After I had plated the meal and we were eating, she said, “Do you remember that bite in the CME we talked about that night we met? Did you ever see that again, or get a sense of what could have caused it?”
I shook my head, swallowed. “Never saw it again. I think it must have been a test.”
“But of what? Someone testing whether they could plug a syrup tap into the pipeline and divert a point their way?”
“Maybe. My quant friends think that happens all the time. Kind of an urban legend for them. Tap in for ten seconds and disappear with a lifetime stash.”
“Do you think that could happen?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a quant.”
“But I thought you were.”
“No. I mean I’d like to be, and I can follow quants when they talk to me, but I’m a trader mostly.”
“That’s not what Evie and Amanda say. They say you pretend not to be a quant so you can do things, but you really are.”
“I would if I could,” I said honestly. Why I was being this honest, I had no idea. Possibly I had an intuition that she might find that more amusing than pretended quantitude. I like to be amusing if I can.
“Say you could do it,” she said. “Would you?”
“What, tap a line? No.”
“Because it would be cheating?”
“Because I don’t need to. And yeah. I mean it is a game, right? So cheating would mean you’re lame at the game.”
“Not that much of a game, though. It’s just gambling.”
“But gambling smart. Figuring out trades that outsmart even the other smart traders. That’s the game. If you didn’t have that, it would just be, what, I don’t know. Data analysis? Desk job in front of a screen?”
“It is a desk job in front of a screen.”
“It’s a game. And besides the screen is interesting, don’t you think? All those different genres and temporalities, all running at once… it’s the best movie ever, live every day.”
“See, you are a quant!”
“But it isn’t math, it’s literature. Or like being a detective.”
She nodded, thinking it over. “Why haven’t you detectived this CME bite, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said. So much honesty! “Maybe I will.”
“I think you should.”
She shifted next to me on the cushion.
I registered this and said, kind of cluelessly, “Dessert? Postprandial?”
“What have you got?” she said.
“Whatever,” I said. “Actually the bar is mostly single malts right now.”
“Oh good,” she said. “Let’s try them all.”
It turned out that she had an alarmingly extensive knowledge of costly single malts, and like all sensible connoisseurs had come to the conclusion that it was not a matter of finding the best, but of creating maximum difference, sip to sip. She liked to dabble, as she put it.
And in more than just drinking alcohol. I came out of the cabin with a clutch of bottles in each hand and sat down somewhat abruptly beside her and she said, “Oh my God, it’s Bruichladdich Octomore 27,” and leaned in and kissed me on the mouth.
“You just had a sip of Laphroaig,” I said as I tried to catch my breath.
She laughed. “That’s right! A new game!”
I doubted it was new but was happy to play.
“Don’t drink too much,” she said at one point.
“Hummingbird sips,” I murmured, quoting my dad. I tried to illustrate by kissing her ear, and she hummed and reached out for me. Her dress was rucked up around her waist by this point, and like most women’s underwear hers was easy to push around. Lots of kissing left me gasping. “You’re going long on me,” she murmured, and straddled me and kissed me more.
“I am,” I said.
“And I’m having a little liquidity crisis,” she said.
“You are.”
“Oh. That’s good. Don’t strand those assets. Here, use your mouth.”
“I will.”
And so on. At one point I looked up and saw her body glowing whitely in the starry night, and she was watching me with that same amused expression as before. Then later still she put her head back on the thwart and looked at the stars, and said, “Oh! Oh!” After that she slid down to join me and we crashed around on the floor of the cockpit trying to make it all work, but mainly I was still hearing that oh oh, the sexiest thing I had ever heard in my life, electrifying beyond even my own orgasm, which was saying a lot.
Eventually we lay there tangled on the cockpit floor, looking at the stars. It was a warm night for autumn, but a little breeze cooled us. The few stars visible overhead were big and blurry. I was thinking, Oh shit—I like this gal. I want this gal. It was scary.
New York is in fact a deep city, not a high one.
Where there’s a will there’s a won’t.
b) Mutt and Jeff
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Where are we?”
“I don’t know. Weren’t we…”
“We were talking about something.”
“We’re always talking about something.”
“Yes, but it was something important.”
“Hard to believe.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know, but meanwhile, where are we?”
“In some kind of room, right?”
“Yeah… come on. We live in our hotello, on the farm floor of the old Met Life tower. The old Edition hotel, used to be a very fine hotel. Remember? That’s right, right?”
“That’s right.” Jeff shakes his head hard, then holds it in his hands. “I feel all foggy.”
“Me too. Do you think we’ve been drugged?”
“Feels like it. Feels like after I had that tooth pulled in Tijuana.”
Mutt regards him. “Or remember after your colonoscopy? You couldn’t remember what happened.”
“No, I don’t remember that.”
“Exactly. Like that.”
“For you too? Now, I mean?”
“Yes. I forget what we were talking about right before this. Also, how we got here. Basically, what the fuck just happened.”
“Me too. What’s the last thing you remember? Let’s find that and see if we can work forward from it.”
“Well…” Mutt ponders. “We were living in our hotello, on the farm floor of the Met Life tower. Very breezy when out among the plants. A little noisy, great view. Right?”
“That’s right, there we were. Been there a couple months, right? Lost our previous room when it melted?”
“Right, Peter Cooper Village, extra high tide. Moon or something. Landfill just can’t hold a building upright over the long haul. So then…”
Jeff nods. “Yeah that’s right. We were trying to stay away from my cousin, which is why we were in such a shithole to begin with. Then over to the Flatiron where Jamie lived, and when they kicked us out, he told us about the Met tower possibility. He likes to bail out friends.”