“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“We could go somewhere else.”
“Only if you think we should,” she said.
“I don’t think any such thing,” he said.
The restaurant was lighted by candles, which gave the lacy expanses of the ladies’ white gowns an antique glaze. The menu came in French. He knew a few words from Abbeville, but they weren’t the words that described this fare, so he had to seek the waiter’s help.
“Why don’t I just bring you some sort of steak,” the waiter said.
“And some corn,” said Karl.
“Corn,” said the waiter. “Yes, of course.”
When the waiter had gone, Karl arranged the napkin in his lap and surveyed the array of implements before him, which seemed extensive enough to perform surgery. Luella said nothing.
“I don’t know why they say this is such a great place,” he said.
“You really don’t, do you,” Luella said. She reached over and took his hand where it lay next to a rank of spoons. “It’s because people like me don’t come here.”
They ate as quickly as they could and left. She gave her address to the carriage driver, who headed south and west into precincts of the city Karl had never traveled before. There were sweatshops and small restaurants and greengrocers and block upon block of three-story tenements. At some point he got a whiff of what smelled like the farm, and he wondered if they could already have reached the city’s outskirts. Soon it was stronger than any farm he had ever known.
“That’s the stockyards,” she said. “You get used to it.”
She leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.
“Here,” she said.
The carriage rolled to a stop. The horse twitched. Karl jumped down onto the rutted street and came around to help her, but by the time he got there she was already on the way to the rickety steps of her flat.
“I’m sorry,” Karl said.
“You didn’t know,” Luella said. “I should have.”
Through the window of the tenement across the street somebody was shouting in a language Karl had never heard.
“Will you be all right?”
She smiled, put her hand to his cheek, and gave him the slightest, sweetest kiss on the lips.
“Next time,” he said, “I’ll be smarter about where we go.”
“Next time,” she said, “you will be smarter about who you go with.”
“Don’t say that,” he said.
“I won’t have to,” she said. “Others will.”
In the morning his uncle called him into his office before Karl left for the Board of Trade and his maiden descent into the pits. Karl brought with him a small notebook in which to record his uncle’s instructions.
“You were with that girl Luella last night,” said Uncle John.
“Yes, sir,” Karl said.
“Did you have a good time?”
“She’s very nice.”
“Have you seen her here this morning?” said his uncle.
“I was a little worried,” said Karl.
“There is no place for sentiment in business,” his uncle said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know why you haven’t seen Luella?” his uncle asked.
“No, sir.”
“She has become much too familiar,” said Uncle John. “I had to let her go.”
“But I was the one who wanted for us to go out,” said Karl. “I am the one you should blame.”
“Business and sentiment, lad,” said his uncle. “You must keep them scrupulously separate. When you don’t, someone always gets hurt.”
Karl left his uncle’s office in a daze, contradictions colliding within him. An opportunity of a lifetime, brigaded by cruelty. The sweetness of the city’s freedom causing injustice and suffering. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, a newspaper hawker shouted the morning’s headline. Another bank had failed. The markets had been getting more and more jittery.
As soon as he reached the floor of the Board of Trade, the clamor and immediacy drove contradiction into retreat. On the trading floor everyone wore linen jackets, wheat green in color for the traders, who had numbered badges pinned to their lapels. Along the perimeter of what they called the pits the traders stood elbow to elbow in a line, like cornstalks at the edge of a field. A pit consisted of concentric risers ascending perhaps four feet on the outside and descending an equal distance toward the center. Each pit specialized in a single commodity—wheat, corn, rye, and so on—and each section was devoted to a specific month—July wheat, September corn, November rye. Every trader had his special place on the risers. Through sharp trading you might force a man into the poorhouse, but as long as he was in the pit you would never take his trading space.
Whenever a large order came in to buy or sell at whatever price the market would bear, a telegraph clerk slapped the order onto the counter, making a sharp noise like a starter’s gun. A runner snatched it and raced toward the pits. Woe betide anyone who got in the way.
As Karl donned his trader’s jacket and badge for the first time, the activity in the pit was so intense that at first he couldn’t even locate the man who was to train him. Rumor had it that Sampson & Sons was trying to construct a corner in September corn. This meant they were buying heavily in an effort to take control of the supply and then ruthlessly drive up the price. When the price reached a peak they hoped to sell out at enormous profits.
The noise was furious. Men shouted and flung fingers into one another’s faces. Karl found some daylight and moved through it. Behind him the crowd closed up again like water.
When he reached the top step, he finally spotted his man. Rather than go around and risk losing his target in the turbulence, Karl descended to the center of the maelstrom.
“Schumpeter & Co.!” he shouted. “Peter Mallory!”
His words were lost in the din.
Ducking outstretched arms, he reached the bottom. Down there the traders oriented themselves outward and upward, where the action was. As a result, the very center was empty and calm.
As he pushed upward again, the mob pushed back. Noise crashed over him.
“Well, there you are, sport,” said Mallory, who immediately caught something out of the corner of his eye, and, like a fisherman seeing the ring of a trout’s rise, wheeled and cast. The quarry was
