by Kim Karr
Just before I get out of the car, I take my phone in my hand, and before I know what I am doing, I’m texting Maggie. Like it’s become a part of my day. Like the time I spend texting and talking to her isn’t eating up my time in the pit. Jeopardizing my research, my focus on the market, my trades.
Yesterday was excessive. I need to cut back. Besides, her questions are fucking ridiculous. I’m almost certain it’s her way of getting to know me. Still, they are off the wall, and yet, I find myself answering them, and to boot, giving them real thought.
Then there’s the sexting and phone sex. Both of which I can honestly say I have never thought about doing before—before her, that is. Even though I know I need to limit the time I spend on the phone with her today, here I go again.
Me: FaceTime fucking beats phone sex a million to one.
Maggie: Do you know how early it is here?
Me: Did you wake up screaming my name?
Maggie: I’m screaming your name right now, and it’s not because you’re making me come. Good night, Keen.
Me: Keen? That’s all I get after last night?
Maggie: (smiley face with zzzz’s above it)
I laugh and shove my phone in my pocket, ignoring the wood that started to rise minutes ago when I mentioned making her come. The way she screams my name does something to me. Something I can’t think about right now.
I climb out of the back of the car, say my parting farewells to Todd, who as usual nods without speaking, and then stride into the grand entrance meant to dazzle all those who walk through it.
Huge glass doors.
Marble floors.
Modern statues.
Fur rugs and designer furniture.
Walking fast, I board the elevator. The car rises quickly, as it always does, and I mentally prepare for another day of taking on the world.
As I exit the small space, I can already make out the faint echoes of the mighty roar. It is music to my ears, and I head right toward it with a vengeance.
My phone pings with a text, and although I shouldn’t, I pull it from my pocket.
Maggie: Is it true that in the underground parking garages on Wall Street, wolves get laid by a happy hit squad of prostitutes on their mid-afternoon coffee breaks?
Me: I thought you were sleeping.
Maggie: Now that you woke me up, all I can think about is sex.
Me: Hold that thought, will you? I need to fucking concentrate today. Later.
Walking through the maze of custom-made desks and sleek black telephones, I enter the pit, and immediately my adrenaline starts to surge through my veins.
The pit is a vast space loaded with desks, telephones, computer monitors, glass walls, and some very obnoxious dudes. All with their jackets off, leaning back in their chairs, reading their Wall Street Journals, and talking shit.
A dozen more steps and I will be where I make the magic happen.
Two steps away, and the big bossman claps a hand on my shoulder. “We need to talk, son,” he says.
All of a sudden, my gut twists. Mr. Foxtrot has said like five fucking words to me in just as many years.
“Certainly, sir,” I tell him as calmly as I can and ignore the feel of my phone buzzing once again in my pocket. This time I can’t possibly respond to her, yet I find myself wondering if he will notice. When he doesn’t stop at my desk, I decide against checking the phone, and instead follow him as he strides quickly toward what I assume our destination to be—his office.
“Jesus Christ, Ray!” Bill screams when we pass by his cubicle. “Pick up your skirt, grab your balls, and make a goddamn decision.”
I give him a quick glance and smirk as I watch the numbers and letters flash across his screen, bringing the previous day’s stock quotes right in front of his face.
“It’s going to soar as soon as it opens, Ray—you better make a decision real quick.”
Bill is in his forties. A real hard-ass seller with a raging coke addiction. He sweats profusely, never shuts the fuck up, and somehow managed to make $5.2 million last year. Yet, he’s still out here, and not in a corner office, or even an interior office.
The way things are going for me, I’ll have a corner office in another year, and Bill’s salary within two.
I’m on my way up.
Way up.
Right to the top.
The bossman walks faster and sets his attention on each of the desks we pass. Every broker is diving in, getting ready to work—the roar growing louder as the minutes tick past nine and toward nine thirty.
Usually I’m here earlier than all these yuppies, but since I stayed late last night and know I’ll be doing the same tonight, I slept in a little later—and yes, also because Maggie kept me up extra late too.
“Fuck them, we could eat them for breakfast!” screams John, the guy who’s been out in the pit the longest.
“—ten thousand at eight and a half—” says a short-timer who is balder than a pool cue.
“—pick up a hundred thousand shares—” says Liam, a real Irish tightwad.
Though the chatter usually perks my ears, I find myself pulling my phone from my pocket. With Mr. Foxtrot ahead of me and preoccupied with all the hustle and bustle, I check my messages.
Maggie: Are you more like Richard Gere in American Gigolo or Pretty Woman?
Me: ?
Maggie: Are you all about the sex or the market?
Me: You’re insane. Which answer will get me a look at your wet pussy faster?
Maggie: Neither. I’m not one of the hooker whores down in the basement of your building.
Me: You’re stuck on that, aren’t you? Internet surfing?
Maggie: No! Just curious.
Me: You had it right the first time, they’re the happy hit squad of prostitutes, and to answer your question from earlier, I’ve never dipped my pen in that ink.
Right then the buzzer sounds, announcing that the market has opened. And just like that, the room breaks into pandemonium. Feet come flying off desks. Journals hit the trash. Eyes open wide. The gates are open and the bulls are ready to charge.
Like each of them, the mighty roar is surging through my veins and resonating with every fiber of my being.
As we near Mr. Foxtrot’s office, I shove my phone back into my pocket and hear the ping of it again. Maggie will have to wait.
Phillip Foxtrot is a big man. Husky and tall, just his natural state is intimidating, and I am no pussy. However, couple that with the fact that he rules his empire with an iron fist, and yeah, I’m shaking in my shoes a little.
Quickly, he closes the door to his massive office and sets his gaze on each of the six television screens he has on the wall to the left, and then shifts his attention to me. “Take a seat, Keen.”
I hustle to the chair in front of his desk.
“No, Keen, sit in my seat,” he says, indicating the chair behind the giant mahogany desk.
I stand where my feet are frozen on his plush carpeting.
“You got a problem with that, Keen?”
“No,” I reply, “no problem, sir.”
“Good.”
With my shoulders squared, I walk my ass around his desk and take a seat, right in his fucking black leather swivel chair.
“You like how that feels?” he asks.
“Ummm.” Fuck, what’s with the stuttering? I try again. “Yes, I do, sir. Who wouldn’t?”
“Move around a little in it. Pick up a pen. Lean back. Make yourself comfortable.”
Okay, I’m not going to lie: right now my balls are shriveled up inside themselves.
“You want to sit on a throne like that someday, don’t you, Keen?”
I nod.
“Do you know what it takes to be king?”
I grip the sides of the chair. “Sure—intelligence, determination, and hard work.”
He circles around the desk. “No, Keen, it takes balls. Big balls.”
I say nothing.
The man who founded this firm
sits on the edge of his desk and looks down at me, the silver at his temples gleaming amidst his dark hair. “Do you have big balls, Keen?”
I glance at the silver framed photo on the desk of his wife and two kids. “I like to think I do, sir.”
He leans down lower. “Have you ever come out to my house in the Hamptons?”
“No, sir, not yet.”
I’ve heard about his summerhouse, of course. In fact, he has two houses in the Hamptons—one where his family vacations and one for his firm meetings, as he calls them. The firm meetings are for the higher-ups and clients, and are not meetings at all, but actually wild parties. These “meetings” are thrown almost every weekend from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Live bands. Food. Booze. Girls who work for the firm dancing topless, strippers and hookers considered guests, and everyone naked and howling at the moon by midnight.
Mr. Foxtrot motions for me to get my ass out of his chair, and I do, with great relief. Once I am sitting across from him, he looks right at me and says, “It’s your time, Keen. It’s your time. Not only will you have an open invitation next summer to some of the best pussy around, but you might even be throwing your own parties before the decade ends.”
This is it; my promotion is on the table already. I’ll be a higher-up before the day is done. I can’t fucking believe it. I’m an eagle soaring high and building my nest.
I did it.
I fucking did it.
All that work paid off.
With a great smile and hearty tone, Mr. Foxtrot says, “All you have to do is one small thing for me.”
I nod eagerly. “Sure, anything, sir.”
He stares at me for a beat, then two. “I thought I could count on you.”
“You can, sir, you can.”
After a few moments of silence, he pulls a sheet of paper from his desk drawer and casually pushes it toward me. “The National Association of Securities Dealers is releasing Surfnet for trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the four-letter trading symbol SURF. Tomorrow the opening tick will come out way too high, but by noon, when no one buys it at the inflated price, it will drop. I want you to be on it. To purchase as much as you can without drawing the attention of the SEC, and then dump it the next day when the price rises again due to good press.”
As I watch the reflection of the numbers flashing across the television screens in the mirrored bar, I suddenly realize the depth to which Phillip Foxtrot is fucking me up the ass right now.
I don’t even have to look at the piece of paper he slid my way to know what this is.
To know this isn’t a promotion.
That this is insider trading.
That this is me being named the sacrificial lamb. The stories weren’t lies. Fuck me. This is how Bill made his money. What was said about him wasn’t just hearsay. Nor was the guy in the federal penitentiary right now acting on his own behalf, as he claimed when he was hauled away, right after I was hired.
I’m not naïve.
I’m anything but, yet this has blindsided me.
I’m also not a pussy.
So what the fuck do I do?
Mr. Foxtrot laughs warmly, and the shoulders of his five-thousand-dollar gray pin-striped suit rise and fall with each chuckle. “You look uncertain, Keen. I’m surprised. Tom Workman, the guy who hired you, told me what big balls you have. He told me about how you pitched him stock right in the middle of your job interview.”
I say nothing.
The prick is still chuckling. “He was impressed with you from day one—he told me to watch out for you. That you would be going places.”
Sweat coats my brow, and I try to hide my nervousness. “Yeah, I was worried he wasn’t going to hire me. There were twenty other MBAs interviewing, so I figured I’d better do something drastic—you know, make an impression.”
Mr. Foxtrot steeples his hands together. “So your hesitation, then—is this about a girl, perhaps? Some good pussy that you can’t stay away from got your mind all fucked up?”
“No,” I answer immediately. “Absolutely not.” Just then my phone pings, reminding me I have unread messages. Fuck me right now.
At that, he smirks and motions with his chin to my pocket. “Listen, Keen, why don’t you go into the bathroom and jerk off to whatever conversation you are having on that phone of yours, and then come back with a clear mind, ready to talk.”
This conversation is not happening. “I’m good, sir.”
“You like jerking off, though, I assume, right?”
I am a bit taken aback by the question. “Yeah, I do.”
With that he simply shrugs and stands. “What guy doesn’t, right?”
I nod, fully aware this conversation is taking the wackiest twist.
He nods back, as if relieved with the way I answered him. “Good, that’s real good. Jerking off is key to forgetting about whatever it is that has been distracting you the last couple of days, Keen.”
A moment later my phone fucking pings again.
The look he gives me is that of the devil reincarnated.
I swallow. “I’ll turn it off, sir.”
Two seconds later, he’s sitting on the desk in front of me with his arms crossed, watching as I power down my iPhone.
Then he extends his arm and turns his palm out flat. Like a scolded child, I find myself handing him my phone. Promptly he walks over to the bar and drops it into his ice bucket that has yet to be refilled today, so is filled with water. When he turns back around, he says, “Now do you need to use the bathroom to take care of your cock, or with the distractions out of the way are you ready to talk stock?”
My hands are shaking.
What he wants me to do is illegal.
No one will know.
I’ll be a rich fucking son of a bitch if I say yes.
I’ll be on top of the world.
No! I really will be the Wolf of Wall Street.
I take a weary breath . . . look around . . . and then stand up like the fucking man I am to deliver my answer.
What can possibly happen?
Maggie
Date: January 3
Time: 6:31 a.m. PST
Me: Never? Really?
Date: January 3
Time: 6:33 a.m. PST
Me: Okay, then you win. Here’s the pic you asked for.
Date: January 3
Time: 6:34 a.m. PST
Me: I’m still waiting for my first real dick pic.
Date: January 3
Time: 6:35 a.m. PST
Me: And by the way, I’m changing your name to Best Phone Sex Ever.
Date: January 3
Time: 5:00 p.m. PST
Me: Are you working late? If so, call me.
Date: January 3
Time: 8:13 p.m. PST
Me: I’m home if you’re around. Call me.
Date: January 4
Time: 10:09 a.m. PST
Me: I left you a few messages, did you get them?
Date: January 7
Time: 11:10 a.m. PST
Me: Where are you?
Date: January 10
Time: 9:44 a.m. PST
Me: What happened?
Date: January 15
Time: 11:17 a.m. PST
Me: Talk to me, please.
Date: January 17
Time: 9:08 p.m. PST
Me: Was this even real?
Date: January 24
Time: 10:43 p.m. PST
Me: You’re such an asshole.
Date: January 30
Time: 9:51 p.m. PST
Me: I’m deleting your number. Have a nice life, ASSHOLE!
Keen
The faces on the original LeRoy Neiman painting seem to be glaring down at me with disdain. I wipe the sweat from my brow and try to focus.
Thirty hours without sleep—or is it forty?—make it hard to concentrate. And all the scotch isn’t helping.
Lyle Berman, Bobby Baldwin, Doyle Brunson, and Chau Giang aren’t giving me any guidance either. Th
en again, the mouths of the most famous poker players in the world can’t offer up advice when they’re painted on a canvas.
The confine of the glass wall that surrounds me makes me feel like I’m in a fishbowl with all eyes on this Wall Street wolf. Technically ex, but why spill what no one needs to know?
Pulling strings got me in here. Unraveling them will get me kicked out.
“Blue Suede Shoes” is playing overhead and I think to myself, now Elvis, he was one hell of a man. Good with the ladies, and according to legend, one hell of a card shark. And let’s not forget he could hold his booze.
Seconds tick by and all I can do is stare down at the dwindling pile of thousand-dollar chips in front of me. I’d roll up my shirtsleeves to ease the stress, but I did that eight hours ago.
All or nothing.
It’s all or nothing.
The hot little cocktail waitress is making her rounds again, and even though I raise my glass to indicate a refill, she still saunters behind me and presses those big tits of hers up close and personal. “Another?” she purrs into my ear.
I nod with a dip of my chin and give only the slightest glance into that ample cleavage of hers.
Under any other circumstances, I’d excuse myself from the table and take her into the bathroom to fuck her against one of the stall doors.
But right now, getting laid isn’t on the top of my list.
Winning is.
All or nothing.
It’s all or nothing.
Shifting the jack of diamonds next to the queen of diamonds, I try to study the tells on the players’ faces. They all seem like professionals, though, and they don’t have many tells.
What the hell am I doing here?
Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio hosts the highest-limit poker action in the United States, with $20,000 minimum buy-ins. And although I’m good, I’m definitely not a professional player.
Still, I had the cash, and the connections, so the higher Vegas powers that be extended an invitation.
And I figured, why not?
You see, after I quit my job on Wall Street because my prick of a boss pushed me to the edge, he insisted on firing me. Fuck him, I let him, and then I cashed in all $500,000 of my severance and decided to let the chips fall—literally.