I was in the mezzanine with the clerk. He was a good kid if you got him off the floor, not so weird about staring at the screens and trying to bully people all the time. I know for a fact he doesn’t have money to throw around, but he buys one of those SF Giants we’re number one foam fingers and starts carrying it around, talking about fingering this and that and giving people the finger, like a jackass.

A week ago, TRE invited me into his office, and for once, had me close the door. He told me that a rival market making firm, one that traded both options and stock, was readying a bid for us. I couldn’t keep the secret.

“How much?” asked the clerk, in between sips of his beer.

“It’s a lot.”

“You got a number?”

I drew in a breath. “Two hundred million dollars.”

“Who?”

“Bishop.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah. But Luther thinks it’s not enough.”

“What?”

“Says we made $50 million bottom line last year. That values us at 4 times. Says we can do better.” I’m not looking at the clerk because I can sense his indignation rising.

“Yo,” he says. “It’s two hundred million dollars. We’re just a bunch of shitheads in trading smocks. Look around you. People are drinking chardonnay at a baseball game. This isn’t real. This is going to end.”

I feel my jaw set. I am getting angry at the clerk, and half paying attention to the game. Marvin Bernard is up, who sucks ass on a good day. “You don’t know that. This thing could be worth a billion in three years at the rate we’re growing.”

“Floor traders aren’t worth a billion dollars,” he says.

“Okay, so if we sell now, TRE gets, like, twenty million, Luther and those guys get fifty.”

“That’s not enough?”

“Look around you,” I say, imitating him. “Don’t you think people are making more than that?”

The clerk looks back at the game as Marvin Bernard strikes out, swinging at something around his eyes.

“You only need to get rich once,” he says.

* * * *

I grab the clerk and give him instructions for the spinoff. I’m not sure he’s listening. Some people make better traders than clerks. I need this kid to focus for just one second, but as he’s printing out my risk reports back in the booth, he’s smoking and joking with the Bay Bridge potheads. The only time you get this kid to stop being a numbnuts is when there’s money at stake. It occurs to me that this perfectly describes most people on the floor.

I tell the cute lesbian MQ to put me on the wheel, walking past the guys in the crowd, and then I go and take my place in back of the pit. Some are looking at me. Some are shaking their heads. One of them crumples up his risk report, turns around, and fires it at my forehead. It bounces off, to great effect. Then he calls me “Dickface.” Everyone gets a kick out of this. It’s going to be like this all day. I knew it would.