“Hey, Walt! There’s. . . people on the floor!”  Walter looked at me as if I was crazy. Of course there were people on the floor. The New York Stock Exchange was bustling, even more lately with the bull markets we’d been having.

“No, look! Over there!” I pointed at a small family grouping. “If management finds out we let in some tourists, no more cushy security jobs for you and me.”

Walt squinted over at the intruders. “Guess we better get them outta here, then, before somebody notices.”

We threaded our way through the crowd to them. Walt has some bulk, so he tried to block them from anyone else’s view. 

“Ah, excuse me, sir,” I began, to the one I had figured as the father of the group. He turned and looked at me with a big smile. But somehow, he didn’t seem right. I don’t mean loony bin material. His face didn’t seem to have completely normal expressions, and his clothes (and his shoes) were made of something that looked oddly soft. It was like they were stylish, but not for here in America, not for the twentieth century. The wife and the little girl, same. 

“Uh, you’re going to have to leave,” I said, motioning toward the door. I was still hoping that nobody had noticed them. I’d had this job since I was sixteen, and I didn’t want to lose it.

The man kept that weird almost-smile.  “How do you do?” he said to me. There was almost a kind of buzzing in his voice, around the edges. “I am Diana Delgado, and this is my. . . my wife, Diana Delgado. I’m sorry, I am Brice Delgado. My offspring, my. . . daughter is Fatima Delgado. Designations are important for learning about each other.”

“Mr. Delgado, you’re not allowed to be here unless you’re a day trader. Come on, we have to go.”

Then Mrs. Delgado spoke up. I thought she hadn’t been paying attention. She just seemed to be watching all the traders. “I am pleased to meet you. My name is. . . Diana Delgado. We are introducing ourselves.” Her voice had that same buzzing, but it was in a different pitch. Or something.

I had to get them out of here without making a big stink about it that someone would notice.

“Mrs. Delgado, here in New York, we love out of town tourists. You wanna go get the little girl an ice cream?” I tried to edge them in the right direction while looking around to see if I was in trouble yet.

“Perhaps later, Mr. – you have not shared your title with me yet. Have I committed a breach of etiquette?”

This was getting more cuckoo all the time. Walt was shaking his head and backing off a little. He doesn’t like it when things seem out of kilter. 

“I’m Pete. I’m a security guard here.” I pointed to my uniform. “If you don’t leave, people are gonna get upset and I’m gonna lose my job. Probably Walter here will, too. You wouldn’t want that to happen, right?”

Mr. and Mrs. Delgado looked almost nervous, except they continued with their smiles.  “No, of course we would not want anyone to get upset, especially because of us.” The little girl spoke for the first time. Again with the buzzing. Her voice didn’t sound like a little girl at all, though.

She took what looked like a small knife out of her purse. Walter and I looked at each other. This was getting bad. She cut her thumb and pressed it. I was afraid she was going to get blood on the floor. Instead, there was a slight hissing noise, and if you can believe it, some kind of gas came out of her thumb. And there seemed to be a lot of it. I watched as it rose up and up to the ceiling and spread out through the rest of the room.

“Now people will not get upset,” Mrs. Delgado said. “Everyone who inhales the vapor will understand that the nature of the cosmos. Just for a little while. We use this to get to know each other.”

I realized that she was right. That all we do for money is meaningless in the face of the greater good. I watched as the traders’ faces changed, as they sold their holdings, and then left. The room got quieter and quieter.  

“You see?” said Mr. Delgado. I was remembering my grandmother’s hugs and feeling of sunshine on my face. There were tears running down Walter’s cheeks.

“Thank you,” I said, and bowed my head. 

I don’t remember anything that we talked about, the Delgados and Walter and me. I never had an experience like that, before or since, not even in church. 

The newspapers the next day, they talked about that October crash like the traders were going wild. To this day, none of them have admitted what really happened that afternoon.