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And if they pull their money out, then we won’t have enough cash to sell six thousand contracts. You see what I’m saying?’
    â€˜I think I do,’ Jay said.
    â€˜What I’m saying,’ Timothy continued, ‘is that we won’t be able to make back the money for the other investors. So, really, it’s a question of fairness.’
    The Kid said, ‘I see.’
    â€˜Fairness for all the other investors,’ Timothy said again. This was an important point.
    â€˜Okay,’ Jay said.
    â€˜So let’s not talk to our investors now. No phone calls. No meetings. Just …’ He brushed a finger to his lips and let it float away, like ragweed. ‘Quiet.’
    â€˜Okay, Timothy.’
    Timothy smiled and winked. ‘See now,’ Timothy said, ‘this is a great learning experience. Now you’ll see how the world really works.’
    The Kid nodded. He left the room – in too much of a hurry, Timothy thought – and got to work.

3
    When he finished the remaining half-bagel, Timothy shuffled from his office to the reception area. At work for less than thirty minutes, he had already had a long day.
    Osiris was on the twenty-third floor of the Bank of America building, the only tall building in Palo Alto. On a clear day like this one, when everyone else in San Mateo County was twenty floors below him, Timothy could observe his entire world without moving. He could see his own house, ten blocks north: an old Tudor surrounded by ornamental grasses and apricot trees. To the east he could see the Stanford campus, its red Spanish roofs and sun-colored brick, where hundreds of computer scientists scurried into classrooms and wrote the software he used to make money. To the south he could see Sand Hill Road, with its lawyers and venture capitalists and sloshing pools of cash, where investors sat in low-slung office buildings, sipping lattes and smiling at Timothy’s perfect money-raising pitches. He could see as far as the San Mateo Bridge and SFO, his portal to Manhattan, where a first-class ticket set him back eight hundred dollars but bought him as much decent cabernet as he could drink in five hours and dropped him thirty minutes from the Four Seasons.
    He leaned against the wall of windows, his breath fogging his view of the Bay. Further out, the San Mateo Bridge, an ugly barrel of concrete, was shrouded in its own Bay fog.
    â€˜It’s a beautiful day,’ said Tricia Fountain. Tricia was Osiris’ receptionist. She sat at the reception desk, in front of a wall that said in simple brass letters ‘Osiris LP’.
    Timothy had hired Tricia six months ago, after interviewing a handful of other candidates. Those candidates included a middle-aged black woman with two kids, a Chinese man from Stanfordwho Timothy suspected was gay, and two fat women whose resumes Timothy failed to read.
    No other candidate had Tricia’s qualifications. First, she was twenty-three. Second, she had bright blue eyes, dark hair, clear skin, and chiseled cheeks. Third, she dressed well. Today it was navy blazer over cashmere sweater, tight and blue, which displayed her body in a thoughtful, understated way. The way Tiffany’s displays engagement rings, Timothy had thought the first time he looked at her breasts. No point being gaudy about them. They speak for themselves.
    â€˜Beautiful?’ Timothy said.
    She was born in Orange County, and – beneath the Ralph Lauren blazer and stylish librarian glasses and fashionable bob in her hair – Timothy found that proud stupidity so common in people from the south of the state. For instance, the way she said, ‘Awesome,’ when discussing a matter that clearly wasn’t awesome in any way. Or the way she once admitted that she had no idea exactly what Timothy and Osiris actually did, and didn’t want to. Or the way Timothy often caught her looking at herself in the reflective brass letters that spelled