Economic instability and intervention: a crux of politics, an inflection point of belief.
When markets turn unstable, when do you intervene? High unpredictability, erratic price swings, correlation breakdown, exogenous shocks. The Friedmanites would say, let the markets go where they will, and intervention is disastrous life support. It’s exactly what Lili would argue against in classrooms, in essays, at undergrad parties. The blindness of neoclassical economics, constantly insisting that markets will stabilize naturally, that state intervention is pointless—even harmful—that economic violence is not their problem. Always a resounding yes from them to the question: Are markets self-correcting entities?
Now, though, she wants to believe it—that a stumble will right itself; that intervention is not needed; that it is possible to recover from the worst mistakes; and that mistakes don’t alter the amount of happiness you could have, just change its content, its texture, its quality, but not necessarily the people you would have had it with—
Another loud splash. “Jesus Christ,” Amina shrieks across the water, “do notgrab my foot, Greene, I will fucking drown you!”
Regardless of one’s stance on intervention, one view is clear in modern economics—that markets do not return to previous highs, they only move forward. To new lows, new heights; blind and forceful.
But still, she is looking back. Measuring her days in the stretch between past landmarks.
It’s been almost two weeks since he last called her.
She’s taken to leaving her phone in her room. It was dead when she checked that morning; Amina and James have been the ones sending updates and photos to the group chat.
A few nights ago, she’d overheard Amina on the phone with Jackie. While Lili was swimming in the pool at dusk, she’d caught the faint sounds of it, one-sided conversation.
I don’t know.A sigh from upstairs, falling into the gardens below.She doesn’t want to talk, and I don’t want to push her... I mean, Jackie, do you really think? No, she seems—numb.
Numb. She wishes she was numb.
She wishes she was numb, and invisible; not able to cause any more harm.
Instead, under the fragile protective shell she’s trying to maintain, she feels vulnerable, exposed; a wound learning to live with itself. Surrounded by salt water, the rush of open air and the sky above her, the oncoming evening, in a few hours, and beyond that, the days and nights and days to come.
There’s vertigo in that.
A gleam flashes in her periphery: her bracelet. It catches the bounce of sunshine off the water. Something of hers he touched once, the thin gold chain resting at the hollow of her wrist.
You look stunning, that simple, sudden compliment before the gala—and then, his confusion but with a smile.And you smell wonderful, brushing his lips against the sensitive skin of her inner wrist.
Under her bracelet now, she rubs a flake of skin. Her sunburn that will fade to a tan. Eventually, she’ll have a body he hasn’t touched.
Almost two weeks. This is nearly the longest she’s gone without him, since before him.
It feels like yesterday. It feels like months ago.
The weight of his laughter, the sound of his voice: These things aren’t supposed to fade, this fast. And too—fumbled words she might have said, in the gardens in Paris. Things she thought—she thought, for one stupid moment—that she’d be able to—that she had wanted to—
Ask for forgiveness, but more than that: to apologize.
To say, simply:I am sorry.
I am so incredibly fucking sorry.
Lili breathes. An inhale, exhale. Air filling her lungs, oxygen into her blood; biology that proceeds without her intention, indifferent days thatwill continue to run through her fingers. The miracle of living that feels like a burden, her body a thing she carries.
She shuts her eyes.
He is not here, and he is not hers.
At what point does loss become unfathomable?
At what point is grief indigestible?
They get an early dinner in town, in Cassis. Sun-sated, with their skin still warm from hours on the boat, they find a restaurant near the harbor. Fresh fish, dining on the streets. Watching foot traffic, Lili taps her cigarette into the ashtray. Amina frowns.
“You’ve been smoking a fair bit,” she comments.
