Kapitoil: A Novel

by Teddy Wayne

  While I labor on the project, I power on the television in the background. I watch financial shows whenever possible, but I also watch the baseball games. I am not very interested in the game itself, but the analysts converse nonstop, so it is beneficial for my English. Each night at midnight I see a long advertisement for a machine called Steve Winslow’s Juicinator that produces juice out of vegetables and fruits. By the third night I can remember and predict what Steve Winslow will say, such as: (1) “This juice has powerful, all-natural antioxidants” (2) “It’s made with high-quality, durable plastic that will outlast you” (3) “It’s not a blender; it’s not a juicer; it’s a Juicinator” and (4) “If I didn’t believe in it, I wouldn’t put my name on it.” On Wednesday night I buy the juicer, as I do not eat enough fruits and vegetables here, and because it is durable it will survive for many years and retain its value.

  Late on Tuesday night my program reaches an average of +2.0 percentage points above market returns in tests, which means it is a positive investment risk. I stay up until Wednesday morning writing a short report on my program and explaining its benefits. It is challenging to write something in English that a native speaker will read, but most of it is mathematical and financial jargon terms, which I am more comfortable with, such as:

  The model can be interpreted probabilistically, so it can derive error bounds on estimates. Then it runs secondary simulations, with different possible values. Then it creates agents that model activities of major players in the market…

  I notice I use many words that the baseball analysts frequently say, e.g., in this section: “error,” “runs,” “agents,” and “players,” which is logical, since baseball is partially what helped me conceive this idea and is also a system of independent players and actions and laws that people like Dan attempt to predict.

  On Wednesday I wait until Jefferson is alone in the office kitchen and tell him about my program and show him my report and ask which superior I can give it to. He scans the pages for a few minutes.

  “You’ve coded it pretty good, but it’s a little Karim-esque,” Jefferson says, “in that it’s littered with grammatical errors.” I want to tell him that I rarely make grammatical errors and that I merely have problems with idioms, and that his last sentence in fact contained a critical grammatical error, but he is helping me, so I nod. “If you like, I can clean up the writing for you and submit it to a higher-up I know in quants.” I thank him and ask him to keep these data private.

  “This data,” he says. I merely nod again.

  I return to my pod and try not to think about the potential success of my program, because it is unhealthy to speculate before it has even been accepted, but whenever I make an advance in my career I recall what my mother said to me once when she was in the hospital. It must have been a few months after I turned 12, because she was not yet attached to the machine that breathed for her and was still strong enough to talk for long periods of time. Also, they still permitted Zahira to visit her. At the end my parents decided Zahira shouldn’t see her in that condition, so only my father and I went and she stayed with our aunt and uncle. After our visits, he always exited to their bedroom alone and closed the door, and I had to tell Zahira about the visit. The doctors advised me to lie to her and say that our mother merely had to go away for a long time, and although possibly that lie would have protected Zahira’s feelings more, that is one area of life people should never lie about. In addition, she was very smart even then and understood what was happening.

  But I remember Zahira was there, because she had to use the restroom, and my father left my mother’s room with her to find a nurse. When the door closed behind them, my mother sat up in the bed. I thought she was going to ask me to retrieve her some water, as she frequently did. But she said, “Karim, if I ask you to promise me something, will you always honor it?”

  I moved around in my chair and wished a nurse would return, but I said yes.

  “When I—” she said. “I want you to take care of Zahira.”

  “I always take care of her,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I want you to be the one who takes care of her. You. Do you understand?”

  I quickly looked at the closed door. “I understand,” I said.

  “And although you may not see why now, I also want you to look after your father,” she said.

  I said I understood again, but I didn’t 100%. Then my father returned and we discussed something else.

  Zahira is fortunate to grow up as a female now in Qatar instead of one or two decades ago, but if she lacks sufficient funds then it limits her options, and I will not be honoring my promise to my mother.

  antioxidants = substances that restrict cancer; found in juice

  higher-up = superior in a pyramidal hierarchy

  juicer = device that produces juice

  Karim-esque = representative of Karim

  littered with = filled with

  JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: OCTOBER 17

  On Thursday I am nervous to ask Jefferson if he has heard from his contact in quants, and he does not mention it or email me about it. At the end of the day he and Dan discuss where to go that night.

  “What’s wrong with Haven?” Dan asks.

  “The patrons are morons,” Jefferson says. “And ugly, to boot.”

  Dan deposits one hand in his pocket and pets the back of his head with the other. “Fine, we’ll go to Scorch.” He detects me looking at them, which is impolite of me, but when they are conversing so loudly it is natural to pay attention. “We only have space for a couple of guys on the list. But we’ll get you another time.”

  After they leave, Rebecca focuses on her monitor while she speaks to me. “You’re not missing out on anything, by the way,” she says. “They’re hoping some vapid Alpha Phis will be impressed by the fact that they spent $400 for a bottle of vodka and two seats at a table in a room full of date-rapists.”

  I do not want to spend $400 on seats, but there are some areas of life I would like to observe in New York that are challenging to experience in Doha, e.g., alcohol and females. The few times I have gone with my coworkers and foreign businessmen to hotel nightclubs where they serve alcohol, I restrict myself to a maximum of one drink, although my coworkers consume more than that, and they dance with foreign females and sometimes leave with them. Three months ago a female banker from Jordan sat next to me as I ordered my drink. After we talked briefly about her work, she moved slightly closer to me and said, “I am staying in the hotel by myself for three nights.”

  Her face was highly symmetrical, and under her business suit her body had a pleasing shape, and she smelled like a garden. But she was two years younger than I was, and I could not stop considering that she was someone’s daughter, or possibly sister, and I negated the temptation. To be polite I bought her drinks for the duration of the night, and before I left I told her I found her insights into the cultural contrasts between Jordan and Qatar intriguing, especially about how the two countries treat females (Jordan is more advanced, although I noted that Qatari females do possess some rights that are forbidden in many countries in the Middle East, e.g., driving).

  My Doha coworkers never discuss these nights afterward, which is unlike Jefferson and Dan, who frequently enter the office in the morning and analyze their actions from the previous night as if it were a sports event. Typically Jefferson succeeds and Dan fails.

  On Friday afternoon Jefferson still has not said anything to me about the program, and I cannot wait any longer and email him even though he is next to me. He replies:

  Sorry, I meant to shoot you an email before. They said they already have similar programs that outperform the market by 3-4%, so they’re going to pass. Better luck next time?

  I stare at the monitor until all the words become blended. I do not know why I thought I could write a program that is more advanced than what workers with MBAs and advanced computer science degrees and broader experience can produce. I am merely self-taught and wit
hout a true university education and have only one year of experience at Schrub. It was a waste of energy.

  I also will now look foolish when Zahira asks me about the project.

  On Saturday I do not know what to do with myself, as I do not feel like programming because I have no new ideas, and my ideas are inferior and unoriginal anyway. Therefore, I go to the office, because at least I can be productive there, as my work does not require any creativity and it is the solitary role I can be efficient in.

  The WTC is peaceful when I enter. There is no receptionist, but a few coworkers whose names I do not know are in the office. So is Rebecca.

  She explains she missed some work recently because she was out of town and is compensating by logging extra hours today.

  “Where did you go?” I ask, but then I regret it because I do not want to be too investigative and sometimes people have private reasons.

  She says she visited her brother David at a university I have not heard of in the state of Missouri. “It’s his first year, and he’s sort of having a rough time.”

  “Is that where you attended university?”

  “That’s what it says on my student loans,” she says. “Well, technically, it doesn’t actually say the name.”

  Tuition in Doha is comparatively inexpensive, and since I did not attend authentic university my education was even more discounted. “I am glad that Zahira will not be indebted,” I say. Rebecca does not respond, so I ask, “Do your parents live in Missouri?”

  She opens up a spreadsheet and begins entering data. “My mother lives in Wisconsin, a few hours away,” she says. I do not ask where her father lives.

  In the early afternoon Rebecca invites me to partner with her for a coffee break. The coffee in the office is free, but it is not high quality, so we leave the building and locate a nearby Starbucks.

  We do not converse much in the elevator or as we walk to the Starbucks or on line for the coffee vendor, even though we have to brainstorm frequently about programming roadblocks when we labor. I am a strong communicator in team situations for problem solving, but I am not as expert in conversing about nonproblems, and I think Rebecca is also deficient in this area. Jefferson has mastery over it and modifies his conversation when he networks in the office. I can converse merely in one mode, which is a skill set I must enhance to grow as a business leader.

  I am relieved when it is our turn with the female vendor with pink hair. Rebecca orders a complex coffee, and I order a regular coffee without milk. The vendor informs us of the cost, which makes me question if it is worth buying premium coffee over receiving subpar coffee for free. Rebecca opens her purse.

  I remove my wallet. “It is my gift.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Rebecca says as she searches in the purse, which contains numerous objects and papers and even smaller purses.

  “I am not being silly,” I say. “I want to purchase this.”

  I hand the vendor a $50 bill, which is the only denomination I possess at the time, and Rebecca closes her purse and does not say anything.

  We sit at a table as the song “Believe” by Cher plays. Its frequency is high in Doha as well.

  Rebecca tells me this is her third year at Schrub, and it is her first job she acquired after college even though in university she studied history with minimal studies in economics and computer science.

  “I’m competent, but I wasn’t really born to number-crunch or code,” Rebecca says.

  “Would you prefer a job incorporating history rather than economics and computers?” I ask.

  “I guess maybe teaching, someday.”

  “Why do you not pursue it now?”

  She raises and lowers her shoulders and drinks her coffee and scans the room.

  “You should pursue what you want to pursue,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, you can’t always get what you want.” She laughs, but to herself and quietly. “And if you try sometimes, you just might find you get fucked over even worse.” Then she consumes a long drink and says she should get back to the office.

  I follow her, and outside she retrieves a cigarette pack from her purse and smokes. We do not talk at all as we reenter the WTC. I think she is upset with me because I sounded like I believe I am better at my job since it is closer to my career goals. I disagree with her statement, however. When people start believing they cannot get what they want, they trash their original goals and settle for smaller ones.

  We pass the coffeepot in the office, and Rebecca refills her cup from Starbucks, removes a small purse from her bigger purse and extracts one quarter, two dimes, and one nickel as if she is performing surgery and removing tumors, and deposits them in the vending machine for a bag of potato chips, and I understand she is not upset because of my previous hypothesis, but because she thinks I am wealthy, because (1) I said Zahira does not have loans without explaining it is because tuition is discounted in Qatar; (2) I paid for our coffee with a $50 bill; (3) I said she should do whatever job she wants without considering the salaries; and also possibly because (4) Qatar has a high GDP per capita.

  I feel so humiliated that I do not know how to apologize to Rebecca for it, and we spend the rest of the day laboring with minimal conversation and leave independently.

  On Sunday morning I again do not know what to do, and I do not want to reencounter Rebecca at the office. I consider calling relatives of my family’s friends, but they will ask me about my job and I do not want to discuss it now.

  I would like to go to a Broadway play or a classy restaurant, but I prefer to conserve money, and also I do not have anyone to partner with. So I take the subway to explore the neighborhoods downtown. In Chelsea I observe a few art galleries, although I do not enjoy the paintings in them as much as the ones in the Museum of Modern Art, probably because I do not understand them as well, and it is difficult to enjoy a system you are not competent in. In the early night I walk through Little Italy and then Chinatown.

  It begins raining lightly, so I enter a restaurant and order vegetarian dumplings. As I wait for my food at a small square table next to the window, a Chinese family with one grandmother, two parents, and five children eats at a round table next to me. They slightly parallel the one quarter, two dimes, and one nickel Rebecca deposited in the vending machine. Their table is littered with steaming bowls and plates of noodles and vegetables and meats. They are all conversing with each other, and of course I cannot decipher what they are saying, but even if we spoke the same language I think I would not 100% decipher it, because frequently families have their own mode of speaking, e.g., my father usually does not understand what Zahira and I are saying.

  Out the window the blue and red lights mirror on the wet black street. In a few hours Zahira and my father will eat their breakfast of bread with labneh, olives, and yogurt.

  When the waiter deposits the dumplings on my table, I ask him to contain them so I can consume at home.

  In my apartment I watch the other New York baseball team, the Mets, play against the Atlanta Braves in a playoff game. I permit myself to microwave and eat one dumpling every 1.5 innings as I study the game’s internal logic. It enters overtime, and when I stretch my neck I see the Schrub monitor outside and a scrolling news item:

  FRENCH EMBASSY BOMBED IN IRAN…NO CASUALTIES…SEVERAL INJURED…

  I search other channels for additional data, but no one is discussing the bomb, not even the all-news channels. Finally I find a short report on the Internet that says a terrorist group in Iran “claimed responsibility.” This phrase intrigues me, as I know only the phrase “take responsibility.” I perform an Internet search: “terrorist” + “claimed responsibility” has six times more hits than “terrorist” + “took responsibility.” Possibly that is because when a person commits an error but confesses to it for forgiveness, he “takes” responsibility. When he is boastful of his actions, he “claims” responsibility.

  I walk around my living room as the Mets game continues. Everyone in the stadium is anxio
us about the game, which now seems to me foolish, although I understand why it impacts them. The Mets win with a home run, and at 11:30 p.m. I make a telephone call.

  Zahira picks up on the first ring and says she has a few minutes to talk before she leaves for school. I tell her I merely called to say hello.

  “What happened with your computer program?” she asks.

  I look at my laptop that I have not even booted up today. “It is turbulent now in the stock market, so I decided it is not a strategic time to present a new program to my higher-ups.”

  “You sounded very optimistic about it before,” she says.

  “Yes, but sometimes the risks are greater than the possible rewards, and you must certify that a new idea is 100% foolproof before you launch it.” She does not say anything. “Anyway, I am doing very well at Schrub overall and am making a great amount of money and friends.”

  “You have made friends at work?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Have you socialized with anyone yet?”

  “I recently had coffee with one coworker. And two others told me they will invite me next time they go to a nightclub.”

  She pauses. “That is good,” she says. “But you should call our friends’ relatives if you need to meet other people from the Middle East.”

  “I will, but I am satisfied with my current social network,” I say.

  I do not need to ask if she is making friends at university, because she emailed me that she has, and also she typically makes friends with ease. She has our mother’s skill set for that.

  She says she will put me on with my father before he leaves for work. “Take care, Zahira,” I say.