“How about back to the bar where we met?”
“Sounds good.”
In my skeeter, the locus now of such fond memories of our glorious date in the harbor, I felt the buzz of things going well, and in that excitement I described in some detail my relief at the fact that the submarine market had withstood the shock of the Chelsea building going under. “I’ve got to get my short-on as big as I can before the crash hits, or else I won’t be able to take full advantage of how much will be crashing, it’s amazing when you add it all up. Now that the IPPI is over a hundred it’s like a psychological tipping point, I think everyone is thinking it will start to soar.”
“Do you think your index is fooling them about that?” she asked, looking around at the other boats on the canal.
“What, like I’m spoofing or something?”
“No, just that it’s been going up no matter what happens.”
“Yeah, well, confidence is one of the variables being factored in, so it’s more like people just want it to be going up.”
“Don’t you want that too? I mean, wouldn’t that mean things were getting better for people living there?”
“Prices going up? I’m not so sure. But I am sure there’s a huge collapse coming in the housing stock itself. All the improvements in tech won’t be enough to make up for that.”
“But the index keeps going up.”
“Because people want it to go up.”
She sighed. “Indexes are strange.”
“They are. But people like complex situations reduced to a single number.”
“Something to bet on.”
“Or a way to try to track rates of inflation. I mean, the Cost of Living Extremely Well Index? What’s that for?”
She grimaced. “That’s to laugh at how rich you are. Check off the yacht, the fur coat, the jet, the lawyer, the shrink, the kid at Harvard, whatever else is on the list.”
“It’s definitely more fun to look at than the Misery Index,” I said. This was a simple index, as befitting its subject: inflation plus unemployment. “You could add quite a few more variables to that one too, I guess.” Such as personal bankruptcies, divorces, food bank visits, suicides… It didn’t seem like listing these variables was a good idea at this moment. “Or maybe the Gini index, maybe that’s a kind of cross between the Cost of Living Extremely Well Index and the Misery Index. Or you could go the other way and check the Happiness Index.”
“Indexes,” she said dismissively.
“Well hey,” I said, feeling defensive. “Don’t you use any?”
“I use the volatility indexes,” she admitted. “You kind of have to.”
I nodded. “That was one of the inspirations for the IPPI. I like the way it’s trying to describe the future with its number.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, because it collates all the rates that paper due in the next month are going to get. So it’s kind of a month out. I wanted to do the same for the intertidal.”
“Read the tea leaves, tell their fortune.”
“I guess?”
“While things keep falling apart.”
“Yeah, that’s the balance, both things are happening. So it’s hedge heaven. You have to play both sides.”
“But now you’re shorting it.”
“Yes, I think the long is too long, like I said. It’s a bubble. Of course in a way that’s good, as I said. More to collect when it pops. So I’m pushing that angle too, keep on buying put options.”
“So you are spoofing!”
“No, I really buy them. I do flip them sometimes, just to help keep it all going until I’m ready.”
“So you’re front-running.”
“No no. I don’t want to do that.”
“So it’s like those accidental spoofers. You really do think it’s going up. But I thought you said it wasn’t going to continue.”
“But people think it is. It’ll go up until it pops, so I want it to keep going up.”
“Until you’re ready.”
“You know what I mean. Everything in place. Meanwhile, it’s a case of the more the merrier.”
She laughed briefly. “You’d better watch out, though. If the crash is too big, there won’t be anyone left to make good on your shorts.”
“Well,” I said, startled. “That would mean everything. End-of-civilization kind of thing.”
“It’s happened before.”
“Has it?”
“Sure. The Great Depression, the First Pulse.”
“Right, but those were finance. End of a financial civilization.”
“That’s all it would take, in terms of you losing everyone who could pay you off.”
“But they keep coming back. The government bails them out.”
“But not the same people. New people. The old people having lost out.”
“I’ll try to dodge that fate.”
“I’m sure you will. Everyone does.”
She shook her head, smiling a little at me—at my optimism? my confidence? my naïveté? I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t used to that particular smile being aimed my way, and it made me a little uneasy, a little irritated.
We got to Pier 57 and I slipped the zoomer into one of the last slips in the marina, and we joined the crowd in the bar. Amanda was there with John and Ray, and they greeted us happily, Amanda with a start and then a knowing smile as she saw us come in together. It was nice to cause that start, as it’s never pleasant to be dropped. But we were friends and I smiled back, pleased to be paired with Jojo in the eyes of my friends. Inky was slinging it behind the bar and the clouds over Hoboken were going pink and gold above a brassy sun bronzing the river. High tide and high spirits.
After a drink we all retired to the rooftop restaurant and ate over the water in the twilight and then the dusk. A trio in the corner was playing Beethoven’s “Appassionata” sonata on pan pipes, red-faced and hyperventilating. It was warm for November, even a little sultry, and the steamers and mussels, pulled right out of the filtered cages underneath us, were tasty, as were Inky’s concoctions, which we had brought along with us to the table. The gang was having fun, but something felt different to me. Jojo was talking with Amanda on the other side of her from me, and of course Amanda was enjoying that; but they were not friends, and I felt a little coolness emanating from the J-woman that I could not show that I felt, not in front of the others. So I chatted with John about the events of the week, and we agreed that things were getting interesting with the new state attorney general taking over, said to be a real sheriff, though we both had our doubts. “They’re always just a touch second rate,” John said, to which I nodded. “You go from creation of value to destruction of value, you get a different kind of personality involved. It’s not as bad as the rating agencies, but still, it’s pretty bad.”
“But this guy used to be finance,” I said. “We’ll see if he turns out to be a little more savvy. Or savage.”
“Savvy and savage, that would be the scary combination.”
“True, but we’ve had some like that before. The caravan will move on.”
“True.”
Eventually all the courses had been eaten, the drinks drunk, and as before, Jojo and I were by far the soberest in the bunch. Overhead the stars blurred and swam, but it was because of a slight mist rising off the river, not anything internal to our mentalities. For the others it could have been a Van Gogh starry night, judging by their peals of laughter.
Paid the bill. Down the riverside walk to the marina, into the bug, out onto the river. Stars reflected in the sheeting black water under us. Oh my, oh my; my face was hot, my feet cold, my fingers tingling a little. In the underlight from cockpit and cabin door, Jojo looked like Ingrid Bergman. She had experienced a major orgasm at my touch, right out here; I felt the tingle of that memory, the start of a hard-on. “Want a drink?”