Trust

by Hernan Diaz

He became fascinated by the contortions of money—how it could be made to bend back upon itself to be force-fed its own body.

Benjamin barely knew downtown Manhattan—just enough to dislike its canyons of office buildings and its filthy narrow streets filled with prancing businessmen, busy displaying how busy they were.

These four cities are one and the same, New York. Although this is the capital of the future, its inhabitants are nostalgic by nature. Every generation has its own notion of “old New York” and claims to be its rightful heir. The result is, of course, a perpetual reinvention of the past. And this, in consequence, means there are always new old New Yorkers.

Later, over the years, both at work and in my personal life, I have had countless men repeat my ideas back to me as if they were theirs—as if I would not remember having come up with those thoughts in the first place. (It is possible that in some cases their vanity had eclipsed their memory so that, thanks to this selective amnesia, they could lay claim to their epiphany with a clean conscience.)