It was 18:03.
Morton left the family before dinner due to the pain. Scott wheeled him to his room in the villa and set his featherweight, minute form on the bed. His father struggled to find relief in any position and flailed weakly, reaching for comfort or distraction that didn’t exist in the room. The torment inside felt inescapable.
“Help me, Scott. I can’t manage.” His gasping plea was child-like. His self-awareness was adult.
Scott took a small bottle of tincture from his pocket and squeezed a generous dose from its dropper into his father’s mouth, then took the same himself. He placed a bone induction headset around Morton’s head and set playing a track of binaural beats with a soothing set of generalised pain suppression frequencies that would cycle into a first stage meditative pathway. The headset left Morton’s hearing undisturbed but delivered therapy into his brain and mind and consciousness. Next, he set a fire in the room’s hearth then opened the windows to induce a strong, warm draught.
“The pain is a tool and a focus.” He held his father’s hand and gazed into teary eyes as he spoke. “You feel pain because you are alive. Describe it.”
As Morton spoke fragmented, sometimes guttural sentences, Scott closed the curtains to darken the room. He returned to the bed, laid down beside his father, took his hand and set his wave.
In MindSpace, his father was the fire that engulfed them both. Morton’s words sounded beside him and inside the fire that flooded Scott’s sense immediately. What might have been his spine was compressed in all directions and total pain buried inside mortal fear slowed time to nothing, like a paralyzing bass note reverberating in an infinite, echoless vacuum. Amongst the fear, Scott struck notes into the void as he began to rhythmically chant.
Om tat sat
Om tat sat
There was no vision, no sound nor sense of bodily self. Only engulfing fear that crippled all else save for his centre. The void was close and far, crushing and free. His energy fled through him and from him into the fear that might have been his father’s crippling pain.
Om tat sat
Om tat sat
The mantra’s first phoneme became the strike of some bass drum, deep and lasting, into which the others flowed like soft cymbal strikes. The burning fear pain slipped onto his chant’s path and spiralled into the everything that was not there. Scott’s centre slid up, off the path of noise and sensation and drifted as rhythm became a soaring hum, then ringing then nothing.
“What are you?” came The Question.
“I am you.”
“Then what are we?”
“We’re just a story.”
It was the worst job interview I ever had, and the last one, kinda. It was the day before that made it all weird, really threw me out.
Remember when I was engineering at Vargus? Well, I’d been running my portfolio for about three years by then and it was working. I had multiple strategies, systems for information collection, analysis, review, test and all of that. Then I had a whole implementation system. I was trading on what seemed to be my own terms and it was working. But I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and that’s why I started looking outside Vargus.
I figured that I could use my results to get into the financial sector, learn their systems and validate mine. It would have to be a quid pro quo of sorts. I’d have to show people my method, or some of it, to justify and explain my results for them to let me in to their company, given my unconventional background. If things worked in that sector, in five years I could probably start something of my own. That was basically how I saw it.
I landed a pitch with a private finance house, Interlekt, in New York. I just canvassed a ton of places by creating a pitch deck and spiel to market my results in the hope that someone was interested in listening. Interlekt was the first place that replied. I got into town the day before to give myself time to relax, practise my pitch and tweak it all to fluidity. Jess listened on the phone and gave me as good a grilling as she could, trying to tie me up, pick holes, get me frustrated. She’s good at that! Interlekt was low key, boutique, doing whatever they did off the beaten path. Their office was in the East Village, nowhere near any financial operation, but I didn’t know what that meant.
Late afternoon, I went for a really long, slow run to go explore, exercise and move my mind. I was staying in Brooklyn; just some cheap, average hotel where I could afford an exec room with some space for prep. Brooklyn had plenty of green spaces and was near Interlekt’s place. I jogged over the river and into the Lower East Side, winding through the side streets to soak up the place. It had all that student, up-and-coming feel then. It was that rotation period that would give rise to the runaway gentrification. It was a cool place to those who could detect cool five years before everyone else. I took a long, meandering line into the East Village to Interlekt’s building. You couldn’t tell what was there. It was a clean, wide, double-fronted brownstone on East 10th Street, across from Thompkins Square park. No signs on the door. Something from the roof edge said there must’ve been a roof garden or something like it - the barrier was part glassed and lit. I just strolled past at first, doing a little recon out-of-hours. There was a lobby of sorts but I couldn’t see in without heading up the stairs. I went into the small park and jogged along all its paths, did a bit of workout on the kids’ play gear then went back out to find a drink. I jogged all the way up to Murray Hill before coming back past Interlekt. I could see a guy stood on the steps, smoking. He was in a white shirt, black pants and tie, like service staff or smart facility personnel. Late-thirties, lean, with a short flat-top shaved clean at the sides. I slowed down to a stroll and called up just as I approached.
“Hi! Can I talk to you for a sec? Sorry to bother…” He was a bit surprised, but I kept going. “Is this Interlekt’s building? I’ve got an interview tomorrow with them and just wanted to make sure I had the right place so I wasn’t screwing up first thing tomorrow.”
“Interview? What for?” That wasn’t the response I was expecting, but I had nothing to hide.
“I’ve got a pitch with them to explain a system I developed that they might be interested in. Is this the right place?” I slowly ascended the stairs to the top. The man eyed me closely but he wasn’t unfriendly.
“System in what?”
“Finance, trading. I’ve tried to take a somewhat holistic view in a portfolio in a way that works across multiple sectors and products. If I can develop it further, I think it could become very… robust.”
“What’s your name?” He was abrupt and gave nothing back, but I must have had the right place because he wouldn’t have asked my name if there was no way of checking anything.
“Scott Rheinhold. The appointment’s at three.”
He went inside without saying anything else, through the low lit lobby and into a door off the corridor behind the elliptical, mahogany reception desk. There was no one at the desk. No signage on the outside of the building or inside. It could have been managed residential or office space, you couldn’t tell.
He came back out after a couple of minutes, wearing a black suit jacket and light overcoat.
“I’m Harold.” He held out his hand. “Yep, this is the right place. I’m done for the day, wandering that way. Is that your way?” He pointed vaguely south, across the park. We cut through it towards Avenue B. Harold, it turned out, had been with Interlekt since inception and was a Director of Development Projects. My heart started to sink with the assumption that my interview had started 16 hours too soon while I was dressed in sweat gear.
“Why did you get in touch with Interlekt? How did you hear about it?” he said.
“My system approach hinges on a lot of initial research, big picture to small picture. I just got a big list together of small, medium and large finance and banking firms, you know, then sorted them by the types of operations and nerdy things like that. Interlekt came out as small, off-the-radar and hard to fathom. So, on the one hand I figured that could be a good specialist fit, and on the other, I figured I wouldn’t be burning a public bridge if I screwed up. If the place is small and the people are nice, they might give me a few tips and pointers about where to try next.”
“Hmm…” Harold’s expression was halfway between approval and incredulity. “So what do you think Interlekt actually does?”
“From what I can tell, you run a strangely mixed Venture Capital portfolio. I’m not one hundred percent on this, but Interlekt might have invested in dry cleaners, small chain and even independent grocery stores, various real estate, hire cars, and then computing and medicine at scale. It’s broad, but there’s odd locality and independence in it. It’s also got linkages into very conventional networks from what I can tell.”
“Assuming that your research was right, what did you make of that weirdness? Is it weird?”
“It’s hard to find this information and I couldn’t do all the proofing I wanted, so I’m not certain it’s right. But my gut feeling was that the areas of interest made it look like a family office that was investing in aspects of local community as well as bigger or more conventional bets. Kinda like a local Shylock. I just couldn’t work out what this Shylock’s heart was made of, so I thought I would come and see for myself.”
Harold broke out into warm laughter. “Shylock! That’s funny. Someone might misinterpret that, but I know what you mean. This is finance, for Christ’s sake. Everyone’s a Shylock. If you ain’t then you’re the sucker.”
“Did I just fail tomorrow’s pitch because of my choice of Shakespearian analogy?”
He laughed again. “This definitely ain’t part of your interview, I can promise you that. I don’t normally do interviews. I tell you what…” We stopped as he lit up another cigarette. “I’ll give you the choice. Do you want me to be in your interview?”
It was an impossible question. I could refuse and look like a coward, which would taint the whole conversation since we met, or accept and have zero idea what that really meant while risking tainting the remaining conversation. There was only one saving grace: I knew I wasn’t getting a job at Interlekt; I couldn’t possibly land the first pitch I made so it was all just learning and experimentation anyway. I needed to get something out of him for the risk I was willing to take.
“I’ll do you a deal. If you’ve got the time and the interest to be part of the process, I welcome that. But in return, please would you do me the courtesy of giving me detailed feedback on my proposal and performance, no matter what?”
“Deal.”
We strolled on with him smiling with satisfaction. “Let’s save us some time tomorrow. Take the following on trust, to be backed up officially if you’re successful. Interlekt’s package ticks box just fine and benefits include immediate family. On top of that, there’s flexibility. If you’re running a book, it doesn’t matter where and exactly when you’re doing it. You aren’t on a trading floor. Strategy unfolds over time. You can read and think anywhere. Phones are for talking at distance. In all of these respects, Interlekt is mature. More mature than many. I can give you a tip though. No matter where you live now, get something in New York as well, if you haven’t already. Even if we don’t take you, a loft somewhere will serve a purpose soon enough.”
We stopped on the corner with East Houston Street. “Indulge me a while longer,” Harold said. He drew in a lungful of smoke, tilted his head back and blew out into the early evening air. The sun was behind the skyline but the coming night was clear and the sky was blue to orange with a line of black above the streets. “Why did you begin your portfolio?” Harold asked as we crossed Houston.
“Investment made sense in general, but I’m not the kind to do it with no understanding. We had enough excess cash to do things with, so I started reading. I came to see the portfolio as a test of my understanding of human behaviour, most importantly my own. You can test a hypothesis or ask a question in the market and get answers back in meaningful ways. If the answers are what you expected, then somehow you understand a bit of the world or a situation or a group, and that’s why you profit.”
“How much of humanity do you understand now?” he asked, as we swung into Suffolk Street.
“I don’t. To believe that would be to delude myself. The whole system works on the assumption that I don’t know, even if I have an idea. It’s an ideas development and testing process. Every time. Every hypothesis is different, standalone, even though it overlaps and integrates.”
Harold shifted on to some of his view of the world, which I took as an intimation of his role in the company. A very complex ecosystem was what the world of finance was to him. Inside it, chaos theory and irrationality flew about just as much as predictability and sensible rules. He was interested in exploring the way behaviours and interests mixed in markets and crossed boundaries. This was part of why Interlekt did odd things like finance small local businesses and independent chains. There was both a test and an effort going on. The test was about discovering ways that small things became or connected to the really big things. The effort was around consciously affecting those connections for measurable outcomes. “But that,” he said, “still leaves the question of unpredictability and irrationality, inside increasing complexity.”
“Do you mean crash-proofing?”
“That’s one way of putting it, but even that is only one part of it. When you look at an iceberg, you’re only looking at 10 percent above water, right? If you know that, you can imagine the other 90 percent and what that looks like. But what if, when you actually get under the water, the 90% is totally different to what you assumed? What if it’s a totally different shape, density, uniformity, salinity, pH, whatever? What if it’s not even 90% or even ice?”
“OK, recognising one’s own ignorance about a black box system, one accepts unknown unknowns. But that acceptance alone is meaningless in practise.”
“Yeah. You either start looking below the water or you don’t, but most of the iceberg is under the water. That’s what Development Projects is about, and it’s basically what Interlekt is about. Most of finance is under the water. To have predictive power, you gotta be able to go divin’ and hold your breath. You gotta minimise unknowns.”
“Is that what ‘Boutique Finance’ actually means then? Or are you just talking about Interlekt?”
“To know the answer to that question, you’d have to have been looking under the water at the other boutique operators.”
Harold took a step ahead, cutting across me and swung open a door to a glass-fronted bakery. “This is a must, Scott.” It was warm, brightly lit and smelled of flour, melted butter and roasted meat and veg. I was instantly hungry.
“Hi Marcus! How’s your world today?” Harold’s greeting boomed over the counter to a grey-haired, slim man about 50 years old, dressed in chef’s whites and a paper chef’s hat.
“My friend, it’s been busy and going quick,” said Marcus, with a strong Brooklyn accent. “I was gettin’ a little sad, truth be told. But you arrived and now I’m happy. How long you got?”
“I got as long as you got, but first I need to equip my new friend here. This is Scott, and I can tell he’s hungry.” Marcus laughed and turned to grab down a couple of folding boxes from a shelf behind him. “Scott, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me to your interview tomorrow. You’ll have to excuse me now but please accept Marcus’ selection of his finest work. This is wonderful food, by anyone’s measure. I’ll see you tomorrow. Take care on your way back. It’s cool around here but sometimes it’s a little too cool for school.” We shook hands and Harold went far down to the back of the bakery where he took a seat in one of four booths where people could dine. A couple of minutes passed as Marcus whipped things from the counter and below it, piling them into boxes, then bags. He plonked three large plastic bags each containing a cake box of food onto the counter.
“There’s dinner, breakfast and maybe lunch in there for you and whoever, buddy. Enjoy. Maybe we’ll see you again next time you’re around.”
I thanked Marcus, looked back down the bakery and waved in gratitude to Harold before heading south on Suffolk Street. There was a strange sense of flow inside me. I didn’t know whether I was holding so much food because of something I had done, or whether it had all been done to me. I had never envisaged meeting a job interviewer who decided to gift me before the interview had even started. Was that because of me, or because of something else, like chance? Or had he controlled something? I didn’t know and the thoughts washed through my mind to be replaced by a search for somewhere to sample the delights. I swung onto Delancey Street, past the 7th Precinct and into Luther Gulick Park, in search of a bench and a quiet view. I took a seat and watched some three-on-three played by feisty young locals. A couple of the kids were only about 15 but at least 5’10” and they wrestled for space and advantage against their acquaintances in their early twenties who were all a few inches taller. One of the white guys rocked a full on B-Boy look, to the point of almost trying too hard, but on the court his shooting skills carried him. The other white guy was a lanky skater type who was good at turning inside and around opponents to supply a shot or wind his way to the hoop. I could tell from the dynamic that all the players knew each other, perhaps close friends and some cousins in there. They saw me watching but ignored me at first. I opened a box and eyed its contents. There was enough food in that one box to feed five people. Slices of quiche, some sandwiches, mixed cold cuts, two sub rolls, olive focaccia and some dressings set my mouth watering. In the bag beside the box was a paper bag with 6 croissants. I munched on a pastrami sandwich and savoured the perfect blend of horseradish and piquant, creamy dressing combined with fine onion and the tang of pickle. The white bread was pillowy with a crust whose crunch turned to a satisfying chewiness. Heaven in a sandwich. I heard the basket ball ping hard off the court and looked up to see the skater squaring up to one of his opponents. The ball bounced straight towards me but the men and boys were interested in the aggression and not the ball. It quickly built into contact that needed to be separated but the anger quickly spilled over into the two young boys who replicated it in their own stand off. I was suddenly gripped by the desire to fuck up their past time.
“Hey!” I screamed out, way too loud. They looked over, immediately disengaging to eyeball the asshole shouting at them from the bench and waving them over. “I got your ball. You gonna win it back?”
“Ey, fuck you!” The skater switched his aggro straight onto me and led the pack in my direction. “You gonna gimme that ball, asshole!”
“I’ll play you for it!” I shouted. “Come on, I gotta little game for ya!” Skater ran up and his pack began to surround me, ready for some kind of pile on. “How ‘bout this. Me an’ you, one on one, best of five. I win your ball or you win a bag of food.” I showed him a box whose red writing spelled “Marco’s Fine Baked Goods” through the thin white plastic bag. “Seriously,” I said, “there’s enough for all of you in that one bag.” I tilted the open box to show them what I was already dealing with. “Come on, I can’t eat it all and I could use a few hoops.”
Skater jumped at the challenge. I gave away three inches in height and didn’t look like someone with a well-practised, long range hook shot. The food was theirs anyway but I wanted to win the competition. His opening two points were pretty comfortable but that lulled him into a false sense of security. I took my first point with a fast feint to get around him into a simple lay up. My second came from reading his jump shot and clipping it with a punch. I chased the ball hard, powered back at him and worked him backwards, closer to the basket. I faked a one-handed jump shot to send him up but dropped the ball once he was jumping, got beside him and clear enough to even up the score. He got serious then, ready for tricky moves to go around him. I worked him two thirds of the way to the basket, then did the unthinkable: I ran back to the three point line and launched my secret hook shot that he had zero chance of stopping. Years of practise in high school had cemented that annoying and occasionally useful skill. There’s a deep satisfaction to be had from being the initiator of someone else’s utter frustration. His buddies helped him take the loss well and I didn’t milk the victory. Once he gave me the ball in payment I wandered over to the bench, grabbed the food and wandered back. I came clean with them and sat down to open up their bag and offer it around. I told them it had been given to me and that I just wanted to share it instead of leave it, and with that we sat on the court and I talked a bit of shit with those random locals while we munched our way through Marco’s finest. It’s funny what “free” does to people’s brains. It can actually be impossible to give stuff away. But if you can make people think they’ve had to at least try to earn it, it’s easier to give stuff away. There was no logic in this, just some sense that I went from a lonely guy who challenged them to someone who beat them to someone charitable enough to give up his winnings. Complete nonsense, but they would never have accepted me coming up and just offering the food. It had been fun to have some random company and they appreciated how good Marco’s cooking was. I left them munching croissants and headed out the park to cross the river and head home. It was 8:30 by the time I was on Myrtle Avenue. I needed some cash for the next day’s cab and sundries. There was a machine outside a 7-11. A bedraggled, homeless guy with thick, matted shoulder-length hair and a beard down to his chest sat cross-legged on the floor beside the machine. He was wrapped in a filthy gray sleeping bag, a dark red ski-type jacket and dark, grotty jeans. He watched me walk to the machine then he looked up and asked, “Can you spare a little cash for me, please?”. I wasn’t expecting the please, and his voice sounded clear and well spoken. I expected a slur and some hint of common aggro but was surprised instead. I withdrew a hundred bucks and tucked ninety into my wallet.
“What’s your name? I’m Scott.” I said. His response was delayed and I could see some surprise in his eyes.
“Michael. Mike.”
“Wanna drink, Mike? I’m gonna grab a drink. You want something?”
“If they’ve got something hot, that would be nice. Or juice or… I don’t drink booze.”
“OK.” I went into the store, grabbed a few cans of soda and two large coffees from the machine, a pack of Marlboros, a lighter and some candy. Outside, I got Mike to shuffle up and I sat down beside him. I set down the coffees and dumped all the sugars and creamer into his hands. “You want something to go with the coffee?” I asked, as I began to root through my open box. There was still a mountain of food in there. I plucked out a bit of everything into the croissant bag and handed it to him. His baleful eyes betrayed some suspicion, but I said nothing. I opened the smokes and lit one up, without offering. Jess would’ve killed me but I was a free man for an evening and there were worse crimes.
“Every bit of that stuff is good. I just got it from Marco’s. Don’t tell me you’re vegetarian!” I said, laughing. I couldn’t tell if he smiled, he just tilted his head. His hands were filthy. “I can get you a napkin or somethin’ if you need. You want some water for your hands?” I asked.
“No need,” he replied softly. “Technique and established immunity work together rather well. Thank you for asking. And… thank you for your kindness. It’s unusual.”
“Someone was kind to me and so it makes sense to share. Do you mind me smoking while you eat? Try the quiche, it’s really good.”
“This is the smoking section, so you carry on.”
We sat quietly while I puffed away and sipped a Coke. Mike ate slowly, constantly chewing then shifting his lengthy moustache and sweeping crumbs from his beard between mouthfuls.
“What did you do to deserve such kindness?” Mike eventually asked.
“You know, I’m not entirely sure. It just kinda happened. This guy gave me a load of food.” Mike looked over at me and raised his eyes quizzically, so I proceeded to recount the key points of Harold’s charity.
“Sounds like a test, to me,” was Mike’s judgement.
“What do you mean? How?”
“Just a feeling. I wonder if you’ll ever find out. You were right about the quiche.” Mike spoke with a gentle precision in a soft, midwestern accent. “Finance, hmmm? It’s a big world. Where does morality come into that?”
“Interesting question,” I mused. Regardless of Mike’s appearance, I rolled with the conversation and its potential depth. “I think you can project anything you want onto markets and your behaviour within them. As vacuous as this sounds, anyone can tell themselves anything they like and it’s only their belief that makes it true.”
“Give me an example,” said Mike as he sipped from his coffee. His hands were almost black against the white polystyrene of the cup.
“If you think that defence stocks are a good dividend payer or they’re rising due to impending defence spending or war or whatever, and you buy in, is that immoral? You can say that the market doesn’t care about you, so those stocks will go up and pay dividends regardless. You aren’t making that happen because you don’t trigger the underlying events. But others would say that you’re creating a form of demand and legitimisation by buying in, and if the thing in question is immoral or unethical, you’re tainted or even a perpetuator of evil.”
“What do you believe?”
“If I’m as analytical as I can be about it, I get to an answer that no one seems to like. It’s always both things. If you slice everything up or look close enough, you can largely say that none of it’s your fault but probably most things you can buy have degrees of immorality in them. The question is whether you refuse to engage on that basis.”
Mike nodded gently, sipped his coffee and returned to the food.
“What do you think, Mike?” I asked as he finished a mouthful.
“If the market in all forms is ultimately about information, one must accept that the market in information is kept deliberately imperfect for advantage that comes from asymmetry. This is obvious in the sense that accounts aren’t truth and you’ll never know how good or bad a company or thing really is. A barrel of oil isn’t immoral per sé, but what went into it confers the ability to render moral judgement on it. Blood diamonds are more immoral and less ethical than diamonds, in theory. But it’s all relative and if you never know which are which, can you be judged?”
“I’m kinda working on the idea that you can offset. There might be some redemption to be had from how you spend your ill gotten gains.”
“Amen.”
“Sounds like finance was… is your field?” I tested.
“No, just an interest among several. Immunology is my field.”
“What happened that meant you’re talking to me here?”
Mike sighed long and slow. His shoulders dropped and his head sank downwards. He reached out for the cigarettes and lit one away from his face to avoid burning his hair. He inhaled deeply, leaned back against the store window and looked up at the sky. “I can barely be bothered to explain, Scott. It’s shameful and silly and sad and…” He blew out the rest of the smoke into the air and wiped at his eye with the back of his hand. “A broken heart made me so sad I just stopped engaging with everything, then stuff piled up, then that life ended. Pathetic, really.”
My mind began to race over imagined ways I could help Mike fix himself. Part of me wanted to try to offer some unconditional support, but another part of me knew to stay quiet. I lit another cigarette and we sat there in silence, sipping our drinks and smoking.
“Hey, Scott. If you wander by here tomorrow, let me know how your interview went. Best of luck, and thanks again for your kindness.”
I took the hint and the exit he offered. I grabbed a few more cigarettes from the pack to make space for a rolled up ten, then handed him the pack and lighter. He nodded his thanks and a smile slipped from around his eyes.
“I’ll catch you tomorrow, Mike. Take it easy.” I stood up and strolled away down the street towards the hotel. I’d taken no more than ten steps when I heard a mushy crunch and the slamming thud crack of glass . I spun round. Another guy in a camo jacket, tight ripped jeans and big, ragged army boots was in front of Mike, who was slumping down sideward along the window. A huge impact pattern on the glass showed where the back of his head must have slammed into the window. The guy swung a kick straight into Mike’s gut, forcing puke straight out through his beard. I panicked. That bolt of fear at the edge of adrenaline shot through me into my fist. I ran at the punk who turned as he heard me coming, but it was too late for him to move as I piled into him to shove him hard to the floor. I ripped open the door of the store and yelled, “Call the fuckin’ cops! Now. Cops!” I could see the clerk was coming out from behind the counter but made a beeline back for the phone. As I turned, the punk ripped open the door. His eyes were bloodshot and angry. Mid-length greasy hair slid down from under a brown, unbranded, sweat stained cap. He had thin, long facial hair and remnants of teeth. He was some other kind of bum. As he opened the door and came at me, he just half growled and half screamed, his hands sort of clawing in my direction. I was gripped by the desire to put him down. I backed up towards the counter as the punk came in. I glanced down to see Mike’s blood on the toe of his left boot.
“Call an ambulance! Call an ambulance!” I yelled out. The punk sort of leered and laughed in a weird, addled way, like he drew pleasure from my panic, then he swung at me, clipping the side of my head. I could feel his nails rip and scratch my neck and the edge of my jaw. I yelled out in shock, then anger exploded in me and I slammed my fist up as hard as I could, right into his jaw. The connection was good enough and his head flicked back and his body waddled one step behind before he fell straight back into the aisle and against the drinks fridge. The door flew open and cans piled out onto the floor as the fridge rocked from impact. The punk was stunned enough. I looked back for the clerk.
“Cops are coming!” he called out at me. He had a short bat in his hands but he looked scared.
“Ambulance?”
“Oh yeah, yeah…”
“Fucking call them again! Get a fucking ambulance!” I commanded. “Where’s your water?”
“Next fridge.”
I grabbed two bottles and headed outside to Mike. An overweight woman in sweatpants and a dirty denim jacket was kneeling beside him, rifling his pockets. She’d picked up the two bags from Marco’s that I must have dropped.
“Get the fuck away from him!” I yelled. She bolted up, grabbed one of the bags and then ran off down the street in some lumpen, spastic motion like one of her legs was shorter than the other, even though there was no sign of that being the case. I could hear a kind of rasping, clattering breath from her as she strained to get away.
Mike’s nose had been slammed back into his face and bright blood steadily oozed over all of the part of his face that wasn’t covered in hair. A stream of puke and blood led down through his beard to his torso. He was down on his side and blood pooled slowly on the floor.
I tried to clean off his face with the water to see the damage. I washed around his mouth and cleared his airway with my fingers. His pulse came as a small mercy.
“Mike, Mike! It’s Scott. Can you hear me? I’m here. It’s OK. Say something.”
He stank. The smoke had been enough of a distraction as we had spoken but close up and in need of help, the smell was a grim mixture of filth, puke, blood and something slightly rotten. I pulled him away from the window and laid him out on his back. I slammed on the window and screamed out for a first aid kit. I kept hammering until the clerk called back. I set back on Mike and wished for some sign of breathing, but there was none. He should’ve been rasping through the blood. Now the centre of his face was utterly misshapen into a bloody flatness of a smashed and buried nose. The pulse was still there. I set him so I could administer breaths and just tried to shut out his filthy state as I pinched shut what there was of his nostrils and blew down into his mouth. There was an odd gurgle in his neck and chest, and blood bubbles popped from his face onto mine. His chest rose, indicating that there was some airway to his lungs. I tried again another couple of times, squeezing my eyes shut to stop the blood popping into them. The clerk came out with a plastic first aid kit.
“Get it open, get a dressing on his face!” I barked. I looked up and around. A man and a woman were stood near, watching. “Help us! Help us, please!” I begged. The man came closer but on seeing Mike’s state and wound, pulled a face of repulsion and strode off. The woman came and knelt beside me.
“What can I do?” she asked, gently and with fear in her voice.
“We need to stop the bleeding.” The clerk didn’t have a clue what he was doing. I grabbed the open kit and passed it to her. “Find the largest dressings and pads in there.” I leaned down again and fed in three more breaths. His moustache and beard made it hard to get a seal with his mouth and air hissed through the hair and again gurgled somehow in his throat and from his busted nose.
“Try putting him on his side. That doesn’t sound good. I think this is the best I can find,” she said. She held a tubular pack of bandage and a pad of some kind. I hauled Mike onto his side into the recovery position. Blood was all around the sides of his head, like a horror mask. I grabbed the pad, tore it open and pressed it gently onto Mike’s face. Together, we wrapped his head in bandage to hold the pad. The noise of the door pushing open interrupted our work.
“Oh, fuck!” the clerk exclaimed as he jumped up to face the punk who’d come round and was determined to leave, maybe through us. He looked angry still, but I couldn’t tell if he could see. His eyes looked defocussed. Before I could do or say anything, the clerk had jumped up and just swung the bat into the punk’s face, clipping his shoulder. He swung the other way and hit the side of the punk’s head, which was enough to send him backwards into the store again.
Before we’d finished tying off the bandage the cops screeched up and piled out. They secured the punk in cuffs and had him in the car well before the ambulance turned up. By that time, I’d worked out that covering Mike’s face with a plastic bag and poking a hole through his mouth made for a better seal and kept the blood and crap off me.
At the hospital, the cops kept me busy with questions. I got pissed off with them and told them to fuck off. Deep down, I knew that they were going to let Mike die. I confronted the doctors in the emergency room and told them to save him. I called Jess and overloaded her instantly, trying to explain everything. I wasn’t thinking at all. I said to Jess that I was going to back Mike’s care but I needed to pull money from the portfolio. She never once objected. She just said, “If you feel that’s what you need to do, then we can do it.” She coolly dealt with the doctors and did the rational work of getting cost estimates for surgery while I sat with the mess of a man I had just met and tried to tell him that help was coming. He’d been intubated and his face strapped and packed. I imagined what a nightmare his filthiness would present to the surgical team. I ran out of the room and told the nurses to let me start cleaning up his head. They gave in when I kept pointing out that if I was paying for his goddamn care I wanted to maximise his chances of survival, and if that meant me cleaning him up then I fucking would. That shamed them to act and with one of the nurses, I set about hacking off all his hair then washing his head and dousing him with iodine. It was 2AM by the time they took him into surgery and I left the hospital. In my hotel room, I couldn’t explain to myself the events. They all seemed to have happened because of what I had done. If I hadn’t bothered to check out the office and speak to Harold, I’d have never had the food, walked back from the courts and stopped at the 7-11. I’d dragged mayhem up out of nowhere that landed a boot in Mike’s face and put his nose into his skull. Jess told me ten times over that it wasn’t like that, until I just went quiet on the end of the phone. I stayed up until 5 AM writing out my statement for the cops so I could unload my brain and have something to give them.
At midday I swung by the 7th Precinct to deliver my statement and read it out onto tape in place of an interview. The punk was still in a cell, facing assault charges as long as Mike lived, and manslaughter if he didn’t. The hospital said Mike was still unconscious after the surgery and he was likely to be in an induced coma for at least a week. I called Jess and tried to unload the burden ahead of the interview, then headed to Interlekt. They took me into the meeting room and went through some pleasantries and let me set up for my pitch. The interviewers filed in, with Harold among the last. He was warm and friendly and admitted straight away that everyone knew we had met but it was nothing but a good thing. Then he asked me if I’d enjoyed the food from Marco’s. Then my eyes filled up.
The pitch went out the window and all but Harold and one older man whose name I didn’t know stayed behind. Harold listened as I recounted the events at the 7-11. He was sympathetic and supportive. He could easily sense the blame I was placing on myself and he challenged me directly, like he was conducting the interview.
“How is it that you are the cause of those events and the outcome?” he asked. I described the feelings of responsibility for choices I made that somehow led to Mike’s injuries. “Do you feel that is that the only way reality could be?”
“It feels like that’s how reality was, and you only get one shot at it, so I can’t change it.”
Then the other man spoke. “Reality isn’t objective,” he said. “Your reality is a subjective manifestation that hinges on multiple, intersecting interpretations of complex events and tiny parameters that all add up to a moment. Your reality isn’t solely dependent on you and your interpretation. It depends on others around you as well. You didn’t cause all those events, you just played a part in them. Be careful believing a version of reality into existence that didn’t really happen. Manifesting reality is a powerful skill that people don’t realise they have.” He excused himself. Harold stood and went to a sideboard against the wall. I watched him pour two large measures of expensive Scotch and a little water. He sat beside me, handed me my drink and gave me the choice to continue with the pitch or reschedule. Twenty minutes later, I’d walked him through the pitch and we spent another hour working through examples of my analysis and completed trades.
“Well, Scott, rest assured I’ve heard enough for the time being. Thanks for coming to Interlekt with this and putting in such effort. I’m deeply sorry that the evening’s events went the way they did and you have my sympathies. As my colleague said, please try to go a little easier on yourself. Let us all look closer at the pitch and we’ll come back to you within a week.” And that was that. I flagged a cab for the airport and flew home to Jess. The next day I was in the office at Vargus, keeping my head down, desperate to make the weekend.
A week later and a letter came through from Interlekt, signed by Harold. In polite terms it said thanks but no thanks; my strategy wasn’t compatible with Interlekt’s work. By way of polite consolation, they offered to pass on my details to a few other contacts and maybe something would come of it. There was no mention of any detailed feedback from Harold. I wasn’t going to let that deal go and intended to call him the following Monday.
That Friday evening, the phone rang.
“Mr Rheinhold?”
“Yep.”
“Great. Sorry to call out of the blue. We met at Interlekt…”
“Oh, right. I was going to call you on Monday. Thanks for your letter, no problem. There was a matter of feedback that I wanted to pursue with Harold. We made a deal, actually. Is that what you’re calling about?”
“Not exactly. I’m calling about something broader. My name is Terence Debney and I’m calling because I’m wondering whether you’re interested in… learning a little more about manifesting reality that goes a touch beyond your portfolio.”
What a rewarding read I thoroughly enjoyed it, thank you.
This is amazing. I’m here and not sure how I ended up here but I’ll check everyday.