Bond Girl (5 page)

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.

Three

Girlie

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?

I
n 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.