On the Floor

by Aifric Campbell

  ‘So that’s the big research story,’ sneers Al. His dad didn’t spend $40,000 a year on Columbia tuition just so Alexander could coattail a casino market like Japan where fundamental research counts for nothing and barrow boys buy on the rumour and sell on the news and wind up earning five times what Al does. And of course Al himself is feeling pretty smug about the downturn in the Nikkei since he’s been saying for years that the bull market has sinister overtones, that it’s Japan’s revenge for the bombing of Hiroshima, that Asia as a whole represents a fatal threat to the US economy because all their Toyotas and Hondas will force the Cadillacs and Chevrolets off the road and into extinction, their imports will flood the American markets and a teetering trade imbalance will topple us all into the sea.

  ‘Hey, Geri, Geri, you gotta listen to this,’ Al snaps his fingers, points to the phone crooked in his shoulder. ‘I have got the ultimate shithot war trade,’ and he taps his pad where he has scribbled the words VULKAN VALVE.

  ‘Jurgen, my man,’ Al shifts the receiver close to his mouth. ‘I have come to tell you how to play this war.’ He kicks his chair out of the way and starts his sales march backwards and forwards between the window and the row of desks, ever since he read an article about how standing up improves blood flow to the brain, Al makes all his sales calls upright. And as he launches into full flow beside me I can tell by the smooth patter that he’s been flogging this idea for a couple of days now.

  ‘But, Jurgen, just because Switzerland is neutral doesn’t mean you can’t come to the party. So here’s what I’m telling you. A Saudi wellhead is only 20 metres across, and that’s like way too small for the Iraqis to take out.’

  When I started pulling in big orders from Felix, I used to think it would really get under Al’s skin, him sitting beside me watching me chalk up the numbers, but he seems to relish it, as if there is some reflected glory in being my desk mate. So despite the fact that his sales numbers are a fraction of mine and his dogged pursuit of clients yields limited results, he still looks after me like an older brother. In the fallout after Stephen he behaved as if my broken heart was an extra presence on the desk that needed special care. He would surprise me with coffee in the morning or the avocado and mackerel pitta from Nadia’s that he knows I like. And he was scrupulous about inviting me to any social event that came up. He even suggested I try my luck with his expat friends while he tried out mine. A sort of dating club for two. We could like, you know, hang out at the weekend.

  Thanks but no thanks, Al. I mean I just have things to do, you know, Rex and stuff.

  She’s walking the dog, mate, quipped Rob. That’s girl code for fuck off.

  Shut up, Rob.

  Only kidding, G. But Al’s right, you know, said Rob. You need to start getting out.

  Al slaps the desk with his free hand. ‘Whoa there now, Jurgen, don’t forget the MiG-29 Fulcrum: Mach 2.3, 30mm gun, six air-to-air missiles. Now that baby might be Russian but it’s still one of the best fighters around and I would not want to be the guy sitting in a British Tornado staring that in the face. Luckily, there are only forty-eight MiGs in Baghdad, as far as we know. Which leads me straight to the reason for my call: Vulkan Valve.’ He gives the phone cord a triumphant belt. ‘No, no, it’s a British company. No, NO, Jurgen. Not American, British. Footsie listed. Vulkan Valve has been around forever. A solid electronics business with increasing involvement in defence – comms systems, that sort of thing. And you know what these geniuses at Vulkan Valve have come up with? You know what the hot new defence must-have is? MSTAR. M-S-T-A-R,’ his right hand twangs the phone cord in time with each letter. ‘So what’s MSTAR you say, Jurgen? Well, let me tell you. MSTAR is short for Man-portable Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radar. It’s a new – and this is crucial, Jurgen – portable radar system. Imagine a tiny little dish no bigger than a – than a – Frisbee.’ Al pauses and draws an imaginary Frisbee circle in the air in front of him. ‘A tiny little Frisbee that gives you 180-degree cover over a range of sixteen miles. And so light you can carry it around. This baby can sniff out the enemy and provide exact positions. I mean if you want to kill people, you need to know where they are, right, Jurgen? Now MSTAR is state-ofthe-art hardware, hot off the production line at Vulkan and rushed out to Saudi as of last week. And take it from me, if this puppy does what it’s supposed to do, everyone is going to want one. You know how many defence budgets around the globe are getting beefed up in size as we speak? This is what I’m saying, Jurgen. Let’s try and be clever about this war. Let’s try and be ahead of the pack. The Vulkan Valve chart might look like a dog to you now, but just you wait till those MSTAR orders come rolling in and that stock takes off. Forget de-fen-sive, Jurgen, I’m saying let’s go ballistic,’ and he punches the air.

  Rob holds up a Post-it and gestures at Al who leans in to read OXYGEN THIEF, while Rob is eye-rolling and mock-gasping for air. And I surprise myself by giggling because every time Rob does this in response to Al’s high-pressure sales pitch, it is somehow just as funny as it was last time. Al gives him the finger and retreats to his desk, thwacking his phone cord against his leg.

  ‘Like the man said, Jurgen,’ he continues, ‘the meek shall inherit the earth but not its mineral rights.’ I know this quip is straight from the book he keeps hidden in his drawer called Wall Street Wit, and I also know that Jurgen doesn’t get the joke because his English is not good enough, so he is not laughing like Al, who is chuckling into the phone now as he begins winding up the call. Without an order. And this is the nub of the problem: Al is great at coming up with stories but his closing skills stink. The Germans and Swiss appreciate his diligent attention to detail but he doesn’t know when to hit the pause button. He buries clients alive with his spiel, I can picture them gasping for air as another shovel of clay hits them in the face. Al just doesn’t see that sales is seduction, it is dialogue, not monologue. Just shut the fuck up and listen sometimes, I said to him last year when he was panicking because his numbers were flat and the Grope was leaning hard. What you hear is worth much more than what you say. You’ve got to put yourself in the client’s shoes. But like most guys in this business, Al thinks it’s all about him and the logic of the pitch. So he’d rather showboat than pay attention to what kind of performance pressure his clients might be under in this business of ego damage and repair. He doesn’t try to imagine being Jurgen, sitting there in his dingy little cubicle at SK Zurich, newly promoted and scared shitless now that he is finally behind the wheel of the European fund just at the very moment that the world is staring down the barrel of a gun. Al won’t hear the whimper in Jurgen’s voice as he watches the world square up for war, he won’t think himself into performance pain and until you become the only warm embrace in this bleak and hostile world, you will never have the client safely in your grip.

  ‘Sure, Jurgen, sure. I’m going to be watching Vulkan real close and I’ll be back.’ Al hangs up and stares admiringly at his latest new toy – a black mug with “Greed is Good” emblazoned in gold on the front. His desk is an installation homage to Americana, and each time he returns from a trip home, he brings back a little souvenir. There is an NRA mug with the right to bear arms on one side and the pursuit of happiness on the other; a Coke bottle opener; an IBM drinks mat; the weighty pewter Bull & Bear statuette his father gave him when he got the offer from Steiner’s; a collection of pencils with Columbia logos; a selection of Ivy League mugs that I am under strict instructions never to use; a basketball hoop that hangs on the wall behind us. Al keeps his Red Sox mitt in his locked top drawer since the last one disappeared and caused a lot of bad feeling. A varsity pennant hangs from his phone hook and the back of his chair has got a Route 66 sticker on it even though it is generally considered bad form to personalise chairs on the floor. And I see Nantucket ’90, a new photo of Al in cut-offs leaping for a volleyball on white sand.

  ‘You should personalise your space, Geri.’ He has seen me looking.

  ‘With what?’


  ‘Some stuff that means something to you.’

  ‘A bottle of vodka,’ Rob cuts in. ‘And a pack of Silk Cut.’

  ‘How about a picture of Rex?’ says Al.

  ‘That’s lovely that is,’ says Rob, ‘a picture of her fucking dog.’

  ‘Or on vacation,’ Al nods at his photo.

  ‘One with your kit off,’ Rob snorts.

  ‘I don’t remember this being a three-way conversation,’ says Al.

  I offer Rob a dark frown and then, to Al, I say, ‘This is not my dorm. I don’t actually live here.’

  ‘Geri,’ Julie’s voice leaps out of the squawk and I look up to see her standing up at her gatekeeping post right in front of the Grope’s glass box, gesturing urgently. ‘He wants to see you.’

  ‘How about later, like after the morning meeting?’

  ‘Right now,’ she cuts me short and watches like a hawk as I cross the floor, as if she senses I could disappear down a rabbit hole at any moment.

  ‘Close the door,’ he says as I turn into his office and I’m remembering six years ago when I showed up here for interview and the Grope asked me what I really wanted out of life. According to him, I said I want to get my teeth into something, but all I can recall is that he was the first man I’d seen with manicured hands. He had this trick of seeming not to breathe, a fat-fingered corpse propped up in a grey carver, no blinking, no rising chest, no visible signs of life. But like everybody else on the trading floor, I soon learnt to see it for the play-dead tactic it was, how he could lull you into a false sense of security just before unleashing his deadly strike. Like watching a fucking alligator, said Rob when I shared this observation. The whole thing about reptiles, yawned Al, his laundered arms stretched in a hand-lock, is they have this transparent shield that covers their eyeballs so they don’t need to blink. It’s not like a deliberate thing. Rob shook his head mournfully, Life’s just too short, mate, and walked away, hands in pockets, sleeves up. Always the sleeves up.

  ‘Great job last week on China Fire,’ the Grope rolls into position behind his desk.

  The truth is my big ticket with Felix on Thursday was a breeze since he had already made up his mind about the deal before I even arrived in Hong Kong. Steiner’s had a client with a block of China Fire shares and a real nervous disposition who was forecasting World War 3 and wanted to liquidate his position before the first shot was fired in Baghdad. Felix was the obvious buyer; there was nothing I could tell him about China Fire that he didn’t already know. So we could have done the business on the phone, but a ten million dollar trade was a good excuse for him to make me fly out to Hong Kong so he could arm-twist me about the relocation. First he let me run through the sales patter for the benefit of the two bifocalled gophers who stood hovering on the boardroom threshold waiting for an entry permit. One of them moved to slide a business card in my direction and Felix fixed him with a stern glare. He doesn’t encourage fraternisation and I have never met the same analyst in all the time I’ve been coming to see him. After five minutes Felix dismissed the two lackeys with a terse nod and they slunk out of the room. Felix sat facing the door as if expecting an assassin. I waited, silent. I have long since learnt that opening gambits bore him, that he prefers to take the lead.

  ‘You know that Goldman’s are putting a sales person out here in Hong Kong next month, Geraldine. One of their top producers, in fact. A major commitment to the region.’ He positioned his Mont Blanc in a precise alignment with his notepad. ‘Apparently they think locally-based global coverage is exactly what I need.’

  ‘Yes. We should talk about that.’

  ‘We are talking about it, Geraldine.’

  Of course we both knew that he could short-circuit the whole discussion with one call to the Grope and force the issue, but Felix prefers to amuse himself by toying with my feigned insouciance in the face of his smothering possession. It is control and its boundaries that keep him interested.

  ‘And what are Steiner’s plans for their Hong Kong clients?’

  ‘You know we are totally committed. It’s a question of—’

  ‘I must confess that I have noticed lately a certain lacklustre quality in your performance, Geraldine. Speaking frankly, I think you would find that Hong Kong is the kind of environment where you would flourish.’ Felix raised a palm to silence my intervention. ‘And, of course, you wouldn’t want the competition to steal a march on your business.’

  ‘Yup, another great trade with Felix Mann,’ says the Grope and leans towards me. ‘And now we need to have a whole other conversation about him.’

  I focus on the dead space between his eyes, tell myself this pulsing heart is just the booze and the lack of sleep. The intercom beeps. ‘I have Tokyo on the line,’ Julie interrupts.

  ‘I said no calls,’ he snaps.

  ‘Yamamato-san says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Goddamit.’ The Grope slaps the desk.

  ‘And they need you upstairs before the morning meeting.’

  He frowns, checks the clock and pushes back from his desk. ‘There’s a very big opportunity coming your way, Geri. And we need to talk about it the minute I get back.’

  He strides out of the office, leaving me sitting here staring at the TV and Saddam in his open-necked fatigues.

  But this is no more than a temporary reprieve; all that’s happened is I’ve bought a little extra time before I try to explain why I don’t want to shift my ass to Hong Kong, for reasons that are not entirely clear because nothing is clear anymore, though some clarity might emerge if I applied myself to proactive thought instead of guzzling vodka and popping pills. Is Zanna right, is it really the vain hope of Stephen that makes me cling on to the non-life I have here? I am struck by the crazy thought that I should just ring him now, a desperate impulse to call and beg for his advice, but even if I could scale the 161-day ice wall of our silence, what would I actually say? The fact is I wouldn’t make it past Alison, she would happily call-screen me into oblivion on the private line that Stephen never answers. Sorry, Geri, he’s in a meeting, she used say when I rang in from trips, in a way that made me certain he wasn’t. If I said I’d call back, she’d say the meeting leads straight into another meeting and all the while, in my head, I’d be carefully de-beading the strand of pearls around her neck and forcing them down her throat. I’d picture her sitting there, wondering if she could get away with not telling Stephen I called and if she did, how she would barb-edit the message. The power of being on the spot when I was ten thousand miles away. Ever since that night in Grodz when she overheard me say to Stephen it would be like fucking a fish or something. But he would never sleep with Alison, even I could tell she would cling on like dog hair, it could never just be the one fuck. Otherwise they have the same genetic profile, an intimacy with horses and Klosters and top-ranked public schools.

  Sell water to a duck, fuel to a fire, a cure to a dying man, Stephen used to say to wind me up. Because he operates, of course, on a higher plane. Stephen makes history, not sales. He doesn’t trade tickets, he delivers vision. Stephen raises the capital that bankrolls corporate ambition. He doesn’t dance to the tune of the markets, he pioneers virgin territories, each new deal another chapter in the ongoing evolution of investment banking, another leap forward in mergers and acquisitions. He creates complex financial structures like a child dresses a doll in different outfits. In order to execute this important task, he had to organise it so he was born in the right hospital, went to the right prep school, bagged his Cambridge First and took his MBA at Harvard. Stephen has a direct line to the jugular while the rest of us suck on veins.

  You have to have a nice speaking voice to work in Corporate Finance. You have to be able to hold your drink to work on the trading floor.

  Behind me through the open door I hear the roar of another’s day’s business. Right now I should be warming up for the high point of my sales day, my phone audience with Felix, but I cannot muster the enthusiasm. Kant’s treatise lies unopened on my desk alt
hough Felix told me I was to apply myself as I was leaving his office on – when? Friday and a lifetime ago. But I have not applied myself one little jot and he will use this as further evidence of my accelerating decline. There is only one way down from the pinnacle of success and that is a nosedive into oblivion.

  The fact is Felix could pull the plug on a whim and I have to guard against complacency. Such an undisciplined mind, he snapped some weeks back when I slurred through a critique of Kant’s Formula of Autonomy. Such laziness, Geraldine. When the line went dead I could feel the cold rush of career disintegration in my ear, for this was a foretaste of what would happen if I managed to detonate our exclusive relationship. I would find his direct line on auto-divert to his secretary, the past five years would count for nothing, Anna-Li would no longer recognise my name and I would face a future cradling an empty dial tone, that sound you never want to hear: the windswept wail of a salesperson who has lost a client, like a child screaming for its mother.

  Zanna is right: Felix owns me body and soul. He structures my day and my compensation curve, a steady upwards slope to last year’s peak: $872,678.14 (Base compensation $150,000 + Discretionary bonus of $722,678.14, excluding unvested stock options). Felix is the reason why my numbers exist and the reason I get paid what I do. He knows I know this, but Felix handles bonus numbers with the distaste you reserve for other peoples’ shit. I trust events yesterday were to your satisfaction? he commented on the morning after Comp Day in December. Fine. Everything’s just fine, which is how I always respond, DESPITE the fact that I bet I still attract a chick discount, some sort of arbitrary but in-excess-of-30% female cut, based upon Steiner’s assumption that my career longevity will not match the guys around me, that it will be short-circuited by the ticking of a biological clock that will one day catapult me off the trading floor and into a Bulthaup kitchen. But I let it lie, because, hey, what’s fair? You’re only as good as your last trade and since when was I a feminist anyway?