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And what mill, exactly, would that be? If Tommy Ogden had ever experienced one misfortune in his life, they had never heard of it. Tommy Ogden had always done just as he pleased. The world's machinery had always been his for the taking, and when he chose a drill that displeased him he put it back or threw it away without hesitation or apology. Viewed dispassionately, Marie would qualify as a drill, and in time she too would find herself replaced. Not, from the look of things, that she would care overmuch. And not that she would fail to exact revenge. Marie was fed up with her dyspeptic husband, his selfishness and his eternal animal gloom. He so rarely appeared to be having a good time but that was difficult to know for certain because so much of that time was spent inside himself, a place that he, if no one else, evidently found a fascinating country. Of course Marie was aware of Tommy's situation Chez Siracusa. She was aware that he was well liked there, liked by the girls and by the management and not only for his generous wallet. Tommy had always been generous with money. But surely that was another matter entirely, the exception that proved the rule. Still, when she had first met him in Scotland he had been attractive. She was drawn to him at once. She found him quite shy and open to possibility. He was beautifully built. He moved with assurance. Other men made way for him, and Marie had liked that. But he had not aged well.
    There's not a moment to lose! Tommy shouted. He took a swallow of whiskey and sat back in his chair, Marie forgotten. He was remembering the dinner table when his father and mother were alive, the identical china and Tiffany flatware and centered silver candelabrum, the heavy crystal. Dinner proceeded in a standoffish silence until his father made a comment about his day, something to do with business usually, the railroad, and when that was gone his many investments, the shape and disposition of the capital markets, their natural rhythm. Who was selling short and who was buying long and why. That was the reason he was leaving for New York in the morning. New York City was where the decisions were made, the customary processes of consultation among bankers in London and Boston as well. Money moved like the mysterious ocean currents and that knowledge was not available in Chicago. We are a colony, you see. We are Hong Kong or India and we do the bidding of others because we do not control our own assets. They are held in trust, as it were. Our assets are controlled for us and if we desire a slice for ourselves we can have it so long as fees and interest are paid; and that rate is set also in New York and London and, depending on the size and shape, in Boston. Here in our region we manufacture things, automobiles and heavy machinery and the food that feeds the nation. We do not own it, however. They own it, because they own the banks that supply the credit. Frequent visits to Wall Street were necessary in order to know who was buying long and who was selling short and why. Well, his father would add, you never knew why, precisely, beyond the obvious: someone invented a new machine or discovered a mine rich with ore. Someone identified a fad, the hoop skirt or the tulip. The way of things was that someone met someone else in the men's room of the yacht club or at a wedding or funeral and received a tip, bullish or bearish, it scarcely mattered which. But we do not have that information at the Chicago Club or that golf course out in Lake Forest.
    Tommy remembered his father's gruff voice in the thick silence of the dining room, candles guttering then as they were now. Much of what his father said was swallowed up in that vast whale of a room; a tree crashed and no one heard. He spoke often of the mysteries of the balance sheet, numbers assigned arbitrarily to the left-hand column or the right, depending on whether you wanted to show assets or liabilities, mumble mumble, for the taxman or your