Diary of a Working Girl (11 page)

Tom has left a beautiful arrangement of lilies and orchids on my desk with a little card that reads, “We are so glad to have you.” I couldn’t be more pleased, and feel a bit amused by the fact that Tom has omitted the exclamation point here, where most likely any other human being would place one. Reading it as a straight sentence, without the lilt at the end that an exclamation point would require, does make one take the statement more seriously.

You know, I think Tom has got something there. No wonder he is 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 77

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a Managing Director of Mergers and whatever that other thing is.

It does sound like a pretty serious job.

“Shall I leave you to settle in for a bit? Tom’s left all sorts of notes here for you about filling out your paperwork and meeting with HR about benefits and all. I’ll be right over the wall if you need me.” He knocks on our dividing line and raises his eyebrows in wait of my response. If the fidgeting and crimson cheeks serve as any indication, it looks like he just might faint if I require his presence for a moment longer.

“Sounds gre—” I go to lift my voice, as if there is an exclamation point, and then, stop myself, clear my throat, and repeat, in a monotone, professional way, “Sounds great.” John nods his head and disappears behind the maroon wall. I think I can hear a sigh of relief coming from the other side.

My computer appears to be brand new. I take my coat off and hang it on the side of my mock doorway. It’s so beautiful, I think it will make a nice first impression to passersby. Sitting at my new chair, which has a comfy, high back, and, I note, as I lean back into it, a fantastic rocking option—a nice change to the cheap, uncomfortable chair I use at home—I actually feel very much at home here.

One mountain of paperwork and the most boring meeting of my life later, I’m fidgeting with my computer, which won’t allow much fidgeting before a dialogue box prompts me to enter a password. Passwords remind me of voicemail and voicemail gets me wondering if there are people leaving me messages at home, left and right, offering me assignments for the first time in my life. I get a sinking feeling, realizing that I am not there to answer the calls.

So I dial my voicemail number.

While I’m waiting for the call to go through, I scream to John over the wall, “How do I get a computer password?”

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I can barely hear John’s response over a voice shouting in my ear, “Lane!”

I takes me a second to realize the voice is coming from the phone.

“Oh Swen! Sorry,
again
,” I whisper when it all becomes clear.

“No worries, my sweet. I’m just coming in from the steam room.” Swen—otherworldly, fantastical, Swen. “So how’s the new job going?”

“You wouldn’t even believe it if I told you.” Lowering my voice, and cupping my hand over the receiver, I whisper, “There are, like, a million, trillion men here.” Again, I attempt to avoid silly exclamation points.

He asks, “What are you wearing?” I briefly wonder if I am feeding a fantasy he may be scheduling after high tea, but describe the whole outfit and the croc-shoe debacle anyway (sometimes the mileage you get out of a great story is worth the hassle of actually going through the experience), when that hideous globe tie appears before me once again.

“I see you’re settling in nicely,” Tom says, when I hang up the phone. And, I note, he glances—with a bit of a rosy cheek—to where I’ve propped his little note from the flowers atop my computer monitor.

“Thanks for the flowers. That was awfully sweet of you. How’d your meeting go?” And to seem extremely professional, I ask, “Are there any notes you’ll need me to transcribe?”

“Well, if you haven’t any more shopping to do this afternoon, that would be a great help,” he says and hands me a couple of sheets of yellow legal paper. “I’ve got you a password already. It’s really a lot of trouble for nothing, and I figured I’d save you the hassle. It’s (and he lowers his voice to a whisper here) Faulkner.”

I type in the notes quickly, calling Tom every once and again to ask what “MD” (managing director) and “IBD” (Investment 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 79

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Banking Division) stand for, and embarrassingly, once to ask what

“TR” is—“Um, that’s, um, me,” he replies, not wanting to hurt my feelings. I roll back in my chair to peek at him through the plates of clear glass that serve as his office wall when he says this, attempting to convey a “duh” expression in the cutest way possible.

He smiles and says, “I gotta go, there’s some girl staring at me through my window.”

When I go to grab the sheets off the printer, I take in my new department. There are about one hundred people right in my surrounding area, and I am already picturing all of us going out for happy hour, complaining that “numbers are down” or whatever it is these people complain about. There is, I have already noticed, a bunch of semiboisterous guys a few desks down, who keep walking around to give each other papers and files and things—and more than once, I have noticed them whispering and pointing in my direction. I am intrigued.

When I bring the papers to Tom, he gives them a once-over and, nodding his head approvingly says, “You do nice work.”

“Thank you,” I say, feeling that first wave of pride you get from a job well-done. I’m a kitten who’s mastered the litter box.

“You ready for your tour?” he asks.

God am I ever. I get to go around once again—taking it all in, top to bottom—all of those strong legs, backs, arms. “Let me just grab my notebook,” I say, not wanting to miss anything I can possibly use for my article.

Now Tom has professional reasons for showing me the building, but I have my own reasons for touring it, so taking it all in is not the easiest thing in the world. First we go around our floor.

“This entire floor is investments. And most of it is Mergers and Acquisitions. Most of the guys in the cubicles are the number crunchers. You know, the guys who play with the figures to see 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 80

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what companies would look like combined, to find out who’s in trouble, who can afford to acquire another company. There are about one hundred and fifty of those guys on this floor. They are called analysts, and they are assigned to different projects that the managing directors and vice presidents are working on.”

I’m trying to get this info down, and note (in code, of course) which ones are cute and which ones have checked me out, and which cologne it is that is wafting up into my nose and causing heat to emanate from my neck.

He continues, “Now there are lots of managing directors. That’s MDs. No, not the medical type. About ten right now, and they are all working on different projects in various sectors of the marketplace. So, over here,” he says, waving over a section midway down this corridor of open-front offices, “the trafficking segment of our department makes sure that nobody is contacting the same companies to suggest different deals. Otherwise we would all look like we don’t know what the hell is going on.”

I have always found it boring when men talk about the world of finance, when I’ve met them in bars or at parties, but Tom, talking this way, in his element (even with that awful tie) seems so regal, important.

“So what kind of deals do you put together?” I ask, and surprisingly, I find, I am actually interested in hearing the answer.

“Well, it can be anything. Say Barneys is doing really well and looking to grow their remainders and discounting business, and Daffy’s is not doing so well. We’ll have the analysts put together a prospectus of what a Barneys /Daffy’s company would look like and present it to them.”

Barneys and Daffy’s? That sounds like a deal I could really get excited about. But Barneys would never want to be associated with a bargain-basement store like Daffy’s. Come on. Anyone 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 81

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knows that. It’s like
Vogue
merging with
Family Circle
. That conference room would be left a tattered battlefield strewn with tufts of perfectly flattened blond hair and torn strings of outsize Chanel faux-pearls on the one side, and Lycra and polyester blends on the other side of the enemy line.

When I mention this, Tom just smiles and says, “Excellent point.”

The whole floor is coming to life before my eyes, as I imagine the important negotiations, intimidation tactics, and fiscal something or others currently in progress.

Tom opens a door that leads to a stairwell, and explains the mysterious path John led me through earlier. “Since we are on twenty-five, and the elevators are divided into two towers—one to twenty-five and twenty-six to thirty-nine—the fastest way to get to our floor from the lobby is to take the express straight up to twenty-six, rather than stopping on every floor all the way up to twenty-five.

Same when you go down.”

I follow him up the one flight, smiling at the two women chatting here (my coworkers); they get very quiet when they notice Tom, and I remark to myself that he must be pretty important.

“Now, the first thing everyone learns in this building is that there are no arrows above the elevators to indicate whether they are going up or down. Instead, the red light means up, white down.”

“Why? Wouldn’t it be easier just to have arrows?” I ask.

“That’s just the way it is. Feel free to draft a letter of concern to the management office, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“Tom, nice to see you,” says an older man in the elevator.

“Jim,” Tom says and nods. “This is my new assistant Lane.” He introduces me, and Jim sticks his (hairy) hand in my direction.

I shake it. “Nice to meet you,” I say.

“A pleasure,” he says, smiling.

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And before we get to our destination—the conference floor on thirty—the elevator stops to let in one bespectacled man, a couple of casually dressed guys in jeans and tees, one skinny, and two blond men. Wow. Wow. Wow.

“Tom, which—” I want to clarify once again which is down and which is up, and he stops me and says, “Red, up.” I smile.

“Thanks.” I am taking notes and Tom screws up his face, probably wondering what the heck I could possibly be writing down, and considering that if it is the elevator instructions then perhaps he hasn’t made the best choice in hiring me. Of course, this is exactly what I’m writing down, because my mind is so cluttered with all of the men that I’m sure I won’t remember, and so I cup my hand over my paper, like someone who is afraid a classmate is cheating off of their exam paper. I shake my head when he tries to peek over. Tom finds this utterly amusing.

The conference floor is exactly what it sounds like—a floor lined with conference rooms. Outside of each room are tables of food, soda cans, bottled water, and appropriate amounts of garnish, for those meeting inside. Those rooms that have meetings in session have signs outside indicating which potential mergers or acquisitions are being discussed: “Verizon and Time Warner;” “Macy’s and Marshalls;” “Starbucks and Tealuxe.”

Tom takes on a hushed tone here to indicate that we need to be quiet. “So this is where it all happens. When we have meetings I’ll need you to come in and take the minutes down. It’s not that bad—at least you’ll get a free lunch.”

I haven’t eaten yet, and I spy a cookie that looks fantastic, but resist the urge to grab for it. This isn’t so hard to do, as there are so many men standing around and walking past, that the last thing I want to do is stuff my face like a pig. (Another article idea? “The 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 83

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Man Diet.”) And there goes another, and another, and that one looks really important. Where have I seen him before?

I catch a smidge of a conversation. “With the resources we had three years ago . . .” It trails off as they walk into one of the rooms.

We follow a square route around until we once again reach the glass doors that lead to the elevators, and Tom says, “Okay, here’s your test. We’re going down to the first floor. Let’s see if you can get into the right elevator, Lane.”

And I am starting to get embarrassed. I mean, okay, so I asked once, but obviously it’s not that hard. What kind of moron does he think I am anyway? So there I am, all pissed off that my boss thinks I can’t figure out something as simple as a white light indicating a descending elevator, when the doors of an elevator with a red light open up and a breathtakingly handsome man is revealed, and I can’t help myself from walking right through the doors.

“Lane, that’s not us,” Tom says, saving me just as the door is about to close me inside. The handsome one smiles, and I feel that even if I piddle on the floor men here will adore me and stroke me, like a good little girl who’s just said her first word.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Rite of passage,” he assures me.

Enter proper elevator; join ridiculous amount of men; exchange looks; get the feeling Tom may be silently laughing at my probably now obvious point-of-view; doors open.

“And this is where you came in,” he reminds me, as we pass by a lobby shop with tons of magazines (maybe something I’ve written is in there?), Snapples, candy, greeting cards. “And this is the coffee shop,” he indicates with an outstretched hand. It is an adorable little station below a sign that reads JAVA CITY with lines of (what else?) men, waiting, to the sounds of frothing, for cappucci-21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:04 AM Page 84

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nos and lattes. I have never in my life found a coffee shop so exhil-arating. “And behind there is the cafeteria, which we will see in a second. But first I want to show you where it all happens.” We make our way toward the mysterious “it” down an escalator and around a corridor, with, I see, a long table and some vending machines—a great spot for an intimate lunch for two?