“It’s getting bad. It can’t last. It’s already starting to crumble. See?”
He rattled a newspaper in Magnus’s direction.
“Alfie, you need to be a bit more specific. Unless you are talking about that newspaper, which seems fine.”
“I mean”—Alfie pulled himself up and looked over the back of the sofa—“that the entire financial structure of the United States could fall down at any second. Everybody said it could happen and I never believed them, but now it seems like it could really happen.”
“These things do.”
“How can you not care?”
“Practice,” Magnus said, looking back to his book and turning the page.
“I don’t know.” Alfie slid down a bit. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it will all be fine. It has to be, right?”
Magnus didn’t bother to point out that that wasn’t what he had said. Alfie seemed appeased, and that was good enough. But now Magnus had lost the flow of what he was reading and no longer felt like continuing. These visitors were getting annoying.
After a few days, Magnus was completely tired of the company, but he was not inclined to throw them out. That would have been unseemly. He simply took a second suite on a different floor and stopped coming home. His guests seemed aware of this, but no one minded as long as the door to Magnus’s old suite was open and no one cut off the room service account.
Magnus tried to fill the time with ordinary pursuits—reading, walks in Central Park, a talking picture or a show, some shopping. The heat broke, and a mellow October settled over the city. One day he hired a boat and spent the day drifting around Manhattan, looking at the skeletons of the many new skyscrapers and wondering what actually would happen if it all fell apart, and wondering how much he currently cared. He had seen governments and economies fall before. But these people . . . they made big things and had a long way to fall.
So he opened some champagne.
He noticed that many people spent their days huddled around the stock tickers that graced every club and hotel, many restaurants, even some bars and barbershops. It amazed Magnus how these silly little clockworks under glass could fascinate some people. People gathered around them, sitting hour after hour, just watching the machine spit out a long tongue of paper full of symbols. Someone would catch the paper as it unscrolled and read the magic it contained.
The twenty-fourth of October brought the first scare, with the market tumbling and regaining a bit of footing. Everyone had an uneasy weekend; then the next week came, and everything got much worse. Then came Tuesday the twenty-ninth, and it all came down, just like everyone had apparently predicted, yet never really believed would happen. Magnus couldn’t avoid the shock wave, not even in the peace of his room at the Plaza. The telephone began to ring. There were voices in the hall, even a scream or two. He went down to the lobby, where a full-on panic was in progress, people running out with their suitcases, every telephone cabinet occupied, a man crying in the corner.
Out on the street it was worse. A group of people outside were in fevered conversation.
“They’re jumping out of buildings downtown,” one man said. “I heard it. My friend works down there, and he says they’re just opening the windows and throwing themselves out.”
“So it’s really happening?” another man said, grabbing his hat off his head and holding it over his heart, as if for protection.
“Happening? It’s happened! The banks are starting to board up the doors!”
Magnus decided it was probably best to go back upstairs, lock the door, and get out a good bottle of wine.
He did get upstairs, and he did get into his room, but the moment he arrived, one of the recent strangers from his other room appeared in the doorway.
“Magnus,” he said, his breath reeking of booze, “you gotta come. Alfie’s trying to jump out the window.”
“Well, that craze took hold fast,” Magnus said with a sigh. “Where?”
“In your old room.”
There was no time for Magnus to inquire how long they had known about his new room. He followed the man as he stagger-ran through the halls of the Plaza. They took the back stairs up three floors to the old suite, where the door was hanging open and several people were gathered around the door to Magnus’s old bedroom.
“He’s locked himself in there and put something against the door,” one of the men said. “We looked out of this window and saw him on the ledge.”
“All of you, get out,” Magnus said. “Now.”
When they were gone, Magnus extended his hand and sent the bedroom door flying open. The bedroom window, once the source of a beautiful view of Central Park and too much sunlight, now framed the crouching figure of Alfie. He was perched on the thin concrete lip just outside, nervously smoking a cigarette.
“Don’t come any closer, Magnus!” he said.