Washington was winding down. The President of the United States of America sat alone in the Oval Office. Thomas Piketty’s Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century waited on his desk. Too much of it. He played solitaire with a deck of Official White House Playing Cards and drank a bottle of Budweiser. For a few fleeting minutes, he was happy. When this is all over, I’m going fishing. For about a year. Ireland, Scotland maybe. Catch me a big old salmon. That’s if the fuckers who pull the strings let me go. Maybe I know too much to ever leave their sphere of influence?
He was counting the days.
Then work came back. It just never stops.
The desk phone buzzed. He waved a hand.
‘Yes?’
‘Mr President, the Treasury Secretary is waiting to see you.’
‘I’ll be just a couple of minutes. He can wait.’ He was down to the last few cards, wanted the three of clubs or the two of spades. They didn’t come, no matter how many times he cycled through the cards, three at a time. So he shuffled his remaining cards, got that three, finished the game. I might be the President, but I’m only human.
He smiled, finished the beer, put the bottle into the recycling bin.
‘Okay. Let him in.’
The man in charge of keeping the American economy afloat, raced into the room, a wiry bundle of nervous energy. He looked even more agitated than was usual for the guy charged with managing an economy worth seventeen trillion dollars and with a public and private debt level of fifty trillion dollars. Fifty million million dollar bills. That’s a shitload of cash, no need for stacks-reaching-the-moon analogies.
‘Mr President, thanks for seeing me.’
‘Can’t this wait ‘til morning, Bill?’
‘I’m sorry, Ted. It’s the graphs. We’re there.’
‘So, with all the wars we’re currently up to our necks in, all the macho superpower jostling, backed up with nukes in silos running on DOS-based five-and-a-quarter inch floppies, seven thousand city killers deployed globally, terrorists left and right who’d love to pop a nuke in through that window,’ he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, ‘not to mention the decline of America, as illustrated by kids going to school with automatic weapons to kill everybody, like everybody, and they’ve got a right to bear arms, and once-great cities like Detroit literally collapsing before our eyes. I’ve got nearly ten million people looking for work, in an economy where the web is replacing decent jobs faster than coffee shops and burger joints and discount stores can open up to create minimum wage positions. Inequality is worse now than it was a hundred years ago. Our spies have constructed a paranoid society that even George Orwell would’ve considered far-fetched. And the climate, Bill. The climate is changed because every damned redneck simply must own a giant fucking truck to haul all his guns around in. And now they’re modifying the trucks to pump out extra black smoke. What’s wrong with us, Bill? So, when the sea levels start to rise, as they most surely will, we’re all going to be fighting over mountains. With all this, Bill, you’re telling me that things are about to get worse?’
‘We can make it better, Teddy. We must.’
‘Yes we can?’ he laughed. ‘No we fucking can’t.’
The President sighed, got up from his desk, went to the cooler in the side cabinet. He popped open two beers, gave one to - he hoped - the man with the plan, dropped back into his leather seat.
‘Shoot.’
‘Okay. So the cause of the Global Financial Crisis was the bursting of the housing bubble, which had been created by too much easy credit being manufactured by banks and handed out to people who were credit risks. And those sub-prime mortgages were tied up in complex debt bundles and everything got tangled so the whole damned house of cards almost came tumbling down.’
‘I’m with you, Bill. But I don’t know for how much longer.’
‘This is the money shot, Mr President. The credit and debt bubble has expanded again. We’re actually beyond the metrics that applied in 2007 when the shit hit the fan. If there’s a single massive shock to the system before we can get tangible growth in the global economy, by that I mean in productive, real things, not magicked debt, then the entire system collapses.’
‘What will that mean?’ He drank deeply, then lit a cigarette.
‘The Chinese will stop buying our bonds, our Government debt paper. So we won’t be able to keep running things on IOUs. federal employees will stop getting paid, and not just temporarily. We won’t be able to keep funding the military and the spies.’
‘Hnh.’
‘The banks will fail and we won’t be able to bail them out again.’
‘There would be a revolution, a real one, if we tried that trick again, Bill.’
‘So there’d be no cash in the ATMs and the banks would likely grab a fair chunk of deposits to recapitalise.’
‘Like in Cyprus.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I get it. We’re talking about the end of American civilisation as we know it. So how do we deal with this?’
‘We avoid any shocks to the system. That’s key. And we stay on good terms with the Chinese. That’ll keep us above water for now.’
‘Until the end of my term?’
‘Theoretically, yes.’
Two more beers. The early evening sun painted the crabapple trees in the Rose Garden pink and gold.
‘But what if a shock occurs?’
‘A return to the gold standard might be the only thing to give confidence to the markets. If the shit hits, I really don’t see any other way of saving the dollar, or of saving you from baying mobs. My people have been outlining plans of action.’
The President looked towards the walnut cabinet, the one with the bottles of Jameson Rarest Vintage Reserve.
Jacob looked up from his work and saw that night had fallen. Oh. Sophie appeared then, a hulking security guard walking behind her.
‘Say hello to my little friend.’
‘I didn’t realise it was so late.’
‘It seems that after six, everybody gets an escort. Hungry?’
Lower Manhattan twinkled, the red sky framing 1 WTC to the west.
‘What treats from the House of Bourbon do you have in store?’
‘Venison. Cooked two ways and with different sides options. And a glass of fabulous red, perhaps?’
‘Sold.’
‘Come on down to the kitchen. I’ve got a table set up.’
They went downstairs, followed by the guard. Jacob was surprised to find a vast, modern kitchen, built for entertaining large numbers of guests to the highest standards. Some of Sophie’s assistant chefs had stayed back to finish and plate the dishes. They worked on, chopping, sautéeing, tasting, sniffing, while Jacob and Sophie sat at a little stainless steel table, which had been dressed with white linen napkins, elaborate silverware and crystal glasses.
‘You going home tonight?’ she asked.
‘I guess I’d better, since it’s just around the corner. It’s going to feel weird.’
‘You want me to come over?’
‘Would you? That’d be great.’
‘Just promise not to cook me.’
The venison was really good and Sophie made her decision. It would be seared and roasted, rested, sliced, served rare with a balsamic and blueberry reduction sauce and accompanied with braised shallots, roasted beetroot and a celeriac puree. The security guy had the deer, seated alone by the door. He said it was the best food he’d eaten in his life and that he liked his food.
Jacob finished the wine while Sophie instructed the chefs on the next morning’s activities and the kitchen porter cleaned up. She went to a changing room at the far end and came out a few minutes later in her Ramones t-shirt and jeans. She looked hot.
‘Ready to rock?’
‘Hey ho, let’s go.’
They were escorted down in the lift, to a low-lit lobby, still some activity, a few men in suits arriving for the night shift. Money never sleeps.
They walked to Jacob’s in ten minutes, in the fresh night air and quiet. Jacob loved living down in the financial district because it was so quiet at night. Times Square would drive him crazy, any kind of regular proximity to that wild, dangerous tempo of night.
Sophie’s phone called to her, played Blondie’s Call Me. She sang as she checked the display.
‘Oh, it’s the restaurant’s accountant. Salem. Fuuuck.’ Cooking, the purity of the creation of wonderful food, had taken Sophie away from the crushing reality of what Rod had done to their business. ‘Better talk to him.’
‘Let’s take a seat,’ said Jacob, gesturing to an angular bench in the Bauhaus style.
Sophie sat and talked and Jacob went to a nearby coffee cart for an espresso. He made the cup-to-mouth gesture, pinkie raised, to Sophie but she shook her head, No.
The coffee was good and he mused over whether good coffee tasted better in the fresh night air. In the end, looking up at the blackness, he figured Yes.
Sophie tapped her screen repeatedly, eager to end the call.
‘I need a coffee now,’ she said. ‘A double, please.’
Sipping her coffee, a bitter Kenyan blend, she told Jacob what the accountant had to say.
‘How bad?’
‘I’m fucked. The debts are huge. Even though we had a high turnover, every cent was spent before it hit the till. Our game plan was to build value, then sell. Who’s going to buy a restaurant that’s been serving people? Five years of my life down the fucking toilet.’
‘At least you won’t be doing five to ten in prison,’ he smiled.
‘True.’
She laughed then and he took her elbow, led her to his apartment.
‘Your accountant, is he any good?’
‘He better be. My apartment is down as collateral for the financing.’
‘Shit.’ He fished for his keys, opened the front door of the building.
‘He’s going to spend a few days going over the books, work at keeping the banks at arm’s length until I come up with a plan.’
‘Come on.’ Into a deserted lobby, thankfully no neighbours around.
Jacob glanced at his mailbox, saw all the bills waiting. No escape.
In the elevator, she leaned her head against his shoulder. He enjoyed her smell. The hallway was as he’d remembered, thankfully no police crime scene tape across his apartment door, no signs of what had happened. As he put the key in the door, Sophie felt another pang of guilt. I helped make this happen. Why? I trusted Rod. Trust, what a killer.
He turned on the lights and got that horrible feeling like when you come home to a burgled house. People have been here, uninvited people. Police, yes, but they are just people after all.
‘I need a drink,’ he said. ‘Join me?’
She nodded, opened the windows to let some night air in. Suddenly exhausted, she sat in a chair there, looked out at Downtown. Jacob got his bottle of Stolichnaya, found half a large Coke in the fridge, rinsed two tumblers under the tap.
He drank his vodka straight up, she took a little Coke.
They sat without talking.
Then she said ‘Why did we get a divorce, Jacob? Why didn’t we just hang on in there?’
The question surprised him. He had been in a place that most couples know, the place where some things were just left unsaid. ‘It was all me,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t take your work hours. I’m sorry. And I expected you to cook amazing meals for me every night. I can see now that was the last thing you’d want to do.’
‘It was me, too. I thought I was changing the world, one plate at a time, getting rich in the process. Now I see that it’s just food. And I am potentially bankrupt and homeless.’
‘You can always stay here.’
With that, she leaned over and kissed him.