No. It’s too early for this shit. What the fuck is she doing up so early, anyway? I thought we had this discussion last night.

I am the first one here. I turn on the lights and fire up the computers. We just got these flat-panel monitors, which signal to the day traders and everyone else in the building that we are rich.

I hear the elevator door open.

It is W83, the guy that I clerk for.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You look like shit.”

“So do you.”

“You look like you were up all night.”

“So do you.”

“You got the breaks?” he asks.

“Working on it.”

The breaks are the trades from yesterday that got fucked up. I have to sit here with a dot matrix printout for a half hour and go through the lines one by one. It is detail-oriented work that I have no appetite for. Additionally, I am fighting off some morning wood, which makes it difficult to focus.

W83 came out here from Chicago with TRE about four years ago to start up this frontier fucking outpost. He’s been pissing into the wind in the Microsoft pit the last two years, and the stress is starting to show. He looks terrible this morning. I guess trading is a tough job, you have to love it like you love your own balls.

I stand up. “No breaks.”

“Right on.”

“What were you doing last night?” I asked.

“Nothing. What were you doing?”

Jerking off in the sink. “Nothing.”

We look at each other.

“Breakfast? The usual?”

“Please.”

So I go downstairs to Café Venue to get a toasted sesame seed bagel with cream cheese for him, and nothing for myself. For now I’m just getting coffee, which most of those geniuses usually get from Starbucks down the street, Venti Caramel Macchiatos for six bucks, but I don’t have the money for that. This coffee for me is free, JLS has an open account with Venue, so we can get whatever the hell we want, whenever we want. In the meantime I am observing the pork chop behind the counter, she is really not good looking at all and I would probably be fired for even saying this, but I would totally do her. Oddly-shaped boobs and hair in the small of the back that is a little too dense to be down, and huge teeth, and a horrendous ankle tattoo, of what, I can’t tell. But she’s got great energy. She always flashes me this sweet, demented smile, like she’s dying for some dick. She’s down here every day making toast and coffee and I despise myself for this ritual every time I get breakfast, half the time I walk out of here with a fucking boner. One of these days I am going to have to go bang one out in the bathroom upstairs but those bathrooms are vile and I would be crossing an imaginary line I have drawn for myself: no masturbating at work. I take this shit seriously.