Half the Day Is Night

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  So the big investor funds would make enough available to allow MaTE to keep buying and to keep the price artificially inflating. Then they would profit take, selling a little more and a little more. Robit was regarded as an undervalued stock, a good growth stock, but it didn’t pay much dividend. She figured when it reached twenty-one there’d be a number of large sell orders. Then the price would dip as MaTE held off buying. At nineteen MaTE would buy again.

  They were playing against the big computer-monitored investment programs, carefully manipulating the stock to put a lot of it on the market. If MaTE got 35% of the Robit stock today it would be enough of the corporation that MaTE would control the board. Then they’d use that equity to pay Marincite Corp. for MaTE.

  The trick was to spend enough money to pry open Robit but not to spend so much money that Robit was too expensive.

  At one-thirty in the afternoon while she was eating a bagel Owen Cleary of MaTE said, “It’s at twenty-one and an eighth.”

  “It should start to fall,” she said. Although he knew that.

  At two o’clock the stock was holding at twenty-one even. There wasn’t a lot of activity, but a few people bought takeover stock, hoping it would continue to go up. Surely by two-thirty it would start to go down.

  At about a quarter to three it started to climb. “Someone else is buying,” she said. She felt sick. Who would be buying?

  A white knight maybe? Somebody out to protect Robit? By now the street would know that MaTE was making a move, Robit might have appealed to someone to buy them, a friendly buyer.

  She called Singapore and established a link with New York to increase Owen’s credit. Owen started buying at twenty-two. That meant that MaTE would start its life as a new company heavily indebted, but that was a risk they had already decided to take.

  The stock went to twenty-five. This was not good, this was a worst-case scenario. They couldn’t afford to go on. The New York Stock Exchange was querying, the loan was now larger than the assets of the bank, did First Hawaiian have a guarantee?

  Polly Navarro was her sugar daddy, he would use Marincite Corp. money to guarantee the loan. “Owen, call Polly,” she said. “New York is going to shut down our funds.”

  It had all been agreed on, Polly would step in if things went wrong.

  After a moment Owen said, perplexed, “I can’t get Polly.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I’ve got his tickler number,” Owen said, “but there’s no answer. He’s not answering.”

  “Call his secretary,” she snapped.

  The secretary said Mr. Navarro was not available and he didn’t know where he was.

  “Owen,” she said, “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Maybe he’s in the john,” Owen said.

  She had an image of Polly in the john, pants around his knees. Once it was in her head it was stuck there, hard to think around.

  She queried someone in New York, a broker she had worked with, could he find out who was buying Robit?

  Yeah, he could find out, give him a moment.

  While she was waiting, New York suspended credit to First Hawaiian pending a guarantee. Singapore followed suit.

  The loan was at $172,000,000 more than the worth of the bank. First Hawaiian was technically bankrupt. At this moment, on paper, her company was worthless.

  Her broker came back. “Marincite Corp. is buying Robit,” he said.

  “Who else?” she said, exasperated.

  “Just you,” he said.

  That made no sense. If no one else was buying, the price shouldn’t be going up. First Hawaiian was burning down.

  “I’m going to look for Polly,” Owen said.

  In the john? she wondered.

  Robit was bleeding, she could see the shares spilling into the market and someone was buying them. The stock was at twenty-six. And First Hawaiian couldn’t give Owen any money to buy stock because First Hawaiian’s creditors had stopped giving money.

  She watched the stock fluctuate, twenty-five and seven-eighths, twenty-six, twenty-five and three-quarters, twenty-five and five-eighths, twenty-six and an eighth.

  She couldn’t do anything, she was locked out. First Hawaiian was calling her through her console, they wanted to know what was going on, and she didn’t have an answer. She didn’t even bother to answer, they could see as well as she could. She called the broker in New York again. “Who else is buying Robit?” she said. “I’ve got to know.”

  “I told you,” he said, “It’s all Marincite. It’s two Marincite accounts. What’s going on?”

  Two Marincite accounts? Marincite was a big company, was it bidding against itself? Somebody in investing didn’t know about the takeover and saw a chance to make some money? “Some sort of communications fuck-up,” she said to the broker, “Thanks for the info.”

  That was okay, they would just transfer the stock. Her heart was pounding. She just had to tell Owen when he got back, he’d tell Polly, he’d find Polly.

  How could someone be spending that much money without Polly knowing? Polly would know about the takeover, he wouldn’t okay this kind of buying, this was big money, as big as the deal she had set up with them.

  It was the deal she had set up with them, only First Hawaiian wasn’t running it.

  Polly had to be doing it.

  Why would Polly be ruining her deal? First Hawaiian was burning down. Why was he doing this?

  Owen didn’t come back.

  She called First Hawaiian and told them that the money was coming from Marincite, but she didn’t know what was going on. They were screaming at her, and she didn’t know the answers, so she cut the call. And then she watched the numbers.

  Robit bled, and First Hawaiian burned. First Hawaiian couldn’t meet its debt, and in a few hours the creditors would call the money in, and then First Hawaiian would cease to exist.

  Her grandfather’s bank was going to close. Well, at least it was all in the family.

  Singapore called first.

  Then New York suspended First Hawaiian and froze all assets in the U.S.

  The numbers kept flowing. Someone in Marincite appeared to have acquired sufficient assets in Robit to spin MaTE off, if they wanted to.

  That was when Polly Navarro walked into the conference room in his Marincite maroon suit, cut long, like the Sorcerer in the ad except, of course, very classy. Polly knew what was going on, she could see that. And he wasn’t going to save her company. “Mayla,” he said. “I’d like to talk to your people.”

  “What’s going on,” she asked.

  “I’m going to offer to buy First Hawaiian,” he said. “When Marincite Corp. guarantees the debt, New York will release assets and business can go on as usual.” He sat down one seat away from her, which was good. She didn’t want him sitting next to her.

  “You burned my company down. What did you do?” she asked.

  “I needed to acquire a bank,” he said reasonably. “I wanted a Caribbean bank. It was either First Hawaiian or Caribe Securities, and you made the best pitch.”

  “You made the best pitch.” As if that were some sort of compliment. “You had inside knowledge,” she said, wheels spinning but nothing going anywhere. “You broke a verbal agreement. We’ll sue.” But she was just making noise.

  “I’m sure you will,” he said pleasantly. “But I think the Caribbean courts will side with me.”

  She thought he was probably right.

  11

  In the Dark

  The pyroxin hit while he was pulling on his gloves. The gloves were lined in something like chamois, soft and warm. The chamois was a wonderful surface, friendly as stroking a cat, embracing his hands, trapping warmth. It felt good to put his hands in something warm, and he felt good. The diver’s suit he was wearing felt good. Since he’d left France he hadn’t been warm, really warm, except in bed. His muscles relaxed, no longer tense from cold. Pleasant ache of relaxing. Pyroxin made you warm. Pyroxin. It even sounde
d warm.

  Santos was grinning at him. “You look like a cat in cream,” Santos said. “My mama is always saying that, ‘you look like a cat in cream,’ but you do man.”

  David grinned back. Hard to reconcile this Santos with the pirate face from the reality games. Santos had a narrow dark hatchet face, cheeks pitted with acne scars. An amazing face. David could see Indians, Mayans in that face, protein-starved generations of Native Americans. And Spaniards in that face. A face that was a type, that perfectly summed up Santos, what he was, what his history was, all the generations of his family coming together in that face.

  It felt good to be warm. Pyroxin was a wonderful substance.

  “You don’t want to get too hot,” Santos said. “It’s not so good then, you sweat and then you get too cold, too fast. Go on down and stick your legs in the pool, I’ll be suited up in a minute.”

  David picked up his facemask and his recyc unit. It was an old Travis unit with stripes of reflective tape across the back. A couple of the strips were gone. The newer units had reflecting bands painted on. Santos had told him to use the Travis. He said it was better for shorter guys to use a Travis, the Honeywells hit in the small of the back if you weren’t tall.

  He wandered down to the pool and sat down on the side and dropped his legs in. A couple of the other jocks were sitting there, too. The water was deliciously cool, and he could feel the cool creeping up and meeting with the warm in a most pleasant way. He imagined his heated blood circulating down through his legs and picking up some of that cool, then bringing it up into his body. The light was breaking off the water in the pool and little brine shrimp were collecting in the light. Like insects drawn to a lamp.

  He was noticing everything. Pyroxin made him alert, too. He had been worried that someone would call him Kim Park and he wouldn’t be quick witted enough to respond, but the pyroxin took care of that. Made him notice, made his mind work, allowed him to sort out the noise and notice the substance.

  He shrugged into the recyc. The webbing was a little strange and he fumbled a bit awkwardly with the straps but he got it set right.

  One of the other jocks pulled his legs out of the water and then turned around and fell back into the pool, holding his facemask. David pulled his own facemask on and the air was silent. The mask smelled of polycarbons and the black padding of the seal felt strange around his face. Then the mic clicked on and he could hear open air. “No está aqui,” someone said. The mic brought their voice intimately close, as if they were whispering in his ear. He pulled his legs out and stood up, then crouched and fell backwards, too.

  The water churned over him, a circle of light, a ceiling, with legs sticking through it and blurry unfocused figures on the other side. He floated backwards, looking up, looking into the circle. The figures on the other side seemed to be looking back at him. People in the yard were chattering. “Pas plus mal.” Creole, but the same as French except for the island sound. “Not too bad.”

  He felt himself adrift, unmoored, the figures could be below him instead of above him, he had no sense of weight. And then in his mind they were below him and he was drifting up, slowly away, helium filled and awash in the ether.

  Then another jock fell through and he realized he was awfully close, that he better get out of the way so other people could come through.

  He kicked over and swam down into the yard.

  “¿Quién?” a woman barked in his ear. Not a voice like the others and he stopped, waiting for the regular chatter to come back. “Who is it, who’s in? Parks, is that you?”

  Facon, the yard boss. Everybody said “Parks” instead of Park. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s me.” Easy, keeping on top of things.

  The water was cold, but he still felt good. The lights and chatter in the yard made it warm.

  And this was his job. To feel this good. He would like doing this, he never wanted it to end. He was happy here, he wouldn’t need much, just be allowed to do his job. All these years he had been looking for his place and here it was.

  He felt himself clicked in place like a puzzle piece and knew he had quit running. He would become Kim Park and spend the rest of his life this way.

  After awhile Santos swam down into the yard. “You need a bike,” he said.

  There was a rack of “bikes,” they were nothing more than a motor with handles. Santos grabbed a bike from the end, and David took the next. Santos showed him where the little thumb switch was, and David thumbed it on. The bike was pointed down and it almost smacked the bottom before he wrestled it back up. They didn’t steer well, he had to force it with his arms and wrists, but he got it pointed after Santos and let it pull him out of the yard.

  The construction site was well away from the main farm, away from the pens. They passed a few lighted pens and then they were out in the dark. He heard Santos’ bike grinding louder as Santos thumbed the engine higher and he copied. Ms. Facon, the yard boss, had told him not to go over medium speed, but he had to put it as high as it would go to keep up with Santos. Maybe he had gotten a slow one? He streamed along behind the bike, his legs just loose and dangling. The water was colder, like wind, at this speed.

  He would have to be careful and not lose Santos. They weren’t going far anyway. He could see the lights of the construction site in front of him.

  He didn’t think about the dark, didn’t think about the cold. The pyroxin helped him, helped him look at the lights and think about the lights, as they got bigger and bigger, until they were at the construction site, which was a slab with girders rising in a superstructure all awash in a cloud of silt. The water was heavy with silt, so that the lights were fogged and the color washed out of everything only a few meters up.

  The site boss was MacKenzie, a woman with a hard North American accent.

  “Santos,” she said, “you’re working with Lemile. Park, you’ll be working with Patel, spot welding, as soon as she gets her skid.”

  “MacKenzie,” Santos said, “I think maybe I can work with Park? You know, show him around and stuff?”

  David could hear her grinning, “Like I’d get any work out of you? Forget it.”

  “No, really, we wouldn’t goof off—”

  “Forget it, Santos.” She kicked sharply, one, two, three, and rose above them.

  Santos shrugged and grinned. “Lemile’ll run my ass off. Nothing ever good enough for him. Someday the fucker be yard boss. Mama Patel’ll take good care of you, though.”

  The silt wasn’t like fog, it didn’t swirl. It was just there, suspended by their construction. He wondered if it clogged up the filters on the recyc unit. He was cold after the ride out. He waited, thinking that the warmth would come back now that he wasn’t being dragged behind the bike, that the water wasn’t rushing past him, absorbing all the heat.

  “Park? I’m Patel.”

  Patel’s faceplate reflected one of the lights, a blinding mirror for a moment. He looked away, unnerved by talking to a faceless person. Indian women seemed to use the deeper parts of their voices when they talked.

  She took him up on the superstructure, where the silt ate a lot of the light. There were footholds stuck to the girders, like handles. He took off his right flipper and she showed him how to slide his foot under the handle to keep himself from drifting off the girder.

  His job was to drag a kind of pallet along the girder. (It had a kind of clip that made it easier to balance on the girder). It had pieces of something like right-angled ductwork stack on it. He couldn’t figure out why they would be putting ductwork on this way, but he didn’t know anything about construction under water. He figured he’d find out eventually.

  The pallet was awkward, he slid it along the girder to a foothold, then he had to look down to find the foothold. Looking down meant looking into the murk-obscured light. He mostly found the foothold by touch. Then he’d unclip a duct (keeping the pallet steady with one hand) and Patel would do some sort of spotweld to secure it against the girder. Then they would jimmy the palle
t around the foothold and secure it to the girder again, Patel would swim to the next spot and he would slide the pallet along while she got ready for the next weld.

  In twenty minutes he was even colder. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm. He could tell it was twenty minutes because the telltale glowing green on the facemask included a chron. He could watch the time creep.

  His foot cramped from using it to hang on. He wasn’t much accustomed to arching his toes up to hold on. Patel was patient. “No,” she said, “lift it towards you, swing it up, like a lid, yes, that is the way.” He couldn’t see her face, there wasn’t enough light.

  He lifted and jimmied the pallet awkwardly, eased it along the girder to the next two holds where Patel waited, stocky and opaque, balanced on the beam. It hurt to curl his cramped toes under the foothold, he tried twisting his foot to give the aching tendons a rest and could kind of float while he unclipped the duct thing, but in order to jimmy the pallet onward he had to square his foot and hook on. He gritted his teeth and jimmied the pallet. His foot cramped.

  When he got to Patel he stopped for a moment and tried to rub the cramp out. His foot hurt no matter which way he bent it.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. She didn’t sound angry but he couldn’t be sure she wasn’t irritated. His earlier clarity was gone.

  “It has a cramp,” he said.

  “Give it a minute,” she said.

  It was the cold as much as the unexpected exercise. Cold hurt muscles, made them strain easily. Dancers wore leg warmers. He was so goddamn cold.

  Stupid job. Why was all this labor done by hand? There had to be a smarter way to do this.

  “Okay?” she said.

  No, he wanted to say, so he said nothing, just caught the foothold and unclipped another duct thing. Resting seemed to have made it worse.