by Marie Astor
***
The next morning, Janet left for work in much better spirits than the day before. All in all, Bostoff Securities was shaping up to be a far better gig than she had expected. Lisa Foley was still Lisa Foley, but yesterday’s lunch with Tom Wyman proved that now Janet was much better equipped to handle her high school friend than when she was a teenager. Despite Lisa’s efforts to steal the limelight, Tom’s attention did not stray from Janet throughout the meal, and while Janet intended keeping her interactions with Tom Wyman on a strictly professional level, she would be a liar to deny that her scheduled meeting with Tom this morning did not contribute to her uplifted spirits.
At a quarter to nine, Janet was approaching the Bostoff Securities building. Midtown was mayhem compared to downtown, but her commute from Second Avenue and Ninetieth Street had been shortened by twenty minutes. Tempted by the sight of pastries in the nearby coffee shop window, Janet made a quick stop to grab breakfast to go. After all, she had skipped dinner last night, which, considering the huge lunch she had indulged in, was no great sacrifice, but it was still better than nothing. This morning she would allow herself to indulge in hazelnut coffee with extra half and half and a croissant, but tomorrow it would be yogurt or oatmeal.
Janet entered the marble lobby of Bostoff Securities and pressed her floor button. The elevator doors opened, and she gingerly stepped out, straining to recall the shortcut to her office Lisa had shown her the day before. The details were fuzzy now. After a moment’s hesitation, she walked through one of the doors. As Janet made her way through the double doors, she heard a loud buzz of human, mostly male, voices. A few moments later, she found herself smack in the middle of the trading floor. Seemingly endless rows of desks with stacked-up computer monitors stretched the entire length of the room, which had to be the size of ten basketball courts – or maybe it was five basketball courts – she could not tell exactly. Everywhere there were men dressed in slacks and collared shirts with their sleeves rolled up. Some wore ties and had their suit jackets flung over the backs of their chairs. The average age had to be between twenty-five to thirty, and the atmosphere was that of startling chaos: jokes and yells flying across the room, feet being put up on desks, and paper being thrown on the floor. Janet straightened her back, doing her best to look as though she belonged. “Must not show fear,” a line she had heard a wild animal trainer utter on the Discovery channel popped into her mind. The advice seemed applicable now, as the floor of Bostoff Securities was very much a jungle. Janet kept making her way down the trading floor aisle for several more agonizing minutes when she finally saw another set of doors. Fighting the urge to lunge for the door handle, she steadily opened the door and found herself in the corridor that Lisa had shown her the day before. A few steps to the right was the door to Janet’s office.
The corridor was empty, and abandoning all restraint, Janet rushed inside her office and shut the door behind her. The offices at Bostoff Securities were sturdy: there was none of the see-through flimsiness of glass, but the reassuring impenetrability of solid wood. Glad of the privacy, Janet pressed her back against the door and took deep breaths. Calm down, she thought, you’re going to be working with these people and you can’t run for cover every time you need to get something done.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m almost done here,” a male voice made Janet drop her purse on the floor. At least it was not her breakfast, which she was still clutching in her hand. Janet picked up her purse and touched her pinned up hair for reassurance. Whenever she was in distress, her neat hairdo was always a source of comfort.
“I was running late,” she blurted out, immediately regretting her words. This was, after all, her office.
“First day, huh?” The bespectacled man sitting behind Janet’s desk smiled at her, and she could not help noticing that he had really lovely blue-gray eyes.
“Second day, actually,” Janet replied curtly, wondering how best to broach the subject of the unknown stranger taking over her office.
“Oh, I’m sorry, this is very clumsy of me. I’m Dean, Dean Snider, IT.” The man jumped to his feet, sticking out his hand for a handshake. “I was just sent in to set up your computer, so I assumed that today is your first day.”
Janet placed her purse on her desk and shook Dean’s hand, sneaking a better look at him. He was wearing clothes that were too short for his height and slouching when he should be standing up tall, but this goofiness rendered him an unlikely kind of charm.
“Yesterday was more of an orientation than hands-on work,” Janet improvised a description of her work, which, honestly speaking, had not involved any work at all.
“Well, that’s no skin off anyone’s nose.” Dean grinned. “One thing I found in this place is that work will always be here for you the next day. Sometimes it helps to take a breather and reassess things.”
Sensing Dean’s glance lingering on her, Janet looked up. She was not used to IT specialists giving work advice to lawyers.
Dean squinted at the computer monitor. “I’m all done here. Your email is up and running, and so is the rest of your computer. Have a good one – don’t work too hard.”
Once the door behind the IT support guy closed, Janet settled in her chair. This had certainly been an eventful morning. She reached for her by now lukewarm coffee and took a sip. Then she took a bite of her croissant, but could take no pleasure in either one. For reasons unknown to her, the IT guy’s remark was humming in her head. What was his name? Dean, Dean Snider, that’s right. “Sometimes it helps to take a breather and reassess things.” No doubt Dean was simply making small talk, but something in his tone made Janet uneasy.
Janet dumped the rest of her croissant into the garbage bin and opened the orientation package she had received the day before. She had meant to look at it yesterday, but had been too woozy from the wine-laced lunch with Lisa and Tom. At the top of the pile were five different non-disclosure agreements. According to the terms and conditions of her employment at Bostoff Securities, she was virtually prohibited from mentioning anything other than her title and the fact that she worked at Bostoff. This was odd to say the least. At the DA’s office she had worked on confidential investigations, but she never had to sign such elaborate disclosures before. Perplexed, Janet put the forms aside. She would have a word with Lisa about them later.
Remembering her appointment with Tom Wyman, Janet checked her watch. It was ten thirty a.m., and she was due to see Tom at eleven. She grabbed her handbag and headed for the ladies’ room. Yes, it was silly, but she wanted to touch up her makeup for Tom. Not that she was interested in him: he was a colleague, but that did not mean that she couldn’t enjoy Tom’s attention.
Janet examined her reflection in the ladies’ room mirror. Today she had opted for a less conservative outfit of a navy pencil skirt and silk blouse with a bow-tie detail. The 1980’s inspired combination was very much in style at the moment. Janet had to admit that she was pleased with what she saw: the skirt ended just at the knee, exposing her favorite part of her legs: her calves, which were elongated by her three-inch heels. The pointy-toed black patent leather Mary Janes were not the most comfortable shoes in her closet, but they were by far the most flattering. The blue-green pattern of the blouse brought out her green eyes, and the bow-tie detail accentuated the slightly lower than average neckline, while her neatly put up chestnut hair provided the necessary counterweight to make her outfit office-appropriate. She looked like a sexy librarian, minus the glasses. If Janet knew anything about men, she was certain that Tom Wyman would be intrigued. She quickly reapplied her lipstick and dusted a light coat of powder over her face. She did not need any blush since her cheeks were already pink with anticipation.
At a quarter to eleven, Janet was back at her desk. For reasons beyond the powers of her common sense, her heart was palpitating with expectation. Her reaction was absurd, and she was the first to admit it. But right now her mind had the rationale and the clarity of that of an oversexed teenager, an
d she was powerless to control it. Yet again Lisa had prevailed – thanks to her meddling, a business meeting had acquired romantic connotations, fraught with nerve-wracking anticipations of a date. But then it was dishonest to put the blame entirely on Lisa, for Janet knew full well the underlying cause of her flustered state. After being backstabbed and dumped by her boyfriend of almost five years, her confidence was not what it used to be. Say what she might about keeping her relationship with Tom Wyman purely professional, she could not deny that the attention of this handsome and successful man would be a welcome poultice for her bruised ego.
A knock on her office door made Janet jump up in her seat. She looked at her watch. It was eleven o’clock on the dot. “Janet?”
“Hi, Tom.” Janet slowly looked up from her computer screen. She might have spent the last hour agonizing over her meeting with Tom, but he did not need to know that: to him, she was a busy lawyer in a leading securities firm. So what if her computer monitor merely had her email screen? Thankfully, even a man as suave as Tom Wyman did not possess x-ray vision.
“So nice to see you again, Janet.” Wyman beamed her a smile that could put a Colgate commercial to shame. “So how do you find your second day at the firm?”
Janet sensed Tom’s eyes gliding from her face to the neckline of her blouse. “Great, thank you. I’ve just been going through some paperwork.”
“Ah, yes, the infamous non-disclosure paperwork, which I’m proud to say I personally drafted.”
Janet shot Tom a curious glance, unsure whether to voice her concerns.
“It’s nothing to be alarmed about,” Tom addressed her silent question. “For someone like yourself, the paperwork is a mere formality. We legal folks are more than aware of the importance of confidentiality, but some of the traders we’ve got working here may not be as sensitive… The biggest risk comes with disgruntled employees who are out to take their revenge on the firm by spreading false rumors. The purpose of the non-disclosure paperwork is to stop them from doing just that.”
“I see.” Janet nodded. “I’ll have it completed shortly.”
“So, are you ready for an overview of Bostoff Securities’ business model?” Tom grabbed a chair and placed it next to Janet’s. Suddenly, her office seemed incredibly small.
Janet could feel Wyman’s breath touch her skin where it was exposed by the low cut of her blouse. Perhaps she should have opted for a different outfit after all. “We could go into a conference room.”
“Why bother? It’s nice and cozy in here.”
Tom’s knee brushed against Janet’s thigh. She froze like a rabbit hypnotized by a python. Her earlier plans to flirt with Tom Wyman seemed juvenile now. She was no match for her overpowering opponent. Tom Wyman was not the kind of man to be toyed around with: he expected a woman to either go all in or stay out of his way. And Janet certainly was not ready to go all in.
Janet’s thoughts must have been plastered all over her face because a moment later, Tom pushed his chair away from hers.
“Right, so here’s a quick overview of Bostoff’s structure.” Tom opened his briefcase, laying a thick manila folder on the desk. “This is a chart of all the entities that Bostoff Securities owns.”
“I see.” Janet hoped that her bewilderment was not apparent on her face as she examined the chart of Bostoff entities. She had never seen a corporate chart so convoluted, but she did not yet know enough about Bostoff’s business to ask intelligent questions, so she decided to listen to Wyman for fear of appearing a novice. After all, Tom was a partner at Ridley Simpson, which was a top-ten national law firm, and the corporate structure he approved had to be legitimate.
“Bostoff strives to keep as much of its business offshore as possible. As long as it is within the permitted legal and regulatory framework, of course,” Wyman added quickly. “As far as the actual creation of offshore entities is concerned, the process has pretty much been streamlined, so you won’t have to be concerned about anything there. I’ll take care of that.” Tom smiled. “Your judgment will be needed when new business ventures come up—that’s when you are to notify me to devise a game plan.”
Janet felt her face grow warm. She might not have Tom Wyman’s expertise, but she was not going to sit on her butt, deferring all decisions to him. At least she hoped that was not the ‘job’ that Lisa had hired her for.
“I thought Lisa had explained the structure to you already. Bostoff keeps a very lean internal legal staff, with the bulk of the work outsourced to yours truly,” said Wyman.
“Lisa gave me a cursory overview,” Janet lied. Other than her title, Lisa had hardly explained the details of Janet’s employment at Bostoff Securities at all, but when faced with a choice between being a department store clerk and an assistant general counsel at Bostoff Securities, the latter seemed like a much more attractive option, at least at the time. “I look forward to working with you, Tom.” Janet conjured up her most guileless smile. “These structures seem so complicated. I will need all the help I can get to get up to speed.”
“Not to worry, Janet. That’s what I’m here for. Now, let’s go over some of the recently created entities…”
An hour later, Janet found her head spinning from all the information that Tom Wyman had imparted on her. He had assured her that Bostoff Securities’ structure was perfectly legitimate, but while Wyman’s flowery assurances were spoken with much confidence, Janet felt a steady sense of unease growing inside her.
Chapter 3
