Stock Phoenix

Stock Phoenix

The cascade of hats soaring through the air, tassels fluttering in the breeze, accompanied with loud shouts of jubilation filled my heart with a new found sense of freedom. Finally, a whole new life set before me with all the promises of greatness. I turned to my right as I felt a strong hand pull my shoulder swiveling me around until I was facing a man of equal height and stature to my own, but with blonder hair and much more piercing, blue eyes. “We’re finally free buddy!” Nathan exclaimed. “You ready to go to dinner with our parents and Adriana?” he asked. “Yeah, just give me a sec,” I said as I started to search for my estranged hat and tassel.
As we sat at the dinner table with both of our families, I glanced at the brunette with the perfect figure and glowing skin grasping Nathan’s hand, the large rock on her finger glistening in the candlelight. I couldn’t help the fountain of envy that boiled up inside of me as I saw the way she looked at my best friend; her eyes brimming with love and pride staring at his golden locks. Nathan lightly tapped his glass with his knife to signal a speech about to be made. After a long notification of his thanks for all the love and support over the years, he finished with saying, “After these amazing four years at Stanford, I can’t imagine a better way to start my life than to open a stock portfolio with all of the generous gifts of cash I have received. Ryan,” he said as he pointed in my direction, “has decided to mimic my endeavors and I wish him all the best. Now;” he paused as he raised his campaign flute high in the air, “to the beginning of the rest of our lives,” he finished. Our glasses splintered the soft light as they were raised high in a toast before the “tink” of crystal meeting crystal filled the room.

“Sir,” I faintly heard the voice of my new butler say through the cloud of my dreams. “Sir, you told me to wake you at 6am to take Mister Nathaniel Scott’s to the airport,” said the soothing voice.
“Thank you Bernard,” came my voice muffled by the down pillows enveloping me in sleep. I dragged my aching muscles out of my king size bed and groggily looked around my gargantuan apartment. I couldn’t believe that in the six weeks since graduation my stock portfolio had almost tripled, and tried not to think about the misfortunes that had befallen Nathaniel in his endeavors as I slipped on my Corneliani suit. I stopped by Nathan’s apartment to him pick up along with his fiancée, Adriana, in my flame red Ferrari.
As we approached the line to pass security, Nathan pulled Adriana aside for one last goodbye. I accidentally overheard their broken conversation…
“Nathan, please- don’t go…” said Adriana in her musical British accent before Nathan interrupted her,
“You know I have to. I have nothing left. At least I will have a steady job this way rather than relying on luck, right?”
“Please…” Adriana gasped through a steady stream of tears.
“This is the only way we can have a real life together. Just one year- that’s it. Just- promise you will wait for me? Promise,” said Nathan with a hushed, pleading air.
Adriana looked deep into his ocean colored eyes before slowly nodding her head with a barely audible, “I promise.” That boiling spring of jealousy started to bubble inside me as they embraced and kissed for several minutes.
The two walked towards me, and I turned my head as if I had not been watching this passionate scene before Nathan nudged Adriana into my arms.
“Take good care of her, Ryan,” he told me.
“You can count on me to do just that,” I said before giving him a quick hug. “Don’t forget to keep in touch,” I said in almost a mocking tone, as Nathan rarely forgot to do anything important. I remember the scent of fresh rose blossoms filling my senses as Adriana’s head plopped on my shoulder, our arms waving farewell to her lover and my close friend.
The air seemed to be unusually damp as I drove Adriana home. As we sat parked in front of her driveway, she paused and looked up at me with those beautiful hazel eyes saying, “I can’t believe he’s gone. What am I going to do for a whole year while he looks for a job?”
“Don’t worry, Adriana,” I said in the most soothing tone I could muster. “Look, if you ever need anything at all, don’t hesitate to call, ok? I can always find time for my best friend’s girl,” I said as a warm smile spread across my face.
She flung her thin arms around my neck with a soft, “Thanks, Ryan. You’re the best,” before the passenger door opened and shut with a crisp “click.”

Over the next couple months, Adriana called me to get together multiple times. We would always rush to the country club to play a couple rounds of golf, or take a cruise in my catamaran as she would tell me about her days, dank with the memory of her fiancée, who seemed to be calling less and less. I always marveled at how Nathan could abandon such an amazingly charismatic woman and start to even refuse to talk to her. Was work really that important that he had to shut out the love of his life, trying to focus?
This thought was floating through my dreams before a shrill ringing woke me. I looked at the clock only to see that it was 2:16am. Who on Earth could be calling me this late? I thought angrily as I picked up the receiver. “Hello?” I said in a dazed voice. My senses snapped into clearer focus as I heard heaving sobs on the other end of the phone. “Hello? Adriana? Is that you?” my voice was becoming more panicked by the second. What did he do to her this time? What could have possibly happened?
Her feeble voice said, “I’m pregnant. Ryan I can’t take this anymore.”
My mind was now running at 500 miles per hour. “Hold on, what? Are you sure?”
“Yes I’m sure. I have been for the past month and a half,” she said, almost maniacally.
“Does Nathan know?” I asked, scared of the answer.
“I have no idea. His phone number doesn’t work, his e-mail has changed and I have no idea why he hasn’t responded to any of the snail mail I have sent him,” her voice was becoming more mangled through the receiver with every word.
“Okay, just calm down. I’m sure there’s an explanation for this…” I said, trying to calm myself more than I was Adriana.
“There’s no one I can turn to Ryan. No one. My parents won’t understand, Nathan’s gone. None of my friends would have any sympathy or offerings of support. Please, I just… I just…” Adriana was now crying so hard that her tears overpowered her determination to speak.
“Well, you have me,” I said in an attempt to salvage the situation. “Look, if Nathan isn’t going to have the balls to take care of you then I will.” I took a deep breath and contemplated if I was perhaps going insane before saying, “If nothing else, you and I could get married. Your parents have taken quite a liking to me and I would take care of you and your child as if it were my own.”
There was a slight pause as Adriana gathered her thoughts before saying, “Oh Ryan, you would do that for me? I mean, I know technically I could get it ‘taken care of,’ but I just couldn’t deal with that if I had another way out,” her voice rang with a renewed sense of hope.
I couldn’t believe that my ludicrous idea had actually resonated with Adriana in a positive way, but managed to say, “Of course. We’ve always been close right? And, if you want, we could go down to the courthouse tomorrow afternoon and have a private little ceremony before you get too far along.”
Adriana took what felt like an eternity to respond, “That sounds… respectable. I can’t even believe how good you are to me, Ryan. That you would dedicate the whole rest of you life to me because of my stupid mistake…”
Her voice trailed off until mine took its place, “To tell you the truth, Adriana, you have always had my heart. Always,” I said before placing the phone back in its home. The next day, we headed down to that house of law, her in a beaming white sundress, me in my finest Gucci tuxedo, and vowed to never forsake each other.
Another four months passed, and as her belly started to grow, so did our affections for each other. We took thousands of pictures and played Mozart through Bose headphones into her abdomen. Countless trips to the park and the glow that emanated from her skin will forever be engrained in my memory. But that Sunday morning I knew something was wrong even before I got the call. My cell phone started playing Fur Elise before I clicked it open to hear a panicked Bernard say, “She’s fallen sir. They are rushing her to the hospital now. It doesn’t look good sir. There was a lot of blood.”
At the word blood I literally jumped into action and drove to the hospital in such a hurry that it was a miracle no one got hurt in the process. I saw her haggard face as I approached the room, and knew right then, before the doctor explained the medical details, that the light of our lives was gone.
“We did everything we could, Ryan. I’m so sorry, but at least Adriana is ok,” came the distant voice of the physician. She’s not ok, I thought. She won’t ever be ok. Not after losing her baby girl… What are we going to do…? I tried to quiet my thoughts as I walked towards her and kissed her forehead that was still damp with sweat. Her eyes were staring at the wall in front of her, glazed over as if she had been turned into the living dead.

The next few months floated by in almost complete and utter silence between us. I think it took Adriana at least a good three weeks before she spoke to anyone at all, and about ten before she uttered anything but hello and goodbye to me. As our conversations finally started to blossom again, our finances started to dwindle from the large payoffs that I was used to receiving from playing the stock market. About six months after the miscarriage, I was sorting through a bunch of old bills until some dropped to the floor, making a horrible mess. A little disgruntled, I picked up the dried tree pulp scarred with money figures and was about to forcefully throw them in the recycle bin, before a certain magenta note already lying in the bin with the name, Nathan, hastily scribbled onto it caught my eye. I let the papers in my hands float to the floor again as I picked up the pink note that had an address accompanying the very familiar name I had just rediscovered. As if in a trance, I looked up the apartment complex and drove to the spot that I suspected I would find my old friend to give him a piece of my mind.
I wended my way up three flights of stairs before finally reaching a red door marked with the numbers that matched the note; 365. My fist stopped in mid-air as I heard moans emanating from behind the wooden gateway. My mind started to race before my fist then made forceful collisions with the wood in front of me. I pressed my ear against the smooth oak to hear whispers and scuffling, but no answer. I figured there was only one other way to find out what was behind this door, so I lifted my right leg and kicked the wood harder than I had ever kicked in my entire life. The sound of splintering wood resounded through the apartment before I coolly made my way into the bedroom filled with red and white satin.
An older, blonder version of my old friend popped out from underneath the sheets before letting out a girlish squeal and saying, “Oh my God, Ryan…”
As soon as Nathan said my name, I saw the chocolate tresses that belonged to my Adriana also spring from beneath the sheets, as a gopher popping out of its hole in one of those horrible carnival games. I slowly walked towards the two people who had so deeply betrayed me with a sense of wrath like I had never felt before.
“Adriana, go home,” I said in such a restrained and deep tone of rage that I have not been able to duplicate since.
“But…” she started to say before my voice now boomed and echoed throughout the apartment,
“GO HOME. I will deal with you later.” Adriana grabbed one of the satin sheets as if to shield herself from the livid man I had become, before scurrying over to scoop up her clothes and run out of the room, as I noticed a shocked and confused look spread across Nathan’s face. I now turned to the man I had been careening in hatred against for all these months.

“Ryan- what’s gotten into you? Why are you here?”
“What do you think- huh? That you can just disappear off the face of the planet and come prancing back here to claim your prize? Do you have any idea how much pain you have caused us?”
“What? What are you talking about?” I felt the blood boil in my veins as those words were uttered from his mouth.
“Oh, don’t play dumb with me. Why are you trying to steal my wife from me? What did I ever do to you to deserve this kind of betrayal?”
I saw a look of realization flash across his face before it began to turn a nasty shade of crimson as he shouted, “Betrayal? BETRAYAL?! How do you think I feel finding out that my best friend took advantage of my fiancée not even two months after I left. What the hell? I knew you always liked her, but to take advantage of her like that? How could you do that Ryan?”
“I wouldn’t have had to marry her if you had just gotten your ass back here when she found out she was pregnant with your daughter, you fucking bastard. You abandoned her when she needed you the most. I was just here to pick up the pieces of a life that you shattered.”
The last words that spurted from my mouth hung in the dead silence that followed. Nathan’s face started to fade into a rosy pink as the air returned to his lungs in large gasps. “She was pregnant?” He managed to say through the thousands of thoughts I could see running through his brain. “She was pregnant…” he whispered as the countless thoughts whirling through his head came to a halting stop. “So where is she?” Nathan asked with a tone of bewilderment.
“Who?” I asked.
“My baby girl. Where is she?” he said, now sounding more resolute.
“Adriana lost the baby. We lost the baby.”
With these words Nathan crumpled to the floor, his head resting in his hands. Earthquakes surged through his body as he shook with lurching sobs. I softly walked towards him and squatted next to him before whispering in his ear, “You told me to take care of her, and that’s all I have ever done, Nathan. I’m so sorry that it turned out like this. Just tell me why. Why did you stop responding to her pleas? What in God’s name was important enough to leave her stranded and alone?”
Nathan raised his head until my green eyes met his icy blue stare. “It was because of my training. I couldn’t let anyone know where I was or what I was doing. They moved us around so much we never had a permanent address anyway…”
Since I was almost positive that he had snapped and just started babbling, I grabbed a hold of his shoulders and gently shook him until he stopped talking. “What training? What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I can’t…”
I shook him once more, this time more violently before saying, “Just tell me Nathan or I swear to God…”
His voice shook with panic as he confessed, “Okay, okay… look you aren’t going to believe me, but—I got a job as an undercover operative for the CIA. Not a bank, like I told Adriana and everyone else.”
I laughed in such a frigid and fanatical manner that it made Nathan’s face harden into an arctic glare as he stood with the swiftness of a fox.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” he said with a tenor of unmatchable composure compared to the blubbering puddle he had been two seconds ago. He turned to a drawer next to him, flung it open and drew out a black leather case before ferociously flipping it open, revealing an ID card labeled with Nathaniel Scott, CIA across the top. He flipped it shut after I had gotten a good look and stormed out of the room without even a second glance at my gaping mouth.

As I stood on the rickety pier, staring out at the waves of the ocean crashing against the shore, I reflected on that day that had unfolded about a month ago. I felt Nathan’s hand on my shoulder and his usual cool voice say, “It’s done. She’s all set to be on her own for a while before she gets up on her own two feet. You did a good thing, Ryan.” I gave a soft nod before he added in a slightly more brisk tone, “Come on, we have to get going. The director will be pissed if we’re late again.” I gave one last glance at the orange and yellow the sun’s playful rays had painted onto the clouds as it rose from its slumber before I cast the shining circular symbol of bondage to Adriana into the crashing waves and slipping into Nathan’s black Beamer. We looked each other square in the eye before unsheathing our sunglasses and saying, “From ashes to glory.”