“You don’t. You’re head of derivatives trading at Kensington, for crying out loud.”

“I fear financial pain more than physical pain. You would, too.”

My direct line rings. It’s a 201 number, and it looks familiar.

“Kensington.”

“Hey, Savage.”

“Boone Dog, what’s up? Thought you were on the road.”

“I am,” he says, with the most attenuated of Southern accents, “I just wanted to fill you in on last night. Are you on privacy?”

I hit the privacy button. “Now I am.”

“We have a problem,” he says.

“Oh no.”

“Weber is a mess. He was catatonic throughout that dinner last night. Said maybe two words all night.”

“That’s what Tod said. Was it really that bad?”

“It was. There’s something wrong with him.”

“Well, we can’t send our customers to psychiatrists.”

“I don’t know, it might be cheaper than not sending him to a psychiatrist.”

“Booner. Don’t drag me into this. This is your problem, not my problem.”

“That’s crap and you know it,” he says, agitated. “You make just as much money off of Weber as I do, maybe more.

“I don’t know why we’re having this conversation. It’s not like we can do anything about it.”

“Look, just tell Tod to keep it under his hat. The last thing we need is the press finding out about this.”

“I will. Speaking of Tod, were he and your girl up to anything last night?”

“They were fine at dinner.”

“Well, they went out with C.N. afterwards, and now they’re all weird around each other.”

“Great. More good news.”

“I know. Hey, is your girl going to be able to do this PALM spinoff?”

“Savage, she’s the smartest person on the floor. She’s smarter than you. She’s smarter than all of us put together. She’ll be fine.”

“She’s a freakshow.”

“Honestly, Savage, we need to hire more freakshows like her.”

“Whatever. This place is already the Island of Misfit Toys.”

“Present company excepted, of course.”

* * * *

I pulled the can opener out of my top desk drawer and started to slowly open the can of beans. The can opener was old and just barely sharp enough to do the job, but I had resisted spending money on another one. I pulled back the lid, twisted it off, trying not to slice a finger off in the process, and threw the lid in the trash, then grabbed the used plastic fork out of the drawer and started eating the beans.

Lots of people had these Palm Pilot things. They did seem pretty useful—kind of an electronic organizer—but it seemed only a matter of time until someone figured out how to hook it up to a phone, and then the gig would be up. Why enter a phone number from your address book in your Palm Pilot when you can dial it directly from the phone? Was there any reason you couldn’t also have a calendar in your phone? This seemed like Iomega all over again.

I thought about what Boone Dog said. We’re the number one investment bank in the world, and we supposedly hire the best and the brightest, but this place is a complete zoo. Guys like Tod are overrepresented here, the Ivy League cake eaters, but sales is all Nick and his Little Italy crew, mortgages upstairs just hires Indian dudes from IIM and IIT, the quants are Chinese, and there are enough Jews here so that the place completely clears out on Rosh Hashanah. If you walk by a bank like Kensington on the street, you might be deceived into thinking that its employees are drones, identical toy soldiers, but then you have guys like Tully, who was actually undercover in the DEA. I think he still has to appear at the parole hearings of the guys he helped put behind bars.