Codex by Lev Grossman

Author:Lev Grossman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

13

“TELL ME SOMETHING, Edward,” Joseph Fabrikant asked, leaning back in his chair. “How much do you know about the Wents?”

The chairs at the Four Seasons were upholstered in fawn leather, and they were so extravagantly comfortable it was actually hard to sit upright in them.

“Not as much as I probably should.” Edward pressed his knuckles against his front teeth and stifled a yawn. It was eight thirty in the morning the next day, which was very early indeed on his new sleep schedule. He prodded his tomato and basil omelette with a fork and squinted at it blearily. Joseph Fabrikant, evidently tired of pursuing Edward through the intermediary of Zeph, had finally ambushed him by calling him at home and pressuring him into breakfast. Now he sat across the table from Edward, his highly symmetrical face half remembered from across woozy lecture halls, a snow-covered cross-campus walkway, a beery dorm-room party, leaving with the prettiest girl there. Fabrikant had been a natural insider the same way Edward had never seemed to really be part of anything at all. The morning sunlight flooded through the high windows and fell on him at flattering angles, a tall, handsome, successful, affable blond demon.

“Why? How much do you know about the Wents?”

“As much as I’ve been able to find out,” said Fabrikant. “Which is pretty damn little.”

The restaurant was half full, mostly with businessmen and Upper East Side dowagers in pairs and threes, and the air was full of conversation and the clatter of heavy silverware muffled by expensive acoustical engineering. They’d already exhausted their store of college gossip. All that was left was business.

“Here’s what I know,” said Edward. “They’re rich, they have a lot of old books, and they don’t get out a whole lot.”

Fabrikant didn’t laugh. His bushy yellow eyebrows lowered in concentration, and the muscles flexed in his square jaw. Edward wondered whether he had any sense of humor whatsoever.

Edward had ordered a mimosa with his omelette, aware that it was a wildly inappropriate drink for what was supposed to be a power breakfast. But he hadn’t been feeling very empowered lately. It was clear why Fabrikant had asked him here: They were both junior members of New York’s young financial all-star circuit, with a slight but definite personal connection between them. What would follow was a matter of ritual: a mutually beneficial exchange of mildly confidential information between respectful rivals, nothing too criminal, just part of business, one of the hallowed traditions of the fiscal fraternity. Information flowed like water these days, and sometimes even the best plumbers got their hands wet.

But information was something Edward was in short supply of these days, as regarded both the market—God help him if Fabrikant brought up the interest rates in London, he hadn’t checked them in a week—and whatever nebulous sphere it was that the Duke and Duchess inhabited. And if what Zeph said was true, if Fabrikant really was trying to get the Duke to invest in his company, then Fabrikant was in play in both worlds.

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