‘So,’ she said, coming back up to him with a smile. ‘What can I do for you?’
Macavoy halted at her approach and looked at her severely, hoping to put her in a properly respectful if not fearful frame of mind.
Arlene ran her tongue around her lips and idly routed her shoulders so that her breasts momentarily swelled up towards the neckline of her low-cut dress then receded – two round white tides swelling and receding.
‘Few questions,’ said Macavoy. ‘Like did you tell your recent visitors where they might find –’
‘My God, you’re a hunk,’ said Arlene, reaching her two hands up briefly to knead each of Macavoy’s shoulders and eyeing him up and down. ‘You work out every day?’
‘Uh, every other day,’ said Macavoy, taken aback and actually retreating a step. ‘Uh, Luke Rhinehart, Mrs Ecstein. Did you –’
‘No, no, more than that,’ said Arlene, moving her hands inside his suit jacket to his chest and squeezing through his shirt the muscles around his nipples. ‘You must have played football or lifted weights, right?’
Macavoy was retreating sideways now, into the living room.
‘Basketball actually,’ said Macavoy ‘But, uh, what did you tell –’
‘And a belly like a steel wall.’ said Arlene, whose fingers were kneading his abdomen as the two of them danced slowly from the hallway across the living room, Macavoy retreating, Arlene effortlessly advancing.
‘Look, Mrs Ecstein, I –’
‘And thighs like –’
‘Aghhhh!!’ said Macavoy as Arlene’s fingers probed his inner thighs so suddenly he actually jumped, almost breaking their physical contact.
‘Great hard haunches of bullmeat,’ concluded Arlene.
After meeting Arlene Ecstein I confess I began to have some doubts about my quest. Arlene was so harmless that it rubbed off on to Luke: I seemed to be making a mountain out of a molehill. Besides, I didn’t see how I could spare the time to go down into the southern wilderness to search for a man who probably wasn’t there. And a pan of me was equally afraid he would be there. I passed over the first weekend I might have gone by escorting Honoria to a gala charity ball given by several old-line Wall Streeters as a way of showing their commitment to the needy – whether the ‘needy’ referred to those to whom a bit of the money raised eventually trickled down or to the socialites themselves was unclear.
The following week was a hectic one, marked primarily by Jeff’s ‘hunch’ on bonds and bond futures proving to be a good one; our BB&P Futures Fund soared almost 6 per cent in one day. Akito phoned and complained he couldn’t tell from my indicators why I’d taken such a large bond futures position and then, after making good profits in just two days, gone flat. I hemmed and hawed and concocted a series of mostly fictitious variables to disguise the fact that I’d taken a large position because one of my most unstable traders had a hunch, and gone flat for the same reason.
In his new strange state Jeff seemed to want to go flat in almost everything. It was like pulling teeth to get the poor man to go long or short anything, Jeff inevitably muttering darkly about risks and ‘challenging the Gods’, and only going away to execute the orders because he knew I’d have to fire him if he didn’t.
But even as I pretended to throw myself into my trading and my life with Honoria I felt the pull of Lukedom. I finally decided that if I went the weekend before election day then even if I had to stay longer than two days at least the Tuesday of the election the markets would be closed and I’d miss only one day of trading.
Honoria didn’t want to go with me. For one thing she couldn’t afford to take any days off from Salomon Brothers, not even the Monday before election day. For another, that part of Virginia was the pits as far as she could tell. Lukedom appeared to be located at the far southern end of the stale, buried in barren stripmine hills, probably surrounded by people who had starred in the film Deliverance. Kim seemed interested in going, but I knew that Honoria might not take too kindly to my travelling alone with Kim, so I pretended I didn’t notice her interest.
Still, I decided to make one last effort to get Honoria to come with me. I arranged to meet her at ‘Wipples’, a fashionable financial district bar best known for having one whole wall on which customers had over the years written various stock, bond and futures recommendations. They also dated and signed them. ‘Wipples’ then saw to it that the best always remained, despite the efforts of their authors to remove them. Hence customers were able to note that one well-known Wall Street guru had urged clients to ‘sell everything’ in August 1982 just before stock were to lake off like a missile launch. Another wrote in September 1987 that the market would hit 3,000 by mid-October Instead it hit 1,750. But except for the wall – to which I’d wisely never contributed – the place was a simple, unpretentious bar that humbly charged all the traffic would bear.
Which was considerable The bar had a reputation for being the place one went after a particularly brilliant or lucky financial coup, so going there implied one was brilliant or lucky. At any rate it implied you could afford to pay ten dollars for a shot of whisky, which certainly showed something.
When I arrived Kim was with Honoria, and wearing a dress, one of those new short spandex things, black, that hugged the body and begged you to watch each vibration. Since it was mid-thigh-length Kim’s black-stockinged legs stuck invitingly out beneath the table. I hadn’t seen much of her since she’d gotten a part-time job promoting some Upper East Side health club.
Honoria, like most of the other female patrons, was dressed in a more sedate and stylish manner, a mauve and white business suit which, with her blonde hair, was dramatic. As I sat down at the booth with them I couldn’t help feel my male ego swell – the two foxiest ladies in the joint.
Kim, as far as I knew, normally avoided Wall Street types – except maybe the rebels and losers – and couldn’t usually spend much time with Honoria, their lifestyles overlapping only in that both ate, slept and peed. As Honoria waved at me, I wondered vaguely why Kim was here.
I ordered the cheapest drink on the menu: I hated overpaying for a drink as much as overpaying for a security. Then I again urged Honoria to accompany me on my drive south to find my father.
‘As I understand it,’ Honoria responded, shaking her head with a mock groan, ‘I am being asked to visit a hippie commune caught in some time warp left over from the sixties. Is that right?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But I really don’t care one way or another.’
‘That Arlene Ecstein certainly didn’t turn out to be a hippie,’ suggested Kim.
‘That’s true,’ said Honoria. ‘If your father has degenerated into the male equivalent of Mrs Ecstein, then I suppose our worst worry would be that we’ll be bored to death.’
‘But it would be nice if some of the sixties was still alive today,’ Kim went on. ‘That two or three people still existed who weren’t chained to chasing money and ripping each other off.’
‘In those days,’ said Honoria, ‘parents were so stupidly liberal, their rebellious children didn’t have to worry about money – doting parents sent moneygrams. Today we know better. Rebellious youth are disinherited before their hair even reaches the back of their neck. Reserve your compassion for condors and spotted owls.’
‘Actually it’s that we know better now,’ I said, thinking that the sixties and my father were part of the same sickness. ‘We want to make something of our lives instead of drifting with some flow that eventually strands us in a bog.’
‘Yes, but the flowing and the bogs