That Night at the Palace by L.D. Watson

the market would bounce back. In the meantime, she would have to sell the apartment and lower the stipend.
    Dianna and her attorneys didn’t understand. Dianna wasn’t about to let go of her apartment, and there was no altering the stipend. Well, that wasn’t completely true; it could be lowered, but it would be costly. It took nearly a month of negotiating during which Darnell was living in a south-side hotel where he shared a bath with five other people. He had long since fired his lawyers because there was no money to pay them. Actually, they had dropped him because they had seen his finances and knew full well what was about to happen. The stipend was cut, but to do so, he had to sign every stock he owned over to Dianna, and not just the stuff he had previously reported. They took everything, except the debt. Even when he turned everything over they weren’t convinced, so it was finally agreed that until the value of all of the stocks returned to what they were on the day the divorce settlement was agreed upon, one week prior to Black Tuesday, he would pay her fifty-five percent of his salary from Lockyer and Hornsby. They had him, and they all knew it. He had no option. It was difficult enough signing the new settlement, but to add salt to the wound, Dianna sat across the table with a smug expression while holding hands with her new boyfriend.
    With payment on Dianna’s apartment and the “stipend,” Darnell would have almost nothing to live on, and he still owed the fifty grand. Yet he reasoned that he could hold off his creditors and manage living in the south-side hotel until the market began to climb back. He would eventually start collecting commissions again, and with some luck get his life back. At least that was his hope.
    On New Year’s eve the partners called them all into a meeting where they announced that they were closing the firm, effective January first. They argued that there was no money to keep it up. There was some truth to that. Darnell hadn’t sold a single stock since October, but everyone was sure that it was just a matter of months or even weeks before things bounced back. Those two old crooks were simply covering their hindquarters. Unlike Darnell and most of their clients, Lockyer and Hornsby had invested heavily in real estate. It wasn’t the best of investments at the time, but they hadn’t lost everything from the Crash, and unlike almost everyone else in the country, they continued to collect revenue. Darnell, however, was out on the street.
    It was then that he began to realize just how bad this crash really was. Lockyer and Hornsby weren’t the only ones closing their doors. Most firms were closing. There wasn’t a firm in town with a job opening. That being the case, Darnell began to try relentlessly to get hired as an accountant, but no one needed an accountant if they weren’t making any money. By the spring of 1930 almost no one was making money. As mid-summer approached, Darnell Blankenship, the man who a few months earlier was on his way to owning Wall Street, was now five months behind on his payments to Dianna and living with a collection of out-of-work misfits in an alley behind a now closed toy factory.
    Right after the crash, Darnell began drinking heavily. He hadn’t been much of a drinker prior to that day, though he would have a little gin whenever he and Dianna went to a speakeasy. Now he had a bottle in his pocket almost all the time. It wasn’t so much that he liked the taste of it. The cheap homemade stuff was strong and burned and had metallic aftertaste that lasted all day, but it calmed his nerves. He didn’t know if it was from stress or something really physically wrong with him, but his hands had begun to shake most of the time, as if he was cold. The booze helped him relax, and when relaxed he didn’t shake. So now he kept a bottle close by all the time. Whenever he got a job interview or some day-work, for that matter, he’d take a few drinks to