The Donzerly Light Read online

  And from that day forward it was a given what Jay Grady wanted to do with his life. From an article in an encyclopedia perused in the school library that morning came his future. His dream.

  Not the typical career choice for a teenage boy hardly into the changing of his voice. Fireman, policeman it was not. Farmer it would never be. Neither the things she had heard him muse about prior to that day: pilot (he had told her how he had watched the crop dusters for hours on end lace back and forth across the fields) or truck driver (because they got to go everywhere, and they got to drive cab-overs or conventionals pulling single or doubles—none of this she had understood, but she had willingly listened). No, those choices had not made the cut. They had been swept aside by the dream, by the want, the determination to become a stock broker.

  He would have to go to college, he told her. Four years at least, but maybe two more after that. And he would have to move to New York, because that was where the real money...correction—green... was made. That was where hot brokers had to be.

  New York. At first her heart had sunk at that thought, because she had always pictured her life as one not too unlike what she had grown up with. Maybe not in Wisconsin, but there would be a house, a pretty two story house, with a big window in the living room where a Christmas tree could be seen from the street, and a front yard where flowers would bloom in the spring, and a backyard where the children they would have some day would play, and where their dog—a collie named Snoopy—would romp and run, and a big porch where she and her husband (Jay, Jay, oh let it be Jay) would sit on warm summer evenings and listen to the crickets chirp and the leaves rustle in the trees. That was what she wanted, and from what she had learned in school about the world’s biggest cities, she sure knew that New York was not the kind of place where those houses were generally found.

  But then she had remembered something. From the movies. Lots of them talked about a place called Long Island, where families lived. A check of her father’s worn atlas that night confirmed that it wasn’t that far from New York City (or near Manhattan, as the atlas called the part of New York where Wall Street was located).

  So her trepidation had been for naught. Jay could be a stock broker, and could work in Manhattan, and they could still live in a house with a yard for the kids and the dog, and a porch for she and Jay, and a window for the Christmas tree.

  His dream, her dream. One dream.

  And toward that dream there had been four years at Notre Dame. A lot of work for her, a lot of study for him, and a happiness for them both, with some really good times mixed in. Parties on game day, beer and pizza with friends gathered to cheer on the Fighting Irish. And after Notre Dame there were two years at the University of Indiana, and apartment that was a little bigger (very little), more work and study, more beer and pizza, and many, many more perfect nights together.

  Then came the Big Apple.

  Carrie closed the closet door, the recollections mated now with the present. Here. She walked back into the kitchen and stopped and looked around. It wasn’t Manhasset, or Floral Park, or any quaint and cozy place on Long Island. But someday her home would be. Their home would be. And before that, once—as Jay put it—he was ‘solid’ on Wall Street (which she took to mean established as a broker, making his green, able to support the both of them—and any tiny surprises that might come along), they would be married. Her parents would come, or maybe she and Jay would zip back to West Porter for a hometown ceremony. But ‘where’ mattered nowhere near as much as the reality that they would be together, man and wife, bound as one forever. Forget the ‘til death do us part’ thing—their love would be eternal.

  Silly, maybe, and surely there were women who would say she was a fool to tie herself to a man in the way she had. No career of her own, no ‘backup plan’. Phooey on all such talk. She loved him. Had since the day she’d stared thunderstruck at him from Miss Wells’ porch. And he loved her. And that was what she wanted out of life. End of argument.

  Well, that and maybe that her man would pick up after himself, she thought, seeing one more little mess to be dealt with. She went to it, a spread of newspaper on the dining room (or as she sometimes called the cramped, somewhat dim space, the dining gloom) table, atop which were scattered a bunch of coins—coins that, for whatever reason, Jay had arranged so that all were heads up. Now why he’d do that at the time of morning she’d found him out here was beyond her, as was the why attached to what he’d apparently found necessary to scribble in big letters in the margin of the paper—or the stock pages, he would have corrected her. He had tried once or twice to explain the columns of information to her, but all she could see were a jumble of letters and numbers and fractions, an unintelligible mix of things that, somehow, made the world go round—if she was to believe her man, and generally she did. The pages were like a scorecard, he had told her, and the numbers and fractions were the scores. A way that investors—the ‘fans’, he had joked—could keep track of the ‘players’, which were the odd groupings of letters that identified each stock. And those were the things that made the least sense to her. Okay, some were understandable, like GM, which stood for General Motors. Or F, for Ford. Even T, which was the symbol for AT&T, was close. But USX for United States Steel? Where did that come from? Probably from some guy name John Smith who said his initials were J.X.

  But enough familiarity with the subject she had retained (without comprehending, of course) that she at least recognized the writing in the column for what it was. Four letters—ICUJ. And on the page where they were scribed, a large circle spun many times around a spot down one of the columns, right around a stock called ICUJ. Winn Dixie, for all she knew.

  Whatever, she thought, wondering briefly why her love would have been thinking work so late last night. Why indeed? But then again, why not? And why not was a heck of a lot easier to discard than the former, so that it was, and with that curiosity out of the way she gathered up the coins and set them on the counter, and took the paper and folded it neat and laid it on the coffee table in front of the couch, then went to the cupboard and took down a cereal bowl, and got cereal and milk and began to make breakfast, the whole time her back to the counter where she’d dropped rather than set the coins, the nine coins, eighty seven cents in all, two quarters, two dimes, three nickels, two pennies, all of which lay now like coins should, some heads, some tails, the random order of the universe restored in them. Their magic spent. The gift they bore already given.

  Five

  The Call

  It was easiest to think of Stanley & Mitchell as Wall Street’s version of heaven and earth.

  As in heaven there was a God, here known as Horace J. Mitchell, the eighty seven year old surviving half of the Stanley & Mitchell duo that had founded the firm in 1927, two years before the crash. The Big Guy, in both authority and mass, the latter best understood when trying to pass him in the hall.

  Below the deity Mitchell were the apostles, known on the fourteenth floor of 220 Wall as account executives and managers. Two executives and four managers, so the number was only half of their biblical equivalent, though in status they were akin. Mitchell’s minions, though they, like he, had offices with windows that let in the light of day. Blessed one and all.

  And next in hierarchy, right up there with the saints, were the forty-seven account brokers, the second hardest workers in the hallowed halls of Stanley & Mitchell. They had offices and windows, but the latter only looked out upon the bullpen—the sunless sea of cubicles where the firm’s hardest workers toiled away.

  A little bit of hell on earth it could be for these mortals, the firm’s forty-seven junior brokers, each of whom sat in their cubicle at a terminal all day pecking at keys and rubbing away eye strain as they slaved for the account broker to whom they were assigned. Each longing for the day when they might be a ‘saint’, because account brokers had the best of it, their junior counterparts reasoned. One foot in heaven, and still with ties to things earthly. They had personal slaves to
do the grunt work, the research, the entering of trades, and yet they were the ones who got to make the calls. To pick the picks. To go out on that limb and say this was the stock to buy, or this was the one to dump, or short this one, cover that one, horde munis, sell gold, increase silver, this future, that treasury, bing, bang, boom, yes! What they did, what they got to do, mattered.

  And the mortal junior brokers took what was told them and made it all happen. And only the tiniest speck of input did they have in the whole process.

  But, given the right circumstances, tiny could be a whole helluva lot. At least Jay Grady was thinking so when, as he neared his cubicle ten minutes before the start of trading Monday morning, a familiar voice stopped him in his tracks. He turned toward it and saw Jude summoning him with a wave to his own cubicle.

  Jay glanced at the large digital clock high on the wall as time drained steadily toward the magic hour of 9:30 a.m. and, after a quick appraisal of what needed to be done before then, went to where his friend sat, chair swiveled away from the glowing screen of his terminal.

  “What’s up?” Jay asked briskly, his hand flexing around the handle of his briefcase. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff to get done.”

  “You’ve got ten, twelve minutes, farmboy,” Jude said, leaning back and lacing his fingers behind his head. “Mellow out.”

  “What do you want, Jude?” Jay pressed, shifting where he stood.

  Jude grinned at his friend’s impatience, at that hardworking, up before dawn, slop the pigs, milk the cows, Midwest farmboy attitude, or whatever of that cliché had survived three months in Manhattan—not to mention all the shit that had befallen the Grady clan some years before that. Jay had let onto some of the...unpleasantness that had scarred his pre-teen years, but not much, and not often, and never, ever anything close to willingly. So Jude had let it slide by, figuring it was past, and his buddy wanted it to be just that, and if that was so then he probably wanted to be treated like anyone else. And Jude Duffault could oblige that want quite nicely, thank you. “Just wondering how fucked up your Saturday was?”

  Fucked up? Well, when he’d finally woken to Carrie’s gentle but insisting voice around ten in the morning, his newly returned sobriety was filled with caustic reminders of the night just passed. A mouth left dry and bitter. A sinister little spike of pain behind his eyes every now and then. A sensitivity to light that made the glow of a 60 watt bulb seem the Trinity Test all over again. Yeah, fucked up it was. “Pretty much so.”

  “I figured as much. You were a mess when you split, evidenced by the fact that you came back for your change. Why the hell did you do that? Times that tough, farmboy?”

  Oh, well, this little voice that wasn’t a voice suggested that I might need the change, and you know what? It was right. “I was messed up, like you said,” Jay decided to say. A smart move, he knew. The only move. Anything else would sound loony tunes, like it still did to him. “I don’t know why I did that.”

  “Hell, you probably don’t even remember hopping up on stage and doing the grind with that little babe from Osaka.”

  Jay stared at Jude, embarrassment bulging his eyes, but very quickly it became apparent that his friend was putting him on. Jude could lie, and lie well, but only for a second or two, until his half truths and fully conjured stories were belied by the glint in his eye growing to a full fledged ‘gotcha!’ “Funny, Duffault. You’re a hilarious guy.”

  “Maybe this Friday we’ll get you drunk enough so you do get up there.” Jude did his best sit dance, fisted hands thumping the air and his hips thrusting suggestively, wobbling the chair.

  “This Friday I go easy on the booze,” Jay said, recalling the one empty space in his memory of Friday last. “You know that waitress who brought us our last round?”

  “The cute one?” Jude checked. “With that wicked little wiggle?”

  “Right,” Jay said, though those characteristics were the least important to him right then. “Would you believe I can’t remember her name? And I asked her. I can remember asking her, and almost everything else up to then. Even the stupid things—Bunk’s story about his sister, Steve and him going gaga over Christine Mellinger. All that, but I can’t remember her name. That’s how fucked up I was.”

  “So?” Jude asked, amused. “You want to ask her for a date or something? Shit, man, for twenty bucks she would have blown you like a trumpet in the little boy’s room.”

  “It just bugs me,” Jay said. “Doesn’t anything like that ever bug you?” You know something, and you know you know it, but you can’t remember it for nothing?” Or you know something completely nuts for the most insane of reasons, only it doesn’t seem insane to you at all? He didn’t pose this question, one spat by his brain between thoughts of the topic at hand, and he certainly didn’t attempt a silent answer for self. He’d singed enough brain cells on that inquiry already since the wee hours Saturday. “Hasn’t that happened to you?”

  “Does it matter?” Jude asked, shaking his head. And then Jay knew he was serious, because what came out of his mouth next was not prefaced by ‘farmboy’. “Grady, you spend too much time on irrelevant shit. Talking to bums, worrying about some waitress’s name.” One of his eyebrows arched high in a pre-punctuation. “Shopping for houses on Long Island...”

  “I told you we were just looking.”

  Jude nodded, both doubt and knowing in the gesture. “Really? So Miss Carrie didn’t see a perfect little home for the two of you? Nothing caught her fancy?”

  Of course something had, though he could hardly remember it, having seen the pleasant little house through dark glasses while aspirin sizzled in his stomach. But what did it matter? They hadn’t bought it. Sure, Carrie had gone on and on about it on the train ride back to the city, but that didn’t mean they were going to buy it, or any house like it, or any house out there for the matter. Not if he had any—

  And there he caught himself, surprised at what had risen within. A certitude of living locales that had never shown itself before. Hell, he knew what Carrie wanted, what she had always wanted, the picket fence and the yard and the whole family deal, and he had never voiced or thought anything in opposition to it.

  Until right now.

  “Looking, Jude,” Jay repeated, burying the sudden internal conflict, blaming it on his friend’s prophecy from Friday night—Long Island will be the death of you, man, the death of you. “We were just looking.”

  Jude threw up his hands. “Whatever you say, buddy.”

  “That’s what I say.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good.” Jay hated the look in his friend’s eye right then, that little glint that proved he was privy to the real deal. To the truth. “May I be excused now, Mr. Duffault?”

  Jude shooed him off with a flick of his hand and watched his friend hurry away, then turned to face his terminal, ready to face the trading day about to begin. But before that could happen, a shadow draped itself over his shoulder and upon the keyboard, where his pecking fingers stilled. He spun his chair quickly around to find Jay standing where he had been just seconds before. Returned, an odd look about him. A hesitance, like he was embarrassed about something. Embarrassed or maybe uncertain. He stood there in silence for a moment, his gaze shifting on and off of Jude, the awkward seconds gathering until a question popped out.

  “Have you ever heard of Illinois Cumberland Jet? The symbol’s ICUJ?”

  Jude puzzled briefly at the innocuous query. Why had that seemed hard to ask? “Illinois Cumberland? No. What do they do?”

  “They make a cleaning solution for turbine blades.”

  Jude nodded. “Really. Sounds small.”

  “It is,” Jay confirmed. He ran a hand over his mouth. It came down damp from perspiration that had sprouted suddenly on his upper lip.

  “Is this Illinois Cumberland thing your call for the day?”

  “Yeah,” Jay answered. ICUJ was his ‘call’, that one speck of input a junior broker had into the managing of Stanley & Mitchell�
��s fifteen hundred accounts. Every morning each junior broker would submit to their supervising account broker one stock which they had determined in the S&M way to be worthy of investment by the firm’s clients. It was the account broker’s responsibility to examine and sign off on these calls, but as a matter of practice they did so with hardly a look. It was only one stock, after all, and only a fraction of the brokerage’s daily allocation for purchases would be directed to these selections, and, hell, the young guns had to get their feet wet somehow.

  “Where’d you dig this thing up?” Jude asked.

  “It just kind of...presented itself,” Jay said, a faint smile rising, like the hint of sun through a misty dawn.

  “Well, you never know about these no-names,” Jude said. “Maybe it’ll hit.” He turned back toward his terminal. “Weirder things have happened.”

  “Right,” Jay said in agreement. In total agreement.

  Six

  Return Engagement

  The soup of the day at Greenie’s Diner was broccoli cheese, and the Monday night special was meatloaf, but Jay had ordered neither, and now, near eight o’clock in the evening, he sat at the counter amongst the thinning dinner rush and picked at the remnants of his chicken fried steak, scribing with his fork the letters I C U J in the puddle of thick white gravy left on his plate. He had tried to eat, but thinking had gotten in the way. And there was plenty to think about.

  Illinois Cumberland Jet had hit, and hit big. It had finished the day up a full point on word of a contract it was negotiating with Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, the venerable behemoth known as 3M.

  It had started the day at three fourths.

  Jay took his sweating water glass in hand and sipped. Sipped and digested the reality that anyone buying the little-known stock that morning had more than doubled their money in seven hours.