If I want to get a badge, I have to do my job, and my job, among other things, is to stand here and tell W83 when he gets auto-exed on the wheel, and here it is, the spinoff officially happened, PALM started trading, and the wheel just went, like, fizzzzzzz, started whipping all over the place, hundreds upon thousands of executions all at once, which means that W83 has positions everywhere but he doesn’t know what they are. And there is nothing I can do about it, because it happened so fast, I didn’t see any of the trades. So he has big risks, and he has no idea what happened. All of this stuff is supposed to go into the handheld, but the software is a pet rock when there is a fast market, and this is the fastest of all fast markets, so once again, the handheld shits the bed. If fact, the entire exchange shits the bed, all the screens across the floor are frozen, because the computers can’t handle all the action, and everyone is like, what the fuck? and is looking over at the COMS pit. It seems like they are all staring at me. Neither of us has any idea what the fuck is going on, and I’m starting to get worried, because when shit goes wrong, the clerk always gets blamed, and if I get blamed for this, I am not getting my badge. So I’m standing in the back of the crowd jumping up and down, yelling dude, dude, dude, and he can’t hear me, one, because it’s so fucking noisy in here now, it’s roaring, and two, because he’s got a bead on some broker that I can’t see, and he’s not paying any attention to me at all. I’m guessing that he doesn’t even care what his risk is at this point, but if this trade goes tapioca, and I can’t untangle the mess, it is bad for both of us.

You like—

In the meantime I am, yes, getting really claustrophobic, the crowd is turning into a wave, it roars, and it ebbs, and it roars again, and it is the loudest fucking thing I have ever heard, every broker on the floor is over here yelling orders as fast as he can, huge orders, huge fucking orders, like thousand-lots, and people are pushing and shoving, and I get an elbow to the gut from some asswipe trying to trade PALM stock, and I grab his arm and give him the stinkeye, and he calms down, because I am a lot bigger and stronger. I want to get the fuck out of here, because it is starting to get dangerous, and it is useless to try and clerk in this environment, but if I want the badge, I gotta stick it out. TRE is not going to be pleased if I throw in the towel.

There is a minor commotion to my left—no, not a commotion, a something, like a bubble where sound doesn’t exist, the whole place is so fucking noisy but to my left, there is this silence. I just had a sense that there was something that required my attention, something I might be interested in, and off to my left, once again, the Carey clerks are quiet and so is the rest of the MSFT pit and they are all turned around to look at something. What, I don’t know what. And then I see the dancer, as milk truck, the crowd parting as she walks through it, and she is wearing a taupe shirt and you can plainly see her nipples through it, like rockets. Though that is nothing new, ever since she got knocked up it is the same thing every day, just pure awesomeness.