Limitless

I took one of the two tiny pills out of the bowl and using a blade divided it neatly in half. I swallowed one of the halves. Then I just sat at the desk, thinking about how my situation had changed so radically over the previous three or four days, how it had started to fall apart at the seams, to convulse and haemorrhage and slip towards the recurring, the chronic, the terminal.

Then, about twenty minutes after that again, in the slipstream of this downward moodswing, I noticed out of the blue that my headache had lifted completely.

[ 19 ]

FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, therefore, I only took half a pill each morning with breakfast. This dosage brought me as close to ‘normal’ as it was probably possible to get under the circumstances. I was apprehensive at first, but when the headaches didn’t come back, I relaxed somewhat and allowed myself to think I might have found a way out, or, at the very least – with a stash of nearly seven hundred such doses in prospect – plenty of time in which to look for a way out.

But of course it wasn’t that simple.

I slept until nine o’clock on the Monday morning. I had oranges, toast and coffee for breakfast, followed by a couple of cigarettes. Then I had a shower and got dressed. I put on my new suit – which wasn’t that new any more – and stood in front of the mirror. I had to go into Carl Van Loon’s office, but all of a sudden I felt extremely uncomfortable about having to go anywhere dressed like this. I thought I looked strange. A while later, as I made my way into the lobby of the Van Loon Building on Forty-eighth Street, I was so self-conscious that I half expected someone to tap me on the shoulder and tell me it had all been a terrible mistake, and that Mr Van Loon had left instructions to have me escorted from the building if I happened to show up.

Then, in the elevator to the sixty-second floor, I started thinking about the deal I was supposed to be brokering with Van Loon – the Abraxas buyout of MCL-Parnassus. I hadn’t given any thought to it for days – but now, as soon as I tried to recall any of the specifics, the whole subject became a blur. I kept hearing the phrase ‘option value pricing-model’ in my head, hearing it over and over – option value pricing-model, option value pricing-model – but I had only the vaguest notion any more of what this meant. I also knew that ‘the build-out of a broadband infrastructure’ was important, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. It was like waking up after a dream in which you’ve been speaking a foreign language only to find out that you don’t speak the language at all, and barely even understand a word of it.

I stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby area. I walked over to the main desk and stood for a moment, waiting to catch the receptionist’s attention. It was the same woman who’d been here the previous Thursday, so when she turned to me, I smiled. But she didn’t show any sign of recognition.

‘May I help you, sir?’

Her tone was formal and quite chilly.

‘Eddie Spinola,’ I said, ‘for Mr Van Loon.’

She consulted her diary and then started to shake her head. She seemed to be about to tell me something – maybe that Mr Van Loon was out of the country, or that she had no record of my appointment – but just then, walking slowly from a corridor to the left of the reception desk, Van Loon himself appeared. He looked sombre and as he put a hand out to greet me I noticed that his stoop was more pronounced than I’d remembered.

The receptionist went back to what she’d been doing before I interrupted her.

‘Eddie, how are you?’

‘I’m fine, Carl. Feeling much better.’

We shook hands.

‘Good. Good. Come on in.’

I was struck again by the size of Van Loon’s office, which was long and wide, but decorated very sparely. He went over to his desk and sat behind it. He indicated that I should sit as well.

He sighed, and shook his head for a moment. ‘OK, look Eddie,’ he said, ‘that thing in the Post Friday was not good, not the kind of publicity we want associated with this deal, yeah?’

I nodded, unsure about where this might lead. I’d half hoped that the article might escape his notice.

‘Hank doesn’t know you, and the deal is still under wraps, so there’s nothing to worry about, yet. I just don’t think you should show your face down at Lafayette any more.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Keep a low profile. Trade here. Like I said, we have our own trading room. It’s discreet and private.’ He smiled. ‘No fucking baseball caps.’

I smiled at this, too – but I actually felt quite uncomfortable, and nervous, as if I could very easily throw up.

‘I’ll have someone show you around the floor later.’

‘Yeah.’

‘The other thing I wanted to tell you, and maybe this is a good thing, is that Hank won’t be here tomorrow. He’s been delayed in LA, so we’re not going to have that meeting until … probably until the middle or even the end of … next week.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ I mumbled, finding it hard to look Van Loon in the eye, ‘it’s probably … like you say, it’s probably a good thing, no?’