So Katharine agreed to not see Michael. I suppose if I had more time on my hands, I would have kept tabs on her, maybe even hired an investigator. But I was too tired to be jealous, and I certainly didn’t have the time. To my knowledge, Weber didn’t know. The less he knew, the better. I never called her on the work lines, but I would occasionally go outside to talk to her on my new cellular phone, when Weber would stop to take a breath from his trading. Was I checking up on her? Sure, I was checking up on her. Where are you. At home. What are you doing. Nothing much. I would listen for any unusual intonation, to see if she was being untruthful. But she was a master poker player, having kept me in the dark about Michael for months, possibly years, and having kept me in the dark on her feelings for the better part of a decade. Still, I thought it was inconceivable that she would be capable of repeating the offense. That is, until I convinced Weber (via instant messenger) that I had a serious health problem that I needed to attend to, and I needed to see a doctor, and instead I went home, driving my 15 minutes in reverse commute during daylight hours, actually seeing other cars on the road, and I saw Michael’s car the moment I turned onto the street, the silver Toyota Celica, one of the new ones, with the angular lines, and my heart began to pound, and I lost sight of everything, and I couldn’t feel my feet, and my hands swelled, and I opened the garage, and I took out a 34 inch aluminum softball bat that I hadn’t touched in years, from behind the wheelbarrow, and I held it high above my head, and brought it crashing down on his windshield, and his hood, and smashed in every window, every taillight, and smashed in every panel on the body of the car. I stood back and admired my work for a moment before going back to work.

I had totaled the thing. The car was now a motherfucking useless piece of shit.

* * * *

Weber: We are going to play the PALM spinoff.

I already knew what Weber wanted to do. He wanted to buy PALM.

3Com spinning off Palm was going to be the biggest trade of the year. Basically, 3Com knew that its Palm Pilot division would be massively overvalued by the market, and if they could spin it off by selling the stock, they would stand to raise a lot of money.

They were right. PALM stock had been trading when-issued for a little while now, and it was clear that investors were mispricing it. PALM was estimated to be worth more than all of 3Com, the parent company, which didn’t make any sense. Not only did it not make any sense, it wasn’t possible. It was an arbitrage. If you could short PALM and buy COMS, you would be sure to make money over any period of time. But I was sure that wasn’t what Weber wanted to do. Weber probably wanted to buy PALM, or worse, sell COMS.