a long way from home.”
“Long way from home. And cold as hell.” She grinned. “Don’t you know.”
I replied with a nod and a tight smile, wanting her to know that I was grateful for her recognition of me.
“What ’bout you? You’re surely no taxi man dressed like that. You one of them super stock market men?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “I guess I am.”
“Then what you doin’ down here at midnight? You not make enough millions today?”
I shrugged. “Just a hard night.”
“That happens,” she said. “Sometimes, man, the night comes hard.”
I had to nod.
Don’t you know.
6
T he water ripples around her foot in gentle circles.
From one side of her foot, the circles disappear into shadows under the dock.
From the other side, the circles melt outward into the lake where the water and the sun become the same brightness.
The afternoon seems without beginning or end.
I walk down to the dock, sipping on a cold sweating beer bottle, bristles of sun-burnt grass stubble pricking my bare feet.
I am conscious of slowing my pace, taking shorter steps the closer I get to the dock, so that I can keep watching her.
Stretched out on the dock, she is leaning back against an old upturned wooden lawn chair. Bathing suit bottom. Baseball T-shirt. Her hair stuffed under a faded canvas hat, strands falling loose onto the flaking paint of the weather-cracked chair slats.
Reading her trashy paperback against one propped knee.
Her other knee bent over the side of the dock, her toes touching the water, her foot making a lazy circle. Casting ripples outward.
When I step onto the dock, I stop.
The air is motionless and scorched, with the faint smell of road dust and barbecue smoke and the algae on the rocks beneath the dock.
Laughter and children’s voices and the joyful yipping of a dog drift through the trees from the next cottage. And radio music. Rock-and-roll songs.
Feeling my weight on the boards, she glances up from her book.
“What are you looking at?” she asks.
“You,” I tell her.
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re beautiful.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re you.”
She smiles, lets her book slide. “Do you ever wonder why I love you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes it’s because you do things like talking me into getting out of the city for a few days. This old beat-up place with all the spider webs in the rafters. Our anniversary here.”
I step to her.
I kneel down. I kiss her softly, her skin hot and salty with sweat.
“Be careful,” she whispers. “You could kiss a girl right out of her pants like that.”
“I was thinking more about making this last forever. Us. Having this afternoon together.”
“That too,” she whispers.
7
I could not recall any point previous to these last few days when I had ever before been intimidated by daylight.
Mid-morning, I flicked my eyes around my office hurriedly to check for any overlooked details that would salvage my situation, preparing to push myself from my chair.
Yellowish sunlight, diffused by the tinted glass of the broad windows, had leaked in around me.
I hated it, bloated with lemony brightness.
With no shadows, I felt denied any sense that there was something left unseen, something yet to discover, some new possibilities or solutions.
I was hatefully tired.
I had spent the night in a chair in my living room. Three times I had tried to reach Albert Quan; falling back into a tense and listless sleep, the lamp light seeping under my eyelids, each time the man would not take my call. The final time I woke it had been dawn. With the twelve-hour time difference, the business day in Singapore had run to its conclusion. Bank of South Asia had closed. My attempted contact incomplete. My possibilities shrinking.
At my desk, I swallowed sorely, my throat dry. My eyes scratchy with fatigue. Feeling forced to take on my business day, empty-handed and reluctant, as it unfolded in uncertainty and false glare.
Time to report to Kyle’s called meeting.
I took a final breath, trying to disband my doubts. In unbroken momentum, I rocked to my feet, paced rapidly out of my office, down the hall, and through Kyle’s open door.
There were four of them waiting: Kyle behind his desk; on two inward-facing chairs, Brenda Gibbons from our treasury department, Dimitri Sarkans from trading; and, on the deep couch along the side wall, an older man I did not recognize.
Kyle commenced while I was still entering the room. “Sit down, Paris. I’ve invited Brenda and Dimitri in to keep them informed of what’s happening firsthand.”
I nodded to them.
“And I’d like to introduce Ted Dwyer.” Kyle swept his hand to the older man. “Ted and I go back a long way. All the way to Yale, in fact. At various times, Ted has been president of two of our largest brokerage houses and one of our largest banks. These days he spends most of his time up in Ottawa warming a bench in the Senate, but I persuaded him to fly down this morning to give us the benefit of some of his experience and perspective.”
I stepped over and shook hands with Dwyer who, with difficulty, hiked himself partially out of the couch cushions, prefacing his greeting with, “Sorry. With this hip replacement, I always need a little more advance notice to get up and running.”
I eyed the remaining chair.
Instinct warned me not to relinquish my command of the ground between Kyle and Dwyer.
“Okay.” Kyle launched the discussion impulsively, like tearing the paper from a cheaply wrapped package. “Paris, what have you got for us? Our treasury department has a stack of overnight messages from Bangkok Commercial Bank requesting settlement on the bond issue no latter than March
