Opening Belle

by Maureen Sherry

  Did she really just call me “Izzy,” like we’re close friends?

  “I mean, you heard those women in the bathroom tonight. They’re basically prostituting themselves to move their careers. It’s got to stop.”

  Silence.

  I don’t confide in anyone I work with. This conversation catches me off guard. I try to think. What is she really up to?

  “Yeah, well, I’m kind of busy?” I say weakly. I want to hear more. The women I know at work only say positive things about the place. It’s not some morale-sucking post office. You don’t get ahead with disparaging remarks, so we never say what we really think, we say what our bosses want to hear and accomplish big, capitalistic things at great human cost. Countless young MBAs are brought in, given little direction and ample verbal abuse, and most disappear within five years. The survivors—me included—are people who learn to look the other way. I’m not proud of my ability to do this, but I do it and beat myself up about it. I don’t need a support group for this.

  “Look, the way we all run around, it’ll never happen—us getting together. Come. Really, you’ll be surprised at who’s here,” Amy says.

  “Who is there?”

  “Just come. The Ear Inn. In the south Village. I’m hanging up,” and with that, she does.

  I’m drying my hair. I’m going to bed. What could they be meeting about? Please, I think, now I’m even lying to myself. I have to go. I can’t go. I shouldn’t go. My family needs me. They need you? They don’t even know you’re home. I could leave the apartment again and Bruce would never know.

  I slip on low-riding jeans I’ve just recently starved myself back into, and some boots with a killer three-inch heel. This brings my five-foot-eleven frame up significantly, and I feel slightly charged and something bordering excitement. I keep telling myself I’m not going and yet I keep getting dressed to go, as if I’ve surrendered to some powerful force. I crack the boys’ bedroom door to see Bruce snoring on a chair with a Nate the Great detective story splayed across his chest. Three angelic-looking children breathe in and out simultaneously. Owen, my two-year-old, is facedown on the floor and not even in a bed, but everyone is safe and alive. I should wake Bruce and send him to bed. I should put Owen in his crib but the odds of waking him up are too high, and the idea of having to explain to Bruce where I’m going too complicated.

  I tiptoe out of the room, down the hall, ring for the elevator, and reverse my route back into the cold, much to the interest of the late-night doorman.

  CHAPTER 4

  Herd on the Street

  I PUSH PAST a thick group of December sidewalk smokers, to enter a bar full of pool tables and skinny jeans. The women of Feagin Dixon are huddled around a table and an untouched pitcher of beer. In their business suits, they complicate the mood of the room like tourists in a world not their own. Here they look both familiar and strange to me. I pull up a chair and nobody acknowledges me. We don’t instinctively make that high-pitched noise of excitement that women make to greet each other. We’re cut from the same non-fun cloth; none of us grew up with money. We are scroungers who found a way to grow wealthy without a pedigree. We tend to not be girlfriend girls. We just want to do business and go home.

  I tune in to the middle of a story that a usually spunky Michele Lane is relaying in an unusually subdued voice. Michele’s a late-twentysomething strawberry blonde who works on the institutional sales desk dealing with large money managers and is barraged with suggestive and even pornographic emails almost every working day. At least that’s what she’s telling the table.

  “Propositions, threats that I better attend client dinners, better be peppy . . . stuff like that,” she says with wide, incredulous eyes.

  “Do you have copies of them?” asks Alice Harlington, a dour, no-nonsense analyst who always appears to have just tasted something nasty.

  “I printed and filed every disgusting email sent to me from the men we work with,” Michele replies. “But they make me second-guess myself each morning when I look in my closet. What can I wear that won’t get noticed? How will this fabric move if I sweat? I like to think I’m tough, but this is so draining, so distracting from work.”

  Her voice trails off and heads nod all together. Women at investment banks tend not to make a fuss for very good reasons. On the first day of work, all Wall Street personnel sign their civil rights away with something called a “U4,” which states that if they have a bone to pick, it will be in the privacy of the company’s own legal offices, and not in front of a judge or on the pages of the New York Times. It would be an expensive and life-debilitating move to speak up. The last woman who should ever do such a thing would be one with three kids. What am I doing here?

  Michele is still speaking. It turns out that my immediate boss, Simon Greene, wants to get cozy with her, calling her frequently in the evenings to meet for dinner.

  “Still, I never feel as though I can turn him down. I mean, he’s my boss!” she finishes quietly, without her usual flag twirler enthusiasm.

  I know exactly what Michele means; but what Michele doesn’t know about her boss is worse. Several weeks ago, I got a call from Edward Howe, a guy who used to be my client, but was now Michele’s since he had switched firms. He was her first institutional account—her first step into the big leagues. She set up a dinner to meet Edward until Simon got wind of her ambition and invited himself along to “give her pointers.” As Edward later explained to me, she was proposing investment ideas while Simon kept quiet and respectful at the table. That is, until Michele went to use the restroom.

  While she was away, Simon leaned over to Edward and asked, “So, are you doing Michele yet?”

  Edward was so bothered, he called me the next day.

  “I can’t believe you have to work for an ass like that.” And then asked me to report his dinner to our human resources manager.

  “Are you serious?” I had laughed.

  “Doesn’t that bother you?” he asked.

  “Bother me? Who cares if it bothers me? Any report filed just goes right back to Simon. Michele would be unemployed by Monday.”

  Michele now tells the table, “He gave me a pair of diamond earrings with my last bonus. I was gracious, because the instant I turn nasty I’m out of a job, but how do I handle this?”

  Then came Violette Hawes. “You accepted diamond earrings from Greene? Are you insane?”

  “What should I have done?”

  “Are you screwing him?” Amy asks point-blank.

  “What? No!” Michele says, but blushes.

  “You are,” Amy continues.

  “She’s not,” I say. “I have great screwdar and Simon doesn’t even register on it.”

  “ ‘Screwdar’ meaning?” Alice asks, looking horrified.

  “When men get overly joyful, a bell goes off in my head. It usually means they’ve either nailed a trade, or a woman who is not their wife. Simon isn’t happy enough to be getting away with anything. Can we continue, please?”

  Michele tosses me a grateful look and the table slips into the silence of some support group waiting for the next person to share. I hate this stuff.

  Violette clears her throat and before she speaks I know she’s going to undress me in front of the group.

  “I’m uncomfortable having Belle here,” she says.

  Everyone turns to stare at me. While it may be true that I was less than forthcoming about every detail of her future job, I knew Violette, standing five foot four and holding her own in a Wharton School conference room, was the person we needed, and that she was tough. There are some facts about people practically tattooed on their forehead and Violette being great at her job is a fact.

  “Back when I interviewed in 2004,” Violette continued, “anyone who could read a balance sheet could get a job. The ball was in my court. I had lots of career options but Belle made it sound like FD was full of thriving executive women.”

  When Violette came to interview in New York, I arranged meetin
gs with six managing directors to evaluate her. I delivered her résumé materials to the interviewers myself, telling each of them this was a woman we should hire:

  Me: “Here’s the résumé of a woman from Wharton. We’re really interested in hiring her.”

  He: “What does she look like?”

  Me: “She spent four years in commercial real estate before going back to business school. She knows how to close a deal.”

  He: “Single?”

  Me: “She aced her accounting classes.”

  He: “Smart and tough. I like that in a girl.”

  Me: “I believe she’s a fully grown woman and she’ll be here at eleven a.m.”

  Days later, while leading Violette around the trading room, I felt the sweep of eyeballs follow our every move, and when she finished her final interview, I picked up her reviews from the last man to meet with her.

  “I’d do her if I had to,” a capital markets partner had written as the title of his review. I let my eyes travel from his notes to his bulging, middle-aged, sweaty face to his bald head and back again, hoping to tell him with my eyes that I was sure Violette was hoping for charitable sex from him.

  “Your mom would be proud to read this,” I said as I walked away.

  Violette tells the table, “It was later, after I took the job, that I saw in my file one guy had actually drawn pictures of my breasts on the top of my résumé. It was only then that I confronted Belle.”

  “You don’t know they were your breasts,” I cut in. “Maybe they were just random Botero sketches—”

  Violette interrupts me. “Enough of the bullshit,” she says, running a hand through her curly dark hair and focusing her almond eyes directly on mine. “I asked for the truth and you lied to me.”

  “I believe I told you,” I swallowed, “that it’s tougher at Feagin than most places, but that I went from vice president to managing director in four years and that you wouldn’t accomplish that in any other business nor at any other bank. You just have to be able to ignore environmental noise. And do you remember what you told me when I told you that?”

  “I told you that I knew how to do that,” she answered.

  “And I said, ‘You’re hired.’ ”

  “But I put in more hours than any of you. I work every weekend ’cause I have no social life. I haven’t been on a date in two years, and still my accounts suck.”

  Amy came to my defense. “Violette, we know you research stocks with rabid energy, and turn the dog meat accounts you are given into formidable sources of income. But you aren’t succeeding because you mouth off too much. Flipping birds back at management is costly. We all need to work within this culture to change this culture.”

  Violette leans her curly head conspiratorially to the table and says to the group, “I get that some of you have figured out how to get promoted: have a filter, hold your thoughts, and don’t speak up, but Belle actually lies to please management.”

  “We have all sold out in some way,” Amy, who’s wearing bangle bracelets, says. Each time she motions with her hands to make a point, a jangling noise underscores it. “That’s why we’re meeting, to learn how to no longer do that while still maintaining our jobs.”

  “Belle is a good salesperson, but a lousy friend,” says Violette with finality.

  Six sharp haircuts turn to look at me, and I realize my name has probably come up before. I never knew I was so disliked and I don’t even try to defend myself.

  “My job includes recruiting good people, and that’s what I do, don’t I? I mean, I recruited most of you and you’re the best there is.”

  Lily Jay jumps in to change the conversation and take the limelight off me. “Do you know I still have T. Rowe Price as a client but don’t get paid on their business anymore?” she says.

  Lily goes on to describe how a man on our desk, Brian Butler, a guy famous for reading research to his clients directly from a morning handout, never adding any personal commentary or original thoughts of his own, took over the account.

  “He’s expecting triplets. Guess management thought he needed income,” Violette snarked.

  “Your income?”

  “Well, he’s supposed to be their FD contact, but at the opening bell he’s just sitting and stirring packets of Sweet’N Low into his coffee, methodically testing the result, getting it just right. Then he reads aloud that day’s investment ideas, word for word. I mean, people at T. Rowe are perfectly capable of reading the same document themselves. Guess they didn’t want to be treated like five-year-olds so they don’t take his calls. They call me.”

  “Wait, but doesn’t Fletch Buckfire have half that account too?” Amy jangles.

  Lily covered this massive account with a man named Fletch, an old-school sales guy stuck in some permanent stage of adolescence. Lily did all the work while Fletch was the relationship guy, the person who took everyone to the strip bar or hunt club.

  “He did, but then he killed his client’s dog.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. They went hunting or whatever you call it when you toss dynamite to make ducks get off their feathers and fly into the air. Then the boys shoot the hapless creatures. Anyway, Buckfire tossed the dynamite stick but the poor dog thought he was playing fetch, so he picked it up and tried to run it back to Buckfire and the T. Rowe guy.”

  “Wait. This is like a cartoon. The dog ran at them with dynamite?” Alice asks, coming the closest to smiling that I’ve ever seen her. I expect to see her stoic face spring some crack lines.

  “So Fletch shot the dog?” I ask.

  “You got it. Anyway, the old boys are a bit pissed at Fletch right now, Butler’s awful, and without me there’s nobody who actually transacts business between Feagin and T. Rowe Price so they’ve gone back to calling me, which is fine and I’m still doing all the same stuff except Butler and Fletch get paid instead of me.”

  “Now that would be hard to swallow,” Amy says with motionless hands.

  “It’s hard to swallow,” Lily agrees, pushing her chair back in finality. She shrugs like this is all a waste of time, like there isn’t anything any of us can do.

  “I covered accounts for Belle when she was on maternity leave,” Amy says, “and she got them back. Maybe you’ll get T. Rowe back.”

  I sit there thinking of what I did to get my accounts back each time I had a baby, thinking of Marcus warning me to watch out for Amy and how one evening, when she thought I had left for the day, I found her cutting and pasting client contact information from my unlocked computer. She was emailing everything to herself in a traceable way that a sleep-deprived, too-busy mother would never take the time to check. I guess the reason I still trust her is she didn’t lie or make excuses for this and our conversation went like this:

  “What could I possibly have done to make you steal my accounts?” I had asked. “All I’ve ever done for your career is help it and this is how you thank me?”

  Amy, all business all the time, didn’t even look guilty. She hadn’t tried to swipe to another screen. She didn’t redden, she just looked me in the eye.

  “You’ve been great to me, Belle, but really, how long are you going to keep this kid/job thing going? I’m just getting myself ready for the inevitable. You would do the same thing.”

  Would I have done the same thing? I’d like to think I wouldn’t. At this table here tonight she seems so trustworthy. What is it about our firm that has us doing things the outside world would never understand, things that only a few years ago we would have thought ourselves incapable of?

  Michele, Violette, Lily, Amy, and I all work on the trading floor. One floor above us, the rest of the women work in research and investment banking. Though they have doors they can close, and offices with walls, their physical isolation makes unwanted male attention more covert. One of these women is Alice Harlington.

  When she graduated from business school, Alice accelerated onto the fast lane at JPMorgan Chase, research department. She had such a client
following that Feagin Dixon enticed her to join us. She was a mathematical whiz and fluent in complicated accounting. She married a plumber who balanced out her crazy travel schedule by pampering her when she was home. “He’s like a wife,” Alice liked to say, “and he fixes stuff.” “Nice,” the rest of us would sigh. I looked at Alice’s soft, rippled body, thick glasses, flat shoes, and felt admiration for her comfort in herself. Alice never tries to be anyone except Alice.

  “Well, ladies, it’s important to support the people who help you rise in your career. And Amy, Belle’s been nothing but a cheerleader for you. Remember that.”

  “I do,” said Amy, and I believe her.

  Alice is another one who doesn’t mince words. “But I must share the story of my hiring Sook.”

  Sook Park is her assistant, who came for his Wall Street interviews fresh out of business school. Alice was looking for a meticulous aide who could plow through spreadsheet computations, reconfigure balance sheets, and analyze income statements of public companies. Sook could do all of this.

  “You see, when I called the head of research to finalize the offer to Sook and to come by his office for a handshake, I wasn’t prepared for the response I got.”

  “So what was the response?” asked Violette, visibly annoyed by Alice’s buildup.

  Here, Alice physically imitates answering a phone, looking over our heads, pushing her thick glasses closer to her eyes. “I got a phone call from a research director asking me if I had actually met Sook.”

  Alice sits back in her chair, thoughtfully choosing her next words.

  “So I said to him, ‘Of course I’ve met Sook, he’s interviewed here six times, he’s terrific with the models’,” she says, referring to the earnings predictions he would be responsible for creating.

  “ ‘Alice, he’s Or-i-en-tal,’ Mr. Director told me.”

  Alice holds an imaginary phone away from her, staring at the receiver quizzically. Her focus came back to the women at the table.

  “Ladies, I swear, I thought I was being set up.”

  She puts the phone back to her ear, pretending again to speak with the assistant director. “ ‘I believe the term is Asian American,’ ” she says softly.