The Black & The White (11 page)

“
Excuse me. I love that
shirt. Where did you get it?” a lady at the bar asked
me.

“
I’m not sure,” I said. But
I was lying. I didn’t want to tell her that the shirt was a
knock-off. She would be assuming I was wearing designer clothes, of
course.

Jeffrey, the restaurant
owner, approached me just in time to hear the compliment.
Perfect timing
, I
thought.

“
Making friends already,”
Jeffrey smiled. I blushed. “You must be Isabelle?”

“
Thank you so much, Jeffrey,
for being so accommodating,” I said, a bit flirtatiously. “I know
I’m not the easiest person to deal with.” I wasn’t sure why I said
that. I wanted to retract it but couldn’t.

Jeffrey was very attractive. His curly
brown hair was slicked back away from his face. His green eyes
peered through thick, long lashes. There was something about him
that captured my attention. He flirted back, often touching my arm
as he talked.

“
Has anyone told you that
you and Kim look alike?” he asked.

“
Yes, all of the time,” I
replied. “All Asians look alike, I guess.” I smiled but immediately
wanted to retract that comment as well. I wasn’t as good at
flirting as Kim was.

He must have noticed my reaction to my
own comment. He laughed and leaned over to give me a friendly kiss
on the cheek. “You’re a cutie.” He grabbed the extensive wine list
and asked me to make some choices for the table.

“
I don’t know. You tell me.
I’m new at this game.” I paused while continuing to look blankly at
the wine list. “Okay, I want four bottles of red, four bottles of
white, and two bottles of champagne. Bring champagne out first and
then two red and two white with the appetizers. You can bring out
the rest during the entrees.” I hoped Jeffrey would suggest which
wines to choose.

Jeffrey was caught off guard by my
assertiveness. “Who said you’re new at this game? You’re a woman
who knows what she wants.” He winked. “I like it. You’re obviously
learning a lot from Kim.”

I too was surprised at my
decisiveness. I was happy about Kim’s influence on me. I smiled and
gave him a flirtatious look.

“
Just don’t learn too much
from her,” he added.

Everyone was late for dinner. Jeffrey
and I talked while I waited at the bar. He was constantly being
beckoned by his staff, which I found partly annoying and partly
sexy. Jeffrey made me nervous somehow. My hands became clammy
around him.

I consumed two lychee saketinis on the
house, courtesy of Jeffrey, to ease my discomfort while I waited
for Andrew and Stephen.

“
Those are going down pretty
fast,” Jeffrey noted with a smile. I told him how I loved lychees.
They were my favorite fruit and brought back childhood
memories.

“
Buddies!” Stephen exclaimed
as he greeted me with a hug and a kiss.

After two martinis, I was friendlier.
“Two kisses. One on each side,” I said, pointing my left cheek
toward him to indicate where to place a second kiss.

“
Ha! Today’s my lucky day. I
get to give you one more kiss,” he said.

Andrew smiled from the other end of
the bar.

Andrew’s friend Giovanni arrived soon
after Stephen, with his Russian girlfriend, Irina. Giovanni was a
portfolio manager at a large hedge fund. He was married and had
several children. He was also perpetually drunk and
stoned.

“
She doesn’t fucking come
with complications like my fucking wife,” I once overheard him say
about Irina, his “tart.” Giovanni paid Irina’s rent and allowed her
to shop with his credit card. “Cheaper than a hooker,” he once
explained.

Giovanni’s wife was once a stripper.
They had met while she was working.

“
She’s a fucking pig now,”
he said, referring to her weight. She’d apparently gained a lot
since they’d met.

Giovanni drew a lot of attention from
the restaurant patrons. It was obvious to everyone that he’d had
too many drinks before dinner. His speech was slurred, and he
walked zigzaggedly out the door. I was embarrassed for him, but
Irina laughed.

Carin and I sat against the bar until
the people at our designated table paid their bill. I watched both
Andrew and Stephen work the room. People seemed more responsive to
Stephen, laughing and engaging in conversation.

Out of the blue, Giovanni grabbed my
wrist and drew me closer to him. “You’re fucking hot,” he
said.

I pulled away and jerked my hand out
from his grasp. “Get off of me,” I said firmly.

“
Bitch,” Giovanni
said.

I wiped the saliva he had sprayed on
my face with a napkin from the bar. Suddenly, Stephen gripped
Giovanni by both arms, lifting his 210-pound body, into an upright
stance. He had been wobbling to and fro, unable to keep his center
of gravity. Carin nudged me with her arm and rolled her
eyes.

“
What an asshole!” Carin
said.

“
Buddies, I missed you!”
Stephen said. He reached his arm around Giovanni and kissed him on
the cheek. Giovanni pushed him off.

“
You fucking fag,” he said
as they both laughed.

“
Shit. I’m fucking hungry.
Let’s eat.” Giovanni gulped down another martini in one breath. He
then handed the empty glass back to Irina before burping
loudly.

Giovanni turned to Carin who had been
standing next to me the whole evening and asked, “Who the fuck are
you?” He feigned an attempt to grope Carin’s breast. She jerked
left to avoid his hand then she looked at me and said, “You owe me
big time for this favor.” I smiled and said thank you.

“
Buddies, let’s go out and
smoke a joint,” Stephen said. He threw his arm around Giovanni and
patted his chest in a manly display of affection. In his animated
spirit, Giovanni spilled a portion of his vodka martini on his own
shirt but didn’t seem to notice. Stephen took his cocktail elixir
and placed it on the bar. “Dude, what the hell. That is mine. What
the fuck!” Giovanni raged.

“
Buddies, you can’t take
that outside. Come with me.” Stephen grabbed Giovanni’s shoulders
and pulled him out the door. Stephen turned back around to me and
mouthed “I’m sorry.” I shook my head in disappointment. As they
snaked their way through the bar crowd, I noticed several customers
shake their head in disgust as they watched the stumbling Giovanni
being escorted outside.

Jeffrey came over. “You ladies want
another drink? Or do you want to get seated now?”

He put his arm around me. Carin kept
subtly nudging my leg. I tried not to react. I beamed at
her.

“
We’ll order a drink and
have it at the table,” Carin said. We all followed Jeffrey through
the crowd and into the dining room where the waiter was neatly
placing the silverware onto the table.

“
I’m fucking hungry. This
fucking restaurant sucks. It takes an hour to fucking get seated,”
Giovanni said, his speech slurred.

“
Yes, your party was late,
so we had to accommodate other more timely guests,” Jeffrey said,
turning to me. “You okay with everything?”

I nodded yes and smiled.

“
Enjoy dinner. Your bottles
will be coming out shortly,” Jeffrey said. He gave me a friendly
kiss on the cheek. “I’ll stop over later to see how things are
going.”

I wondered what Jeffrey thought of the
whole scene, Wall Street men infiltrating his restaurant with their
roguish antics.

“
Who was that guy? I’m going
to kill him for kissing you,” Stephen said.

“
He’s the owner. Isn’t he
hot?” I answered.

“
Yeah, but I’m better,
right?” Stephen asked with a puppy-dog face.

Andrew seated Carin next to me, and
Stephen chose the seat in front of me. Thankfully, Giovanni and
Irina sat at the other end of the table. As she spoke to the rest
of the table in her broken English, Giovanni paid little attention
to her.

The waiter came over and poured wine
into our glasses. Stephen grabbed one of the bottles and examined
it. “Nice! Did you order this?” he asked me.

“
Yes. Isn’t that what you
got at the table last week?” I lied.

“
Ha! You got three. So
funny. Well, good thing Andrew is paying for dinner!” He
laughed.

“
You’re an expensive hire.
You’re going to make me go broke,” Andrew said,
laughing.

I had no idea what Jeffrey had ordered
for us, but I had agreed to the bottles.

“
Don’t worry, he can afford
it. You did good,” Stephen said.

I may not have impressed my boss, but
I sure had impressed my boss’s biggest client, which to him was
probably more important.

“
To Isabelle’s tasty
mistake,” Carin said, holding up her glass. We all
chuckled.

As we all talked, I felt Stephen tap
and nudge my feet. I looked at him. We looked at each other and
acknowledged the connection. I looked over at Carin. She seemed to
have noticed the eye contact between Stephen and me and was
smirking. Flustered, I began arranging the wine glasses in rows—one
row for the red wine glasses and one row for the white wine
glasses.

Throughout dinner, people continually
vied for Stephen’s attention, interrupting him mid-speech. “Geez,
Stephen, everyone here loves you.”

“
That’s ridiculous. These
people don’t like me and they’re not my friends. I pay for their
large houses. Every boat has its water skiers. And a lot of people
are skiing behind my boat.”

I smiled. I liked that analogy.
Stephen paid for many of the million-dollar homes around him
through trading or sales credits. These people, including Andrew,
had to be nice to him.

Conversations soon turned to talks of
market movements and economic theories. Even Giovanni participated
in the conversation. Even in his stupor, his intelligence shone
brightly.

“
Dude, you’re wrong,”
Stephen said, correcting an analysis of the market Giovanni had
just given. “If the futures market misprices the fat tails of the
vol market, you get a deliverability shift without suffering the
negative carry in a low-vol environment.” He took a sip of his wine
and smiled at me. “But I have no idea what that structure is going
to cost.”

It was only at this moment that
Giovanni looked and acted slightly sober.

“
Basically, you are avoiding
owning the convexity in a low-vol environment. I don’t know who is
doing that trade, but I really like that idea. Dude, just price it
up for me, and I’ll execute $1 billion to start. And don’t fucking
screw me this time, alright?”

Andrew smiled at me across the table.
I knew that Andrew had accomplished what he had wanted, which was
to elicit more business from Stephen.

I was intrigued by Stephen’s ability
to have more than one conversation at a time, although I didn’t
understand most of what he said in any of them. I was learning that
traders preferred to nod in agreement when they didn’t understand
rather than ask their clients to explain themselves. To ask would
cause them to lose face and seem ignorant. So I nodded along as
well. However, it was obvious to me that Stephen was intentionally
talking over everyone’s head, as a joke that only he
got.

“
Do you always drink red
wine?” Stephen asked, interrupting Carin’s and my conversation. He
remembered what I drank, what I wore, and what we talked about the
first time we had met.

“
Yes, I’m a victim of
habit,” I retorted.

“
Well, that’s a good habit.
Your heart must be healthy,” he replied. “Do you think your
drinking is problematic?”

I looked at him
quizzically.

“
It’s not a problem for me,”
he said, laughing at his own offbeat humor.

“
Okay,” I responded. Carin
and I looked at each other.

“
I’m just saying.” He
paused. “I mean, I just noticed.”

Giovanni lit a joint and soon the
pungent smell of it began to invade our space. We all immediately
directed our attention to him. I worried that Jeffrey would notice
and kick us out.

“
Dude, let’s put that away,”
Stephen said.

“
No one can fucking smell
it,” Giovanni said. He took the joint and pressed it against the
bottom of the table.

Soon after, Jeffrey stopped over at
our table. I had never seen anyone be so public about their drug
use.

I was being overly familiar with
Jeffrey, touching him often. I thanked him for tolerating the
behavior of my crowd, allowing the pot smoking to occur despite
feigning ignorance and accepting the risks associated with that
blind eye.

“
No worries. A friend of
Kim’s is a friend of mine,” Jeffrey said.

“
Who’s Kim and when do we
get to meet her?” Andrew asked.

“
She’s my hot friend,” I
said. “My summer mentor as an intern.”

“
So, bring her tonight.
Let’s go out somewhere,” Andrew said.