NightWriter

SOMETHING SMALL AND GRAY, AND QUICK

Thomas Tessier

For months it had seemed that the deal would never get done. Richard Marsh worked doggedly at it, renegotiating numerous points, tweaking and sweetening terms and conditions, adding and subtracting provisions. The other party – one of the smaller clans in the Emirates – was apparently content to bargain and procrastinate indefinitely.

But then, earlier this week, there was a sudden flurry of phone calls from and to Dubai, and it all came together at last. The Arabs were in. To the tune of $220 million. Which would lift Richard’s Greenland Global High Yield Hedge Fund, currently comprising $915 million in assets, well past the billion dollar mark. The big country.

Not bad, for a guy who who was only 36. Richard had created Global Hi-Yi four years ago with the backing of the Greenland Holdings Group, and had now posted three straight years with average annual returns of 35%. He was the Fund’s single investment manager. He had a staff of a couple of dozen bright young people, working from a suite of offices in Greenwich, Connecticut. Such success had come with a price, and in his case it cost him his marriage. He got over that in a weekend.

A done deal is never done until everything is locked down, signed, and the money actually changes hands electronically. An investment this large and complex required a meeting to spell out the agreed terms in writing, to determine the modalities of transfer, and to print and sign the final contracts and any secondary documentation. It was all set up by his associate in Dubai, working with the investing party. Some of the Arabs were already ensconced in Liechtenstein. They had rented out one of the royal castles for a month or two, and were using it as a base for a mix of business and family vacation activities. Richard had met a couple of them earlier, when they first invited him to an informal chat in Manhattan more than six months ago. Sniffing him out. Now, was the real thing.

Richard and his two top finance and contract law assistants, Tony Hawkins and Rob Briggs, took an overnight flight from JFK to Zurich, then a chopper to the small heliport at Balzers, outside the capitol city of Vaduz. From there, a waiting limo carried them the few miles to Das Schloss, a gray Gothic pile built on a small hilltop, overlooking a deep, rocky river gorge. They were shown directly to their adjacent rooms on the upper floor. Richard told Tony and Rob to meet him downstairs in an hour and a quarter – time enough for them to unpack, relax a little, freshen up and change clothes.

The first thing Richard noticed in his room was that the windows were wide open. It was a gorgeous day in early June, sunny, no humidity, a light, sweet breeze at play in the air. Richard went to the windows and looked out at the beautiful garden arrayed below, banks and banks of vibrantly-colored flowers in bloom. He pulled the windows in and shut them tightly. There was one thing he hadn’t gotten over.

They had a late lunch on a terrace looking out on the gardens. The castle was kind of interesting. It was still the property of some prince or other in what was undoubtedly one of the most obscure royal families in the world, but it had not been used as a private residence for some time. It had been renovated, retrofitted, and now operated both as a sort of state guest-house and luxury hotel — though, definitely not the kind of hotel just anyone could book a room at.

Richard’s associate from Dubai appeared. Part of his full name was El-Ajibadi, so everyone who knew him addressed him and referred to him as L.A. He showed them the conference room where the meeting would take place the next morning. It was the castle library, still lined from floor to ceiling with leather-bound volumes, but now bereft of any personal touches, dominated by a large mahogany table and executive chairs in the center of the room. Das Schloss provided wireless access throughout, and a side room off the library contained some desktops, printers and basic computer supplies. L.A. explained to them how he and the investing family had agreed to structure the meeting, and it all sounded fine to Richard.

Late in the afternoon they met a couple of the investors, including one Richard knew from the New York session. It was cordial, a lot of smiling as they all sipped iced tea on the terrace and chatted about nothing much. They were not going to ask him about his market strategy and day-to-day tactics. They knew his record. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be there. It was a done deal, Richard told himself again.

They had an early dinner with L.A. at a restaurant in Vaduz and were dropped off back at the castle just before 9 pm. L.A. excused himself, and Richard didn’t need to declare it an early night. Jet lag and the long hours of the last week were fast catching up with them. The meeting was scheduled for 10 am, plenty of time for a good, long sleep.

The first thing Richard noticed when he entered his room was that the windows were open again. This time they were only open a couple of inches, just enough to let in a little of the mild, sweet night air. Somebody on the castle staff must have done it, when they turned down the bedding and put Godiva mints on the pillows. Richard was annoyed, but more at himself than anyone else. They were just doing their jobs. It was predictable, so he should have anticipated it and made a point of telling them after the first time that he didn’t want the windows open.

Because, obviously, when Das Schloss had been drastically updated a few years ago, the historic lead-frame windows had been left exactly as they were. No double-pane glass, no new frames. No screens.

Anything could fly in.

Richard shut the windows.

Then he conducted a thorough search of the room, shaking and slapping the heavy drapes, scanning the high ceiling and the walls, peering behind the furniture, even pulling a chair around to stand on so that he could see the top of the tall armoire. Then he carefully examined the bathroom. Spotless. No intruders.

Feeling somewhat reassured, Richard got out of his shoes, socks, shirt and pants. He checked out the contents of the well-stocked fridge and chose a bottle of Apollinaris. He sat up against the headboard on his bed and opened his laptop. He held the first long gulp of the sparkling water in his mouth, letting it bubble and fizz there for several seconds. So clean and fresh.

He tapped the keyboard a few times and quickly pulled up a listing of Asian futures, to get an idea of what would happen when the Far East markets opened in a few hours. All slightly up, which was good.

When he glanced away from the screen for a second, he thought he saw something moving on the other side of the room. Something in the air, a small whitish-gray blip. Moving quickly, disappeared in a second. Richard set the laptop aside and got up off the bed. He walked slowly across the floor, his eyes searching, alert for any hint of movement. Anywhere around him. But he saw nothing, just the room and its contents. By the time he got back onto the bed, Richard was half-convinced that the open windows had spooked him, and that his subconscious had just played a trick on him.

He took a sip of water and gazed at the page open on his laptop, but he couldn’t concentrate his attention on the words and numbers. An old anxiety was creeping in at the edges of his being. Richard knew of several ways to deal with it, the first of which was to brush it off, reason it away and otherwise ignore it. That worked, through sheer force of will, but only for a few minutes.

Next, because he was admittedly a little on edge, he made an effort to calm himself down. Breathe deeply, slowly. Get that heartbeat down a notch. Let the muscles in your arms and legs relax. Let your whole body relax. The air around you is comfortable. The bed and pillows embrace you.

Now, close your eyes. The instinct is not to, because doing so makes you much more vulnerable. But that was why Richard had to do it, just for a second at first, then for two or three seconds, and so on. Because by shutting his eyes, Richard was displaying confidence in himself and in his situation. Confidence that he was alone, and safe. And that confidence would only make him stronger.

Richard shut and opened his eyes several times at increasingly longer intervals. And saw nothing unusual. That was good. The drawback with this particular technique was that sometimes it came too late to be convincing. If your mind has already crossed the threshold and believed with certainty that something was there, opening your eyes and not seeing it could be worse than seeing it. If you saw it, you could fight it, swat it to the floor and grind it to pulpy bits with your shoe. Not seeing it meant it was still there, waiting.

Several years ago, Richard had paid $3,000 to Dr Harry Swiderski, a psychologist in New Haven who had devised a program of six one-hour sessions that was said to have good results for people who suffered from mottephobia. Six times he prodded, urged and steered Richard back through the primary incident, progressively breaking it down into its various major components and then further breaking them down as contributing factors. Each one was held up, examined, explained. Exhausted.

It was simple really, two minutes in a boy’s life dissected into 20 or 25 different units of experiential content. He was five years old at the time, the youngest of three brothers on the vacation to a cottage that his parents had rented for a week on a lake in the Adirondacks. It was night four, the boys were sent to bed at 10 pm as usual. Sharing the largest bedroom, they would talk in whispers in the dark for another hour or so before dropping off. Richard slept on his back. His mouth had fallen slightly open, it would seem. A little after 2 am, he later learned. He woke up choking, gagging. Something was in his mouth, squirming, it felt dry, powdery, like paper – until his teeth instinctively clenched and he bit through it and an acrid taste filled his mouth. Swallowing bits of something, gagging and spitting out the rest of it. The light going on. His brothers jumping up, shouting for his parents. Richard crying, hunched over the edge of his bed, hawking, then puking.

The point of Dr Swiderski’s program was that a moth is a moth is a moth. A parcel of life made up largely of protein. Essentially, harmless to humans, if not always so to certain of their clothes. It just happened to land in the wrong place and would have flown away in a second or two if Richard’s jaw hadn’t clamped shut when it did. Seen in larger contexts, all individual human experience is ultimately trivial. This was harmless-trivial.

Okay, his brothers laughed their tiny little brains out, but that’s what brothers that age do – and there was a point, that it was the kind of thing you could look back at years later, as an adult, and at least smile at. Okay, his father patted him only once on the shoulder and told it was nothing, get over it, but that’s what fathers do. It may have felt brusque and cold at the time, but there was a point to it, turning it into a challenge for you to lift yourself to meet — and beat.

And there was his mother, who simply comforted him, and must have sensed that the incident could linger, because after that vacation his bedroom never lacked for mothballs. He found them in the closet, under the bureau, in the drawers, on top of the window frames. Even after he’d gone off to college, and later got his first job on the Street, whenever he came home for a visit, fresh mothballs were there. Richard loved her for that, among many other reasons, and it still puzzled him why he had treated her so casually in the last couple of years of her life.

As for Dr Swiderski, Richard still wanted his money back. It was not possible to say how much he still loathed and feared moths. Nothing could explain away how that hideous taste came back in his mouth whenever he saw a moth. Nothing could mitigate the feeling of terror and despair as something invaded your mouth, seeming to choke the life out of you as it burrowed into your body – whenever a moth suddenly flew close to his face, Richard would be hit by that instinctive gagging reflex.

He looked at his watch, realized that he’d been sitting there on the bed, drifting for an hour. Jet lag doesn’t knock you out, it slowly zombifies you. He closed the laptop and set it on the desk, went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and use the toilet, and then set his travel alarm. The castle also provided a clock on the night table, and he set the alarm on that too. He turned off the lights and crawled beneath the covers.

For years after the moth incident in the Adirondacks, he slept on his belly, his mouth facing down about as much as possible in sleep. The night of the day that Greenland gave him the okay for his own fund, Global High Yield, he slept on his side in the semi-fetal position. Which, he learned when he looked up sleep positions the next day, is the one most people sleep in. Richard took that as a personal triumph.

Before he could float back into that half-awake half-asleep zone, he heard it. The tiniest of sounds, like someone pushing one sheet of paper against another on a desk for just a second or so — on the far side of the room. His pulse quickened, his breath shortened. Then, nothing. Then, something shimmering like the sound of dust swirling in the air, a tiny, powdery cascade that came out of nowhere and then vanished.

A moment later – a faint rustling sound, something waving or flapping lightly, and it was moving, not stationary.

Richard wanted to reach for the switch on the bedside lamp, but couldn’t move. His arm wouldn’t budge, it felt as heavy as a lead rail. A sudden storm of unknown chemicals washed through his system, overriding switches, shorting out junctions, throwing random little bursts of static that broke up his attempts to think clearly. His heart was pounding, his breath came in jagged gasps from his open mouth, and his whole body shook violently in a tumbling panic.

I will not fear my fear

I will not fear my fear

I will –

Richard didn’t make the meeting. Tony and Rob tried to reach him via the castle’s house phone system, but got no answer. Calls to Richard’s cell number also went unanswered and shunted them to his voice mail. They texted him, no response. Now very alarmed, they pounded the door of his room, in vain.

L.A. And a couple of the Arabs were standing in the lobby, a certain unease beginning to creep into their expressions. Rob went to talk to them while Tony sought out the castle’s day manager and explained the urgency of the situation to him. Their friend, colleague, was not answering, he may taken ill or fallen in the shower and injured himself, and was unconscious or unable to move. Something was wrong.

A few minutes later, accompanied by the castle’s full-time paramedic, they entered Richard’s room. He was lying in the bed, half on his side, but with his upper body turned as if he had started to roll onto his back. The paramedic checked for a pulse.

“Nein.”

Tony and Rob came closer.

“Jesus, what is that?”

Between Richard’s clenched teeth was part of a large moth, one mottled gray and white wing extending from his mouth across part of his cheek, a sooty dust around his lips and on his chin.

/// ends ///