Kapitoil: A Novel by Teddy Wayne

Author:Teddy Wayne
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Petroleum products - Prices - Forecasting, Forecasting, Wall Street (New York, Petroleum products, Humorous, Arabs, Arabs - United States, Fiction, United States, Mathematicians, Prices, General, N.Y.)
ISBN: 9780061873218
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-04-13T05:58:45+00:00

bong = device for inhaling marijuana

Manhattan project = term for atomic bomb project (not necessarily a project in Manhattan)

obscurantist = a person who withholds data from others

par-tay = different pronunciation for “party”

performative = a statement that also produces an action

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 9

On Tuesday I was making some trades in my office when someone knocked on the door. The person knocked very softly as if waking a child, and I didn’t hear it the first time, because it was raining loudly outside.

“What’s up?” Rebecca asked when she entered, which I didn’t know how to answer, because (1) she was the one to search for me, and (2) I never know how to respond to that question, since (a) people don’t truly want to know exactly what you are doing at the moment and (b) I couldn’t tell Rebecca even if she did want to know.

So I said “Nothing,” which makes people think you are boring, but I had no other ideas and I was slightly nervous.

“You’re allowed to decorate here,” she said.

“I do not own many objects.”

“Still, a picture or something. Some personality.” She was now standing across from me at the desk even though there were two empty chairs there. The sky outside was the color of smoke, which made the interior seem even less decorated. “It’s pretty dead.”

“Maybe you can lend me one of your brother’s paintings,” I said, and immediately I regretted it.

“Yeah,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about that. Not about the paintings.” She picked up a pen on my desk and moved it in her fingers like a conductor of a symphony holds a baton. “So, the other night, I was pretty drunk and all, and I think I may have done or nearly done certain things that could be considered somewhat inappropriate by some given the context of our professional relationship.”

It was difficult for me to follow the meaning of her sentence but I could understand it from her expression and how she focused on the pen.

“So, basically I’m saying that I wanted to make sure you didn’t get the wrong impression or anything.” She looked at me for the first time since she had entered the room. “Still friends?”

The rain had stopped, and in fact the sun was now out, but I wished it was still raining. It felt as if someone had turned up the gravity inside my chest, the opposite of feeling high, and without looking at her I slowly said, “Still friends.” I understand on a logical level how all real-world systems have finite resources and can partially satisfy only some consumers, and therefore the desires of two parties are sometimes incompatible. But it is still difficult to understand on a nonlogical level.

I heard her put the pen on my desk. “Great. Well, that’s all I wanted to say.” Then, to be polite, she asked me how work was proceeding, and I again responded like a robot, and she left, and I looked at the sunlight pouring into my dead office until I decided to concentrate on my work.

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