Читать книгу Bond Girl - Erin Duffy - Страница 7

ON THE FIRST day I was so excited I could barely breathe. I couldn’t believe that I had managed to achieve the goal my eight-year-old self had set all those years ago. But I had. And I was ready to do whatever it is people actually did inside this building. I sat with the rest of the incoming class of new analysts, twenty-five of us in all, in a conference room on the main floor of the building. I looked around at the other new kids, knowing that they were all there for the same reason—cash (and maybe some stock options)—and worried that my more romantic motivations of fond childhood memories and a desire to follow in my father’s footsteps would result in my not being able to compete. I convinced myself that the rest of the group probably had memorized the Fibonacci sequence by the time they were twelve. My excitement quickly turned to fear, and the longer I sat in that conference room, the faster my fear turned to all-consuming terror. We sat quietly and listened to an overweight woman with dark curly hair and bright lipstick lecture us from a podium.

“Welcome to Cromwell,” she said enthusiastically. “My name’s Stacey, and I’m the firm’s head of Human Resources.” The fuchsia lips flashed a brief, not entirely convincing smile. “Please make sure your name tags are visible at all times for the first week or so. It will help you get to know one another, and it will help your new colleagues learn your names as well. Please open your orientation packets.” We dutifully opened navy blue folders on the table in front of us and began to flip through the contents. “Inside, you’ll find a copy of the employee handbook, which addresses all of Cromwell’s rules and regulations. It goes over everything you should and should not do, common ethical dilemmas that, as new analysts, you may come up against and how to handle them and, more important, what we consider to be fireable offenses. Pay close attention to the section on electronic communication. You should not write anything in an e-mail or instant message that you wouldn’t want published on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. If you think it could embarrass the firm or yourself, don’t write it. If you receive incoming e-mail that contains inappropriate pictures or material, delete it. If you respond, you will be held accountable for disseminating material that is inconsistent with the firm’s principles and your employment can be terminated. Make sure you read the handbook because from this moment on, you’re responsible for knowing everything contained therein, and if you violate any one of the rules, you cannot use the excuse that you didn’t know. Does everyone understand?”

We sat silently. A few of the eager analysts in the front row nodded, but apparently Stacey didn’t like the halfhearted response. She leaned forward on her elbows and asked us all again, louder this time, “Do you understand?” This time, there was no smile as she enunciated each syllable. We responded “yes” in unison. What is this—nursery school? I wondered. We get it Stacey, you own us. It wasn’t that hard to understand.

“If you have any other questions, your orientation packet contains the names and numbers of the desk managers and the appropriate contacts in HR. You all should know what floor you are heading to. There will be someone from each group waiting to greet you at the elevators and escort you to your desks. Other than that, have a great day, and again, welcome to Cromwell Pierce. You are now part of one of the most respected firms in the industry.”

We stood, and I moved with the crowd out to the elevator banks. I counted seven girls. The Ivy Leaguers walked together in front of the rest of us, acting like a pack of alpha girls I knew in junior high. I had gone to the University of Virginia, an intellectually inferior school as far as they were concerned. I felt, warranted or not, like an outcast. Not exactly how I wanted to start my first day.

The hierarchy in most Wall Street firms is clearly delineated. You spend your first few years as an analyst, responsible for learning as much as you can, and making sure the rest of “the team” gets their lunch orders picked up from the lobby in a timely fashion. From there, you move up the ranks to associate, then to vice president, then director, then managing director and, from there, I was pretty sure you jumped to the executive committee or something. For my purposes it didn’t really matter. All I needed to know was that I was as junior as junior could get, and I therefore worked for everyone. I figured as long as I kept that in mind, I would be okay. At least I hoped so, because from what I had heard, forgetting your rung on the corporate ladder was a very bad idea.

I was one of ten analysts who stepped off the elevator when the doors opened on the eleventh floor, all of us assigned to various “desks” in the fixed-income division. There were people waiting in the hallway for us as we exited the elevator, everyone somehow knowing which clueless analyst he was supposed to claim ownership of. As I stepped onto the marble floor I was immediately intercepted by a stocky man with shocking green eyes and short brown hair. He was imposing and suave, attractive in a rugged way, the kind of guy who instantly commands your attention. I figured he was in his midforties, due to slight graying at his temples, but it was hard to tell. Men are annoying like that. He seemed to excrete charisma from his pores as easily as a normal person sweats. His khaki pants and blue-and-white-checkered shirt were pressed within an inch of their life, and his brown tweed blazer fit him perfectly. He looked like a brunette Ken doll, live and in the flesh. When he extended his hand to greet me, I noticed that his fingers were thick and squat, but that his skin was smooth and his nails were perfectly manicured. Here was an interesting dichotomy: a guy who oozed machismo but who also valued immaculately buffed nails. This was my first introduction to a legitimate Cromwell salesman and, more important, my first introduction to Ed Ciccone, otherwise known as Chick. My boss.

Chick was a trading floor veteran. I’d come to learn that he’d spent twenty years in the Business, fifteen of them on this very trading floor. He was smart, ferociously competitive, and could sell just about anything. He was well known on the Street for his hard partying, his lavish entertainment spending, and his ability to function on little to no sleep. He was wildly successful, extremely popular, and hugely intimidating. He didn’t waste time with formalities; after a perfunctory shake of my hand, he turned and walked toward the trading floor, a vast room that encompassed nearly the entire floor of the building, except for the foyer by the elevator bank, a coffee stand in the hallway right outside the elevator vestibule that was swarming with people who probably didn’t need more caffeine, and a few offices lining the perimeter. I could hear screams on the trading floor from the elevator vestibule and felt my hands begin to sweat. It seemed like total chaos. People—nine out of ten of them men—raced through the hall, their loafers crushing the once-plush carpet fibers flat and thin, talking, laughing, cursing. Some wore ties and jackets. Most wore khakis and their moods tattooed on their foreheads. We wove in and out of people as we approached the small staircase that led down to the floor, and for the first time I could see huge banners hanging from the ceiling marking the accolades the division had earned over the years, the way the championship banners hung in Madison Square Garden. The room was enormous. A girl could get lost in there and need the dog teams from the New York City Police Department to be found. I felt my legs begin to tremble.

Chick spoke insanely fast, like his lungs didn’t need oxygen at the same rate as a normal person’s. His smile was friendly and his demeanor was welcoming, but at the same time I had the sense that if I screwed up he would make sure I spent the rest of my Cromwell career stuffing FedEx envelopes in the mailroom. We made a left before we hit the small staircase that led to the floor and walked down a hallway lined with glass-enclosed offices. Small plaques mounted next to the doors displayed the occupants’ name, a small sign of stature that differentiated the office-endowed from their peers. Only very senior managers received offices, because they were a scarce commodity on the floor. The majority of employees only had a seat on “the desk” on the trading floor; no hope of privacy, no direct-dial phone numbers, no chance of having two minutes of solitude during the day unless they locked themselves in the bathroom. Chick wasn’t one of the majority.

We walked past his secretary, who Chick quickly introduced as Nancy, and pushed open a heavy glass door into his office. I found myself staring through floor-to-ceiling windows on the opposite wall that afforded an uninterrupted view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Photographers could have used Chick’s office to shoot postcards to sell in Times Square—I wasn’t entirely convinced they didn’t. If I had this view, I’d sit in here all day, but it didn’t seem like Chick spent much time in his office at all. His shiny lacquered desk and aerodynamic chair were squarely in the middle of the room, and there were two leather-backed chairs facing his desk. The walls that abutted the adjacent offices were completely bare, although with the view I guess he figured artwork was unnecessary. I scanned his desk, which held a monitor with two keyboards, and a phone, and was covered with disorganized stacks of papers and books. A mini basketball hoop was attached to the rim of an empty wastebasket on the wall on the right, next to a large fish tank containing three tropical fish. That was about it.

He sat down behind his desk, with his back to the view of the water. I found it kind of funny that the people who occupied these offices sat with their backs to one of the most iconic New York landmarks, but I guess Cromwell figured the view was meant to impress guests, not employees. “Take a seat,” Chick commanded from his chair as he motioned to the empty chairs facing him.

I did as I was told and placed my hands on my knees to keep them from shaking. This guy terrified me.

“Okay, Alex,” he said as he put his hands behind his head and his feet up on his desk, so that I was staring at the soles of his brown Gucci loafers. He leaned back in his chair and talked to me while he stared straight up at the ceiling. It was very disconcerting having a conversation with someone when the only way you knew for sure he was actually talking to you was because you were the only other person in the room. “I run my group pretty openly. There aren’t a lot of rules you need to know, but I’ll go over the basics. You’re smart, I know, because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. I promise you, though, that you aren’t the smartest person in this building. What that means is that I expect you to work hard; I expect you to be the first person here in the morning and the last person to leave at night. Unless, of course, you think that you know more than some of the guys who have been busting their asses for twenty years. Do you think that, Alex?”

I wasn’t really sure if the question was rhetorical. It was difficult to tell when he still hadn’t taken his eyes off the ceiling.

“No, Mr. Ciccone. I don’t think that.” There was a piece of pink gum stuck in the tread of his left shoe.

“Good. I’m here by 6:30 every morning, so you do the math and get in before me. That’s rule number one. Rule number two is don’t call me Mr. Ciccone. I’m not your high school math teacher and we’re all adults here. Call me Chick like everyone else. You will not ask for anything. The way I see it, you don’t deserve anything. No one knows you, you haven’t done one productive thing to help this group make money, and until you do, you should just thank God every day that you’re able to clear the turnstiles in the lobby. Your job, until I tell you otherwise, is to learn as much as you can by observing the rest of the team and asking questions without annoying them to the point where they punch you in the face. Help out when they ask you to. If that means you pick up someone’s laundry and drop it off at his apartment, or buy a birthday present for his wife, then you do it and you do it with a smile. It might not be in the job description, but you can take comfort in knowing that you will at least be the highest-paid delivery girl on the planet. I personally interviewed more than eighty applicants for the one spot in this department this year, so I know for a fact that there are hundreds of kids out there who want this job. If you have a problem with any of this, turn in your name tag downstairs and walk right out the front door. I’ll have you replaced by lunchtime with someone who will wipe my ass for me if I ask him to.”

Lovely visual.

He continued very matter-of-factly, “You will get coffee, pick up lunch, mail packages, and enter numbers into spreadsheets until you go blind if that’s what we ask you to do. I don’t have time for tears. There aren’t a lot of women on the floor. There are two or three on most of the desks”—my quick math put that number somewhere around thirty—“and before you ask, no, it’s not because we have a problem with women at the firm. We always try to hire smart females, but most of them realize they’re not cut out for the Business and quit, or they get married and quit. I have milk in my fridge that has lasted longer than some of the girls we have hired over the years. I’d put the aggregate number in fixed income around forty or fifty, not including the administrative assistants who mostly keep to themselves. You’re one of two women in my group, and if that dynamic is a problem for you, then take the train to Midtown and see if the broads at Condé Nast have a job for you, because I won’t. You’re not to answer phones. Under no circumstances are you allowed to execute trades of any kind, and you are prohibited from talking to clients unless someone introduces you directly. You’re also required to pass the Series 7, 63, and 3 exams by October fifteenth at the absolute latest.” Christ. I had less than three months.

He pushed three huge binders toward me. I felt my stomach churn in fear. A passing grade on the exams he’d named was required by the Securities and Exchange Commission if your job necessitated speaking to clients. The tests covered industry rules, regulations, ethics, fraud, and market basics. They were notoriously hard, and a lot of people failed because there was so much material to memorize and so many different ways to make mistakes. From what I’d heard, if you failed them, it basically advertised to everyone you worked with that you were an idiot, and the humiliation alone was enough of a reason to quit. I flipped open the binder for the Series 3 exam, which covered futures and options, and read one of the practice questions: “What would a farmer in Iowa do to hedge himself if he was worried about the effect rising grain prices would have on pork belly futures?”

Pork belly futures? I thought I was working on the Treasury bond desk. What do pigs have to do with anything?

“I don’t know what’s going on lately with some firms allowing their analysts to fail the tests and still keep their jobs while they study for a second try, but that’s not how we do things here. You pass all of them on the first try in October or you’re fired.”

Great.

“As you know, we are business casual here. I trust that you’ll dress appropriately. If you wear a tight skirt and someone smacks your ass, don’t come running to me or to HR about it. This is a place of business. Not a nightclub. The team is fantastic, one of the best in the Business. They work hard, play hard, and are some of the funniest human beings you will ever meet in your life. Personally, I think being a little crazy is what makes us so good at what we do, so prepare yourself for just about anything. It may seem like a tough group to crack, but once you earn their respect and are accepted, there’s no better group of people to work with.”

Yeah, especially if they smack me on the ass.

“Other than that, keep your head down, work hard, and stay out of the way. Use your brain, and you’ll be fine. Are we clear?” He finally took his feet off the desk and turned his gaze on me.

“Yes, Chick. We’re clear.”

“One more thing. I’m not your father, and I really don’t give a fuck what you do with your personal life, but I don’t encourage interoffice relationships. You’re a good-looking girl, and it won’t surprise me if half the floor hits on you, but I expect you to be smart. I do not expect you to date anyone on this floor, certainly not anyone on my desk. The last thing I need is a weepy employee fucking up right and left because she’s upset that someone here didn’t return a phone call. Capiche? Let’s go.”

Chick stood without giving me a chance to answer. I had never in my life met anyone who seemed so nice and so completely insane at the same time.

We walked out onto the floor, a giant room shaped like a horseshoe with enormous hermetically sealed windows and ceilings high enough to accommodate a circus tent. I wasn’t expecting the floor to look the way it did. Every time I’d gone to work with my father, I had never stepped foot on a trading floor. Bankers were kept separate from everyone else. They had inside information on mergers, stock offerings, and acquisitions and had to be segregated from the traders to ensure that inside information stayed classified. Banking floors were clean and tidy—all polished wood, plush carpets, and private offices. They even used a different elevator bank. The stories my dad had told me about my new work environment didn’t begin to do it justice. The difference between the Cromwell Pierce trading floor and the Sterling Price banking floor was staggering. This place looked like it was stuck in the ’70s. The walls had probably been white once upon a time, but they were now a dingy shade of cream. The Formica desks were chipped and stained, broken corners revealing the brown cork underneath. The fact that these desks were basically Generation One Cromwell was something I tried not to focus on; because if I thought about how many people had sneezed, coughed, eaten, and God knows what else all over them for the last forty years, I would have to come to work in a plastic jumpsuit wearing latex gloves.

I kept my eyes on the floor as I navigated the obstacle course of rows to our “desk” in the back corner of the room. I could feel the stares from the men as I walked by. The guys surveyed the length of my skirt and the fit of my sweater, just in case I had missed a button or, God forbid, had visible panty lines. It was something I’d have to get used to.

The energy in the room was palpable. People bellowed out numbers, screamed instructions to pick up phones, yelled just for the sake of yelling. The shouting made my ears buzz, and I didn’t know how anyone was able to understand anything above the chaos. There were at least four hundred people on the Cromwell Pierce fixed-income trading floor. Most of them were loud. Most of them were aggressive. Most of them relished the opportunity to mess with the new kids.

Most of them were male.

Chick suddenly threw his hand up in front of my head and intercepted a football that had missed its intended target. Unless of course, the target was me.

“Watch it, Smitty! Hitting the new girl in the face with a football on her first day will get you called to the principal’s office.”

I tried to find something to say to break the awkward silence, and the best I could come up with was, “You guys play football?”

“Sometimes we do. You don’t. You’ll be too busy learning to have time to play. Capiche?”

“Sure. I’m really excited to be here and I’m ready to work hard.”

“That’s good, Alex, because we don’t want you here any other way.”

A slight, pale man with red hair and an absurdly thin blond girl approached us. They stopped, and the guy nodded in my direction. His skin was translucent and his eyes so light they were almost clear. I was immediately reminded of the weakling on the high school football team who had to carry the equipment because he wasn’t big enough to actually play in the games. I had always assumed those scrawny kids bulked up later in life. I was wrong.

“Who’s this?” he asked, his voice almost robotic.

“Alex. My new kid,” Chick answered curtly.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi!” The blond stick figure gushed, as she threw herself on me. “Oh, this is great! I’ll have a friend now! There aren’t a lot of girls to talk to in this place!” she said as she hugged me.

The redheaded leprechaun surveyed me and said, “Chick, yours is cute, but mine is better.” He snorted as he walked away, the girl trotting off quickly behind him. I wondered if he took the train to work, or if he just slid down a rainbow into the lobby.

I held my breath. Chick started walking again and said, “That was Keith Georgalis, more commonly known on the floor as Darth Vader. He’s a prick. He runs the high-yield desk. His sidekick is his analyst, Hannah. She’s a freaking moron, but she’s a treat to look at so we keep her. She doesn’t work for me, so what do I care? If you make even half the mistakes that idiot has made, I’ll bounce you out on your ass so fast your head will spin.”

Before I could say a word Chick stopped in front of a group of people and waved his arm in a sweeping motion as he proudly announced, “This is the desk.”

A “desk” was the Wall Street term for the team of people who worked in a specific product area. My desk, the government bond sales desk, was composed of forty people sitting in three long rows like diner counters—covered with papers, phones, and flat screen monitors. Each person sat in an aerodynamic chair, his specific workspace segregated from the person sitting next to him only by a thin black line of grout, the same way tiles are connected on a bathroom floor. The workstations were so close together that if you extended both your arms you would touch your neighbors. The concept of “personal space” didn’t seem to exist here, and I realized that if I ended up sitting next to an asshole—or worse, in between two—my days were going to be miserable.

I stared at the wall of computer monitors looming in front of everyone. Every single employee on the floor had at least three monitors at his workstation. Some traders had as many as six. In order to view them all, some were elevated above others on stacked reams of printer paper. It was hard to believe that there was enough information to look at on a daily basis to warrant multiple computer monitors, and I quickly began to worry that I wasn’t going to be able to follow everything the way the other guys could. At the time I didn’t realize that someone could sit directly behind you and you could be so busy you’d go months without ever actually speaking to that person, or even know his name. You could. I would.

I was nervous, adrenaline making me so jittery it was hard to stand still. I scanned the men sitting in the rows. They were all on their phones, some of them with their feet up, mindlessly tossing small rubber balls into the air while they spoke. The phones rang incessantly, multicolored lights blinking on an enormous switchboard. The desk was covered with coffee cups, soda cans, bottles of water, and newspapers. The place smelled like the short-order cook station at a diner—a combination of grease, sweat, strong coffee, and burned bacon. I gave a quick glance around and saw a huge box filled with bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches lying on the floor. As I scanned the group, I noticed the one other woman on the desk. I made a mental note to introduce myself to her sooner rather than later.

Chick grabbed my shoulders and began to turn me in ten-degree clips as he pointed to other long counterlike rows filled with people conducting business. “Here’s a brief layout of the floor.” He spun me to the left and pointed to a square configuration in the corner of the room. “That’s the emerging markets desk. They sell bonds issued by developing countries. Brazil, Mexico, Chile. Most of Latin America.” He turned me another ten degrees so that I was facing the middle of the room. “Over to the left we have high yield, bonds issued by companies with lower credit ratings. That means the debt has a higher risk than say a high-grade bond, which is debt sold by larger, more well-established companies. Your Ford, IBM, Procter & Gamble, and most other big-name companies you can think of are traded off the high-grade desk, which sits directly to their left. Past them you have mortgages, which should be self-explanatory, and at the end of the room you have the money market team. They sell bonds that mature in one year or less. There’s also some structured product teams over there,” he said as he rotated me again and pointed to a bunch of nerdy-looking guys in the right far corner. “They do highly complicated structured trades that most people don’t understand, and that includes a majority of the people in this room. You’ll learn what they do eventually, because I’m training you and I don’t have idiots working for me. Finally, around the corner is the foreign exchange desk. They trade global currencies. If you ever travel to Europe and have to change your dollars for sterling or euros, you’ll have to know where those rates are trading. That’s their job. Capiche? There are economists and strategists scattered all over the place. You won’t have much cause to interact with anyone who doesn’t work in rates to start off.”

I tried to process everything he was saying, but my brain shut down somewhere around the time he mentioned Brazil. I was so screwed.

“Now, these rows over here,” he said as he pointed to long rows that faced each other, the elevated monitors forming a wall in between the guys so they didn’t have to stare at each other all day, “is the trading desk. These guys actually price and trade the bonds that we, the sales desk, buy and sell for our clients. It’s our job as salespeople to solicit business and keep our clients informed and happy. Clients can pick up the phone and call any shop on the street to do trades; we need to make sure that they call us. How do we do that? By being good fucking salespeople, that’s how. That’s what we are going to teach you. How to be a good fucking salesperson. Capiche?” My head was spinning, and I could swear that I just heard one of the trader’s computers cluck like a chicken for no apparent reason. What the hell was going on here?

“What’s that noise?” I asked, afraid if I hadn’t really just heard a clucking chicken I was about two minutes away from a stroke.

“What, the chicken?” he asked.

I was relieved he heard it, too, and yet startled that he didn’t seem to think random barnyard animal noises needed explanation. I nodded. “Yes, the chicken.”

“Some of the traders programmed their systems to make farm animal noises when they do a trade. They can’t possibly keep their eyes on everything all the time so the sound effects help let them know where their positions are. So don’t be surprised when you hear something moo, or bark, or oink. The junior guy’s system rings a cowbell, but it’s annoying so I might make him change it. I hear that fucking thing in my sleep.”

Unless you saw it for yourself, you couldn’t accurately imagine this scene if you took three tabs of acid and locked yourself in closet. I gulped.

“So are you ready to start?” Chick asked as he walked toward his chair on the desk, where he apparently spent most of his time, despite having a private office.

Ready to start? I couldn’t remember anything he just said. I needed a map. And a finance-to-English dictionary. Pronto.

Before I could ask him to clarify a few things, he called everyone to attention.

“Listen up, team; this is Alex. She’s our new analyst. Introduce yourselves and make her feel at home.” A few people nodded; some of them raised their hands and waved. One guy actually got up and shook my hand, though he was on the phone when he did it so he didn’t actually speak to me. I looked around and noticed that there were no empty workstations. I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit on someone’s lap, so I was sincerely hoping that Chick was going to tell me where I’d be sitting. When he sat down and started typing into a massive Excel sheet, I realized he wasn’t.

I had no choice but to ask him, or else stand in the aisle all day like the team mascot.

“Excuse me, Chick. Where should I sit?” I asked, nervously.

“Here you go.” Without taking his eyes off his spreadsheet, he reached behind him and grabbed a tiny metal folding chair that was leaning against the wall. It was kindergarten size. I took the chair from him and held it in front of me without unfolding it, clearly confused.

“You don’t have a desk yet,” he said, without trying to hide his irritation. “We have to figure out where to put you. In the meantime, just pull up the folding chair behind people and watch what they do. Rotate through the whole group.”

My mind was racing. How could there be nowhere for me to sit? I didn’t just show up unannounced. I got this job offer last October. It was July. In ten months’ time they couldn’t even find me a desk? A man in his late thirties walked over and grabbed Chicky’s shoulder, staring at me like Sylvester the cat used to look at Tweety Bird. He was tall, well over six feet, with a platinum blond crew cut, broad shoulders, and huge biceps. He never took his eyes off me as he talked to Chick. It made me so uncomfortable I had to stare at the floor.

“Yo, Chicky, this is the new girl?” he asked in a thick southern drawl.

“Alex. Our new analyst.”

“She’s cute. Would I do her?”

“I get the feeling she’s feisty, so yeah, probably. I doubt she’d do you, though.”

“Give her time, Chick. Give her time.” He then grabbed one of the last two sandwiches out of the box and offered it to me. “Hey, Alex. Welcome to Cromwell. Have a sandwich.” His hands, like Chick’s, were perfectly clean and smooth.

I answered him politely, “No, thank you, I’m fine.”

“You don’t like the swine?”

“Excuse me?”

“The swine. Bacon. You aren’t Jewish, are you? If you aren’t Jewish, then why don’t you fancy the swine?”

“What? Umm, no, I ate already, thank you. But I don’t have a problem with the swine, no.”

“Suit yourself, newbie. It’s probably better. If you start eating bacon every day, you’ll lose that tight ass of yours, and nobody here wants to be stuck looking at a pretty girl with a fat ass. Remember, for girls, eating is cheating.” With that he threw the sandwich back in the box and winked at me as he walked away.

I looked for Chick to say something, anything, to defend me, but he didn’t. Instead, he removed his wallet and his BlackBerry from his drawer.

He smacked me on the back as he stood. “I have a golf outing, but I’ll be in tomorrow,” he said as he struggled with the sleeves on his blazer. I watched him leave, feeling as if I was watching my lifeboat turn around while I was still treading shark-infested waters. One hour as a full-time employee at Cromwell and, so far, it was nothing like I had imagined.

I STOOD HELPLESSLY CLUTCHING my chair like a security blanket, staring at my fellow team members, none of whom made a move to introduce themselves. I walked down the first row, feeling as if I was walking the plank, until a man who looked an awful lot like Andy Garcia intercepted me. He had the same tan skin, the same black hair, the same brooding eyes, and thankfully, a smile.

“Hey,” he said as he shook my hand. “I’m Drew. Why don’t you hang out with me today?”

“Oh really?” I was relieved, like a kid just saved from being picked last for dodgeball. “That would be great, thanks.”

“Pull up a seat … well, a folding chair. Whatever.”

He slid his chair to the left, to make room for me. I stared wide-eyed at all the numbers, the scrolling headlines, the modeling systems, the Excel sheets, the various colors flashing spastically on his monitors. Drew smiled and said, “Until you get your own desk—and, knowing this place, that could take a year—you’ll just have to shadow people during the day. Here’s what you need to know.” I flipped open my spiral notebook and waited anxiously for my first sales lesson. “First, don’t put the chair in the aisle, that’s the fastest way to piss people off. Make sure your chair is pulled as close to the desk as possible.”

“Okay, easy enough.” Not exactly the kind of lesson I was hoping for, but it was better than nothing.

“Second, don’t annoy people. When guys are busy, don’t ask them questions. Don’t try and make small talk with anyone. Until people get to know you, no one has any interest in talking to you. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”

“Don’t talk to anyone. Got it.”

“And whatever you do, avoid Kate Katz—a.k.a. Cruella—like the plague.”

“Why?” I glanced at the woman on the phone at the end of the row. He had to be referring to her; she was the only other female on the government bond desk. She didn’t look scary. She reminded me of my third-grade teacher, sort of. Only with more expensive clothes and a better haircut. Her short brown bob was tucked behind her ears, and her crisp white shirt was tucked into dark navy pants. She wore small diamond earrings, little makeup, and loafers. She wasn’t exactly what I would classify as intimidating. She looked friendly enough, I thought.

“Just trust me on this one. Lastly, I assume you noticed the coffee stand in the hallway?”

“Yeah, I saw it when I got off the elevator.”

“Good. We call it Papa’s. I have no idea why. Make the guys who work there your friends. You will be spending a lot of time getting coffees there for the group, and the quicker you get there and back the better. If they like you, they will take care of you faster. Other than that, you’ll figure things out as you go. You can hang with me today. I’ll show you the screens we use, and get you used to following the markets. Cool?”

Very cool. If I could, I’d canonize Drew. “Thanks so much.”

“No problem. Now, where’s your calculator?”

I quickly produced the shiny new HR-issued calculator. “Right here. What can I do?”

He handed me a printout of a grid, filled with numbers in type so small they looked like newspaper print. “Give me the weighted average of these prices. Don’t forget that these are in thirty-seconds, so you’ll have to convert them to decimals before you average. Also check to see if any of the handles look bad. They should all be around par. If not, let me know and I’ll double-check. There are probably a few errors in there.”

“Sure, I can do that.” And I could have, assuming someone had told me what a handle was, how to weighted average something, and how to turn something called thirty-seconds into decimals. As soon as I had those down, I could definitely do this.

He gave me a knowing smile. “You have no idea what I just said, do you?”

“I, ummm …” Shit, I thought. My business classes suddenly seemed like a complete waste of time. I might as well have majored in underwater basket weaving.

“Be honest, Alex. Pretending to know things you don’t will only make it harder. Do yourself a favor and admit what you don’t know.”

“You might as well have been speaking Mandarin.”

Drew laughed. “Here.” He pointed to the first figure on the grid: 99–28. “The 99 part of the price is called the handle. If you booked this trade at 98–28, the trader will tell you that you have a ‘bad handle.’ It’s clear at all times which handle bonds trade at, so a lot of times people won’t refer to them. There’s just no need and the less time you take relaying prices, the better. So if a trader gave me a price on this bond, he’d just say, twenty-eight. When I said to check for bad handles, I meant that if most of the bonds are trading around par–100, and you see a price that’s say, in the seventies, the handle is probably bad.”

“Ohh, okay, that makes sense.” I pointed to the twenty-eight part of the price. “So then that’s in thirty-seconds?”

“Right. Bond prices are quoted in thirty-seconds, so in order to change that to a decimal, you just divide 28 by 32.”

I typed the numbers in my calculator. This was sixth-grade math; I had no problem with that. I entered 28, hit the divide sign, punched in 32, then pressed the equal button on my calculator. The screen flashed ERROR.

That didn’t seem right. “Shoot, I think my calculator’s broken.” I showed Drew my screen.

“I take it you’ve never used a financial calculator before?”

“No, we used regular ones in school,” I said.

“These don’t work like normal calculators. After every input, you have to hit the enter button, and then the function at the end. So you type in 28, then enter. Then you input 32, hit enter again, and the divide key at the end. It’s always that way. For example, if you needed to add two plus two, it’s two, enter, two, enter, plus.”

“Why couldn’t the financial calculator people just leave it the same as every other calculator in the free world and not make things harder than they need to be?”

“Good question. I don’t have the first goddamn clue. You’ll get used to it though.”

“If you say so.”

“I have to make some calls. Are you cool now with getting this done for me?”

“I think so. I’ll try.”

“Good. Let me know if you have any questions, but use common sense. If I’m cursing at someone or losing money on a trade, telling me you can’t figure out how to work the calculator probably won’t go over well.”

“Got it. Thanks for the help. I guess I have more to learn than I thought.”

“Girlie, you have absolutely no idea.” He chuckled as he grabbed his headset and hit a button on the phone board.

I grabbed my backward, nonsensical financial calculator and got to work on my first real assignment as a Cromwell employee.