Bond Girl (3 page)

Leatherface laughed. “You're the first person that didn't try to figure out what we wanted you to say.”

“Is there a correct answer?”

“Yes,” Starfish answered. “It's moot now though, Pump Girl.”

Pump Girl?
I didn't think I liked being called that.

The rest of the interview was easy. We discussed my résumé and my family background. I think having an investment banker for a father scored me a few points. When I left the business center, I felt pretty good about my meeting with Leatherface and Starfish Ted. Two weeks later, I received a letter in the mail, offering me a position in the 2006 analyst program. I was assigned to the government bond desk in the fixed-income division, starting in July. My lifelong dream had been realized.
Watch out Wall Street,
I thought
. Here I come.

S
ince my new job started in July, and there was no way in hell I was going to get up at 5:00
A.M.
every morning to catch the train into the city from Connecticut, I quickly set about the brutal task of finding an apartment in the city. Thankfully, my best friend, Liv, was looking to move right away also, so the two of us ran around Manhattan for two weeks after graduation, looking for a non-rat-infested building we could afford. We finally found a place suitable for two people and moved in June 15. We divided our tiny one-bedroom Murray Hill apartment into two bedrooms by erecting a fake wall in the living room. I had the real bedroom, and Liv had the fake one, no larger than a prison cell, but with better flooring. The living room could barely accommodate one sofa, a tiny coffee table, and four people comfortably. Our combined income was more than $100,000—a lot by normal standards—and yet neither of us could afford her own place. Of all the things that are great about New York, rent isn't one of them. Liv had a job at another investment bank, but in Human Resources, and so we both needed a Manhattan address to spare us the horror of commuting.

We lugged all our belongings, which wasn't much, into the service elevator and up to the twelfth floor with the help of my friend Annie. Annie and I had become friends the first week of freshman year at UVA. We lived on the same floor in the same dorm. One night, when our resident adviser was locked in her room with her boyfriend, we stole the sofa from the lounge and moved it into Annie's room at the end of the hall. When she was caught a week later, she was forced to sort mail at the university post office for a month as punishment. But she never told the RA that the great couch caper of 2002 was orchestrated by yours truly. For that, I will love her forever.

Annie had decided to prolong school as long as possible by attending NYU to get a master's in psychology. After discovering how early Liv and I had to get up now that we were part of the working world, she was pretty sure she didn't want to enter it.

“How on earth are you going to get up at 5:30 and not be a zombie by 3:00?” Annie asked. “That's just unholy.” She looked at me the same way I look at people over forty who aren't married: with unabashed pity. She sat on the living room floor and pushed her curly blond hair behind her ears. Annie had done gymnastics as a kid and possessed a flexible, toned physique I wouldn't have even if I lived on carrot sticks. I know this for a fact. I tried for most of freshman year.

“I'm sure I'll get used to it,” I said as I jammed sweaters in my closet.

“I'd rather die,” she added.

“Are you excited?” Liv asked as she broke down boxes with a razor and laid them flat against the wall next to a bookshelf. She picked dust bunnies off her black spandex shorts with a perfectly manicured nail and ran her sleeve across her forehead. “I don't start until next week, and I'm kind of dreading it.”

“I'm excited. I guess a little nervous, too. It's like the first day of school all over again. New people, new places. I hope I don't screw up anything too badly.”

“You'll be fine,” Annie assured me as she stood to leave for her own apartment on the Upper West Side. And by “her own apartment” I mean the one her parents kept in the city for the two times a year they came to Manhattan to see a show. She gave me a quick hug and waved good-bye to Liv as she headed for the elevators. “Call me tomorrow and let me know how it goes,” she yelled over her shoulder.

I helped Liv lug boxes to the refuse room down the hall, and we spent the next few hours unpacking, cleaning, hanging, ironing, scrubbing, organizing, and discussing how excited we both were to have our very own apartment in Manhattan. I went to bed at 9:30, still leaving a lot of boxes untouched, and prayed that my first week of work would be merciful.
I'm sure it won't be too bad,
I assured myself.
It's just a job. How bad could it possibly be?

Two

She's Cute. Would I Do Her?

O
n 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?”