The trading floor in the morning is a bit of a depressing place. It is mostly quiet, people reading newspapers and whatnot. And the sound that you hear is of the timestamp machines clicking away the minutes. They aren’t perfectly synchronized, so there is kind of this constant clicking. They are very lonely timestamp machines. They haven’t made this stuff electronic yet, so you have to stamp a ticket. Though some of the more advanced firms have had guys on handhelds, hooked up to the exchange, like JLS. But I don’t like using it because I like having my hands free. And I don’t want this anchor hanging from my neck, so I give it to the clerk. This makes TRE unhappy, but who cares. The clerk can learn how to trade stock.

Oddly enough, TRE and the gang are down here already in the LMM. It’s not uncommon to huddle up in the morning, but TRE looks as serious as a heart attack. He’s eyeing me carefully. I fear that he knows what happened, even though there is no way for him to know.

“We got the PALM spinoff today. We need someone in that 3Com pit,” he says, looking at each of us.

“Not it,” says Fred, touching his nose with his finger. “I’m busy enough with Qualcomm. PaineWebber might put a $2000 price target on that turd for all I know.”

“No can do,” says Tex, “I’m trying to exploit the shit out of a skew trade in WCOM before the big guy figures it out.”

I am daydreaming about losing my ass in the 3Com pit. I lose millions of dollars, taking down the entire San Francisco branch and half our clearing firm. My parents never speak to me again. The clerk interrupts my suicide plans and says something that makes everyone laugh, but I miss it, not hearing.

But I just did rails with the biggest broker on the floor.

“You need to be in there today,” says TRE. “Spreads are going to be massive. Just put yourself on the wheel, don’t get too crazy, everything will be fine.”

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

“Ok.”

* * * *

Pac Bell Park might be the only baseball stadium in the country where you can order tiramisu. And these people call themselves baseball fans. Frankly, they are the worst baseball fans in the world. And Sabean is the worst GM in the world. And Barry Bonds is just a bad guy, no matter how many balls he hits into McCovey cove. But at least we have Jon Miller. And thank God for the Razor and Mr.T. But here we all are, eating tiramisu at a baseball game, and everyone was so rich they forgot what it was like to be poor. Whatever that means. Even that Mexican guy at Venue is getting rich. Heck, he probably had box seats in this place.

The stadium is a little out of the way. It’s downtown, and public transportation doesn’t take you there, so you have to walk. So I took the bus with the clerk; we got comped tickets by JLS. All he can talk about the whole way down there is how hungry he is. We’re walking across town on a Sunday morning and nothing is open. Well, that’s what happens if you lift weights all the time: you’re hungry. Finally we stop someplace and get the kid a chicken caesar wrap, and after he eats one, he buys another. Then he eats that, too. I can see the muscles in his forearms as he grips the thing. He swallows it whole, like a rattlesnake eating a rodent. Then he gets a berry vanilla smoothie. The kid eats two thousand calories in the span of seven minutes. Then we are on our way.