The Tool & the Butterflies by Dmitry Lipskerov

Author:Dmitry Lipskerov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Published: 2020-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

The morning after he and Vera fought and then made up proved depressing. The gray sky was falling along with the snow, causing fits of some peculiar despair. The inadequacy he felt upon making a trip to the bathroom only deepened his foul mood. Iratov caught himself thinking that he wanted to grab his tool like a real man and send a taut stream into the toilet—or at least near it.

For some reason, he didn’t want to see Vera at all. Some new attitude toward her had settled in his chest. He understood that a person who can’t do it almost always experiences feelings of enmity toward those who can … and do. Iratov tried to chase those thoughts away, telling himself that he could overcome all of it, and that what he’d lost wasn’t the most important part of his relationship with the woman he loved.

He drank some coffee with a splash of cognac.

“It’s a bit early,” he thought. “Not even nine yet.”

With a menacing squeak, all the computer monitors in his study turned on at once. Leaving his unfinished coffee behind, Mr. Iratov ran over to the desk, glanced at the graphs displayed on the screens, sat down, visited several business websites, and realized that he’d lost something on the order of fifty million dollars that morning. The stock markets of China, Japan, and all of Asia had collapsed, falling by almost 7 percent.

One must give Mr. Iratov his due, though. He always kept his head in those situations. He held that both triumphs and reversals on the market were inevitable, and they generally balanced each other out. There would always be busts, various Black Mondays and Fridays, but there was no precedent for markets failing to return to their historical maximums, even if it took them a while. Patience was the most important quality for an investor. Slumps come and go, but the green rally will still lead humanity ever upward. Iratov wrote a few emails to his brokers and instructed them to minimize his losses by betting against the currencies of developing countries, telling them which pairs would be most advantageous.

Mr. Iratov turned away from his financial affairs and looked at the news. Not finding anything of interest, he could think of nothing better to do than type his own name into the search bar and press enter. There was no news about him personally either. Not even knowing why, he pressed the “images” button and saw numerous versions of his face. He looked at his young self winning various architecture prizes, then posing in his Bentley with some hip girl band, whom he’d unhurriedly plowed one after another, followed by endless parties and gatherings of every kind. He saw a rich, steady, confident man with a magical face that had enchanted a great many members of the opposite sex, from small-town airheads to Hollywood stars. Next came photographs where he was already with Vera. Formal events, the fashionable catwalks his wife loved, theater premieres, and even an official photograph of Mr.

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