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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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Human
Capital by Stephen Amidon |
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Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Short Stephen Amidon’s
new novel, Human
Capital, reveals the struggles of a parent in suburban Here’s an excerpt from pp. 63-71: Drew
leaned over the footbridge’s buffed railing, staring into the little river
that twisted through The
immaculate water, trapped in a series of effervescent eddies, slapped and
gargled ten feet below. Sparkling fish darted among the smooth stones. Back
when Quint bought the place the river was so
polluted that the bleached bones of small mammals littered its corroded
banks. These days Drew could baptize his impending newborns in the water if
he were so inclined. A squadron of dragonflies patrolled its surface, their
movements tightly choreographed as they hunted mosquitoes. The afternoon sun
revealed startling colors in them, gossamer blues in the wings, electric greens on their bodies. They’d been imported from
He looked up, letting his gaze take in
the entire park. Quint really had worked wonders on
the place. The undulating grass was cut to a uniform height, coated with the
fine dew that emerged periodically from programmed sprinklers. The dirt
pathways were carefully raked; the firs and magnolias lining them were
trimmed into neat geometric shapes. Newcomers would never suspect that the
park covered the pestilential rubble of a tap and die factory that had gone
so spectacularly to ruin that Drew and his friends had been banned from
playing here as boys. It was one of the few prohibitions they actually
obeyed, scared away by stories of flagrant rashes and rabid bites. Now a team
of groundskeepers eradicated any outcropping of wilderness, and the brazen
jays and fat squirrels that moved over the grass were perfectly harmless.
Drew had learned during last summer’s tennis games that the pollution had
been the complex’s prime selling point, allowing Quint
to buy it for a song, then get the EPA to foot the
cleanup bill. Nowhere was this transformation more apparent than in the
former factory buildings. The largest, occupied by WMV Capital Management,
was huffed perfection, old stone salvaged, gaps packed and sealed. The two
outbuildings were occupied by a roster of lesser companies, a sports
paraphernalia retailer and a reverse auction outfit that brokered energy
contracts. The rest had impenetrable names that relied heavily on the latter
consonants. Drew had considered relocating here, but rents were on a par with
midtown He stifled a yawn and shook his head,
trying to jump-start his mind. It had been a long, exhausting weekend,
starting with Saturday’s arduous shopping expedition to the mall for baby
gear, a task they’d left this late because of Ronnie’s omnipresent fear of
another miscarriage. They’d visited a dozen stores, loading his old Saab to
bursting. Luckily, none of his weary credit cards was rejected. Ronnie had
gone to bed soon after their return, the pregnancy finally starting to slow
her down. Drew had recently suggested she stop working, but she wouldn’t hear
of it. Leaving her clients before they’d been properly referred to new
therapists was unthinkable. After
she was soundly asleep, Drew established himself in front of the television
for his regular fix of videotaped catastrophe: flashlit
cops and overhead angles on car chases; sports riots and animals gone bad. The two beers he’d allocated himself in reward for
the mall trip stretched into four, and he only vaguely remembered going to
bed. But then there was a voice in the darkness. Ronnie was sitting up,
clutching a pillow to her stomach, telling him that something was wrong, the
terror in her voice stoked by two previous miscarriages. They had the ER to
themselves; Saturday nights were downtime at Mercy The real action started
just after dawn on weekdays, when weary hearts seized and brittle arteries
burst, unable to handle another day, another ride into the city, another
anthill of woe. The
news was good. As soon as the nurses and doctors got at his wife, Drew knew
that it was a false alarm. There was none of the tight-lipped, whispering
urgency that he had dreaded during their silent ride to the hospital. They
wanted to keep her in for the night, anyway; twins occasionally baffled their
gadgetry. Drew sat with up with her through the dawn, chasing those beers
with bad coffee as he watched over her relieved slumber. They
were home by nine. He helped Ronnie into bed, then climbed
in as well, spooning up behind her round hot body. They slept until noon,
when the distant ringing of a phone woke him. He could hear it downstairs but
not on the master bedroom’s phone, which confused him until he remembered
that he’d turned off its ringer after they got home. Ronnie slept on, her
flush face serene in a plane of bright midday light, her ginger hair lit like
some hothouse flower. “Since
when do you outsleep me?” “We were at the
hospital all night.” Her expression turned serious. “Don’t
worry,” he said. “False alarm.” “She
really should stop working, you know.” “She feels responsible to her
patients.” “So what did you do last night?” he
asked. “Party. End-of-the-year festivities
have begun.” He still found it hard to imagine “Hey, who just called?” he asked. “I
thought I heard the phone.” “Oh, sorry. It was Quint.” “Quint?
Really? What did he want?” “To talk to you. He left his mobile
number. Wait, it’s . . .“ She handed him a drugstore circular
with a number penned in the margin. “So what’s up, Dad?” she asked. “What
are you doing with Quint?” Drew hated to lie to “Probably just wants to get the tennis
thing going again.” He phoned from his study, wondering
whether Quint wanted to give him the chance to up
his investment now that the lockup was ending. It would be tricky; he’d
probably have to bring Andy Starke in on what he was doing if he tried to
borrow any more against the house. On the other hand, it would be
embarrassing to turn down such an offer. Quint sounded very far away, his voice
layered with static. “Drew, yes, I was wondering if we could
get together tomorrow.” “Sure. Absolutely” Quint broke away for a moment to speak to
someone in the room with him. “Hello?” He came back on. “Can you make it after lunch? About
two?” Drew had precisely nothing planned for
the following day “That shouldn’t be a problem.” There was an impatient chorus of voices
in the background. “All
right. I’ll see you then.” “Is
there anything I should know or—” But
the connection was already dead. Time
to go. Drew plucked his briefcase from the bridge and strode through WMV’s heavy, iron-framed doors. The receptionist invited
him to take a seat. He would have to wait a few minutes after all; Quint was running a bit late. From where he sat he had a
view of the entire open-plan office. The once-decrepit building was now perfectly
clean and perfectly still, a place more appropriate for contemplation than
high finance. There was nothing in the design to suggest the nail-chewing
tension and split-second frenzy associated with Quint’s
business. The intervening floor had been knocked out to turn the small
factory’s two cramped stories into a single unbroken space; the stone walls
had been uncovered and sanded. The light was natural,
pouring through skylights and long vertical windows but mostly, at the far
end of the building, through the sheer wall of glass that overlooked the
park’s gently rolling acreage. The main-floor area was populated by
secretarial staff and younger associates. Hammered iron walkways ran above
them on either side, lined by the offices. Just beneath that wall of glass
was a common area with sofas and lounge chairs and tables. Above everything,
Quint’s office hung like the car of some great
elevator, a floating glass cube. Drew could see him in there now, leaning
back against his desk, talking to three men gathered in a tight crescent of
chairs. His arms were folded across his chest; occasionally, his right hand
would free itself to make a frugal gesture. It
was the same scene that had confronted Drew during his first visit to WMV
last May, a meeting he’d been angling for ever since he and Quint became tennis partners. Drew had almost wrecked his
car racing across town once the call finally came. In his office Quint was very different from the reserved, slightly shy
man Drew had come to know on the court and at school functions. The polite
wariness had been replaced by a clipped, almost conspiratorial tone. He
talked nonstop for nearly ten minutes, telling Drew about WMV, explaining why
it was different from other hedge funds. Drew lost his way occasionally in
the jargon, especially a short interlude about “stochastics.”
But he’d grasped the basics: Quint traded in the
world’s volatility, betting that incorrectly priced markets would eventually
stabilize. His fund was “global macro”; he’d invest anywhere, anytime. Bonds,
stocks, currency, futures. Emerging markets, established ones, markets that
weren’t even made yet. What stuck in Drew’s mind
was Quint’s insistence that all markets were
ultimately rational and that the key to making big money was to move into the
temporarily irrational ones before they stabilized. How exactly he did this
was a mystery to Drew; Quint had offered him a
glimpse of a computer screen that was stacked with a series of crowded,
mutating line graphs that could have been describing the workings of a
bumblebee’s nervous system. Quint also explained
that a client’s money would not be actually invested in the markets, but
rather used as collateral for the very large amounts he borrowed. “We’re leveraged. Big time. And we can
afford to be because we’re right.” As for the rest, it was pure Greek. But
the details weren’t important. Drew had been to Quint’s
house; he’d seen the cars and tennis rackets and wristwatches of his clients;
he’d listened to their talk about Gulfstreams and
houses in Forty-four percent. “But we have to move on this,” Quint said. “Minimum participation is two-fifty. And
there’s a one-year lockup.” It took Drew several long seconds to
understand that the sum of $250,000 had just been mooted. He’d arrived
thinking he could just about manage thirty. “Obviously that’s just the ante,” Quint added. “You can participate at a more robust level.
Most come in at about a million. Rookies I cap at two. Unlike Steinbrenner.
After your lockup we’ll talk about accepting further capital.” “Okay”
Drew said. “Let me . . . can
I let you know?” “Let
me know what?” Quint asked after a moment. “My,
you know, how much I want to put in.” Quint
relaxed. “Sure.
But I need to know something by the close of play tomorrow. I want to get you
set up for a June dividend next year. Plus I have a ninety-nine-partner
limit, and there’s a pretty hefty waiting list for this spot.” Drew
had left in a gloomy trance. For some reason he’d thought Quint
would understand he didn’t have that kind of money to invest, that he was
just after enough cash to pay for his daughter’s college and knock down his
credit cards. A strange notion, since as part of his
effort to impress the men at the tennis games, he’d been hinting that he’d
just closed on some fairly large property deals and was swimming in cash. As
he drove back to town, he went though the motions of trying to determine
where he could get his hands on a quarter million dollars. A futile exercise.
Five years earlier he could have siphoned it out of Hagel
& Son, but that money was gone. He had eighteen thousand in various bank
accounts, half of which he figured he could dedicate to an investment. For
the rest of the thirty he’d been planning to borrow against the big
Northwestern life insurance account his father had set up for him when he was
a boy. But that was it. Two hundred and fifty was an impossible number. By
the time he got to his office he knew he had no choice but to beg off. He was
clearly out of his league. His bluff had been called. Badgering Quint had been a foolish mistake, taking unfair advantage
of their growing friendship. But he couldn’t make the call. He sat at his
desk for nearly an hour, staring at the phone, unable to bring himself to
admit that he would never be able to join Quint’s
fund. What
amazed him was how easily the answer came to him. He’d borrow it from the
equity credit line they’d opened a year earlier, when Ronnie was in her
second pregnancy. Their plan was to use it to renovate the house once the
baby was born. Although 33 Crescent had been heavily mortgaged to pay off
Anne, the recent property boom had inflated its notional value far enough
that they would be able to sap a couple of hundred thousand more dollars from
its old wood. But then they’d lost the baby and the loan had remained dormant.
Without ever saying so, Drew and Ronnie agreed that it would be spent only
once a child was pinkly oxygenated and nestling on her chest. Although
he understood that there was no way he could use this money to invest in a
private fund, the thought wouldn’t go away. Within a few hours it became
inevitable. It would be simple. Ronnie would never know. He’d do everything
through his office. Even if she got pregnant in the next few months—an event
that of course came to pass—he’d have received his first dividend by the time
they were ready to start renovating. He would have to hustle to make the
repayments for that first locked-up year, but come the following June the
weight of his debts would be lifted. And it wouldn’t be the ten or twenty
thousand per year he’d anticipated when he first approached Quint, but a hundred thousand. More. He’d be able to pay
down the credit line; Oberlin would be a snap; he could pay the builders.
Five years down the road the credit line would be gone. Every penny he made
from WMV from then on would be profit. Pure, weightless, frictionless money.
He could help get There
would, he admitted to himself, be trouble if Ronnie found out. She was averse
to all forms of risk. It led to stress, which was in her eyes a poison more
deadly than leaked PCBs. Gambling with their house was something even she
might never forgive. But she didn’t understand. She hadn’t spent those
Saturday mornings with Quint and his partners. Nor
did she know how desperate things were at Hagel
& Son, what it was like to wake up at four in the morning and wonder how
he was ever going to afford Shannon’s college, much less the new family they
so badly wanted to start. What it was like to pay two hundred thousand
dollars to a selfish damaged woman in exchange for one scared and confused
daughter to raise without an instruction manual and
then, as an added bonus, to watch his father’s business waste away to nothing
in the distraction that followed. And
so he had met with Andy Starke at Bill’s Tavern that evening, saying he
wanted to increase the credit line by a hundred thousand to start the major
overhaul of the house. Starke said it shouldn’t be a problem. He knew Drew.
He knew the house. Only a fool would refuse to lend against 33 Crescent. The
following morning Drew had called Quint and told
him that yes, he wanted in. “Fantastic,”
he said. “I’ll have someone drop off an accredited investor form and we’re
all set.” “Accredited
investor form?” “It’s
an SEC requirement. It basically says you make two hundred grand a year or
have clear assets over a mil. Get that back to me, and we’re good to go.” Filling
out the form proved easy. It felt good, actually, fabricating big numbers for
the income and asset columns, erasing all that debt. He’d been worried when Quint had him give the form to Mahabal,
but the sharp-eyed lawyer didn’t check closely. Why would he? Drew had spent
the last few months as a regular guest on Orchard. His daughter was dating Quint’s son. He was one of them. Human
Capital will have some special appeal to readers who’ve been involved in
hedge funds, or who are familiar with the approach used by Long Term Capital
Management. Every reader will appreciate Amidon’s
presentation of those aspects of parenting, belonging, and striving that can
bring out the best and worst of human nature. Steve Hopkins,
January 25, 2005 |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Human
Capital.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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