I run up to the trading floor, skipping steps, flash my badge, and I appear in the MSFT pit to give W83 his toasted sesame seed bagel with cream cheese. He accepts it and dismisses me. Meanwhile, the coffee is doing its thing and I gotta take a smash. Every time I take a dump in here I look up at the ceiling at that rusty pipe, that thing is about a foot around and it looks like it’s going to fall down any minute. It probably weighs fifty pounds, at least. Number one options exchange in the world and the filthiest, most unsafe bathrooms. I bet people get knifed in here, seriously. If I still have a girlfriend after last night’s performance, I should mention this to her, so she can talk to her boss about this place, this excuse for a men’s room that’s barely better than a pit toilet. This is fucking ghetto.

I have some time to kill before the open so I huddle up with TRE and W83 and the other traders in the YHOO pit. Ordinarily I would be back in the booth, thinking about boobs, but I figure if I want to get my badge I should take these opportunities to talk shop. I arrive in the middle of the conversation, unacknowledged. I gather they are talking about something important.

“We got the PALM spinoff today. We need someone in that 3COM pit,” says TRE. The company that makes Palm Pilots, 3Com, is spinning off the Palm Pilot division and selling shares to the public. Everyone will want to own the stock. The newspapers have been talking about it for weeks.

“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.” He’s trying to put on a complex option position in a pit that the lead market maker rules with an iron fist. It’s keeping him busy.

“What about you?” TRE asks me playfully. “You ready to get in there and mix it up?”

“Yeah,” I say, puffing out my chest, “just give me a badge and I’ll sell some straddles and go to lunch,” which is a very risky thing to do, and therefore ironically funny.

I look at W83. Tex and Fred look at him, too. He looks like we just told him to walk right up to Estella Warren and ask her for her phone number.

TRE frowns at him. “You need to be in there today. Spreads are going to be massive. Just put yourself on the wheel, don’t get too crazy, everything will be fine.” The wheel is the system that executes small trades into your account automatically, the tiny retail orders that come through the exchange. Many traders would simply show up to work, put themselves on the wheel, and go get a massage and a cheeseburger. The ten or twenty trades they got while they were gone were usually winners.