Teddy Wayne - Kapitoil

“Still, a picture or something. Some personality.” She was now standing across from me at the desk even though there were two empty chairs there. The sky outside was the color of smoke, which made the interior seem even less decorated. “It’s pretty dead.”

“Maybe you can lend me one of your brother’s paintings,” I said, and immediately I regretted it.

“Yeah,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about that. Not about the paintings.” She picked up a pen on my desk and moved it in her fingers like a conductor of a symphony holds a baton. “So, the other night, I was pretty drunk and all, and I think I may have done or nearly done certain things that could be considered somewhat inappropriate by some given the context of our professional relationship.”

It was difficult for me to follow the meaning of her sentence but I could understand it from her expression and how she focused on the pen.

“So, basically I’m saying that I wanted to make sure you didn’t get the wrong impression or anything.” She looked at me for the first time since she had entered the room. “Still friends?”

The rain had stopped, and in fact the sun was now out, but I wished it was still raining. It felt as if someone had turned up the gravity inside my chest, the opposite of feeling high, and without looking at her I slowly said, “Still friends.” I understand on a logical level how all real-world systems have finite resources and can partially satisfy only some consumers, and therefore the desires of two parties are sometimes incompatible. But it is still difficult to understand on a nonlogical level.

I heard her put the pen on my desk. “Great. Well, that’s all I wanted to say.” Then, to be polite, she asked me how work was proceeding, and I again responded like a robot, and she left, and I looked at the sunlight pouring into my dead office until I decided to concentrate on my work.

dead = lacking decoration or personality

The next two days I worked very late and was home only to sleep. My apartment had many luxuries but I was the solitary person using them, and that can grow boring, e.g., many times I was listening to the radio on the stereo and wished I could play the song for Zahira, but when I remembered she wasn’t there, I didn’t want to listen anymore.

Kapitoil was humming at near-optimal efficiency. We were restricting our daily investment so we would not cause market turmoil, and Mr. Ray didn’t state any specific projections, but I calculated that if we continued at this rate for the next year, Schrub’s quants revenues would increase approximately 30 % over the previous year.

Then on Thursday morning I received an email from Mr. Schrub’s secretary. I was so stimulated when I saw her name in my inbox that I spilled my cranberry-blueberry juice on my desk and it left a small red puddle. She wrote:

Mr. Issar,

Mr. Schrub would like to invite you to his estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, this coming weekend. Car service will pick you up at the office at 5 p.m. on Friday and deliver you to Downtown Manhattan Heliport, where you will meet Mr. Schrub and proceed by helicopter to Greenwich. A car will return you to your residence on Sunday afternoon. Please let me know at your earliest convenience if these terms are acceptable.

I almost called Zahira to tell her the news, but it was too expensive to connect to Qatar during the workday. And I couldn’t tell anyone in the office because it would produce envy and they would question why Mr. Schrub was requesting my company, so I told my mother in Arabic so no one would understand me if they heard. I don’t truly believe she is observing me, but it’s nice sometimes to pretend she is.

I replied that the terms were acceptable, and she responded with further data about the car service. I asked:

Is it possible for me to arrange my own car service?

She wrote that it was. I removed Barron’s business card from my wallet. It was easy to find because it was the only one I had received in New York so far.

When I made my reservation with Barron he didn’t mention if he remembered me, but maybe that was because he was very busy and couldn’t talk for long.

At noon on Friday I saw Rebecca in the kitchen. She was emptying packets of false sugar into her coffee. “Hey,” she said.

“Hello,” I said.

“Any weekend plans?” she asked.

“I have a busy weekend planned with friends,” I said, which was at least partially true. “What about you?”

She stirred the coffee with a plastic straw without looking at me. “Nothing special,” she said. “Have a good one.” She walked past me and out the door. I should have said that I was instead going to try to compensate this weekend for work I had neglected. But maybe it’s better I didn’t. When people lie they often have to lie again to cover the first lie, and they continue for many iterations in a chain.

Barron was on time, and as I got into the car I said, “It is my pleasure to meet you again, Mr. Wright.”

“You, too,” he said, and although I know that people reciprocate that to be polite, it sounded more authentic with his voice. “Heliport, right?”

“Yes. It will be my first time on a helicopter.” I added ASAP, “When you took me to the Yankees game, I forgot to call you after the game. My employer drove me home.”

“That’s cool. People forget all the time. I still get paid.”

“No, it is not cool,” I said. “It was my bad.”

He turned his head and looked at me even though he was still driving. “Okay,” he finally said. “Nice suit, by the way. Fits you right.”

Barron turned down the sun-protector, and again I saw the picture of his daughter taped to it. I asked how she was progressing. He said she was excelling in school and he thought she would soon be smarter than he was. I told him I thought the same thing about my sister. “Although for now I want her to think I am more intelligent, so that she continues to try to impress me in school.”

He laughed and said, “You’re all right. You’ve got a unique sense of humor. It’s subtle, but you’ve got one.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I will work to make my sense of humor less subtle.” This was possibly the reason no one else found me humorous. Then I said, “It must be enjoyable to spend time with your family after a week of work.”

Barron scratched the back of his head. His haircut was close to his skull, but many white hairs blended with the black ones. “It is. Sometimes it’s not. But mostly it is.” His eyes angled at me in the mirror. “You have any family here?”

I looked out the window, because suddenly it felt like tears were under the surface of my eyes and waiting to appear like perspiration on a Coke can. “No,” I said. I remained in that position to avoid Barron and because we were now near the East River and I always enjoy observing the water. My father used to teach me swimming at Al Wakrah beach on Saturdays. He was a powerful swimmer, and I learned quickly, although I was never as strong in the water as he was. He didn’t take Zahira, and of course my mother never went although I derived my broad shoulders from her and I believe she would have been efficient in the water as well. We stopped going when she became ill.

We arrived in a few minutes at the heliport, which had a landing pad in the shape of an L on top of the river, a large building behind the small parking lot for cars, and spaces for 12 helicopters, although just five were currently there. I thanked Barron. “Call me when you need a ride to the White House,” he said, and I laughed and complimented him by saying he had a non-subtle sense of humor.

In a few minutes Mr. Schrub’s limo entered the parking lot. The driver, Patrick, exited and opened the rear door for Mr. Schrub. He nodded at Patrick while he held a briefcase in one hand and talked on a cellular, and Patrick returned to the car and waited.