A pause. Then the doughnut's soft patient voice from Paris, by satellite: "Sherman. Please. For 300 million bonds nobody's got to do anything on hot flashes."

"Of course not, of course not. It's just that I know I've explained ... I know I've ... I know ..."

He knew he had to talk himself down from this giddy urgent plateau as quickly as possible, become the smooth calm figure from the fiftieth floor at Pierce & Pierce that the Trader T doughnut had always known, a figure of confidence and unshakable puissance, but ... it was bound to be his car. No way out of it! Mercedes, RF, a white man and woman!

The fire raged inside his skull. The black man stropped away on his shoe. The sounds of the bond trading room closed in on him like the roar of beasts:

"He's seeing them at six! Your offering is five!"

"Bid out! The Feds are doing reverses!"

"Feds buying all coupons! Market subject!"

"Holy fucking shit! I want out!"