Bond Girl. Erin Duffy

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      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! СКАЧАТЬ