“I guess not,” I said, though the chained gates of MC Hammer’s foreclosed mansion were seared in my retinas.
“Look, it’s not so bad. You’re cash poor, but you’ve got assets. There’s your apartment, for one. And what about all that C&S stock you stupidly bought? Toxic assets to be sure, but you’re not without options.”
“I thought the boom would last,” I said.
“It was a bubble, Mike. It’s always a bubble.”
“So what would you do, then, if you were me?”
“I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t do: I wouldn’t go around pretending I was writing a book.”
“That’s true,” I said. “I can’t see you doing that.”
Ricky leaned over and brushed a fallen strand of Sammy’s hair behind his ear. Sammy continued to snore.
“What I’d probably do, instead, is get on my hands and knees and beg my friend Ricky for a handout. That’s what I’d probably do. If it were me.”
“Right,” I said. “I was considering that option.”
It was the only option I’d considered. The plan that I’d been banking on all morning—the plan I hoped would save me from ruin and resuscitate my marriage—consisted, entirely, of asking for this loan.
“So how much we talking here?”
I coughed out a figure.
“I’m sorry,” said Ricky. “Could you speak up a bit? I didn’t quite catch that.”
He was loving this hard.
“Three million,” I said, a little louder. “Can I borrow three million dollars?”
Ricky shook his head. “Michael, you beautiful fool.”
“It wouldn’t have to be all at once. Maybe a million now to start paying off some things, another in six months’ time, something like that?”
I trailed off. Ricky looked down at the table like he was taking inventory of the Duane Reade stuff I’d dumped, calculating how much we could sell it for on eBay.
“Look, Mike, I’d help if I could, I really would, you know that. But that’s a lot of change we’re talking about, and I’m not so liquid at the moment.”
“I’d take euros,” I said. “Yen even.”
He removed a painting from the wall.
“You have a safe hidden behind a frame? I thought they only did that in movies.”
“Duh. That’s where I got the idea.”
He held his palm to a sensor and the safe opened. It was empty.
“Not even yuan?” I asked.
“Invested,” Ricky said. “I’m all in.”
“What about Cuba?”
“Cuba can wait. I’ve got a thing going on, a great opportunity. I’ve been looking for the right time to tell you about it. Actually, I was hoping we could talk at the party tonight. I’m in on the ground floor of something. Low risk, and a bigger upside than Sammy’s Neanderthal wang. If you can scrounge together just a teensy bit of capital, I think we can make your debt disappear. Can’t promise anything, of course, but I feel good about this one, and you know I’ve never steered you wrong.”
That teensy bit of capital posed a problem. I couldn’t imagine explaining to Wendy that I was selling our loft in order to invest in one of Ricky’s sure things, no matter his previous rate of success. Still, it was a thought. I didn’t have any others. There was always my book.
“In the meantime,” Ricky said, and snatched the stem from my hand. He replaced it with a fifty-dollar bill. “Buy yourself something nice. You deserve it.”
He lit the crack rock. This was my cue to leave.
Wendy
When I arrived at the restaurant, a Greenwich Village sports bar, of all places, the client was already there, in a corner booth, drinking Coca-Cola spiked with rum. I know because I ordered “same as he’s having,” and was surprised to find alcohol in my beverage, and more surprised to find it sweetened by high-fructose corn syrup. I didn’t think that people still drank non-diet soda. At least not in New York.
The client was dressed casually now, in jeans and a bomber jacket. Blond bangs were curtains over his eyes, protecting them from UV rays and admiring glances. His nose and cheekbones were miracles of architecture. Thick, moist lips. Shaven chin–shine. He wore a sober expression one might not expect from someone so boyishly handsome. The effect was jarring; his eyes were oversized, as if they’d outgrown their sockets. I was the subject of his scrutiny.
I’ve always fetishized WASPs. True WASPs, I mean, born in Connecticut and bred on Nantucket schooners eating lobster rolls and deconstructing golf swings. They’ve never shown much interest in me. Rachel Kirshenbaum and I used to drive out to Darien to look in their windows. We loved their orderly homes. The neatly stacked copies of Elle Decor. The calming peach walls.
“I never got your name,” I said.
He nodded. I wasn’t sure he understood I’d meant it as a question.
“So what is it?” I said. “Your name?”
The client sighed as if the answer were obvious. “Lucas,” he said.
Lucas did not read the menu. I wondered if he’d memorized it before my arrival as a power move. If he could reel off the list off the top of his head, wines and specials included. Or perhaps he was the kind of guy who ordered a cheeseburger wherever he went, or else asked the waitress what she recommended and then ordered that. He slurped his drink loudly. The waitress came and we ordered our food.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing here?” Lucas asked.
“Eating lunch.”
“Good,” he said. “Sharp.”
Lucas reached into his bag and removed a piece of paper. He sketched a female stick figure. He made a click sound with his teeth. The figure had conical breasts, linguini hair. Her eyes were dots. Her mouth was the letter o.
Next, Lucas drew a male stick figure doubled over at the waist. He drew a large phallus protruding from the female figure’s pelvis and extending into the male figure’s rear end.
Lucas wrote Wall Street next to the female figure. He wrote Joe Schmo next to the male. I noticed he wore no wedding ring. I wondered if it was
