Glenfiddich Ten-Year-Old Single Malt, are you shittin’ me? You bought a bottle of well-aged Scotch whisky to a down-and-out bum living on Skid Row?
Ah, knock that off, would ya? I ain’t dying, you loser, I’m laughing. You finally managed to do something entertaining. And civilised. I hope you brought glasses. You can’t drink this stuff outta the bottle.
You did bring glasses. Huh . . .
Well, okay. I’ll make a deal with you. I ain’t gonna tell you my story. My story’s my business, and that ain’t for sale. But I’ll tell you a fable of the streets; a true morality tale for our times; a story every wet-behind-the-ears starry-eyed idiot oughta hear at least once. This is the story of a man who managed to get himself a ticket for the Money Train. This story is about a man called Jack.
Jack English was a farmer-boy, grew up in Idaho. Classic smallholding, the kind there ain’t really room for no more in this fine and copasetic country of ours: some wheat, some greens, some potatoes, some dairy. Father was killed in one a them bizarre industrial accidents farmers are strangely prone to. Jack’s daddy went through a potato washer — came out in lumps, apparently. Raw steak with fries on the side — you ever eaten steak tartare? They say human flesh is more like pork, but nonetheless . . .
So, anyway. Daddy went through the wringer; the farm went to the wall. Jack was a college boy, great with numbers but hopeless farmer, didn’t have his daddy’s touch with the soil. Saw disaster crawling over the hill towards him, black and inevitable. Did everything he could to hold it off, but he didn’t have it where it counts. Had to sell the land off, piece by piece. First the arable — Jack was always more of a people person, and a cow’s closer to human than a cucumber. Then the pasture, along with those pretty-eyed ladies Jack was so attached to. Cows can be quite attractive, you know, in a big-tits-long-eyelashes kind of a way.
Day the sale went through, Jack watched as his Jersey girls, his daddy’s pride and joy, wandered down to the milking shed as usual, into their stalls just like always — only the farm hands hitching ’em up to the milking machine weren’t working for him no more. The great cycle of grass, lactation, machinery and cow shit kept right on turning without missing a beat. But he wasn’t part of it. He’d never been part of it; he was just some damned idiot who couldn’t hang onto what he’d inherited.
He rustled the banker’s draft in his pocket and he bit his lip until it bled.
Then he drove into town, found a bar, and got drunk.
Pass that bottle, will ya? I notice you ain’t drinkin’ yours. Don’t worry on my account; I ain’t gonna lose it watching someone else drinking my booze. It may or may not surprise you to know I ain’t actually an alcoholic. I mean, sure, I’ve been drunk every time you’ve been down here, and the first time you found me I was so completely pissy-eyed I could hardly speak, but that ain’t because I got to be. I just really, really, really like to drink. Well, take a look around; living here, who wouldn’t? I’m what you might call a contextual drinker. Down here, I’ll drink every drop I find. But take me outta this particular context you happen to find me in, put me somewhere clean and decent, and I can leave the booze alone with the best of ’em. Although I admit my liver probably don’t know the difference.
There’s all kinds a drunk, you know. Down here we mostly enjoy the drinking-to-forget drunk; although drinking to stop the voices is popular too, with a certain discerning clientele. But in the world above the gutter, there’s thousands of ways to get acquainted with the bottom of the bottle. There’s the fun drunk, where the gang’s all together and the food’s just grand, and everybody’s so fuckin’ witty you can’t even believe it. There’s the summer-afternoon drunk — ah, that was one a my favourites, back in the day. Sitting with a couple a six-packs, watching the sky and the grass and the water, waking up just as the sun slips behind the hill. There’s the meaningful drunk, when halfway down the bottle, damn if that ain’t the secret of the universe, who knew that was it all this time . . . ? Only you can’t quite get the cap off the pen, so you have to let it go, and when you wake up the next morning all you can remember is how righteously good it felt to know how the world fits together. The sloppy drunk — sprawled all over your girl, begging her to marry you, so god-damn horny you want to do it right there on the bar stool; only the booze takes all the starch out of you, and she has to carry you upstairs and put you to bed in the spare room. The mean drunk, where you catch a glimpse of your reflection and try starting a fight with yourself. Right now, you and me are having an educational drunk — where one of you sits in respectful silence and gobbles up the pearls of wisdom cast before you. So many kinds, so many kinds . . . I gotta take a leak.
That’s better. Where were we? Oh, yeah, kinds a drunk. Well, Jackie boy, he went on an epic drunk — Homeric in scale. He drank and he drank, and he ranted and raved, and waved his arms around, and stumbled around the room. He was a cabaret, a floorshow, an entertainment all in himself, better’n anything you’d see this year in Stratford, little old England. People actually stayed there to watch him. He did this whole speech on the inequities in the modern capital marketplace that meant that just when you most needed help with your cash flow, all the checks and balances the money men had in place would automatically kick in and prevent you from getting it, and how the perverse incentives of Wall Street would bring the whole system crashing down around our ears one day. Kinda prophetic, huh? Well, when you’re looking in the rear-view mirror, everyone’s a friggin’ genius.
Then he got started on the cows. Took out his wallet, started showing everyone a picture of this one damn cow he’d hung onto. ‘This is Genevieve.’ Slurring his words, barely able to stand up. Everyone nodding respectfully. ‘All I got left — that and an acre of land to graze her on.’
Other end of the bar, there’s a guy on a different kinda drunk. He’s working his way down a bottle of vodka, shot after shot after shot, not speaking. Their eyes meet in the mirror. Some sort of connection’s made.
‘Wh’r you?’ slurs Jack, sliding onto the bar stool.
The man shrugged.
‘I,’ he said carefully, ‘am a financial wizard. I’m a giant of Wall Street. I’ve made and lost more money for myself and my employers than you could dream of — and I’d trade the whole damned lot for a life I could be proud of.’
Jack gawked.
‘I’m drinking,’ said the man, every word enunciated with the care of the truly shit-faced, ‘because I’ve just been to the memorial service of a man who used to work for me. He wasn’t a friend, mind you. He was a salesman; they never have any friends. Just golf buddies and drinking partners. He was killed — by the system.’
‘Whatcha talkin’ ’bout?’ mumbled Jack.
‘The system,’ repeated the man, calmly. ‘The system you were railing against just now. It chewed him up and spat him out, left nothing but a suit of clothes behind.’
‘Y’re all a shower of bastards,’ said Jack indistinctly. ‘You and y’r damned rules and y’r freakin’ cash flow projections.’
‘Indeed, we are. A shower of heartless bastards in expensive suits and red suspenders, and not one god-damned soul between the lot of us. I’ll trade you.’
Jack looked blank.
‘I’ll trade you,’ the man repeated. ‘I’ll trade you that house, and that acre of land, and that pretty-eyed cow of yours.’
‘What do I get in return?’ asked Jack.
‘I’ll give you a reco . . . a recomm . . .’ the man sighed. ‘I’ll give you a recommendation to my manager, who’ll be frantic since receiving notice of my resignation, and desperate for a replacement. I’ll call in the morning, give my personal assurance that you’re a fine young man, deserving of a chance to prove yourself. Oh, and the keys to my apartment.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t wanna be like you,’ growled Jack. ‘Money men took my farm, the farm my daddy spent his life building up. There should be
a better way . . .’
‘Perhaps. But, as you so correctly observe, we’re all a bunch of robbers. Who’s going to change the world if the good guys won’t work for us?’
‘What makes you think I’ll even be any good?’ Jack asked, baffled.
‘I have no fucking idea,’ said the man, ‘and I couldn’t care less. But I want out, and you want in. The rent’s paid for a month. After that, you’re on your own. Deal?’
Jack squinted across the top of his glass.
‘Why’re you doing this?’ he demanded.
The man looked into his vodka and shuddered.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘the system eats people. It eats us from the head down, chews us up and discards the empty husks. It is a carnivore, with a predator’s instincts, and I do not intend to be its next victim. And since you’re so angry and determined and out to get us all, let’s see what the system makes of you before it spits out your bones.’
‘I’ll show ’em all, you know,’ said Jack, swaying. ‘I’ll be decent. Ethical. And if they won’t let me, I’ll fight the system from the inside, take ’em down. I won’t be a corporate whore.’
‘Yes, you will,’ smiled the man. ‘Yes, you will. Here.’
He put a bunch of keys on the bar, then a business-card. Red Giant Investments Ltd.
Jack’s ticket to board the Money Train.
‘’kay,’ mumbled Jack, and shook the outstretched hand. Then he slid off his stool and passed out.
Was I the Red Giant financial wizard? Ah, just give over, wouldja? Ain’t no point trying to work out where I come in this story, ’cos I ain’t in it anywhere. The men in this story, they’re all dead now. Chewed up by the system, leaving nothing but the empty shell behind.
Jack’s mother, ah, she was mad. Selling off your birthright, completely insane, chasing dreams, not the man your father was, you know how it goes. How do I make that out? On account of you wastin’ those hard-earned college dollars of yours trailing round the country collecting stories off people like me, that’s how. Don’t try and tell me your folks are thrilled by the path you’ve taken . . . anyway, Jackie boy, he shouted her down for once in his life. He was a man possessed; he’d been given a strange, singular chance, and damn, he was going to take it. He packed up his car, his mother and his underwear, and set off to take a bite outta the Big Apple.
New York crashed into Jack like a series of divine revelations, left him gasping and lost. First revelation was the architecture: ornate fingers of glass and concrete that pierced the clouds. He visited St Patrick’s to ask for God’s blessing on his new life, felt uneasy, couldn’t work out why. Finally figured out it was the scale. God’s house is supposed to be the biggest place in town, but Wall Street residents bow their heads down at somebody else’s altar. When he realised that, he had a moment of panic; actually went to Grand Central and looked at the departures board. Looked again at that bit of card in his hand, that ticket for the Money Train.
No contest. The Money Train won. Always does. Jack turned right around and headed back into town.
Second revelation was the apartment. Only four rooms — two bedrooms, living-room with kitchenette in the corner, miniscule bachelor-pad bathroom — but in New York, it’s all in the address. His was Ninetieth and Park. His mother looked at the view, and for a blessed minute, she stopped complaining.
Third was the office. He snuck into the building like a thief, convinced he’d be found out. A woman met him in reception, a certain age as they say, but damn, she looked good.
‘I’m Adela,’ she told him. ‘You must be Jack.’
‘Yes,’ he said, thinking to himself, damn, even the secretaries are hot, all those years I wasted in Idaho . . .
‘You’ve got a month’s trial,’ she said. ‘You’ll report direct to me until we re-staff, picking up where Bradley’s team left off. And I warn you, we’re up against it. Nick’s dead, Ruby’s on sick leave, and Brad’s idea of a useful contribution is to throw it all up to live in Idaho and send you down here instead.’ She looked him up and down. ‘So I hope you’re everything he said you were.’
‘What did he say I was?’ asked Jack, busily adjusting his ideas.
‘He said you were a bankrupt farmer-boy with a grudge against the system,’ she said. Jack nearly swallowed his tongue. ‘But he always knew how to spot talent, that man. I guess no-one lasts forever. Come with me.’
Took him into a high glass palace up in the clouds. He had a desk, a phone, a computer, a window, a pile of paperwork, a compensation package he didn’t even begin to understand, a desk-neighbour name of Jerry. Made some small-talk, him and Jerry getting on famously, and then this — vision.
Blonde hair in a chignon, beautiful blue eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, lovely body in a grey suit, pretty black heels. Only the heels gave her away at first; other than those, she was pure Wall Street, suit with a head on top. But those heels told a different story. Her smile was the other clue; warm and sweet, unexpected.
Jerry caught him looking, grinned.
‘That’s Aisling Carroll. You know McLain Carroll, right? Red Giant’s founding father? She’s his daughter, interning for a year. Doing an MBA at Harvard. Waaay too good for us.’
The daughter of the Red Giant, thought Jack, swoonily. She’s beautiful . . . then, across the office, he saw a huge slab of meat with a shock of red hair, inexpertly crammed into a pin-striped suit by some poor, terrified tailor. The slab glared at Jack like it wanted to kill him.
‘That’s why we don’t mess with her,’ said Jerry.
‘That’s her daddy?’
‘Booya.’ Jerry lowered his voice. ‘You reckon the story’s true?’
‘What story?’
Jerry looked at him incredulously.
‘Where’d you say you were from?’
‘Idaho.’
‘They have negotiable currency yet in Idaho?’ Jack lobbed a pencil over the partition; got it right in the middle of Jerry’s forehead, perfect bulls-eye. ‘Ow . . . well, the story goes like this. Mr Carroll got his start at one of the other big places — Lehmann’s, I think — then he went out on his own, founded Red Giant from nothing. Grew overnight, just about; man’s got the magic touch. Somebody at one of the big firms wasn’t happy. One more at the feed-trough means that much less for everyone else, right? So, he decided to take Red Giant down. Him and a couple of other Masters of the Universe, they made a plan. Horned in on his deals, priced him out of the market. Tried to cut off his lines of credit. That kind of thing. Mr Carroll got word of it. Next thing that happens . . .’
Dramatic pause; Jack’s eyes like saucers. Jerry glanced over his shoulder, whispered so Jack had to strain to hear him.
‘The guy who started it — they found him in the Hudson River.’
‘Doing what?’
Jerry laughed shortly.
‘Floating, you dimwit.’
‘Floating? What — ?’
‘Face-down. And that isn’t the worst part. The worst part — is all his teeth had been pulled.’ Jack swallowed. Jerry shrugged. ‘Red Giant never looked back.’
Jack stared at McLain Carroll, his new boss. Carroll looked back like Jack was next in line for a one-man river-cruise. Jack looked away and shivered.
‘Shit. He hates me already.’
Jerry looked Jack straight in the eye.
‘Maybe,’ said Jerry. ‘But he’ll leave you alone as long as you bring in the money.’
Jack flicked through the files, gradually realised he was supposed to do a deal with a couple of maverick inventors for the rights to a voice-recognition system for MP3 players. He stared at the pages of figures. And something clicked in his brain.
I can do this, he thought. I can actually freakin’ do this.
Like I said, the men in this story, they’re all dead now.
Course they got t
o know each other, Jack and Aisling. She was beautiful and outta reach; more than enough to attract him. As for Jack — ah, he had that farmer-boy physique, the build that comes effortlessly when you work on the land. In that polluted corporate ocean, he stood out like a tall ear of corn: strong, golden, and totally outta place. Plus, as it turned out, they both had this fantastic idea they were going to be good. Shared dream; bringing ethics to Wall Street. How could they resist?
First, the high-octane business discussions, the junior staff all working crazy hours, Aisling and Jack fitting in nicely. Meeting by the coffee percolator, nothing planned; just more often than not, come break-time there they’d both be. Next, that wilful blindness; you both act like it’s all still spontaneous, but still, a lull in the working day and God damn, there you both are again, what are the odds? All the rest of the percolator crowd getting wise to it, staying out of the way; Jerry giving way last of all, a bit jealous, a bit reluctant to concede defeat. Then, the first time you slip over into the edge into personal . . .
Why are you here? she asked him, one hot October night. You seem far too . . . nice. So he told her the story he hadn’t even told Jerry: the farm in Idaho, the shame of losing his birthright. I want to do better than they did by me, he said earnestly. I want to make the money-men play fair.
She looked at him like she’d just seen him properly for the first time.
So why do you do it? he asked her. Why work so hard? With your dad running the place and all?
She blushed like a rose. He felt his heart squeeze with it.
That’s why I have to work so hard, she told him. I’ve got to . . . she sighed, and pushed her glasses up her nose. I’ve got to earn it.
You can fall in love with the smallest damned things. Jack fell for the way she looked when she pushed those glasses up her nose. Just that, and he was a goner. He kissed her, soft, innocent; felt like he was drowning. She let him, for just a second, then pushed him away.
New World Fairy Tales Page 8
