Читать книгу Bond Girl - Erin Duffy - Страница 8

I SPENT THE rest of the month working like a lunatic. I got to the office every morning by 6:15. I wanted to make a good impression, even if there wasn’t much that I could do. During the day, I sat behind people on my folding chair and was mostly ignored. A few guys attempted to teach me how to look at any number of a dozen applications that scrolled numbers in a dizzying array of colors. I learned to discern which ones displayed the stock market, the Treasury bond market, derivatives and swaps; where you could see the calendar of economic indicators that were being released that day; foreign exchange rates; corporate spreads; and prices for futures contracts and for the European and Asian markets. I still didn’t really understand what any of these things were, but I watched their prices flash like mini strobe lights on their computers. I was given little projects to do, which was a problem since they all involved having access to a workstation.

My solution was to stay late every night, using the models and various programs on someone else’s desktop to solve the math equations I had to turn in the next morning. I usually got home around 8:00 P.M., ate whatever I could find in the refrigerator, and collapsed into bed from exhaustion. I was beginning to forget what Liv looked like, and so far, we had yet to take advantage of our cool apartment in the city because we were both too busy working. Every morning I was quizzed on the important news stories around the world, and I was asked what might have moved the market overnight during Asian trading. The sheer mass of material I was supposed to know was staggering. I still didn’t know anyone’s name except for Chick, Drew, Reese (swine guy), and Kate/Cruella. I don’t think anyone knew mine. Instead, they called me “Girlie.” Much to my horror, I answered to it.

On a particularly steamy day in August, I sat in my metal chair, listening to a large man with hands that looked like catchers’ mitts explain bond market basics and tried very hard not to fall asleep. He had a scruffy beard and chocolate-colored eyes that were friendly despite the fact that he looked like he could crush my head like a walnut with his bare hands. His name was Billy Marchetti, but everyone called him Marchetti. As he playfully flicked rubber bands at me while he waited for me to finish the equation he had given me I heard some random guy on the floor scream “Pizza’s in the lobby!” at the top of his lungs.

Without looking at my watch, I knew exactly what time it was. Every Friday for the last six weeks, some guy screamed “Pizza in the lobby!” across the floor at 10:30. And every Friday morning at 10:30, the floor erupted into applause that rivaled what was heard in Yankee Stadium when Jeter scored against the Red Sox. I had had a glimpse of trading floor eating habits my first day at Cromwell—hundreds of egg-and-cheese sandwiches dripping with grease being devoured as fast as humanly possible without choking to death. At the time, I disregarded it. That was before I understood the pivotal role that food plays in the finance industry. Every day there were bagels, or egg sandwiches, or Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The food was ceremoniously carried to various parts of the room in huge cardboard boxes that were dropped on the floor every thirty feet like paper land mines. Within seconds, dozens of grown men would descend on the offerings like angry bees swarming a honeycomb, grabbing whatever they could get their hands on. You wouldn’t think that guys who earned seven-figure salaries would care so much about free doughnuts. You wouldn’t think so, but they do.

Mealtime at Cromwell was like feeding time at the zoo; if you were fast and big, you ate first; if you were small and slow, you had better get out of the way. An example of Darwin’s survival of the fittest, adapted for healthy, well-fed men. The delivery options weren’t restricted to the usual Chinese or pizza joints. If someone felt like ordering $2,000 worth of penne alla vodka, veal parmigiana, and Caesar salad for lunch from an expensive restaurant that didn’t have delivery service, the executive chef and the waiters would deliver the food themselves. Sometimes there were trays of fried chicken, ribs, and cornbread from a BBQ place in Midtown; kung pao chicken, lo mein, and anything else on the menu from the Chinese place; or cheeseburgers and fries. In the afternoons, when energy began to fade, someone would inevitably appear with three dozen milkshakes, ice cream sandwiches, or bags of candy from the drugstore. When it was someone’s birthday, the secretaries ordered huge ice cream sheet cakes, and platters of chocolate chip cookies. I was pretty sure I was going to wind up weighing two hundred pounds. And I was single. This was not good.

Chick pressed the button on “the hoot,” a microphone that broadcast his voice across the floor. “Copy that. We got this one, Frankie. Pizzas will be there in five, and if they’re not, you have my permission to beat my analyst.” He pointed to me with his right hand. “Girlie slave, go get the pizzas and bring them back up to Frankie. Go.” Chick believed in figuring things out for yourself and being proactive. For the most part, I had managed to follow along without having to ask for clarification until now. Considering I didn’t know how many pizzas I was supposed to pick up, or how I was supposed to pay for them, or who the hell Frankie was, I thought now it was appropriate to ask a few questions.

I stood nervously behind his desk. “I’m sorry, Chick. How many pizzas do you need me to get and how should I pay for them?” I asked, sweetly.

“Do my shoes need a shine?” he responded, as he examined his impeccably clean loafers. “Hey, Wash!” He called to the shoeshine guy roaming the floor. “Can I get a shine, buddy? My shoes are looking a little dull.” The man with the shine box came over and set his tiny stool down and began shining Chick’s shoes while he was still wearing them.

He looked up at me like I was a bothersome gnat. Then without answering me, he yelled over his shoulder, “Willy! You back there?” A guy in his mid to late twenties seated in the back row popped up from behind a computer monitor, sucking on a lollipop. I hadn’t noticed him until now, which was strange since he was good-looking.

“Yeah, Chick?” he yelled back, a phone still held to his ear.

“Get over here and take Alex to pick up the pizzas.” No please, no thank you, just the order. Get the pizzas.

Thirty seconds later, Will walked past Chick’s desk and waved for me to follow him. He was wearing the standard blue button-down shirt under a dark gray Henley sweater. He had black hair and blue eyes and was fit without looking like he spent all his free time lifting weights in the gym while admiring himself in the mirror. He was handsome by anyone’s standards but, for Cromwell, he was Movie Star Hot.

“Thanks for coming with me. I’m Alex,” I said coolly as I shook his hand.

“I’m Will Patrick. Nice to meet you, Alex. You’re Chick’s new indentured servant, huh?”

“Basically, yeah. Chick just called you Willy. Which do you prefer to be called? The nicknames in this place are confusing.”

He smiled, revealing a perfect set of white chompers. They could have used his mouth as an “after shot” in a toothpaste commercial.

“Will, if you want me to answer you. Chick’s the only one who calls me Willy just so he can call me a dick every day without getting in trouble with compliance. Unfortunately, when I was in your shoes, I made the mistake of telling him I hated it when he called me that. Now, if Chick has it his way, it will be on my tombstone.”

“So I should get used to being called Girlie?”

“Pretty much.”

“Wonderful. So how many pizzas are we getting?” He smirked. When we reached the lobby, I froze in horror. There were five delivery guys waiting for us, stacks of pizzas at their feet. When Frankie had yelled “Pizza in the lobby,” he meant pizzas, plural, as in one hundred of them. Will picked up one of the stacks and handed it to me.

“You can handle carrying ten at a clip, right?”

“Umm, I think so. I’ve never done it before.”

“Get used to it, Girlie,” he said, as he grabbed a second stack and flashed me a smile. “Let’s go.”

I have always had a contentious relationship with Murphy’s Law. For some reason, at the most inopportune times, I seem to embarrass myself in a way that’s completely out of character. I’ve always been a good athlete, but ask me to walk down the aisle in a bridesmaid dress and for some reason that I can’t explain, I always end up tripping. I have had my heel catch in the hem of pants that I wear all the time as soon as I found myself in the presence of a good-looking guy and have landed on my butt on a crowded Midtown sidewalk for inexplicable reasons. I’m basically Murphy’s bitch.

I was so definitely not the girl you wanted carrying multiple pizzas up two escalators, into an elevator, down a hallway, up a small flight of stairs, down a small flight of stairs, and then to wherever it is that Frankie sits. Slowly (did I forget to mention that I was wearing four-inch stilettos that hurt like hell and a pencil skirt that forced me to walk like a geisha?) I followed Will back to the trading floor. It was only 10:30. Why did we need eight hundred slices of pizza before lunch?

We found Frankie, a trader on the corporate bond desk, across the room. Will set his stack of pizzas down on the floor and I tried to do the same, except people started grabbing the boxes, and ripping them open before I could put them down. I turned and started back toward the elevators, and noticed Will heading back to his desk. I called after him, figuring he forgot that there were still eighty pies downstairs that we needed to deliver.

“Sorry there, Girlie, but I just went with you on the first trip to show you the ropes. The rest are up to you.”

“You want me to make eight more trips? You won’t help me? How do I pay for these?”

He chuckled, enjoying the latest in a seemingly endless string of hazing rituals. “I seriously will not be helping you, but I have faith in your ability to not fuck up carrying pizzas. Our brokers send them every week. The bill goes to them. I enjoyed our chat, Girlie. We should do it again sometime.”

I watched his back as he walked away. Right, of course. They’re a gift. The weekly hundred pizzas. Of course they are. How in God’s name was I going to manage working here without gaining thirty pounds? Fifteen minutes and eight trips later I dropped off the last stack and returned to my chair, dodging empty boxes and pizza crusts along the way.

“Hey, A!” I heard a voice call from behind me. I turned to see Will, flashing his perfectly white teeth, holding a slice of pizza up in the air, as if toasting me. I couldn’t help but smile. Chick had said that I couldn’t date anyone in the office, but he never said anything about flirting. Right?

IN SEPTEMBER, AFTER TWO MONTHS of being a nameless gofer, I found myself looking forward to the firm’s annual analysts’ boat cruise. The cruise was a Cromwell tradition. The firm rented a yacht for the new class and some of the senior employees for the alleged purpose of team bonding. It left from Chelsea Piers and cruised around the island of Manhattan. Oddly enough, a chance to share horror stories with my peers, others who understood how brutal it was to be the new person on the desk, sounded heavenly.

Since Chick would sooner gnaw off his own hand than spend an evening stuck on a boat with a bunch of insignificant kids, he was sending someone else as his representative.

“Boat cruise tonight?” Chick asked, as he chugged a soda.

“Yeah, I have to leave at five thirty. I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s fine. Reese will be there. Have a good time.”

Great. Swine Guy was coming. I had purposely avoided him since my first day. He scared me. “Thanks. I’m sure I will.”

At the yacht, two waiters clad in white dinner jackets and black bow ties were standing on either side of the entrance ramp holding trays of wine. Not a bad greeting as far as I was concerned. There was a DJ spinning a bunch of pop radio classics loud enough for everyone else on the pier to stop and gawk. I saw a few familiar faces from my training class, but I didn’t know any of the investment banking interns. There were probably fifty or sixty first-year analysts in the entire firm, but I decided to only talk to the ones in sales and trading because we would be able to discuss the difficulties of adjusting to life on a trading floor. At least we had that in common. I took a glass of white wine and approached my fellow freshman Cromwellites, all of us united in our inadequacy. Or so I hoped.

“Hi, guys!” I chirped as I joined a conversation. I meant “guys” literally. They were. Every single one of them.

“Hey,” a few muttered, barely acknowledging my existence.

“What’s up? It’s been a bizarre two months, hasn’t it? The folding chair is just crazy.” The group shot me inquisitive looks, as if I had just confessed that I had been beamed up by an alien spacecraft.

“A folding chair?” one of the more vocal analysts asked. “You’re joking, right?”

“No! Wait, you guys don’t have to sit on folding chairs?”

“No. I have a desk. Don’t you, Dan?” a guy named Adam asked.

“Of course,” Dan responded. “How could you not have a desk, Alex? That’s humiliating. What in God’s name do you do all day if you don’t even have a computer?”

I suddenly felt like I was in the middle of one of those dreams where you show up to class naked.

“There … well, the thing is, at the moment … there … wait. You guys seriously all have seats?” It never occurred to me that being deskless wasn’t customary.

“Yeah, Alex, we really do. Clearly your group doesn’t think you deserve one. Sucks to be you. So, anyway, are you guys going to the Yale-Harvard game this season?” Dan asked the others, none too subtly excluding me from the conversation. I skulked to the stern, leaned against the rail, and stared at the Statue of Liberty as we cruised up the Hudson River. I was isolated, an outcast among my peers. I overheard a few conversations other analysts were having, each trying to prove that he had a more important role, a better boss, a desk that made more money. I wasn’t going to play that game, mostly because I was pretty sure I would lose. I decided a better course of action was to keep munching on appetizers at the railing with my good friend, Lady Liberty.

I was halfway through my third mini BLT when someone pulled my ponytail, yanking my head backward. I turned to see Reese with a big smile on his face, and a shrimp in his hand.

“This spot taken, Girlie?”

“Nope. No one else back here except for me and the swine.”

“The what?” He leaned his elbows on the railing so that we were closer to eye level. Reese must have been six foot four, and it was hard to hear him what with the noise of the wind and the boat engine, not to mention the din from the idiots bragging about the many feats of intellectual strength they’d performed over the past two months.

“Remember the day I started? You asked me if I fancied the swine. I’m a big fan of the swine. I just wanted you to know.” I held up the remaining half of my bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich.

Reese started laughing and patted me on the head. “I forgot about that! I like to unnerve the new kids right away. It’s my idea of a personality test. If you had gotten all huffy on me, I never would have talked to you again, you see? With girls especially, you gotta know what you’re dealing with if you want to stay out of trouble. Good job. So far, you’re okay with me.”

“Thank God! I’m Alex, but my friends call me Girlie,” I said, as I extended my hand, feeling comfortable for the first time since stepping foot on the boat.

He laughed again. “Well, hello there, Girlie. You can call me Reese. How are you liking Cromwell so far?”

“I love it.”

“Really? No one’s given you a hard time?”

“Nope! I’m having a ball. Everything is great.”

“Bullshit,” he replied with a smirk. “Don’t lie to me on the first date, sugar. I only have room in my life for one woman who lies to my face, and I’ve already got a wife.” He held up his left hand and shook his ring-clad finger.

I didn’t think complaining was a very good idea. So I stayed silent.

“I’m not letting you leave until you give me an honest answer, sugar. How are you liking Cromwell?”

He was serious.

“Well, I’m just worried that maybe I’m not doing enough or that people don’t like me. I don’t want to be annoying. I’m supposed to be asking everyone questions, but also staying out of the way. That’s kind of hard to do considering I don’t have my own desk yet.” There, I said it. Now I probably should just throw myself overboard.

“Why do you think people don’t like you?” Reese chuckled. “Let me tell you something. If people didn’t like you, you’d know it. You should ask some of the other kids what their time at the firm has been like, and then you’ll see how nice people are really being.”

“I was just talking to some of the other analysts and I’m the only one who has to sit on a folding chair. It sounds like they have real work to do, and so far I really haven’t been able to do anything except help Drew and a couple of others with a few things.”

“Is that why you’re standing over here by yourself instead of mingling with the other rookies?”

“Sort of.”

“Ahhh. I see. And obviously, you believe everything they’re saying.”

“Well, yeah, why would they lie?”

“Because they’re guys,” he said, without hesitation. “I talked to one guy who’s such a tool he doesn’t even realize that his team is ripping on him. I’d feel bad for him if I didn’t think he was such a prick after talking to him for two minutes.”

“Who?” I asked, eager to discover which Ivy Leaguer wasn’t quite as impressive as he claimed.

“That guy, the one in the orange shirt. You know him?” Reese pointed to the gaggle of analysts.

I looked over and was not at all surprised to see Adam holding court. Still.

“Oh yeah. I know him,” I said. “He went to Princeton. And just in case anyone doesn’t know he went to Princeton, he name-drops about his eating club, wears at least one orange item every day, and carries a duffel bag with a giant tiger’s head on it. He has a huge ego.”

“Sugar, if you don’t like big egos, you’re in the wrong industry. I’m going to cheer you up though. Watch this. Hey, Tony the Tiger! Come over here.” Reese waved to Adam, whose face lit up like a hundred-watt bulb as he realized that Reese wanted to speak with him. He pulled his shoulders back and adjusted the buckle on his belt, clearly thinking that he was being summoned because he had made such a good impression on a Cromwell managing director. I wasn’t sure why Reese asked him to join us, but I knew kudos were not on the menu. Adam smoothed the collar on his tangerine Lacoste polo shirt before he shook Reese’s hand, while simultaneously patting him on the back.

“Hey, Reese, right? We spoke a little while ago about Greenspan and the Federal Reserve.” Adam flashed him a big smile before turning his attention toward me. “Hey, Amber.”

“My name’s Alex.”

“Right, sorry.”

(“No, you aren’t.” I didn’t say that.) “No problem.” Sounded better.

“Her friends call her Girlie, though.” Reese was enjoying this. I wondered if I could make it if I tried to swim to shore.

“Girlie?” Adam was confused, a new feeling for him.

“Only her friends, though. I mean, I call her Girlie. You should stick with Alex.”

Adam shrugged. “How long have you been at Cromwell, Reese?”

“Twenty-one years. How long have you been at Cromwell?”

“Two months. But I think I’m really adding value quickly.”

Reese gave me a wink. “Yeah, you were saying that earlier. Why don’t you tell my girlie friend here about your trade last week.”

This caught my attention. He was allowed to do a trade? I wasn’t even allowed to pick up the phone.

“It was great. I’m trading size already, you know? They want me to just hit the ground running.”

“What does trading size mean?” I asked. Reese pretended to cough to muffle his laughter.

“You know, big trades. Moneymakers, not the little dinky trades that don’t matter if you fuck them up.”

“I sit on a folding chair. I guess I’m doing the opposite of trading size,” I said.

“Adam, tell Alex how you did it. Teach her how to work the ropes. Tell her the whole story like you told me.”

Adam was loving the attention. “So there’s this company called Cox Communications, a major player. So this guy I’m working with is a fellow Tiger. He’s a great guy and really lets me get involved—we were in the same eating club. He took the order from his client and then told me to shout out the order to the trader.”

Here I had to interrupt, because I knew he was lying. “Adam, you haven’t passed the Series 7 or the Series 63 yet. You aren’t allowed to trade. There’s no way they let you do that. It’s illegal.”

“Well, no, I didn’t execute the actual trade, but his client wanted a big chunk of shares. I had to tell the trader to start building a position, but it wasn’t an actual order.”

Reese continued to prompt Adam to finish the story. “So, Adam, what exactly did he tell you to do?”

“I had to stand up and scream across the floor to the trader that I was a large buyer of Cox.”

Reese started laughing and asked Adam to repeat what he’d said.

“You said what?”

“I said I was a large buyer of Cox. Everyone started clapping and cheering. It was awesome.”

I’d heard it before, but now I saw it was true: book smarts and street smarts are not the same thing. As far as street smarts went, Adam was clearly a complete idiot.

Reese stood there, his arms folded across his chest, slowly nodding his head. Then he stepped forward and put one hand on each of Adam’s shoulders. “Adam, we’ve got to teach this girlie how real men operate. So, one more time, show us how you yelled it on the floor.”

“I’M A LARGE BUYER OF COX!” he yelled proudly.

Reese dropped his hands from Adam’s shoulders. He tilted his head to one side, never losing eye contact with him, and said ever so slowly, “If I were you, Adam, I wouldn’t be crowing about having announced that you’re a pole smoker. I’m sure the guys in equities have been laughing their asses off at you ever since.”

Adam’s body went rigid. He turned bright red as the full force of his own stupidity hit him. He tried to pretend he was invisible. He wasn’t. His brow furrowed like he was in pain, and quietly he said good-bye, this time getting my name right. He walked away slowly, his shoulders slumped forward, no longer pulled back in their arrogant Princeton posture.

I stood silent. I wanted to laugh, but he was my peer, my counterpart on the equity floor. If they could make Adam—undeniably smart and aware—humiliate himself that way, what on earth did my team have in store for me?

Reese patted my head again. “Still think we don’t like you, sugar?”

“I can’t believe they did that to him.”

“See, that’s what people will do when they don’t like you. The more time you spend here, the more you’ll see how badly we can torment someone when we want to make him miserable. If the worst thing that has happened to you is that you don’t have a real desk, then you have nothing to worry about. Play the game, sugar, just play the game.”

“I don’t know how to play the game.”

“You’ll learn. Until then, just keep your head down and wear beige … you get what I’m saying?”

I did. It was the first thing I genuinely understood since I had started. That was something to be thankful for.

“I get it. And I should keep fancying the swine, right?”

“Always fancy the swine, sugar. Now, stop holding up the railing. Get over there and start mingling! You’re in sales, for God’s sake. We don’t need any wallflowers in the group. Work the crowd, make people like you, and pretend to like the assholes you can’t stand. That’s all part of your new job.”

“Thanks, Reese,” I said as I followed him into the crowd with a renewed sense of confidence and enthusiasm. “For the advice, I appreciate it.”

“You’re one of us now, sugar. One thing about our desk: we always have each other’s backs. It doesn’t mean we won’t fuck with you mercilessly, though.”

“Sort of like older brothers?”

“Exactly. Forty of them.”

Reese had given me my very first sales lesson, and it was probably the most important one that I would ever learn: if I wanted to be successful, then I needed to get really good at pretending to like people I didn’t.