the foot well. He had always assumed she would grow up pretty spectacular. Now he was feeling a little guilty for underestimating how beautiful she would become. His fantasies had not done her justice.
“It’s a problem,” she said. “I can’t go up there tomorrow. I can’t take more time out. We’re very busy right now, and I’ve got to keep on billing the hours.”
Fifteen years. Was that a long time or a short time? Does it change a person? It felt like a short time to him. He didn’t feel radically different from the person he had been fifteen years before. He was the same person, thinking the same way, capable of the same things. He had acquired a thick gloss of experience during those years, he was older, more burnished, but he was the same person. He felt she had to be different. Had to be, surely. Her fifteen years had been a greater leap, through bigger transitions. High school, college, law school, marriage, divorce, the partnership track, hours to bill. So now he felt he was in uncharted waters, unsure of how to relate to her, because he was dealing with three separate things, all competing in his head: the reality of her as kid, fifteen years ago, and then the way he had imagined she would turn out, and then the way she really had turned out. He knew all about two of those things, but not the third. He knew the kid. He knew the adult he’d invented inside his head. But he didn’t know the reality, and it was making him unsure, because suddenly he wanted to avoid making any stupid mistakes with her.
“You’ll have to go by yourself,” she said. “Is that OK?”
“Sure,” he said. “But that’s not the issue here. You need to take care.”
She nodded. Pulled her hands up inside her sleeves, and hugged herself. He didn’t know why.
“I’ll be OK, I guess,” she said.
“Where’s your office?”
“Wall Street and lower Broadway.”
“That’s where you live, right? Lower Broadway?”
She nodded. “Thirteen blocks. I usually walk.”
“Not tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”
She looked surprised. “You will?”
“Damn right I will,” he said. “Thirteen blocks on foot? Forget about it, Jodie. You’ll be safe enough at home, but they could grab you on the street. What about your office? Is it secure?”
She nodded again. “Nobody gets in, not without an appointment and ID.”
“OK,” he said. “So I’ll be in your apartment all night, and I’ll drive you door-to-door in the morning. Then I’ll come back up here and see these Hobie people, and you can stay right there in the office until I come get you out again, OK?”
She was silent. He tracked back and reviewed what he’d said.
“I mean, you got a spare room, right?”
“Sure,” she said. “There’s a spare room.”
“So is that OK?”
She nodded, quietly.
“So what now?” he asked her. She turned sideways on her seat. The blast of air from the center vents caught her hair and blew it over her face. She smoothed it back behind her ear and her eyes flicked him up and down. Then she smiled.
“We should go shopping,” she said.
“Shopping? What for? What do you need?”
“Not what I need,” she said. “What you need.”
He looked at her, worried. “What do I need?”
“Clothes,” she said. “You can’t go visiting with those old folks looking like a cross between a beach bum and the wild man of Borneo, can you?”
Then she leaned sideways and touched the mark on his shirt with her fingertip.
“And we should find a pharmacy. You need something to put on that burn.”
“WHAT THE HELL are you doing?” the finance director screamed.
He was in Chester Stone’s office doorway, two floors above his own, gripping the frame with both hands, panting with exertion and fury. He hadn’t waited for the elevator. He had raced up the fire stairs. Stone was staring at him, blankly.
“You idiot,” he screamed. “I told you not to do this.”
“Do what?” Stone said back.
“Put stock in the market,” the finance guy yelled. “I told you not to do that.”
“I didn’t,” Stone said. “There’s no stock in the market.”
“There damn well is,” the guy said. “A great big slice, sitting there doing absolutely nothing at all. You got people shying away from it like it’s radioactive or something.”
“What?”
The finance guy breathed in. Stared at his employer. Saw a small, crumpled man in a ridiculous British suit sitting at a desk that alone was now worth a hundred times the corporation’s entire net assets.
“You asshole, I told you not to do this. Why not just take a page in
“What are you talking about?” Stone asked.
“I’ve got the banks on the phone,” the guy said. “They’re watching the ticker. Stone stock popped up an hour ago, and the price is unwinding faster than the damn computers can track it. It’s unsalable. You’ve sent them a message, for God’s sake. You’ve told them you’re insolvent. You’ve told them you owe them sixteen million dollars against security that isn’t worth sixteen damn cents.”
“I didn’t put stock in the market,” Stone said again.
The finance guy nodded sarcastically.
“So who the hell did? The tooth fairy?”
“Hobie,” Stone said. “Has to be. Jesus, why?”
“Hobie?” the guy repeated.
Stone nodded.
“Hobie?” the guy said again, incredulous. “Shit, you gave him stock?”
“I had to,” Stone said. “No other way.”
“Shit,” the guy said again, panting. “You see what he’s doing here?”
Stone looked blank, and then he nodded, scared. “What can we do?”
The finance director dropped his hands off the doorframe and turned his back. “Forget
“But you recommended the guy,” Stone yelled.
“I didn’t recommend giving him stock, you asshole,” the guy yelled back. “What are you? A moron? If I recommended you visit the aquarium to see the piranha fish, would you stick your damn finger in the tank?”
“You’ve got to help me,” Stone said.
The guy just shook his head. “You’re on your own. I’m resigning. Right now my recommendation is you go down to what was my office and get started. There’s a line of phones on what was my desk, all ringing. My recommendation is you start with whichever one is ringing the loudest.”
“Wait up,” Stone yelled. “I need your help here.”
“Against Hobie?” the guy yelled back. “Dream on, pal.”
Then he was gone. He just turned and strode out through the secretarial pen and disappeared. Stone came out from behind his desk and stood in the doorway and watched him go. The suite was silent. His secretary had left. Earlier than she should have. He walked out into the corridor. The sales department on the right was deserted. The marketing suite on the left was empty. The photocopiers were silent. He called the elevator and the mechanism sounded very loud in the hush. He rode down two floors, alone. The finance director’s suite was empty. Drawers were standing open. Personal belongings had been taken away. He wandered through to the inner office. The Italian desk light was glowing. The computer was turned off. The phones were off their hooks, lying on the rosewood desktop. He picked one of them up.
“Hello?” he said into it. “This is Chester Stone.”
