by John LeFevre
I’ve got forty-eight floors until we reach the lobby in order to convince him. “So you’re two hours late. What’s the difference between that and two and a half hours?”
A few minutes later, we’re trekking up the hill through Hong Kong Park and over to the Lobster Bar at the Shangri-La hotel for a quick drink. Although I have many second homes in Asia, the Shangri-La is one of my favorites; I lived there for almost a month when I was having some domestic troubles with the Warden. It has the only hotel pool in the city with unobstructed sunlight all day long.
Many a memorable night out begins with the idea of having one quick drink, although from the get-go, it’s certainly not my intention to stop at one. Knowing full well what misery lies ahead of me tomorrow morning, I am fully committed to not remembering how I’m going to get home.
We grab a couple of seats on the couch, order two Peronis, and then just sit in silence. After a couple of minutes, I’m ordering another drink; Smithers has barely touched his. “What are you going to do about the Duke?” he asks. “Come tomorrow morning, he’s going to shit his pants, and when he does, he’s going to be calling Roo, and you, demanding that you take the bonds off his hands.”
“Smithers, he placed an order for $50 million. I confirmed the order. I even had Roo confirm the order after you gave it to me. Do you know what she did? She sent me this obnoxious email, saying that it’s not inflated and he should be given a priority allocation, particularly because he’s looking at a couple of structured credit trades.”
The thought of her being so stupid finally makes him smile. He hates her as much as I do. She was promoted to managing director ahead of him, coincidentally the same year when there were complaints about the firm not having enough senior women in sales. She had new business cards printed the next day.
Out of nowhere, a bottle of Dom Pérignon appears. Before the waiter can say a word about its origin, Mitch plops his considerable weight next to us on the couch and gives Smithers a huge slap across the thigh. “Hey, boy-o.” He’s hammered, all six feet four inches of him. He’s not alone either; Grace is with him. Grace is a part-time prostitute (presumably due to lack of demand) from the Philippines. She’s on Mitch’s roster of rotating companions, all of whom are either professionals or semipros.
I wouldn’t mind Mitch joining us for drinks tonight if it weren’t for the fact that Grace is so hideous—way too ugly to be in this bar. What’s the point of paying and spending time with hookers if they aren’t smoking hot? Mitch likes to say that he has a well-balanced portfolio, but Grace is definitely sub-investment grade—by far the worst credit in his stable of nags. I look around and count at least three other prostitutes in the bar who put her to shame. This is the Shang, after all.
Using trading-floor vernacular in reference to women is douchey but fairly common; I remember having a female desk assistant in London whom everyone called Hooks. (When a bond is downgraded one notch below single-B, it’s referred to as getting “triple hooks,” or a CCC rating.) There are also garden-variety sayings like “buyer” and “mine” when you see a hot chick, and “no bid” and “yours” when you see a pig. Grace is an illiquid distressed asset that trades by appointment.
Mitch is like a cartoon character. “Come on, lads. Let’s ’ave a drink.” He is built like a professional wrestler and has the same attitude. He’s famous for sneaking up behind one of his dinner companions in restaurants, pulling his cock out, and then resting it on their shoulder to see how long it takes them to notice. Smithers can see where tonight is going; he chugs his room temperature beer, stands up, and reaches for his jacket.
“Fuck off, cunt.” Mitch pulls his jacket away and throws it onto the ground. When he’s wasted, he is notoriously aggressive and belligerent. “You’re not fucking going anywhere; I just bought you a fucking bottle of champagne.”
Smithers surrenders, as if he has a choice. “Okay, okay. I’ll stay for a little while longer.”
Even that response is a bit too hesitant for Mitch to accept. He shoots his hand into the air and yells, “M̀hgòi, mˋhgòi.” Our waiter has only just started to walk away from having poured the first bottle. “Go ahead and bring us another bottle, please. I’m thirsty.”
The service at the Shangri-La is impeccable; the second bottle of champagne arrives just as we finish the first, or three minutes later. Mitch is on fire tonight. “We’re going to need one more bottle, and then also a table for four for dinner on the restaurant side.
“Smithers, I am treating you as my special guest for dinner, and I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Welcome to the Hotel California, Smithers. A few minutes later, they politely inform us that our table is ready. Mitch leads the way, holding a bottle of champagne with one hand and Grace the hooker with the other. I’m mortified; who knows how many people around here recognize me? Smithers, I imagine, is simply numb as we are escorted to our table, prominently located in the middle of the dining room.
Mitch points to the maître d’. “Excuse me, I’m terribly sorry. But I’ve got no idea where my mouth has been, and it’s touched this bottle. Can you please bring some more champagne?” Grace blushes and flashes a whitish snaggletoothed grin. So she does comprehend English after all—good to know.
Mitch continues. “Oh wait, Fred [not his name]. We’re pretty hungry, especially this girl.” Mitch gestures to Grace by grabbing her breast. “May we also please order four surf and turfs? Medium rare for everyone. And another bottle of champagne. Thank you so much, Ted.” At this point, in what is an otherwise completely full restaurant of Hong Kong society types and regional business people, we have graduated from being an offensive disturbance to an outright spectacle.
I make a toast. “Only in Asia can one quick drink cascade into who-knows-how-many bottles of Dom and a nice steak and lobster dinner with old friends and new. Here’s to just another Thursday night in Asia.”
We cheers. Grace the hooker chugs her entire glass of champagne. Mitch, ever the big-hearted gentleman, attentively fills it back up to the brim. Instead of seeing her holding a flute of Dom Pérignon, I imagine her kids back in the Philippines living with their grandmother, drinking dirty water from old Gatorade bottles. Up to this point, she hasn’t said a word. I count myself lucky.
After the meal, I make the switch to Macallan, ordering a double twelve neat. Mitch orders a double thirty neat. Given how drunk he is and how I suspect he’s going to drink it—by slamming it—ordering the more expensive thirty-year-old Macallan seems a bit extravagant and wasteful to me.
The bill comes; Smithers’s response is priceless. He just looks at it and laughs. “Have fun with this one, guys.” In theory, Mitch should pick up the tab. But when he says, “Do you think you can jam this through [expense it]?,” it’s clear to me that this one stings. So as a face-saving gesture, I propose a wager: if he can tell the difference in a blind test between a Macallan 12, 18, 20, and 30, then I will pick up the check.
I order the drinks (regular size, not samples) from Anthony, the bartender, and ask him to write the correct years underneath the corresponding beverage napkin beneath each glass. He then ceremoniously brings them over to our table and hangs around to watch. He still remembers me from when I lived upstairs.
Mitch doesn’t waste any time smelling or tasting each one several times. He looks at each glass, downs it, and moves on to the next one without hesitation. “Okay, it’s eighteen, thirty, twelve, and twenty.” Anthony is our game show host, dramatically turning over each napkin to reveal the results. Motherfucker. Mitch nails it.
The fact that the staff is not only pleasant but friendly with us is indicative of how much money we spend there, and also the fact that in Asia, you can get away with pretty much whatever you want, especially as a white guy with a corporate credit card.
“Fuck it. Now it’s my turn. If I’m paying for this, I might as well try it too.”
I attempt to be slightly more deliberate, not that I have much experience doing this. I sniff and smell, taste and taste again. It’s a stab in the dark; I miss two of the four and, in an attempt to bring closure to the evening, offer my concession and reach for the check. “What are you doing?” Mitch shouts. “Let’s go again.”
We go a few more times, even managing to coax people at an adjacent table to get involved. Finally, Mitch says, “Anthony, you might as well just bring us a bottle of the Macallan 30.” As we polish that off, he slurs his way through explaining to me how and why it’s so easy to tell the difference—from what I remember, for Macallan, it’s mostly in the color. It’s an expensive lesson.
So in the process of determining who’s going to pay for dinner, my original bill almost doubles. Without saying a word or even looking at the new total, I pay our tab. For good measure, Mitch tips an obscenely generous amount and signs my credit card receipt “CUNT” in giant block letters.
He’s using my own move against me. I’ve always found it irritating to see guys pick up tabs pretending like they’re being generous when you know damn well that they’re just going to expense it. So, as a joke, when we’re out drinking, I sometimes scribble “CUNT” or “CUMFACE” across the signature line of the receipt, so that they can’t expense it, or if they do, they’ll have some explaining to do. It’s a good thing I’m tight with my business unit manager.
What a night. Mitch probably won’t remember it. Smithers will want to forget it. Grace the hooker won’t appreciate it. And I get stuck with a fucking monster bill. But it’s worth it: I managed to drink just enough to remember getting back to my apartment but without any recollection of how I made it into my bed.
Thank Christ my maid wakes me up the next morning with a blow job—that’s the name of my morning detox: apple, carrot, pear, ginger, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
Walking into the office, I notice that Roo is in before me for the first time in her miserable existence. Normally, I would be in no mood to deal with her, but in this case, I already know exactly how it’s going to play out, so I’m looking forward to it.
My dealerboard lights up as soon as I sit down; it’s the Duke calling. It’s either my green dot status on Bloomberg or Roo who’s alerted him that I’m in the office; I suspect the latter. My position is really simple: “Well, the color we have from UBS and from Roo is that your $50 million was all real interest. You can’t expect me to take the bonds back just because the market sold off.” He starts talking about how supportive he has been of our deals and that this is a misunderstanding, and he really needs a favor out of us. “Sorry, mate, there’s nothing I can do. Gotta hop.” Click. I can’t imagine how he can explain to his bosses that he owns 20% of this pig of a deal.
Ten seconds later, I can see one of the credit sales lines lighting up. It’s the Duke calling Roo; I don’t bother listening in because my comprehension of Cantonese is terrible.
The bullshit that follows is exactly as I had anticipated. Roo first tries sweet-talking me into buying the bonds back. I say, “Fuck no.” Then she throws Smithers under the bus and says that he made a mistake when he took the order by not making a note of the actual demand. Then she tries explaining how the client left a $50 million order when he wanted only $10 million, purely as a favor to us, so that we could advertise a greater level of oversubscription on the deal. It’s as if she has no recollection of our email exchange; not only is she totally insincere, she’s also a sociopath.
“He can go shit in his hat. He fucking owns them. If he wants to sell them back to us, tell him I’ll bid 99.5 for 5 million, and that’s it.”
I know what’s going to happen next. She’s going to escalate this to Dirty Sanchez (her boss) and to BJ (my boss). Like clockwork, two hours later, I see the three of them in BJ’s office. Once she’s had time to make her bullshit case, Dirty calls me in there. “Hey, it sounds like there’s been some miscommunication, and there’s no point placing blame [that means she blamed me], but in the interests of preserving this relationship, we want you to buy back $25 million and then ask UBS to buy back the other $25 million.”
I casually produce a copy of the email. “What’s the miscommunication?”
Having clearly forgotten about the email, and having tried to throw every possible person under the bus, Roo’s completely out of options—well, almost. She can still throw her client under the bus. “That’s right. Sorry. I’ve been so busy that I must have mixed this up with something else. Let him eat these. That’ll teach him a lesson for inflating his order. And if we have any blowback, I’m very close to his bosses—so we won’t have any franchise repercussions.”
By the end of the week, the Duke has lost over $1 million on that position alone. He owns 20% of the deal; there is nowhere to go and nothing to do but sit and wait for markets to stabilize. Like they say, “Hope is a poor hedge.” By the next week, we’re guessing that figure has grown to $2 million, or more. The following week, he gets fired.
The news of his demise is met with cheers across the close-knit community of syndicate and sales bankers. “You got the Duke shit-canned? Allow me to be the first to buy you a drink.”
This deal, and the fact that the rumors about Bear Stearns are true, closes the Asian public bond market for four months, until October, when we reopen it with a jumbo US$ benchmark for an Indian bank.
It takes a while, but Roo is eventually fired a couple of years later. It would have been much, much sooner, except that she keeps getting pregnant. And she fucking hates kids.
The Minibar
I come to, my head fucking pounding; I’m still drunk, but at least I’m in my bed. Make that a bed. That’s a relief. How I got there, I have no clue. It’s probably something like six o’clock in the morning. I’ve got no idea why or how I wake up so early, especially since my first meeting isn’t until 9 a.m.
Lying in bed next to me, sound asleep, is the naked body of a smoking hot chick. I lift the covers further for a more detailed inspection. Holy shit. Nice. Still alive? Nice. She is amazingly proportioned, quite curvy for an Asian chick. Clearly surgically enhanced, but what the fuck do I care? I poke the ass to see if the rest rolls over. Damn, I want its autograph.
Now for the life of me, I have no recollection of where the fuck she came from, where I met her, and how she ended up in my hotel room. More important, I have no clue if she is a professional or not. I reach over and grab a tit, a fucking awesome tit. Okay, this might be a little creepy, but fuck it.
But she is definitely hot. Is she a whore? I ask myself. We were out with some legit girls for a while, but then again, I’m in Singapore. I remember being out with a bunch of clients and colleagues. We went to karaoke; there were some pretty good-looking chicks there. I remember being the big hit, owning “It’s Not Unusual” by Tom Jones. I must’ve hooked up with one of those chicks. I am the man. This discourse continues in my head. She’s probably legit, maybe a junior client, or an analyst from the Singapore office, I tell myself hopefully.
Having exhausted my capacity to debate with myself, I pull back the covers again and give her a gentle tap on the ass. Nothing happens. She doesn’t even budge. So I go back for the double tap, this time a little bit harder. Again, nothing happens. So finally, I wind up and come down with the full-out spank. Instantaneously, she jumps up—wide-awake—and immediately starts blowing me.
I’m now getting the best blow job I’ve ever had. Not the best blow job you’ve ever had, the best blow job I’ve ever had.
At this point, I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t care. She finishes. “Okay. I go shower now.” Not sure how I should play this. I’m hungover and some chick who just gave me the best head ever, who I still hope might be a client or colleague, just spoke to me in Tarzan English.
I do my best to go back to sleep.
The next thing I know, she’s looming over me, dressed in a cheap cocktail dress.
Okay, how do I play this? “Okay, hon, you have to go, and I have to go back to sleep for an hour. So give me your business card and we’ll hook up again next time I’m in town.” I knew it wouldn’t work, but I try.
“You pay me money; everybody pay; you owe me S$200. Nobody fuck for free.” What a profound statement: “Nobody fuck for free.” I think back to everyone I can ever remember fucking, especially my current girlfriend. But then again, my girlfriend’s probably more expensive than a thousand hookers and still never gives heartfelt head, at least not to me.
I know the drill. “I paid Mama-san last night, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. It’s already taken care of.” The events of the previous evening hadn’t actually come back to me, but it’s worth a shot. That fails immediately; this clearly ain’t her first rodeo.
“What? You crazy, la? Who fuck for free? You pay, you fucking fuck.” She reiterates in increasingly broken English. “Nobody fuck free, you fuck.”
I get out of bed and scrounge around for my wallet. No cash. I find my pants from last night. No cash. My suit jacket. No cash. All I can find are a few illegible credit card receipts. It must have been a fun night.
Bottom line, I have no fucking cash anywhere. Now, the last thing I am going to do is the reverse walk of shame with some love monkey down to the nearest cash machine.
Before I can even start to pitch a layaway plan, she grabs the phone and presses 0. “I call hotel security,” she says while holding the phone out like a gun. “Or you come with me to ATM and pay me S$200. Okay, fuck, you pay me S$200. No one fuck for free. You pay S$200.”
My survival instincts immediately take over. I leap across, slam the phone down, and gently lead her over to the closet. I pull out the hotel laundry bag, shake it open, and hand it to her. I then pull her over to the minibar, open it up, and start stuffing the bag as she holds it open. Two Diet Cokes, two Heinekens, two small bottles of Pellegrino. Boom. A handful of the airplane-sized Grey Goose and Bacardi bottles and then some. I pause for only a matter of seconds before I hear, “No. No. S$200. More. More.” Next go the Pringles, M&Ms, and Twizzlers. “More,” she barks. In go the Oreos, Junior Mints, and the mini Jim Beam.