Paradime (16 page)

I glance up at Lessing. We make eye contact this time, but his face remains impassive.

‘So, Danny,’ Shaw says, leaning forward, ‘what’s it going to be?’

I wonder what else is in this psychological profile they have of me. My attitude to Kate, for example. Do they expect me to just forget about her? I’m hesitant to say her name, to bring her into it, but surely a red flag will go up if I
don’t
mention her? Equally, they might perceive it as an area of potential weakness if I do. So I’m left with
how
I mention her.

‘Okay, Doug,’ I say, hands held up in mock surrender, ‘I guess I’ll have to go for it.’

‘Great.’ Shaw starts moving off the couch. ‘So let’s—’

‘But—’

He stops, and looks over at me. ‘
But?
’

In spite of how unstable he thinks I might be, Shaw clearly feels I’m locked into this on two fronts already – the first being fear (of the law) and the second, desire (for Trager’s lifestyle).

But I’m about to give him a third.

There is resistance at first, mainly from Shaw, and then there’s a bit of horse-trading. Whoever this Dr Karl Lessing is, he has serious clout because Shaw defers to him on almost every point. Not openly, he does his best to conceal it, but the body language is clear.

What I tell them is that I am more than willing to go along with this, but as chaotic as my life may well have been, even up to a few days ago, I can’t just walk away from it . . . and specifically I can’t – and don’t
want
to – abandon my girlfriend to all the fallout. So I tell them to arrange it somehow for Kate’s student loans, including all accumulated interest and fines, to be paid off.

Expunged, erased, whatever.

‘And then I’m
yours
.’

Locked in, triple down.

I know I’m running the risk here of confirming Shaw’s worst fears about me, but it’s the only move I’ve got. When they agree to it, I have to work hard not to seem too relieved.

‘We’ll figure out a way to do it,’ Shaw says. ‘It can’t be that hard. Then we’ll run the details by you. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

The quid pro quo comes pretty fast.

Shaw says there’s a thing in the next couple of weeks he needs me to do, a TV interview – the two of us, only five, ten minutes, but it’s important.

‘PromTech?’

‘Yeah. Teddy had a couple of the guys over there pretty spooked about this deal, so we need to shore that up, we need to show a united front.’

‘Doug, I may have signed those papers, but I have
no
idea—’

‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll coach you through it. Right, Karl?’

‘Of course,’ Dr Lessing says, with a thin smile. ‘A little fine tuning.’

Shaw then gets up from the couch. ‘Okay,’ he says, straightening his jacket, ‘we’ll get started on this tomorrow.’ Then he turns to me. ‘So, Teddy, we good?’

‘Yeah,’ I nod, and glance out across the river, ‘we’re good.’

Good, that is, apart from the idea of appearing on TV. After Shaw and Dr Lessing have gone, this looms large in my mind because it seems insane – the real-life equivalent of that dream where you find yourself naked in public. Why would you actively choose to do it? And in this scenario the whole thing gets pushed a little further into the thickets of dream logic by the fact that I’d be appearing as someone else but would still very much look like
me
.

I also wonder what they meant by ‘a little fine tuning’, but that becomes fairly clear the next morning when Shaw arrives, not with Dr Lessing but with a guy about my own age, maybe a bit older, who turns out to be a voice coach. Tall and good-looking, Matt Becker has a booming, actorly voice, and it later transpires that he
is
an actor, as well as an occasional stand-up comic.

Anyway, Shaw sets us up, and we get straight into it. I do my Teddy Trager voice for Matt, and he pretty quickly tears it to shreds. At first, he says it’s
okay
, but then basically has a note for every third or fourth word I say. He uses recordings and YouTube clips of Trager, and it’s not long before I realise how much there is to this – cadence, timbre, register, rhythm, a whole bunch of shit you wouldn’t normally think about. We spend hours at it, doing drills and breathing exercises, and Matt is very professional, very circumspect, making no reference to the fact that with no effort whatsoever I already
look
so much like the person he’s helping me to
sound
like.

I’m assuming, therefore, that he’s being paid really well, and not just for his skills but also for his silence.

From the next day, he divides his time with a colleague, a movement coach named Arturo, who works with me on posture and coordination, on gestures and hand movements. It’s an intense few days that also includes regular visits from a doctor, a nurse and a physiotherapist. Shaw stays away, and I don’t leave the apartment at all, confining myself to just a couple of rooms. I have no access to TV or the Internet, nor do I engage with the domestic staff on any issues other than those relating to either food or laundry. This makes the whole thing feel sort of bootcampish, as well as a bit claustrophobic, but I accept it all because I guess I’m looking on this as a sort of trial period.

Anyway, by the fifth day I’m pretty satisfied with my new, deluxe Trager 2.0, but I’m also mentally and physically exhausted, so I decide to go for a swim. The experience of floating alone in a blue pool high above the streets of Manhattan turns out to be weird and relaxing in about equal measure. On my way back to the main living room, one of the staff members, a severe Korean woman in her fifties, appears and informs me that I have a visitor. My immediate reaction is irritation. Who is it? Some friend of Trager’s? Some person I’m going to get tangled up in knots with as we try to hold a conversation? I can just see it . . . they think they know
me
, I have no idea who
they
are. It’ll be a nightmare.

I step into the vast living room with its wraparound floor-to-ceiling windows. There is a woman sitting over on one of the couches. She has her back to me and seems to be gazing out at the deepening, red-flecked evening sky. As I get nearer, I realise that she’s not so much a woman, actually, as a girl. She turns and smiles at me. ‘Hi.’

Who is she? Trager’s niece or something, the daughter of a friend? She’s probably about sixteen or seventeen, possibly younger. She’s wearing a small black satin sheath dress. She has pixie-ish blonde hair, pale skin, red lipstick and really striking blue eyes – eyes that have locked onto mine now and show no signs of letting go. ‘I’m Sabrina,’ she says, her voice a little husky. She then leans back on the couch, simultaneously crossing her legs and biting her lower lip.

Something catches in my throat, and I have to look away. I hold up a hand. ‘Sabrina, just . . . just a moment.’

I turn quickly and walk out of the room. At the far end of the corridor I see the Korean woman, the . . . what is she? The housekeeper? I don’t even know her name and can’t call out to her. But I do get her attention, and, when she approaches, I tell her that I’m going out for a while and that when I get back I expect the young lady in the main living room to be gone. ‘Is that understood?’

The woman nods, with a slight look of panic on her face. ‘You go out?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘out . . .
outside
,’ as it hits me for the first time that this might not be as easy as I think. But then I resolve
not
to think, to just go, and that’s what I do, head straight for the vestibule, press the elevator button, and wait – aware all the while of a slight commotion somewhere, movement, voices, maybe from the kitchen, the Korean woman explaining, then another voice responding . . .

The elevator opens, and I get in, but as I descend to the lobby, I find it hard to contain my anger. Because what was that meant to be back there, a honey trap? A little insurance policy Shaw set up for himself?

When I get down to the lobby, I make straight for the exit, ignoring what seems to be a ripple of activity over by the desk involving the concierge and maybe one of the security staff. Outside, I hit the sidewalk, and, with traffic roaring past, I get about three blocks south before calming down enough to realise I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t have any ID on me, or any money. I can’t even go for a fucking drink. So what do I do? Go to 10th Street? Walk all the way
there
? But again, that option seems closed off to me. I can turn around here on Twelfth Avenue all right and retrace my steps to the Mercury, but that’s not the same thing. It’s as though there are two realms in this city, parallel and coexisting, and if you pass from one to the other, as I appear to have done, then that’s it, you’re stuck, there’s no route home.

I turn around now and look up at this glistening tower of luxury condos dominating the night sky in front of me, and I have to say I find it ironic, even faintly ridiculous, that I have no choice but to go back in there, that I literally have
nowhere
else to go.

When I re-enter the lobby a few minutes later, I can’t help feeling that I’m being watched – and not just from inside the building, by the guys over at the desk, but from outside too, from across the street maybe, from the back of a van, or – who knows – from an orbiting satellite two hundred miles up in the sky.

Then I get to the eighty-second floor and step into the apartment again. The Korean housekeeper seems relieved to have me back. Whoever is in the kitchen (the cook, I’m guessing) is talking loudly on a phone but in a language I don’t understand and can’t even identify.

I go into the living room and look around. Sabrina is nowhere to be seen, but all of a sudden I regret sending her away – not because I could have had her but because I could have helped her. Surely, in the circumstances, it was within my power to do something – slip her a ceramic bowl or even send her off with the goddamn Picasso. Because what kind of world does a girl like that come from, a girl conjured up out of nothing with a credit card?

‘You want dinner, Mister Teddy?’

I turn around. The housekeeper has trailed along in my wake.

‘Yes,’ I say, weary now. Then I look at her. ‘Sorry, excuse me . . . what’s your name?’

Turns out it’s Mrs Jeong. She’s been in this country for over twenty-five years and has two grown-up kids who are doing really well. She likes ballroom dancing and collects antique perfume bottles. And she works really hard. Which I can see is true. All of a sudden. I can also see that she is very patient, and probably very kind, and I have to wonder what she makes of Mister Teddy and how he treats his guests.

Do I tell her I have a headache now, that I’d like her to fetch me some Excedrin?

No, but . . . a thought strikes me. I walk past her and go to the kitchen, a huge affair that could easily service a modest-sized restaurant. There’s a guy on a stool behind the breakfast bar. He’s on his phone and looks startled when he sees me. He puts his phone away and gets off the stool. ‘Sir, is there something—’

‘No,’ I say, ‘you’re fine.’

His
name, it turns out, is Pavel, and he maintains the smart HVAC system for the whole apartment.

He and Mrs Jeong are both temps, agency people. A couple of weeks ago they were working somewhere else.
In
a couple of weeks, who knows?

Like Sabrina.

I go over to the refrigerator, a stainless-steel, touch-screen PalomaRex 3000, open it and start scanning for potential ingredients. I see anchovies, olives, capers, red peppers. I feel a little rush of adrenalin, like I should already have a knife in my hand, like someone should be calling me shithead and telling me to hurry up with the fucking
soffritto
.

‘Mr Trager . . .
sir
?’

I turn around. Mrs Jeong and Pavel are both just standing there, staring at me.

‘Are you guys hungry?’ I say. ‘Because
I’m
making dinner tonight. I was thinking something simple, pasta . . . a puttanesca maybe?’

Shaw drops by early the next morning. It’s clear from the look on his face that he’s been fully briefed, so before he gets a chance to open his mouth I launch a pre-emptive strike. Does he think I’m an idiot? Does he think he can just
entrap
me? Does he not realise that, apart from anything else, sneaky, sleazeball
shit
like that is counterproductive? As I throw these questions at him, I’m standing in the main hallway with a kale and blueberry smoothie in one hand and a copy of the
New York Times
in the other and doing it – more or less unconsciously, I think – in my Trager 2.0 persona.

This is something Shaw hasn’t seen yet, and when I’m done, he laughs out loud. ‘Holy
fuck
.’

I take a step forward. ‘
What?
’

‘Oh my God, Teddy . . . Danny, that . . . that is
amazing
.’

I stare at him for a moment, hesitating, part of me gratified (stupidly) and part of me wondering how I can parlay this into further leverage. ‘Well, Doug, if it’s so amazing, don’t
jeopardise
it.’

‘Okay, okay.’ He holds a hand up. ‘I made a mistake. I wasn’t trying to entrap you. Jesus, I just thought . . . you might . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘You know what? Let’s just forget about it, let’s move on.’ He pulls out a sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket. ‘This is . . .’ He hands it to me. ‘Well, see what you think.’

I put the smoothie and the newspaper down on a nearby console table and then take the piece of paper from him. I study it for a moment. It looks like some kind of financial statement. It shows a sequence of cash transfers that appear to end up in the account of the debt-collection agency that owns Kate’s loans. It’s in the exact amount of what she owes.

I look at him. This is his idea of moving on? Is he fucking
serious
?

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘We’ve sent Kate a message, fully pretexted. It states that a private loan-forgiveness programme run by an anonymous philanthropy group has liquidated five million dollars’ worth of debt across a range of educational institutions.’

‘
What?
’

‘I know, I know.’ He shrugs. ‘But believe me, stuff like this goes on. We modelled it on a real case.’

Still shocked by his tone-deafness, I exhale slowly. ‘Look, I don’t know . . . Kate’s not stupid. I mean—’

‘What, you think she’s going to
contest
this?’

‘No . . . I guess not.’

‘Anyway, it’s done.’

I hand the sheet of paper back to him. ‘Okay.’

There’s a lot more I could say here, but really, what would be the point? I decide to just move on myself. ‘Listen, Doug . . . you’re going to have to loosen things up a bit.’ I make a gesture with my hand. ‘
Here
, I mean. The apartment. You can’t expect me to believe that Teddy wasn’t on the grid. I need Internet access. I need to watch some TV. I feel like I’m in a prison. This is a long game. Potentially. You’re going to have to put a little faith in me.’

Shaw thinks about this. ‘Okay, you’re right. But I’ll tell you what, let’s get the Bloomberg thing out of the way first. It’s early next week. Then we can talk. But in the meantime, maybe stay out of the kitchen as well, will you?’

‘What? That was . . . I just needed to
cook
something.’

‘Danny, these people, they’re hired help, and, to be honest, you were making them a little nervous. We can do without that.’

‘Fine. Whatever.’ As I turn to pick up my smoothie again, something occurs to me. ‘By the way, what was that you said there, the
Bloomberg
thing?’

‘Yeah, Bloomberg TV. Cristina Stropovich.
The Up Take
.’

‘Oh . . .’

‘
What?
’

‘A lot of people watch that, right?’

‘I guess. I mean, it’s not the
Tonight Show
or anything.’ He looks at me and sighs. ‘You’ll be fine. It’s a business channel, people are focused on information. And besides, Teddy wasn’t
that
well known, not outside the whole . . . VC tech start-up echo chamber. Which is something we can use to our advantage, by the way.’ He pauses again. ‘Maybe I’ll get Karl to fix you up with something, Xanax or—’

‘No,’ I say, picking up the smoothie. ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine.’

The next two days see the third and final phase of my so-called fine tuning. Shaw himself takes over, with the focus now on lingo and terminology, on how to talk about and
sell
something like the PromTech deal. Each day, I undergo eight straight hours of hardcore, presidential-debate style prep. Covering more topics than could possibly be touched on in a single ten-minute interview, Shaw anticipates questions, one after the other, and then coaches me through plausible and natural-sounding replies. Occasionally he encourages me to improvise but then can’t help shutting me down as soon as I veer even slightly from a position he’s trying to push.

The day before the interview is scheduled to take place, we drive out to a PromTech facility in New Jersey. This is a research lab where technicians test drive some of the company’s more speculative projects, stuff that has made it past the shoot-for-the-moon phase and into actual development. I’m aware that on this visit Shaw is sort of test-driving
me
too, that he wants to walk me around and see me interacting with people.

At one point, in conversation with an intense young roboticist named Zabruzzi, I start to feel dangerously out of my depth. I can now talk convincingly and at length about the business end of this stuff, but when things get technical, I’m lost. The problem is that while Shaw is seen here as a business guy, I’m seen as a science guy, as essentially one of
them
– someone who should be comfortable talking about capacitors and quantum dots and flexible interface hi-res . . . whatever-the-fuck. Before the conversation gets too awkward, I remember something Trager mentioned in the car, and I decide to bring it up.

‘So,’ I say to Zabruzzi, ‘how is that remote DNA tracker,
tracking
. . . thing coming along?’

His eyes light up, and he launches into an impromptu and very welcome demo of what turns out to be an amazing piece of technology: a compressed rectangular unit of ‘opto-electrochemical nanosensors’ fitted to a neat little drone bot that can, in theory, roam around at a height of three hundred feet and over a radius of two and a half miles, picking out DNA matches from the populace below.
Holy fuck
is what I want to say, but I’m supposed to know about this shit already, and even be bankrolling it, so I keep my response muted.

Afterwards, in the back of the car, and channelling what I imagine to be at least a trace of Teddy Trager’s passion for this kind of stuff, I ask Shaw where he sees Paradime taking PromTech in the long term.

Concentrating on sending a text, Shaw says, ‘What do
you
care?’

‘Teddy obviously cared.’

Shaw looks up from his phone. ‘Oh please.
Teddy cared
. . . Give me a break. Teddy was a boy scout. Teddy thought these guys could be preserved in geek formaldehyde. Teddy thought I had corrupted his soul by making him into a billionaire.’ Shaking his head, he turns back to his phone. ‘Can you believe that?’

At Bloomberg the following day we are greeted in reception by a senior producer. We observe security protocols and are then led up to a frenetic, open-plan, glass-domed newsroom and studio space, where we go through make-up and a sound check. There’s a lot of small talk, a lot of standing around, and the whole thing passes like a particularly vivid anxiety dream.

When the interview finally begins, Shaw and I – well-oiled PR machine that we now are – sell the shit out of the PromTech deal. The interviewer, Cristina Stropovich, is well briefed but fairly soft in her approach. The questions are predictable and the answers boring. Nonetheless, we get our point across, and, although I’m nervous at first, mainly because of the unfamiliar studio setting, I don’t feel at any point that I’m going to blow it.

Then, towards the end of the interview, she injects a shot of human interest into the proceedings by bringing up the accident. How am I doing? How has the recovery process been? I tell her I’m not going to lie to her, that even though my injuries could have been
so
much worse, it’s the brush with mortality that leaves the deepest impression on you, the exposure to vulnerability that sparks a recalibration of your priorities. Then, a little tentatively, and as though she’d been saving this one up, she asks me about my perceived early ambivalence vis-à-vis the deal and if my recent change of heart had anything to do with the crash. I try to shrug this off, but when she persists in her line of questioning, I ramp things up a notch.

‘What, I’m not allowed to change my mind? Come
on
. This is complex stuff, Cristina, sands are shifting all the time, and you’ve got to be able to adapt. What was that thing Walt Whitman said? Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.’ As I say this stuff, my heart is pounding. I’m aware of Shaw beside me, tensing up, and of Cristina opposite, leaning forward slightly, a subtle shift in her level of attention. And I’m not done yet, either. ‘You see, Cristina, the essence of good leadership isn’t such a mystery, none of it is, not when you’ve looked into the abyss and realised what’s actually
in
there . . . because let me tell you it’s not darkness, it’s not the void, it’s a
clock
, a gigantic LED display that’s counting down the seconds and minutes and days of your life, so either you let that define and diminish you or you let it
drive
you. How? By thinking big, by never compromising, by finding smart solutions that impact the lives of people all over the world. Now I’m not claiming this as an original thought or anything, but time is our most precious resource and to waste it being idle or unfocused or
timid
?’ I shake my head. ‘It’s just not an option.’

‘Wow!’ Cristina says, turning to the camera. ‘And remember folks, you heard it here first!’ Then she turns back, her face just a tiny bit flushed. ‘Well . . . gentlemen, Mr Shaw, Mr Trager, that was great, and thank you both so much for dropping by the studio to see us today.’

Out on the floor of the main newsroom, she’s all over me . . . I must come back and do an in-depth interview, a one-on-one, a special, anything. She loved my honesty, it was so refreshing, so inspiring, and she knows her viewers will love it too. I nod along, and say
sure
, half aware of the buzzing ecosystem behind her and half aware of Shaw ten feet away talking to one of the producers.

As we’re leaving the building a few minutes later, I can tell that Shaw is not happy about something. He doesn’t speak until we’re in the back of the car. He turns to look at me. ‘You went a little off the reservation there, no?’

‘What? That all came up naturally, Doug. You don’t think it’s the kind of stuff Teddy would have said?’

‘Oh, I do, for sure, Walt fucking Whitman, it was pitch perfect, but maybe that’s the problem.’

I’m about to argue the point when his cellphone rings. He answers with a grunt. The call seems to go on for ages, but during it he says very little, apart from the occasional
yeah
,
okay
, or
fine
.

As we cruise down Lexington, I stare out through tinted windows at the city floating past – people, storefronts, sidewalks I’ve pounded – and wonder how I ended up here, in the back of a limousine. It’s insane . . .

Shaw puts his phone away, sighs wearily, and takes a deep breath. ‘Apparently, you did a good job. A
very
good job.’

Apparently?

I wait for more, but that’s it. He doesn’t say anything else. I look at him. He’s perspiring. His jaw is tense. I wonder who he was talking to on the phone just now. I wonder what he was
told
.

With the media appearance out of the way, I push Shaw to deliver on his promise of Wi-Fi and cable. However, after a couple of days of continuous screen time, I start to get bored. I mostly stick to neutral stuff, restaurant reviews, industry blogs, aggregated news sites, listicles, shit like that. I also listen to a bunch of podcasts, watch movies and season-binge some cable shows. But it’s not as if I watch that much TV anyway, and I’m not a big fan of social media, so I inevitably max out. I can slip down the digital sinkhole as easily as the next person, but it’s not something I have to do every day.

The laptop Shaw gives me is a Mac. It’s new and has nothing on it. I have access to Trager’s various accounts, from Amazon to Netflix, and that’s it, but what was I expecting? All of his personal stuff? His list of contacts, notes, emails, documents? Hardly, but without any of
that
, how do I become Teddy Trager, how do I maintain even a shadow version of his life?

And this highlights a question I have that needs to be addressed sooner or later. Where
is
everybody? If Nina is supposed to be my girlfriend, where’s
she
? Why hasn’t she shown up at the apartment, or called me? Where are Teddy’s friends? His business associates? The people who work for him? Why hasn’t his sister called again? How sustainable is all of this? In a way, I don’t care, and I’d be relieved to end it now, today. At the same time, I’m aware that ending it might be complicated, that if I stop cooperating, then surely they would have to . . . what? I don’t know, frankly. But leaving all that aside for a minute, even on a purely practical level, the question remains: if I’m Teddy Trager, where’s my
life
?

I bring this up with Shaw the next time he sinks wearily into what I now regard as his couch. At first, he’s reluctant to engage, but I push him on it, and eventually he tells me that there is an ‘apparatus’ in place, a sort of buffer zone between the outside world and . . . and . . .

‘And
me
, basically.’

‘Yeah.’ He nods. ‘All calls, all communications, requests, invitations, whatever, are screened, and we deal with them. We’re using the narrative of your recovery from the accident, your need for rest, for isolation—’