“You.” A woman had caught sight of Oskar. “What company do you work for?”
“Cantor Fitzgerald,” Oskar said. It was just the first company that came to mind.
“I didn’t know Cantor Fitzgerald had offices here,” someone said, but Oskar was already out on the sidewalk, where a separate crowd was assembling: news vans were parking on the curb and blocking traffic, men carried TV cameras with shockingly brilliant lights, journalists were moving in on everyone exiting the building.
“Did you work with Jonathan Alkaitis?” someone asked.
“Who?” Oskar said. “God no, of course not.”
2
Oskar walked by Olivia Collins as he left, but because she’d never been to the seventeenth floor—Alkaitis conducted his meetings on Eighteen—she didn’t recognize him. She was standing in the lobby with the other investors, trying to make sense of the altered world. She’d been here for some time, and the scene—the weeping investors, the camera people, the news vans pulling up outside—had the quality of a bad dream.
A few hours earlier, she’d been awakened from a nap by a ringing phone. “I’m sorry, Monica,” she said, after a moment of confusion, “I was sleeping just now, and I’m not sure I quite…” She went quiet, frowning, trying to understand what her sister was saying. “Monica,” she said, “are you crying?” She’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at her beloved tiny apartment, this place that she rented mostly with the proceeds of her investment with Alkaitis, but what Monica seemed to be telling her was that there had never been any investments at all, and in some fundamental way the situation didn’t compute. Olivia stood slowly—rising too quickly made her dizzy sometimes—and fumbled around in the mess of the closet for her waterproof boots, the handbag that she always meant to hang on a hook but never did, her winter coat. “Monica,” she’d said, interrupting her sister midsentence, “I’m going to go down to his office and see if I can find anything out. I’ll call you later.”
In the taxi, she applied bright lipstick and tied a silk scarf over her hair for added fortitude. She’d hoped to get into Jonathan’s offices, to talk to someone—anyone—but she was far from the first to have this idea. A crowd was gathering in the lobby of the Gradia Building. “It’s my life savings,” a man was shouting to one of the security guards, “you have to let me at least talk to someone, this is my entire life—” but the guards, four of them, were arrayed along the turnstiles and seemingly had no intention of letting anyone through. Olivia stood by the doors, unsettled by the crowd’s fury.
“Do you not understand?” A man was speaking to a guard who seemed to Olivia to be very young, although in fairness most people looked young to her these days. “All of my money has been stolen.”
“I understand, sir, but—”
“You have to calm down,” a guard was saying to a woman who was talking very close to his face.
“I will not calm down,” the woman said, “I will not be told to be calm.”
“Ma’am, I sympathize, but—”
“But what? But what?”
“What am I supposed to do, ma’am? Let a crowd of angry people storm the eighteenth floor?” The guard was sweating. “I’m just doing my job. I am doing my job. Step away from me, please.”
Olivia stepped forward as the other woman retreated. “I’m a personal friend of Mr. Alkaitis’s,” she said.
“Then call up there and get someone to come down and get you,” the guard said.
She called Alkaitis’s number, again and again, but no one picked up. The cowardice of it. She pictured them hiding up there behind locked doors, listening to ringing phones, doing nothing. She knew no one else’s extension. She stayed in the lobby for a long time, milling around with the others, falling in and out of conversations, and at first there was some solace in being with people who’d also been robbed, who were also in shock, but after a while the miasma of sadness and fury was too much to bear, so she hailed a taxi—the last taxi she’d take for a while, she realized, watching the numbers tick up on the meter—and went back to her little apartment uptown.
After the pandemonium in the lobby of the Gradia Building, her home was very quiet and still. Olivia closed the door behind her and stood for a moment in the silence. She set her keys on the kitchen table and sat for a