Chương 168: CHAPTER 97 - When the Levee Breaks

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" Upton Sinclair Candidate for Governor For the average American mortal, booking a large wedding venue within seven days was impossible. For Diana Mirabelle, it was the vendor's immense privilege that they had even crossed her mind. The otoki took up the entire afternoon at the Double Lucky Dragon.

No one questioned why the funeral of a Japanese artist, attended by Nikkei and buried out of the Buddhist church on Riverside, should end in yum cha—but such was the tradition of America, a nation of multicultural pastiche. At the grand lobby, a dragon in gold leaf coiled twice along the entry wall, its tail vanishing behind the host stand; a fish tank the size of a car bubbled beside it, ignored by everyone who passed.

Before the guests had all been seated, the trolleys already came and went in an unbroken procession: har gow, chicken feet, char siu bao, small dishes nobody had to choose. That was the amazing thing about choosing Yum Cha. There was something for everyone. No one would feel offended. Near the door, Madeleine Filmore had appointed herself the room's quietest job—logging each koden envelope against a name as it came in.

At the head table, where custom set the family, sat no soul with a single thread of blood relation to Kiritani. Eppie, and around her: Curon, Vaughan, Davis, Mirabelle, Eric, Emily. It should have been an uncle. A widow. A string of cousins working through their shared grief via a shared dialect, but the atomic fire over Hiroshima had put an end to all that. Not all the guests had come. Perhaps a fifth of the chairs were empty—adding to Mirabelle's genius of choosing a Yum Cha banquet. They ate largely in silence.

An otoki was not a place to discuss the business of music or to celebrate the arts. Outside their table, only the eldest surviving members of the Japanese internment families knew each other. Senator Sanders stayed twenty minutes. He found her between trolleys, thanked her for looking after Valorie, watched the girls hug, then was gone before the tea was changed. + Karmic Causality Whelp, some good's coming out of this… Eppie filed away the man's thanks.

Somehow, knowing the [System]'s pedantic nature, the [Causality] was probably for Valorie's happiness, rather than future deeds associated with Francis' national senatorial bid. Davis waited until the plates thinned. Eppie watched him succeed in not talking to her about Wayfaring Stranger, watched it get as far as his mouth, then her CEO announced that he was going back to work. Mirabelle joined him. She had a flight to catch. By 3 PM the trolleys had slowed to nothing.

The oldies left last, in twos and threes, stopping at the gold dragon to pass on their well wishes. Madeleine closed the notebook and gave her the number without being asked. Two hundred and six envelopes. Two hundred and six people had come to bury a man with no family. Returning final bows took another thirty minutes. In the aftermath, she looked at what was left and advised Eric to pack the extra food so he and Emily could eat like kings for a week while they sorted out their NYC culinary bearings.

Outside the entrance, she joined Juliana Vaughan in George's dark Range Rover. The Dame of the Met was asleep within the minute, leaving her and George to quietly review the minutes of the day, just to stave off the silence. NYC. The Vaughan House. Exhausted as she should be, Eppie was not. Her [Stamina] was sitting pretty at [34/35], so she retreated to her private library, desecrating the heirloom cushions with her theatre top and cheap cotton shorts.

The Upper Library wasn't the main library, yet it was filled with what Eppie presumed to be rare, collectable books, with walls of built-in shelving, a rolling ladder, and two generous reading desks with jade glass shades. She was mid-browse through books with names and authors she had never seen before when Vaughan entered, trailed by George with hot cocoa steaming on a tea-light cosy and two hug-mugs.

Her not-mentor bade George " goodnight", sat herself down beside Eppie, and poured her a rich cup of what turned out to be white chocolate chai, because they'd both still like to sleep after their conversation.

"Euphemia," Vaughan's tone gave her pause. It was not an endearing tone. Neither was it hostile. The hypothesis her [Perfect Pitch] arrived at was… interrogation.

"It might be presumptuous of me to ask, but could you sing me Wayfaring Stranger again?" Vaughan's demand caught Eppie off guard, and yet, it was in no way strange. From the [System] notification, she knew that her version already had [Causality] in this world, meaning Vaughan likely knew a different version with different lyrics and origins.

"Of course," Eppie sipped the chai, allowed the warm, milky liquid to envelop her throat, then stood by the book rail with a hand against the wood, and another between her ribs. The first line went out low, sombre and reedy, a girl's voice in a room built for whispers. I am a poor wayfaring stranger, While travelling through this world of woe, there's no sickness, toil, nor danger, In that bright world to which I go Then [El Duende] came.

Death, in the metaphysical, meta-musical sense, did not flood her as it had in the church. It instead seeped through the plush carpet, climbed the floor-to-ceiling dark, found the gaps between the spines, curled into the nooks the brass lamps could not reach, and came back with memories she could not possess. Dust turned slowly in the lamplight, stirred by a young girl's voice. [Perfect Pitch] set every note exactly where it belonged. I'm going there to see my Father, I'm going there no more to roam.

I'm only going over Jordan, I'm only going over home. I know dark clouds will gather round me, I know my way is rough and steep; Yet beauteous fields lie just before me, Where God's redeemed their vigils keep. I'm going there to see my mother, She said she'd meet me when I come, I'm only going over Jordan, I'm only going over home. Juliana Vaughan's eyes turned upward. Eppie followed her gaze. Near the central arch of the vaulted ceiling, she saw it.

A portrait of Vaughan, nineteen, maybe younger, in a lecture hall, standing beside a man in his forties, done in the style of the Flemish masters. + Karmic Causality Her song continued. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I'll soon be freed from every trial, My body sleep in the church yard, I'll drop the cross of self-denial, And enter on my great reward, I'm going there to see my classmates, Who've gone before me one by one, I'm only going over Jordan, I'm only going over home. I want to wear a crown of glory, When I get home to that good land, I want to shout salvation's story, In concert with the blood-washed band.

I'm going there to see my Saviour, To sing His praise forever more, I'm only going over Jordan, I'm only going over home. The last note did not stop so much as exhale, travelling up through the library, along the fifth-floor dark, filling the attic. The house soaked itself in the sound and gave its applause in solemnity. + Karmic Causality Vaughan wiped away a wayward tear.

"James would have loved that. He would have loved you like our own." Eppie chose silence. She was neither good with grief nor compassion, and she couldn't placate Vaughan like Valorie or William by saying "It wasn't your fault."

"How interesting that it's missing a verse, and the details are a little different. Classmates I had not expected at all, but it's a good change…" She pursed her lips in thought. When she looked up, she was back to her old self.

"Now that Kiritani-sensei is in the pure land, and the proper matters of his funeral are concluded…" Vaughan's eyes made her shiver, for they reminded her very much of Lana's old self presiding over a board meeting.

"I find myself willing to talk about money again." Eppie swallowed her chai. Vaughan smiled.

"I say that James would have loved you, because you seem to have the same disdain for money that he does, and yet…" The Dame turned her cup.

"That said… James came from unfathomable wealth. Generations of it. Properties that are now landmarks, stocks that formed the foundation of our modern conglomerates. He felt, acutely, the burdens of Noblesse Oblige —but you…" Vaughan sighed.

"Is five million too little, or too crass? What's your breaking point, Eppie?" My breaking point is when profit exceeds good—whatever the hell that means.

"There is none. I am…" she pondered the truth and decided to tell it.

"I am existentially unable to profit when there is artistic good to be disseminated." Vaughan's mug came down harder than Eppie expected. The chai jumped over the rim and went onto the saucer. Eppie jumped with it. For Vaughan, this was about as intense a demonstration of displeasure as she was willing to display.

"Euphemia Fontaine. I might only be the Chief Curator of an Arts Museum," Vaughan said coldly.

"But I am not so unobservant as you think. You've been leaving me breadcrumbs for two weeks now, kitty cat. Did you think I would not notice your hints between your Shakespeare in the Park and your mentions of this Martin boy being traded like chattel?" It took Eppie actual [Causality] through the [Facial Landscape] to keep herself composed.

"Cat caught your tongue?" Vaughan smirked at her own joke.

"Sorry…" Eppie knew the jig was up the second she flinched. She'd been caught red-handed like Puss sans his boots.

"If you're truly sorry, tell me what's on your mind," Lady Vaughan cautioned with kindness, replacing the cup and saucer on the tray, wincing that it took heirloom china to crack Eppie open.

"We're not teacher and student; we're partners. Kiritani-sensei made sure of that. So tell me, partner, what's eating you."

"Would you believe me if I told you that your 2. 9 billion will soon be 2. 1 billion, maybe lower?" Her not-mentor stared.

"Would you… believe me if I told you the Met will have to make admission mandatory? That your 63 per cent visitor contributions would fall to 17? That the admission contributions would, in the coming decade, cover less than 20 per cent of the operating budget?" Her not-mentor's face paled.

"And… that the Met would one day take payments, in the multi-millions, from tech-oligarchs, not as unconditional contributions, but as unspoken curation directions? That the Met Gala would pander to the 0. 1 per cent, and not the other way around?"

"This is…" Vaughan was obviously thinking that she was insane.

"Not very likely." Yeah, because the Met's endowment is at its peak, right NOW. That's it. But that's the god damn end of it, until I came in and bought the usage rights to every god damn artistic article for 1. 3 billion dollars. Our partner companies chopped up books the curators did not know still existed in the vaults and fed them like candy to the LLMs. The stock price soared… It took Vaughan about a minute to shake herself from the dystopia Eppie envisioned.

For someone like Vaughan, what she had done to the Met was anathema. It was an indication that Juliana Vaughan had squandered James' dream. Lana was proof that, in the end, finance won over art, and humanity itself was made subordinate to capital, that the invisible hand of plutocracy had mugged Lady Liberty in the park and dragged her into the bushes.

"There will be a recession."

"How?" Vaughan asked.

"Homes," Eppie said.

"The banks have been cooking their bond books. For six years, they lent money to people who were never going to pay it back, on the theory that the house would appreciate faster than the debt would." She left her seat and took a great stack of books from the library. Then, she made a Jenga Tower composed of volumes of human knowledge. Vaughan's eyes widened at the enormous folios being stacked, one-handed, for the sake of a metaphor. The top volume was gold-foiled.

"The investment banks—Lehman, Bear, Merrill—then sliced these loans and repackaged them as bonds. AAA, because the rating agencies were paid by the people selling them, and everyone bought them. Banks. Pension funds. Norway. Universities. Museums…" Eppie pointed to the ancient volumes at the bottom of the pile.

"These are dead loans now. Housing prices stopped rising a year ago." She pointed to the top.

"Still AAA. These loans are good." She stretched her arms over the whole stack.

"But this is the package. When this goes, and we realise it's all trash from the bottom up, no bank will lend to another bank. The entire scheme collapses, because no one knows who is solvent. Paralysis leads to collapse." For dramatic effect, she pushed the metre-high stack over. The enormously heavy books made a great crash as they fell from the table onto the floor. Vaughan winced.

"The Met's endowment does not hold a single subprime bond. Yet, it will not matter. You are in equities and in funds you cannot exit inside a year. Those funds will be haemorrhaging capital, forced to sell into the fall. There's no credit to borrow. The banks themselves won't survive this…" Eppie picked up the books. She took from the library expensive-looking gold-leaf volumes and piled them together once more.

"Unless there's a bailout. Unless… the government itself becomes the guarantee." Eppie waited.

"Lehman, September, is my guess. If you know any trustworthy quants, run the math."

"I see. So it all hinges on banks that are too big to fail," Vaughan said at last, not sharply, precisely.

"And how do you… know this? So precisely?"

"The same way I know my songs," Eppie delivered her most mischievous, cat-like expression, the kind that said, ask not why a cat knocks your cup off the cupboard.

"Why my Wayfaring Stranger is missing a verse." Vaughan considered this for longer than Eppie was entirely comfortable with." Tomorrow," she said.

"I will have the Roman Inquisition here to interrogate that brain of yours. Depending on your answer, you may be put into a barrel and sent to sea, and should you survive, we'll see how you fare with fire." Eppie froze. Surely, Vaughan isn't serious.

"Will you…" Eppie gulped. She probably could survive a fire, given enough [Causality]. What would come next? Medical dissection?

"Will you listen? I don't know anyone else with the money and liquidity to make a difference. If you're able to get out from under this—if the Met is able to staunch its losses—buy T-Bills, for example, then it will be able to keep its doors open, for free, for everyone, forever."

"And my money?" Vaughan looked amused.

"If I was to take advantage of your prophecy?"

"The profits can be… a fund," Eppie said without missing a beat.

"A charity to supplement the artists who will soon lose their jobs, their homes, their passions, to the actions of the gamblers. We… you can build a theatre with that money. A place. Something that doesn't answer to a rating agency, or a board, or anybody's quarterly numbers… call it… an Ark, an Ark that is capital gains tax claimable." Vaughan looked at the tower of gold leaf books.

"I will think on this," she said at last, then smiled mysteriously.

"Let's finish the chai. Do return the books to their places. George's back isn't what it used to be." Eppie nodded. She picked up the pile and returned them one by one to their usual resting places. Mid restoration, she caught Vaughan weighing one of the books with one hand. Her not-mentor was staring at her, as if marvelling at a miracle. + Karmic Causality Well… Finance is kinda my thing… Eppie gloated.

It took another ten seconds for Eppie to suddenly realise that it wasn't her financial insight that was making Vaughan consider calling upon the Roman Inquisition. The enormous, leather-bound hardcovers she was holding were easily between four and eight kilograms each. And she was moving them four to five at a time, one-handed, balanced on her stick-thin wrist while sliding up and down the ladder without apparent effort. Vaughan finished her chai. The Matron of the Met now looked very, very serious.