The Clout of Gen Read online

  The Clout of Gen

  By Ahmad Ardalan

  Copyright 2012 Ahmad Ardalan

  All characters’ names adapted in this story are fictional.

  Chapter 1

  Waking up to that awful sound of his two-dollar alarm clock, John felt frail and depressed again. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep for months, and that continuous nagging from Susan had really taken its toll. Her voice kept playing over and over in his head—all her talk about needing more money for the house, her ongoing criticism about her husband getting nowhere at work, and her wasted dreams. That was all the woman could talk about, it seemed, and John had to wonder, Is any of this worth it?

  Things had really changed since they’d first met. They’d been introduced eight years prior, at a fundraiser John was covering for his paper. Susan was a nice-looking lady, the type any man would want to settle down with. She had an innocent smile, reddish cheeks, and curly brown hair, all of which gave her a cute appearance. She was a few years younger than John, the daughter of a war veteran and a pharmacist, and she had been brought up in a lovely home.

  Unfortunately, for all of her good attributes, Susan had an attitude problem. One moment, John wished he could spend every moment holding her hand, but the next, he regretted ever meeting her in the first place.

  After the fundraising event, John and Susan started dating. Things took off from there, and two years later, they married. The following year, their son Adam was born, and since then, it had been a downhill slalom. As time passed, her animosity began to reveal itself. She was continuously discontent, and her interests had changed significantly. Socially, the couple just didn’t click anymore, and the hard life of being married with limited resources had spoiled the relationship of the once-close family.

  John tried his best to make his wife happy, but all his efforts were in vain. His marriage was utterly dreadful because of her, and if it wasn’t for Adam, he would have left her without giving it a second thought.

  After a quick shower, John left the house without even bothering to say goodbye, as he figured there was no point. After a quick stop at the newspaper office, he was off to cover a new story. He had worked for the same paper for over ten years, since he was 23, and he’d covered over three hundred and fifty stories during that decade of journalism.

  At first, he seemed to have a bright future ahead of him. Within his first year at the paper, one of his stories made a real impact, and that gave his career a quick boost right off the bat. A few other successes followed, but then things began to fade and dwindle, and it seemed as though John had somehow lost his spark. He never reached the level of success he had hoped for, and most of the stories he wrote after that first stellar one struggled to leave a mark. As the years went by, he became just another man doing his job at an adequate and tolerable level—an unremarkable cog in the wheel.

  The story he had to cover now was another one of those “reality fairytales,” as he used to call them: An ordinary person barely scraping by under the poverty level had managed to go from rags to riches. Another person had made a risky business move that served well in the end, jolting that person to instant millionaire status in the hardest of economic times, arguably during one of the worst financial crises of our modern history. Despite the fact that John had to cover such stories, they seldom impacted the reporter at all. In fact, he never understood why anyone would want to read them, why they had any sort of following, or why people always seemed interested in such “news.” Why do we care about an average stranger doing something special? he wondered. In some way, it revealed how desperate most people were, living vicariously through the successes and joyous moments that belonged to others.

  This particular story turned out to be about Vesselin Lechkov’s mother. Mrs. Lechkov had a broader vision than others when it came to medical insurance companies. An American of Bulgarian origin, the struggling mother decided to invest a meager $600 back in 1972. Shortly thereafter, around ten years ago, she suffered a car accident and as a result, lost her memory. During that time, no one was aware of the stocks she had bought, and only after the old lady’s passing did Vesselin come across the holdings while clearing out his mother’s meager belongings. That $600 had grown over time and was now worth well over $560,000. Word got around, and now John was tasked with covering Vesselin’s story. Sadly, Vesselin wasn’t the hero of the story at all; he merely profited from the wise decision made by his mother, a woman who would never receive the recognition she deserved for the risk she took.

  A nice two-hour chat with the fellow at his home—a trailer, to be more accurate, the place where Vesselin, his wife, and their two kids had lived as long as he could remember—and several photos later, John was done. The awful, rainy weather didn’t inspire him to spend any more time there than necessary. His mood was still down in the dumps, and while a little sun would likely not have had him dancing around in the streets, anything was better than being soaked.

  Back at his office, John added the final touches and edits to his article and sent it along. For the first time ever, the story actually touched him somehow, he realized, and he grabbed his mug of stale coffee and began to browse the Web to find out more about it. With the world going downhill like this, maybe I need to do something like that old lady did, he reasoned. Maybe I should try to leave something for my son.

  Everything in life only seemed to be getting worse. The whole world seemed to be turning mad, and every person John encountered seemed to be hung up on talking about their struggles. Really, it was all about business: crisis this, crisis that; Euro down, gold down, oil up; governments being toppled; people faulting on house payments; unemployment running rampant. The crisis was becoming too much for everyone to bear, and John couldn’t help but feel sorry for everyone, himself included. It was all hitting home. John’s very own brother had already lost his home, and a good friend of his had been forced to cancel his health insurance. John, himself, wasn’t exactly living the “American dream,” but he took some comfort in knowing that at least his payments were on time—for now.

  The reality was that life was getting harder, and Susan’s negative attitude was just adding fuel to the fire. She seemed to blame him, as if he singlehandedly brought Wall Street to its knees and split the European Union; she just could not take the good things in life for granted or appreciate them without complaining about the bad things or the rough parts. Everyone is suffering, for God’s sake. Can’t she even grasp that she’s not the only one going through rough times? Does she really think the world is out to get her and that no one else is hurting? John often thought to himself.

  After spending an hour reading all kinds of reports about the economic downfall of mankind, John grabbed his coat and headed toward the Metro. He picked his son up from the nursery and returned home. One of the few things the dysfunctional couple did agree upon was that Susan would drop Adam off in the morning, and John would pick him up in the afternoon. John loved his child, but he had never thought he would become a father so quickly. It was a lot of pressure, but he seemed to manage it well. It was Susan who struggled to deal with it.

  Several hours passed before Susan returned home. She rambled on and on about her day and mentioned how nice Andrew, her boss, was for praising her work. Again, she bragged about what a fine motivator he was, repeating the same stuff over and over again.

  John had gotten used to it and was able to let her rattle on about it, but when she decided to turn the tables on him, accusing him of not working hard enough and his lack of progress in life, it just ticked him off. He had always loved her and been good to her, and he was doing his job, but nothing was ever enough. “The hell with this. I need to go to the bar before I’m gonna listen to this nonsense.”
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br />   That was his answer to the constant bickering, and he had been going to the bar around the corner very often lately. In the past year, he had spent more time there than he had at home. It wasn’t so much the alcohol he needed, but the company and the peace of mind. He needed someplace to cool off and ease his mind. The whole thing with Susan was annoying; he wasn’t happy at home, so the bar was his escape. He had begun drinking heavily, and though he didn’t think of himself as an alcoholic, he had to admit that he was drinking far more than he ever had in college.

  Once he ordered his beer, talked with the guys a bit, and played a round of pool, he decided to watch TV. Unfortunately, the only TV broadcasts were reports about how financially lost the world was. This time, it was some South American billionaire talking about how it was a great time to make money, claiming that hard times are the perfect opportunities to find fortune and that with the right bold moves, one might hit the jackpot, even in the face of so many huge obstacles.

  The encounter he’d had with the Bulgarian trailer park family earlier, coupled with his fight with Susan and the beer and the South American money guru talking about taking financial chances got John thinking that maybe it was time for him to make a bold move of his own. He reasoned that it might be exactly what he needed to do. “To hell with writing,” he mumbled into his frothy mug. “That paper’s getting me nowhere. Besides, maybe it’ll get Susan off my back.” He decided it was now or never. If that old woman did it, it can’t be that hard, right?

  John knew his only source of cash would be their savings account, around $24,000. Sitting there on that barstool, he decided he would simply withdraw the money, learn more about the market, and see if he could make it grow. It was as simple as that. Susan doesn’t even need to know about this, John told himself. She doesn’t even need to know how much I invest and where. I’ll just tell her it’s coming from the paper, and she’ll be none the wiser.

  John figured he could learn a lot from Al, an old friend who had made a decent living off the stock market. John and Al were old college buddies, and right from the start, it was easy to sense that Al’s dreams and goals had nothing to do with journalism. He was only in those classes to follow his parents’ desires, but his real passion was for the business world. He basically wasted his college years, but he eventually received his degree and moved on. Al started his career writing for the business section in one of the local magazines. From his direct contact with many businessmen, he quickly gained experience and learned how to maneuver his way through the business world. After two years, he finally left the magazine and started working on Wall Street. John felt rather safe and confident taking advice from an old buddy that he knew personally, one who had enjoyed some success.

  The next day John called Al, and the two met for lunch. From what Al said, the wealthy South American’s ideas were on the money, so to speak, because Al told John, “Yeah, even in this economy, you can hit it real big…or you might go down in flames. There is money to be made, but it’s risky.” Al asked John about his sudden interest in the markets, and John explained to his old friend that his job wasn’t helping much and that a recent story he’d covered had opened his eyes to the potential of risk-taking. “Stop by my office when you get off work,” Al said. “We’ll sit down, and I’ll explain how things work in the investment game, as much as I can, anyway.”

  Al got right down to business and offered to help John invest his money, but that was something John wanted to do on his own. He wanted to be involved directly, so Al taught him the easy way: He taught him about online trading and how to buy stocks on margins, something Al referred to as “the high-speed route to heaven or hell.” It didn’t require much money, and if John played his cards right, he would make a fortune, but he could also easily lose it all. “It’s a bit like gambling,” Al admitted, “so you just have to take it slow at first. You should practice with demo trading for at least a week and then go live when you have the confidence to dive in with real money.”

  As the days past, John finished his work at the paper as quickly as possible and hurried home to get on the Web to trace the stock market. Even Susan’s bad mood and yapping stopped bothering him, because he was immersed in his own little world. For the first time in a long time, he felt isolated from the stress his home brought. He decided not to tell Susan about his plans, as he was sure she would be as negative and critical as usual, one minute screaming at him for not doing anything and in the next, insulting everything he was trying to do. The best thing to do was to leave her out of it.

  Strangely, Susan didn’t seem to be talking as much as usual. She’d also been upgrading her looks, taking better care of herself, and wearing nicer clothes and more makeup and jewelry and fooling with her hair. John was happy to see it. Hey, it gets her off my back if she’s focusing on her looks—something she hasn’t bothered with for the past two or more years. Maybe she is getting back to be her own good self, he hoped.

  After four days on the demo money, John felt he had the tools and had learned enough. In his first five days, he’d made $3,200—more than what he could earn in two weeks of working at the paper. This is amazing! A month or two of this, and I’ll really prove my worth. Maybe then Susan might see that I am taking action. Maybe my whole marriage might be saved and we can at least start to work things out.

  With one eye on the political news and another on several companies’ financial reports, John carefully made his choices. His dreams were growing, and he was taking more chances. Ultimately, it proved to be fatal.

  Several reports seemed to indicate that Germany was the safest and strongest economy, so John felt his shares placed in German companies had reached their limit, and it was time to fish them out and make it, big time. As it turned out, German shares were not immune to the financial disasters taking shape in Europe. After just one week of big losses, poor John was on the ropes. The world was closing on him. He had withdrawn all of the savings he and Susan had acquired over the years. He had taken a chance and gambled away the family’s money, and he had little to show for it. By noon that day, his account had a mere $2,700 in it. He withdrew it and decided to leave the office early.

  He walked for an hour, trying to think of what he should do or say to Susan. He was in real trouble now, and nothing good had come from keeping it quiet. He’d hoped money would fall in his lap from his efforts and all would be good again, but now he realized that kind of thinking was much closer to a dream than a reality. I’m just…doomed, he worried.

  Finally, he decided to take a cab back home. When he got there, he noticed that one of the lights was on, and he assumed Susan had forgotten to turn it off in the morning. He opened the door and went to the kitchen to grab a beer to help him cope with the dreadful reality of his situation.

  He heard some noise upstairs. When he went upstairs to check on it, to his agony, he recognized sounds coming from his wife, growing louder by the second. He opened his bedroom door to the sight of Susan and the perfect Andrew in bed together—in his bed.

  Andrew immediately grew pale. He covered himself up and ran away, stuttering “Sorry! I’m so…sorry!”.

  John didn’t say a word. He simply took out a bag and started stuffing his wife’s things in it. Susan was crying and begging his forgiveness and understanding, but John remained mute. He didn’t utter a word, and honestly he didn’t even hear her; he was caught in a dreadful silence for several moments.

  Finally, after he had finished packing up her things, without making eye contact, John said, “You have five minutes to take whatever else you want and leave. Pick up your son from the nursery and never come back here again. And don’t even think about taking the car!”

  After fifteen minutes, it was all over. Susan was gone, so John sat down to have a drink. Beer wasn’t going to do the trick, so he took out his scotch whiskey and began drinking it straight from the bottle. All he could think about was how his world had changed over the years. He loved giving to charity. He helped people a lot
and was a good husband, but when money started to get tight, everything seemed to collapse around him.

  Maybe I am a loser, he thought. Maybe Susan is right, and my life is not even worth living. Seeing his wife in bed with another man was a traumatic event that insisted on playing over and over again in his head. In an instant, he jolted up from his seat and went to look for his gun that he had hidden in an old shoebox in the top drawer. Once he had the weapon in hand, he put three bullets in it. He stumbled to the bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror, and whispered two words: “Bye, Johnny.”

  And then, John pulled the trigger…but nothing happened.

  The gun was jammed, so he tried to fix it and then pulled the trigger again.

  Nothing.

  Finally, John threw the useless gun and began to cry, rivers of tears running down his cheeks as if he was just a little lost boy with a broken heart.

  After half an hour, he still couldn’t grasp the truth of all that had transpired in his miserable life. The noises of their lovemaking echoed in his ears, and he realized he could stay in the house no longer. He jumped in the car and drove off. He had no idea where he was going, but he knew he was heading toward insanity.

  Finally, after driving around to nowhere in a depressed and defeated haze, John saw it: a small parking area near a cliff, with a panoramic view of the sea, about forty-five kilometers north. It was perfect for tourists wanting to take photos, but that was not how John intended to use it. “If a gun can’t do the job, I’ll just throw myself over the edge,” he said aloud.