that off at three-quarters,” he said. “The market’s already moved north of that.”
Karl looked up at the balcony where an attendant was turning the arm of the indicator.
“You really have to be alert,” Karl said.
Mallory looked past him. His arm flew up and in an instant he was writing again.
“By the time you see the market shift, it’s too late,” he said. “You always have to run ahead of the current.”
Hour after hour Karl studied Mallory. Then at the end of the day the older man had Karl attempt a trade. But before he could consummate it, a bell sounded.
“You’ll just have to wait till tomorrow to lose your virginity, sport,” Mallory said. “Do you want to have a drink? Or are you a temperance man like your uncle?”
Karl did not drink, but he did not want to say so. Mallory’s face had a glow that indicated he didn’t mind anyone knowing how he was inclined. They went to a stand-up place around the corner where Karl saw a dozen familiar faces in the mirror behind the bar, as expressionless as the bottles.
“Those are the bulls,” said Mallory. “They were counting on harvesting the fruits of their corner, but the price ended up within an eighth of where it started. They were expecting to get filthy rich, but they’ll get filthy drunk instead. Sir, bring us two Pilsners. The lad here has just spent his first day dealing grain.”
They had left their linen jackets behind, and Mallory in his suit looked as though he could work at the Fair. A bright yellow silk handkerchief stood out against his gray double-breasted jacket like a beacon in a gathering fog.
One beer led to another, and then a third. Karl savored the taste of the fields in it.
“Tomorrow you will make money, sport,” Mallory said with an expansive wave of his hand. “Or else you will lose it.”
He lifted his glass and Karl touched it with his. The beer was edgy, and the bubbles stung his nose.
“I don’t have much money to lose,” said Karl.
“Don’t you worry about that,” said Mallory. “The funds will be the firm’s, and I will be there to catch it if it starts sliding through your fingers.”
Later, when Karl got back to his room, he was exhausted but could not sleep. He blamed the muggy weather, what had happened to Luella, the bilious liquid backing up into his throat. At some point his head began to throb. The simple fact was that he could not wrest his mind from the swirling, addictive chaos of the trading floor.
The next day the opening bell approached, and Karl began to panic. Mallory wasn’t there. When he finally did arrive, he looked more than a little ill.
“I don’t imagine you went right home,” said Karl.
Mallory put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a box of matches with the silhouette of a can-can dancer and the name of a club.
“I guess I went there,” he said.
“What did your wife say?”
“I didn’t wake her up to find out,” said Mallory.
Just then a runner brought an order. Mallory nodded him toward Karl.
“As you can see,” Mallory explained to the runner, “I am a mite under the weather. My understudy here will be at the tiller.”
For the next several hours Karl felt as if he were fighting to keep from capsizing. At some point, though, he began to get the sense of the waters. He filled so many orders he lost count of how much corn had moved through his hands. When the closing bell sounded and the dial above the trading floor stopped moving, his whole body felt as if it might collapse.
“Well, sport,” said Mallory, “by my count you’ve made your uncle two thousand dollars richer.”
“Two thousand dollars,” said Karl.
“Now let’s go give ourselves a reward,” said Mallory.
This time Karl came a little closer to keeping up with his mentor at the bar, goaded on by a honky-tonk piano like nothing Karl had ever heard. Mallory wanted to take Karl to another place and introduce him to some can-can dancers, but Karl had a different idea.
He got his mentor into a carriage, then hailed one for himself. He did not know Luella’s address, so he offered to direct from up front.
“I’ve driven a lot of buggies,” he confided.
“Ay,” said the driver, “and I’ve driven a lot of drunks.”
Row after row of tenements lined the street, which teemed with vendors. The clamor was like an open-air version of the corn pit, if you could call the fetid air open. He tried to focus on individual buildings, but they were all a wobbly blur.
“Slow down, please,” he shouted. The driver grumbled but complied. This made Karl’s eyes somewhat more useful, but still he could not tell one tenement from another.
Suddenly a gang of street urchins surrounded the carriage, forcing it to come to a stop. Hands stretched out to Karl. Cries of “Mister! Mister! Mister!” Then he felt a hand reaching into the pocket of his coat. Somehow he found the agility to seize it.
The other boys scattered. A policeman across the way cast a wary eye in the direction of the scuffle, as if to determine who was assaulting whom. The boy wriggled and twisted, but Karl’s hand had not lost the strength of the forest.
“I’ll turn you over to that officer there,” he said, which set the boy off again. “Unless you can help me, that is.”
“Shit on that,” said the boy. “I don’t do the nasty for nobody.”
“Show me where Luella Grundy lives and I’ll let you go,” said Karl.
The boy looked at Karl with all the city’s dangerous knowledge in his twelve-year-old eyes.
“Gimme a nickel?” he said.
“If you stick with me until I see her,” Karl said.
“Hey, nothin’ doin’,” said the boy. “What if she ain’t there?”
“So what’ll it be, lad?” said Karl. “Me or the law?”
The boy squirmed again for a moment, then stopped. Karl helped him into the carriage.
“Where to now, mister?” said the driver.
“Wherever the boy says,” said Karl.
“Two blocks down, then a block north,” said the boy.
The driver snapped the horse into action. The policeman watched them pass—man and boy—and shook his head.
When they reached the place, Karl half recognized it, but in his present state he wasn’t sure. He held out the nickel to draw the boy up the front steps and into the vestibule.
“This
