BANKER, TRADERS AND A NERD
“$265,000 gone, in a second. Less! One microsecond! I should have listened.”
Celeste McFadden daubed her eyes but missed a spot of mascara on her left cheek.
“Listened to me.” Roger Laffite stroked McFadden’s hair, which was as lush and wavy as a cocker spaniel’s. “Who’s the financial wizard who advised you to buy Bitcoin futures? You said he was a professional.”
“Can you do something?”
“I can’t get your money back, but I can put his name out. When I’m finished, he’ll be lucky to trade baseball cards.”
McFadden stopped crying. “Can’t you get a lot of money for those?”
“Only the old ones in mint condition.” Laffite heard a sniffle and handed her a tissue. “I’ve brought champagne. Tell me where your ice bucket and flutes are, and we’ll celebrate.”
“Celebrate! Are you daft?”
“We will drink to your greater wisdom, a lesson in life.”
“Damned expensive lesson.”
“One you can easily afford. You’ve learned not to be greedy. That’s important to keeping your money safe. Your pantry is this way?” Laffite stood.
“Mmm.”
“When I return, we’ll have a nice chat about dividends of telecoms, midstream companies and perhaps something exotic.”
“Sounds exciting.” McFadden raised a finely tweezed eyebrow. “Penny stocks?”
“Your costly lesson in sensibility, Celeste, hold on to that.”
“Flutes in the cupboard, bucket in the cabinet and ice in the fridge.”
“Perfect, I’ll find them.”
Laffite set a pair of cut-glass flutes on a drift-wood and crystal coffee table, eased the cork out of a bottle of Taittinger and poured. “The exotics I was thinking of are Japanese trading companies, Mitsui, Itochu, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo. All have attractive payouts, growth potential, solid as rocks.”
“Boooring.”
“Celeste,” Laffite reassuringly patted her satin-draped thigh. “Your father, rest his recently departed soul, and I were the closest of friends.”
“Despite the age difference.”
“My firm saved him from merging with a company that had more hidden debt than a Congressional budget bill. But beyond that he and I developed a personal relationship. Toward the end, he asked me to…”
“Stop me from squandering his fortune?”
“Well phrased, Celeste. He should have created a trust fund for you, but who among us doesn’t think we have tomorrow to get things done?”
“This is depressing. The champagne is lovely, but I really need something else.” McFadden left and returned with a silver cigarette case. She opened it to reveal a score of neatly rolled reefers.
Laffite recoiled. “I don’t smoke. I’ve never smoked.”
“Never? Not even one tiny puffy-wuffy.”
“No.”
McFadden lit one, filled her lungs and, as she held her breath, squeezed Laffite’s thigh rather near his trousers’ inseam. She touched the stick to Laffite’s lips. “Just breathe in and hold.”
Laffite coughed.
“You really are a virgin. I’ve never done a virgin before.”
“I’m not…”
“Not that kind of virgin, of course not. Try again, breathe and hold, shh.” Her breath tickled his ear.
“Nothing,” Laffite said.
“You didn’t inhale. Let’s try this.” McFadden sucked a lung full, pressed her mouth against Laffite’s, breathed into him and held his lips closed until it was time to release.
Laffite sat quietly for a moment. “May I have one of those?” Well into his first ever reefer, he laid his head back and rested his hand at a spot on McFadden’s leg somewhat inappropriate for a daughter in mourning.
“I’m going to quit my job,” he said.
“No, no the high will wear off.”
“Any more time spent at the firm would be a waste of life.”
“A little savage play and all will be fine in the morning.” McFadden slid her hand into Laffite’s.
“I hate my job.”
“At McKenny? You’re managing director at the most influential consultancy in the world.”
“I’m a slave to our clients.”
“Your annual bonus alone puts you in the one percent. You have ties to the most powerful corporations imaginable. Why give it up?”
“This,” Laffite held up a reefer, “has freed my mind from a quarter century of scholastic bondage. Just this moment I had a vision of an adventure that may change the world.”
“Poo.”
“Change my world anyway. Bitcoin is a wildly volatile disaster.” Laffite pressed high enough into McFadden’s thigh to sense moist warmth. “Marijuana is the cure.”
“You’re not making sense. I’ve created a monster.” McFadden gripped Laffite’s earlobe dangerously tight in her teeth,
“I’m sure you have.”
