Dad's retiring.

He told us at Sunday dinner, like it was nothing. "I put my papers in. April 30." Then he passed the potatoes. My mom put her fork down and put her face in her hands and we all thought she was crying, and she was, but she was also laughing, and she said "Thirty-two years, Everett," and he said "I know, Jo."

Thirty-two years on the job. He started in 1967, the year of the big snow, and he's worked nights and holidays and walked into things all of us have spent our whole lives not asking about. He used to come home and sit in the car in the driveway for ten minutes before he came in. I didn't understand that till I started working on the floor. You need a minute between the noise and the house.

Paul asked what he's going to do. Dad said, "Fish." Mom said, "You don't fish." Dad said, "I'll learn."

Eddie and I broke up.

Friday night at his apartment. He'd had a bad week, another bad week, and he said I don't support him. I said I support him fine, I just can't talk about corn spreads every minute of every day. He said that's his life. I said I know. That's the problem. I said I've been talking to the back of your head since August.

Then it got quiet, and he said, "Maybe you're right," which was worse than yelling. He gave me back my Sox sweatshirt. I gave him back his umbrella. Very civilized. I drove home down Western Avenue crying so hard I missed my turn twice.

Darlene, on Monday, when I told her: "Honey. I told you. They're all married to the market. Some of them get divorced from it. He's not going to be one of them." Then she gave me half her bagel and we didn't talk about it again.

The worst part is the corn pit is right there. Forty feet away. I'm going to have to look at the back of his head every day anyway. At least now I don't have to listen to it.

This week a giant hedge fund back East almost went under and the Federal Reserve got a bunch of banks in a room to keep it from taking everybody down with it. That's what the guys under the TVs say, anyway. The whole floor's been jumpy as a cat.

Eddie's in trouble. He won't say how much, but he was wrong on corn in August and he got more wrong trying to make it back, and his clearing firm called him upstairs Wednesday. He borrowed from his father to stay in. He goes out after the close and doesn't come home till late, and when I call he says "I'm fine, babe, it's just a drawdown," which is a trader word for losing money that sounds like a plumbing problem.

Marty, meanwhile, is having a quiet good month. He trades small and gets out fast and goes home at two to his wife and his daughters. He told me once, "The guys who blow up are the ones who need to be right. I don't need to be right. I need to be out." I wrote that on the back of a trading card and stuck it in my wallet.

Two weeks ago Russia stopped paying its debts. Today the Dow fell more than five hundred points. In between, every market in the world has gone a little crazy, and the bean pit with it.

Beans have been falling all summer. Big crop coming, Asia not buying, and now the whole world selling everything at once. Every morning the pit opens like somebody kicked a hornet's nest, and it doesn't stop till the bell. My voice is gone. My hands shake at night from the coffee. I dream in quarter-cents.

Marty is standing back. Smaller trades, fewer of them. When the pit goes nuts he steps up one step and just watches with his arms folded. He said, "Days like this, you don't have to play. Nobody makes you." Half the locals around him are trading three times their size, red in the face. Some of them won't be here in October. You can tell which ones by their eyes.

FLOOR WORD: limit. There's only so far beans are allowed to move in one day. When they hit that, up or down, the pit goes quiet, weird quiet, and everybody just stands there. It's the strangest sound in the building.

SIX. The Bulls won it again last night in Salt Lake City, Jordan with the steal and then the shot at the end, and my whole family stood in front of the TV in the living room and my dad, who never yells, yelled. My mom yelled at him for yelling. Then she yelled.

The floor was in a good mood this morning, for about four minutes. Everybody saying the same thing: this is the last one. Jackson's leaving, Jordan's probably leaving, they're going to break it all up. One of the old guys in the bean pit said, "Enjoy it. Nothing good lasts in this town." Then the bell rang and he sold me a hundred beans. Not me. Marty. You know what I mean.

Eddie and I went out to watch the game at a bar on Rush Street. Eddie had money on it, of course. I wanted to watch it with my dad. We watched the first half at the bar and the second half at my parents', and that's the best compromise we've made all year.

Eddie wants me to move in with him. He has a one-bedroom up north with a view of the lake, if you lean out the bathroom window and look left.

I said no, for now. I'm still living at my parents' house, saving money, which is the smart thing for a clerk to do, and also my mother would light a candle for my soul every day at St. whoever is in charge of daughters. Eddie doesn't get it. He says, "You're twenty-three." I say, "Exactly. I'm twenty-three. What's the rush?"

The other thing is he trades bigger every month. He had a great winter, he bought a new car, he picks up the check for eight people at dinner. My dad says a guy who spends like that is either rich or about to find out he isn't. I said Dad, that's not fair. He said, "I didn't say which one."

A year on the floor this week. A year ago I didn't know what a soybean looked like. I still don't, really. I've never seen one. I've traded about a million of them.

Six weeks clerking for Marty. Here's what I've learned about how he trades.

He's a scalper. That means he buys and sells all day long for tiny profits, a quarter of a cent here, half a cent there, in and out in seconds or minutes. A quarter cent on a contract of beans is $12.50. He does it hundreds of times a day. He doesn't care where beans are going this year. He cares where they're going in the next three minutes.

He stands in the same spot every day, near the top of the pit, where he can see everybody's hands. Before the open he drinks one cup of coffee and does not talk. During the session he never stops talking. After the close he goes completely quiet again and eats a turkey sandwich alone in the members' lunchroom. I think he's the sanest person on the floor. Darlene says that's like being the driest fish in the lake, and then she says don't put that on your computer, and I have.

FLOOR WORD: out-trade. When Marty says he bought ten from a guy, and the guy's card says he sold ten to somebody else, or sold five, or sold at a different price, it doesn't match. That's an out-trade. Every morning before the open, I'm on the floor with the other clerks, sorting them out. Somebody always loses money. My job is to make it not be us.

First day as a clerk.

New jacket: navy, with Marty's clearing firm's patch on it. They had a men's small this time. It's still two sizes too big. I'm starting to think that's on purpose, some kind of initiation.

My job: every time Marty makes a trade, he writes it on a card, how many, what month, what price, and the badge of the guy on the other side. Then he flicks the card over his shoulder at me without looking. I catch it, or I pick it up off the floor, and I check it, and I keep a running count of where he is: long how many, short how many, at what average. If he turns around and says "Where am I?" I have to know, instantly, without looking at anything. If I'm wrong, it's his money.

He turned around at 10:40 this morning and said "Where am I?" and I said, "Long seven March at a quarter," and he looked at me for a second and turned back around. That was it. That was the whole job interview.

Darlene walked past at the close and said, "Well?" I said I think I didn't screw it up. She said, "Nobody screws it up the first day. It's the second Tuesday you've got to watch."