Chapter 18

July 6

I finally heard about the war in Spanish Guyana that morning. I probably should have heard sooner, in that it was one of those wars that involved killing, and it was taking place in the country where my girlfriend was supposed to be. But in my defense, the only news I'd had time for lately had been the financial news, and there were precious few equities that rose and fell based on trouble in Spanish Guyana. Finally, July sixth's Wall Street Journal had included a short item mentioning the surprisingly mild effect the unspeakable horrors inflicted on the Spanish Guyanian population were having on worldwide aluminum prices. 
 "Great news," I told Keller that morning. "My girlfriend's trapped in a war zone." 
 "Based on your reaction, I guess it's safe to say you were ready to move on romantically," Keller said. 
 "No, no. I still care about her very deeply. That's why I'm so pleased she's in a war zone."
 "Once again, in something that is in--or can be translated into--English." Keller glanced at his watch to make sure he had time for an explanation before the opening bell.
 "It's simple. I haven't had so much as a postcard from her in a month, so I'd begun to suspect she'd left me and not even had the decency to tell me that I was just too much man for her."
 "Okay, I'm with you so far."
 "But based on what I now know, there's a good chance she hasn't ended our relationship, she's merely become a prisoner of war. True, she might be enduring unspeakable horrors. But she's still interested in me."
 "Assuming she's survived."
 "Right, assuming she's survived."
 "So you're rooting for the woman you claim to care about to be enduring unspeakable horrors."
 "No, no, no, of course not. I'm rooting for her to be detained in a horror-free environment."
 "But you'd take the horrors over the breakup?"
 "Maybe."
 "That's cold."
 "Bullshit. It means I care. Taking the pro-horrors side of the argument means I might hate myself for wishing such a thing, but I only wish it because I care about Dana and don't want our relationship to be over. If I take the pro-breakup stance, I might end up hating Dana for leaving me. So it's a matter who would I rather hate. The fact I'm willing to hate myself over her is a sign of my commitment to the relationship."
 "My friend, I have good news for you and I have bad news. The good news is, with logic like that you're going to do fine on Wall Street."
 "And the bad news?"
 "You're insane. That, or you're in love."
 "There's a difference?"
 "Yup. Love's going to cost you more in presents."
 "Ah shit,"
 "What?" Keller asked.
 "Now I've got another problem. "Dana's birthday. It's four days from now."
 "You sure?"
 "Sure I'm sure. Think I'm an idiot? Birthday's one of the first things I check. Women love nothing better than to not tell you their birthday so they can hold it over you when you don't remember it. I'm not going to fall for that. On our third date I bribed a waiter to ask for her I.D. when she ordered a glass of wine. He wrote down her birthday and slipped it to me with the check."
 "Clever," Keller said.
 "Thanks."
 "I take it you haven't bought her anything."
 "I thought she'd left me."
 "Don't you think the fact that she's apparently caught in a South American prison and you couldn't possibly get the gift to her, assuming she's still alive, might get you off the hook in the present department?"
 "Have you ever had a girlfriend?"
 "Yea, you're right. You better get something, or you'll never hear the end of it."
 "Not that Dana's the materialistic type," I said.
 "Of course not. Women rarely are."
 "It's just that they expect some sort of store-purchased gesture on their birthday. And Christmas."
 "And Valentines," Keller added. "And anniversaries. But it's purely as a sign of love."
 "We're not married. At least I don't have to worry about the anniversaries."
 "Doesn't matter. They've started counting anniversaries of first dates. It reduces our disincentive to proposing."
 "Really? Dating anniversaries? I've never heard of those. But then I've never had a relationship last a full year."
 "Yea, me neither," Keller admitted. 
 "You don't suppose that says anything about the two of us, do you?" I asked.
 "It says you better get her something nice."
 I got her something nice. I even gave up on the wild idea of consuming food on my lunch hour to get it. But once I had it, I still didn't know what to do with it. It was the same problem dogs faced with tennis balls, albeit with less drool. I suppose I could have dropped the present in the mail. But items over a certain dollar value simply shouldn't be cast off into the dual ethers of civil wars and South American postal systems, not when you've just put yourself in hock to a credit card company to acquire them. So I cut out early that afternoon, wrestled a cab away from a fellow New Yorker who was too old to fight back effectively, and battled the up-town traffic to One Planet's Madison Avenue offices. 
 I arrived at three minutes to five. When the elevator opened on the eighth floor I could see the glass doors of the One Planet office right in front of me. Unfortunately, a man inside the office could see me as well. He grabbed a key from his desk and made a run for the lock, but I beat him by a step and forced my way in. 
 "We're closing up for the day," he said, walking back to his desk and turning off his computer. "Whatever it is, you'll have to come back tomorrow."
 "This can't wait," I told him. The man's officemates hurriedly shut down their own computers and dashed past us towards the door, just in case my reason for dropping by involved them.
 "People always say things can't wait. But in my experience, everything can wait."
 "Great," I said. "Then whatever you have planned for this evening can wait, because you're staying here till you explain to me what's going on with Dana Davis."
 "Who?"
 "Dana Davis. She's one of your people. You sent her to Spanish Guyana. I haven't heard from her since."
 "No one's being sent to Spanish Guyana," the man explained. "There's a war going on."
 "Which brings us to the second reason for my concern."
 "We're all concerned."
 "Ah ha! If you're concerned about her, then you've heard of her."
 "Not necessarily. I'm concerned about everyone. That's what we do here. We become concerned." He passed me one of his business cards. "Rick Lyle," it read. "Associate Concern Coordinator."
 "So Dana is caught in the middle of this war?"
 "We're looking into that."
 "Then you don't know where Dana is?"
 "Oops, that's five o'clock. I've got to lock up the office." Lyle flipped off the overhead lights and headed for the door. I blocked his path. 
 "Listen," Lyle said. "I'd like to stay, but we run an Earth-friendly office here. The lights, air conditioning, and computers all are turned off promptly at five o'clock."
 "Then you and I are going to stand here in a dark, stuffy, technologically-bereft office until you tell me what's going on with Dana."
 "Is that a threat?" said Lyle, alarmed. "Are you threatening me? I'll call our lawyer." He looked behind him for the office lawyer.
 "It's after five. Your lawyer's gone home along with everyone else. And anyway, that wasn't a threat. But this is: if you don't tell me what I want to know, I'm going to have to flick the office lights back on."
 "You wouldn't."
I flicked the lights on.
 "Noooo…" Lyle screamed, and flicked them back off. "You son of a bitch. These are fluorescent bulbs. They consume a significant amount of energy in the moment they're activated because of a chemical process involving..."
I flicked the lights back on. Lyle flicked them off. 
"What do you have against mother Earth? We all have to live…"
I flicked the lights back on. He flailed at the switch to turn them off.
 "Okay, you win. We don't know where Dana is. All the letters we send to her in Spanish Guyana come back marked 'Undeliverable-Genocide.' There's a rumor around the office that someone might have sent her somewhere else, but no one seems to know where exactly."
 "So you've lost her."
 "No, we haven't lost her. You can't lose a person. She's around somewhere. I'm sure she'll turn up." Lyle reached to flip the light switch off before realizing that I hadn't switched it back on.
 "I have one more question, and it's very important," I said. Lyle kept one hand over the light switch to be safe. "Where, exactly, am I supposed to send her birthday present?" I showed him the necklace I'd selected.
 "Oooh, that's nice," he commented. But he didn't know where.
 
"I did it," Kerns said. "I knew I could do it. Well, okay, I didn't know I could, but I no longer assumed I couldn't, and that's pretty good progress in a few weeks." Kerns rounded the corner and headed back home. "I out administered the best administrator in the college. First, I planned ahead to intercept the agenda. Second, I recognized the potential for danger. And third, I dealt with it with speed and finality. Then fourth, I went out for a beer to celebrate with the rest of the Council, just to rub Smith's face in it. It was a total victory--well, except when I ordered that non-alcoholic beer. I think that might have cost me some points in the Council's eyes. Plus, it tasted like goat piss. But that's a small price to pay. I won. I won. Tell the truth, you didn't think I could did you?"
Roger didn't answer, he just ran along trying to keep pace with the lanky Kerns' suddenly swift stride. But Roger's respect for the Dean had grown. And like any dog, he appreciated the fact that his owner had been employing his council on a regular basis. Roger had even stopped telling the other dogs he met in the park that he was adopted. 
 "Of course, nothing's ever free," Kerns added, his mood suddenly darkening as the pair returned home from their mid-day walk. "Smith isn't the sort to give up without a fight. Or more accurately, he is the sort to give up without a fight in an actual fight, but he's most certainly not the sort to give up without a fight in an intra-office administrative power struggle. No, Smith will fight to the death, so long as there's no chance of actual injury. Of that much we can be certain." Kerns unclipped Roger's leash from his collar. Roger's ears drooped at the suddenly depressing tone of the Dean's voice.
 "In fact, today's rousing success might inspire such a backlash that it turns out to be the greatest failure of my life. What chance do I have? I might as well quit now…" Kerns slumped down on the living room sofa and cradled his forehead in his hands.
Thinking quickly, Roger jumped in the Dean's lap and licked the man's nose. 
 "Roger," the Dean said. "You've never licked my nose before. You tried to bite it once, but as I conceded at the time, that was mostly my fault. Does this mean…you have faith in me?"
Roger licked Kerns' nose again, and wagged his tail for emphasis. "You're right. I can do this. I'm headed back to the office. Thank you, Roger."
Roger jumped off the Dean's lap as the man rushed off. Then the little Pekinese curled up on the couch and slept the sleep of a dog that had never once needed to question that he did his job well. 

July 7

If there's anything more dangerous than a true believer, it's a true believer with a fact on her side. And Sarah had one. It's been a well-known fact ever since the 1960s that our planet is only a few years away from the massive starvation, devastating plagues, and lethally long lines at restrooms that are the inevitable result of overpopulation. Sage men like Paul Ehrlich had been in the vanguard. But they were such brilliant thinkers, so far ahead of their time, that even world events hadn't been able to keep up with their predictions. The disaster they knew the world could not avoid in the 1970s, the one it certainly couldn't avoid in the 1980s, was still staring us dead in the eyes as we rolled through the 1990s then on into the next millennium. And now there was no question that our doom was imminent. After all, world population had been at the point of disaster decades before, and there were many, many more people now. 
 Sarah helped herself to a handful of granola, a fat-laden snack food favored by hikers and others who assume that it must be good for them, since it was eaten by all the right people. Then she got down to business. 
 "Okay everyone. I was very pleased by the progress we made at our last meeting. We came to a difficult decision regarding population control. A crucial decision. But I can't help but notice that nothing much has happened since then."
 "What was supposed to happen?" Jeff asked.
 "Well, deciding to do something really is only half the battle here. Our decision will have more long-term significance, planet-wise, if we follow it up by actually doing the thing we've decided to do."
Jeff looked startled. "That's an awfully big step," he said. "I thought we were just going to decide to do it and leave it at that, like we usually do."
 "No, not this time," Sarah said. "This time none of us are leaving this tent until we have a plan in motion." She zipped the tent closed. "I don't care if it takes all night."
The others exchanged nervous glances.
 "Or are you not committed to the planet?"
No one argued. 
 "Doctor," Sarah continued.
 "Me?" the doctor asked, startled to be singled out.
 "Yes, you. I think you are best equipped to handle this vital assignment. The villagers will let you give them injections without much of a fuss. All we have to do is select the right thing to inject, and the population problem is solved."
 "I, uh…" the doctor said.
 "You're not soft on overpopulation, are you doctor?"
 "No, it's not that. It's just that poisoning the villagers…it might hurt my chances at continued funding. My organization, Doctors with Passports, does have some very strict policy guidelines, you understand."
 "So it's about money?" Sarah asked.
 "No, no, not entirely. I'm also quite busy with taking blood tests at the moment. And there's something else, now that I think of it. Murder falls into something of a moral gray area concerning an oath that I was once required to take." 
Sarah didn't like it, but the others agreed that it would be wrong to ask the doctor to go back on an oath.
 "Well, okay," Sarah said at last. "But without the doctor's help, the rest of us are going to have to work that much harder. Now does anyone here have any experience with killing…for the good of the planet, I mean?"
 None of them did. They were more the idea-oriented sorts. But everyone was willing to help out by offering his or her opinion. Guns, they all agreed, were not a viable option. They all had protested against guns many times in their lives, and none were willing to back down now, even in a good cause. As it happened, this was just as well, since none of them would have known how to acquire a gun on Lesser Morrell Island. Certain other weapons were just as clearly unacceptable. Many of their number had rallied against land mines and nuclear weapons, for example, which meant that those, too, were not options--even if they had been options, which, of course, they never were. Chemical and biological weapons were added to the black list, too. It was very frustrating to see one alternative after the next crossed off the list. The activists' own deeply-held moral beliefs were making it impossible to carry out their agenda. How was a liberal supposed to commit genocide, anyway? 
 History offered a few suggestions, Sarah reminded the group: Stalin had used the brutal conditions of forced labor camps to weed out the extraneous and troublesome members of his population. But, as Brent pointed out, here on the Island they lacked the manpower and infrastructure to arrange such a thing. And anyway it would have been tricky to recreate the brutal conditions of the Siberian steppe in their generally pleasant Pacific climate. 
 Lenin had had small landowners shot, fortunate as he was he to live before guns became unfashionable. Mao, perhaps the most effective left-wing genocide role model, had rather cleverly done most of his best genocide work through starvation. But food was abundant in these parts, what with the ocean so full of nourishing fish and the trees so full of succulent fruits and monkeys.  
 A liberal in search of mass-murder advice could do worse than to look to Pol Pot for advice, added Jeff. The man had done away with upwards of 15% of a country of eight million in relatively short order. Most of this killing was done with guns and disease, but Pol Pot was a true renaissance leader, and had never settling on a single favorite method of population control. But then, like most historical role models in the field of progressive genocide, Pol Pot had had tremendous amounts of help when it became necessary to wipe out his country's unnecessary citizens. Back in the old days there were always plenty of people willing to rally around a good idea.
 In the end it was clear that the Lesser Morrell Island group would need to come up with its own answers. It was an awesome responsibility, they knew, as future generations would no doubt look back upon them for guidance, as college students today look up to Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Poison had its supporters, especially an organic poison such as cyanide or strychnine. It seemed such a natural, earth-based approach, and less violent and confrontational besides. "The sort of murder weapon that Gandhi might have used," commented Laura. Gandhi was one of her heroes. Gandhi and Stalin. But as far as the doctor knew, no deadly poison came from a plant indigenous to their island. For her part, Sarah was in favor of simply fomenting unrest among the natives until they set upon each other. But while they wouldn't come right out and say it, the others were not certain that Sarah's political skills were up to fomenting unrest, having once seen her fare poorly in a debate against a photo of a political candidate with whom she disagreed.
 In time, answers came. None of the group had ever specifically protested against knives or spears, they realized. And suffocation or drowning remained wide open as well. Sarah and Laura in particular favored suffocation or drowning over spears, which seemed much too phallic and male-oriented. But Jeff leaned towards spears, as suffocation tended to involve plastic bags, an obvious problem for an environmentalist. It seemed they were once again at an impasse. But in the spirit of compromise, Jeff agreed to suffocation--so long as they used cloth bags. 
A decision had been reached.
 
The mysteriously altered agenda had been no accident. Smith had asked around, and there was indeed no such thing as an Agenda Finalization Formalization Committee--or at least there hadn't been until eight minutes before the Council meeting, at which point one had miraculously been formed and approved by the Dean himself. But that information was of little use to Smith now. Smith had underestimated Kerns, and it had cost him. In retrospect, Smith thought, he had no one to blame but himself. But since that was no good, he resolved to blame the government, since it hadn't properly warned him of the danger. Whoever was at fault, the results had been devastating. Not only had Kerns been able to block Smith's plan, he'd found a way to squelch it forever. Smith chastised himself again for spelling out "Special General Budgetary Process Exemption" on the agenda when a simple "Budgetary Procedure" would have sufficed. He resolved to never again do anything with such a high degree of clarity.
"There's still no need to panic," Smith thought. "Kerns might have learned how to avoid future errors, but that didn't mean he can get out of past ones."

July 12

My Wall Street career continued to lurch towards respectability. I'd hardly finished investing Timmy's money when I found a third client, the manager of a mid-sized pension fund, by positioning myself next to successful looking sorts on the train heading home from the city and pouring over Johnston Brothers research reports until I caught their attention. Few transit systems in the country are better designed for investment sales than the New York City commuter rail. Try hopping into luxury cars sitting in traffic in L.A. and see how much progress you make. Carjackers have ruined that once promising profit center for everyone. Even my boss, Mr. Callesse, seemed impressed by my rapid progress. Not that he would come right out and offer praise or encouragement, since by long tradition praise on Wall Street was conveyed only through a form of non-verbal communication known as the year-end bonus. But Callesse did admit that Johnston Brothers had a few potential client leads more promising than the phone book, and eventually he consented to give me a few. 
Only two weeks on the job and my life was settling into a pattern of train rides and phone calls, quickly eaten meals and failed attempts to get into the always-crowded bar below my apartment. It was beyond question an incredibly happy time for me, and I was certain that the only reason I wasn't in fact incredibly happy was that I'd gotten into the habit of being incredibly unhappy over the summer, and habits always are hard to break.
 
"The ticking time bomb," Smith thought. "It's my strongest remaining hand to play…assuming a bomb can be a hand. "Better yet, I don't have to do much to play it. It was just looming out there waiting to swallow Kerns up…that is, assuming a bomb that's a hand can loom and swallow." Smith had a feeling that this was the day. Always a man to consider faculty meetings exciting, today's left him giddy with anticipation. 
 "Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome our new dean, Dean Jack Kerns, the dean," Smith announced to the faculty.
 "Thank you, Thomas," Kerns said, taking the podium to a heartening, if obligatory, round of applause. It was his first formal address to the Bucklin faculty since taking over for Jergensen back in April. It was also the first time Kerns had ever said anything to which his wife, a member of the faculty recently returned from Cancun, had been more-or-less required to listen. "I'd like to welcome you all back to campus," Kerns continued. "I trust your summer sabbaticals were productive." By the looks of their tans, they had been. "As most of you no doubt already know, Bucklin College has entered a new phase in the advancement of American education. We have, you might say, given the campus back to the students. Specifically, we have agreed to provide a range of student centers so extensive that virtually every group in our highly diverse campus culture now has a place where it can go when it wishes to exclude everyone else. We have created an environment so friendly to special interests that there's virtually no room left for any interests that aren't special. In short, we have achieved the primary goals of any progressive educational establishment."
Kerns paused for more applause from the faculty. He searched Katherine out in the crowd and wondered what she thought of his rousing speech. He'd never before roused anyone in his life, and suspected Katherine would be surprised to find him capable of it. If she was, she was hiding it well. Katherine wasn't even applauding along with her colleagues.
 "But of course nothing worth doing is worth doing cheaply, and certain compromises will have to be made in the weeks, decades, and generations ahead. In fact, some of you might already have noticed that campus special interest groups have taken over your classrooms, labs, and offices."
 "Yea, what's with that, Kerns?" anthropology professor Herbert Schmelling interrupted. "There's a pair of Turkish students in my building night and day. I mean, I like a glass of raki as much as the next anthropologist, but all the tambur music is starting to get to me."
 "Turks? Christ, Herb, you're lucky," said Lucile Halley, professor of Biochemistry. "I'm stuck with something called the Androgynous Students Alliance. It wouldn't be so bad, expect that they've taken all the signs down off the restroom doors, and I don't know which one I'm supposed to use."
 "Unfortunately, there was simply no avoiding these sacrifices," Kerns said.
 "No avoiding them?" asked music department assistant professor John Woloschuk. "How was there no avoiding giving away the music building to the campus nudists' club? Do you have any idea what they've been doing with my woodwinds?"
Well, at least Katherine wasn't joining in with the carping. Actually, she hardly said a word to him since her return, which was making it even trickier for Kerns to gather evidence of an affair. Still, he'd decided to continue to act paranoid and suspicious around his wife, if only to avoid looking like a fool later if it turned out to be true.
 "Now listen, everyone," Kerns said. "Just last fall, this entire faculty voted unanimously that the primary goals of this college should be--and I quote--'to bring together the peoples of the world and make the Earth a better place'. Now, was that statement truly representative of your feelings, or were you just making an empty politically correct statement that seemed unlikely to have any actual bearing on your lives as tenured intellectuals at a pricey New England college?"
There was some shifting around in seats, but no one argued.
 "Okay, then. Nice to see we're all still on the same page," Kerns continued. "Because it isn't just the offices. We're also short on classroom space, so there's no possible way that we can offer as many classes as we have in the past. But the good news is I've explained the problem to the student groups, and they say they're willing to take fewer classes, or, if necessary, no classes at all. I think that's very sporting of them."
 There was no applause anymore. Just worried murmuring sounds.
 "I can tell you all have your concerns. It's natural to have concerns in times of change. But I'm certain that all of this can be settled to everyone's satisfaction…or at very least to the satisfaction of those groups and individuals that complain the loudest and most often." Kerns paused for a beat. "So at this point I'd like to turn the meeting back over to the man behind the entire student center program, Associate Dean Thomas Prester Smith. He's in charge of handling all aspects of the transition. As for me, I'm going to be at out of town for the next week at an important conference on reducing university travel budgets, so please address all your input on this matter directly to Smith, and please do so as soon as possible, since he'll need to have a solution in place by the time I return. Remember, we're got to have everything up and running by the Fall semester, and that's not too far off."
 "But what…" was all Smith got out before Kerns' pager beeped.
 "Oops, got to take that. See you in a week, Thomas. The office secretary knows where to find me if you need me." This was true. But it wouldn't help Smith. Kerns had given the secretary the week off. As an added precaution, he'd also informed her that someone would call if they needed her to come back early, thereby guaranteeing that nothing in the world would convince the secretary to answer the phone for the next seven days.
 
 "The end is near," I read. "This is the time for action." A second unsigned scrap of paper had appeared on my desk. This one was decidedly more apocalyptic, though not appreciably less enigmatic, than the first. I looked around, but didn't see anyone who looked even vaguely like a doomsayer. But then it was rare on Wall Street to see anyone who even looked a little bearish. I dug the earlier "Don't play their game" note out of a drawer, and confirmed they were written by the same hand. I never had figured out what the first note meant, but to be on the safe side, I had avoided office games of all kinds, including poker and garbage-can basketball. 
 This note was a bit tougher to follow blindly.
 "Did you ever get a sort of an odd note left on your desk, maybe as a joke or something?" I asked Keller the next time he hung up his phone.
 "What kind of a note?" Keller asked, distracted by his computer screen.
 "Just a cryptic piece of unsigned advice scrawled on a torn piece of paper."
 "Oh, that kind of note," Keller said, paying more attention. "You've heard from the Ghost of Johnston Brothers."
 "Fuck you, Keller, I'm being serious."
 "I'm being serious, too, Gwaf Jr.," he said, using the technically inaccurate nickname that he'd been trying to hang on me for a few days now, much to the delight of the ersatz Gwaf, Sr. "Johnston Brothers has been haunted for years, only the ghost usually sticks to the research department. He must have taken a special interest in you."
 "I'm not going to sit here and let you yank my chain." I reached for my phone.
 "I'm not making this up."
 "You're saying you believe in ghosts."
 "Not exactly. But this one's a well-established rumor. And once a falsehood is well-established, the person repeating it can't be criticized for bringing it up. It's like cults. After a few hundred years, they become religions, and then you have to respect them."
 "Yea, but this office building hasn't been here a few hundred years. Only since the late 1960s."
 "So our ghost is only a few decades old. That's long enough for a ghost. It's not like I'm asking you to worship the thing. The point is, these notes have been appearing on Johnston Brothers' employees desks a few a year since before we were born. No one ever sees anyone leaving them, and no one knows what they're supposed to mean. But there is a theory…"
I waited until it became clear Keller wasn't going to continue unless I gave in and admitted that I was listening to his bullshit. "Okay, hit me with the theory."
Keller smiled at his victory. "The theory is it's related to the Johnston Brothers analyst who tried to rate a Nifty-Fifty stock 'sell' during the bull market back in the early 1970s."
 "I thought that was just a myth."
 "No, I have it on reliable office gossip that that part at least is true. They fired the analyst, of course, and apparently the guy just disappeared off the face of the Earth. The story goes he sneaked back in here one night and killed himself down on the research floor. Then the company hid his body in the ventilation system to avoid the scandal, or maybe because they were afraid a suicidal analyst could spook the markets. Now the ghost of the bearish research analyst haunts the building swearing revenge on young Johnston Brothers employees."
 "And you believe this?"
 "It would explain the smell coming from the ventilation system every summer."
 "For the record, the notes I've received aren't really threats," I said. "In fact, the first one was more like ethical guidance."
 "On Wall Street, ethical guidance is the worst curse of all."
 "Still, it seems fairly implausible."
 "Just something to keep in mind." Keller reached for his phone. "Hey, if you do meet the ghost, ask him if there's any way he can give us a clue where the market's heading. Nothing like a little spectral market analysis to give us a leg up on the competition."
 "You mean to say that if I get one question to ask someone communicating with me from beyond the grave, you don't want to know the meaning of life, or if there's a God, what you want is next month's Nasdaq figures."
 "And don't overlook the Big Board," Keller advised, then went back to yelling into his phone.
 
Katherine had expanded her disinterest in Kerns to include not looking him in the eye when he dropped by her office to explain that he would, indeed, be leaving immediately for a week on vital Bucklin business. Kerns tried to explain that he was caught up in the blood sport that is small-college administration, but his wife gave him no hint that she gave a damn. Kerns would have liked to tell Katherine everything. What he was secretly planning, how this job already had changed him--and how deeply he truly loved her. But it was embarrassing enough to relay travel plans to someone who wasn't listening. Kerns wasn't about to bare his soul.  
 At least he had Roger as an ally. Even after Katherine's return, the little dog did not follow her from room to room, anxious to lend Katherine his assistance in her daily activities, as had long been his custom. Instead Roger sat loyally by Kerns in the study, ready to spring to his defense should the need arise. Roger could sense the tension in Kerns, and was sure he and this gangly packmate were locked in a desperate battle of some sort. Roger wasn't 100% certain what they were up against, but he'd learned from experience that there were very few problems that couldn't be solved by high-pitched yapping and maybe a swift nip on an ankle. 
 Out of this new found sense of loyalty, Roger followed Kerns that day as he threw some clothes in a suitcase and headed for the front door. "It probably would make more sense for you to stay here, considering what I have in mind," Kerns told his furry compatriot. Roger did not turn back. "Still, it is nice to have an ally, even a short, yippy one. And you are good at keeping a secret. Okay, you can come along. I'll just leave Katherine a note explaining that you've decided to come with me." Kerns left his note, then led Roger the two blocks to their former residence, the house Kerns and his wife continued to own and pay a significant mortgage on, even as they lived in the official Dean's residence on Federal Street. "We don't want to be homeless after you've been fired, my darling," Katherine had explained while sending the mortgage check a month back, in that endearing fake French accent of hers.
 
July 13

There's a phrase often repeated in investment companies' literature, mainly at the insistence of the investment companies' lawyers: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." In other words, if an investment made a pile of money last year and a second pile of money this year, it might seem reasonable to believe it will make a third pile of money next year. But in truth, the odds are just as good that the investment will instead take one of its first two piles back. The mistake is assuming that one can extrapolate from the past to produce an accurate vision of the future. You might be jumping on board the bandwagon just as the band's about to launch into an extended Foghat medley. That's life. You never can tell. 
 It pays to consider this lesson in non-investment-related phases of life as well. A month ago, when I saw visions of my future, they all involved dumpster diving. I was extrapolating from my then present station as an unemployed loser to produce a grim vision of the future, one that involved a descent into madness, despair, and four-day-old baked goods. In the past month, my position in the world had changed dramatically. And again I was extrapolating, perhaps unjustifiably. My future, it seemed, was all around me, row after row of people just like me, only with a bit more job experience, a bit less hair, and quite possibly a few pieces of furniture in their apartments. 
 If this is what I wanted out of life--and I must confess, it did look pretty good compared to the dumpster-based option--then all I had to do was establish myself as a competent equities salesman. Competency in this line of work equaled a very comfortable existence. This life included a nice car, a nice house, a nice wife, two nice kids, a nice piece on the side, then a nice alimony settlement, with some nice child support payments thrown in if you didn't wait until they were grown and out of the house. Yes, a competent equity salesman could afford all these basic necessities, with enough left to blow on luxuries like home electronics and a retirement plan. And all you had to do in return was spend twelve hours a day in front of a computer screen with a phone in your hand and your heart in your throat for, oh, three or four decades. It was a good life. But for some, it just wasn’t enough. Some competent equities salesmen eventually took long, hard looks at their lives and priorities and decided there must to be something more. Twelve hours at a desk and a nice stack of cash suddenly left them feeling empty. These competent equity salesmen would then settle on what they really wanted in life. And, inevitably, what they wanted was superstar equity salesmen. For superstars, the time, effort, and job might have been just as daunting--but the stack of cash was a whole lot higher.
 "How long have you been doing this?" I asked Keller over lunch. "How long have you been selling equities?"
 "Oh, forever. Well, it feels like forever. I guess it's actually been a little over a year. But on Wall Street that's long enough to qualify as forever."
 "How about Callesse? How long has he been here?"
 "He's been here forever, too."
 "He's only been here one year and he's already the department manager?"
 "No, he's been here at least seven years," said Keller. "So I guess that's seven forevers."
 "Is that how long it takes to get really good at this?"
 "Nope. It takes less than a year to get good at this. I can say that for a fact, because if you're not good at it after the first year, they fire you."
 "Yea, but I'm not talking competent, I'm talking superstar. What does it take to be a superstar?"
 "Christ. Don't tell me you think I'm your mentor."
 "Hell no. This is Wall Street. There's no such thing as a mentor on Wall Street. You're just someone I'm going to use as a stepping stone on my climb to power, then cast aside when I don't need you anymore."
 "Oh, that's different then," Keller said. "As long as I'm not your mentor. You asked how long it takes to get great at this. Well, time is irrelevant. It takes three things to be a superstar, and only one of them really matters: you've got to work harder, you've got to be smarter, but above all else you can't let anything stand in your way--even if what's trying to stand in your way is that you don't want to work any harder and you're not really any smarter."
 "So it's just tenacity?"
 "It's not just tenacity; a lot of it has to do with ethics."
 "Really? Ethics? On Wall Street?"
 "Exactly. Superstars don't have them. Oh, I suppose they have some. For example, if a superstar equity salesman was standing on a subway platform, he probably should resist the urge to push other commuters into the path of oncoming trains. Those fellow subway riders might one day become clients, after all."
 "But you're saying that's as far as the superstar's ethics go?" I asked.
 "Let's just say the superstar equity salesman realizes that there are exceptions to ethical rules. If this salesman needed to find a way to get on an oncoming express train not scheduled to stop at that station, say, and a fellow subway rider was all he had available to push into its path, well, let's call that a gray area. The point is the superstar equity salesman can make these sorts of snap decisions. That's part of what makes him so special."
 "It does seem a tad extreme."
 "That was just a hypothetical example. The main ethical gray area isn't subway transit. It's portfolio management. A competent equity salesman spends his career building up solid, working relationships with investors and professional buy-side portfolio managers, right?"
 "That had been my assumption."
 "Everyone's working together to make money?"
 "I'm guessing this is a trick question."
 "Correct. But don't spoil my fun."
 "Okay, then, yes, we're all working together to make money."
 "Wrong," chided Keller. "And I'll tell you why. How do our clients make money?"
 "They make money when their investments make money."
 "And how do you and I and Johnston Brothers make money?"
 "We make money by taking a commission when our clients trade shares though us."
 "See the problem here? Our clients make money by holding good stocks. And the emphasis there is on holding--all the research proves that buy-and-hold beats buy-and-sell-and-then-buy-something-else-then-do-it-again. But we make more money if they do the latter. Our interests are fundamentally opposed to those of our customers."
 "And superstar salesmen take advantage of this?"
 "All salesmen take advantage of this. Superstar salesmen base their lives on this. Listen, you can have a perfectly fine career on Wall Street by doing the right thing and looking out for your clients. You can have a nice summer house on Martha's Vineyard, and your children can go to a decent college-prep nursery school. But if you want your Martha's Vineyard summer house to be on the water, and you want your children to go to the very best college-prep nursery school--or for that matter if you want them to go to the very best college-prep nursery school on the water in Martha's Vineyard--then you've got to churn." 
 "Churn?"
 "That's what it's called. Well, that's what it's called by those who don't think it's a good idea. People who think it's a good idea call it 'adopting an active trading strategy'."
 "Who thinks it's a good idea?"
 "Mostly just superstar salesmen and those who want to become them." 
 "Then adopting an active trading strategy is the key. Why isn't everyone doing this?"
 "Everyone does. But for most of us mere mortals, it's the exception, not the rule, cause it isn't as easy as it sounds. Look at it this way: you know how tough it is to convince that person to trust you and buy the stocks you recommend. Well, if you want to adopt an active trading strategy, then you've got to convince someone to trust your advice and invest in stock A as you suggest--then you've got to call them back a while later and convince them that stock A isn't the place to be at all, they need to switch to stock B. Then you have to convince them to switch to stock C, then stock D and then E and…well, I could continue, but you know how the alphabet goes. And you have to do all of this without the client losing faith in your abilities to pick the right stocks for them."
 "I can see that it has its challenges. But the upside…"
 "The upside is you've turned one client into a whole bunch of clients--or at least a whole bunch of commissions."
 "Do you do this?"
 "Sometimes. When I think I can get away with it. I'm no superstar, not yet. But as it happens, some clients actually like to jump in and out of investments. Makes them feel involved."
 "And they don't realize they'll lose in the end?"
 "There are people who keep going back to casinos and people who keep buying lottery tickets. There's no explaining it; all we can hope to do is make money off it." 
 "Don't the clients ever realize we're working at cross purposes?"
 "Now and then," Keller said. "But it's not like Wall Street's the only place you find this kind of thing. Dentists use exactly the same scam. They tell their customers they need a root canal, or three caps, or whatever they feel like doing that day. The more pain they inflict on their customers, the more cash the customers have to fork over. It's brilliant."
 "I'm not sure dentistry is a scam."
 "No? These are people that actually can say they've got a bridge to sell you, and make you ante up for it. Believe me, the nitrous oxide isn't the only reason they're laughing."
 "Maybe I should have been a dentist."
 "Nah, dentists and investment bankers both get to screw our clients and have them come back for more, but we're still better off," Keller said. "Investment bankers don't have to worry about being nice to children or getting soaked in other peoples' spit."
 "It must be this combination of factors that makes investment banking the thrilling challenge that attracts the best and brightest business school grads each year."
 "Don't be cynical. It attracted you, too. And now that I've explained the birds and the bees to you, I'll bet you try to churn someone before the month is out."
 "No bet." I wasn't going to last the month. I wasn't even going to last the afternoon. But I resolved to start slowly. I picked just one of my clients, and advised him to adopt an 'active trading strategy.' It was an aggressive investment strategy, I admitted to the client. But as I explained at the time "Life's full of risks, Timmy." Besides, if worst came to worst, life's also full of sharp objects, ambulance-chasing lawyers, and deep-pocketed companies. And Timmy did have three limbs left.