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system of justice and that what the judge says goes. The MF gamed the system for all it was worth and the same system seems to be protecting him. Luckily, as I am visualizing him, wolfing down a gourmet dinner in his dandy penthouse, I am at the Four Seasons in New York dining on risotto laced with black truffles. My friend RP e-mailed me earlier in the day: “Last minute idea: do you want a FREE dinner  that will help save the earth?” Who am I to turn down a free meal at the Four Seasons, under any circumstances?
    During the cocktail hour I notice, among the ladies, a conspicuous lack of the large stones that glittered with such delicious abandon in premeltdown days. I pay special attention because the other day I received another phone message about selling my jewels. This time it was from one of the big auction houses. A polished voice asked if I would like a “complimentary consultation on how to discreetly dispose of your jewels.”
    Excuse me, where did anyone get the idea I have such valuable gems? I wish!
    I meet RP at the venerable Grill Room, where I had countless business lunches as a high-flying magazine editor. The government of Malaysia is sponsoring a dinner for the first Earth Awards, and finalists from all over the globe talk about how they have been working for years to help the planet. In the beneficent atmosphere, I forget about the MF and news tidbits about his wife paying for his security guardsand fat cigars—with whose money? Okay, maybe I don’t forget entirely.
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    I arrive home from the Four Seasons feeling wiped out from the day. I take a Tylenol PM and try to fall asleep. Another Tylenol and a tranquilizer three hours later don’t do the trick and the demons do a shock and awe attack. Tonight, drugs don’t help.
    I contemplate the advice of my dinner partner that day, a doctor whose specialty is integrative medicine. I told him I was looking for someone who would help me with meditation, and asked if I would become addicted to the tranquilizers I take when I feel panicky. He said I didn’t appear to have a problem yet. (When you become a PoRC, you grab any freebie advice you can get.) He suggested a book about yogic breathing exercises. Learning how to inhale and exhale is pretty far down my to-do list, but maybe I’m fooling myself about what will really help me fight the panic. Tomorrow I will find the book. It’s been quite a while since I locked eyes with the lions in front of the New York Public Library on Forty-second Street. That’s a good thing about being a PoRC, you get to have experiences that you forgot about when, for instance, it was easier just to one-click and order a book from Amazon.
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    I have until March 4 to file a claim for the SIPC insurance money that may be paid to people who’ve been swindled bythe MF. SIPC says it can pay up to $500,000, but my savings were in an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) so it’s not clear whether I will receive any remuneration at all. And if the government classifies me as the victim of a theft, and worthy of its largesse, how long will it be before I see the SIPC money? Six years? Eight years? By then, I figure, I won’t need to have my hair colored; it will be a perfectly elegant shade of pure-panic white.
    The morning after the Four Seasons dinner, I descend into the dark depths of the basement storage area of my apartment building to locate the MF’s statements. I need to collect reams of materials in order to file the SIPC claim. Three hours later I’m covered with filthy dust but in my hands are all the documents going back to 1999, when I first put my money into the MF’s funds.
    The IRS instructs us to keep records for seven years, and I’ve dutifully complied. I throw out as much as possible because I have very little room for storage and neat-freak is embedded into my DNA. But for some reason—and I think it’s because I’m