“From Bank of South Asia.”
“What? You pledged the bonds as collateral for an asset-backed line of credit with Bank of South Asia?”
“Bet your ass. And I went to Bangkok Commercial and waved around the contract for the asset-backed credit line with Bank of South Asia that we had quietly pocketed.”
“And now what?”
“Like you say, now we’ve got to pay for a hundred million dollars worth of bonds.”
Kyle crossed over, letting his voice swell with gluey anxiety. “And we don’t have the cash.”
“But we’ve got the credit financing.”
“Stop right there,” Kyle warned. “What about this credit?”
I swallowed my surge of indignation. “What?”
“Anything else we don’t know about?”
“No. Standard stuff.”
“How standard?”
“Bank of South Asia lends us eighty per cent of the price of the bonds.”
“Standard terms?”
“Yeah. We pre-pledge the bonds to BSA before we buy them. BSA lends us eighty cents on the dollar. We use the eighty million to pay most of the purchase price for the bonds. The rest we raise ourselves.”
“We repay BSA on our sale of the bonds?”
“Right. We have to repay BSA in ninety days. When we sell the bonds into the open market, or to Amsterdam, whoever bids the most, cash is paid into escrow. BSA takes eighty cents of every dollar in escrow to retire their loan, then they release the bonds at the end of ninety days for settlement of the sale.”
He refused to acknowledge that the credit arrangements were ordinary, using his silence to pry under my facts suspiciously.
To retaliate, I slipped back into the tone lingering from my discussion with Michelle. “We pledge the bonds. They lend us eighty per cent of the purchase price. We pay back when we sell the bonds.”
Kyle cast me off with disdain. Flicking his fingers. “Yeah. Brilliant.”
I could feel his doubt working, like cold water dripping.
“Have we locked up the eighty million from BSA?” he inquired sharply.
“Of course.”
“Okay, BSA lends us most of the money we need to buy the bonds. So we can turn around and resell them right quick before the interest on the BSA loan sneaks up and bites us in the ass. Where’s the rest of it? The discount settlement is ninety-two. Where’s the other twelve or so million we still need?”
“I can pull together a syndicate of a few smaller players in Singapore for most of the rest.”
“Then tell me. Right now. In plain clear English. Just how much we’ve raised so far.”
“It’s still going to be a few more hours until …”
“To the penny!”
Kyle planted his rage around him like fence posts.
I was reminded that this was also about our previous arguments that had ended inadequately; they had been accumulating over the last several months; vigorously chewed but never swallowed.
With Kyle slipping over the edge into a predictable free-fall of fear and anger, I recognized for a second time in the day that my failure and frustration were assured if I made the mistake of continued discussion and was lured into the trap of assuming Kyle was heading towards principled debate.
“A few more hours,” I announced, wrapping it up quickly. “Until the markets open in Asia and I can call a few people and get some email back.”
“I don’t trust it,” Kyle stated, tapering off into sullen silence.
That, I recognized, was Kyle postmarking his control of the situation. If everything worked out smoothly, his comments would be discarded. But if anything went wrong, he would have this exact point of reference to prove that he had been in command, able to verify that he had warned against it and that nothing had slipped by him.
“I don’t trust it,” he repeated as he stood. “And I don’t trust you on it.”
He walked out.
When did you ever?
4
At night I repeatedly woke from sleep exhausted from re-dreaming old dreams.
I felt as if I had no new dreams.
Every night I felt as if I were trapped in a backwash of sleep with the same images tumbling in on me. Nothing but re-runs out of the shadows. Leaving me barren when I woke.
My dreams were overused memories of dreams I had dreamed before; as if nothing new was happening within me emotionally, within my experiencing of life.
So there was nothing new to draw upon.
Nothing new to dream about.
Living on leftovers.
5
In February, in the city, winter lopped off the afternoon at its knees.
Within our offices, the intensity of the fluorescent light neither wavered nor dimmed. You would only notice the change outside in snapshots when you looked up between telephone calls or looked off your computer screen. First the deepening mid-afternoon shadows shouldered along the canyons between the office towers. Then it was black outside the windows, without further increment, as if the blackness spilled down from the sky.
Often you could hear the end of the day in the rising volume of vehicle horns barking in rush-hour before you took notice of the gloom, punctuated by streetlights, pierced by headlights and checkered by distant shoals of lit up high-rise windows.
Soothed by the cliffs of familiar darkness outside my windows, I sat patiently in my office, my apprehension easing as I listened to voices disappearing into the elevators, the expanding emptiness of the office leaving me insulated from interruption or reproach. I flipped through a wad of yellow computer slips confirming the day’s string of bond trades. My eyes retraced packs of numbers and decimal points that dissolved within my concentration without registering any meaningful information. I brushed the bundle aside.
My confrontation with Kyle came back on me like heartburn. I hated it, how it had gone. I hated how Kyle had withdrawn his support this past year and made me a target because I had elevated my commitment to my personal life above my commitment to the firm. I had tried to make caring about someone the most important thing in my life, certain that it would make me invincible; and, instead, it had left me on the outside of potent office alliances, compromised and vulnerable. It left me feeling as if I had been betrayed by something I could not see or touch.
Listlessly, I slumped in my chair, leafing through a two-month-old copy of Forbes magazine to keep my hands busy while I waited for it to be time to make the call.
Often, when I was about to call to the other side of the world, I imagined the sun rolling freshly through the streets of a foreign city; the recipient of my call rising from slumber, preparing for the day in morning rituals similar to my own, travelling to work along hectic streets banked by gaudy advertising.
Memories of my last trip to Singapore broke my clouded thoughts: cleanly swept streets and lush parks planted with palms and broad-leafed tropical plants; gleaming office towers looking out over the green sea and verdant islands of Indonesia; on the streets, heat and steamy humidity doubling the weight of the air in your lungs; and then the chill of the air conditioning, bringing welcome relief as it soaked slowly back into your shirt when you got off the elevator heading for someone’s office.
I clicked my mouse, and brought my database of names and addresses up onto