Talking a lot about wine gets you a substantial ACI
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When I entered the nearly empty bar near Grand Central, I was unsurprised—and, I’ll admit, rather pleased—to see, sitting on the stool he’d occupied when I was in the bar some months before, the mature gentleman who had told me that the economic crisis was inevitable once smart people started taking jobs on Wall Street. (“Our guys would have never invented credit default swaps,” he’d explained. “They couldn’t have done the math.”)

I settled myself a few stools away, but I did nod; in return, he lifted his martini in my direction as a sort of understated toast. He was dressed, as he’d been the other time I saw him, in gray trousers and a tweed jacket and a blue button-down shirt—none of which differed from what could have been purchased in close proximity to a New England college campus in 1959. Again, he was wearing a club tie. This time, it appeared, from my vantage point, to be decorated with tiny artificial-heart valves.

No sooner had I ordered a drink than we had occasion to exchange glances that communicated dismay: Three men who were sitting at the other end of the room had begun discussing wine in voices that seemed intended to enlighten oenophiles who were strolling past Rockefeller Center.