Heads You Win

Most young men going to university as freshmen could take a few weeks to become accustomed to the routine before they settled in, but Alex didn’t have a few weeks. Bernie’s stall, as the locals still thought of it, was just about breaking even. Although Alex had found ways of cutting costs, the Wolfe at the door was still demanding his three hundred and twenty dollars a month—and, as he regularly reminded Alex, in advance, as agreed in the contract. But Alex didn’t have three hundred and twenty dollars, and if he couldn’t hand over the money by Monday morning, he would no longer have a stall. Whom could he possibly ask for another short-term loan?

He sat at the back of the theater scribbling on a notepad. Those undergraduates seated around him assumed he was writing down the lecturer’s thoughts, but he was too preoccupied with how to hold on to the stall. He had assured Elena at breakfast that morning that his grades were always good enough to put him in the top half of his class, but knew he couldn’t share his other worries with her.

“Could the Wall Street crash have been avoided, and should the financial experts have spotted the signs far earlier, or were they all just…”

Alex looked down at his notes and thought about his options: Mama, Dimitri, Ivan. He considered each of them in turn. His mother only knew half the story, and it was the better half. She’d never met Mr. Wolfe, and only ever saw Ivan from a distance when he joined Alex for lunch at Mario’s. A shadowy figure whom she didn’t like the look of, she’d told her son on more than one occasion.

Recently, Alex had begun to wonder if she might be right. Elena had assumed that Ivan worked in the market, although she’d never seen him there. She frequently made it clear that she hoped her son would not end up as a market trader, but would become a lawyer, or an accountant, with an air-conditioned office in Manhattan, who went home every evening to his wife and three children, and resided on the Upper East Side, rather than in Brooklyn.

Dream on, Alex would have told her. But he knew she would never accept that he was one of life’s street traders who, when he put on a suit, became an entrepreneur. He struck a line through her name.

Dimitri? He had proved to be a giver, not a taker. A man whose trust and generosity seemed to know no bounds. He had been responsible for Alex and his mother having a roof over their heads, and had supplied the original loan for his stall, which Alex still hadn’t repaid. To make matters worse, Dimitri was away at sea again and wasn’t expected back for another ten days.

Alex still thought Dimitri was hiding a secret. But perhaps his mother was right, and he was simply one of the good guys. Alex reluctantly put a line through his name, leaving only one person on the list.

Ivan. Their relationship had become increasingly fraught. His partner would often fly into a temper if Alex was even a few minutes late for a chess match, and recently Alex had begun to suspect that he wasn’t getting his fair share of the profits from their weekend games. Ivan never let him see what he’d entered in his notebook, and while the side bets were being placed his eyes were always covered with a blindfold.

During the past year, Alex had learned very little about Ivan. He didn’t know what his day job was, other than that he ran a small import and export business on the side. Despite this, Ivan was fast looking like the only prospect of keeping his agreement with Mr. Wolfe.

Alex slowly circled his name, and decided that as in chess, the best form of defense was attack. He would raise the subject of a loan during their lunch break on Saturday.

“I want you to write an essay over the weekend,” said the lecturer, “on whether President Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office were the turning point…”

That wasn’t how Alex planned on spending his weekend.

*   *   *

“Let me try and understand your problem,” said Ivan in Russian, as a large pizza was placed in front of him. “You are currently renting a stall—”

“I have a five-year license.”

“For three hundred and twenty dollars a month, and you’re only making a small profit.”

“Not enough to cover next month’s rent.”

“But you think the problem would be solved if only you were given enough time?”

“Especially if I could get my hands on a second stall.”

“Even though you can’t afford the one you already have?”

“That’s true, but if you and I were to become partners, I’m confident—”

“Forget it,” said Ivan, cutting him short. “If you were to rent a second stall, the only thing that would double would be your losses.”

Alex bowed his head and looked down at his untouched pizza.

“However,” said Ivan, after he’d picked up a second slice, “if it’s simply a cash flow problem, I might be able to help.”

“I’ll do anything.”

“Last week I had to sack one of my couriers, and I’m looking for a reliable replacement.”

“But that would mean I’d have to drop out of NYU. If I did that, my mother would disown me.”