Casey stared at her shoes. When anyone got angry, she grew silent. A long drag of smoke would clear the swamp in her head. She wanted to leap up the emergency staircase to the roof two steps at a time. She inhaled deeply, unable to deal with Unu’s angry face. She opened the front door and caught a whiff of the garbage piling up in the incinerator chute down the hall. Whether it was on the Upper East Side or Van Kleeck Street, apartment garbage smelled exactly the same—melon rinds and roach spray mingled in her nose like a cocktail.
“Can we please talk later?” she asked meekly.
“No,” he said indignantly. “Frank says my bonus is shot this year. And I’ll probably get laid off if I don’t start making more reasonable stock calls. Everything I like is a long shot, it turns out. But I did the research and I know what’s good, it’s just that the market is filled with a bunch of fucking hedgers. No one believes in companies anymore or wants to hold ’em. Flip, flip, flip. That’s all they do. Isn’t that a fucking riot?” Unu laughed meanly. “And baby, the market wants some returns some of the time, but I am calling for the big time.”
Unu walked away. He hadn’t realized how disgusted he was by what was going on in the Asian equities market. Wall Street was about plundering and making as much money as possible. Did it even matter how? He walked back to the sofa. “The true believers have left the room,” he muttered to himself.
Casey put her hand across the back of her neck. Unu had been hinting here and there that his calls were poorly received. Despite all of his research, charting, and analysis, the market was behaving irrationally, he’d mentioned at dinner last week. It happened when motives were at odds, he’d explained. Casey hadn’t completely understood. She’d been tired herself, absorbed in trying to figure out the random mix of personalities in her business school assigned section. His boss, Frank, was always telling Unu how smart he was, but lately Frank was saying he was too smart for his own good. Unu’s stock picks were too risky for their business or, worse, too conservative because the returns wouldn’t come in for years. The company’s investment philosophy varied sharply from Unu’s. Frank said a lot of little bets were better than a gigantic loss or the attractive windfall. Unu railed against hedging. He called himself a true believer. When he liked a company, there was no way he’d back off his position.
Why can’t you just do what they want you to do? she thought to say, but couldn’t because this was something they shared: They were both stubborn. What was the worst thing that could happen? she wondered. He wasn’t afraid to be poor, because he had never been poor. And Casey was poor, and she couldn’t seem to make herself rich. But neither was willing to compromise on his or her fragile ideas.
Unu sat on the sofa and stared hard at his cards as if he could see through their blue backing.
Her eyes were tired, and Unu fell out of focus. She could make out the curve of his spine bent toward the coffee table, his head in his hands.
She put down the cigarettes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. And I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”
Casey sat close to him, and Unu dropped his head on her shoulders. She couldn’t leave him now.
12 INSURANCE
UNU WAS LET GO ULTIMATELY IN FEBRUARY, and two months passed without his looking for work. Casey tried not to let it get to her. Her mother’s words buzzed in her head: “Never make a man feel bad about his job.” But what if he had no job? Casey wanted to ask.
For ten months, they’d lived together happily, so Casey tried not to change their routines. During the week, she went to classes and did her homework religiously. On Saturday mornings before she went to Sabine’s, she rose early to clean the house and to work on the occasional hat. Sabine was letting her sell them at her store, allowing her to keep the profit without taking her cut. On average, she sold one a month, netting about a hundred dollars or so. Unu woke up with her and read his finance journals, and after Casey went to work, he drove his Volvo to Foxwoods Casino, where he played blackjack. Early Sunday mornings, they ate eggs and toast at home, then attended services together. When church ended, Casey went to work the counter at Sabine’s, which opened at eleven. Unu stayed home and researched companies for his own trades. To save money, Casey fixed simple meals every night. Usually she did the grocery shopping on her way home from school.
April was a busy school month for Casey, and it showed up on the empty shelves of their refrigerator. There was very little to eat in the house.