I’m wondering just how far the public walk to the coat check will be when Ballsbridge swoops in behind me.
Marcus Ballsbridge, most often referred to as Ballsy, is a thirty-nine-year-old father of two. He has the sort of thick, dark hair women just want to tousle. Of course, if one of us ever were to do such a thing, it would be interpreted as some call-to-mate move. The news of her flirtation would be broadcast across the trading floor in minutes. A girl can think of tousling but she dare not do it. He has angular features and a southern drawl laced with charm that quiets the cackle of sales assistants and he’s probably the closest thing I have to a work friend. Ballsbridge and I sit back to back on the trading floor. We exchange work-related barbs for much of the day in sibling fashion. The second the market closes we don’t speak until the following morning. All our conversations occur between the opening bell at 9:30 a.m. and the close at 4 p.m., which makes this moment officially off-limits. Tonight he surprises me.
“Hey, darlin’ Isabelle, you and I hitting all the hot spots, huh?” He grins and holds up a sack that looks like mine only with more expensive packaging.
“We’re far more evolved,” I say, noting he talks more slowly when time isn’t money. From all appearances, Marcus is single-handedly keeping FAO Schwarz out of bankruptcy.
“Are you still in that purple dinosaur stage?” Ballsbridge has an unhealthy fascination with Barney the Dinosaur. He draws him into conversation noticeably often. It’s weird.
I proceed to reel off my kids’ Santa list, as if my life depended on it. “Bionicles, Peek-a-Blocks, Haircut Barbie, Transformers, and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, plus baby books. I know I’m going to forget something and break someone’s heart,” I say, and I mean this.
“Honey, you’re actually reciting that alphabetically.”
Ballsy is happy, Christmassy. Usually when I overhear him talking to his wife on the phone he is fuming. His concerns stem from the fact she just bought something unnecessary, or had some enhancement or spa procedure that perhaps was necessary, but costly nonetheless. Tonight he’s different; he’s light and fun, while I’m feeling a tinge of panic. Tonight is important and I look bedraggled.
“Hide me, Marcus. I look like a mother, for God’s sake.” I nod toward my bags.
Without missing a beat he grabs my sacks, banging the Peek-a-Blocks hard, and we enter to the tune of “Triangle A-B-C, triangle 1-2-3.”
“Thanks,” I exhale, and watch his back disappear into the coatroom with our wares, and I wonder why he’s proud to carry toys around and why I’m not.
Metronome is a ten-thousand-square-foot restaurant that has been transformed into a dance hall this evening. It’s the early side of the party, when people get liquored up for confidence, so most are hanging around the bar. The DJ spins innocent tunes, wedding tunes: “Celebrate good times, come on!”
Will that song ever just curl up and die already?
A few women dance with each other, hoping to get the party started, but nobody is cutting loose just yet. The evening hangs in an awkward state of sobriety.
The trading floor, the place most of us work, sets the stage for a mating dance. Daily. A grid of attached desks sits in a space a quarter the size of a football field. There are no walls and no cubicles to separate us. During work hours, everyone is either on the phone or flirting. A trading floor has everything to keep adrenal glands pumping cortisol: breaking news, tragedy, money, racism, sexism, and a little less overt sex play than in the past. The blow-up dolls that floated around in the early nineties have been deflated, and the deliveries of erotic chocolates have ceased. As my closest friend, Elizabeth, says when she visits me at work, “I feel like you work in a nightclub.” She compares us to the technology start-up where she works and says that Wall Street’s just in a more evolved stage of lawlessness than her world.
So the holiday party, with its alcohol, low lights, and music, is a show waiting to start, a nostalgic one-night pass back to the old days, and it never disappoints.
I see my first target—Simon Greene, my direct boss. He’s a frumpy, oily, bald, hyperactive guy pushing sixty. He never talks to me unless it’s bad news. We haven’t spoken in ages, which is a positive sign for my pending bonus. But the time to let him know I’m expecting to be remembered is now. It’s time to talk to Simon.
“Merry Holiday,” I bumble out. I had started to say Christmas, did my millisecond correction because Simon is Jewish, and “Merry Holiday” was the result. I’m sure that cost me.
“Hey, Isabelle,” Simon says flatly.