The Founder had his feet on the desk and was describing a journey he had recently taken to Legal. ‘The soundtrack is essential’, he said. ‘It guides the experience.’
A commotion broke out on the trading floor. The Baker Brothers, it appeared, had begun to trim their portfolio. They were selling off their smaller parks and they had paused cash distributions to investors. The market was reacting by piling out of New York and into North Carolina.
‘Who do they think they are’, Legal said, ‘the Baker Brothers? They behave like they are the Hunt brothers in silver, or Soros in the GBP.’
‘I think they are an elephant in a bathtub’, the Founder said.
‘We zig when everyone else zags.’
‘That’s a Charlie Baker line.’
The trader in charge of institutional paper for the Southern Tier stood on his desk outside the window to the Founder’s office and waved a trading slip in his left hand. His right hand kept his phone glued to his ear. As he spoke with the customer on the phone, he shouted at a park salesman across the trading floor, ‘Fill or kill! Fill or kill!’ A trader next to him slammed his fingers into his keyboard and shouted, ‘Motherfucker.’
‘What do you think would happen if we put a bunch of chimps in front of computer monitors instead of these clowns’, the Founder asked. ‘Do you think they would do better?’
Legal looked at a stack of White Castle boxes piled on the credenza next to a window overlooking New York Harbor. ‘They would have better table manners’, he said.
‘You know the Baker boys started like this’, the Founder said.
‘Say again?’
‘Charlie was a clerk on the NYMEX, back when park trading was done by open outcry. He did that instead of going to college.’
‘He should have joined the Marines’, Legal said. ‘He would have made great cannon fodder.’
‘We can only regret.’
.
‘Tell me more about the journey’, Legal said. ‘I am curious.’
‘I have found it to be a two-phase process.’
‘Explain.’
‘First, it is a breakdown of the ego. Then there is a crying jag.’
‘OK.’
‘The first phase is terrifying. That is the phase where you pull the bandage off your skull, dive in and swim. You might wonder what the self is, what observes the self and what observes the thing that observes the self. You will, very likely, find it achingly lonely.’
‘And you paid for this?’
‘Fuck you.’
Outside the window, McCarthy, the head of the Capital Region desk, had invited a couple of strippers to the floor. One of them was sitting on the lap of Abishek, the head of risk management. She had taken his PhD in applied math and pulled it down around his ankles. The way she twisted her knees around his neck seemed to make him uncomfortable.
‘The crying phase is merely crushing. That’s when you feel a yearning for a connection with people who are absent. I thought of some things I wanted to say to the Comptroller and was levelled by waves of sorrow and regret.’
‘What did you want to say to her?’
‘None of your beeswax.’
‘Has she, you know, beaten you lately?’
‘No.’
‘She been taking her meds?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then, I decided I had enough. I took the mask and the headphones off and chatted with the guide, who was a lovely woman. Then, I walked outside and it was Hamilton, Ontario.’
The stripper had placed one end of a hundred-dollar bill between her teeth. Abishek had bitten the other end and they were playing tug-of war. Abishek stood to face her and she crouched on the desk on all fours, with her hips grazing the monitors.
‘Gross’, Legal said. ‘He doesn’t know where that bill has been.’
‘I don’t think he cares.’
Legal made a face. ‘I don’t want to punch down here, but Hamilton, Ontario is a dump. I mean, when people from Youngstown want to feel good about themselves, they make fun of Hamilton.’
‘Yes it is’, the Founder said. ‘The worst part of the trip was Hamilton.’
.
Legal’s phone rang. He looked at the screen, locked eyes with the Founder and put an index finger up. He spoke into the microphone, ‘No, and no.’
‘Who was that’, the Founder asked.
‘Some broker. She said a park in Otsego County is trading at thirteen grand a lot.’
‘That’s cheap.’
‘I told her to call me back when it falls to six.’
.
‘Actually, the worst part was not Hamilton’, the Founder said. ‘It was the call I got from the Evictor in central New York after I hit the street.
‘He is a good lawyer’, Legal said, ‘the Evictor.’
‘Yes, he is’, the Founder said.
Abishek was now on his knees, blindfolded. The stripper was feeding him fruit roll-ups and asking him to beg.
‘It is about Alice’, the Founder said.
‘Alice Beach’, Legal asked.
‘Yup.’
‘Oh man.’
‘I don’t know where to start.’
.
‘Wasn’t Alice the woman whose eighteen-month-old son was raped by her neighbor six years ago’, Legal asked.
‘She is.’
‘And didn’t you get rid of the neighbor even though it was not the economically rational thing to do’, Legal asked.
‘I did.’
‘Didn’t the neighbor give you some kind of story about how it wasn’t her who did it, but rather her fourteen-year-old autistic nephew and that he would never come around again? Didn’t you tell the neighbor that you didn’t give a shit about her nephew and that your job was to keep people in the park safe and that it was not about the money and that you could not take the risk that this would happen again and she had to get out of the park immediately? Didn’t you give the neighbor a few grand for her home even though it was worthless? And didn’t you scrap the neighbor’s home immediately, once she was gone and you got title to it? Didn’t you have to spend, like seventy-five grand to fill that lot? Aren’t you still in the hole for that?’
The Founder pulled out a notepad and wrote, Are you wearing a wire? He pushed it across the desk toward Legal. Legal tore the page off, wrote, Here’s an evasive answer. Go fuck yourself and pushed the pad back across the desk to the Founder.
‘And Alice paid you back by stiffing you’, Legal said.
‘Every time I see her, I tell her that I will help her get public assistance’, the Founder said. ‘It’s available, but she won’t apply. She is into me for five grand now.’
‘Didn’t you once say that eviction is like using nuclear weapons to enforce traffic tickets? It is not fair but it is the only remedy available?’
The Founder pulled the writing pad toward himself, ripped off the top sheet and wrote, Tell me again that you are not wearing a wire.
.
‘So I am in Hamilton, Ontario, not entirely compos mentis and the Evictor calls’, the Founder said. ‘He tells me that the court date that we had had for Alice had to be postponed for two reasons. The first was that she was in North Carolina.’
‘What does she do?’
‘She is a veterinary nurse. She travels for work.’
‘Doesn’t that pay decent money?’
‘The real problem was that the judge was conflicted out. He represents her.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Judge of village court is a part-time job. The judge has a private practice. He represents her in family court.’
‘And the judge waited until now to tell us this?’
‘Actually, he did not tell us. The Evictor was in court for another matter. He chatted with the judge about upcoming cases. When the Evictor mentioned Alice, the judge said, ‘Her husband is a deadbeat’. The Evictor asked how he knew that and the judge said, ‘She is a client of mine.’’
‘So he can’t hear the case.’
‘Nope. The other judge won’t hear cases brought by the Evictor because the Evictor represents the town and the judge is a town employee.’
‘Doesn’t the town have to provide a forum for cases to be heard?’
‘The Evictor is looking for a solution. They might have to bring in a judge from the city court. That would solve the problem, but it would be another month before the case is heard.’
The Founder remembered how chills had gone down his spine when he had heard Obama say, ‘The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice’. That seemed like empty syllables now.
‘Anyhow, I was in Hamilton when the Evictor delivered that message and my neurons were newly plastic. I was not in good shape to process it.’
Do you think that you will do it again’, Legal asked, ‘Another journey?’
The stripper and her colleague had tied Abishek and a trading intern, a large guy who had played lacrosse at Colgate, back-to-back by their elbows. One of the strippers was tickling the lacrosse player under the chin. The other was stepping on Abishek’s foot.
‘I don’t think so’, the Founder said. ‘I don’t need psychedelics. I own mobile home parks.’