Page 1
Will it be the tango or the paso doble? Two men sit across from each other at a maple conference table overlooking the Potomac. One scratches something down on a cocktail napkin, a figure with many zeroes, and passes it across the table to the other, his french cuff brushing the polished top. Who knows how the cocktail napkin (where are the cocktails) came into the picture?
A glimpse down. The figures roll around in his mouth like an incantation.
“To be wired to a Swiss account?”
“As soon as you lower the value of a life to $6.9 million.”
A moment’s hesitation and then a nod of approval. This is how it’s done on the beltway. People in the know call it the K Street waltz (okay, so it’s a waltz.) When the Environmental Protection Agency dropped the value of a single life from eight million to something south of seven, a lot of money was going to be made.
Someone has to start making money first.
Those that did were wearing this . . . the Classic French Collar (No. 2505), made of the finest cotton from the Nile Delta, this shirt is worn by both Wall Street and K Street types, and even EPA technocrats with fat Swiss bank accounts.
Pearl buttons. Single-needle throughout. Men’s sizes: S, M, L, XL, XXL.
Colors: Blue with White French Collar - a classic look. Any other combination . . . well, it wouldn’t be a classic.
Page 2
He was a simple bus driver with a hankering for the life of the gentleman hunter. Those Minnesota woods called out to him on the eve of every open season. Though he was still a bus driver at heart, a regular Ralph Kramden, he could afford a better rifle, a better car and a bevy of employees/servants to carry his equipment and ammunition up and over those hills and down into those valleys in search of that prize trophy to hang on his wall.
He was an unsteady shot and bagged little more that a four-point buck, but he always looked dapper in his Tweed Shooting Jacket (No. 2106), the same classic jacket worn by English gentlemen hunters in the Scottish highlands.
His lack of skill at the hunt was more than made up for by his talent at dismantling electric trolley lines like the Pacific Electric Red Cars in Los Angeles. Mass rail transit would become little more than a memory, a page in a scrap book that your grandheirs might point at and ask about.
“Grandpa, what’s that?”
“Why that’s an electric trolley we used to get around town on just after the last big war, but some big companies ripped it out and made us buy their buses and use their gasoline.”
Where did the Pacific Electric trolley go?
To the moon, Alice, to the moon, on a stack of crisp Benjamins as a matter of fact, all padding the profit margin of General Motors and Standard Oil and Firestone Tire.
In the grand scheme of things, be the hunter not the hunted in our Tweed Shooting Jacket (No. 2106.)
Men’s sizes: S, M, L, XL, XXL
Color: Grey
Page 3
OJ with a splash of Tia Maria. A gentle breeze slides off the Carribean. Sunrise isn’t too early to smoke a Montecristo No. 4 is it?
The sights, smells and tastes betray the presence of real movers and shakers here. Back home they are accustomed to living and working in what they call the “nose bleed” section of the risk-reward curve. They are the men, and a few women, who manage hedge funds.
No, they don’t have calluses from clipping at bushes all day. They generally pay people to do that while they sit, watching the market move up and down, bothering to look away from their Bloomberg monitors only to make a quip to their associates about oil futures.
In the Caymans, at the annual pow wow of fund managers (invite only), the living is easy and their attire shows it.
The Viscose Jacquard Linen Jacket (No. 2609) is tailored to let that cool trade wind in but not let market cap value out. Jackets like this are worn by a different breed all together.
Men’s even sizes: 38 through 48
Color: Blue with Creame stripe
Page 4
“Where did your watch go Senor Lansky?”
The man doesn’t answer but only rubs a pale strip of flesh around his wrist. The man’s first name is Meyer and you know the rest . . , a man of considerable means though you’d be pressed to get him to admit it.
The watch?
It’s a Cape Cod 1936 (No. 1107) with a havane crocodile strap. Senor Lansky feels naked without it, but it was an acceptable sacrifice given the dire circumstances. He gave it to a hot blooded idealist named Fidel Castro just an hour before in exchange for one more week to get his affairs together in Havana, make arrangements for passage to Nassau and transfer a fortune to various shell companies and sheltered bank accounts back in the Old World.
Yes, it was an acceptable sacrifice but one that doesn’t sit well with him. Why don’t you see for yourself how hard it would be to part with your own, even for half-a-fortnight of financial freedom?
The Cape Cod 1936 (No. 1107) comes with a matching crocodile skin humidor box. Tick, tick, tick . . . time is running out both for you and him.
Submission to the CL Literary & Writing forum Seven-in-Seven project.