The Man Who Knew the Answer

By Richard Segal

The afternoon began innocently enough with a lunch meeting in Tower Hill, but gathered pace when I hesitated upon my departure from the Rotunda, and overheard a quartet of deal-making Continentals: ‘The names for an apple are not the fruit itself.’ Code for a transaction they were negotiating or aphorisms for the spewing aside, one picaresque experience leads to another and the next thing I knew, I was on the 73 bus heading out of Harvard Square, with the Armenian driver working the crowd and apologizing for our poor geography. Vijay finally breaks loose of his winter skin while sampling comedy clubs up and down the East Coast, and discovers that The Impresario represents truth in advertizing. In his black and blue swan t-shirt, every clown does have a silver lining. However, these are but preludes to the existential challenges soon to face a young nation, in search of the one man able to solve these riddles, and deliver a cure for us all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728353630

Richard Segal

Richard Segal, an American citizen, resides in London, England, and works as an economic and financial consultant. He has written widely about matters relating to global public policy over the years. His most recent novel was The Man Who Knew the Answer.

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© 2020 Richard Segal. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  05/29/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5364-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5363-0 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

CONTENTS

Good Moorning, Vietnaaam!

Bianca Road

Nature’s Way

Between bourgeois stability and contrived unpredictability

Local Knowledge Sells Houses

She Used to be a Dancer

The Ballad of Pravin and Vijay

Crisis is the Edge Upon which Change is Possible

Car Men

A Slow Start for the First Comedian on the Stage

Urgent Hand Delivered Message for Lord Font LeRoy

And That’s What Makes Him So Funny

The Rat Called

Jump Cut to the 90s: Helsinki

The Babson Trap

Dubbed into Turkish

Doom Loop

Wake up Everybody

The Moth Confesses

Talk of Foreign Interest

The Infinite Corridor of Time

The Impresario

Names Changed to Protect the Innocent

Mr Elcin

The Sutton Arms

The Nexus

Rear View, Window

What’s a Sephardic Menu?

Ask Me Another

The Other Law of Large Numbers

The French Connection

‘The Stompers, Big Deal’

The Arbitrageur, Masters, Barbers, etc

It’s not Happening Bruv

An Abrupt Tomorrow for Those Less Lucky

Caught ’em with the Offside Trap

Better Living Through Napkins

Happy Christmas from Scrooge and the Ghosts of Christmas Present

The Royal

‘You Can Get Clintonesque’

How to Create a Failed Country

‘Monster Munch’

Haway the Lads

A Tear in Provence

The Turgeon House

Whatever it Takes

Reader Interest Increases

‘I’m like that, you know’

The Last Brownstone

To T, O & M

GOOD MOORNING, VIETNAAAM!

Meggy is off the Desk

I was suspending time at the Four Seasons one afternoon, the new Four Seasons at Tower Hill, because the eavesdropping is better there. I rarely turn down an invitation at this hotel, whether or not lunch is served, because of the pristine renovation of this port authority building. The menu is the same at the original in Hyde Park, straight down to the candied pecans dotted around the salad plates, and it is more convenient, but it is purpose built and attracts more posers.

Posers? What am I talking about? Flies to honey is not the same analogy as Ginger to Fred, a Four Seasons hotel to posers, but the staff are pleasant in Tower Hill and trained to be so, though not to the extent of over-conversing with visitors. If he permits follow on questions from a lingering capitalist about the history of this Beaux-Arts edifice, and not a paying visitor at that, the evil eye from a floor manager will shortly follow, and to both of us if necessary. Each employee of a major hotel group has a target utilisation rate by task, which excludes spending too much time chit-chatting. Nice of the manager to remind him before he gets docked or receives a demerit.

I had three items to check off my list that afternoon, including make a phone call, return an email and go back to work, which is always an anti-climax in the afternoon, especially when analogous employees will be counting down the hours until they can freeze their screens for the day and head for the train station, unless they drive, in which case they speed along on roads not built for cruising until tempers flare like madmen.

Before leaving I must appraise the rotunda which serves as a café, bar, restaurant and meeting place, with rose coloured gold on the ceilings and a raised platform for waiters to rest and observe and be prepared to pounce when they sense a paying visitor has finished his gentle tea and is ready for a refill. I eavesdrop but I don’t take notes about the transaction the foursome are negotiating because they speak softly so as to be discreet.

If I did tape them surreptitiously and bought or sold on the basis of their nudges or winks, I could not be hauled in for insider dealing, because I’m not an insider and any information I absorbed could be claimed to be incidental and not knowingly material or non-public. That’s in the event I could be traced or I found the information worthy of extramural note, for instance that one of the four will revert to the avocation he enjoys when this deal has closed, intermediating shipments between seafood processors in the North Sea and family business middlemen on the Continent. These sub-narratives I might have discreetly taped and erased once transcribed, for future reference or skimming off the top, his blow-out fruits de mer recipe assemblage that is. It would put the city gourmets and ‘LIBOR’ ‘arbitrageurs’ to shame. Ah, the allusions of the price of everything.

Once outside, I tip my imaginary hat to the specialist pub where I spent the evening of the final day at my last job, after the heat trap of a riverside boozer became too crowded. It’s a small chain with similar kegs and pumps, but individual locations have been acquired and rebranded without being remodelled. Thus, each outlet has a singular look and feel. The interior design was appealing, with 1950s drugstore cowboy fonts and wall colours, a necessary menu including pan fried buttermilk chicken, and the weather stayed warm when the sun went down. Moreover, the chain hadn’t yet been bought by private equity and resold at a loss to a trade buyer when it needed the cash. This was the end of the innocence, during a session not sufficiently elongated to be one for the ages, but not my innocence.

It’s nice when people are nice, as AMY (her initials, as opposed to Amy) enlightened me when she was in a good mood. It was her favourite proverb that if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day but if you teach him to fish he will eat for a lifetime. However, this was before being and everythingness turned against her and she repeated nice news adages no more. I was nice one afternoon, when I bit my lip. I was minding my potatoes in the otherwise unoccupied changing room at the gym when a bloke walked in humming to himself. He was not wearing blue tooth ear plugs, a natural presumption, but humming to himself, semi-prog ’80s soul. Half a minute later, an older gentleman walked in, clearly his mentor as the bloke was in his mid to late 40s.

As soon as he got settled in the changing room, he asked the bloke to keep an eye on his locker while he relieved himself because his wallet was inside. However, he would not be gone long, as the toilets were not far away. Moreover, the only two things I’ve been known to steal are glances and mild religion jokes, neither of which were in his locker – and what is the difference between a rabbit and a rabbi?

Quite suddenly and without warning; thus, maybe it was a false alarm, the bloke commenced a sermon about rolling averages in the inquiring sense, and perhaps the mentor could explain what one was. Rolling average, cou cou, cou cou, come out, come out wherever you are? No, please, the bloke persisted, what the deuce is the definition of a rolling average? It’s a mathematical formula, summing like zed to the minus Nth. The mentor supplied an accurate reply, which is to add a new number and take away the first in the series, so that the average remains a constant time period. Three, nah twelve, January to December followed by February to January.

Uh uh, and here I summarize: ‘it removes the outliers or the highs and lows and then takes A to the minus Nth. I can’t do investing without it. No one can.’ With an average, you take the sum of the numbers and divide by the number of observations but the mentor struggled to articulate a plain speaking synonym for the term ‘observation.’ He was thinking of a trimmed mean, not a moving average because that’s the same as a rolling average. The bloke had to know, and he wasn’t having any of his mentor’s correct answers, which frustrated him additionally. I should have asked for the thirteen numbers and calculated both rollin’ averages in my head for their benefits. ‘I think it’s got summing to do with Limp Bizkit, Z to the minus Nth,’ I nearly explained unprompted, to stir the pot. We’ll be rollin, rollin, rollin, long guitar beat, followed by rollin, rollin, rollin. I towelled and dressed with my back to them, to avoid being questioned about biting my lip to hold back the Zths and Nths, and what on earth the rap metallic movement has to do with day trading.

The deal makers had valuable information I could have utilised for pertinent business matters, and yet, I allowed this to go in one ear and out the other. The bloke, though, he was convinced the correct formula was erroneous and off skew, and the mentor and I were hanging off each word. My mouth was involuntarily wide open to better take in his folk wisdom. Personal quad speakers. Moreover, if I was a betting man, my money would be on him being able to solve quadratic equations in his head, because it’s the simple man’s math that stumps him.

I was sitting at the Ned at 8:05 am, not by myself because I was late on this occasion. The 8 am sharp reservation was for a table of three, one of whom I had met before, but the person who introduced us and booked the table was not able to attend because she had other potatoes to attend to. I gather this decision was bittersweet to her, because she has the delicate appetite of a verified gourmet. She either felt that two reps from her company with a prospective client would more than suffice and the 90 minutes away from her desk meant less operating income she could be generating, and meetings she could be arranging for parallel clients, and perhaps even paying clients. Perbelline.

That’s the name of the café where I was five minutes late and my two hosts were respectively five and ten minutes early. My alternative guess was that she had morning sickness and had to stay home for a few extra hours, but she wasn’t three months yet and was superstitious, so had to offer another excuse. This is ironic because on any comparable day she’d have voracious pregnancy hunger. I looked at the menu and smiled, because of an obvious typo. I had a rough draft version of the menu apparently, because I peered quickly at Marc’s menu and the salmon hash browns on his menu were described as ‘exquisite’ with an e as its final letter. Stan asked why I was smirking and I replied that the Austrians and Swiss, and 15% of the Germans, innately can differentiate between muesli and granola, and no one else can, not even 1990s Californians.

I made this up to distract myself because the typo reminded me of a book I was reading with a lot of parenthetical cutouts, by a scientist who was highly intelligent and not afraid to remind his readers of this. He should have been less of a back seat driver about his Slovakian friend Petr’s ponytail and more diligent about the handiwork of his sub editor who overlooked the spell check error of reverting to the English spelling of Peter because he was rather authoritative otherwise. Moreover, why do aging hippies have ponytails but not pigtails?

It is ironic that the typo was over a variation of the spelling of Peter, because of the occasion a certain Claudio, a prospective business affiliate with whom I had only communicated over the phone and electronically, scolded me in a hotel lobby in a city twinned with Barcelona, because I ignored his constant calling at me. This was after my colleague Patrick mentioned to me in his droll ‘been there done that’ voice that a fellow was seeking to attract my attention. Was I drunk, little Claudio wondered. I may be, I agreed, but this doesn’t change the fact that my name isn’t Peter.

Claudio is Belgian, as is his partner, though Claudio is from the French side of Belgium and his partner Ethel from the semi-autonomous Dutch speaking part. They are a marriage made in heaven, if there’s curry ketchup in heaven. There is also I presume an Italian speaking side of Belgium, as there is in Switzerland and many similar small countries. Of the five nation states that have proved breeders for the world, Italy is the only European nationality I can think of that builds enclaves abroad. New York City for example has many Irish pubs and Greek delis and coffee shops with memorable flag coloured and statue adorned paper take out cups, but it doesn’t have a Little Dublin or a Greek quarter.

Claudio is little as well as armed with an in-built random affront generator, and I have seen him or an evil twin several times on public transportation in recent years, but as he doesn’t recognise me, I overlook the sightings. Maybe he was hungover too. When we were kings and clients, he would write to me regularly, copying my boss Peter (enunciated as Pee-terrr), and this explains the misunderstanding that required Patrick’s intervention. This was before we met in person, meaning the entire team. After the symposium, when he was angling for sponsorship for his next conference, Claudio would call me even more regularly. It was not my budget and I didn’t like voice mail, and therefore it was of no use to leave a message. If you’re not there, who should I ask for instead? With whom? he asked, when he caught me at my desk, and I said I’d get back to him. With Pee-terrr, or PA-trick, or Anna? We didn’t have an Anna, but I’ll bet you will, Claudio, I said to myself, and handed the phone to Patrick. Which computer games have you been playing, Claudio, while I’ve been preoccupied with video golf?

One of my first jobs while I was studying, temp jobs that is, was in a testing lab at a factory at short commuting distance, when there were still factories in America’s inner cities. I would leave the house early and catch a bus to the train station, for the Red Line the rest of the way. Most days there would already be a career woman at the bus stop. I had no intention of continuing with this temp job routine for more than a few months and I never saw anyone else under this awning as many as twice. I didn’t ever speak to the woman, although I did nod once or twice when I arrived first, to indicate that she should board ahead of me and have choice of seat, because she paid a lot more dues than I had. She didn’t seem happy, though who is at that time of the morning? Berger may have signed on to the theory that seeming indifference was a ruse while professing to write ‘only to amuse himself;’ in fact, though, she may have pioneered this theory.

The bus was electrified, meaning it was connected to a power line above by a cable and this is how it derived its drive. It is not difficult to steer these buses because the routes are predetermined by the lines above and the driver can only go in a divergent direction if there is a fork or if two routes converge at the same intersection. True, he or she does have to brake at traffic lights, keep the peace when buses are overcrowded and inform first timers to pay upon departure, rather than when entering. The 73 bus to Belmont has one particular legendary driver among many and I have had him twice. I should have taken his name to send a copy of this book. He’s an immigrant who has put two children through college on the salary of a bus driver, that is some sacrifice.

He’s Armenian and his family has always married within the faith. This must be so because the family’s last home before moving to the Boston area was Aleppo and some Armenians have not been able to catch a break, after they were expelled from their homeland in what is now south Turkey, but fortunately for others they have been able to avoid two bullets. The first time I was luckily enough to ride the 73 to Waterford Square when he was driving, it was rush hour and the bus was very full. However, this didn’t prevent him from working the crowd and especially a Japanese woman with middling English and largeing of shopping, and assisting new comers to find seats in the back given the advantage of his rear view mirror and in-bus video system, and reminding first timers to pay when leaving and not boarding.

This was recent and not at all a long time ago, when I in turn had no foreknowledge that I would be moving to New York, which if I was forward looking would have embraced, before I had heard of the long gone Abraham & Strauss department store in Downtown Brooklyn, which sold clothes that lasted. Soon, it will be legit for grannies-to-be to wear Baby on Board buttons on public transportation because it will be evident that she is going to be the main carer when her daughter returns to work from maternity leave. She isn’t asking for a seat and she definitely does not want a seat ahead of a mother who is pregnant and far along at that, she merely wants young and fit passengers to be considerate, perhaps even giving their seat to a visibly pregnant woman or a more elderly person, at the cost of not having a steady hand while standing, while improving at Angry Birds.

There is, though, a case to be made for an able-bodied person occupying a seat at his first opportunity and this is to conserve it in case it can be allotted to a passenger who genuinely needs to sit. Otherwise it is free game to a section of the population which doesn’t understand the conceptual framework of consideration to others, whose SI derived motto is that if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying, fist pumping the air when they snatch the last empty seat on a train from a little old lady seemingly moving at slow motion. Snooze you lose, he indicates with a nod of his nose, before fusing with the game app on his phone. His avatar was Pikachu if I’m not mistaken.

Train.jpg

The second occasion I was lucky enough to pick up the 73 bus to the destination where the trolley meets the train, Dunkin Donuts on the left, Star Market on the right, promoting local producers where the loss leaders otherwise would be, it was again rush hour but it was less crowded and there were no Japanese or other passengers with a lot of luggage or shopping, but still busy. My stop was the termination of the route and as a consequence it thinned out by the end, because not many of his customers live in Belmont. At traffic lights and other corners I would gaze at the local enterprizes, for instance quaint dry cleaners, pizzerias, photocopier shops, Irish establishments with names such as Kearney’s, and florist and flourist goods destinations. If you like pastries I can recommend one of the Armenian bakeries in Belmont, if you like Mediterranean food, and he pointed succinctly. Armenia is the Caucasus, not the Med, but go ahead and explain that shade of azure to someone 5 ½ thousand miles removed. I’m Armenian you see, the ever-aware bus driver informed me.

Thanks, I know how good Armenian chefs are, and I remember your life story from last time, which is also very good. Two young professional children having aced advanced placement (AP) classes in the public schools, college educated and one with a master’s degree, live-in grandparents, a wife who can whip up a Syrian-Armenian spiced lamb roast with the best of them, all on the salary of a municipal bus driver, but he tells the story better than anyone, and he’s a better man than me for it, better than most people.

I was not lucky enough to have him three times in a row, but otherwise the routine was the same. Rush hour traffic, standing room only and stopping every 50 feet on the outbound leg, and uninhabited swift buses on the ride back in to the Cam, but they run with nearly the same frequency, meaning the inbound ride at 7:45 pm on a hard plastic seat is quicker than the lightning round on a game show when they’re running far behind and have to catch up, close to a blast. Many places in the Square look and feel acceptable, and I’ve sampled the majority, but only a few have staying power.

When I was ten, the Pewter Pot was legendary, because we had been informed in Miss Davala’s history class that George and Martha Washington ate off pewter dishes every night. The pewter motif of the restaurant’s porcelain dishes was a tribute to our founding father. It was mandatory to brainwash fifth graders into believing that the British Red Coats were evil but creditable marksmen, while ours were law abiding and slightly more capable, but politically incorrect to inform us that their figurehead king was Cocoa Puffs to the power of Fruit Loops. It’s what, now, a Starbucks? When I was 20, Bartley’s was legendary, not because of the food but because of the waiters’ wit (‘sorry, squire, the Ancient Greeks didn’t use mustard’) and the even-then event-driven retro menu. Was it only ten years later?

However, these are recent developments and it was long ago and far away that I would yield to the morning-tired career woman when I arrived at the bus rest before her. One afternoon on this route whose only common link with the present day is the overhead electricity lines, I was privileged that the only two consecutive empty seats were catty corner to a parent with orange brown hair, mostly brown, wearing a plaid blazer. He was keeping a toddler to his left amused, while looking like a cross between a poet and a science fiction editor. In the movie, he will be played by a cross between Ed Norton and Bob Dylan, but the one who writes them and not tries to sing them. The toddler was enjoying his colouring book, neatly, and maintaining control of his crayons. Imagine,