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Around noon, his secretary called to know if he wanted to order lunch or make a reservation at La Valois, the latest expensive French restaurant. He could barely get the words out that he didn’t want anything, then vomited breakfast into his wastepaper basket. The acrid smell of bile filled his office.
He’d sweated through his Armani shirt and Hugo Boss jacket. The view from his office, usually so pleasing, was now nauseating, as it showed the ant people scurrying to and fro. Only, those ants were not in the deepest hole in hell that he was.
He watched on the screen as his short sales started coming in for payment. The money was rushing out like a river in spate. Soon a colleague would notice. Then he or she would talk to someone else and by end of day there would be a delegation here.
He’d lost the bank so much money. Of course, a hundred times that was supposed to come flowing in, if things had gone according to plan.
He himself had personally cashed in all his assets and taken out loans and now had nothing except the clothes he stood in.
He had no money at all to pay the expensive lawyers he would soon need.
His colleagues would be here, clamoring for blood, by the end of the business day.
It didn’t bear thinking about. The bank fuckheads barely paid attention when he made vast amounts of money for them. They watched the profits pile up
and had no idea how he’d done it and they didn’t care. All they cared about was the little green bar showing profits.
But they noticed immediately the slightest loss. And this wasn’t a slight loss. It was a hemorrhage, a lake of red.
In an hour, another tranche would be bought. Several of the stocks were more expensive than when he’d done the short sales.
This was shaping up to be the single biggest loss in the history of PIB. In a period of market stability, so he had no excuse. Nothing to say to them. All the money he’d earned for the bank would be as nothing. Nobody would remember that, they would only remember this day, June 10, as the day Hamilton had bet big and lost bigger.
It was entirely possible that he would bring PIB down, single handedly.
He’d be fired by end of day but that wouldn’t be the end of the disgrace. He had a fiduciary duty which he’d betrayed. There would be a law suit that would last decades. They would impound everything he owned, which was nothing. He would spend the rest of his life not only poor, but reviled.
His second wife, Charlotte, was suing him for divorce. She hated him and would latch on to this like a bloodsucker, terrified that she wouldn’t get her pound of flesh before he lost it all.
He could hear her screams in his head.
He’d lose his memberships and, it went without saying, all his friendships. He’d be a pariah, an object of scorn and shame.
He’d be … poor.
Like all the little people he saw walking to and fro on the sidewalks, tiny insects.
He didn’t know how to be poor. Had no idea.
Poor.
God.
He leaned his hands and forehead against the sparkling glass, looking out across the Bay. There wasn’t anywhere within a hundred miles of here where he could afford to live. Maybe he’d become homeless.
It was unthinkable.
He peeled his forehead away from the wall of glass, leaving drops of sweat.
The window couldn’t open. He couldn’t lean out into the open air and fling himself out, flying for a few moments before hurtling to the ground.
But there was another way out. It was in a locked drawer. A relic of a period several years ago when there’d been some muggings in the area. He’d bought himself a Glock19 and had taken lessons. The gun felt good in his hand. He felt good knowing he had it. But he didn’t finish the course and always forgot to carry it with him when he left the office.
Still, it was there.
He unlocked the drawer and looked at it. Dark gray, a precision instrument, finely machined, perfectly suitable for the task.
He reached out with a finger then pulled the finger back, as if the metal were hot. It wasn’t. It felt cool to the touch. Like a laptop, or an iPhone. Or a fine bottle of whiskey.
