Inside the Citadel

Book excerpt: Can a Lutheran stockbroker from the Midwest and a Jewish financial headhunter from Great Neck find happiness? Well, maybe, if they climb New York State's biggest mountain together. We're talking Fire Island and the Hamptons and group summer houses and art parties on 57th Street. It's summer, 1972, two new World Trade Center towers reach for the sky and the Dow Jones Industrials bid to top 1000 for the first time. But people are people and problems are problems and Scott Lehmann and Jennifer Cohen encounter their share. Scott pictures himself, in the end, like Gary Cooper in High Noon, flinging his badge to the dust and striding away. But it's not that easy. There's the elusive Jennifer, and the glitter of Wall Street, and the yellow-green, ever-moving translucent numbers...