All I wanted to do was fuck. I got the top off, great, then set to work on the too-small bra, tugging at it, the weight of the breasts straining, the damn nipples.

“I’m being serious. Why don’t you come to school with me?”

Fucking hell. “Sweetheart. I don’t have any money.”

“You take out loans.”

“I don’t want debt.”

“What you’re doing isn’t sustainable.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, raising my voice slightly. “I am on the verge of, maybe, what, making a million dollars, and you want me to walk away from it?”

“I care about you.”

“If you cared about me you would take that bra off.”

“You see? I don’t like what that floor is doing to you.”

“Doing what?”

She sits up in bed. “You’ve become…mean. Not mean, but—callous.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that—other people—don’t even exist around you.”

This is a major turn-off. My erection quality suffers.

“Sweetheart, I’m not quitting to go to school with you. I’m going to be a trader. It’s what I want to do. Okay?”

She pouted.

“Okay?”

She sighed.

“Okay.”

Off came the bra.

* * * *

There is something beautiful about this. People will always try to get free money if they can, which is why rednecks play the lottery. But this is no lottery, you can actually win this by being smart and aggressive in a competition to see who can do the fastest math and who can yell the loudest. So I can do math really fast and I can yell really loud. Fred said it. If I can keep my shit together for like an hour I am going to get a badge, especially if W83 gets rinsed. It occurs to me in a flash that I don’t have a plan for the money I am going to make. I have always used pussy as my success yardstick and I am doing fine in that department.

Yeah, I watched Trading Places, everyone on this floor has seen that movie, Mr. Valentine has set the price, it is a classic. That was down on the old NYBOT, with the orange juice futures. I’ve actually been there, I went there last year, I was visiting a buddy who trades out there, he trades options on onions or milk or something like that. I can’t remember. Oh yeah, sugar, he trades sugar options. That’s how I got into this business, you know, I went out to the NYBOT and nobody there was over the age of 28 and they were all getting rich trading sugar options. One of them had a two-tone dress shirt with suspenders and cufflinks and a badge that said KISSL and there were other dudes in T-shirts with Scooby-Doo haircuts. You can’t watch that footage in Trading Places, you know, where all the guys are screaming for orders in the pit and not want to be a trader. You can’t go down to the NYBOT and not want to be a trader. Right?