Table of Contents
Dramatis Personae

Please note that characters are added as they reveal themselves and become part of the story. 

The Melancholy Korean is a former derivatives trader living in New York.  He loves Dante, James Joyce and Flaubert.  He has studied French, German, Japanese, Sanskrit, and Hebrew, but of these languages, he remembers only, "avez-vous un cendrier?"  Yes, he smokes.  No, he doesn't know Korean.

Leon Badges is a painter, illustrator, draftsman, and cartoonist.

Felicity

Barbara, Felicity's Mother

Harry Best

Prune

Dr. Ken Coffin

Broker Bill and his wife Kate

Mumbai

Nicky, the Greek

Blue Stocking

Rev Hezekiah Bartholomew Smith

Kitty

Marco

The Critic

Sybil

Wednesday
29Oct

Silence

DateWednesday, October 29, 2008 at 12:17AM in

"Do you think, captain..."

"Jesus, Mell.  Where the hell have you been?"

"...that people who follow the stock market..."

"Not this again." 

"... or the bond market..."

"You know what, Mell?  I told myself, this whole time, he's probably still alive because he pulls this shit every six months...'"

"...or the currency and commodity markets..."

"But then I thought, what if this is the fucking time?  What if this is it?"

"... that they realize their lives are totally meaningless?"   

(silence)

(silence)

(silence)

"Kate was right, Mell."

"Dow down eight hundred points.  Up a thousand.  Down five hundred.  Up, down.  Down, up.  Doesn't this shit get tiresome?  Oh my God.  The Nikkei is trading like it's 1982!  The dollar is more volatile than Sycamore Networks in 2000!  Iceland, the next Thailand!  Volkswagon ripping off the faces of the genius hedge fund fraudsters.  Guess that return wasn't all alpha, boys.  Gold cutting the guts out of all the fiat currency propeller heads."

(silence)

"Their lives, captain.  All of 'em.  A big, fat zero."

(silence)

"Do me a favor, Mell."

"You think they get that?  When they can't sleep at night, do the day traders and equity arbs and technical analysts and newsletter hacks and media muffins on CNBC and stringers on the Reuters business wire and, not least, the shrill, shrieking bloggers--do they get chills, when they think about how they have contributed absolutely nothing to the human race?  That no one will remember that they ever existed?"

(silence)

"Call me back when you grow up."

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Saturday
27Sep

Felicity's Letter - Part 6

DateSaturday, September 27, 2008 at 01:27AM in
"I was born Israel Cohen" you continued, "in Aragon, far from the shadow of the Temple.  It was the time of the Alhambra Decree."

"Melancholy..."

"I was born in a manger, in star-crossed Verona, under a Taurus moon.  Over the horizon, the Lion was ascendant, and the ruler of my life, Saturn, was in the first house."

"Weren't you born in LA?"

You paused for a moment to pull out a cigarette.  You didn't hear my question.  Oh Melancholy.  How well I would come to know this movie.

"But the story of my education begins when I was twelve, during the last terrible bear market.  It was a bad time, when the great firms of old, like Kuhn, Loeb and Company, were being swallowed by the vultures.  It was the beginning of July, and I had just been kicked out of camp.  Sent home early.  Does not play well with others, refuses to listen to authority, breaks curfew to wander in the woods, a danger to himself.  I don't have to tell you, I had upset my parents' holiday plans."
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Tuesday
16Sep

Requiescat In Pace

DateTuesday, September 16, 2008 at 10:39PM in
"Where's the wake, captain?"

"Not now, Mell."

"If you're gonna jump from the window..."

"Seriously.  Not funny." 

"Come on, I just want to pay my respects.  I had a few years with him too, you know.  It's the Sicilian way."

"Bad luck, Mell.  I would stop right here."

"What's bad luck?  Schadenfreude?"

(silence)

"No disrespect, captain.  I just want to go to the funeral, tell the big guy himself, how much he influenced my life."

(silence)

"Mister Wall Street.  Hell of a run.  1934 - 2008."

(silence)

"Do you know, captain, after the Crash in '29, how long it took for Wall Street to recover its former glory?"

(silence)

"Fifty years."  

(silence)

"Only in the Eighties, thanks to Reagan, did the Street get back its mojo.  By mojo, I mean, financial services as a percentage of GDP."

(silence)

"Not again in my lifetime, captain.  Not at the rate I'm smoking.   Hell of a ride while it lasted.  I don't regret a moment of it.  Not least, the rock star weekends."

(silence)

"So, in honor of Brother Lehman and Mother Merrill, and even the other one, that unloved step-bastard, I would like to mark this moment the only way I know how:

multas per gentes et multa per aequora uectus

aduenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,

ut te postremo donarem munere mortis

et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.

quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum.

heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,

nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum

tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,

accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu

atque in perpetuum, frater, aue atque uale."

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Friday
12Sep

Trieste - Part 13

DateFriday, September 12, 2008 at 10:30AM in
"Who are these women?"

Melancholy was getting agitated. 

"What the hell kind of book is this?"

The four men had taken seats around a table in the cafe.  The old man was sipping coffee.

"That one, molto gentile." 

"I don't understand."

"Further back, signore, look further back in the book."

"Si chiama Molly." 

"Molly."

"Irlandese."

The old man put his hand on the page.  "One moment," he said, "let us pause here one moment." He took from his pocket an ivory-colored card, wrote on it, and handed it to Melancholy.

"You can't be serious."

"The cure, signore, for your malinconia." 

"So much?"

"Shall we bargain like dirty little merchants?  Over your happiness?  I can see you are un gentiluomo."

Melancholy pressed his lips together. 

"Certo."

He wanted to get a closer look.

"May I?"

"Most certainly, signore."

He picked up the book and held it close to his face.  A bit of paper fell out from between the pages. 

"What's that?"

Melancholy reached down to the ground.

"My God."

The old man smiled wanly at Melancholy. 

"What about her?"

"I think, signore, you have seen enough for today."

The old man stood to leave.  He turned and motioned to the Clown to follow him.  It was only then that the Clown, who had been staring out the window through most of the conversation - he must not know English well, Harry thought - noticed the small picture Melancholy held in his hands.  His reaction surprised the two Americans.
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Thursday
11Sep

Midstream

DateThursday, September 11, 2008 at 10:28PM in
"Feeling better, captain?"

"Jesus, Mell.  Where the fuck have you been?"

"I'm somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, I think."

(silence)

"Come on, buddy.  You can't keep doing this to us."

"Who is us, captain?"

"Your friends."

"You sound like a fucking after school special."

"Mell, please tell me you're gonna go home soon."

"No way, captain.  After all these years of bicoastal bullshit, I wanted to see the part in the middle of our great country.  That part that isn't a stinking sinkhole of misery and despair."

"Nebraska?"

"God's country, captain.  Palin country."

"Now you're done with Obama?"

"These people out here are the backbone of our country, captain. Hell, they're the backbone, the tailbone, the fibula, the fucking hands and feet, the head, the soul, the heart of America.  Fairfield County is the lizard skin wallet."

"I thought you liked Connecticut."

"The Midwest, captain.  Where people go to church, boys date girls, and men marry women.  Everyone who doesn't like that program, well, they just move to your building in Chelsea."

"Mell, you can't keep running away from your problems."

"I love it out here, captain.  Swear to Christ.  People are so friendly.  I feel like more of a man just breathing this air.  Damn it feels good.  Palin country."

"You sound drunk."

"Although, I haven't eaten this much sauerkraut since Harry and I were in Trieste.  Less sauerkraut next time for breakfast." 

"One day, Mell, you're gonna have to go back home.  Like it or not, you belong on the East Coast.  Why don't you move to New York?  I told you I need a new Mumbai.  You can go back to trading."

"Palin country is great, captain.  People do real work out here.  They farm the land.  They produce.  None of that bullshit finance buying and selling.  Game over for Wall Street.  Fucking Obama is sinking faster than Lehman stock."

(silence)

"Yes, I may have had a couple beers.  So what?"

"You're drinking beer now?"

"Budweiser's for real Americans, captain.  Not that elitist, East Coast, chilled vodka shit."

"So, you're gonna move to Nebraska now.  Is that your new plan?"

"Palin country, captain.  I'm feeling it."
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