Limitless

‘I think Caleb Hale had a couple of drinks too many that night, or was maybe mixing booze with his Triburbazine pills, or whatever, and he just lost the run of himself. And now they’re trying to gloss over what he said, cover their tracks, make out as if this is a real policy. But what they’re doing is entirely irrational …’

‘That’s ridiculous, Ginny.’

‘We were talking about history a minute ago – I think that’s how most history works, Daddy. People in power, they make it up as they go along. It’s sloppy and accidental and human …’

The reason I was confused during those few moments, as I stared over at Ginny, was because in spite of everything – in spite of how different they looked and how different they sounded – I could so easily have been staring over at Melissa.

‘Ginny’s starting college in the fall,’ Van Loon said to the others. ‘International studies – or is that irrational studies? – so don’t mind her, she’s just limbering up.’

Tapping out a quick timestep in her new shoes, Ginny said, ‘Up yours, Mr Van Loon.’

Then she turned and walked over in my direction. Hank Atwood and Jim Heche converged, and one of them started speaking to Van Loon, who was back sitting at his desk.

As Ginny approached where I was standing, she threw her eyes up, dismissing everything – and everyone – behind her. She arrived over and poked me gently in the stomach, ‘Look at you.’

‘What?’

‘Where’s all the weight gone?’

‘I told you it fluctuates.’

She looked at me dubiously, ‘Are you bulimic?’

‘No, like I said …’

I paused.

‘Or maybe schizophrenic then?’

‘What is this?’ I laughed, and made a face. ‘Sure it’s not medical school you’re going to? I’m fine. That was just a bad day you caught me on.’

‘A bad day?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hhmm.’

‘It was.’

‘And today?’

‘Today’s a good day.’

I felt the impulse to add some sappy comment like and it’s even better now that you’re here, but I managed to keep my mouth shut.

A brief silence followed, during which we just looked at each other.

Then, from across the room, ‘Eddie?’

‘Yeah?’

It was Van Loon.

‘What was that thing we were talking about earlier? Copper loops and … AD-something?’

I bent slightly to the left and looked around Ginny, over at Van Loon.

‘ADSL,’ I said. ‘Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Loop.’

‘And … ?’

‘It permits transmission of a single compressed, high-quality video signal, at a rate of 1.5 Mbits per second. In addition to an ordinary voice phone conversation.’

‘Right.’

Van Loon turned back to Hank Atwood and Jim Heche and continued what he was saying.

Ginny looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

‘Excuse me.’

‘Let’s get out of here and go somewhere for a drink,’ I said, all at a rush. ‘Come on, don’t say no.’

She paused, and that flicker of uncertainty passed over her face again. Before she could answer, Van Loon clapped his hands together and said, ‘OK, Eddie, let’s go.’

Ginny immediately turned around and moved off, saying to her father, ‘So where are you lot going?’

I slumped back against the oak-panelled wall.

‘The Orpheus Room. We’ve got more business to discuss. If that’s OK with you.’

She made a dismissive puffing sound and said, ‘Knock yourselves out.’

‘And what are you doing?’

As she looked at her watch, I looked at her back, at the soft dusty blue of her cashmere cardigan.

‘Well, there’s something I’ve got to do later, but I’m going home now.’

‘OK.’

The next short while was taken up with goodbyes and see you laters.

Ginny drifted over to the door, waved at me, smiled, and then left.

On our way down to the Orpheus Room a couple of minutes later, I had to shake off an acute sense of disappointment and refocus my attention on the business at hand.

My bid for the apartment in the Celestial Building was accepted the following day, and I found myself signing all of the documents the day after that again. Van Loon’s letter had silenced any enquiry into my tax affairs, and with the financing arrangements equally discreet, I have to say I had a very easy time of it. Less easy was deciding how I wanted the place to look. I called a couple of interior designers and visited some furniture showrooms and read various glossy magazines, but I remained undecided and fell into an obsessive cycle of plan and counter-plan, colour scheme and counter-colour scheme. Did I want it all spare and industrial, for example, with gunmetal-grey surfaces and modular storage units – or exotic and busy, with Louis XV chairs, Japanese silk screens and red lacquer tables?

When Gennady arrived at the apartment on Tenth Street that Friday morning, I had already started packing some of my stuff into boxes.

I should have expected trouble, of course, but I hadn’t been letting myself think about it.

He came in the door, saw what was happening and lost his temper almost immediately. He kicked a couple of boxes over and said that was it. ‘I’ve had enough of you and your two-faced guinea shit.’