las Vegas air-conditioning. Two young hotel employees were clearing dirty mugs from the coffee and pastry stations. “I’m going to go call my wife,” Daniel said. “Catch up with you at dinner?”

“Looking forward to it.”

It was a pleasure to be away from other people for a moment, with no one making obvious proclamations about economic collapse or pulling him into hysterical conversations about the chartering horizon. Leon poured himself a hazelnut coffee and stepped out into the atrium.

Miranda had left the meeting ahead of him and was sitting some distance away on an industrial sofa, writing something in her legal pad. No, not writing, sketching: the pad was angled away from him, but he watched the movements of her wrist with some interest as he approached. She’d started out at the company as his administrative assistant, which all these years later seemed like a faintly unbelievable rumor. He cleared his throat, and she flipped a page over as she set the pad on the marble coffee table, so that he couldn’t see whatever she’d been working on. He’d seen her perform this motion a hundred times, at least, and as always, he made a point of not asking. Leon held strong opinions about privacy.

“You’re skipping the economic outlook session too,” she said.

“This entire conference is an economic outlook session. I decided coffee was more important.”

“I like your priorities. That’s an interesting idea, by the way, parking ships off the coast of Malaysia.”

“Do you mind if we talk about literally anything other than the economic downturn?” he asked.

“Not at all. I’m thinking about making an excuse and leaving early tomorrow.”

“What, you’re not enjoying the atmosphere of barely suppressed panic?”

“There’s something almost tedious about disaster,” Miranda said. “Don’t you find? I mean, at first it’s all dramatic, ‘Oh my god, the economy’s collapsing, there was a run on my bank so my bank ceased to exist over the weekend and got swallowed up by JPMorgan Chase,’ but then that keeps happening, it just keeps collapsing, week after week, and at a certain point…”

“I know what you mean,” Leon said. “It’s the surprise that bothers me, personally, the way everyone I talk to seems shocked by the downturn in the industry.”

“Yeah, so, true story, one of our colleagues pulled me aside today, I’m not naming names, and he said, ‘I just can’t believe what’s happening to our industry, can you?’ And I’m trying to be patient with these people, I really am, but I had to ask him, which part is surprising to you? Let’s break this down. What is it you can’t believe, exactly? That people don’t want to buy goods when the economy collapses, or that people don’t want to ship goods that nobody’s buying?”

“Predictable outcomes, and all that.” Leon remembered at that moment that his accountant had called earlier and absently checked his phone. She’d called again, ten minutes ago. “Sorry,” he said, “I think I have to call this person.”

“If you don’t see me at dinner, it means I successfully escaped.”

“I’ll be silently cheering you on from the sidelines,” he said as he rose, and wandered away from her, toward the glass atrium wall, toward the phone call that would split his life neatly into a before and an after.

“I’m going to assume you haven’t heard the news,” his accountant said, “or you would’ve called me already.”

“What news? What’s going on?”

“You didn’t hear?”

“Obviously not.” He’d never liked her. Bit of a robot, he remembered Miranda telling him when he’d asked if she could recommend a good accountant, but the best I’ve ever worked with. She sees all the angles. Although what was the point of hiring the best accountant you’ve ever worked with if you’re going to ignore her advice and park all your retirement savings in a single investment fund?

“Leon”—and she didn’t sound like a robot at all, she sounded human and deeply shaken; she was conveying information, he realized just before she told him, that she very much didn’t want to convey—“Alkaitis was arrested this morning.”

“What?” He sank gracelessly into the nearest sofa, staring at an embankment on the other side of the glass, red gravel dotted with cacti under a garishly blue sky. “I’m sorry, did you say— what ?”

“It’s all over the news,” she said. “He was a con man. The whole thing was a fraud.”

“The whole…what?”

“It was a con,” the accountant said.

“What do you mean? All the money I invested, you’re saying…?”

“Leon,” she said, “I’m so sorry, but your money wasn’t invested.”

“That isn’t possible. The returns have been excellent, we’ve been living off of them, we—”

“Leon.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I just don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“What I’m telling you is that Alkaitis was running a Ponzi scheme,” she said. “The money you gave him, he didn’t invest it. He stole it. Your account statements were fictional.”

“What does this mean?” he asked, but he knew what it meant.

“Your money’s gone,” she said softly.

“All of it?”

“Leon, it wasn’t real. None of it was real. Those returns…” She didn’t add that I told you seemed almost too good to be true, because she didn’t have to. They both remembered the conversation. How could he have been so stupid? He was staring at the sky, inexplicably out of breath. He didn’t remember hanging up on the accountant, but he must have, because now he was no longer speaking with her, now he was reading a news story on his phone about the arrest of Jonathan Alkaitis at his home in Greenwich that morning, about a Ponzi scheme’s collapsing when one too many investors pulled out, more arrests expected, the SEC and FBI investigating, and somewhere in that morass was Leon’s retirement savings, or rather the ghost of his retirement savings, the savings themselves having been spirited away.

“This isn’t a disaster,” he whispered to himself. Time had skipped again; he was no longer looking at his phone; he was standing by the wall of glass. The economic outlook panel had apparently just broken up, his colleagues spilling out into the corridor and mobbing the coffee stations, a rising tide of overlapping voices. He had to get out. He crossed the plains of gray carpet and floated down the escalator, through the lower atrium and past the casino, out into the thin air of the winter desert. The sidewalk was crowded and the tourists walked in slow motion. Why was a shipping conference being held in a desert city? Because Las Vegas hotel rooms are cheap. Because the desert is a sea. It isn’t a disaster, he told himself, we will not be destitute. He could say he was robbed and that wouldn’t be inaccurate, but on the other hand, these were the facts of the case: he’d met Alkaitis at a hotel bar, Alkaitis had explained the investment strategy, Leon hadn’t understood, and he’d given Alkaitis his retirement savings anyway. He didn’t insist on a detailed explanation. One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid. The strategy had seemed to adhere to a certain logic, even if the precise mechanics—puts, calls, options, holds, conversions—swam just outside of his grasp. “Look,” Alkaitis had said, at his warmest and most accommodating, “I could break it all down for you, but I think you understand the gist of it, and at the end of the day, the returns speak for themselves.” It was true, Leon could see it for himself, a steadiness in that column of numbers that appealed to his deepest longing for order in the universe.