Ghosts of Manhattan: A Novel(77)

This is where Dale Brown comes to work. I don’t want to see Joe Sansone because my immediate boss might treat me as a friend, try to persuade me to change my mind and give me time to do so. I want this to be official, cold, and friendless.

I haven’t seen Dale since the meeting with Freddie. I don’t know if he recognized me then or will now. I know his office is in the southwest corner, though I’ve never been there. I get on the post road and start my journey south, then west.

When I get near to the corner, I strain to see the office nameplates out of the corner of my eye without appearing as though I need them to find my way. I see “Dale Brown, President” across from an alert secretary who is watching me coming. She’s cute but not stunning and she seems to sense the danger in my gait. Dale hardly knows me and she certainly doesn’t know me at all. She starts to rise, then hovers inches above the seat of her chair as though she’s decided it’s best to get in a ready position.

“Is he in?”

“Do you have an appointment?”

I don’t answer and don’t stop. I’ve already got position on her and I’m to the door. I turn the knob and step into the office.

“Sir, excuse me.” I close the door behind me to shut out her protests.

The opening and abrupt shutting of the door startles Dale. He looks up from his computer screen. An expression of panic travels across his face before dissolving to one of annoyance. A man in a suit who must be a Bear Stearns underling has interrupted his reading. There is a flicker of recognition, and probably an association with Freddie.

“Can I help you?” He says this in a way to let me know that helping me has nothing to do with his question.

The door opens behind me. “I’m sorry, Mr. Brown.” She snaps out her words and comes around to stand next to me, glaring and with the corners of her mouth pulled flat back toward the hinge of her jawbone.

“I’m Nick Farmer. I quit.”

His eyebrows rise in symmetrical arches of surprise. He seems to be trying to decide if this is something he should care about before he commits to a response.

I don’t care to wait. I turn and let myself out and close the door behind me and shut them in. They’re left to stare at each other, each to confirm for the other that what they think just happened actually happened.

I retrace my steps to the elevator and press Down for the lobby. I see the 7 button for the trading floor and I think of all the souls trapped in there. Not against their will, but against their knowledge. I wonder if corruption can reach levels to be self-defeating, or if Bear will always be here.

I think of Freddie and his prognostications putting a date on the end of the world. A nerd-like Nostradamus predicting that Bear’s insane bets and manipulation of securities will create a black hole. Once critical mass is reached, the global economy will crumple in on itself in an instant. Bear will be compressed to the size of a grain of sand. I imagine people and banks throughout Europe and Asia ripped from their foundations and screaming across oceans, the way things are sucked with violent force toward a gash in an airplane at altitude. Everything colliding into Bear.

Is a person like William the first to be destroyed, or does he show up in a post-Armageddon world like a cockroach? I’ll find a safe place far from here to rebuild, and if the rest of the world has to rebuild around me, so much the better. I answer my own question as I realize William will survive too, because there’s always a place for a soulless soldier.

Traveling down in the empty elevator, I already sense a change, like a fever breaking, and I think I could like myself again. Enough to be alone, and I hope that’s the first step to not being alone.

As the elevator drops, so does my strength and certainty, because I don’t know what’s coming next. I never get nervous when I know what I’m going to do, and I had known exactly how I was going to quit. It felt like an actor was playing the role of Nick Farmer and delivering the lines I had already written and I wasn’t there at all. But now I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can feel the nerves bunch up in my throat and my stomach feels light, as though I need to weigh it down, but I’m too nauseous to eat.

The elevator doors open and I hope to see Julia waiting in the lobby with a reluctant smile, but I know right away she’s not there. In my periphery I can tell all the bodies are moving with purpose to destinations. No one is waiting for anyone. I circle the lobby to reaffirm what I already know. It’s 9:15 a.m. exactly.

I walk outside to the cold air and the sounds of city traffic. The sidewalks are still thick with people though not with the crush of an hour earlier. I take a few more steps away from the building to look up and down the sidewalk, knowing I can pick out her movements from the crowd.

She’s not there and I don’t blame her. I’ll wait until 11 a.m. for her, then go to the airport by myself and hope she just needs a couple weeks to herself before she’ll see me.

I turn back around to move against the building so I’m not standing still in the middle of a stream of brisk walkers. My eyes stop on a woman seated on the backrest of a bench, at an angle so that I see her in profile. I recognize the posture and the tilt of her head.

Seeing her is the kind of gift that changes everything. I am the luckiest. I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I hear myself exhale. We have a chance.

She hasn’t moved and doesn’t see me. She’s resting against the empty bench, her body facing into the wind like a seagull on a pylon.