Stochastic Man Read Online Free

master of the stochastic arts and my vision is clearer than yours.
    Quinn said nothing to me then about running for higher office. As we returned to the party he simply remarked, “It’s too early for me to be setting up a staff. But when I do, I’ll want you. Haig will be in touch.”
    “What did you think of him?” Mardikian asked me five minutes later.
    “He’ll be mayor of New York City in 1998.”
    “And then?”
    “You want to know more, man, you get in touch with my office and make an appointment. Fifty an hour and I’ll give you the whole crystal-balling.”
    He jabbed my arm lightly and strode away laughing.
    Ten minutes after that I was sharing a pipe with the golden-haired lady named Autumn. Autumn Hawkes, she was, the much-hailed new Met soprano. Quickly we negotiated an agreement, eyes only, the silent language of the body, concerning the rest of the night. She told me she had come to the party with Victor Schott—gaunt gigantic youngish Prussian type in somber medal-studded military outfit—who was due to conduct her in Lulu that winter, but Schott had apparently arranged a deal to go home with Councilman Holbrecht, leaving Autumn to shift for herself. Autumn shifted. I was undeceived about her real preference, though, for I saw her looking hungrily at Paul Quinn far across the room, and her eyes glowed. Quinn was here on business: no woman could bag him. (No man either!) “I wonder if he sings,” Autumn said wistfully.
    “You’d like to try some duets with him?”
    “Isolde to his Tristan. Turandot to his Calaf. Aïda to his Radames.”
    “Salome to his Jokanaan?” I suggested.
    “Don’t tease.”
    “You admire his political ideas?”
    “I could, if I knew what they were.”
    I said, “He’s liberal and sane.”
    “Then I admire his political ideas. I also think he’s overpoweringly masculine and superbly beautiful.”
    “Politicians on the make are said to be inadequate lovers.”
    She shrugged. “Hearsay evidence never impresses me. I can look at a man—one glance will do—and know instantly whether he’s adequate.”
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “Save the compliments. Sometimes I’m wrong, of course,” she said, poisonously sweet “Not always, but sometimes.”
    “Sometimes I am, too.”
    “About women?”
    “About anything. I have second sight, you know. The future is an open book to me.”
    “You sound serious,” she said.
    “I am. It’s the way I earn my living. Projections.”
    “What do you see in my future?” she asked, half coy, half in earnest.
    “Immediate or long range?”
    “Either.”
    “Immediate,” I said, “a night of wild revelry and a peaceful morning stroll in a light drizzle. Long range, triumph upon triumph, fame, a villa in Majorca, two divorces, happiness late in life.”
    “Are you a Gypsy fortuneteller, then?”
    I shook my head. “Merely a stochastic technician, milady.”
    She glanced toward Quinn. “What do you see ahead for him?”
    “Him? He’s going to be President. At the very least.”
     
     

 
    7
     
     
    In the morning, when we strolled hand in hand through the misty wooded groves of Securtiy Channel Six, it was drizzling. A cheap triumph: I tune in weather reports like anyone else. Autumn went off to rehearse, summer ended, Sundara came home exhausted and happy from Oregon, new clients picked my mind for lavish fees, and life went on.
    There was no immediate follow-up to my meeting with Paul Quinn, but I hadn’t expected one. New York City’s political life was in wild flux just then. Only a few weeks before Sarkisian’s party a disgruntled jobseeker had approached Mayor Gottfried at a Liberal Party banquet and, removing the half-eaten grapefruit from the astounded mayor’s plate, had clapped a gram of Ascenseur, the new French political explosive, in its place. Exeunt His Honor, the assassin, four county chairmen, and a waiter, in one glorious boom. Which created a power vacuum in the city, for everyone had