Bond Girl. Erin Duffy
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for the last six weeks, some guy screamed “Pizza in the lobby!” across the floor at 10:30. And every Friday morning at 10:30, the floor erupted into applause that rivaled what was heard in Yankee Stadium when Jeter scored against the Red Sox. I had had a glimpse of trading floor eating habits my first day at Cromwell—hundreds of egg-and-cheese sandwiches dripping with grease being devoured as fast as humanly possible without choking to death. At the time, I disregarded it. That was before I understood the pivotal role that food plays in the finance industry. Every day there were bagels, or egg sandwiches, or Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The food was ceremoniously carried to various parts of the room in huge cardboard boxes that were dropped on the floor every thirty feet like paper land mines. Within seconds, dozens of grown men would descend on the offerings like angry bees swarming a honeycomb, grabbing whatever they could get their hands on. You wouldn’t think that guys who earned seven-figure salaries would care so much about free doughnuts. You wouldn’t think so, but they do.
Mealtime at Cromwell was like feeding time at the zoo; if you were fast and big, you ate first; if you were small and slow, you had better get out of the way. An example of Darwin’s survival of the fittest, adapted for healthy, well-fed men. The delivery options weren’t restricted to the usual Chinese or pizza joints. If someone felt like ordering $2,000 worth of penne alla vodka, veal parmigiana, and Caesar salad for lunch from an expensive restaurant that didn’t have delivery service, the executive chef and the waiters would deliver the food themselves. Sometimes there were trays of fried chicken, ribs, and cornbread from a BBQ place in Midtown; kung pao chicken, lo mein, and anything else on the menu from the Chinese place; or cheeseburgers and fries. In the afternoons, when energy began to fade, someone would inevitably appear with three dozen milkshakes, ice cream sandwiches, or bags of candy from the drugstore. When it was someone’s birthday, the secretaries ordered huge ice cream sheet cakes, and platters of chocolate chip cookies. I was pretty sure I was going to wind up weighing two hundred pounds. And I was single. This was not good.
Chick pressed the button on “the hoot,” a microphone that broadcast his voice across the floor. “Copy that. We got this one, Frankie. Pizzas will be there in five, and if they’re not, you have my permission to beat my analyst.” He pointed to me with his right hand. “Girlie slave, go get the pizzas and bring them back up to Frankie. Go.” Chick believed in figuring things out for yourself and being proactive. For the most part, I had managed to follow along without having to ask for clarification until now. Considering I didn’t know how many pizzas I was supposed to pick up, or how I was supposed to pay for them, or who the hell Frankie was, I thought now it was appropriate to ask a few questions.
I stood nervously behind his desk. “I’m sorry, Chick. How many pizzas do you need me to get and how should I pay for them?” I asked, sweetly.
“Do my shoes need a shine?” he responded, as he examined his impeccably clean loafers. “Hey, Wash!” He called to the shoeshine guy roaming the floor. “Can I get a shine, buddy? My shoes are looking a little dull.” The man with the shine box came over and set his tiny stool down and began shining Chick’s shoes while he was still wearing them.
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?