There's no Love on Wall Street

by Ira Trivedi

  ‘Mr VP, I have fifteen missed calls! My friends are going to kill me. I was supposed to see them two and a half hours ago.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, no sweat,’ he said as he fumbled in his pocket for his phone. He seemed slightly disoriented, as if he had not been expecting this. ‘I should catch up with my friends as well.’

  I was waiting for him while he settled his tab when I saw the waitress who had served me the hookah walk past with a tray in her arms. I tapped her on the shoulder and asked her for the bill. She pointed at Jonathan and winked at me. ‘He took care of it.’

  There were a lot of people at this bar and getting out was proving to be a greater struggle than I had anticipated. If I had been by myself, I wouldn’t have hesitated to push through the crowds, but with Jonathan around, I felt as if I should act in a more genteel, ladylike fashion. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a very effective strategy and I wasn’t getting anywhere. I looked at Jonathan with a sorry, helpless look on my face (helpless was kind of cute, I thought). He took hold of my thumb and within minutes we were outside once again.

  ‘Thank you for the evening, I had a great time.’

  ‘Oh yeah, totally,’ he said with a distracted smile, as he typed into his BlackBerry.

  I hesitated, then added, ‘We should do it again sometime. I know I’ll see you at work, but let me give you my number.’

  ‘Cool,’ he said as he flipped open his phone. ‘How do you spell your name?’

  I held out my hand for his phone, typed my number into it and handed it back to him. ‘Here you go,’ I said as I stepped into a cab waiting on the pavement. ‘It’s saved as Intern.’

  The Arrival of the ‘Other’ Intern

  For a change I woke up on Monday morning looking forward to going to work, almost as if it were my first day at Goldstein. So much had changed since that day. I had woken up each morning with an impending sense of doom, never knowing what torture Sally would put me through. But now, there was Jonathan to look forward to, and Sally could not take that away from me. I had been thinking of him since the moment I had stepped into the cab and driven off, leaving him smoking a cigarette on the curb. I wasn’t even sure why I was crushing on him so badly. Of course, he was cute, and he was a Harvard guy, and an athlete (I daydreamt of him slamming shots dressed in his tennis whites), and one of the youngest VPs at Goldstein, but it wasn’t merely that. There was just something electrifyingly attractive about him and I could not get him out of my mind. I dressed extra-carefully for work, and chose a pinstripe suit courtesy Mr Chadda and a lavender blouse that I had recently ordered from J.Crew … just in case I ran into him.

  The start of my day was more action-packed than I could have imagined. I found two emails waiting for me. One from Sachin Vasudeva.

  Hello Sexy Intern,

  I hope you are enjoying your time at Goldstein.

  I just got back to NYC after two months in Charlotte, NC, the armpit of the universe. No interns as sexy as you. Can I see you asap?

  Yours, S

  Sachin, my guardian angel. I was glad he was back. I was beginning to flounder in the sea of investment banking, and I needed him now more than ever before.

  Hi Sachin,

  Welcome back to New York! Good to hear from you. I am in the CDO group and loving it here, though I am working very hard. Why don’t you drop me a line when you are free and we’ll meet up.

  Talk soon, Riya

  Lunch at Cipriani mid-town tomorrow, beautiful.

  12.30 p.m. see you there.

  Sachin

  Cipriani was one of the chicest restaurants on this side of town. Ivana’s MD had taken her there for lunch last week, and she had raved about it. I was going to have to figure out a way of leaving the office for an hour. Perfect!

  The other email was from the long lost intern Ker-Lih Gau.

  Dear Colleagues,

  I would like to introduce myself. My name is Ker-Lih Gau and I am a sophomore (with junior status) at Stanford where I am an economics major. I have been eagerly waiting to join the group, but have been unable to do so because of visa issues. I am very excited to announce that I will be joining the group this Monday. I look forward to meeting all of you and working with you in the future.

  Best Wishes,

  Ker-Lih Gau

  This was bad news. I had forgotten all about him.

  I had been on the job for almost six weeks now, and had set the intern standards for the group. I feared that his arrival would screw up the dynamics. What if he was super smart and really good at Excel and made me look dumb? I was trying really hard to form a good impression on the group, particularly Sally. Trying really, really hard. I was always the first one to arrive at 8.30 a.m. sharp and always one of the last to leave, usually at three the next morning. But no matter how hard I tried, I kept messing up. I was beginning to feel stupid and incapable and was beginning to think that perhaps a life in India making chapattis and taking care of the children was what I was destined for. Sally was never happy with my work, always pointing out some mistake or the other, however miniscule. My PowerPoint skills had improved dramatically, but according to Sally, they were still ‘sub-par’. My Excel skills were poor, and I had spent hours trying to improve them. Excel was just really difficult for me, and the more I tried to learn, the more difficult it got. Financial modelling was just as bad, and no one was willing to spend time teaching me or helping me out. For the moment I was hanging on by my fingernails and I didn’t quite know what to do.

  I went to the intern directory and scrolled down to G. Gau, Ker-Lih. My blood chilled. From the photo, Ker-Lih looked like the serious, hardcore nerd variety. The kind that was really good at math, and all that other technical stuff, and probably CDO structuring. He had a scowl on his face and he wore thick-rimmed glasses.

  Just then Sean slurped his way into the analyst pen, clutching a can of Diet Coke. ‘I see you’re going to have some company today. Kurls, the other intern is going to be here. More fresh blood to prey on.’

  I guess he had read the email too. ‘Hey … remember that I’m the senior intern now. I’ve moved up in the world,’ I joked with him.

  ‘Point taken. We can kick his little intern ass together then.’

  ‘He looks like a tough nut to crack, though. Here is our man.’ I turned my screen towards Sean and pointed at Ker-Lih’s photo.

  Sean whistled out loud, ‘Wow-ee, this looks like one intense dude. Don’t worry, a few days in CDOs will loosen him up.’

  I laughed, feeling slightly better. I liked Sean despite his grotesque, unbankerly habits. He smelled up the pen sometimes and blamed it on me, he belched loudly, threw food wrappers on to my desk, and frequently subjected us to the unpleasant smell that emanated from his feet when he took off his shoes and his socks. Nevertheless, he redeemed himself because he was sweet and helpful, and had done most of my PowerPoint training.

  ‘Riya,’ I heard Sally’s voice and instantly jumped out of my chair, a mass of quivering nerves. I came face-to-face with a short Asian boy, all of five feet tall. Sally gave me a sceptical, sour look. ‘This is Ker-Lih.’

  ‘Ker-Lih, this is Riya, our other intern.’

  ‘Hello, it’s good to finally meet you!’ I said a little too cheerfully.

  ‘Hello Riya,’ Ker-Lih replied stiffly.

  ‘Riya, why don’t you take Ker-Lih around to meet the other members of the group?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Why did Sally suddenly sound so pleasant, and why was I being made to show this boy around? Was I some sort of babysitter? No one had bothered to do that for me. I felt myself turn green, but then quickly chided myself for being juvenile and low. I should be a good host. After all Ker-Lih was the junior intern on my desk, and it was my duty to guide him through all the potential pitfalls.

  In real life Ker-Lih looked way more harmless than he had in his photograph. He was a skinny little thing with long shaggy hair and he spoke with a lightly accented high-pitched sing-song voice.

 
‘So Kur-lee, is that how I pronounce it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct.’

  ‘Are you excited to finally be here?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve been in New York for the past month just waiting to come to work but have been unable to do so because of these terrible visa issues. Now I am finally here …’ he said, looking around with a dreamy expression in his eyes, taking in the I-banking scene around him. (Strangely, he was not fazed by the smells of the analyst pen.) Déjà vu. Kurls was an eager, over-excited intern, exactly like I had been when I had first arrived. He would learn the bitter truth soon enough. So much had changed in the short time that I had been here. I had more or less lost hope of doing anything even mildly exciting. What had happened to my hopes of working on multimillion-dollar deals, the lunch and dinner meetings, the negotiations (over cocktails of course), and the jet-setting road-shows that I thought I would be a part of? None of that, at least not so far. Instead my tasks consisted of cleaning up PowerPoint slides, fixing margins on various documents, line-editing, checking books for printing errors, etc. I was not even considered worthy to make the actual slides.

  Kurls was seated directly behind me and I thought it would be nice for us to become friends.

  ‘How come you chose CDOs?’

  ‘They are such an interesting product, really one of the most remarkable financial products that I have come across,’ he said engrossed in his screen, showing little interest in talking to me.

  ‘Oh. So you’re really into finance and stuff, huh?’

  ‘Yes, it is the subject of my interest,’ he said curtly.

  How rude! I had thought I would help him figure things out around the office, but since he obviously wasn’t interested, I decided to let him try on his own. I was in a talkative mood so I nudged sean playfully, who was enveloped in his cocoon of four computer screens.

  ‘What are you up to?’

  He seemed glad to take a break from Excel. ‘Monday mornings, need I say more?’

  ‘How was your weekend?’

  ‘The usual. I was wasted Friday and Saturday nights. Spent most of sunday hungover at the office, slaving away. Typical weekend, really.’

  ‘Cool.’

  I was itching to ask Sean about Jonathan; he was the gossip queen of the group, and always had the dirt on everyone. ‘Hey, what’s up with Jonathan Goodley, that VP?’ I asked casually.

  ‘Hmmm …’ he said taking a swig from a can of Red Bull, and then biting his fingernails. ‘He’s that new VP, right?’

  ‘Yesss …’ I said in a coaxing tone.

  ‘I don’t know much about him, he is one of the guys who came over from J.P. Morgan, one of Zeitlin’s boys.’

  ‘What’s the deal with that? I keep hearing bits and pieces about it from people.’

  ‘Paul Shore was the head of our group before Zeitlin. He wasn’t made partner and created a ruckus so Goldstein told him to fuck off. Then Goldstein basically raped J.P. Morgan, taking away all the top guys from their CDO group, including Zeitlin. They promoted all the J.P. guys, gave them amazing salaries and incentives. This pissed off all the people here, and a bunch of people quit. Goodley is really young, like thirty-two or something, and already a VP. He’s Zeitlin’s right-hand man.’

  ‘That’s so crazy! All the talk of loyalty and teamwork, and people still hop from one bank to the other,’ I thought out aloud.

  ‘Yeah, here, loyalty and teamwork is a bunch of bullshit. Let’s be honest, we would bounce in a second if we got a better deal elsewhere, it’s just the way the Street is. The truth is that we are just a bunch of high-class hookers.’ He blew a huge bubble with the gum that he was chewing, popped it, and went back to tapping away at his computer with his grubby fingernails.

  My BlackBerry beeped—Sally asking me to come to her desk right away. I quickly rushed over, dreading whatever was coming my way. She was boasting her usual drab look, though today she looked worse than usual. A few strands of hair from her neat, tight bun were out of place and underneath her thick glasses I could see dark circles. I had seen her leave at two last night, and she was already at her desk when I arrived at eight thirty. She held a stash of books that I had worked on last night in her hand, and was chewing on the tip of a red pen. Her eyes hardened when she saw me.

  ‘Riya,’ she said a little too gently for my liking. ‘I want you to take a look at this,’ she handed me the pitch book that I had worked on till four this morning. ‘And then I want you to look at this,’ she said handing me a pitch book marked in red. ‘I see a lot of changes haven’t been made, even though they are clearly marked. Riya, we are not in the habit of babysitting here. Your work is progressively going from bad to worse.’

  ‘I, uh … I …’ I didn’t know what to say. Maybe I had missed out on a few changes. For God’s sake she had given me the book at midnight, and I had finished at four. Was it such a crime that I had perhaps made a few tiny mistakes?

  ‘No excuses, Riya. We are working on multimillion-dollar deals here, and mistakes like these are unacceptable. Your offer is in serious jeopardy at this moment in time. Please go, fix this and ask Ker-Lih for help. He seems capable enough.’

  ‘I … I’m sorry, Sally. It won’t happen again.’

  She looked at me like I was a filthy cockroach and dismissed me.

  I walked back to my desk feeling rather small and inconsequential. Just when I thought that the day could not get any worse, to add to my horror, I discovered that Sally had given Kurls a project—the project that I had asked for on my first day of work and which I wasn’t considered capable of doing yet. Kurls seemed to have settled in very nicely into my group and had already bonded with Amit over their mutual love for financial modelling.

  I sat down at my desk, my chin quivering, tears of self-sympathy just waiting to pour out from every corner of my being. I promised myself that I wouldn’t cry though, not here, not right now. I was made of stronger stuff. I took a deep breath and ate some candy. As soon as the sugar kicked in, I began feeling slightly better about life and I opened the horrid pitch book. I had made three mistakes to be exact. Three mistakes in two hundred slides—I had not decreased a point eight to a point six font size; I had not underlined a sentence; and, I had not changed the colour of a border from ‘dark’ blue to ‘darker’ blue. I corrected, and furiously rechecked. With a pounding headache and a fast-beating heart, I resubmitted the work to Sally, praying to the investment-banking gods for mercy.

  Sachin’s Proposition

  I felt yesteryear Wall Street glamour pervade my soul as I walked to lunch at Cipriani, holding my neat little bankerette tote, through throngs of bankers. Dressed in a crisp white blouse, a high-waisted grey skirt with a silk scarf tied daintily around my neck, I looked every bit the part. It had been several months since I had last seen Sachin, and I was looking forward to meeting him again, hoping he would boost my present rock-bottom levels of self-esteem.

  Well-heeled, smartly dressed bankers sat engrossed in conversation, sipping on glasses of white wine while negotiating multimillion-dollar deals. This was the banker life that I was meant to be living, I thought ruefully. The maître d’ led me to my table where Sachin was munching on breadsticks and sipping a glass of champagne. When he stood up to give me a hug, I noticed he had gained some weight and in true Indian-uncle fashion his tummy sat an inch over the waistband of his tight grey pants. His hair was gelled back in his usual style and he was dressed as smartly as ever. It was a nice change to get out of the office for an entire hour, even though it was just lunch with Sachin.

  ‘You look as beautiful as always, Riya. It’s been too long.’

  ‘It has, hasn’t it? I’m glad you’re back.’

  ‘How’s your summer going? All well on the banking front? By the way, I’m short on time, so I ordered for both of us. I hope you don’t mind. The sea-bass is their specialty, you’ll love it.’

  ‘Um, yeah, that’s fine.’

  Sachin seemed anxious and edgy, not his usual cool
, suave self.

  ‘CDO structuring is probably an interesting place to be with all the sub-prime stuff going around, huh?’

  ’Totally,’ I said, lying blatantly. CDOs was probably one of the most boring things that I had ever come across. I had been reading about the trouble on Wall Street with mortgages being issued to people who couldn’t pay them back and how this was causing a minor banking crisis. I hadn’t paid much attention to this because I didn’t really see how any of this affected my future. ‘How was North Carolina?’

  ‘Ugh, don’t ask, it was all just a mess.’

  ‘Really? How come?’

  Our food arrived just then and I savoured the divine aroma of the crusted sea-bass seasoned with a ginger-basil dressing. I took a sip of the white wine and there was an explosion of flavour on my palate. This was what I had expected of the job … not PB&J sandwiches with curry-flavoured chips.

  ‘Riya, I have to talk to you about something important,’ Sachin said in a serious tone, interrupting my musing.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ I replied, taken aback by his sombre manner.

  ‘The past couple of months have not been so good.’ He paused. ‘The markets have not been so hot, and … I suppose … I made some stupid trades too …’ he said softly. He cleared his throat and continued in a stronger voice, ‘I’m in a lot of shit, I’m on the verge of losing my job and I really need your help.’

  I was flummoxed. ‘Uh, I’m really sorry to hear that … but what can I do to help?’

  ‘Actually, a lot, babe … If I don’t recover my losses, I’m fucked. They’ll fire me,’ he said, a sudden urgency entering his voice.

  ‘I … I don’t understand what you mean.’