The Trade (12 page)

"Now,” she breathed softly into his ear. Jay
exalted in the realization of exactly what was going to happen.
Slowly he lowered himself as gently as a fully aroused man can.
Sinking into the warmth and wetness of her, feeling the best of all
that she was and all that they were together reaching up through
him where they were joined. He cried out in the exquisite pleasure.
The new lovers lay still in each other's arms as the dawn broke all
round them.

For an eternity they lay there silent just
listening to the world awaken. "Now,” she whispered again and they
began to move. Rising and lowering and pushing and feeling the
beauty of love and the closeness of friendship and the majesty of
all that the world could be.

The sweat stood on his back and formed on his
face and ran down off his chest, mingling with the mist on her
gently tanned skin. Faster and deeper and more urgently he moved
until it seemed he surely must lose himself inside her. He tensed
for the moment that he knew was upon him and for which he had
waited all these months and from which there was no turning back.
He felt her body rise up towards him, her arms clutching at him,
holding him tighter and closer than he knew was possible. The power
of her release rocked him and drove him into the abyss where he
loosed himself in searing streams, deep inside her, screaming out
and writhing with feelings he'd never known.

They lay together in each other’s arms for
what seemed like a lifetime. And for Jay it most certainly was. His
lifetime of loneliness and detachment and watching from somewhere
else and wondering if he was destined to be alone was over. For the
first time in his entire life he believed he knew what love
was.

After a long time, she roused him from his
reverie. "It always has to be like that for us,” she said. "It
can't be motel rooms or the back seats of cars or anywhere whose
beauty can't match this. It can't be a kiss and a feel and a minute
under the covers with our pajamas on. I can't do that Jay. I need
beauty and love and belonging and being needed and all that's good
and right and us. Once a year, once a lifetime, once a day, I don’t
care, but it always has to be like a fairy tale like that…”

Jay had no answer except a single tear that
Tonia wiped from his deep blue eyes.

Chapter

Bill Beck scuffled his way towards Jay
Calloway's office. As had become the habit, the other office
dwellers on the hall began coughing or throwing wadded up paper
balls to announce the impending arrival of a visitor. Jay blushed
at the attention, but welcomed the warning.

Jay's concentration and focus were quickly
becoming legendary at MacKenzie Lazarus. He'd work all morning,
rarely getting up from his desk except to go to the cooler in the
corner to get an ice cold diet coke. The department secretary had
bribed one of the cafeteria workers to keep his cooler full. He'd
run at noon, sometimes a mile, sometimes ten. He'd work all
afternoon then drift home to catch some dinner. Sometimes he’d head
home by way of the arcade where he would routinely play an hour on
a single quarter and establish a high score. After arriving home,
he'd work most of the evening on his powerful SUN Microsystems
computer while he listened to baseball on the radio or talked to
Tonia on the speaker phone.

He never saw Tonia during the week.

He spent a lot of time answering email on his
computer. It seemed that his internet address had been distributed
to his former students and they took delight in finding him and
sending him messages. Jay didn't really mind because he was
actually fond of some of his students. And when he was lonely, it
was nice to have someone, anyone, even a computer geek student to
talk to via email. C. Daniel Kinchon was his most faithful
correspondent, frequently seeking guidance about teaching and about
research.

A big mystery with his coworkers at MacKenzie
Lazarus was where he'd disappear to on the weekends. No-one knew
where he went and he never offered to tell. They all assumed it was
to see his significant other, and they assumed from his secrecy
that it must be another man.

After the success of his redesign on the CTSG
system, Jay had fixed a few other software problems which had saved
MacKenzie Lazarus more money, though not in such dramatic amounts.
But he wasn't fixing things now. He was building something. For the
last four months he'd been working on a new system for MacKenzie
Lazarus' traders at the NYSE.

The idea for the system had sprung from a
simple question. On a tour of the trading floor he'd wondered aloud
why the traders had to make their trade, then write it down, then
report it to a helper who'd keypunch the whole thing. Jay had asked
why the whole thing wasn't automated with hand held terminals
connected via short range FM radio links to a local file server
that could act as a front end to MacKenzie Lazarus’ networks. Jay
had further asked why the traders had to write the trades down at
all when either a touch screen or voice- input system would be
faster.

"Will they be able to make more trades?" Bill
Beck had asked.

Jay studied the floor, zeroing in on a
trader, monitoring the action involved in several trades. "If
there’s more trades to be made then I would think probably 25% to
33% more trades,” he finally said.

"Why?"

"Because of the one or two minutes that it
looks like it takes to complete a trade, the paperwork takes 30 to
40 seconds. If we can cut the paperwork by 15 to 20 seconds… You
figure it out.”

Bill answered, "Let me run it by the big
boys.” Later in the week, Bill Beck walked into Jay's office.
"You've got four months, $1.2 million in budget, 4 slots for
programmers and 2 slots for electrical and radio engineers to get
this thing done,”

Bill announced. His face showed respect for
Jay's ability and foresight, but human concern for his own job and
the rapid rise of Jay's star. Although Bill was in on the backroom
dealings at MacKenzie Lazarus, he'd never figured to see his new
hire do so well so quickly. Sometimes he felt the beginnings of the
pangs of guilt for what he was involved in with the unsuspecting
kid from the Midwest. He hadn’t wanted to like the kid.

"Bill?" Jay asked.

"Yes?"

"Bill. I can't do this alone. I'm not
ready.”

"What are you…?"

Jay cut him off. "I can design it and build
it and make it work, but we both know that ain't enough around
here.” Bill nodded his head. He knew it was true. He wanted to hear
the rest of what Jay had to say.

"Bill, you just have to be the guy in charge
of this. I'll make it work. I promise. But you've got to provide
the leadership for the programmers and engineers. You're the one
who knows how to get things done around here. You're the one who
can get this damn thing installed, deal with the unions, deal with
the traders, deal with the other programmers who'll be angry they
didn't think it up.

"Bill. Be, my, friend. Get on board. We can
do it together. I won't let you down.”

Coming from someone else it might have
sounded like shameless brownnosing, or abject fear at being put in
charge of a multi-million dollar project after simply wondering out
loud about how something worked. Bill knew that coming from Jay,
however, it was a genuine plea for help from one person who
respects another. Bill accepted the offer, the challenge. He really
really hadn’t wanted to like the kid this much.

That night, at church, Bill had confessed to
the priest that he'd committed a terrible sin. He couldn't tell
what it was but he'd asked for a serious penance. The priest had
not agreed.

"If you cannot confess the full nature of
your sin, my son, then for that sin you are not truly sorry and
cannot be forgiven," the priest had explained.

Now, four months later, Bill and Jay's
creation was almost live on the trading floor. Trader wannabes and
trainees had been running a mock system in parallel with the old
system for two weeks. A few bugs had appeared and been dealt with.
This afternoon, ML was going to run full speed with only the new
system, no paper backup.

At first, the traders had resisted the
changes. They didn't want to learn the latest hardware and
software. But Bill Beck had trained them and held their hands and
shown them that 25% more trades a day meant 25% more commissions.
Their eyes had lit up at the prospect of more commissions. Also,
the prospect of ‘beating’ their brethren at other firms appealed to
the distinctly Type A personalities of the traders.

The whole group, with Jay and Bill at the
front was now headed for the trading floor for the big system test.
They were going to sweat out the afternoon session with the test
system. The programmers knew that their careers were on the
line.

The floor was as frantic as any other day.
The MacKenzie Lazarus traders could be distinguished as always by
their trademark bright green, baggy jackets. Today you could also
spot them by the radio terminals strapped to their belts and the
headgear supporting the microphones for the voice-activated parts
of the "paperless trading system.” Jay had dubbed it the PT109
because it was supposed to be paperless and it had cost $1.09
million of the $1.2 million they had been budgeted to get the job
done.

By the end of the day it was clear that the
system had not broken down. MacKenzie Lazarus business had
continued unabated, though no-one was certain what the overall
impact was. The final trade figures would be required to find out
how well it had gone. At first, trade execution time had actually
been slower. But then, throughout the day it had picked up and near
the height of the trading their real time monitoring had been
showing a 20 to 25% faster trade execution time, and a
corresponding 20% increase in total trades. They waited anxiously
for the final bell.

A tall man in an Armani suit appeared with an
entourage of three or four other "suits”. The handsome man made his
way towards Bill, speaking first, as was his wont.

"Bill Beck. Good to see you again. Any word
yet?"

"Nothing official. But our tracking through
the day looks good. We’ll have the final numbers in a few minutes
Mr. MacKenzie.”

At the sound of his name heads snapped around
and ties were straightened. Everyone on the team knew the man's
name but none of them had ever seen him in person. They'd only seen
his name on their checks and seen his picture in the Wall St.
Journal. Rumored to be worth $1.2 billion, he was the MacKenzie of
MacKenzie Lazarus. The importance of the system they'd worked on
was brought into powerful focus by his very presence.

The bell sounded to signal the end of the
trading for the day. The traders, accustomed to spending up to an
hour reconciling their paper trail for the day, instead worked
their way over to where Bill and Jay Calloway were waiting with Mr.
MacKenzie.

"Jay. Go through the tally sequence with them
would you?" Bill asked. All eyes were on him. Jay quickly reviewed
the tally process with the traders. It was a few simple voice
commands to their terminals. In seconds printouts were spitting out
of the high speed printers installed for the tally sheets.

"Yes. YES. Oh sweet JESUS YES,” a burly
trader screamed. One then another trader started giving high fives
and pumping fists as the paper traders from the other firms looked
on dispiritedly.

One of the traders came over to Jay and
wrapped him up in a bear hug, lifting him off the ground, achieving
some amateur chiropractic adjustment on Jay's spine. Before he knew
it Jay was surrounded by the traders like a home run hitter in a
come-from-behind World Series victory.

Mr. MacKenzie smiled an approving look in
Bill's direction and spoke quickly with him and then with several
of the traders. Mr. MacKenzie moved towards Jay. As he did, the
traders and programmers parted ahead of him like the waters of the
Red Sea. Angus MacKenzie looked Jay directly in the eye, shook
hands solemnly with him, and then was off. Bill and Jay Calloway
basked in the glow of their success, lingering with the exultant
traders and programmers. Later they walked back to their
offices.

"Good show old man,” Bill said in an English
accent. It was the first time Jay could remember hearing Bill goof
around. He looked over and wrinkled an eyebrow.

"Meet me tomorrow for golf, and bring that
young man,” Bill continued in the accent.

"Beggin' your pardon guv'nuh,” Jay started in
a London guttural, then quickly switched to down and dirty
Brooklynese, "But what de hell you talkin' 'bout?” Bill stopped and
smiled at Jay, taking his shoulders in his hands and holding him
firmly.

"Mr. MacKenzie has requested the pleasure of
our company at his club tomorrow morning at ten for breakfast and
then golf.

"Holy shit.”

"Holy shit indeed.”

"But I have a date for Saturday morning,” Jay
protested.

"Not anymore you don't,” Bill answered. An
hour later they had directions to the Laurel Hollow Country Club on
the North Shore of Long Island. Because of the concentration of
wealth there, many call it the 'Gold Coast' of Long Island.

Bill made discreet inquiries into the dress
code at the club and some of the do's and don'ts when around the
CEO of the 2
^nd
largest investment firm on Wall St. Both
men decided to stay overnight at the East Norwich Inn, near Laurel
Hollow, so as not to be late for their big date with the boss.

When Jay got home he called Tonia at her work
number. She wasn't in so he left her a message on her voice mail.
"I can't meet you until five tomorrow afternoon. Maybe we can run
to the
sunset
this time? Mr. MacKenzie, THE Mr. MacKenzie,
of MacKenzie Lazarus, asked me to play golf with him tomorrow at
the Laurel Hollow Country Club. So I've got to go. I'm really
sorry. Call me? Okay? I'll be staying over at the East Norwich Inn
on Route 106 on Long Island. You could surprise me…"