* * * *

This is going to be a mistake.

trdrbear: Need to talk

nderivs: Now?

trdrbear: Now

nderivs is typing…

nderivs: not a good time, can we do IM?

Fine.

trdrbear: have u ever cheated?

nderivs: like on a test?

trdrbear: no on a boyfriend

nderivs: no

trdrbear: liar

nderivs: not lying

trdrbear: everybody cheats

nderivs: well not me. U?

trdrbear: no.

nderivs: liar.

nderivs: 🙂

trdrbear: so why did she do it

nderivs: it was easier

trdrbear: easier than what?

nderivs: easier than talking to u

trdrbear: am I hard to talk to?

nderivs: of crs not

trdrbear: so then?

nderivs: ppl just always take tha EZ way out

The kid is half smart. Katharine did take the easy way out. It would have been harder for her to talk to me, to try to work through the problems. It occurs to me that she actually might have thought she was doing me a favor—if she just leaves me, I feel rejection, I am devastated, but if she does what she did, then I am absolved of responsibility and I get to blame it on her.

Cheating is actually rational.

Then, I feel a wave of revulsion for what I wrote. What a jackass I am, spilling my guts to a 22-year-old girl. But she’s so nice. I haven’t had nice in a while.

I haven’t ever had nice.

* * * *

5 minutes until the spinoff.

I fucking know Weber is going to want to buy PALM. It would be a classic Weber move, squeezing the shorts, because all the smart monkeys are going to come out and try to whack the stock, even if they can’t borrow it. He might even buy a million shares, just to run it and gun it. But at the end of the day, PALM can’t be worth more than COMS, so I have no idea what his exit strategy is. The other things he buys can conceivably go up forever. This can’t. It’s impossible.

I rarely eat lunch. Or breakfast. I usually order a big dinner to the desk. But this morning, I was hung over and fucking starving, so I had Kevin order a pizza. A sheet pizza, no less, which I hadn’t had since I was a kid at a roller skating rink birthday party. I had gone through about five pieces, hands greasy, when I got the following:

Weber: FYI COMS we are going to be selling upside

This meant that Weber wasn’t going to buy PALM, but sell short COMS—in effect, putting a cap on the price of the stock. This was worse, in a way, because when PALM inevitably goes down, it is virtually necessary for COMS to go up. Furthermore, there is no limit to how far it can go.

This is the first time Weber has sold short anything, as long as I’ve known him. And he’s selling short the one thing that is certain to go up.

I call him on the direct. No answer. I write this: