On the Floor (15 page)

A little string of muscle tightens in Rob's neck, the same one that is held taut when he takes down a big position or when the Grope finger-signals him into the office. Convertibles are his passion and his meal ticket and I know it bothers him enormously that he didn't know that SPUD were building a model and that the Grope must have sanctioned this project, and no one even thought to tell Rob or came to pick his brain because he left school at sixteen and never went to college and everyone in SPUD thinks he is a moron. Or at the very least a dinosaur.

But SPUD
is
the future foretold because one day the geeks will rule our world. And this is what Rob cannot see, standing there tight-lipped and simmering as he tries to keep up with Pie Man's lecture. SPUD is our very own little Silicon Valley, puttering away like a nuclear reactor. Their mission is to take Steiner's into the twenty-first century of derivatives power by designing models so clever that we will make bucket loads by just looking at a screen. They will be scanning the financial horizons for value and opportunity. Their quantitative model will transform our lives, change everything, tell the market what value really is and we will all become slaves to the geeks who built it and people like Rob and Al will be rendered obsolete because the model will eventually do us out of a job. This is why Pie Man sits at his desk late into the night. I see him the odd time when I've stumbled in drunk at midnight in search of my keys and he is beavering away with algorithms that no one here
can understand but which will become the norm. I get it because I can do the maths and Pie Man is right – I could get involved, I could even be the best but I do not care. And maybe that's my problem.

Rob is rigid now, his lips grey, he senses there is a whole wide world of value out there from which he will be forever excluded.

He will never make it to the next level.

He reaches out and lifts Pie Man's free hand and turns it over shaking his head at the grubby inside of his cuffs. ‘So basically,' he interrupts, ‘what you're saying is you and Dr Who are going to build a computer system that is going to tell me what my convertible bonds are worth?'

‘Well, yes.' Pie Man blinks as if Rob's statement of hollow fact is just a mundane confirmation.

Rob drops Pie Man's hand. ‘Well, what if I said I already know what every single convertible bond is worth. It's worth what the market is prepared to pay. So we don't need some mathematical model to calculate any theoretical value. We just need shit-hot traders who know what the fuck they're doing.'

Pie Man levers himself up to his full height and stands there above us all, looking curiously unaffected by Rob's contempt as if he possesses some transcendental insight that has him operating on a higher plane.

‘In a few years time, it will be all technical trading,' he says, looking down at Rob and speaking slowly as if he is addressing an imbecile. ‘And people like you won't be able to get a job in this place. Just watch what technology is going to do to your careers. In fact, none of you will survive. Your kind of traders with your finger in the air, making up prices like you were on a fruit and veg stall. You think it's all supply and demand and some sort of intuition, some sort of special touch. You don't even
understand
the instruments you trade.' Pie Man sweeps a huge arm around the trading floor, his eyes glittering. ‘Look at Joe Palmer and his team over there on the warrant desk – they're just bull
market traders. You think they know anything about option theory? You think they even understand volatility?'

‘They don't need to,' snaps Rob, ‘because they made fucking more than a hundred and twenty million dollars last year.'

‘And do you know how much more they are leaving on the table because of all that they don't understand? Double or triple that.
This
is where the smart money is going to be,' Pie Man thumps the top of his computer. ‘You're all stuck in the Dark Ages with your trading books and your market feel. It's like putting monkeys behind the wheel of a car. In the future the quants will be running the show because this business is changing by the second. We are building pricing models for proprietary trading in derivatives so Steiner's can start taking principal risk in size. The real juice is all in equity right now where you can make easy money. Out of pretty stupid people who understand nothing.' He is flushed and triumphant, a lick of sweat above his lips.

‘So the geeks will inherit the earth,' Rob pokes Pie Man's belly. It's a face-off between past and future. ‘And you'll be earning the big bucks. Need to get in fucking shape then, mate.' He jabs again, a little harder this time and Pie Man seems to wobble.

‘Word is there'll be no geeks in the closet,' says Al. ‘They'll all be out visiting customers.'

Pie Man winces with a nervous giggle that comes out like a subdued shriek. Rob and Al stand sleek and tall side by side staring up at this vision of their redundancy and the apocalyptic vision of markets run by fat boys with mathematical models. The future is no longer theirs. And SPUD will have the last laugh.

Rob smiles. ‘So tell us then, Pie Man, how's the swimming?'

I kick Rob's ankle to pre-empt the stage-managed humiliation that is surely coming, but he doesn't miss a beat. Pie Man frowns, perplexed.

‘I hear you're a big man for the pool?' says Rob. I slither off the desk and stab the heel of my shoe on his again, but he doesn't flinch. And of course I know where this is headed and it's all my fault for getting a cheap laugh, for telling Rob and Al that Pie Man invited me to go
swimming in the new pool at the Tara Hotel.

‘What d'you mean?' Pie Man is puzzled now, his blubber neck ripe for the slash.

‘I hear you might be starting a swimming team.' Al snorts on his bottle.

‘Just shut up, Rob.' I prod him again but my heel wobbles and I nearly tip over.

‘Steady on, G, you'll be on your face in a minute.' And I can tell by the crease lines tightened about his jaw that Rob will go all the way with this one. ‘We should go down the pool some time, mate. Just you and me, Pie Man, a few lengths.'

Al is shaking his head, face pink with the effort of holding back his laughter. Pie Man is less certain now about the merriment and is nervously flipping the pencil, a smile ghosting his face.

‘But maybe you prefer going with the girls?'

Al can no longer hold it. ‘Oh man, oh man,' he goes and takes a swig of his water and then snorts the whole fucking spray right in front of him and Rob explodes just as Pie Man's face crumples into knowingness. His eyes swivel towards me, something forming out of all this confusion in his face, the colour rising for sure, a pink blotch on one cheek.

‘Best way to check out the merchandise, eh? Geri in a hot bikini,' and Rob winks at Pie Man who is standing now utterly still, staring at me and the look that is always soft is hardening into something I cannot name. And I look away. Focus my attention on Rob's idiot face.

‘You are an asshole.' I tell him. ‘Of the highest order.'

‘Yeah, he's an asshole,' gasps Al, his face creased and red. He is beyond laughing now.

Pie Man slams his chair against the desk and picks up the satchel that was lying on the floor like a faithful dog.

‘Oh, come on, Pie Man.' Rob's arms encircle me from behind. ‘You know me, just having a laugh.' I push him away but Pie Man is gone, barging through the double doors.

‘You're such a wanker, Rob.'

‘Ah, but you love me all the same,' says Rob and heads off to his desk.

Fuck buddy
, Zanna said when I made the mistake of telling her that I'd slept with Rob in October.
That's exactly what he is. And believe me, you need a serious upgrade
. Their antipathy is mutual and entrenched. Like a chalk screech on board, their first meeting at the Lamb some years back. An airy contempt in Zanna's blood-thinning smile. Rob doesn't have Background:
he is not even a graduate, for Chrissake –
although he did spend a good amount of time hanging around Essex Uni trying to get laid. In Zanna's eyes he is a peasant, he has a thing for dirty jokes, does not know his way around the vineyards of the Loire, hasn't been to Cowes. He could not show her the good cultured European time that she would expect although she admits he could probably show her a good fuck. But it wouldn't be a career-enhancing fuck and if Zanna is going for a bit of rough she only does so in an unrelated sector. Childishness in males leaves her cold, she is not interested in horsing around.
You could at least have found someone who doesn't work at the same firm. Jesus
. But I'd rolled out of the bar one Friday night, insisting on Rob's place for a drink.

Madonna sliding out of the speakers, the coffee table bobbing on some unstable horizon when I sank back into the couch, closed my eyes on a double-vision sea of black and white, then Rob was framed in the threshold of the kitchen, shoulder leaning into the doorpost, arms crossed above jeans and bare feet. I held out my empty glass and moved into the hallway with the vague intention of going to the loo but was roadblocked by my passing reflection illuminated from below in the warm glow of a table lamp, seduced by my own tiredness, encouraged by my increased heartbeat that seemed to have fallen in step with ‘Like A Prayer'. Ran a palm over my right nipple, blood rushing to key zones so that the hidden lips between my legs swell, and I
swayed back into the living room where Rob's head was embedded in the couch leather. Watching me come closer and lowering myself onto him, splayed against the pit of his stomach. His hands on my skirted hips. His head level with my breasts, his face disappearing out of view with that concentrated expression that men have on the brink of pleasure.

We didn't even make it to the bedroom. The long-haired animal rug was scratchy and smelled of chemical cleaner. Rob came professionally on cue and afterwards he was careful not to flop his full weight onto me and I wondered why it is that I always get fucked from behind, if it's something intolerable about my face?

He rolled sideways, propped himself on his elbow beside me and surprised me by stroking my shoulder in slow repeated movements. I took his hand, slid it down between my thighs but as soon as his finger began its tentative exploration, I knew that no one could find the right touch, we were wasting time with the false promise of something that wasn't going to happen.
I need to take a shower
, I said, though what I really wanted was to hit something very hard. Instead I washed my hair, face, neck, I scrubbed my skin until I felt some purpose return and I stood naked in the mirror, my face almost human against all the sharp edges of ceramic and glass and steel, the sour taste of another night's drinking in my mouth.
I have to go
. He was standing up and fretful when I came back, wet hair dripping.

I don't want to
– he swept an open palm through the space between us, testing the shattered boundary between friends and lovers.
What
? I opened the door.
Wreck our beautiful working relationship?

‘
YOU'RE ON THE 14:05 BA FROM HEATHROW
.' Julie places the travel wallet on my desk. ‘Your car's booked for 10:30 so you have time to
pick up your stuff on the way. And come by before you leave – the boss wants to see you.'

‘OK.'

‘Don't forget.'

‘Yeah yeah, I won't forget.'

‘Life in the fast lane, Geri.' Al smiles wistfully.

‘Not all it's cracked up to be.'

‘Wouldn't mind trying it for size myself.' He mutters and turns back to his desk, flips open a research report. He is rattled, but it is just the usual mortality rush. He's thinking of last week's sales run and the numbers that tell us what we are worth. And Al is at the margin, he is not living up to expectations and his unarticulated anxieties threaten to drag him low. I have a hunch that the memory of the humiliating fourteenth in the class of '85 still haunts him, the double whammy of non-inclusion in the best fraternity and the failure to bag the internship at Goldman's, his father's struggle to contain his disappointment at the graduation ceremony.
The next generation? They don't appreciate what hard work is for. They'll only ever let you down
. All those carefully scheduled 6.30 p.m. dinners in the Oak Room on the Friday before term,
Alexander, there's a lot at stake here
. Al nodding earnestly, not daring to shift his gaze from his father's face to the irrelevance of the menu, wiping sweaty palms on his trouser leg.
Yes, sir, I'll do my best
, the vision of an alternative fading before his eyes. In drunken conversations at school with other inheritors of the mantle, Al would have made tentative quips about the burden of paternal expectation, how the old man was like so focused, but you could only share so much with another guy who knew that your sudden death would shunt him up a place in class. So much easier, Al may have mused in the cab home, for the second-generation aspirants whose parental ambitions have just been transplanted: for them, it was a result, just getting through Admissions. Al was stuck at the front of a long line of Van Velzens that snaked back to Ellis Island, weighed down by the hopes of the first weary shoe that ever set foot on this soil, on a journey that would one day end in
vindication and triumph when the unrecognisable descendant's photo enters the Hallowed Walls of the Alumni.

Meanwhile, surrounded by mementos while his real life carries on in exile, Al remains a tourist in our town. He will never take root here although he has studiously embraced the familiarisation programme that includes Covent Garden, Stratford on Avon, Sunday lunch at Simpson's, a tournament at Wentworth, three days at Lords, fish and chips, strawberries at Wimbledon. But I know he is secretly pining for peanut butter jelly and pretzels, top-loading washing machines and giant refrigerators, and yellow cabs with plastic on the seats. It's the little details that grind him down and mark him out as a transient in his own life. Still Al does his time in the hope that this European tour of duty might catapult him to the advantage over his peers that he couldn't quite manage at school. In career years there has been some slippage, and lately he's been reading about his classmates in the
Wall Street Journal
and he is anxiously measuring the widening gulf.