The Black & The White (27 page)

“
You’re too drunk, hon’, I
don’t think you should have anymore,” I said. I had never seen her
that drunk. I felt compassionate for her, yet I couldn’t stop
thinking about how Stephen had licked her neck.

“
I took a pill from Stephen.
I’ve never done it before. It’s so awesome,” she said.

“
You did what? Do you know
many drugs you’ve done tonight?” I asked. I was worried about
her.

She kissed me on my cheek. I told her
I loved her.

“
You don’t have to go into
the club. I can take you home,” I said.

“
I’m fine,” she said just
before she sprang from my grip and ran to Andrew, who was walking
ahead of us.

I watched Kim running away from me. It
occurred to me that I wanted to be fun, to be more like Kim. I
wanted people to like me. Mostly, I was jealous of her with
Stephen, yet angry at the same time.

There was a long line in front of the
club. I made my way through the front where the red velvet ropes
were placed and beckoned the owner. I had met him before, with
Jeffrey at the Biltmore Room.

The bouncer asked me who was part of
the group. I pointed to each one of them. One by one, they guided
us in.

“
Wow, you’re learning fast.
You know the owner of this place?” Kim asked.

I wanted to say,
Yes, this is
Jeffrey’s
friend’s place. You know,
the guy you used to date
?

Once we were inside the club, I headed
straight for the bar. As I leaned over to get a drink, I felt a
large hand grab my butt. I turned to see it was a client of
Andrew’s named Jimmy. I slapped him across the face, “Don’t you
ever do that. Have some respect, asshole!” I screamed.

“
Your ass was just there, I
couldn’t help it.” He smirked.

“
Fuck you,” I said, turning
away.

“
Come on, Isabelle, I was
just kidding. Take it easy and be more like your friend and less
like a prude.” I stuck my middle finger at him.

“
Cunt!” he
replied.

I grabbed my glass of wine and tossed
the contents into his face. As the red liquid ran down his fancy
suit, his jaw dropped and he just stood there, palms up.

Stephen saw the disturbance. “Buddies!
Everything okay?”

“
It would be if you told
this friend of yours not to grab my ass!” I said.

Stephen laughed. It was not the
response I had hoped for.

“
Grab mine too,” Stephen
said to Jimmy. “It’s not a bad butt.” Stephen laughed as he shook
his hips left to right.

Jimmy looked at me and apologized,
semi-sincerely. He took a napkin, wiped his face, and brushed away
the wine that had yet to be absorbed by the suit’s fabric. “Had to
get cleaned anyway,” he said before walking away.

“
Thanks Stephen,” I said. “I
know he’s your friend….”

“
I keep telling you,
Isabelle, these people are not friends. They just want my money,”
he said. “Want another drink… since you gave him yours?”

I nodded.

Stephen then gave me a hug, grabbed my
hand, and said, “For you,” inserting a bag of coke in my
palm.

I smiled at Stephen and seductively
whispered, “Thank you,” in his ear. Stephen quickly turned as to
attempt to kiss my lips. I jerked backwards.

“
Ha-ha. I thought I could
get lucky,” he said.

Past the dance floor, through the
crowd, I maneuvered my way to Kim. I found her standing next to
Andrew, talking to another suited man. More trader-like characters
appeared and joined the group.

Andrew had seen the unfolding of the
unfortunate event. “Thanks for your help with that situation,
Andrew,” I said as I passed him to stand next to Kim.

Andrew just nodded indifferently to my
comment.

“
Asshole,” I said to him,
hoping he would hear.

I told Kim what happened, nearly
screaming because the music was so loud. Kim had managed to find a
second wind, dancing as she sat on the leather banquet chairs
gripping her champagne flute loosely.

“
Here, have a drink. Good
champagne can’t be wasted.” She clumsily poured me a fluted glass
of champagne, but all I could think of was Stephen’s gift to me, a
small bag that I tucked between my right thumb and pointer
finger.

A waitress arrived at our table and
asked, “You guys okay here?” She was tall, beautiful, fit,
well-kept and fluid with her motion.

“
She’s fucking hot. I’d do
her,” Kim said as we watched her walk away.

I got up to go to the bathroom
again.

With expert precision, I did two lines
in each nostril and immediately felt the effects. My nostrils
opened up and I was able to breathe with greater ease. I felt the
chemical rush down my throat. My teeth began to feel as though I
had been injected with Novocaine, a new sensation I hadn’t felt in
Vegas. Several minutes later, I felt alert and happy. I wiped the
residue from the metal toilet paper tray and rubbed my bottom lip
again.

I left the bathroom, happier,
confident, and awake.

New bottles of champagne had been
delivered to our table. More unrecognizable people gathered around
us, liberally helping themselves to the bottles. Kim propped
herself up against Andrew’s shoulders, her eyes half-closed. Andrew
had his arm around her. I wasn’t sure if he was being kind or
taking advantage of her state. It was hard to tell at that point. I
pulled Kim’s languid body away from Andrew.

“
You okay, babe?” I asked
Kim, bending down to talk to her.

“
I’m fine. Just napping for
a sec,” she said in a drunken slur. I sat her down on the couch. I
handed her some water. From nowhere, Stephen reached around my
waist and pulled me to the dance floor.

“
You’ve been hiding from me.
How dare you,” he said before he lifted me up and carried me to the
dance floor. I giggled and wriggled in his arms, enjoying the
attention, momentarily forgetting dinner earlier.

I wanted to keep dancing with Stephen,
our bodies only inches away, seductively rubbing against each other
with his hands on my waist.

Although I wanted to continue on with
the night, I knew Kim could not keep going. Eventually, I took Kim,
got in a cab and left without saying goodbye. At a stoplight, she
opened the car door and vomited onto the street.

“
Hey, hey, not in cab,” the
cab driver shouted in his broken English. He pulled to the nearby
curb and said, “I am not driving you anymore.” We got out, not
protesting, and I led Kim to the nearest garbage can. I held her
hair back and rubbed her back. She seemed weak and small. Her knees
were buckling.

I hailed another cab. As we rode, her
body slumped against mine. She was dead weight.

Back at her apartment, she threw up
again in the toilet. I turned on the shower.

Suddenly, she fell and lay motionless
on the bathroom floor, her mouth gaping open. She looked dead. I
checked her pulse, relieved to feel her heart still
beating.

I wrapped her arms around me and
grabbed her waist. As I lifted her, I realized that she had shit
herself. It was running down the length of her leg. “Dude, that is
so freaking gross,” I said. Kim did not respond. “This is so not
sexy,” I said. “You’re a freaking mess.”

“
Get in the shower. Come on,
Kim. Help me.”

She was conscious enough to respond to
me, slowly lifting one leg at a time as we made our way into the
bath.

She was able to stand as the water ran
down her naked body. She had no pubic hair, having waxed it
completely off. Her stomach was less firm than usual, I noticed.
She had developed a small bulge.

I washed her hair and body, placed her
soiled garments in a plastic bag, and led her to bed.

I picked up a folded piece of paper
lying on her dresser and opened it, intending to write her a note.
It was a bill from a doctor’s office. I saw the words “termination”
and “anesthesia.” Was this a bill for an abortion?

On the back of the bill, I
wrote, “
Call me in the morning to make
sure you’re alive.
” Before I left, I drew
several more lines of cocaine on her dresser. When I got home, I
picked up Meowser. “I missed you, you little fella’.” I gave him a
kiss on the forehead and stroked his soft coat. “You like that eh?”
I said. He began to drool. “It’s a big bad world out
there.”

A
ndrew’s trading books were now well into the red: trades that
had previously generated income, now generated losses. The more in
the red we got, the more paranoid Andrew became about fund
allocation. Despite our losses, we were betting in larger sizes.
Our largest recent trade was $1.3 billion worth of
securities.

One day, after yet another volatile
day full of money-losing trades, Andrew asked to speak to me in a
conference room after work.

“
This business is changing,
and I see things changing for you too. What do you call those
people who see the future?” His tone was suspiciously
nice.

“
A clairvoyant?” I
answered.

“
I’m one of those people. I
can see the future.” He nervously laughed.

“
Listen. Your promotion is
contingent on getting orders.”

“
Promotion?” I looked at him
quizzically. I didn’t know that I was up for one.

“
Well, your job is to do one
thing. We’re going to start racking up our trade in
size.
We are going to
trade in
yards
.
Billions, I mean. You need to start getting Stephen to sell you
some securities. I will deal with the financing, the repo. Momofoku
Securities will let us borrow up the ass. Call those phone monkeys,
but you have to keep this down. I don’t want
anyone
, I mean
anyone
, not your sister, your
brother, your boyfriend and especially not Stephen, to know our
position. Be discreet. If you do this right, the two-year seat is
yours. That’s your promotion.”

I was taken aback. There had never
been an indication of a promotion. In fact, in my mind, it was
quite the contrary. Our relationship had decayed so much, I was
wondering if he was going to fire me at one point.

“
Stephen likes you. Take
advantage of that. He will trade with us. Get him to give you
market orders. Market orders, not limit orders. You understand the
difference, right?”

I nodded my head, speechless. Market
orders were trades executed immediately at the current
price.

“
Okay, so you agree. Bonus
season is right around the corner, you know. The more money I make,
the more money you make. It’s that simple. The larger the position,
the more we take in. We need to offset our losses right now. Let’s
corner the shit out of this market and squeeze every motherfucker
out.” I had never heard Andrew be so adamant and strong in his
language. It was intimidating. “It’s time to break out my big
swinging dick and show everyone who really is king of the
hill.”

I contemplated his offer.

I wanted to ask him about my having
been blocked from accessing the proprietary account, but the timing
didn’t seem appropriate.

Before I left the conference room,
Andrew put his fingers to his lips. “Not a word.”

I smiled and nodded. There
was something about the overly generous offer that didn’t quite
make sense to me. Knowing Andrew, I knew there had to be a catch of
some sort. I recalled Anson’s comment a few months back.
“
That idiot is busy either making money or
front-running Stephen or any other client of his for that matter,
that he definitely needs help finding craftier ways to cheat the
Street
.”

I had plans to meet Stephen at the
museum again but was now running a half hour late as a result of my
meeting with Andrew. As I left the office building, it suddenly
dawned on me—that what I had come to New York City for had come
true. If I did what Andrew told me, I would amass the riches of
Wall Street’s fortunes. I imagined buying my mom a new house and
getting a new wardrobe and perhaps a car. Maybe a Mercedes. Maybe I
would start a savings account for my little nephew. I wanted my
nephews to go to college also. My sister also needed new clothes.
Maybe I would give her my clothes and buy new ones.

I started to reconsider my emotions
about Andrew. The man couldn’t be that bad if he could bequeath
such responsibilities to a novice. He was giving me a chance. I had
to take it.

“
There she is! Isabelle,”
Stephen exclaimed as I walked through the dimly lit bar. I was
excited to see him also.

I told Stephen about my meeting with
Andrew.

“
It’s about time,” Stephen
replied.

I smiled. “It just seems all so
surreal.”