Maybe I couldn't save the U.S., but I was damned well going to get my daughter through school. With fear and trembling I started calling banks. Naturally I spread the action around town, BS'ing a lot of currency traders and bank FOREX (foreign exchange) departments in the process. I'd buy some pounds sterling, then . . . by the way, long as we're on the phone, Mort, I think I might need a few million yen in, oh, say about a month. Why don't we just save time and write some contracts now? Besides, bird in the hand, you know. Then I'd take those pounds I'd just acquired and use them to buy several million deutsche-mark forwards from the next dealer I knew.
How much did I go out, total? Remember, currency forwards run around a penny on the dollar, so I effectively "sold" something like ten million greenbacks, deliverable in one month, when I figured they'd be worth . . . it was hard even to imagine. Most likely zilch. Since I was flying blind. Amy's college fund bought everything. You name it, I went long. She ended up owning futures on Swiss francs, German marks, yen, lira, pounds sterling, Canadian dollars, even French francs. I was actually tempted, briefly, by the peso (well, she loved her trip to Mexico last summer), a sentimental gesture I sternly resisted.
By the time I'd finished it was four forty-five, meaning my new, ninth-grade owner of a United Nations basket of foreign currencies had just arrived home from her West Side private school. She always charged in at four-thirty. I called Joanna and asked to speak to my daughter. Jo's response to the sound of my voice was only slightly less fulsome than Donna Austen's. Finally Amy appeared at my ear.
"Dad, how come you're calling on the downstairs phone? You're supposed to always use the one in my room. Mom hates it when—"
"Sweetie, that line is in constant and uninterrupted engagement between the hours of four thirty-one and eight- fifteen. It's never possible to reach you there at this time."
"Okay, so what's up?"
"Nothing much. How about if you and I caught up on things a bit? What do you say to dinner tonight? Just the two of us? We might even consider a real grown-up meal for a change, no alfalfa sprouts."
"Where?" She was immediately on guard. What if she ended up confronted with a red-tinged steak, sliced off one of the living mammals of the earth?
"Anywhere. Someplace you've always wanted to go. My treat."
"Wow! Anywhere?"