The Buy Side Read Online Free Page A

four floors.“I love Tucker,” she says. “We go way back.” As she walks me to her office we make the usual small talk. Her desk is clean. She has stacks of folders, but they are in perfect order. She has a few items on her desk—a rubber-band ball the size of a grapefruit, a yellow smiley face stress ball, and some chopsticks. I also notice a photo of her and O. J. Simpson—standing on the trading floor, it appears. Out of exactly nowhere she mentions she missed the previous night’s episode of
Melrose Place
. Conveniently,
Melrose
is a guilty pleasure of mine. I saw the show, so I tell her about Sydney’s ploy to hire a prostitute to seduce Robert and how she videotaped the whole thing and how Michael mailed the videotape to Jane—crazy stuff. Stephanie thumps the desk with her hand.
    “No way,” she says.
    I nailed it.
    Twenty minutes or so later, she tells me she has two stacks of résumés for the job she’s going to fill. “One’s this high,” she says, holding her hand a few feet over her desk. “And the other’s this high,” she says, lowering her hand to a couple of inches. Then she smiles and says: “You’re in the second one.” Twenty-four hours later, she calls and offers me a job.
    It’s a few days before my first day on the job and I decide to take a walk instead of going back to my apartment. I happen to have twenty-two dollars in my pocket, a fortune! I start walking west over to Amsterdam Avenue. I think there’s a movie theater on Eighty-Sixth and Broadway. When I’m alone I love to escape. There’s nothing better than spending two hours staring at a screen getting lost in someone else’s world. I prefer a thriller, but I’ll see any movie. When I get to Amsterdam, I see a bar. There, in front of a saloon called the RaccoonLodge, is a sign that announces draft beers $2, ALL DAY . I pull out my money and do some quick math: eleven beers without tipping, and approximately eight to nine beers with tipping. I allow the magnetic pull of the Raccoon Lodge to gently tug me. I’ve also found that a few beers help me escape and are usually better than a movie. The first beers taste like dirty bathwater, but the third and fourth taste just fine. Just around then, I notice a middle-aged man looking at me from the end of the bar. He has on a brown suit that has had one too many trips to the dry cleaner. It shines like a new penny. He’s also wearing an ugly, pastel-colored tie and sneakers. He’s obviously had a few. He sees me looking at him and I quickly look away. But I’m too late. He picks up his draft and slides it down to the stool next to me. He throws his Marlboro Reds on the bar in front of me.
    “Have one,” he says.
    “I don’t smoke,” I say.
    “You don’t smoke?” he asks. I shake my head. “Live in this city long enough and you will,” he says.
    If he’d approached me during my first beer I would have turned my back. But after four beers, I’m feeling rounded at the edges. He looks like a Larry, I think. He has a lopsided grin and his hair sticks out on the sides of his head. He asks me where I’m from.
    “Born in Cleveland, but grew up in Maine,” I say.
    “Maine!” he says, rolling his eyes. I sit quietly, expecting him to tell me why my home state warrants such an animated reaction, but no explanation comes. Instead he asks me how old I am. When I tell him, he just shakes his head at the injustice of anyone being twenty-four years old. Finally, he asks what I do for work.
    “I’m starting at Morgan Stanley next week,” I tell him. “It’s my first job.”
    “Whoa!” he says with a whistle. “The bigtime! You must be some kind of genius or related to someone.” Larry lights another butt. “Listen to me, kid,” he says. “I used to work at a place called Sands Brothers—ever heard of them?”
    “No,” I say as I take a pull on my beer. “I really don’t know much about Wall Street.”
    “They’re a piece of shit, that’s what they