The Futures

by Anna Pitoniak

  Back at the elevator bank, I pushed the Down button. I’d explain myself at the front desk. Maybe they’d had a cancellation. Or I’d take a cab to one of the motels I’d seen between the airport and the Strip. They had to have something, a bed where I could sleep for a few hours before morning came.

  A small ding sounded as the car arrived. I kept my eyes down and didn’t see the dark-suited figure striding out until we nearly collided.

  “Evan? Whoa, what are you doing?”

  It was Chuck, looking rumpled and sweaty but in better shape than I was, and thoroughly pleased with how the night had gone.

  “Yeah. Hi—hey, Chuck. How are you?”

  “How are you? What, you didn’t get enough? Going back out for more?”

  “No.” I shook my head with effort. “I’m locked out. Roger is—he has…company.”

  Chuck laughed. “Shit. Well, come on, you can crash in our room for now. Roger’s gonna be done soon. Trust me, he’s paying her by the hour.”

  I followed Chuck to his suite at the other end of the hallway. Even through my blurring vision, I could see that it was enormous. Bigger than any New York apartment I’d ever seen. Steps led down to a sunken living room with floor-to-ceiling windows. The skyline sparkled against the desert night. I could make out a bar on one side of the living room and a huge soaking tub on the other. A spiral staircase, half hidden in the darkness, twisted up to a second floor.

  “Nice, huh?” Chuck said, his voice echoing in the room. “Would’ve had the place to myself, too. The beds are spoken for, but I think there’s a foldout in that corner near the kitchen. Brad’s still out. He’ll be back soon.”

  Chuck’s footsteps retreated up the spiral stairs. I found the bathroom, flipped on the light, and hurled the contents of my stomach into the toilet. I paused, gulping for air, then puked again. After the nausea receded, I splashed water on my face and rinsed my mouth. I felt better. More in control. I’d sleep a little, get back to my room, be fine in the morning. Hungover, but fine.

  Something woke me. The sound of the air-conditioning turning on or off. I’d passed out on the couch without bothering to unfold it. I was shivering, and I had a kink in my neck.

  It was tempting to stay there, to close my eyes and let the drunken fog tug me back under. I knew I ought to get up, go back to my room, get some real sleep. In just a few minutes. My mind swam with the soothing hum of the AC.

  Then, how much later I didn’t know, there was the sound of laughter and high heels on the marble floor. The high-pitched, breathy voice of a woman.

  The lights went on. Suddenly I was wide awake, my heart hammering and blood rushing to my head. Brad was back, with company. I felt a preemptive embarrassment at being discovered here.

  There were more than two voices. One woman and another. Brad muttering something. Then:

  “I’m going to have a drink. Ladies?” Michael.

  The two women chorused a yes.

  The sound of liquid splashing into glasses, bodies sinking into leather sofas. I turned onto my stomach and peered over the arm of the couch. My view was mostly obscured by the dining table and the oak-paneled bar. They hadn’t seen me, and the window for making myself known without humiliation was closing rapidly. No, I realized. It had closed already.

  Brad was on one couch, Michael and the two women on another. One woman, the blonde from the club, was hunched over the glass-topped coffee table. When she sat up, she handed a rolled-up dollar bill to Michael.

  “This is good shit, Brad,” Michael said, wiping the coke from his nose.

  Brad was silent. It looked like he was reading something on his phone.

  “So,” Michael said. “What do you ladies think of my friend here?”

  The second woman—a redhead—giggled. “I think he’s handsome.”

  “I think you’re handsome,” the blonde purred, nestling up to Michael.

  “I think you have better taste than your friend.” He ran his hand up her bare arm. I grimaced. She was at least thirty years younger than he was.

  The redhead stood up, dress slipped off her shoulder to expose a lacy black bra, and went to the other couch. She snuggled up to Brad, but Brad just kept his eyes on his phone.

  “So what do you guys do?” one of the women asked. “You must be big shots with a room like this.”

  “You should see my room, honey. We’ll take a field trip later.”

  “We’re in finance,” Brad said abruptly. “Hedge funds.”

  Silence, then one ventured, “Hedge funds. What does that mean?”

  “It’s a way of investing designed to mitigate risk,” Brad said, alert again. “Hedging your bets. At any given point in time, we’re betting on a number of different scenarios, so no matter which way the market goes, we’re protected. So an example would be—if I met a woman out at a club, but I wasn’t sure how she felt about me, maybe I’d bring her friend along, too. See? I’ve hedged my bets. In case one says no, I have a backup.”

  Michael snorted. “Brad’s a nerd, in case you couldn’t tell. Don’t get him started. But this is boring. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Actually.” Brad’s voice was rising. “Actually, I don’t think it’s boring at all. It’s interesting, in fact. I was going through the books this week, and there was some fascinating stuff in there.”

  “Not now. We have company.” Michael slid his hand up the blonde’s skirt and kissed her neck. She was giggling and blushing. Her friend attempted the same with Brad, but he pushed her away impatiently.

  “I think we do, Michael. I think we want to talk about this right now. We can do it alone, or we can do it in front of these two. Up to you.”

  Michael laughed. “Ladies, I’m sorry. I apologize for him. No manners at all.” He tucked several crisp-looking bills into the blonde’s dress. “Some other time.”

  The high heels obediently clacked their way back across the marble foyer, and the doors opened and closed a moment later. Michael turned to Brad.

  “You mind telling me what the fuck that was about?”

  “I need to talk to you about this, Michael. Right now. We have a big problem on our hands.”

  “What? For God’s sake, what is it?”

  Brad took a deep breath. “I was looking at the books, getting ready for the conference. I noticed something wasn’t lining up. So I went deeper into the numbers, and I saw we have a lot of exposure—a lot of exposure—in one particular area. Which I’d heard nothing about. The lumber markets.”

  “And?”

  “Do you know about this? All the money we have tied up in lumber futures?”

  “Of course I know about it. I’m running this company. It’s my deal.”

  “Well, then explain it to me. Because I’m sure as hell not seeing it. The housing market is the worst it’s ever been. And yet we’re betting that the demand for lumber is going to go up? For there to be massive, imminent growth?”

  “Correct.”

  “What the hell, Michael?” Brad stood up and started pacing. “This isn’t some murky situation where we don’t know what the economy is going to look like next year. We do know. No one in their right mind is going to be building.”

  “In North America, maybe. But before you get any more worked up, Brad, I suggest you look at the bigger picture. We’re not betting on there being demand here.”

  “Where, then?”

  “China.”

  “China? Are you serious? We have no idea what the Chinese are going to do tomorrow, let alone next year. Since when do we make predictions about their market with any kind of confidence?”

  Michael chuckled. “Brad. Are you sure this isn’t some kind of personal animosity? I know the Koreans aren’t big fans of the Chinese, but—”

  “Stop. Just stop. Does Kleinman know about this?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Kleinman put me in charge, and frankly it would look bad for him to be overseeing every little deal while he’s in Washington.”

&n
bsp; “Every little deal? Michael, are you even listening? Our exposure on this is massive. If it goes the wrong way, we are totally fucked.”

  “You’re getting hysterical about something that’s going to make us a lot of money. Will you listen for a minute, please?”

  Brad stood in place, quivering with anger. He seemed on the verge of shouting, but he clamped his mouth shut and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Thank you. Sit down, too. You’re acting like a lunatic. We’ve been working on this position for a long time. Months and months. Demand from the Chinese market for North American lumber has already gone up this year. Every single one of our predictions has played out, and I guarantee you that demand is going to continue to skyrocket in 2009. Our calls on WestCorp are going to make you a very rich man.”

  My mind was racing. So the deal wasn’t dead. Not at all. It was very much alive.

  “What I don’t get,” Brad said, “what I don’t understand, Michael, is that if this bet is such a sure thing, why isn’t everyone else all over this? We don’t specialize in this. There are a dozen shops that know lumber better than we do.”

  “Because it’s impossible to make any real money selling anything to the Chinese, that’s why. You know that. The tariffs and taxes eat into your profits like a parasite. It’s byzantine. The only way to make money is to find your way through that system.”

  Brad started pacing again. Michael sat back on the couch calmly, waiting.

  Brad wheeled around to look at Michael. “Your trip to China in August. For the Olympics, right? Did you go to a single event? Or was that all just a cover?”

  “Of course I did. Swimming, rowing, whatever. Let me tell you, you meet all sorts of people at the Olympics. All sorts of politicians and government flunkies who are just so eager to rub shoulders with us Americans. The people in that country love us. They finally got a taste of capitalism, and now they can’t get enough. They know how much better things are over here. They’ll do just about anything to catch up. “

  “Jesus Christ. Are we talking bribery, Michael? Did you bribe the fucking Chinese government?”

  On the plane ride that day, we had encountered a particularly nasty bout of turbulence. I gripped the armrests, my jaw clenched. I hated turbulence. I kept counting to ten, over and over, waiting for the plane to steady again. Surely it would stop when I got to ten. That’s exactly how I felt at that moment.

  “Give me a little credit,” Michael said. But before I could exhale, he continued. “Bribery. It’s such an unsubtle word. You can wipe that sneer off your face. I didn’t bribe the Chinese government. We worked out an arrangement that was mutually beneficial.”

  “What arrangement?”

  “Sit down. You’re making yourself all agitated.”

  “What arrangement, Michael?”

  “The appropriate Chinese authorities are now inclined to look favorably upon lumber imports from certain Canadian companies. Those imports won’t be subject to the usual taxes and tariffs. When WestCorp sells their lumber to Chinese buyers, they’ll keep one hundred percent of the revenue.”

  “And what are they getting in return?”

  Michael sighed. He seemed bored by the conversation. “WestCorp wanted the Chinese to drop the trade barriers. The Chinese wanted a few favors that some highly placed WestCorp executives were, luckily, able to grant.”

  “What favors?”

  “Like I said. The Chinese love us. They love our lives. They love North America. They want to come here, to live here, to buy homes here—well, not here here, not Las Vegas, this place is a hellhole. But Vancouver? Toronto? That’s a different story. These businessmen and bureaucrats, now they’ve got money to spare, but the one thing they still can’t buy is a normal life. They want their kids to be like ours. To go to Ivy League schools. To have good careers. They need visas. And Canadian immigration moves like molasses. WestCorp was able to help them out. Speed things up through back channels. They have something we want. We have something they want. It’s really not so complicated.”

  “And you went to Beijing to make this happen. You decided to put the entire company at risk for this deal. I can’t believe this.”

  “Yes, I did. And I would do it again. I don’t need to tell you how dismal things are. How pathetic our returns are this year. How much worse it’s going to get. Do you really want to go back to New York and tell half the company that they’re going to lose their jobs? China is booming. They need lumber, and the Canadians have a glut they need to unload. We’re just providing liquidity. We’re making a market. We applied a little pressure to make it happen, but it’s happening, and it’s working.”

  Brad was silent for a long time.

  “You’re not going to be able to keep this quiet much longer, Michael,” he said at last. “Pretty soon someone else is going to notice it, too, someone besides me, and they’ll start asking questions.”

  “Maybe. But what they’ll notice is how much money we’re making. And what they’ll ask is why they didn’t think of this earlier. Does anyone really care how you get from point A to point B? Did you hear a single complaint from a single banker cashing his checks during the last five years? And we’re not stupid. We’ve been discreet for a reason. When people finally notice, the proof will be there. The profits will be there. I’m not going to apologize for doing my job.”

  “You keep saying ‘we.’ Who is we?”

  “Me and Peck, the analyst. That’s it. A few people have pitched in occasionally, but they never really knew what they were working on.”

  “And does Peck know about the arrangement you have going?”

  I closed my eyes and felt an insane rage—all of it directed at Roger. Most of me realized that this was ridiculous. Roger was the least of my concerns. But were it not for him, I would have been asleep and blissfully ignorant. Yes, I’d had my suspicions along the way. The trip to China. The overheard phone call. But I’d decided, a while earlier, to trust that Michael had a plan. He was the boss. He wasn’t going to do anything illegal. I kept my head down and did my job. It had worked, up until that moment.

  “He knows I went to China,” Michael said. “He doesn’t know what I did there. I picked him for a reason. He keeps things to himself. And he’s ambitious, too. He wants it to succeed. I can tell. He’s perfect for this.”

  “Michael, come on. He’s—what?—twenty-three years old? These analysts go out drinking every night. They can’t keep a secret.”

  “He’s different. And we have an insurance policy on him.”

  “How?”

  “He’s Canadian. Which the WestCorp guys loved, by the way. But his visa is contingent on his remaining in our employ. If he puts this deal in jeopardy, we’ll be talking layoffs. Visas don’t come cheap. He’d be the first to go. So it would behoove him to keep his mouth shut.”

  I could make out a green pinprick of light from the smoke detector on the ceiling above me. The rage had turned into panic. A stinging rash spread across my chest, down my arms, and under my shirt. Breathe, I reminded myself. Breathe.

  “Fucking hell, Michael. This is your mess. Okay? I don’t want anything to do with it. And I’d like you to leave now, if you don’t mind.”

  “You’re the one who brought this up,” Michael said, standing from the couch, tugging his cuffs straight. “I didn’t ask you to get involved. And Kleinman didn’t ask you to be his watchdog. I’m going to bed.” The door opened, there was a pause, and Michael said: “And I hope you don’t have trouble sleeping, because I certainly won’t.”

  “All right, Peck?”

  Chuck cuffed me hard on the back. We were at the breakfast buffet outside the conference room, where the day’s first panel was about to begin. Chuck popped an enormous strawberry into his mouth and winked.

  When I finally returned to my room, I’d lain in bed for the next three hours, jittery and unable to sleep, while Roger snored loudly on the other bed. I’d taken a long shower, had already drunk several cups of c
offee, but it didn’t help. My mind was like a helium balloon. I tried to concentrate on the men on stage who were holding forth on the euro. A glossy pamphlet promised several more panels like this one before the day was out. The bland normalcy of it contradicted everything that had happened the previous night.

  The conference broke for lunch around noon. On my way out, I felt a hand grab my elbow.

  “I need you to do something for me,” Michael said.

  Did he know? But how would he know? I followed him out of the conference center, back to the hotel elevators. Up in Michael’s suite, I had to shield my eyes from the sun, blasting in full strength through the wide windows.

  Michael disappeared around the corner. This room was even bigger than Chuck and Brad’s. Plush cream carpeting, a dazzling glass chandelier, an urn on the hall table overflowing with tropical vines and flowers. Michael returned holding a slim leather briefcase. Black, brand new, with a small combination lock built into the top. He handed it to me. It was surprisingly light.

  “I want you to walk this over to the Venetian,” he said. “Bring this to a Mr. Wenjian Chan. He’s a guest there. Walk, don’t take a cab. It’s important that you hand it to Chan directly. Not to the concierge. Tell him you’re there on my behalf. Okay?”

  What had I been thinking, trusting Michael all this time? Of course he didn’t care about me. He didn’t give a shit.

  “It’s a short walk,” Michael said. “You’ll be back in time for the next panel.”

  He turned and disappeared around the corner. I stood there, unsure what to do. I wanted to shout after him, tell him that I knew. Drop the briefcase and walk away forever. But I’d never do that. It must have been why Michael picked me. He saw it from the start—from the very first time I walked into his office. I wasn’t brave. I never was. Obeying orders was just about the only thing I knew how to do.

  At the Venetian, a young Asian girl opened the door. She inclined her head and gestured me inside. She spoke in Mandarin but stopped when she saw the look on my face.