The elevator began moving upward. But in Jake’s stomach it moved downward: down, down, down, down to the depths below the bottom of the ocean, miles and miles and miles beneath the surface of the earth.

A HASSIDIC MAN sat waiting for him at a desk in a small room, behind a table with a black velvet cloth on it, next to a wastebasket filled with torn luggage tags from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, perhaps since, as Jake vaguely recalled, Amsterdam was a major diamond-cutting center—or was it Antwerp? Antwerp, he decided. Jake felt a sudden warmth at spotting the familiar luggage tags, as if he had just recognized an old friend’s picture on a stranger’s desk.

The Hassidic man was reading something on a piece of paper, but when he noticed Jake, he immediately stood up. The man looked about Jake’s age, or maybe a little younger. He had a bristly beard, surprisingly light in color, and his hairline had already receded beneath his black fedora. When he came out from behind the desk, Jake saw that his eyes were bright blue under the shadow of his hat brim. He took off his hat and laid it on the desk behind him; his head was still covered underneath it by a large black yarmulke. A hat trick, Jake thought. Now the tea party can begin.

“You must be Jake,” the Mad Hatter stated carefully, like a man reading from a script. His voice was calm and direct, with no trace of a whine or stutter.

Jake looked at the young man’s hat on the desk and gulped. “I’m looking for a round brilliant cut stone, about three-quarter carat, VS2 or SI1, around H or I color class, in the range of four thousand to fifty-five hundred dollars,” he announced.

The Mad Hatter laughed. “And I’m Yehudah. Pleased to meet you.”

Jake blushed, laughing a nervous laugh and offering Yehudah his sweaty palm. Nothing like starting out on the right foot, he thought to himself.

“So you’ve found the right girl, huh?” Yehudah asked, shining a mischievous grin that Jake didn’t quite expect.

“Yes, I think so,” Jake said with a smile, feeling the color draining gently out of his face.

Yehudah raised his eyebrows. “You think so, or you know so?”

Jake paused. The undue familiarity made him uneasy. “Oh no, no, I mean I know so,” he stuttered.

“Good, because we’re not all that excited about returns around here,” Yehudah laughed. The laugh annoyed Jake. It reminded him of the kind of laugh the cool kids used to use to laugh at him in elementary school, though he couldn’t picture Yehudah as a cool kid. Jake wondered if there was such a thing as a Hassidic cool kid. Probably not.