Love & Money by Greg McGee

Author:Greg McGee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Upstart

After he and Clive had traded quotations in his office, this time from Eugene O’Neill and David Williamson, and had a quick shot of amber from the rosewood cabinet, Clive had duly invited him for lunch, and they’d traversed the musty foyer on the seventh floor. As Clive barked a happy ‘See you anon, Agnes!’ at the aged receptionist, they were intercepted by the Young Thruster in the suit of silver sheen.

‘Power lunch, Clive?’ he asked.

‘To be followed, Simon, if all goes to plan,’ Clive replied, without breaking stride, ‘by a power nap.’

In the lift, waiting for today’s veteran to pull the concertina doors closed, Clive looked back at Simon, bending Agnes’s ear about something. ‘Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,’ said Clive, without his usual brio.

Once they’d passed through the Corinthian columns onto the narrow street, and were pushing through the perfumed crush, Clive suggested they make another diversion to the Stock Exchange. ‘I shan’t see such a spectacle again in my lifetime.’

From the public gallery, the frenzy in the pit below looked worse, if anything, than on their last visit. The trio of young women in front of the blackboards had become a quintet, their skirts shorter, their padded shoulders wider, as they danced with their chalk and dusters to the roar of the sweating shirtsleeved bulls below them.

‘Can you see the Invisible Hand?’ asked Clive.

Mike didn’t know the quote but thought it sounded a bit Clifford Odets. He couldn’t have been more wrong, though Clive was too polite to say so directly. ‘Adam Smith,’ said Clive, ‘was the father of modern capitalist economics, who in the eighteenth century put in place the theoretical overview for the chaos we see before us. He proposed that, unbeknownst to you and me, an Invisible Hand is guiding these people in their pursuit of pecuniary advantage.’

‘Yes?’ said Mike doubtfully, looking down at the heaving, shouting, sweating pit, unsure whether Clive was being ironic.

‘Oh yes,’ said Clive, making his tone clear. ‘Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand is regulating and moderating this market even as we speak, making sure we avoid inflationary bubbles and catastrophic meltdowns. That should be a huge comfort to us all.’

Certainly something seemed to have the dealers on the floor in its grasp — a palpable fever, an infection raging unchecked, something almost demonic. If the Invisible Hand was indeed down there, it was wielding a whip, lashing the dealers, screaming ‘Buy, buy, buy!’

Lunch, by comparison, in Clive’s usual, seemed initially blessedly tranquil and civilised. They’d barely taken their seats, hemmed comfortably by old brick and velvet and brass, before a dozen Bluff oysters appeared for each of them as an entrée, with a glass of Matawhero gewürztraminer. The calm lasted for as long as it took Mike to tell Clive he’d been sacked by Tyrone.

‘How dare he,’ thundered Clive, ‘sack the finest actor of his generation!’

Mike, flattered, said it was a done deal, there was no looking back, and no way back. He had to pick himself up and get on with his life.

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