and he passed several afternoons browsing their “news” sections, which boasted flattering profiles in journals he’d never heard of and reams of jargon-heavy “white papers” published for industry consumption. Having signed a nondisclosure agreement in advance, he savored the sense of elation involved in peering into the inner workings of what he believed, in a very real sense, to be the future. He also cold-called at least two of the experts whose names Greenleaf had provided him and had affable entry-level chats about sustainable energy that quickly spiraled into arcane theoretical regions he couldn’t follow.
In all this, Potash was waiting patiently for the arrival of what he privately called his “vector.” His vector was his private tipping point, that confluence of hard data, intuition and good vibes that had green-lit all the most important transitional moments of his life. After four days of research and a couple dozen phone calls, the vector arrived suddenly one afternoon. It was accompanied, as was so often the case, by the sense of an abrupt sharpening of vision, of superfine clarity allied to a feeling of specific sanction. This was what he was supposed to do, and right this very second. Dimming the lights in his rented office, he turned down the ambient “space music,” called his personal banker and instructed him to wire-transfer six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the Greenleaf EcoTech High Yield Fund.
The resultant euphoria was intense, unnaturally sweet and dramatically short-lived. The very next day, he sat waiting patiently with his wife at a high-end local restaurant to which he’d invited Janelle for a celebratory dinner. His wife, who had never met Janelle and was still in the dark about his investment, had wondered out loud at the expense of the place, but, in a magnanimous mood, he’d ordered drinks for them both followed by a costly bottle of white wine. The EcoTech Fund was going to be a bouquet he laid at Anabella’s feet, and extravagance was the order of the evening.
An hour later, he was slightly drunk and growing annoyed. Janelle hadn’t arrived, and he couldn’t very well phone in front of his wife and upset the elaborately choreographed surprise. Potash took the endless box staircase downstairs to the bathroom, irritated at first. But the irritation soon began to shade into something else as he stood in the low-lit space methodically dialing both Janelle’s home and cell numbers and finding them ringing through to voice mail. He tried the numbers of another Greenleaf contact and had the same thing happen. Openly alarmed, he dug through his wallet to find yet another. He dialed those two numbers as well, and then two others. As each of them rang through to the exact same recorded message, he found himself effortlessly ascending a rising arc of panic. Three minutes after having entered the bathroom, Potash put the phone back in his pocket and stared at his face in the mirror. Without warning, a white flare of light went off in his head while a ring of cold sweat burst onto the crown of his skull and he bent double over the sink as a vast, inexorable pressure seemed to press him downward toward the floor. He hung on to the edge of the sink, swaying on his feet, and when he finally returned to himself, his heart beating hard, he slowly stood up before leaning down again and running cold water on his face for a full sixty seconds.
Upstairs, Potash did his level best to rejoin a conversation his tipsy wife had begun about making synthetic sandalwood, but he himself was no longer drunk in the least. The flare of anxiety had burned it right out of his system. He found himself staring fixedly at the front door of the restaurant for several minutes as if by sheer force of will he could make Janelle materialize out of the night air and run up to his table crying, “My God, John, there was a car crash on the highway and I’d left my cell phone at home!”
When he finally
In all this, Potash was waiting patiently for the arrival of what he privately called his “vector.” His vector was his private tipping point, that confluence of hard data, intuition and good vibes that had green-lit all the most important transitional moments of his life. After four days of research and a couple dozen phone calls, the vector arrived suddenly one afternoon. It was accompanied, as was so often the case, by the sense of an abrupt sharpening of vision, of superfine clarity allied to a feeling of specific sanction. This was what he was supposed to do, and right this very second. Dimming the lights in his rented office, he turned down the ambient “space music,” called his personal banker and instructed him to wire-transfer six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the Greenleaf EcoTech High Yield Fund.
The resultant euphoria was intense, unnaturally sweet and dramatically short-lived. The very next day, he sat waiting patiently with his wife at a high-end local restaurant to which he’d invited Janelle for a celebratory dinner. His wife, who had never met Janelle and was still in the dark about his investment, had wondered out loud at the expense of the place, but, in a magnanimous mood, he’d ordered drinks for them both followed by a costly bottle of white wine. The EcoTech Fund was going to be a bouquet he laid at Anabella’s feet, and extravagance was the order of the evening.
An hour later, he was slightly drunk and growing annoyed. Janelle hadn’t arrived, and he couldn’t very well phone in front of his wife and upset the elaborately choreographed surprise. Potash took the endless box staircase downstairs to the bathroom, irritated at first. But the irritation soon began to shade into something else as he stood in the low-lit space methodically dialing both Janelle’s home and cell numbers and finding them ringing through to voice mail. He tried the numbers of another Greenleaf contact and had the same thing happen. Openly alarmed, he dug through his wallet to find yet another. He dialed those two numbers as well, and then two others. As each of them rang through to the exact same recorded message, he found himself effortlessly ascending a rising arc of panic. Three minutes after having entered the bathroom, Potash put the phone back in his pocket and stared at his face in the mirror. Without warning, a white flare of light went off in his head while a ring of cold sweat burst onto the crown of his skull and he bent double over the sink as a vast, inexorable pressure seemed to press him downward toward the floor. He hung on to the edge of the sink, swaying on his feet, and when he finally returned to himself, his heart beating hard, he slowly stood up before leaning down again and running cold water on his face for a full sixty seconds.
Upstairs, Potash did his level best to rejoin a conversation his tipsy wife had begun about making synthetic sandalwood, but he himself was no longer drunk in the least. The flare of anxiety had burned it right out of his system. He found himself staring fixedly at the front door of the restaurant for several minutes as if by sheer force of will he could make Janelle materialize out of the night air and run up to his table crying, “My God, John, there was a car crash on the highway and I’d left my cell phone at home!”
When he finally
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