Meanwhile, back on the farm
Lalita has opened all the major veins and arteries that she can penetrate with a kitchen knife, and while her husband bleeds to death, she caresses the piglet whose name hence-forth will be Magnus McKay and presses his Longines gold watch against the wriggling creature until she is quite sure McKay’s soul has found its new lodging. She ties a crimson ribbon around each of the piglet’s legs, so that she will not get him mixed up with the others, then gives him back to his mother to feed.
She has been terribly torn, right to the core, but she is finally at peace. Her torment consisted of the conflict between her undeniable need to possess him forever and the equally pressing need to kill him because he was a depraved monster who deceived and abused both her and the Buddha’s holy monks. This is resolved now. Pigs live at least ten years and she will have him with her constantly for that time. Using McKay’s platinum Visa card and the ATM code he gave her, she takes out as much as the account will allow on a daily basis, until she is rich enough to pay for her mother’s cataract operation and her father’s quadruple heart bypass. She also makes sure she can pay for her young brother’s school fees all the way to post-graduate level, and for herself to retire from the Game and live contentedly in her native land for the rest of her life. Her first and most pressing expense, though, is to bribe the local cops. Fortunately, she has known them since childhood, so once a sum has been agreed upon, they conclude that the faran died of bird flu.
When Magnus McKay the Pig finally dies, she will have had enough time to arrange for his transmigration to a more long-lived creature: perhaps an elephant? Marriage is forever, right?
Bonus season
by Henry Blodget
Shanghai, China
When you were right, all was well in the world. The air seemed clearer, the future brighter, and the forest of roof-top construction cranes stretching west over the Huangpu a symbol of limitless opportunity. When you were wrong, however, as Emerson Jordan was now, a knot tightened in your chest, the Shanghai skyline just looked polluted, and your dubious future condensed to a red number at the bottom of your screen.
“It’ll come back,” a voice on Jordan’s left said.
Jordan prayed that, for once, Fishman would be right.
They had $400 million in a yuan-baht derivative, a bet that this afternoon’s Ministry of Finance meeting would send the yuan to the stars. Two hours earlier, when the markets had briefly lurched their way, Jordan had fantasized about ending his year with a ninth-inning grand slam. Up $80 million, he had rehearsed the final pitch he would make to Stack that night, after Stack had been softened by hours of hosannas from Reingold and other visiting New York brass. He had also considered taking the easy money, quitting while he was ahead. But he hadn’t, and now this was no longer an option.
As the red number blipped lower, the tightness in Jordan’s chest crept outward, and the scroll-wheel of his mouse grew damp with sweat. He had worked hard on hiding the stress — the lip-pinching and fetal slouching of the early years were long gone — but he couldn’t do anything about his palms. Wiping his hands on his pants, he glanced out the windows, where the smog had thickened to an ugly brown soup in the afternoon sun.
Should he cut and run? Even down $120 million — the latest bulletin — he was still up on the year (barely). Yes, the timing was terrible — mere hours before Stack finished the numbers and made the final decisions — but as of now, he could still make a case for a solid number. If he hung on, though? In the space of an hour, the trade had wiped out most of that year’s gains.
“You think they know something we don’t?” the ever-helpful Fishman asked. “Maybe some bastard in New York has a direct line into the meeting?”
Jordan suppressed an urge to smash Fishman’s face into his keyboard. But it was possible — especially here, where the same bigwigs who plotted policy placed trades on their BlackBerries. But that was what Stack was for — Stack, Mr. China, Mr. Guanxi. Stack had made his calls. Stack had signed off on the trade.
Two minutes later, after a tantalizing uptick had falsely raised his hopes, Jordan was down another $20 million. The knot in his chest now extended into his arms, stomach, and legs. All traces of the morning’s optimism were gone, replaced with the conviction that this new frontier was a land of pirates and thieves, that he’d lost his touch, that he was about to lose his job. A trader’s primary task is to manage emotions, and — irony of ironies! — he was actually thought to be good at it. An entire year’s work draining away, Jordan pushed his chair back and rose to his feet.
“Where are you going?” Fishman asked.
Jordan ignored him.
Stack’s office was off the far end of the floor, a glass box that jutted from the building like an observation platform. To get to it, Jordan had to walk past no fewer than fourteen trading desks. In the middle of a trading day, there were only two reasons to see Stack: you were making a killing, or you were getting killed. As he walked, Jordan tried to maintain his poker face — his Stack face — but he knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. On the contrary, on this day of all days, he imagined his fellow traders quietly celebrating, thinking that Stack’s erstwhile boy wonder had finally blown himself up, leaving more for everyone else.
The entrance to Stack’s imperial suite was guarded by two secretaries: Clara from Hong Kong and Lauren from New York. Neither seemed surprised to see him. Jordan nodded to both, then walked past into a dim, windowless corridor. As always, the door to Stack’s office was closed, leaving Jordan with nothing to do but stand helplessly in the gloom. Sometimes Stack made you wait seconds. Sometimes minutes. Sometimes, rumor had it, an hour or more. Today, thirty seconds after Jordan arrived, the door clicked softly and swung open.
Stack’s office had been designed for maximum impact: a sensory deprivation trip through a dark tunnel followed by an assault of light and space — as though you had burrowed into a cave and emerged on the side of a cliff. The office was two stories high, walled by 270 degrees of floor-to-ceiling glass. Not content with the knee-weakening vertigo this instilled — and eager to fully embrace the over-the-top carnival spirit of the new Shanghai — the London-based architects had added another special feature: a translucent floor. It supposedly employed the same technology as photosensitive sunglasses, except in this case (and others), Stack retained control. On Stack’s desk was a box with the usual knobs — temperature, lights, AV, etc. — one of which allowed him to modify the clarity of the glass. If Stack wished, he could set the floor to “clear” and watch visitors discover what it felt like to negotiate while hovering 870 feet above the wide streets of Pudong.