Bond Girl by Erin Duffy

December, with no winter break. I was wistful for the wonder of the season, but I was trapped in my Girlie chair. The firm tried to bring a bit of the holiday spirit indoors, sparing no expense in decorating the building. There was a giant tree in the lobby, and huge sparkling snowflakes dangled from the ceiling. Cromwell got an A for effort, but it still didn’t come close to matching the spectacle of the real thing outside.
    The mood on the trading floor was drastically different during the month of December than it had been since I arrived. December 31 marked not only the end of the calendar year, but also the end of our work year, which, for everyone on the Street, meant one very specific thing: Bonus Season, Wall Street’s great unifier. When you work the way we work all year long, you do it with the assumption that the first week in January you’ll receive a six- or seven-figure bonus check as a reward for the amount of business you generated over the course of the year. The numbers had been finalized by the beginning of the month, so any business done after the first of December was essentially meaningless. Ergo, we basically stopped working. There were holiday parties every night, and by the middle of the month I was exhausted, looked like I had been run over by Santa’s sleigh and his eight reindeer, and I had gained a solid ten pounds.
    One Friday, the fixed-income group threw a party for the whole floor. At 4:00 P.M. kegs appeared and tables were adorned with cheese platters and antipasti. Waiters and waitresses passed hors d’oeuvres that men popped in their mouths like breath mints. Another night, Chick rented out an entire restaurant just for the government bond group, so we could have a year-end team bonding session over expensive bottles of wine and osso buco. The salesmen and traders had to take our most important clients for drinks to say thank you for another year of business, and those nights rarely ended before midnight. You weren’t allowed to opt out of the parties; it was considered political suicide. I tried to turn down the invitation to one of the many fiestas held by upper management (which they inevitably didn’t even bother to attend), and Chick told me in no uncertain terms that if I wasn’t there, I shouldn’t be surprised if my ID didn’t work the following morning. I prayed for New Year’s Eve to arrive so that the holiday bender would end and I could regenerate some of the liver cells I had damaged over the course of the month. I hadn’t seen the inside of the gym in a month, my clothes were tight, my eyes were puffy, and I was only twenty-two. I didn’t know how some of the older guys did it and didn’t drop dead.
    Trading floors are frigid iceboxes year-round. In the winter, they are almost unbearable. It’s a matter of necessity since the computers give off so much heat. If the room is heated as well, there is a fairly good chance the systems would get too hot and explode. So the floor was always freezing, and most people kept fleece jackets and scarves at their desks for days that were unusually bitter.
    One morning in late December, Drew rubbed the palms of his hands together to warm them up. “Christ, it’s cold in here today. What would you give to be on a beach somewhere right now?”
    â€œI’d be happy to be in a third world country right now if it were near the equator,” I said, the metal legs of my chair almost too cold to touch.
    Chick returned from a meeting and shuddered as he removed his overcoat. “Well, A. Today’s a big day for you. It’s like Christmas came early.”
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œToday, you get a desk.” He pointed at the desk next to Drew.
    â€œThat’s Dave’s desk.”
    â€œCorrection, it was Dave’s desk. Now, it’s yours.”
    It was as if someone had given me a convertible, or a bag full of cash. It was the best