The Better Woman (20 page)

She turned on her heel and headed back towards Palazzio's. Maria would be furious that she was returning empty-handed. The rest of the waiting staff would be furious that there would be less in the kitty to share at the end of the night. And Lorenzo would be furious because he didn't have any coke left.

Sarah, deeply mortified that she had sunk low enough to give chase for a tip, decided there and then that she'd had enough of Palazzio's. She strode straight past the café and kept going till she got back to the apartment. Then she rang Tim.

‘I've just had to run after some German tourists because they didn't leave a tip,' she yelled. ‘Tell your manager that he must give me a job.
He fucking must have something that I can do.
'

‘Calm down, okay?' Tim replied. ‘I'll ask him again. Give me a minute.'

She heard voices in the background. Tim's was forceful.

He came back on the line. ‘The boss says you can start in the settlements department on Monday.'

Yelling obviously paid dividends in New York: you had to show attitude to be taken seriously, to get what you wanted.

‘Thanks, Tim. I don't know what I'd do without you.'

*

Before starting her new job, Sarah decided to spend the last of her traveller's cheques on new clothes.

‘I need to look the part,' she said to Louise, Tim's girlfriend. ‘Want to come along?'

Louise's reply was short. ‘No, thanks.'

Sarah had made many attempts to get to know the other girl better, but it seemed that living in the same apartment wasn't enough to forge even a superficial friendship.

‘Whatever,' she shrugged and went shopping on her own.

From Tim's descriptions, Sarah knew that the dealers and their assistants spent a significant portion of their salaries on designer clothes. With this in mind, she went to Barney's, New York's quintessential department store. Feeling decidedly out of place amongst the impeccably groomed sales assistants and well-heeled customers, she tried not to gasp when she saw the price tags on the clothes.

‘Can I help you, madam?'

‘I'm starting a new job on Monday,' Sarah explained to the heavily made-up middle-aged assistant. ‘It's in a bank . . .'

The woman nodded and took Sarah by the arm. ‘We have a sale rack over here – it will be easy to find something to suit a figure like yours.'

An hour later, Sarah left the store five hundred dollars poorer. The sales assistant had assured her that the jacket, trousers and skirt were a ‘steal' for that price. Sarah, having seen the prices before the markdown, had to agree with her.

Sarah got up extra early on Monday morning to make sure she had first call on the bathroom. She showered, blow-dried her hair and was halfway through her make-up when Tim knocked on the door.

‘Are you going to be much longer?' He sounded grumpy.

‘Coming,' she replied, hurriedly brushing some blusher across her cheekbones.

‘I hope you're not going to take this long every morning,' he remarked, a towel slung around his neck.

‘Sorry.' She shot him a smile. ‘I just want to make a good impression on my first day.'

Back in her room, she slipped on the new knee-length black skirt and matching jacket. She studied her reflection in the mirror and, pleased with how professional she looked, told herself that the suit had been worth every cent.

Tim was in the kitchen. The shower seemed to have restored his usual good humour and he chatted easily while he downed a bowl of cereal.

Too nervous to eat, Sarah sipped a cup of tea.

‘Ready to go?' he asked, pushing back from the table.

‘Think so.'

The bank was a ten-minute ride on the subway. Sarah and Tim had just got on the train when they heard an ear-piercing scream. They, and all the other commuters, turned to see an enormous rat inside the doorway of the carriage. The whistle sounded and the doors started to close. The rat looked like he was planning to stay for the ride to the next stop. Tim stomped his foot at it. Once. Twice. Finally, the rat spun around and scurried out through the narrowing slit between the doors.

Sarah shuddered. ‘That was disgusting.'

Tim hunched his shoulders as if it was no big deal. ‘The subway is supposedly infested with them.'

The only benefit of the incident was that it made Sarah temporarily forget her nervousness. They got off at the World Trade Centre and emerged into the heart of New York's
financial district. Sarah remembered how nervous she was.

‘This is my first real job – what if I'm bad at it?'

‘You've managed a petrol station and grocery shop.' He gave her an encouraging smile. ‘This will be a piece of cake by comparison.'

‘Do I look okay?' She paused outside the EquiBank tower.

He squeezed her hand. ‘You'll knock them dead.'

The foyer was a vast marbled area and the security staff issued Sarah with an access card before Tim took her up in the lift.

‘The boss's name is Josh Grimshaw. He's doom and gloom – his name suits him – but he's not the worst of them.'

They rode the lift to the nineteenth floor and Sarah used her newly acquired access card to open the glass security doors. Josh Grimshaw's office was the first inside, in prime position to keep tabs on who was coming and going. He was a slender man with stooped shoulders and deep facial lines. He was aged somewhere in his sixties, his thinning hair more white than grey.

‘We settle the deals that are done upstairs.' He cast his bespectacled eyes upwards, as if the traders on the floor above were the bane of his life. ‘We're a processing department – administration, bottom of the food chain.'

Surely all jobs in the bank, even administration, are important?
Sarah thought.

Tim went to his desk and left Sarah with Josh. He introduced her to a handful of people before leading her to a long narrow room, its walls lined with filing cabinets.

‘These are the deal tickets.' He pointed to a stack of paperwork on the table inside the door. ‘You tear off the edges . . .' He demonstrated by tearing the perforated sides off one of the documents. ‘Top copies go to the traders for signature, then on to the other party. Middle copy gets filed. Make sure you don't
punch holes over any of the print. That's about all you need to know.'

Sarah's induction to EquiBank was thereby complete and Josh returned to his office.

The windowless room felt stifling and Sarah slipped off her jacket. She hung it off the back of a chair and flicked through the stack of deal tickets. She started to arrange them in alphabetical order, then changed her mind and re-sorted them by dealer name. It crossed her mind that she was probably the best dressed filing clerk in New York City.

Sarah's first venture onto the trading floor was something she would never forget: the buzzing phones, the clatter of voices, the flickering screens. Numbers were called out, phones hung up and keyboards tapped. People sat elbow to elbow, many of them with two phones going at once. Every few seconds someone would scream a string of expletives but nobody took a jot of notice.

Sarah momentarily forgot the reason she was there in the first place: to obtain the dealers' signatures on the deal tickets. A wolf whistle jolted her back to the present. One by one the dealers swivelled around on their seats, many of them still on the phone, and sized her up.

One called out, ‘Who's the cute new chick?'

He directed the question to his colleagues.

‘My name's Sarah,' she answered, projecting her voice above the racket. ‘I work in settlements.'

He snorted. ‘We won't hold that against you.'

His colleagues laughed. They all looked similar: young, white shirts, and oozing with so much confidence that one face looked the same as the next.

Anxious to escape their scrutiny, Sarah consulted her paperwork.

‘Who's Joe Fletcher?' she asked.

‘That's me,' one of them smirked. ‘Must be my lucky day.'

Another round of laughter and wolf whistles swept across the floor. Sarah, a blush staining her cheeks, weaved her way towards Joe. His phone rang just as she got there and he scrawled his signature without making any further comments.

Sarah looked around for the next name on her list: Denise Martin. There was a woman amidst all this testosterone?

‘Over here, honey,' a husky voice called out.

With her tailored white shirt and short hairstyle, Denise Martin blended seamlessly with her male counterparts.

‘Just ignore them, honey,' she advised as she countersigned her name next to Joe's. ‘They simply can't help it – their dicks are bigger than their brains.'

Later on that day, on the subway home, Sarah told Tim about her first experience on the trading floor.

‘Denise was the only woman there,' she said. ‘I don't know how she can put up with them carrying on like that.'

‘She's tough – and very talented,' he replied. ‘Managing directors are ten a penny in EquiBank, but Denise is different – you can tell she's destined to go to the very top.'

Sarah was in awe. ‘I didn't realise she was a managing director – she seemed so ordinary.'

In the following weeks Sarah watched and learned what she could from Denise. She studied the other woman's unflappable composure, her authoritative phone manner, even the clothes she wore. The more Sarah watched Denise, the more she came to appreciate how she differed to the other traders. She didn't swear, or scream, or get overly excited. She didn't tell dirty
jokes or smoke fat cigars. She possessed a deadly focus. When she found a stock, bond or commodity that she considered to be over- or underpriced, she'd rally those around her to buy or sell. People said she had a sixth sense and rarely made a mistake. She was by far the best trader in the company and her promotion to managing director hadn't diluted her effectiveness, as it had with others before her.

Often, as she was signing the paperwork, Denise would tell Sarah a little bit about the deal.

‘The brokers kept the other party a secret – they always do – but I could tell who it was . . .'

‘Bought US$10m on this one – just went on a hunch, honey . . .'

‘Joe lost thousands on this – he really screwed up the calls . . .'

Downstairs, away from the flurry of the trading floor, Sarah scrutinised each deal ticket before filing it away. She promised herself that one day she'd have a job as exciting as Denise's.

In September, just as Sarah should have been planning her trip home, Joe Fletcher got fired and the ripple effect caused her to re-evaluate her travel plans. Joe's departure brought about a promotion for one of the assistants; Tim got the assistant's old job; and Sarah was offered Tim's job: inputting the deal details into the computer. In reality it was every bit as boring as the filing, but nevertheless it was still a promotion and she rang Brendan to let him know she was staying on for a few extra months.

‘Everything's under control here,' he told her. ‘No need to rush back.'

‘All the bills up to date?'

‘Yep, do them every week.'

‘Any over- or understocking?'

‘No, everything's about right.'

‘How's Mary?'

‘She's grand.'

‘Can I say hello?'

‘She took off early today. She had something on, I can't remember what.'

Sarah hung up with all the usual niggles. She briefly considered asking Nuala to drive out there to check if everything was okay.

No
, she dismissed the idea.
That would be spying. I've put Brendan in charge. I must trust him. I must think positive . . .

That Friday night all the promotions were celebrated in a new nightclub down in Chelsea. The club was packed to capacity with stockbrokers and bankers. Music blared as skimpily dressed cocktail waitresses took drink orders from the designer-dressed clientele.

Sarah drank champagne with the girls from settlements while the dealers, including Tim and Denise, stood in their own circle and drank bottled beer.

A few drinks in, Denise broke ranks and came over.

‘Congratulations, honey,' she said in reference to Sarah's promotion.

‘Thanks,' Sarah replied politely, feeling that her job, promotion or not, was menial by comparison to Denise's.

Denise seemed to know what she was thinking. ‘The best traders are the ones who start at the bottom and work their way up – you file, you do data entry, you learn. If Joe had started where you did, he wouldn't have made so many stupid mistakes and I wouldn't have had to fire his ass.'

Denise motioned to the cocktail waitress. Soon Sarah had a fresh flute in her hand and Denise was ready to impart some more career advice.

‘Give them another thirty minutes and they'll be swarming all over you,' she said, inclining her head towards the circle of men. ‘Looking for a squeeze for the night. You'll have had a few
drinks too. You may be tempted – but don't do it. They'd never take you seriously again.'

Then, between sips of champagne, she confided that she was in her late twenties and already twice divorced. ‘I got married too young, honey – childhood sweetheart – pity I didn't like the adult he became.'

‘What about your second husband?' asked Sarah.

‘Oh, that just lasted a few months.' She flicked her hand dismissively. ‘A Brazilian – the most beautiful man you've ever seen – but all he wanted was a visa. People tried to warn me. Now I listen when my friends give me advice.'

As Denise predicted, the men began to integrate, sidling up, turning on the charm. Denise moved off and Sarah talked to Tim for a while.

‘How was your first week in the new job?' she asked.

‘Good – spent most of the time on the phone, confirming deals. I got a real taste for it.'