Bond Girl. Erin Duffy

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СКАЧАТЬ 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?”

       Pork belly futures? I thought I was working on the Treasury bond desk. What do pigs have to do with anything?

      “I don’t know what’s going on lately with some firms allowing their analysts to fail the tests and still keep their jobs while they study for a second try, but that’s not how we do things here. You pass all of them on the first try in October or you’re fired.”

       Great.

      “As you know, we are business casual here. I trust that you’ll dress appropriately. If you wear a tight skirt and someone smacks your ass, don’t come running to me or to HR about it. This is a place of business. Not a nightclub. The team is fantastic, one of the best in the Business. They work hard, play hard, and are some of the funniest human beings you will ever meet in your life. Personally, I think being a little crazy is what makes us so good at what we do, so prepare yourself for just about anything. It may seem like a tough group to crack, but once you earn their respect and are accepted, there’s no better group of people to work with.”

       Yeah, especially if they smack me on the ass.

      “Other than that, keep your head down, work hard, and stay out of the way. Use your brain, and you’ll be fine. Are we clear?” He finally took his feet off the desk and turned his gaze on me.

      “Yes, Chick. We’re clear.”

      “One more thing. I’m not your father, and I really don’t give a fuck what you do with your personal life, but I don’t encourage interoffice relationships. You’re a good-looking girl, and it won’t surprise me if half the floor hits on you, but I expect you to be smart. I do not expect you to date anyone on this floor, certainly not anyone on my desk. The last thing I need is a weepy employee fucking up right and left because she’s upset that someone here didn’t return a phone call. Capiche? Let’s go.”

      Chick stood without giving me a chance to answer. I had never in my life met anyone who seemed so nice and so completely insane at the same time.

      We walked out onto the floor, a giant room shaped like a horseshoe with enormous hermetically sealed windows and ceilings high enough to accommodate a circus tent. I wasn’t expecting the floor to look the way it did. Every time I’d gone to work with my father, I had never stepped foot on a trading floor. Bankers were kept separate from everyone else. They had inside information on mergers, stock offerings, and acquisitions and had to be segregated from the traders to ensure that inside information stayed classified. Banking floors were clean and tidy—all polished wood, plush carpets, and private offices. They even used a different elevator bank. The stories my dad had told me about my new work environment didn’t begin to do it justice. The difference between the Cromwell Pierce trading floor and the Sterling Price banking floor was staggering. This place looked like it was stuck in the ’70s. The walls had probably been white once upon a time, but they were now a dingy shade of cream. The Formica desks were chipped and stained, broken corners revealing the brown cork underneath. The fact that these desks were basically Generation One Cromwell was something I tried not to focus on; because if I thought about how many people had sneezed, coughed, eaten, and God knows what else all over them for the last forty years, I would have to come to work in a plastic jumpsuit wearing latex gloves.

      I kept my eyes on the floor as I navigated the obstacle course of rows to our “desk” in the back corner of the room. I could feel the stares from the men as I walked by. The guys surveyed the length of my skirt and the fit of my sweater, just in case I had missed a button or, God forbid, had visible panty lines. It was something I’d have to get used to.

      The energy in the room was palpable. People bellowed out numbers, screamed instructions to pick up phones, yelled just for the sake of yelling. The shouting made my ears buzz, and I didn’t know how anyone was able to understand anything above the chaos. There were at least four hundred people on the Cromwell Pierce fixed-income trading floor. Most of them were loud. Most of them were aggressive. Most of them relished the opportunity to mess with the new kids.

      Most of them were male.

      Chick suddenly threw his hand up in front of my head and intercepted a football that had missed its intended target. Unless of course, the target was me.

      “Watch it, Smitty! Hitting the new girl in the face with a football on her first day will get you called to the principal’s office.”

      I tried to find something to say to break the awkward silence, and the best I could come up with was, “You guys play football?”

      “Sometimes we do. You don’t. You’ll be too busy learning to have time to play. Capiche?”

      “Sure. I’m really excited to be here and I’m ready to work hard.”

      “That’s good, Alex, because we don’t want you here any other way.”

      A slight, pale man with red hair and an absurdly thin blond girl approached us. They stopped, and the guy nodded in my direction. His skin was translucent and his eyes so light they were almost clear. I was immediately reminded of the weakling on the high school football team who had to carry the equipment because he wasn’t big enough to actually play in the games. I had always assumed those scrawny kids bulked up later in life. I was wrong.

      “Who’s this?” he asked, his voice almost robotic.

      “Alex. My new kid,” Chick answered curtly.

      “Hi,” I said.

      “Hi!” СКАЧАТЬ