- Early in the morning, Tommy Wilhelm takes the elevator down from the 23rd floor of the Hotel Gloriana. He's on his way to the hotel restaurant, where he plans to meet his father for breakfast.
- As Wilhelm crosses the hotel lobby, he stops to chat with Rubin, "the man at the newsstand" (1.4). They make small talk, and Rubin tells Wilhelm that he's looking "pretty sharp" (1.12).
- Wilhelm takes a gander at himself in a glass cupboard full of cigars and knick-knacks, and muses about his life. He thinks to himself that he "should have done hard labor"—honest, tiring work—rather than trying to make it as an actor in Hollywood when he was young (1.13-14).
- Rubin and Wilhelm continue to chat, and Wilhelm makes excuses for missing their regular gin game the night before. He never wins, and his money's running low.
- Rubin asks Wilhelm if he wants a paper so he can check the commodities figures. He knows that Wilhelm has recently made an investment in lard.
- Wilhelm doesn't want to see the paper: he already knows that price of lard is falling. Instead, he reflects on how another neighbor, Dr. Tamkin, first began to convince him that the commodities market was a place where good money could be made.
- The novel's narrator fills in some of the backstory, and tells us that Wilhelm's father, Dr. Adler, warned him against going into business with Tamkin.
- As Wilhelm thinks about his father, he absentmindedly stares at the Chicago Tribune. He isn't really reading it; instead, he's thinking back to the poetry he once read as an undergrad at Penn State.
- Pretty soon, Wilhelm's mulling over his entire youth: his decision to drop out of college to move to LA; his decision to change his name from Wilhelm Adler to Tommy Wilhelm; his conflicts with his parents, etc. It isn't long before he works himself into a proper funk.
- As the chapter draws to a close, Wilhelm is still standing in front of Rubin's newsstand, praying to God: "Let me out of my trouble. Let me out of my thoughts, and let me do something better with myself. For all the time I have wasted I am very sorry. Let me out of this clutch and into a different life. For I am all balled up. Have mercy" (1.107).