Nick is happy, or, at least, satisfied. All he knows and cares about is that he got done at a price that is not embarrassing. What a horrible existence these guys lead.

I look over at Nick, and he is gloating, a little. Next to him is the New Girl, who is scowling.

I am interested in her.

* * * *

“Hey Tod, is Boone Dog in today?”

“No, he had some parent-teacher conference or something like that. Very highbrow. Private school and all.”

This concerns me.

“So New Girl is going to be covering Weber today?”

“Yeah, she backs him up.”

“Does she know what she’s doing?”

“Dude, of course she knows what she’s doing.”

“She’s been on the desk for four months.”

“So?”

“Am I asking the wrong guy?”

“Come on, man.”

I took a breath, and cracked open another Diet Coke. This is Number Four.

“That account is toxic, and C.N. has been doing this for years. He is going to run her over.”

“You have nothing to worry about. We had dinner last night.”

“Famous last words. You know the PALM spinoff is coming up after lunch.”

“So?”

“So, you don’t think Weber isn’t going to be playing the spinoff in 3Com paper?”

“She can handle it.”

“You better go talk to your girlfriend over there and make sure she can handle it.”

“I don’t need to talk to her.”

“So she is your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Yeah, because you only have sex with people who aren’t your girlfriend.”

Tod is pissed. “I did not have sex with her.”

“You did something. I can tell. It wouldn’t kill you to go coach her a little bit to make sure we don’t get steamrolled over here.”

“It’s under control. Trust me.”

I took a sip of Diet Coke.

“I trust no one.”

* * * *

The New Girl fascinated me.

She didn’t look like other women on Wall Street. She didn’t wear heels—ever. She didn’t wear jewelry. I got close enough to see that her ears weren’t even pierced. She wore black fingernail polish and dyed her hair black. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was some kind of goth teenager playing dress-up to go to work. She got a job in the back office and came down to the desk after only six weeks. Apparently, it took her that long to learn everyone else’s and start telling them how to do it.

Why they stuck her in sales, and not trading, is beyond me. We could have used someone like her. Tod interviewed her and wanted to wave her in. But Nick gave her this story about how trading was too competitive and she would be a rock star in sales. But she’s been backing up Boone Dog, a North Carolina native, and arguably the best salesman on the floor, who smoothly and easily talked his customers into giving us easy business with his Southern drawl. But Boone Dog was a big hitter, and New Girl was not getting much opportunity to prove herself. She was unquestionably intelligent—it was in her face and body language—but dealing with an account as difficult as Weber doesn’t take pure intelligence, it takes people skills, lots of them, developed over time from dealing with very challenging personalities.