Читать книгу Windows on the World - Frédéric Beigbeder - Страница 22

A minute before, the state of affairs was recoverable. Then suddenly I got the jitters.

“Hey, what’s the difference between David Lynch and Merrill Lynch?” asks the guy in Kenneth Cole.

“Um…no, don’t know that one,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.

“There isn’t one: nobody has a clue what either of them are doing and both of them are losing money,” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.

They burst out laughing, then think better of it and revert to their professionalism.

“It’s more volatile but the volumes are down,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.

“Standard & Poor’s futures are scary,” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.

“The margins are killing us all,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.

“I’m going long on the NASDAQ,” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.

“The squiggly lines aren’t looking good,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.

“Sometimes you gotta know when to cut your arm off,” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.

“We got whacked on the yen,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren.

“Well, my position on the Nikkei is covered,” says the guy in Kenneth Cole.

“Oh my God,” says the blonde in Ralph Lauren. “OH MY GOD!”

Her eyes grow wide, her bottom lip has fallen as far from her upper lip as it can, she’s brought her trembling hand up to her frozen mouth.

“What? What is it? WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?” demands the guy in Kenneth Cole, before turning round.

The weather had been so beautiful: through the telescope, Jerry could count the rivets on the fuselage. He turned to me, all excited.

‘Look, Dad! See the plane?”

…but already my hands had betrayed me. In a split second I’d contracted Parkinson’s. Other customers realized what was happening: an American Airlines jet, a fucking Boeing, was flying low through New York, heading straight for us.

“Shit! What the fuck is he doing? He’s far too low!”

I hate disaster movies: the good-natured blond guy with the square jaw, the pregnant woman whose waters break, the paranoid guy who freaks out, the coward who turns out to be a hero, the priest giving the last rites. There’s always some idiot who gets sick and the stewardess goes looking for a doctor:

“Is there a doctor on the plane?”

And some medical student puts his hand up, he feels really useful. “Don’t sweat it, guys, everything’s gonna be fine.”

This is what you think when there’s a Boeing heading straight for you. What a pain in the ass, starring in a turkey like that. You don’t think anything, you hang onto the armrests. You don’t believe your eyes. You hope what’s happening isn’t happening. You hope your body is lying to you. For once, you hope your senses are wrong, that your eyes are deceiving you. I’d like to tell you my first thought was for Jerry and David, but it wasn’t. I didn’t instinctively try to protect them. When I dived under the table, I wasn’t thinking of anyone except little old me.