Funny, I didn’t remember it being this warm out here.
It’s three in the morning. I still have two hours before work.
What a great city.
I’m on Chestnut Street. If I keep walking this way, I’ll get to Columbus. Or maybe I’ll walk up to Coit Tower and sit there for a while. I’ve never bothered to walk up there before. Or maybe I’ll just walk around Chinatown for two hours. But the souvenir stores selling training chopsticks and giant swords won’t be open.
There is a reason they call New York the city that never sleeps. San Francisco sleeps. There is nobody else on the sidewalk. Everyone is doing blow or in bed.
I moved here because of the architecture. I did. I moved here because this place just looks really cool, because the houses were pink and yellow and green. Where I come from everything is brick. I’m not sure why people have such a fascination with brick, even rich people. Their houses are also made of brick. But now that I’ve lived here for a couple of years, I’ve noticed that this is a dirty city. There is dirt on the pink and yellow and green. In many ways, this place is disgusting. But I don’t care. It’s like they’re at least trying here. Like, they’re recycling.
So I first came here as a teenager. I’m not even sure why. I think my Dad dragged us out here. He was going to a conference or something. So my brother and I, we had some time to kill. We walked all over the city. Russian Hill was my favorite neighborhood. And I liked Telegraph Hill, too. My Dad told me that he had a friend that lived in Telegraph Hill. Big rich guy with his wife, Professor of Accounting somewhere. She was Scottish. She had the greatest accent I ever heard, her talking was like singing. She had black rust for hair, in a bun, and cat-eye glasses. I thought that was great, living in Telegraph Hill with a Scottish wife. How awesome is your life?
There are ups and downs to this place. The politics are dysfunctional. Because of that, there are a lot of homeless people. There are a lot of homeless people because the city government gives them free stuff. It’s not that hard to figure out, but the city government can’t seem to figure it out. There was an article in the Chronicle recently. Some Mexicans were homeless and they were giving them free stuff. But it wasn’t enough for them. They interviewed a Mexican for the article. He said: “We could really use some towels. We don’t have enough towels.” Like free towels just fall from the sky or something. I paid for my own towels. So it has been decades and the city government really cannot unscrew this. People say you can go in newspapers from 100 years ago and politicians were saying back then that they were going to clean up the Tenderloin, and it still hasn’t happened. They are still dicking around with it. They give out free towels, what do they think is going to happen? So you get off the BART at Civic Center and the air is filled with the smell of homeless. And they’re pretty aggressive. But if you can deal with that, then you love this place. It’s the freest place in the world. This city is full of freaks and nobody cares. Back East, there is pressure to conform.
How the hell did I get here?
* * * *
I was in Barcelona when I was 19, over Spring Break. My friends and I got on a walking jag, but ended up lost in a bad neighborhood. A few punks emerged from the darkness, made obscene gestures, and said fuck you in perfect unaccented English. I was more scared than I ever had been in my whole life.
I am half expecting that to happen right now. But nobody is around.
When I was in high school, I was a wrestler. We consistently had the best team in the state. So it was senior year, state championships. I’m in the semi finals. I’m going to wrestle this kid from Xavier, and I am sitting there with the assistant coach before the match. We both look at the other kid. Skinny kid, no muscle tone at all, looks like a geek. How does this guy make it to the semi finals?
“Kick his ass,” my assistant coach said.
So the match begins and I am twice as strong as this guy so I do a couple of quick takedowns and already I am up on points. Usually a kid like that gets demoralized. He’s not really attacking, but he’s hanging around, hanging around. We end up on the mat, and he reverses me, and he’s riding me now. I’m so pissed this bastard scored on me that when I escape, I lunge with so much force that my shoulder hits him in the chin. He bites his tongue, and it is bleeding. They stop the match, because of the bleeding tongue.
The crowd is getting anxious, because this kid is bleeding everywhere. And, I come from the powerhouse school that never loses. We have won six years in a row. Everyone already hates us. So I just abused this poor skinny kid and now people are pissed. The referee checks him out and determines skinny kid is all right and the match begins again.
Skinny kid still isn’t attacking, just locking me up, hanging around, hanging around, waiting for me to make a mistake. We can’t do this dance forever, because the ref will call stalling. So I shoot the leg and the kid reverses me and he is riding me, and I can’t get rid of him. It’s the third period and I’m tired, even after the long break to check out the kid’s lip. I try to catch him in a Petersen and somehow I end up on my back, and the place is going nuts. Coach Roy is yelling at me, I am trying to get out of it, and then the ref slams the mat, and the match is over.
I got pinned with six seconds left in the match.
They were cheering, because I lost.
I do a couple of laps around Washington Square Park. Fior D’Italia. My dad took me and my brother there. They used to give discounts to military folks. I wonder if they still do.
That was a long car ride home with Dad, after that wrestling tournament.
“Well, you’ll have plenty of time to train for next year.”
“Yeah.”
“Team came in second, still a good showing.”
“Yeah.”
“When does track season start?”
With my father, you had to listen to what wasn’t being said. Like, that I gave up and got beat by a cupcake and caused the team to lose the state championship.
I am thinking of a trading floor. Where everyone is getting rich, except for me.
I forgot to go up to Coit Tower. There’s still time.
I have never been carried off the field on my teammates’ shoulders, like my brother. He was a football player. He told me, once, that the best feeling in the world was to be carried off the field on your teammates’ shoulders. In this game, the trading game, you don’t get carried off the field. The guys in the MSFT pit aren’t going to carry me off the field. Winning is making money quietly. Money isn’t the most important thing in the world, but where I work, money is winning.
I am a loser, sometimes.
Maybe I’ll go check out the real estate on Telegraph Hill. Maybe I’ll go visit Scottish accounting wife. Maybe I’ll just call her up and listen to her sing to me over the phone.
I call Pops sometimes. He lets the machine pick up. I’ll call one day, the next day, then I’ll give up. The only time I get through is if Mom picks up, then she gives the phone to my father. We have non-conversations and I listen to what isn’t said.
“What have you been up to, Dad?”
“Mowing the lawn, chasing your mother around, the usual. What’s on your mind?”
“Had a good month at work, Dad.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Nothing spectacular, just fifty grand I managed to scratch together.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s pretty good—sixty percent goes to overhead, but that’s still decent money. Not like some of these big hitters, though.”
“Maybe you should try and be like them.”
“I do try.”
“Your brother gets home from flight school next week. Should I have him call you?”
What isn’t said is that I’m still the kid that dropped out of Marine OCS and now I will be the kid that did a line of blow. And I will probably do many more. I am still high and I am wondering what is going to happen when I come down.
Maybe I’m going to go to work today and start trading three thousand lots. Maybe I’ll make ten million this year. Will that do it? My brother couldn’t do what I do. He couldn’t stand there in the pit all day getting spit on, yelled at, getting cut out of trades. He couldn’t go completely apeshit just to get a lousy fifty-lot. Those people cannot even comprehend it. Mom thinks I’m a stockbroker. Dad thinks I should just try harder. If trying could make ten million a year, I’d be doing it.
I should start heading to work. It is getting early. Down Montgomery Street, down the hill.
* * * *
I went back home to visit recently, for Thanksgiving. My brother wasn’t there, so it was just the three of us.
There wasn’t much to talk about, my dad driving us home from the airport.
“How’s work?”
“It’s a living. Could be doing better, but I’m surviving.”
“Why just surviving?”
“It’s complicated, Dad.”
“Explain.”
“Well, I wanted stocks to not move around very much, but they moved around a lot.”
“But haven’t they gone up?”
“But I don’t care if they go up or down. I just want them to stand still.”
“And they didn’t.”
“No.”
Dad thinks about this.
“Well, why don’t you just buy the stocks? They’re going up.”
“But that’s not my job.”
“But you can trade stock there, on the floor, right?”
“Yes.”
“So just buy stocks.”
“Dad. I would get fired for just buying stocks.”
“You would get fired for making money?”
“Dad, I’m not a portfolio manager. I’m an options market maker. I look for options that are mispriced.”
“Having any luck finding any?”
Even though he was being retarded, he had a point. If I had used all of my firm capital and bought MSFT four years ago, I’d be rich. And I never would have had to set foot on the floor. Instead, I’ve been pissing into the wind.
We went out to eat, on Saturday night. They asked me what I liked. I said I liked sushi. Sushi in Central Illinois is a bad idea.
“Your brother is putting on Captain next month,” he said.
“Good for him.”
“We’re very proud,” said my mom.
“But it’s really not that big of a deal,” I said, in between bites of almost inedible eel. “Right? Pretty much everyone makes O-3.”
Dad got the hibachi. He thinks sushi is bait. “Actually, the promotion rate was the lowest in years. Sixty percent. They’re cutting back, you know.”
It was a mistake to bring it up.
“Why did you quit OCS?” he asked me, looking directly at me.
“Honey.”
“Carol, we need to talk about this. He’s never given me an answer.”
“I had a bad feeling.”
“You had a bad feeling.”
“Yeah, I had a bad feeling.”
“Like you were scared?”
“No, like I thought I wouldn’t be happy.”
“You thought you wouldn’t be happy.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Like, you thought you wouldn’t make enough money?”
“That’s ridiculous. It has nothing to do with money.”
“So what is it, then?”
“It wasn’t for me.”
“But trading is for you.”
“Yes.”
I’m still going on the crappy sushi, but my father has stopped eating.
“You ever think about going to law school?” he asks.
“That sounds miserable,” I say, chewing.
“Your Uncle Jeff is a lawyer.”
“I know.”
“He does quite well for himself.”
“Great. But it’s not about the money.”
“What is it, then?”
“It wouldn’t be fun.”
“Lots of things aren’t fun, but we do them anyway.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“If it was fun, they wouldn’t call it work.”
“You’re wrong.”
“How am I wrong?”
“If I’m going to spend forty-odd years of my life working, I want to be doing something I enjoy.”
“You enjoy it down there, on the floor?”
“Yes.”
“With all those people.” But he said those people.
“Yes.”
He hasn’t touched his food in ten minutes. “Most of them are drug addicts, you know.”
“Dad.”
“It’s true.”
“There are worse things than drug addicts,” I argue.
He’s angry. “Yeah, like what?”
I look at him.
Don’t say it.
Don’t say it.
I didn’t say it.
You pussy.
* * * *
There’s not much to do back home. I suppose I could have borrowed Dad’s car and headed into town, but I didn’t feel like it. I sat around, watched TV, shot some stick. I went to bed but I wasn’t really tired. So I sat there in bed, staring at the ceiling. So I finally get up. And I get up and make myself a glass of chocolate milk with Hershey’s syrup. This is one of the best things ever. I hadn’t had chocolate milk in years. I drink the chocolate milk and I go in the TV room and turn on the tube. I start flipping around, land on Skinemax, so what the hell, I bang one out at one in the morning. I wipe my hand on the rug underneath the chair, then I start rummaging through the rest of the house. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for.
So I go in Dad’s office and he has a file cabinet there. I don’t remember that being there. So I look at it and there is obvious stuff. Life Insurance. Stock Certificates. Birth Certificates. There is a folder, it says “W.” I open it and examine the contents, a legal document. It is not too long, not too short. It has all those dashes and brackets and the text off to the side on the top, and the narrow margins. I don’t know why the lawyers do that. So I am seeing who gets what. I am reading it quickly, but too quickly to find myself in the document. It is complicated. He is leaving stuff to a bunch of different people. Finally I find myself at the bottom of the hill, standing on the sidewalk, and you wanna know what it said.
* * * *
Even with the long walk, I am still in the office fifteen minutes early. The kid is here already.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You look like shit.”
“So do you.”
“You look like you were up all night.”
“So do you.”
“You got the breaks?” he asks.
“Working on it.”
I was hoping to get in early and do my own breaks, but the clerk beat me to it. The kid is built like a brick shithouse and is the second smartest guy here. In all likelihood he is going to make a shit-ton of money over the course of his career. You can tell. He has that look. He has the look of someone who falls ass-backwards into money. He is lucky. That’s actually how TRE interviews people. He asks them if they are lucky. If they say no, or they hesitate, they don’t get the job.
Obviously TRE never interviewed me.
So the clerk brings over the breaks. He looks pretty terrible. Does anyone sleep around here? That is the thing with working market hours on the West Coast. You have to go to bed at 8 to get a reasonable amount of sleep. Of course nobody ever does. The guys that like to party, they just stay out all night. Night, after night, after night.
“No breaks,” he says.
“Right on.”
“What were you doing last night?” he asked.
Sniffing blow. “Nothing. What were you doing?”
“Nothing.”
We look at each other.
“Breakfast?” he asks. “The usual?”
“Please.”
My head is still buzzing but I am strangely exhausted at the same time, so I decide to get a coffee. I should have just asked the clerk to get it, but I forgot. So I am not going to Starbucks, that is for sure, in case I run into Purple Hair Girl.
Purple Hair Girl.
* * * *
So T22 gave me a look on this party he had last night. I don’t know why. He never gave me a look before. We run in different crowds. He has parties all the time. Jackson, the King Filipino, supplies them. I’ve always wondered where these guys come from, these guys that have no boundaries in their lives. There’s no drug this guy hasn’t taken, in large quantities, but to the best of my knowledge he’s never been arrested, never had any serious consequences. He’s probably worth ten million, maybe more. There are a lot of people like that in San Francisco. Not in New York. There are deviants there, but they are boring. Hookers-and-coke-Rangers-fans, clones of each other. They are all the same. T22 is just an agent of chaos. He’s not even predictably looking out for himself. He’s just having fun, randomly, with no consequences.
I’ve been on the floor for four years now and I don’t know T22 that well. We give each other the head nod. That’s about it. I know that he’s killing it, that he does business with all the big banks. It just goes to show that it makes more sense to handle the order than to trade it. Just like it is better to sell the pickaxes to the gold miners than to actually mine the gold. I’ve made a total of four or five hundred thousand dollars since I’ve worked here, but it was all on one trade. Back in the beginning I was in the RMBS pit and someone sold me about five hundred teeny puts. Right before earnings. I was off the floor and I heard the stock was down fifty-seven bucks. I was up more than five hundred grand. I was on the computer trying to trade stock to hedge the delta, but the machine wouldn’t accept the order because I was entering in the wrong big figure. Just dumb luck. It easily could have gone the other way. I think about that a lot. Who sells puts for a stink right before earnings?
So T22 is about the biggest broker on the floor, in spite of having shit for brains. And his parties are legendary. This is what I was worried about. It was like this in high school. I used to pal around with a few guys that wouldn’t drink. We would hang out in this guy Matt’s basement and shoot bumper pool and listen to Seal and drink Diet Pepsi out of two liter bottles, while our classmates were out getting shitfaced. We were dorks. So T22 has these blowout parties; I’ve heard there’s like sex right in the middle of everything. If you’ve ever heard a story about one of T22’s parties, it’s true. So T22 gives me a look last week, he says, “Yo bra, gonna have this size party at my place, check it out.” He doesn’t even tell me where his place is or how to get to it, because he knows that I know. He knows that I know that not only does he live in Russian Hill, he lives in the coolest house in Russian Hill. Maybe. But it is the most modern. You notice it, walking or driving by, you would say, “I wonder who lives there?” You’d never guess it was some drug-addicted floor monkey who makes errors all over the fucking place.
So a few hours ago I was at his house. I’m outside, and I can hear the bass, and I ring the bell, and I knock, and nothing. I am three hours late, because in California nobody shows up until at least an hour or two late, and I want to be really, really cool, not just really cool. So already it is two in the morning. I had to drink a bunch of Mountain Dew just to stay awake this long. I am usually in bed at eight just so I can get up at four. Already I know this is going to be an all-nighter. So I open the door and there’s some kind of modern art masterpiece staring me right in the face. It’s probably worth a hundred grand; T22 is just showing off that he can afford this. I head up the stairs and there it is.
Actually, it’s not too bad, if you don’t count the naked chicks on the floor on either side of Rob, one of T22’s broker buddies. Rob is on the floor with a big grin on his face. Two hookers are on either side of him, humping either side of his head with their tiny vaginas. They say they are giving him “earmuffs.” Everyone gets a big laugh. I looked around the rest of the room. There was an inch-high pile of cocaine on the coffee table, and another hooker who was stroking the magnificent mahogany woody of one of the lanky black clerks employed by T22. I looked away from that. Aside from that, there really wasn’t much else in the room, including furniture.
T22 materializes next to me. He gives me a double bro-shake, one with the thumb, and one without, and then snaps the thumb, and pats me on the back, and gives me a big, toothy grin with his gray teeth. I look at him, and I think, you washed your hair. He says he’s so glad that I could make it. Now we can get to know each other. And he’s pretty wasted, though he doesn’t appear to be high, which is a first. Maybe he just saves that for during the day.
Right now I’m not all that comfortable, because I don’t want to sit next to the guy with his dick out, and I don’t want to be next to the blow, and the two small prostitutes are sitting in the middle of the room. This place is smaller than I imagined. And like I said, there isn’t that much in the way of furniture. So I am standing in the corner trying hard not to look at what is going on. It occurs to me that I’m not friends with anyone here. In fact, most of these people don’t work on the floor. T22 is friends with them in some underground way. It looks like he met them all in the personals of the Guardian or maybe at the Power Exchange. I am trying to make eye contact with a pretty girl with purple hair and a lip ring. In spite of her appearance, she is the most normal one here, and appears sober.
Turns out purple hair girl works at Starbucks, a block or two away from the exchange. So this is how she knows T22, and why not? He knows everyone within a 10-block radius from the floor. She grew up in Noe Valley, so she gets the joke. She’s nice. She reminds me of someone from a movie, I can’t place it. Abruptly she takes a small jar from her pocket, unscrews the cap, and takes a big sniff from it, then asks if I want to come in her pretty hair, everyone else does. For a split second I consider this. I then decide that I am not quite wired like T22 and there is some part of my personality that will prevent me from doing fun, but exceptionally weird things.
T22 re-emerges from his cave. He encircles his arm around me in such a way that I have no choice but to follow. “We’re going to do some BIG bumps, bra,” he says, and I don’t know what he is talking about.
We are in a bedroom now. It’s me, T22, and there is Jackson, the King Filipino, at parade rest against the back wall. He looks overtly pissed about something, hands at his crotch, jacket still on. I’ve never seen him off the floor. He actually looks more pissed off here than he does on the floor. So on the dresser there are lines of white powder, and T22 motions towards them with his left hand, waving, saying nothing.
“Come on, man.”
“What?”
“I just got here.”
“All the more reason,” he says.
“Let me ease into it just a little bit.”
“Bra, this will help you ease into it a little bit.”
“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Bra, you’re an outsider in that pit. Loosen up, make some friends.”
“Can’t I make friends without this?”
“You are full of excuses tonight, bra.”
“You know I can’t do this.”
“Yes you can.”
“No I can’t.”
“Just try it. It’s not going to kill you.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” says Jackson, the King Filipino. He is glowering.
“Give the kid a second, he needs time. This is a big fucking decision, right?”
I look at him. It is, actually.
“I used to be like you. I used to be afraid to try new things. I wouldn’t climb trees. I wouldn’t climb the monkey bars. I wouldn’t take risks. Look at you. You’re a risk taker, and you won’t take risks. You take risks in your professional life, but not your personal life. I’m not even a risk taker, and I take risks. That is what I had to learn, growing up. Unless you try new things, your world stays pretty small. You don’t push yourself. You don’t expand your boundaries. Look at you. You always operate within your comfort zone. Look at me. I try to spend as much time outside my comfort zone as possible. Because when you try something new, something you know isn’t going to hurt you, you grow as a person. Your boundaries expand. And nothing hurts you in small quantities, bra.”
He sounds like he has given this speech many times before.
I feel myself lunging toward the dresser, and in the time that it takes for me to do that, I wonder about the actual mechanics of what happens to powder when it goes up your nose, like, does it stick up there? Maybe I should have tried this with salt or pepper first or something. And then I think about being in an amusement park with my brother and my father when I was about ten. They had this roller coaster called Lightning Loops. I didn’t want to go on it. My dad and my brother did. But since I didn’t, there was nobody to watch me, so none of us ended up going. My dad was pissed. And I knew, intellectually, that thousands and thousands of people go on that roller coaster and nothing happens. But I was still scared, just like T22 when he was a kid. Which is one of the reasons I forced myself to go to Marine OCS. If you’re not afraid of dying, what are you afraid of? And it was very liberating. I wasn’t afraid of anything. I would do belly flops in the pool off the high dive, just for kicks. But the thing is that people are supposed to be afraid of things. Normal people are afraid of things. It is healthy to be afraid of things. And as time passed, after my Marine Corps experience, I began to be afraid of things again. Maybe it was from watching so many people blow themselves up trading, losing everything. But T22 isn’t afraid of anything at all. He has that luxury, because he doesn’t handle risk.
I’m fucked.
I look at T22, and Jackson, who is now registering a faint smile. I laugh. They laugh. It’s brighter in here—did someone turn on the lights? And the paint job in this room is great. And like I said, T22 really did wash his hair. It’s weird, I can see details in his face that I couldn’t see before. He looks handsome, in a way. His eyes aren’t so hollow. And Jackson lost a bit of weight, or he looks slimmer out of that trading smock. Jesus, T22 has a great house.
T22 whispers something in Jackson’s ear and they both get a good laugh.
I find myself going up to T22 and giving him a hug, which he accepts. This makes Jackson laugh some more. It’s not just that I feel great. He knew I would feel great. He knew that this was the right thing to do.
I’m totally screwed, because I know I’ll have to do this again.
Well, I came here to do what I had to do, so now I am going to go.
See you later T22, and Jackson.
“See you later, sister,” I say to Purple Hair Girl, which is ludicrous, but sounds like exactly the right thing to say. I don’t look at her face.
The lanky clerk is tooling one of the miniature prostitutes in the middle of the living room when I leave. Everyone is watching. They actually look really good together, and the girl is cooing softly, which is kind of nice.
Down past the piece of modern art, which impressed me mightily when I came in.
* * * *
I used to be one of the good guys. Me and my twin brother both. People say that identical twins are inseparable, well, that wasn’t the way with us. First of all, we really aren’t that identical. My brother gets in the Naval Academy. I can’t get in, because my grades are worse. But I go to a New England liberal arts school (which one isn’t important) and I do pretty well, and then I go to Marine Corps OCS. And I do tens of thousands of push-ups and run hundreds of miles. I am the best marksman in the class. And I eat the food and scream and yell and fall right asleep at night, not even dreaming. And for once in my life I feel like I belong somewhere. But the closer I got to graduation, I started to get this sense that I was making a big mistake. Kind of like the feeling you get when you get déjà vu. It felt like I’d done this before, and something terrible was about to happen. I don’t know. So the day before graduation, I went to the company officer, and I told him that I quit. And I packed my shit and walked away from the Marines forever.
So I’m like persona non grata in my family, now. And my brother is wearing the dress blues with the silver bars. And I told my Dad that I really had no idea what the hell I wanted to do with my life, and I was telling him the truth. I really didn’t know. But I went to school with some guys who became floor traders. I had no idea what they did. I figured they just bought low and sold high or something like that. I had no idea what they were trading. But my buddy, Brent, he used to wrestle with me in school. So now he’s on the AMEX in New York trading options on something called the Q’s. Nobody knows if this thing is going to take off or not. It took him a few weeks to figure out what an ETF was. Kid kind of looks like Giovanni Ribisi.
So that’s basically how I found my way to JLS. This was back three years ago, and they sent me out here with TRE to start this place up. And I’ve bopped around a little, but mostly traded in the MSFT pit, not making any damn money. But I’ve also never lost money, which is important. Guys will blow themselves up left and right, especially nowadays. You just cannot be short gamma in anything. Not when stocks are moving fifty bucks a day in some cases. So I got safe hands, and TRE thinks I am going to figure it out someday. And I am. I might have figured it out tonight.
* * * *
Instead of embarrassing myself at Starbucks, I go to Venue. The girls there do not have purple hair, although they are pretty busted. I am going there even though the clerk is going there, to get my coffee. He can get the bagel and I’ll get the coffee. It’s pointless, but whatever. Like I said, my head is still buzzing. So the Mexican guy there always gives me a smile. He knows everyone, even though I don’t come down here that much. As it turns out, the clerk doesn’t even notice I’m in line behind him; he’s hypnotized by the brutal chick behind the counter. Creepy.
Most of the time when I tell people I work on the trading floor, they say, “Oh, the exchange building on Pine Street?” Actually, no, I’m around the corner in the building that doesn’t look like an exchange. It just looks like a regular building. The stock exchange is for stock. They don’t do options on the stock floor. They do options on the options floor. But there is no sign on the options floor, so you only know if you are in the know. Besides, I think the stock floor is a charity case or something. I don’t know why anyone would route an order there. It is like Jurassic Park. You should see the old guys coming out of that building. I didn’t know that dudes in San Fran even got that old.
So naturally they hire a gay guy to be the receptionist, and this guy does not mess around. Traders are a bunch of cretins, so all day long it is gay and faggot and cocksucker, it doesn’t faze this guy a bit. He just sits there with his pink-striped shirts and gives you the eye of judgment. I haven’t made friends with him, because that would be smart, but I don’t think anyone else is friends with him, either. In general, nobody messes with him at all. Traders respect the threat of force, and there is something about this guy that suggests he could have your badge taken away if he wanted to. Though this guy probably comes in straight from the Bijou Theatre in the morning. You know, with the marquee out front, that says things like Big Hairy Chests/All You Can Eat. I heard they have mattresses in the basement.
The trading floor in the morning is a bit of a depressing place. It is mostly quiet, people reading newspapers and whatnot. And the sound that you hear is of the timestamp machines clicking away the minutes. They aren’t perfectly synchronized, so there is kind of this constant clicking. They are very lonely timestamp machines. They haven’t made this stuff electronic yet, so you have to stamp a ticket. Though some of the more advanced firms have had guys on handhelds, hooked up to the exchange, like JLS. But I don’t like using it because I like having my hands free. And I don’t want this anchor hanging from my neck, so I give it to the clerk. This makes TRE unhappy, but who cares. The clerk can learn how to trade stock.
Oddly enough, TRE and the gang are down here already in the LMM. It’s not uncommon to huddle up in the morning, but TRE looks as serious as a heart attack. He’s eyeing me carefully. I fear that he knows what happened, even though there is no way for him to know.
“We got the PALM spinoff today. We need someone in that 3Com pit,” he says, looking at each of us.
“Not it,” says Fred, touching his nose with his finger. “I’m busy enough with Qualcomm. PaineWebber might put a $2000 price target on that turd for all I know.”
“No can do,” says Tex, “I’m trying to exploit the shit out of a skew trade in WCOM before the big guy figures it out.”
I am daydreaming about losing my ass in the 3Com pit. I lose millions of dollars, taking down the entire San Francisco branch and half our clearing firm. My parents never speak to me again. The clerk interrupts my suicide plans and says something that makes everyone laugh, but I miss it, not hearing.
But I just did rails with the biggest broker on the floor.
“You need to be in there today,” says TRE. “Spreads are going to be massive. Just put yourself on the wheel, don’t get too crazy, everything will be fine.”
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
“Ok.”
* * * *
Pac Bell Park might be the only baseball stadium in the country where you can order tiramisu. And these people call themselves baseball fans. Frankly, they are the worst baseball fans in the world. And Sabean is the worst GM in the world. And Barry Bonds is just a bad guy, no matter how many balls he hits into McCovey cove. But at least we have Jon Miller. And thank God for the Razor and Mr.T. But here we all are, eating tiramisu at a baseball game, and everyone was so rich they forgot what it was like to be poor. Whatever that means. Even that Mexican guy at Venue is getting rich. Heck, he probably had box seats in this place.
The stadium is a little out of the way. It’s downtown, and public transportation doesn’t take you there, so you have to walk. So I took the bus with the clerk; we got comped tickets by JLS. All he can talk about the whole way down there is how hungry he is. We’re walking across town on a Sunday morning and nothing is open. Well, that’s what happens if you lift weights all the time: you’re hungry. Finally we stop someplace and get the kid a chicken caesar wrap, and after he eats one, he buys another. Then he eats that, too. I can see the muscles in his forearms as he grips the thing. He swallows it whole, like a rattlesnake eating a rodent. Then he gets a berry vanilla smoothie. The kid eats two thousand calories in the span of seven minutes. Then we are on our way.
I was in the mezzanine with the clerk. He was a good kid if you got him off the floor, not so weird about staring at the screens and trying to bully people all the time. I know for a fact he doesn’t have money to throw around, but he buys one of those SF Giants we’re number one foam fingers and starts carrying it around, talking about fingering this and that and giving people the finger, like a jackass.
A week ago, TRE invited me into his office, and for once, had me close the door. He told me that a rival market making firm, one that traded both options and stock, was readying a bid for us. I couldn’t keep the secret.
“How much?” asked the clerk, in between sips of his beer.
“It’s a lot.”
“You got a number?”
I drew in a breath. “Two hundred million dollars.”
“Who?”
“Bishop.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. But Luther thinks it’s not enough.”
“What?”
“Says we made $50 million bottom line last year. That values us at 4 times. Says we can do better.” I’m not looking at the clerk because I can sense his indignation rising.
“Yo,” he says. “It’s two hundred million dollars. We’re just a bunch of shitheads in trading smocks. Look around you. People are drinking chardonnay at a baseball game. This isn’t real. This is going to end.”
I feel my jaw set. I am getting angry at the clerk, and half paying attention to the game. Marvin Bernard is up, who sucks ass on a good day. “You don’t know that. This thing could be worth a billion in three years at the rate we’re growing.”
“Floor traders aren’t worth a billion dollars,” he says.
“Okay, so if we sell now, TRE gets, like, twenty million, Luther and those guys get fifty.”
“That’s not enough?”
“Look around you,” I say, imitating him. “Don’t you think people are making more than that?”
The clerk looks back at the game as Marvin Bernard strikes out, swinging at something around his eyes.
“You only need to get rich once,” he says.
* * * *
I grab the clerk and give him instructions for the spinoff. I’m not sure he’s listening. Some people make better traders than clerks. I need this kid to focus for just one second, but as he’s printing out my risk reports back in the booth, he’s smoking and joking with the Bay Bridge potheads. The only time you get this kid to stop being a numbnuts is when there’s money at stake. It occurs to me that this perfectly describes most people on the floor.
I tell the cute lesbian MQ to put me on the wheel, walking past the guys in the crowd, and then I go and take my place in back of the pit. Some are looking at me. Some are shaking their heads. One of them crumples up his risk report, turns around, and fires it at my forehead. It bounces off, to great effect. Then he calls me “Dickface.” Everyone gets a kick out of this. It’s going to be like this all day. I knew it would.
It smells in here and it’s because of Fat Dave. Fat Dave wears a blue smock and has some kind of mineral deficiency that makes his armpits, ass or feet smell like decomposing bodies. Most of the guys in here are used to it. My eyes are burning. In addition to smelling horrible on purpose, Fat Dave is a nightmare to deal with. He’s easily the most infuriating bastard on the floor. Lucky for me, I brought Fat Dave a sandwich, which is known to change his whole outlook on life. He eats all day long and you can bribe him with food. So when I was down in Venue getting my coffee, I got a pesto chicken sandwich, stuffed it in my pocket, and I just handed it to Fat Dave.
Fat Dave says, “All RIGHT, man,” and starts scarfing it down.
It really was that easy, it was like typing in FEED FAT DAVE A SANDWICH while playing Zork on the Apple IIe. Meanwhile, I have credibility in the pit, because I know how to keep Fat Dave quiet, which everyone else appreciates.
“Thanks, bro,” says Richard, who migrated here from MSFT with me. He won’t consume anything unless it comes from Jamba Juice.
“Don’t mention it.”
Richard looks back at the clerk and then at me. “What’s the matter with your clerk? He makes me uncomfortable.”
I smile. “He’s an assassin. He’s Jason Bourne.”
“When are you going to give him a badge?”
“It’s the subject of much debate at JLS right now.”
“Should be a slam-dunk, right?”
“He doesn’t take clerking very seriously.”
“Would he take trading seriously?”
I think about this. “Yeah.”
“So give him the badge.”
“Yeah.”
We’re looking at the screens.
“What’s your plan?” he asks.
“For what?”
“For the spinoff, dummy.”
“Oh. TRE told me to get on the wheel and not do anything crazy.” I told him.
“Okay.”
“So.”
“So.”
“So what are you going to do?” I ask.
“I’m not going to take a view on anything. Hedging all the deltas. The edge in here is insane. There’s no reason to try and grow a brain.”
“Okay.”
“Dude,” Richard says, “don’t try and be a hero today. There are going to be a lot of millionaires and a lot of body bags. This is a career, not the fucking lotto.”
“Okay.”
He looks at me, chortles. “Ah, shit. You’re gonna take a shot.”
I nod my head slowly. “I am gonna take a shot.”
* * * *
My mom drove me to the airport. She had kept quiet most of the weekend.
“Your father loves you.”
“Whatever.”
“He wants what’s best for you.”
“He wants for me what would be best for him.”
She drives in silence.
“He doesn’t like the money thing,” she says.
“What is a ‘money thing’?”
“You know. Trying to make money.”
I laugh, but I’m pissed. “He’s never had to worry about it. He gets a government check. Does he think we should all get government checks?”
“No, but—”
“Mom, there are people out there, in this world, who try to make money. Maybe not in our family, but they do exist. There are lots of them, in fact. I’m sorry I’ve dishonored him with my pursuit of the almighty dollar.”
She’s quiet.
“You know I’m right,” I say.
“I know,” she says, laughing.
I laugh too. “What a dick,” I say.
“What time is your flight again?”
“Four-thirty. You know, if he wants a relationship with his son, he’s going to have to get over this.”
“Well—”
“What, were you going to say he doesn’t want a relationship?”
She pauses. “Are you taking drugs?” she asks, staring straight ahead.
“Holy fuck. No, Mom.”
“No?”
“That’s what this is all about?”
She nods.
“Christ,” I say, shaking my head. “If I’m going to do the time, I might as well do the crime.”
* * * *
I look up at the screens. I see a lot of low-hanging fruit that these guys are not grabbing. But these are juicy orders. There are other dudes starting to file into the pit, and it is only a matter of time until they start picking these berries. So I say “Buy your book March 75 puts, a fifty-lot,” and Dickface guy is getting really pissed off now. He’s turning around and screaming in my face. I just stare back at him. I want to tell him tough shit, I just made $10,000. This is the easiest money I have made on this floor in years.
I need to hedge, so I turn around to the clerk and tell him to buy 2,000 COMS. I startle him. I think he was just finishing up a phone call. Probably with his girlfriend. She’s really nice, that kid is going to ruin her if they stay together much longer. He scrambles and fumbles and starts tapping away at the box with the stylus, and finally he gives me the thumbs up, I’m filled. What a production. I don’t know why I don’t just use Janice. She’s completely insane, but she’s competent.
It’s getting near the spinoff and it occurs to me that I haven’t seen T22 yet today. He’s this phantom that slithers around and makes errors in between giving out giant, loopy softball trades to people. Imagine you have a friend who leaves a trail of $100 bills behind him. You’d want to make friends with that guy. It has occurred to me that he might be the most important person in the entire city to be friends with.
There he is.
Just as I am wondering what hospital, jail, or other institution he ended up in, he appears, walking along the outside of the pit. His eyes look even more haunted than usual. He was fine when I left the party. I can only imagine what happened after I left. I wonder if Purple Hair Girl got what she wanted, and if T22 gave it to her. All this raging can’t be good for business. He probably just missed ten grand worth of commissions. But as we glance at each other—was that a wink?
The dude just winked at me.
I don’t feel good about this. I’m regretting last night already, like some blacking out at some frat party years ago and throwing myself on a grenade. It was futile to hope that my coke-sniffing episode wasn’t going to get around the floor. Brokers talk, especially T22. I never got the impression that TRE really cared about any of his traders partying, but still. Then it occurred to me that T22 might not talk, that he might actually need something from me. What, I didn’t know.
There’s a commotion behind me. It’s the Bay Bridge guys yelling about palming their pilot and pretending to fist each other and generally being boneheads. I look back at the clerk and he looks kind of freaked out, which is not like him. He seems to be completely hemmed in by market makers and stock jockeys and he knows he’s taking up space. I should just take the handheld back from him and trade the stock myself, but it’s too late now, he’s trapped back there. I’m not sure he could even hear me if I yelled an order at him.
The spinoff hasn’t even happened yet and already I’ve made a month’s worth of P&L. I’ve watched people fall ass-backwards into money every year I’ve been down here, and it’s never happened to me. But now the buzz from the coke is starting to wear off and a sense of dread appears and takes up residence in my abdomen, and spreads throughout my arms and legs, which begin to soften. Failure is a sensation, not an event, and already I am feeling it even before it happens. Two thousand miles away, their disappointment is telegraphed.
I look up at COMS and the stock is starting to really rip around. It was at 78 when I walked in here but now it is at 86 and it is moving around three bucks at a time. The normally unflappable cute MQ girl is getting a little rattled; most of those book orders are now gone and she’s been haggling with the crowd for the past ten minutes. They are bringing in more MQs. I look around, and for a moment, the sense of failure subsides and I think about where I am in space and time. This is the biggest pit I have ever seen. This has to be bigger than the bond pit on the CBOT in the eighties. This has to be the most sublimely insane market in financial history. What would people think if they knew that this existed? For a second, I am proud to be part of this group of people. Even the clerk, the Bay Bridge goons, and even stinky Fat Dave. I sense that we are at a unique place and time in history, a time that is not going to be repeated possibly for decades, if ever. I feel like I am witness to something big—and special.
I have to share this with someone.
When JLS gave me this cell phone, I put all my numbers into speed dial, but I haven’t used them once. I remembered the “3” was home. It would be early afternoon there.
3.
I cover my other ear.
“Hello?”
“Dad.”
“Hello?”
“Dad, it’s me.”
“Wow, it’s noisy there. Where are you?”
“I’m on the trading floor. You have a minute?”
“What?”
“You have a minute?”
“Yes, go ahead.”
“You ever heard of 3Com?”
“What?”
“3Com?”
“What about it?”
“Nothing. Have you heard of Palm?”
“Bomb?”
“Palm!”
“What?”
“Do you know what a Palm Pilot is?”
“Oh. Yes. What is this all about?”
This is going nowhere.
“Dad, are you proud of me?”
“What?”
“Are you proud of me?”
“Still can’t hear you, son.”
“ARE. YOU. PROUD. OF. ME.”
He pauses.
“Son, I think we have a bad connection. You should get back to work.”
He hangs up.
* * * *
The spinoff is in a few minutes. I try to memorize the screen like Fred does but the stock is ripping all over the place. I am unsuccessful. I am going to have to just make a market the old-fashioned way. Like TRE taught me. Make your price. Think about where you want to be. Do you want to own it? The stock has moved twenty bucks in the last twenty minutes.
Suddenly, the wheel screen goes nuts and freezes. I look up. All the screens are frozen. Nobody knows where the stock is. Nobody knows where the options are. The screens jerk back to life, tick a few times, then freeze again. The stock is gapping five bucks at a clip. I think I hear the clerk yelling at me. I’m assuming I got auto-exed on a bunch of trades, but it’s pointless trying to figure it out. I’m just hoping everything evens out.
Now the guy in the Hawaiian shirt is arguing with another scab. The screens spring back into motion, for good this time. Fat Dave is getting wheeled on some 50-lots and loving it. He turns around and sells 10,000 COMS to the Bay Bridge guys, who for once, are paying attention. As I turn around to look, I see that the clerk is transfixed at something off to his left, completely oblivious to what is going on in the pit.
My smock is vibrating, and I reach in and pull out my phone. It’s a 415 area code, but not a number I recognize. I flip it open, hold it to my ear, and hear:
“3Com April 120 calls.”
He hangs up.
I stand on my tiptoes and I see T22 across the floor, with a phone at each ear. He removes the phone from his left ear, closes it, and puts it in his pocket.
I know what I have to do.
You only need to get rich once.
I stare up at the screen at COMS.
The stock is at 95.
98.
102.
105.
All I am looking at is the COMS Apr 120 calls. The screen says:
20 – 24 ½
T22 loops around the front of the pit and stands on the podium. Already, I feel myself raising my arms.
He is looking directly at me.
“APRIL 120 CALLS—“
“TWENTY BID!” I say alone, my hands in the air. I am before everyone else. They say it after me. I am entitled to the order.
“YOU’RE WEARING IT three thousand times,” says T22, eyes wild, making a “sold” hand signal over my head, like dunking a basketball.
I just got all of a three thousand lot order. Look at me.
I do some quick math and calculate that I just spent $6 million on a single trade.
T22’s clerk comes around to give me the ticket. I know what your dick looks like, I think. I look down at the ticket. I look up at the screen. The numbers look off. The stock hasn’t moved, but the calls are lower, now.
“Is that the right price?” I ask him.
“Yeah, man. How does that feel?”