Opening Belle

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Opening Belle Page 15

by Maureen Sherry


  When I open my mail, my pulse quickens. I’m a live, hovering heartbeat, a cocktail party paused, existing for a moment between feeling remembered and not. Each message delivers me into a fairy tale, away from my life of tired working person and exhausted mother. I return to being the person I was, not that many years ago.

  I know I’m dabbling in a dangerous space, getting the high an addict craves. But the person I pretend Henry to be really doesn’t exist so I tell myself I’m still in safe territory. Reading one-way email is not exactly participating in something that feels close to being a cheater.

  If Henry and I had stayed together, would I have left this job by now? Would I be drinking something chilled and frothy on an island and be burying our kids up to their necks in the sand?

  I’m wasting time. The whole entanglement with Henry has led to a new habit, something entirely foreign to me. I daydream even now while my in-box pings. Message from Henry:

  I just found a leg in the sand. It’s blue with a black boot. Plastic. I guess we’re not the first humans to visit here. The good news is I found the most perfect rock to give to you. The bad news is that I want to give it to you in person.

  I remind myself that I have to end his little game, but his email has made me feel instantly better. I feel energized and girly. Am I so starved for attention that these emails make me some version of happy? Even Stone, who is now cutting his fingernails over his wastebasket, isn’t bothering me as much as he should. He began our partnership in an unusual way, acting uninterested in everything except the Metis memos. He bets other guys in the office on who the author is and once told me I speak the way Metis writes. The brat is trying to play with my head and I hate that I let him mentally clutter my brain.

  Ping! It’s another Henry message. I don’t breathe as I open it. It reads:

  I’ve been taking a look at swaps, longevity swaps. What can you tell me about those?

  I crash back to earth. Longevity swaps? I know a lot about currency swaps and helped Tim do a few of those, but longevity swaps? I think they have something to do with betting on the length of someone’s life. How does a guy go from dreaming about me while on an island to figuring out how to profit from speculating on the human life span?

  I’m about to call the swaps desk but glance again at Stone snapping his nail clipper. I feel massive irritation at his very existence. I call him even though he’s ten feet away and watch as he lets it ring five excruciating times. He has caller ID so he knows it’s me. He puts down the clippers when his pinky finger is perfect and answers.

  “Hey, Stone,” I say. “Finished with the manicure?”

  He says nothing so I continue, “What do you know about longevity swaps?”

  Stone stands, uncurls his massive frame from his rolling chair, carefully places his clippers inside his drawer, and finally turns to face me. He’s about six foot two and keeps his tailored shirtsleeves pulled up to his highly developed biceps. Ruffling his unkempt hair is a favorite pastime of his. He seems aware of the fact that he’s good-looking.

  “Ummm, nothing?”

  “Right. Well, give me some good ideas on these things. I’m going home early today.”

  “Okay, need any help writing memos?”

  I stare at him. He stares at me. “I am not, repeat not, writing those memos and I’m also not sure why you believe it’s your place to even say that.”

  His second line flashes now and we look at the turret. It’s his fiancée. He hasn’t called a client yet or researched anything or initiated any sort of trade and it’s been weeks. He’s an expensive thing to look at. His face appears pained to not be answering her.

  “Oh,” he said. “It’s for Cougar?”

  “Cheetah. Stone, the largest account you now cover with me is called Cheetah.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Those tranches of subprime mortgages I put together for Henry sparked a deluge of orders from Cheetah. I write orders for CMOs with a Cheetah account number on them several times per day. Marcus, Amy, and King all sit back in awe as I do less with the slow-moving stock market and more with this shiny new toy called subprime mortgage bonds.

  Clarisse is seething with jealousy at my commission runs since they’re fatter than anyone else’s. Ballsbridge eavesdrops on me, trying to understand how I’m selling so much of this stuff. But Ballsbridge and Clarisse don’t have what I have, a counterpart on the bond desk who realizes that together we make a great team. Most bond traders would never share the work and wealth with someone like me, from a different department. My counterpart in fixed income is the goddess Kathryn Peterson, the most senior woman on the mortgage desk, who, up until now, hadn’t done one trade with Cheetah, and while I trade all day with Cheetah, I’d never traded a bond before.

  A few weeks ago, I approached Kathryn and told her I could get her into that account if we split the commissions and that we would then not need to split them with Stone. She loved the idea and we launched our own partnership. I see her as the perfect way to push Simon back on this partnering thing. He never saw a two-woman partnership, hatched from a department he doesn’t run, coming.

  Feagin Dixon didn’t invent this new mortgage vehicle, Goldman Sachs did, and we, like several other Wall Street firms, are in such a desperate race to catch up that Simon and King don’t care who sells this stuff, just get it done, and that’s why I’m allowed to sell something not even traded on my floor. In my opinion Henry is a visionary and Henry can’t get enough of them. Kathryn and I are happy to be his dealer of choice.

  There is a group here at Feagin called the Fundamental Strategies Group. They’re supposed to evaluate the risk and profit potential of mortgage packages like the ones I sell to Henry. If I ask them to evaluate the risk of the products I sell, they will hand me a neat piece of paper with maybe ten or twenty bundles that would be a good fit for my client’s needs. Then I could go home and take my kids ice skating or feed them something not spawned by our microwave oven. But the problem with using this in-house group is that I don’t trust them. The Fundamental Strategies guys also advise our in-house traders, the King McPhersons of my world who have investment positions they want and don’t want. It’s easy for them to suggest their wannabe castoffs to me for my client to buy. That way Kathryn and I hand them their profit while they load Cheetah up with some junk Henry would probably take a loss on. The way to not get suckered by them is to do the work ourselves. Kathryn and I split the pile while I picture my upcoming evening replete with coffee, a calculator, a sex-starved husband, and children who refuse to go to sleep. Still, to me this seems like a good trade.

  CHAPTER 23

  Bond Girl

  THE COLUMN OF papers stacked on my desk fan at their edges because Marcus Ballsbridge’s ball fan is tilted upward. A ball fan is a fan angled to cool a man’s private parts, an appliance apparently necessary when the owner is agitated, and Ballsy is agitated.

  Naked Girl has limited movements today because her skirt seems sewn onto her body. Still, she shimmies herself into standing position so she can berate Marcus.

  “The breeze from that damn fan gets up my skirt and makes me horrr-ny,” she practically yells. Heads lift from twenty feet in every direction.

  “When you wear such a narrow skirt,” Ballsbridge retorts, “no air can possibly squeeze up there, honey. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Combine a wiggle dress with cold blowing air, Ballsy, and this girl is thinking of something more satisfying than balancing your stupid trades.”

  Marcus and Tiffany seem locked in some sort of domestic spat. It’s like she isn’t able to distract the man of her choice anymore, so she tries to retaliate by not answering his ringing phone lines or dishing out sexy talk he doesn’t respond to.

  From the arc of sweat I see spreading beneath Ballsbridge’s Thomas Pink shirt, I assume he’s losing money. He can’t sit still, taps his computer mercilessly, and has several graphs on his screen with dramatic downward slopes.

  Ma
rcus is big in every area of his body. His fingers are so wide they mistakenly press two computer keys at once, the necks of his shirts are custom widths, and the thigh areas of his slacks strain from the muscles beneath. He was a defensive lineman at the University of Texas and it shows. While I’m tempted to turn his fan off and tell Naked Girl she wouldn’t be so cold if she actually wore clothes to work, I put a hard drive on my papers to protect them from the hurricane behind me and keep my lips together.

  My papers are more lists of collateralized debt obligations, the jargon-laden stuff that Henry has been buying. I’ve been getting Kathryn to tutor me on these things on slow afternoons like this.

  My heels clack across the granite lobby to the elevator as I head to the eleventh floor, where the goddess of mortgages works. Kathryn is a senior managing director, an intense, robotic human frightening in her perfection and beauty who generates stratospheric commissions. Bond Girl sits in a central spot amid the chaotic row of attached desks, and exudes an almost ethereal calm. Her nails are never chipped, there’s never a paper on her desk, her garbage can has none of the banana-peeled, coffee-cupped, ripped-ticket remnants that most mortals slough off. Kathryn’s garbage remains mysteriously nonexistent.

  Dressing sensibly in St. John knit suits and low-heeled pumps, she’s the most senior woman in bond land and the only person the traders on this rowdy desk seem afraid of.

  As I walk toward her, I note that she’s the only employee on this floor of 180 people who never removes her blazer. She stares straight at the triply stacked screens on her desk even when I’m within inches of her. I’m still not comfortable just plopping next to her. I wait to be acknowledged.

  I’m not.

  I roll a chair beside her and sit myself down, busting into her space. She seems to be meditating on the intricate rows of numbers in front of her with the devotion of a nun.

  “Hey, Kathryn,” I say, and wait.

  Each year, Feagin has a meeting for women who are managing directors and senior managing directors. Out of 13,566 employees worldwide, we are a 1 percent club. Kathryn Peterson has met me at these meetings and yet every time I’ve come to visit her here, and even though we’ve been having lots of phone time together putting merchandise up for Henry, she still gazes over my shoulder as if she’s trying to place me.

  I tell her again that I want to speak more intelligently about the mortgage-backed securities market. I tell her that some of these synthetic products that roll across my desk lately make me feel like a three-card monte guy in Times Square. She doesn’t smile or laugh or turn. She simply tolerates me because together we’re finding a windfall with Cheetah and we need each other to keep this going.

  “Tell me what you know, Isabelle,” she says deliberately. This is how our sessions always begin. Like a shrink trying to get the conversation going, figuring out where to start, she waits.

  “This is what I know,” I say. “Everyone who has ever borrowed money has a credit score. The range goes from three hundred to eight-fifty. If someone’s late to pay a debt the score falls. Once below six-twenty you’re considered a riskier person to lend to, you’ve become subprime. Any mortgage issued to you is a subprime mortgage.”

  “Well, yes?” Kathryn murmurs, unimpressed.

  I interpret this comment as, “Duhhh.”

  So I continue, “The interest rate on that mortgage will be less attractive or higher than a rate available to a person with good credit. Most risky mortgages balloon, making their payback more expensive. If the borrower can’t pay the inflated amount she’ll have to refinance the house or sell it. Even though many banks lend to people who can’t possibly pay them back, the banks figure the value of the real estate will rise, so if they stop getting paid back, they foreclose, leaving them with a property that’s gone up in value. That makes the banks’ risk minimal.” I pause for air.

  Bond Girl stifles a yawn and keeps her eyes forward so I plug onward, conversing to the side of her head. “To get investors involved and to lower the risk to the banks even further, Freddie Mac designed a type of bond called a CMO, a collateralized mortgage obligation, which is a pooled piece of debt. The mortgages themselves are the collateral. These bonds are put into tranches or categories that are rated based on how risky the underlying debt is.”

  “Okay,” Kathryn says softly, “so thank you for my history lesson. It was a little boring but you’re probably one of the only people here who could tell me all that. What else?”

  “Here is where I get into muck,” I continue. “So then the banks came up with a clever way to have others invest in the mortgage market. They invented CDOs, or collateralized debt obligations. Instead of just bunching mortgages together that were all in the same risk category, the CDOs take actual mortgage bonds, the CMOs, pool them together, and add another layer of complexity to an already hard-to-understand market.”

  “Unclear,” Kathryn says simply.

  “Well,” I sigh, “some yahoo figured out that by taking the bonds on crappy mortgages, instead of the mortgages themselves, sending them back to the rating agencies so the same stuff could be rerated more favorably, he could sell them more easily. A lot of deadbeat loans could appear to be as good as AAA and investors who before would never touch them now buy them like they’re at the year-end clearance sale at Barneys.” I exhale.

  Kathryn Peterson turns to me and smirks. “You got it.”

  Before I started pitching this stuff, I tried to explain it to humans who didn’t work on Wall Street. I started with my daughter, Brigid, who initially listened with great intensity, bulging her eyes in concentration while stroking our dog, Woof Woof. Within a minute she was grinning and within two she was giggling and blurting out, “Gobbly gobbly poo poo!” Because that’s what it sounded like to her. Woof looked intrigued.

  I moved on to Bruce and spoke the mystical, mythical language of Gobbly Gobbly Poo Poo to him. This time I did it with feeling. But he kept looking past me, hoping to catch sight of the television on the wall in the far room. He scratched his middle and yawned. The dog walked out of the room.

  Today I’m still not certain what I’ve been selling. The only thing I see being created is debt and then derivations of that same debt, explained away as somehow more valuable than the original debt. The fact that this market is so far removed from anything tangible isn’t lost on me. Cheetah Global had been hungry to own this stuff and now has begun selling. I need to know why. I admit the whole thing feels wrong, but how can it be wrong when so many smart people think it’s right?

  Kathryn briefs me. “We’ve got six lots of these ten-year triple-As. Who can we sell them to?” she asks, scanning her screens and comparing them to the papers I’ve brought upstairs with me. The fact that she is even speaking to me is something to note. She doesn’t seem to work with, or be chummy with, any of the guys surrounding her. She’s the one who has fewer friends than me.

  King must be worried about the mortgage desk too. I see him across the room here on the bond floor away from his usual territory, and sense his curiosity peak when he sees me sitting with Bond Girl. He beelines over and casually looks at the papers in my hand, the tranches I intend to evaluate today for Cheetah. I tense myself, waiting to be touched. Without fail King lowers his head onto my shoulder and sniffs my neck like a dog. He smells like he hasn’t had a shower since last night and I’m highly aware I smell like cheap candles. I’ve used my kid’s smelly shampoos again and King finds this intriguing.

  “Marjorie’s Mango?” he inquires.

  “Slime Lime,” I correct. “Gets you clean, won’t turn you green.”

  King lifts the tranche papers with one hand and rests the other on my shoulder. I want to slap it away. “Triple-A, my big nose,” he mutters as he sees the bond ratings. He tosses the papers on Kathryn’s desk and gives my shoulder a squeeze before walking away.

  “Guess he doesn’t believe these ratings,” I say, trying to be as cool as Kathryn but feeling a little panicked.

  �
�He’s on the risk committee now,” Kathryn says. “And he obviously didn’t get this memo.”

  She turns her screen so it faces me, allowing me to read the latest email from Metis.

  To: All Employees

  From: Metis

  Subject: Appropriate Relationships

  While I’m growing tired of being your nanny, please note that one shouldn’t sleep with a subordinate. Remember, the only thing that’s making you attractive to someone younger and cuter than yourself is your superior position and your bank account. Once you get sued, your position, account balance, and body parts will deflate. Grow up.

  There have been eleven memos by now. Still nobody has been caught and nobody has claimed to be Metis. I’m amazed that Kathryn even admits to having opened a Metis memo, never mind openly showing one to me, all girlfriend-like.

  “You shouldn’t let him touch you like that,” she says simply.

  “How do I get someone so senior to leave me alone, and not get fired?” I ask. “And besides, if this mortgage stuff is as messed up as it appears to be, we all have bigger problems than lecherous men.” I go right back to talking about why I’m at her desk in the first place.

  “I hear some guys on the executive board aren’t happy with the loads of merchandise we sit with overnight.”

  Kathryn half smiles, taking note that I’m sticking with the original subject. “It’s a mind-blowing liability if those obligations begin to default,” she admits. “But the truth is that if we default, the whole United States banking system will be on its head so that won’t happen.”

  “Yeah,” I say wearily, thinking of how much Feagin stock I’m forced to hold. Getting wiped out by my own firm would be the ultimate touché. “But as long as they go north, we’re okay,” I mutter, uncertain as to whom I’m trying to reassure.

 

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