Bond Girl. Erin Duffy

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      SINCE 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 goodbye 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?

      ON 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. СКАЧАТЬ