orders to accommodate a wave of sell orders. But not now.
'Mr. Ravich, afternoon, sir,' said McGellen. 'I've got about four hundred sell orders waiting for the market to open tomorrow.'
'What's the size?'
'Some small, just a few large. But they add up to much more than I'm holding.'
'Give me your numbers.'
'I've got new sell orders on three hundred thousand shares at prices from this afternoon's close of thirty-four all the way down to twenty-seven. As for very large buy orders, I have an old one for nine thousand shares at twenty-six.'
Charlie sighed. The company was often criticized for not having enough shares on the market, only sixteen million, making it thinly traded and subject to unnatural volatility. 'What's your gut?' he asked.
'Once some of these bad boys get involved, we're looking at a big blow-off tomorrow, maybe even twenty percent. There's a lot of fear in the market. The stock is going to get spanked.'
'What do you think you'll open at?'
'Hard to say. It could be four points down.'
He looked out the window, saw a piece of paper rise past, carried on an updraft. His stock was going the opposite direction. Teknetrix was going to have to defend its price-an ugly business-by buying back stock on the open market. So long as a company had a board-approved buy-back plan and this fact was public information, the action was legal. He called the company's broker and told him to defend the price at twenty-nine dollars a share.
'Noff fucking with you guys?'
'Yeah,' said Charlie. 'You want to call your portfolio boys upstairs and let them know our stock is cheap tomorrow, I won't mind.'
He was spending a few million to avoid losing forty or fifty million in market value. In another season he would've let the price ride down, but he didn't want Mr. Ming to see a sudden drop in Teknetrix's value and start wondering about the fifty-two-million-dollar loan. Nervous guys, Chinese bankers, chewed too much ginseng root. A lower stock price made a hostile takeover easier, too. For all he knew, Manila Telecom was quietly accumulating Teknetrix shares. All this because of Noff, some asshole newsletter guru, some hype-hopper who didn't have suppliers and factories all over the Third World but instead just flooded select ZIP codes with direct-mail campaigns, sucking in new suckers.
Martha Wainwright — gray, dependable, sixty pounds past a size eight, and maybe a lesbian, for all he knew-arrived in his office smoking a cigarette, and when he looked up from his papers, he could see the anger in her face, her mouth tight, her eyes accusatory. He closed the door. 'Let me just get to my chair, Martha, then you can start-'
'I see no reason for this, Charlie.'
'That doesn't surprise me. Did the advertisement go in?'
'Yes, it went in,' she answered, eyes glaring. 'Charlie, there are so many homeless children, so many neglected kids. Why not choose one of them?'
He breathed out. 'That's a reasonable question.'
Karen came in with an ashtray, then hurried away when she saw Martha's face. 'Is it only vanity, Charlie?' she asked, taking the ashtray. 'That's what this strikes me as, vanity. Male vanity, I might add.'
She meant well, of course; she wanted to present him with every argument in order that he know his own mind. 'Hey, my daughter is infertile.'
She shook her head in irritation, blowing smoke at him. 'Your daughter could adopt.'
'I know.'
'That's not good enough?' Martha protested. 'You won't feel warmly toward that child?'
'Of course I will feel warmly toward that child. I'll do everything I can to make that child's life the best possible.'
'And that's not good enough?'
'No. It doesn't comfort me.'
'You're doing this for your own comfort?'
'In a sense, yes.'
'You want something of yourself to go on.'
' Yes, Martha.'
She stood in irritation. He could hear her wheeze softly. 'This is about vanity and fear and weakness. This is not about love. A woman would never have this attitude.'
'Are you sure?'
She glowered. 'Yes.'
'I think a woman would never have this attitude because a woman, Martha, could not be in this situation. Fifty-eight-year-old women still, for the most part, cannot have children. I can procreate, Martha, you cannot.'
'It's a mistake, an immoral mistake.'
'Why? You're saying that it's immoral to bring a child into the world and give his mother the resources to raise that child properly?'
'Yes, when the resources could go to children who are already born.'
'You're an estate lawyer, Martha. This is what you do. You help people to pass their wealth on to whomever they choose. You're telling me I can't do that?'
'No, I'm saying as your counselor that I find this idea to be foolhardy.'
'On what basis?'
'Emotionally.' She stamped out her cigarette.
'For whom?'
'Everyone, Charlie. Dammit! The mother, the child. Maybe Ellie and your daughter if they ever find out.'
'The mother can pick a good husband. The child will-'
'That child will miss you all of his life!' Martha interrupted, her face reddening. 'The child will want to know you! By the time he is four, he will want-'
'And if the woman marries successfully? What then? She'll be able to marry the fellow she loves, if I'm paying all her expenses.'
Martha shook her head. 'The child will always want to know.'
Calm her down, Charlie thought. Pretend that you almost agree with her. He gave a couple of heavy nods, as if weighing all of her considerations. 'If I decide to do this,' he asked softly, 'will you handle it for me? I mean draw up the arrangements, supervise the interviewing of the women?'
She paced to his desk, poked at his papers. 'Yes, Charlie. Yes, goddammit, I will do it for you.'
'Good.'
She looked at him, mouth set. 'On one condition.'
'What?'
'You tell Ellie.'
The one thing he absolutely didn't want to do. 'Oh,' he said. 'Sure.'
At seven, he eased out of his cab, looking at the sky for information-an old pilot's habit-but the only thing floating above him was the lunatic grin of Kelly the doorman, standing ready to torture Charlie with service. Every day Kelly smiled as if he had woken up wishing to smile just once at something worth smiling at-at Charlie Ravich, his great friend, not the man who gave him three hundred bucks cash each Christmas, as was the custom of the building, which you never disregarded, upon threat of an immediate drop-off in service and a vague disregard from all the staff people. But Charlie paid, always, in a crisp blue Teknetrix envelope, and so here was Kelly smiling like a man charming the devil himself, pulling open the brass door to the apartment house. Charlie nodded gruffly, hobbled into the air-conditioned comfort of the lobby, and then was conveyed upward by Lionel, the seventyish night elevator man, who wasted no energy on salutation or manners, instead concentrating his exhausted animus in the precise thrusting and braking of the elevator's brass lift handle. The thing resembled the throttle on the old T-37 trainer Charlie had first flown in 1962. Always Lionel pressed it forward to maximum upward speed just long enough
