Limitless

As I stood at the windows, peering through the hanging blinds, one of the first things I noticed – in among the familiar cluster of midtown skyscrapers – was a glimmering shard of the Celestial Building over on the West Side. From this perspective, it seemed to be huddled in among a dozen other buildings, but if you looked closely you could see that it was further back than the others, and that it actually stood alone. It seemed incredible to me that I’d been in the Celestial a couple of days before, and had even contemplated buying an apartment in it – and one of the costlier units at that …

Nine and a half million dollars.

‘Eddie!’

I turned around.

Van Loon was off the phone and approaching from the other end of the room.

I braced myself.

‘Something’s come up, Eddie. I have to go. I’m sorry.’ His tone was all friendly now, and when he arrived at where I was standing, he nodded at the yellow legal pad under my arm. ‘Do up that stuff and we’ll talk. As I said I’m away until the weekend, so that should give you enough time.’ He clapped his hands together suddenly. ‘OK, you want to have a look at our trading floor? I’ll call Sam Welles and have him show you around.’

‘I think I’ll head home and just get stuck into this, if you don’t mind,’ I said, and nudged my arm forward.

‘But it’d only take—’ Van Loon paused and stared at me for a moment. I could see that he was puzzled, and probably felt a mild antagonism towards me, just as he had earlier, but he clearly didn’t understand why this was happening to him and wasn’t sure how to handle it.

Then he said, ‘What’s the matter with you, Eddie? You’re not going soft on me, are you?’

‘No, I—’

‘Because this shit isn’t for the faint-hearted.’

‘I know that, I just—’

‘And I’m out on a limb here, Eddie. No one knows about this. You fuck up on me, you talk about this – my credibility is blown.’

‘I know, I know.’ I indicated again to the pad under my arm, ‘ … I just want to get this right.’

Van Loon held my gaze for a moment and then sighed, as if to say, ‘Well that’s nice to know.’ Then he turned around and started walking back towards his desk. I followed him.

‘Call me when you’re done,’ he said. He had his back to me now, and was standing at the front of the desk, consulting something, a diary or a notebook. ‘And make it no later than Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.’

I hesitated, but then realized I’d just been dismissed. I walked out of the office without saying another word.

On my way home, I stopped off at a Gristede’s and bought a few large packs of potato chips and some beers. Back in the apartment, I sat at my desk, got out the thick folder of stuff Van Loon had sent me the previous week and assembled my notes. I thought if I could come to grips with all of this material, I’d be OK. I’d be as informed and up-to-date as I had been when I’d impressed Van Loon with my proposal for structuring the buy-out deal.

I kicked off with the set of MCL-Parnassus quarterly reports in the folder. I laid them out on my desk, opened the first pack of chips and bottle of beer, and started reading.

It took me about two hours of assiduous page-turning before I could admit to myself that not only was this material stultifyingly boring, it was also largely incomprehensible to me. The problem was simple: I couldn’t remember how to interpret this kind of stuff. I had a look at some of the other documents, and although these were slightly less dense and impenetrable than the quarterly reports, they were no less boring. But I persevered, and made sure that I read everything – or, at least in the sense that my eye passed over every word and every line, didn’t miss anything.

I finished all of the chips and beer and ordered up Chinese at about ten o’clock. Shortly after midnight, I finally caved in and went to bed.

The next morning I made a quick and terrifying calculation. It had taken me eight hours the day before to read what previously I’d read in about forty-five minutes. I then tried to recall some of it, but could only summon up fragments, generalities. Previously I’d been able to remember all of it, back to front, inside out.

The temptation at this stage to take a couple of MDT pills was very strong indeed, but I persevered. If I went back full-thrust on MDT, I would only end up having more blackouts, and where would that leave me? So the pattern remained the same over the next couple of days. I stayed at home and waded through hundreds of pages of material, only leaving the apartment to get stuff like potato chips and cheeseburgers and beer. I watched a good deal of TV, but studiously avoided newscasts and current affairs shows. I kept my phone unplugged. I suppose at some level I created the illusion for myself that I was coming to grips with the material, but as the days passed I had to admit that very little of it was sinking in.