On the morning I returned, the General asked whether I had enjoyed my holiday and handed me an overdue notice before I could answer.
I had been away for six working days. My sister had needed help moving, which he knew, but he preferred holiday. It made the accumulation of unopened envelopes on my desk seem generous of him.
“Nothing very urgent,” he said. “That one may already have been paid.”
It had not. I recognized the envelope. The supplier had started using red paper in June, and I had developed a respect for them on account of it. Other companies sent statements marked *Friendly Reminder*, as though the friendliness were what had been missing from the previous three attempts.
“I’ll look at it.”
“And the American Express. There are a few things to sort out.”
He stood in the doorway while I put down my bag. He was wearing a blue jacket I had seen on the statement the previous month, although the entry itself had been less descriptive. He had written *Conference* beside it in a rounded, impatient hand.
“Good to have you back, Alexei.”
For a moment he sounded as though he meant it. Then he asked whether I could have a cash position ready before lunch.
The business supplied commercial kitchens: refrigeration, ovens, replacement parts, and technicians who went out at five in the morning to be abused by restaurant owners whose freezers had stopped working. It was a substantial business. There were trucks, a warehouse, twenty-three employees, and customers who had dealt with the General for longer than I had been alive. Whenever I complained about him, I felt obliged to mention these facts. He had built something. My criticisms, however accurate, had produced no trucks.
The offices occupied the front of the warehouse. Visitors entered through glass doors into a reception area with a stone counter and an enormous photograph of the General shaking hands with a man who had once been governor. Behind reception, the carpet ended. The warehouse smelled of cardboard, machine oil, and the burnt toast someone made every morning in the break room.
My office was between the copier and a locked room containing records no one had requested since 2016. From my chair I could see half the parking lot through a narrow window. The General had once offered to move me closer to the front, then remembered that the room he meant was being used for wine.
Nobody called him the General to his face. He had never been in the military. Polina had given him the name, and I had adopted it with the eagerness of a man being admitted to a private joke. Among the employees he was simply the owner. To the bank he was a personal guarantor. I was coming to think the bank had the most accurate description.
By ten I had reconciled the operating account and found two payments entered twice, a customer deposit posted to sales, and a check to a golf club classified as repairs and maintenance. I corrected the first three. Beside the golf club I left a question mark.
Then I opened the loan schedule.
There were three private notes: four hundred and fifty thousand, six hundred thousand, and seven hundred thousand dollars. Ten percent on the first, eleven on the second, twelve on the third. The monthly payments came to sixteen thousand two hundred and fifty dollars. All interest. I checked the principal balances against the previous month and found them unchanged, as they had been the month before that.
The largest note had an extension letter attached. I opened it. Ninety days, subject to a fee. The signature at the bottom belonged to the Frenchman.
He visited occasionally and was always pleasant to me. He remembered my name, asked whether I still followed the market, and listened to my replies with a composure I found offensive. He owned shares. When something he owned fell, he could wait for it to recover, or collect a dividend, or go to France. I could not see that this entitled him to any particular reputation for intelligence.
At eleven the General came back.
“How are we?”
I turned the monitor toward him.
“If Mercer pays this week, and we hold the equipment order until Monday, we can cover payroll and the scheduled payments. Without Mercer, we need a transfer.”
“He’ll pay.”
“His office said that before I left.”
“I spoke to him personally.”
“When?”
The General glanced toward the parking lot.
“We have a relationship with these people, Alexei.”
I waited. Sometimes, if one waited long enough after such a statement, a date emerged. This time there was no date.
“Don’t send him anything,” he said. “He’s coming to dinner Thursday.”
“I wasn’t going to invite him.”
He looked at me, and I pretended to adjust the width of a column.
“A collection email. Don’t send another collection email.”
I said I understood.
As he left, his phone rang. He answered in the hallway, and I heard him ask whether she was eating. There was a pause, then, in a lower voice, whether the doctor had actually said that or whether it was somebody’s interpretation.
I knew whom he meant. For several months his aunt’s health had been discussed with a solicitude that increased near payment dates. I had met her once. She had asked what I earned and told him, in front of me, that he ought to be ashamed. Naturally, I liked her.
Around noon Blanche arrived carrying two coffees in a cardboard tray. The General came out of his office to meet her, which he did not do for suppliers.
She wore cream trousers and a dark sleeveless blouse. There was nothing elaborate about her clothes, but I noticed them immediately. She gave the General one coffee, retained the other, and greeted our receptionist by name. Then she came to my doorway.
“You’re back.”
“Apparently.”
“Was it awful?”
“Moving furniture for six days? No. I’m considering it professionally.”
She laughed and looked at the envelopes on my desk.
“He’s asked you about the hotel?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ve held the smaller private room for Thursday. It will be better for conversation.”
“How much better?”
“About twelve hundred dollars.”
I looked up. She took a sip of coffee.
“You can tell him it was my idea.”
I had never established whether Blanche worked for the hotel, with the hotel, or merely knew people there who answered her calls. She arranged dinners and appeared at openings; she knew the manager of one private club and had once described a second as impossible since the change in ownership. The General introduced her differently depending on who was listening. She never corrected him.
“He’ll want the larger room,” I said.
“He wants everyone comfortable.”
“Of course.”
She smiled at my tone without joining in it.
“There will only be eight people, Alexei.”
She went down the hall. A moment later I heard the General laughing much more loudly than I had made her laugh, and returned to his American Express statement.
There were business lunches, fuel, hotel charges, a florist, two payments to a department store, and a recurring charge from a storage facility. Some had receipts attached. Several had explanations written beside them. On the second page a charge for a hotel suite had been circled and marked *Personal—P.*
Polina had no company card. I knew this because I had once been asked to arrange one and then, the same afternoon, been told not to proceed.
I put the statement aside.
At twelve fifty I checked my position.
Forty-two percent.
I had bought the calls that morning for eight thousand dollars. They were now worth eleven thousand three hundred and sixty. The stock had broken above the level I had been watching for three days and continued upward, without any of the violent reversals that usually accompanied my being correct.
There was nothing to consider. My rule was forty percent. I had written it after reviewing six months of trades, including several in which an excellent morning had become an expensive afternoon. Forty was not a prediction of how far a position could rise. It was the point at which I had agreed to stop asking.
I opened the sell ticket and selected the entire position.
“You’re gambling.”
Polina stood in the doorway.
I had not seen her since returning. During the six days I was away she had sent me two messages, both questions concerning things she could easily have found out from somebody else. I had answered the first in four minutes and the second in eleven. The eleven had been deliberate, though I had spent all eleven looking at my phone.
“I’m working.”
“Is that our money?”
“No.”
“Then you’re gambling.”
I minimized the window.
She had tied her hair back badly; a loose section kept falling against her cheek. She wore a gray shirt with the sleeves pushed up and held her phone by its edges, as though she had just read something unpleasant on it. She looked tired. I was annoyed that no one had mentioned this to me, although I could not have said who should have done so or why.
“Did you need something?”
“You sound busy.”
“I’ve been gone a week.”
“Yes. I noticed.”
She sat in the visitor’s chair and moved a box of paper clips away from the edge of my desk. I watched her do it. She had said she noticed. There were several possible reasons for this, but only one interested me.
“Did the move go well?” she asked.
“My sister now owns a sofa that can never leave her apartment.”
“Is she happy?”
“About the sofa?”
“Generally.”
I said I thought so. Polina nodded and looked down at her phone without waking the screen.
“You have the card statement.”
It was not a question.
“Which one?”
She looked at the American Express envelope beside my hand.
“Don’t make me ask everything twice.”
I pulled the statement toward me.
“What am I looking for?”
“The hotel. Last month. Three nights.”
I found the entry. Two thousand eight hundred and forty-six dollars.
“It’s here.”
“And what has he done with it?”
“Nothing yet. I’m only entering the statement now.”
“What has he written?”
I hesitated. She reached across the desk, turned the paper, and read the note herself.
“Personal,” she said. “Yes.”
“Were you there?”
“Do you need that for the books?”
“I need to know whose expense it is.”
“Then ask him whose expense it is.”
She pushed the paper back so abruptly that one corner folded beneath it. I smoothed it out. I knew nothing about the charge except the date, the amount, and what he had written. This was suddenly intolerable. I wanted to tell her that whatever had happened, I was not on his side.
Instead I said, “He can’t make you owe something merely by putting your initial beside it.”
“Can’t he?”
“Not in any meaningful sense.”
“That will be a comfort.”
For a little while neither of us spoke. A warehouse cart went past the other side of the wall, one bad wheel striking the concrete at regular intervals.
“I’m not asking you to change it,” she said.
“I didn’t think you were.”
“You did. You looked pleased.”
I began explaining that I had no reason to be pleased, and she interrupted to ask whether Mercer had paid.
“No.”
“Anything?”
“Not since the last payment.”
“How much?”
“Polina.”
She settled back in the chair.
“Is that confidential?”
“It’s a customer account.”
“I know who he is.”
I knew that she knew. Mercer had been at family dinners, company anniversaries, her mother’s funeral. He called the General by a shortened version of his first name that nobody at work used. When his office failed to answer my emails, I was reminded of all these advantages.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Must there be an investigation?”
She stood up. I opened the receivables report.
“A hundred and eighty-three thousand four hundred and seventeen dollars. Sixty-two cents.”
She remained standing.
“You even know the cents.”
“They’re on the screen.”
“How late?”
“The oldest invoice is seventy-eight days past due. The rest varies.”
“Show me.”
I turned the monitor slightly. She came around the desk and leaned toward it, placing one hand beside the keyboard. I could see a small ink mark near her thumb. Her hair fell forward again and she tucked it away impatiently.
“This one?”
“That’s the invoice date. This is when it was due.”
She read the rows slowly. I tried to determine whether she was adding them, looking for a date she recognized, or simply prolonging the conversation. It did not occur to me that I might ask her something ordinary.
My phone buzzed against the desk.
**12:59 — CLOSE ALL OPEN POSITIONS?**
It was my own shortcut, connected to the little order script I had put together after staying in a trade past the close one afternoon and spending the night checking prices that could no longer help me. On regular trading days it asked the question one minute before one. It did not trust me to remember; I retained the dignity of answering.
I swiped **YES** and put the phone down.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“I wasn’t speaking.”
“You were looking at the March invoice.”
“Was I?”
She glanced at me. For an instant she seemed amused, and I felt that we had been having quite a different conversation from the one the words suggested.
“Send me this,” she said.
“The report?”
“Just his page.”
I should have refused. She did occasional work for the company, had an email address there, and was invited to meetings from which I was excluded, but she had no responsibility for collections. There was no business reason to send her Mercer’s account. I understood this so clearly that I began searching for a business reason on her behalf.
“If you’re helping with Thursday—”
“I’m asking you for a page, Alexei.”
I exported the account detail.
“Your company email?”
“My phone.”
I sent it.
She waited until it arrived, then opened the attachment. I disliked how quickly her attention left me once she had it.
“And don’t mention that I asked.”
“Why would I?”
“Sometimes you like explaining yourself.”
This was unjust. I could have named several recent occasions on which I had said nothing when an explanation would have benefited me. I nearly named them now.
From the hallway the General called her name. She locked her phone.
“Leave the hotel charge alone until he tells you what it is.”
“I was going to.”
At the door she stopped and looked back.
“You don’t have to look like that.”
“Like what?”
But she had gone.
It was one seven. I sat looking at the empty chair. I had intended to ask whether she was staying for lunch; there had apparently been seventeen minutes in which to ask it, and I had failed. Instead I had given her a customer’s financial information and offered an opinion about a hotel bill I did not understand.
Still, she had come to me.
I opened the statement again and entered the hotel charge in the account for items awaiting clarification. Then I picked up the next receipt.
The afternoon passed without incident. A technician needed a replacement fuel card. One supplier agreed to wait until Monday and another refused. The General approved the smaller dining room after Blanche told him it would feel more private. Before leaving, he put his head through my door and said he hoped I understood his position concerning Mercer.
“Perfectly.”
“Good man.”
I could still have told him about the report. Instead I asked him to sign the payment approvals.
At home I put rice on the stove, changed my shirt, and opened my laptop at the kitchen table. My apartment had two windows overlooking the back of another building. In the evenings the neighboring kitchen extractor made a continuous noise that I generally stopped hearing after twenty minutes. That evening it seemed particularly loud.
I opened the brokerage account out of habit.
Then I remembered the calls.
For a second I felt physically cold. I could see the sell ticket, the quantity selected, Polina in the doorway. Had I submitted it? There had been something on my phone. I remembered touching the screen but not what it had said afterward.
No open positions.
I went to the orders.
Filled, 12:59:18.
Proceeds: thirteen thousand three hundred and sixty dollars.
Profit: five thousand three hundred and sixty, before fees.
Sixty-seven percent.
I checked the purchase. Eight thousand. I checked the sale again. Then I brought up the chart and moved the cursor back to twelve fifty.
The stock had continued climbing. Nine minutes. While I had been showing Polina an overdue invoice, the value of my position had increased by another two thousand dollars.
I laughed aloud.
There was nobody to tell. I opened her messages anyway, then closed them. She would say it was gambling; worse, she might take no interest. I did not want either response attached to the number.
The rice boiled over. I turned down the heat and wiped the stove with a dish towel, then came back to look at the order once more.
I had made more in those nine minutes than I would take home from the company in two weeks. This comparison was not quite fair: there had been eight thousand dollars at risk, and taxes to consider, and a month in the previous year I preferred not to include in comparisons. But the two thousand was real. The order had filled. There was nothing theoretical about it.
Polina had come to ask about somebody else’s debt and accidentally improved my finances.
I liked that. I liked it more each time I thought it.
In my trading journal I entered the purchase and sale, the size of the position, the return, and the time. Under *Exit reason* I typed *End-of-day liquidation.* This was accurate.
The next field was *Followed plan?*
Above the journal, in the frozen rows I kept visible while scrolling, were my rules. Take profit at forty percent. Do not add to a losing position. No overnight holds.
I looked at the first rule. Forty-two would have been a perfectly respectable result. I had been prepared to accept it. But surely there was something to be said for allowing a strong position to continue while keeping the safeguard in place. Otherwise, what had I built the safeguard for?
I did not change the rule. One trade was no basis for changing a system. I was quite firm about that.
My phone lit up.
*You didn’t tell him I asked about Mercer?*
*No.*
Her reply came almost immediately.
*Good.*
I left the phone beside the laptop, with the message visible, and returned to the journal.
Under *Followed plan?* I selected *Yes*.
