A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism

by Peter Mountford

  He opened the door of a taxi parked right there outside the Hotel Gloria, got in, and lit a cigarette. They were off before he remembered that he was supposed to buy gum. He said, "Excuse me, sir. Before we get to the airport, can you remind me to buy some gum?"

  "Yes. Of course." The man caught Gabriel's eyes in the rearview and said, "You have no bag—are you picking up a girl?"

  "Oh, no, no, no." Gabriel chuckled and rolled his eyes. "It's my mother."

  The man tossed his head back, laughing. Gabriel smiled. "She's coming here to destroy my chances with any girls."

  The driver kept on laughing.

  Gabriel's mother's plane had already landed by the time he arrived. The driver didn't remember to tell him to buy gum, and Gabriel thought of it only once they'd seen each other by the baggage claim. Seeing her, despite himself, despite all his grumbling, he felt a fantastic relief. He found himself smiling—beaming—involuntarily, immensely reassured. She was staring at his bandages, of course, but he didn't want to dwell on that. They hugged first, and then, when they kissed cheeks, he held his breath, aware that keeping her in the dark about his smoking was probably futile. She was not the type to be so easily deceived.

  Half a foot shorter than he, she looked up at him in wonder; there were tears in her eyes. This was because of his bandages, he supposed. Not the cigarettes, he hoped.

  She was what people sometimes referred to as a "well-preserved woman." She had a pretty face, much like Gabriel's, if a little more elfin. Skin collected uncomfortably around her neck now, and she was slowly losing her battle against the bulk that had been trying to gather itself in the lower half of her body for several decades. She looked, finally, like a middle-aged woman one might encounter at Whole Foods on a Thursday evening pushing her cart through the store after her weekly yoga class.

  "Good to see you," he said. He tried to hold his breath back as he spoke. "You like the look?" He turned his bad side to her. She needed to understand that he was not going to allow it to be a big issue. If she'd come down to minister to her baby's scrapes and bruises, she'd come for the wrong reason. The wounds would be subjected to the same kind of acid humor that she applied to his writings on finance.

  "Gabriel, you look—" She just shook her head, tears shimmering in her eyes. "You look wonderful." She was, mercifully, speaking English. She knew she was on his turf. It was a strange alchemy, the way a person came to belong to a place, or a place came to belong to a person. Bolivia, once hers, was now all his. She might have been a scholar of the place, and she'd spent more time there than he had, but he'd been scarred by it. It was literally in his blood. So Bolivia was his now and, whether he liked it or not, he was Bolivia's.

  In the taxi, they kept things broad and nonaligned—they discussed her flight, an angry e-mail she'd received from a colleague at Pomona, and so forth. He tried not to think about the churning rumors that he'd kick-started that morning. Horrific possibilities presented themselves: the rumor had already been corrected and had been traced back to him, Lenka's connection to him had been exposed too. As firmly as he was able, he assured himself that such fears were pure paranoia. In any case, it was out of his hands for now. He had his mother to cope with. He sat with his bad side to her, and he could feel her staring at the bandages, could feel her wanting to peel them back and look at the wounds. Emanating as much diversionary energy as possible, he ushered their conversation toward Evo. They spoke English to evade the curiosity of the driver.

  Sitting in the loud, uncomfortable back seat of the taxi, Gabriel's mother administered a concise verbal abstract of her essay on Evo. He listened as carefully as he could. He noticed the highlights in her hair; a bit too coppery, he thought. She'd been darkening out the silver for as long as he could remember and had kept her hair short, in the style of suburban moms everywhere.

  Seeing that they were approaching the city and would soon be in less tightly confined spaces, Gabriel pounced on a short pause. "I haven't been completely honest," he said.

  "Oh dear." She drew a quick breath and glanced once again at the bandages, as if they were covering the misplaced truth or as if the truth about his wounds were in doubt.

  "It's nothing too bad, but I don't actually work for BellSouth."

  She nodded at him, guarded, her forehead fully furrowed.

  "I've been doing consultancy work for Big Thunder, the private equity firm."

  "Oh." From her nonresponse, he guessed that she hadn't heard of Big Thunder. So he explained who they were, where they were located, explained too about his projects there: the solar-power panels, which he said seemed unlikely to work (he added this just to give it a realistic flavor, the wariness of a skeptical insider); the salt flats, which Evo was not likely to share with foreigners—

  "Nor should he!" Gabriel's mother interrupted.

  "Of course," Gabriel said dismissively, and then he talked briefly about the ecotourism, which he claimed to consider a far more promising investment than either of the other two. "It'd be indirect," he said, "bundling projects together and providing a single loan to all of them at once. So we'd be creating a network too."

  Whether she was actually relieved or not, he couldn't tell, but her response was infinitely better than what it would have been if he'd told her the truth. She asked a few questions, but they were trite. And he, relieved by how well the lie was holding up, went on to explain that he'd been telling everyone that he was working as a freelance journalist.

  "Why?"

  "Well—we don't want to alert people to our interest in Bolivia. Not yet, anyway. There are other firms that are trying to replicate our strategy, and they'd follow us here. So, if anyone asks why I'm here, you need to tell them that I'm a freelance journalist."

  She scowled, looked away. "Oh, I don't like that," she said.

  "Me neither." It was true, he didn't.

  "What about the girl you're seeing? Does she know?"

  His gut told him to say that yes, she knew, so when the two women met, Lenka wouldn't have to lie much—she'd just have to switch out Big Thunder for Calloway Group. But, ease of use aside, he couldn't risk telling anyone—not even his mother—that Lenka knew that he was an investor posing as a journalist. It was too risky for Lenka, so he said, "No. She thinks I'm a journalist. We don't talk about these things much."

  "Is this why you want me at this silly hotel?"

  He just shook his head. "No, no—it was everything." He paused, casting around for a way to explain it. He found it harder to do this in person. He was truly grateful that she was there, but it wasn't simple. The architecture of his scheme was such that each piece of information had to be marshaled along carefully. His mother liked to dig into the methodology of his thinking and so was a dangerous person to have around. As long as she was there, he'd do well to cultivate an attitude of stony mystery with her. "I can't explain," he said.

  He could feel her looking at his bandages again. Clearly, the wound was personal for her. He remembered how, when he was a teenager, she would sometimes watch him eat his cereal in the morning and whenever his spoon approached his mouth, her mouth would open. Her empathy was purely kinesthetic. She was concerned about his emotions and his mind, about his career, but she felt for his body.

  Not breaking her gaze, she said, "It might be hard for me to keep a low profile."

  "I know. When are you interviewing Evo?"

  "The day after tomorrow, noon." She held it as long as possible and then said, "Will she be at the interview?"

  "Probably. They're in the south right now. They'll be back the morning of your interview. I'm sure you'll meet them both then." He tried to imagine the two women meeting—what would they say? They might have a few minutes together before the interview with Evo began. Would Lenka want his mother to be clear about the connection, or did Lenka want her relationship with Gabriel kept secret from her boss? If Lenka was supposed to keep it under wraps, could his mother handle that? Maybe Lenka would just skip out on the meeting.

>   They'd made it down to the plangent city already and were lurching and stopping in a thick braid of traffic. With such a crowded and turbulent city, he should have been able to stow his mother somewhere out of range of his social circles, but it wouldn't happen. The occupants of the calmer spaces above the mess were scarce, which was why to foreigners and the wealthy, La Paz was a tiny village, while to the rest of the city's inhabitants, it was a seething metropolis.

  Then, fully out of the blue, she said the most surprising thing to him. She said, "Would you like to meet him?"

  "Who?"

  "Do you want to come with me to my interview with Evo?"

  "Are you serious?"

  "Sure. You could come along. If your girlfriend's there, you could introduce us."

  "Oh—well, if she's there, I need to ask you to please be discreet."

  "Of course I'll be discreet."

  "Yeah, well, I'm not sure she'd want people to know that she's been dating the weird freelance journalist who never publishes anything."

  "Fair enough."

  "Why are you asking me along?"

  "It sounds like you're working for a well-meaning firm, as these things go. So I don't see any harm in having you there. You could maybe even ask a question or two. Would you have questions for him?"

  "Evo? Yes, I would." He was dumbfounded at first. But it made sense: his mother held the keys to the kingdom, so it wasn't strange that he might sneak inside behind her.

  "Take a couple minutes, if you want. I don't mind." Then, ever the professional, she clarified, "You're not going to publish some feature on the event, right?"

  "No, absolutely not." He held the eye contact for as long as he could manage.

  "Why are you so surprised?" she said.

  "I don't know. I just—he's kind of a hard guy to get a hold of."

  "Even when you're dating his press liaison?"

  He nodded. This, he saw, had embarrassing implications—all the more so considering that in the version of the narrative he'd given his mother, Lenka actually believed he was a journalist. Still, there was nothing to be gained by explaining his difficulties. Stony silence was best. "I'd love to come along," he said. To divert her, he added, "I'd like to ask him about ecotourism."

  She looked at him askance, briefly, her forehead tilted. Maybe she could tell he was running calculations in his mind. Even if she didn't know what he was up to, she could see he was working toward something. He felt her expression relax as she decided to let it go.

  He glanced at the time on his phone. It was four fifteen. The market had closed fifteen minutes ago. He was desperate to know if his rumor had circulated yet, but there was nothing to be done about it. A good strategist knows when to be a receiver of ongoing events and when to wait and be an actor in events to come. Now, he was a receiver of actions he'd already taken, and an actor in events unfolding with his mother.

  After she'd dropped her bags in her large suite at her hotel, they ate a light dinner at the Ritz's upscale dining room, and then, while they waited for the check, she cast a weary look at him. He asked if she was feeling the altitude yet, though he could see she was.

  She nodded.

  It would probably only get worse for her in the next twenty-four hours. The Bolivians called it soroche, and it was totally indiscriminate in whom it afflicted the most. In rare cases, people died from cerebral or pulmonary edema. The only known treatment was to get to a lower altitude, so if a person continued to deteriorate, he or she needed to hurry to the nearest automobile or helicopter or airplane and go somewhere lower.

  His mother wasn't dying, but she wasn't that well either. Gabriel had, for his part, dodged the worst of the altitude sickness. Looking at her in discomfort, he felt a surge of love for her and concern for her well-being. That kinesthetic empathy might work both ways because he found there was nothing like the sight of his mother in pain to bring out his most protective and loving side. "Drink water," he said after he brought her back to her hotel room. "And if it gets worse tonight, call me. Especially if you start feeling really dizzy or nauseated, then you need to call me immediately. It can be dangerous, Mom. Do you know that?"

  "I know, I know." She was wilting before his eyes. Though she still wore her makeup, it was as if he could see beneath it. The only times she actually appeared without her makeup was before her morning shower and after she brushed her teeth at night, and to see her at one of those times was always an arresting experience—like seeing a man you know well suddenly lose the toupee that you hadn't even realized he wore.

  Gabriel kissed her on the cheek and told her that he was glad she had come down. "I'm sorry I'm going to be so busy," he said. "Don't think I'm trying to avoid you if I'm not around—it's just that I've got a lot on my plate."

  She smiled at him wearily, and he knew that she understood. He squeezed her hand and then closed the door and walked quickly toward the elevator.

  Downstairs, he got into the nearest waiting taxi and pulled out his pack of cigarettes, his lighter; he rolled down the window and said, "Hotel Gloria."

  At the business center, he saw that there was nothing new about Santa Cruz Gas. The price of the stock had fluctuated all day, unremarkably. Maybe the news just hadn't made it out yet? Time was not on his side. He considered recontacting the journalists that he'd already contacted, but he didn't want to push it. He didn't want to raise anyone's suspicion.

  By the time his worry slackened enough that he could think about doing something else, it was almost eleven. He turned the computer off and went back up to his room.

  He watched television for an hour. From his window, he could see that there were people up in the Lookout. Fiona was probably there. He dialed her number and she answered on the fourth ring.

  "Gabriel Francisco de Boya! My favorite lout!" she exclaimed. He could hear from the background noise that she was at the Lookout.

  "You're at the bar?"

  "That's right. And I gather that you were skulking around here earlier, spreading rumors about Bolivian gas."

  "Was I?"

  "Aw, you'll tell other people but you won't tell me? Is that how it's going to be?"

  "No, no, Fiona, it's not that." The truth was, he hadn't told her because he didn't want her to use the false rumor. It was one thing to give some rumor a minor existence, and it was quite another to give a false lead to a journalist from the Wall Street Journal. She'd smell a rat or she'd go with it; either way he'd be in trouble.

  "Well then, what is it?" she said. "Do you know something, or are you just juicing an angle?" The noise had dimmed, so Gabriel knew that she had stepped away for the conversation. She was probably at one of the windows on the other side.

  "It's not that simple. Priya's making a play on the basis of a rumor that I heard. I believe it's true, but I'm not sure. That's what I've been telling people. I've been clear with them about it. Look, my ass is on the line, so I wanted to push the story forward."

  "You're juicing an angle."

  "I just can't afford to wait until it trickles out. I'm not exaggerating the angle, I'm just expediting it. If I don't have results by the end of this week, I'm done."

  "Jeez, Gabriel. Really? You're already that close to getting fired?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Maybe you're just not cut out for the hedge-fund world."

  He cleared his throat. "I'll be fine."

  "Of course you will."

  "People are talking about the rumor?"

  "Oh, yes. All night I've been hearing that Evo's going to expropriate the foreign gas. But it's still just a rumor. As soon as someone gets confirmation, it'll hit the wires."

  "I'll look into it. If I can find out more information, or some confirmation, I'll tell you."

  "I hope you didn't just make it up, Gabriel."

  "I didn't just make it up! I heard it from two separate sources, but Evo—he just doesn't seem to have formed his decisions completely yet. He has these plans, but he hasn't quite imagined what car
rying them out will involve. Look, I'll call you about this tomorrow."

  She groaned dubiously.

  "And about last night at the casino—"

  "What about it?"

  "Nothing," he said. "I think he's an okay guy."

  "Grayson? An okay guy?" She laughed. "Gabriel, he's twice the man you are."

  Gabriel was tempted to say something small, something about how Grayson was at least twice the years Gabriel was, but he thought better of it. He needed to play it cool for now. She should be as comfortable as possible. So he'd let her lead. He'd let her tamp him down too, if that would help. In his best eye-rolling tone, he said, "Sure, he's twice the man. Anyway, I'll talk to you tomorrow, midday, unless I hear from you before then."

  "Right." She was circumspect, understandably.

  "Seriously. From here on out, you've got the exclusive on this."

  "How exciting," she droned. He'd find a way to make her change her mind about him.

  He lay in his bed for another hour running through the possibilities and then, still unable to sleep, went back down to the business center. He opened his e-mail. Nothing. He wanted, more than anything, to call Lenka, but it was very late. He just wanted to hear her voice. He opened his brokerage account, looked at the sum. He wouldn't sleep that night. So he stayed in the business center, surfing the Internet in another window and then returning to the brokerage to click on the refresh button occasionally, although the sum of money didn't budge—couldn't, not when the markets were closed. At some point, he checked for news about Santa Cruz Gas on Google News, but there was nothing. He smoked a cigarette by the window, looking out at Casa Cultura, and he wished that he had, at least, a photo of Lenka.

  His mind wandered back to the danger at hand. It wasn't so bad. He knew he wouldn't be arrested. Still, he was sick with it. There was something else, in the pit of him. It was the stomach-wrenching part of vertigo, with something rotten in it too. He was doing something wrong. It felt that way now, felt cold. The first time he'd had a one-night stand, when he was a freshman in college, he'd felt sick afterward in a similar way. It'd seemed reckless and wretched. By his fifth one-night stand, the feeling wasn't so bad. These things did get easier with repetition. Still, that night in the business center, missing Lenka and grazing on dreary news, he felt simply hollow. He was scooped out.