of the abyss, of those who are full of longing.
Richard Wagner
I spent the night with Evelyn at her condo—it’s high-end and obviously expensive and I don’t really feel comfortable with its ambience but I choose to put my feelings aside.
Her condo reminds me of the life I once led but for now, it’s in limbo and so are we.
I’m still not exactly sure what I’m doing here with Evelyn, other than heeding a Siren’s call.
The penthouse has a west view looking back over the lake to the Humber Bay, and I’m nostalgic for my lakefront home and sailing yacht.
But here we are.
And she’s not just sunning on rocks, this Siren, but wants to drag me down to the ocean bottom where the real blood sports begin—make me a deep sea scavenger like Ryker Thompson with his enormous fish eyes.
Yeah, the deep waters of the financial world that sometimes turn turbulent.
I smile bitterly as I cast one more longing glance out the window at the lake.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Ev’s running impossibly long talons through tousled hair, preening like a mermaid, and I’m thinking, come unsex me here, feeling less seducer than cuckold.
But within minutes, she’s changed into her professional attire, and with her bright red hair and brown tweed business suit she’s stunning.
And so I drown.
I’m spinning round a vortex in a chaotic nightmare where nothing makes sense in the flotsam being drawn along.
But now, we’re off to see the wizard in his corporate Neverland.
Ryker Thompson's Investment firm occupies 20, 000 square feet in The Ernst and Jones Tower of the TD Center. Like Ev, he’s also not operating on a shoestring.
From the moment we step off the gleaming elevators, we enter a space as silent as the green depths where light seldom gets.
These are the corporate boardrooms where investment strategists live lives of quiet desperation.
I watch as willowy secretaries soundlessly shadow down plush carpeted halls like sea weed swaying in slow-motion, untroubled by the strongest storms.
Evelyn parks me in her office and goes in search of Thompson.
I’m left wriggling like a worm on a hook, feeling deceived by a sea girl wreathed with red and brown.
But no human voices wake me, and so I drown.
”Well, I finally get to meet Kane Wilder!" a voice booms from the hallway.
A large burly man with close-cropped gray hair enters, looking more like a football full-back than head of an investment firm.
"Ryker Thompson," he announces, while firmly gripping my hand. "I heard a lot about you, boy."
I wince at his grip and his use of a diminutive term to address me, but smile and try to make the best of it.
"So, I hear from Ev you've been working with Abby Cohen at Goldman Sachs —putting to good use that Harvard MBA, no doubt."
I smile bleakly.
"I suppose the degree helped a bit, but it was more an apprenticeship for me, than anything else."
"A humble man —I like that," he winks at Ev.
"So, what have you been up to lately?
“It was only six months ago I left Wall Street, Ryker.”
“Why that’s a lifetime for a fella like you. You must have been doing more than just sunning”
“Well, I’ve been investing in digital assets and trading in cryptocurrency.”
“You mean Bitcoin?”
“There’s more than one currency.”
Damn! He shakes his head in wonder.
"Cryptocurrency? You trade in that on those black web sites?
My jaw tightens. "Digital currency isn’t just used on the dark web or Silk Road."
"NO? he laughs. "Then what the hell it used for? Nothing legal, I bet. Hey, come to think of it, those dark web sites—they’re just like Alice’s Restaurant. I bet you can get most anything you want…”
He stares at Evelyn and licks his lips. “Yep, I’ll bet you can get any kind of honey there.”
I avert my gaze, deliberately avoiding lookin her face, but now I steal a glance and am shocked to see Ev isn't squirming, but smiling.
There’s a sensual gleam in her eye I hadn't seen before.
I watch in fascination as in my imagination she transmutes from wearing tweed business suit to an over-sized shirt and tie—unbuttoned, seductive and tawdry as the pantomime of a clichéd line.
I feel nauseous—the same vertigo I felt standing on Bay Street, staring up at the finance towers.
“What’s the matter, boy? You okay?”
Thompson's peering at me, still trying to size me up.
"Yeah, just had a little bit too much to drink last night," I lie."Still a bit shaky."
"Never met an investment strategist that didn't drink like a fish."
Ev flashes a sympathetic smile.
"Say, why don't you let Ev here show you around and maybe we can get together later over dinner and swap stories. You can tell me what Abby Cohen's really like. How does that sound?"
"Sounds good, Ryker," I mumble.
He was back to sizing me up.
"By the way, you need a better suit, boy, if you’re gonna be down here on Bay Street. You’re what? A size 42 tall? Probably a 32 inch waist. Been a long time since I’ve been that much a light-weight.”
Ev intervened. “He might be slight, Frank, but Kane here, is not light duty.”
“Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”
In that moment I'm a wayward teenager wandering through an upscale mall, swallowed by the futility of perfumed sheets and shining baubles.
Why am I here at all?
It’s the same question I asked at seventeen and feel I haven’t progressed since then, or perhaps regressed is more the answer to that question.