Opening Belle (23 page)

I can't resist him. Even though I'm tired and my dinner is about to become undone. I cannot resist my husband in the late-afternoon sun on our big white bed with the almost clean sheets when I know his love for me is hanging by a thread and I know I still can turn so many things around. In his own Bruce-like way, he is saying, “Yes.”

T
HE ELEVATOR
lifts me to the executive dining room and my calm grows with each passing floor. I've rehearsed what I want to say, so there's nothing left to do except play it through. To hold on to my resolve, I've left unopened every message from Henry and I've made Stone or Kathryn return every phone call to him. If Henry knew what I'm about to do, he'd talk me out of it.

I enter an intimate side room off the executive dining room. This room has a nasty reputation and another name, the BJ Ballroom, because it offers the perfect amount of discretion for afternoon delights that don't include food.

There's a round table with twelve silver place settings, starched white linens, and a simple flower arrangement in the middle. The windows are covered with a gauzy material that allows the presence of daylight to be hinted at. Gruss's place is set with a silver cigar cutter, a cigar, and an ashtray in the place where a soup spoon should be. I go to the seat next to his to ensure I get access to the guy.

A woman is already standing in the room, ready to greet Gruss's guests. It's Blythe Quidel, one of Feagin Dixon's legal counsel, and technically the last word on all things human resourcey. When she sees where I'm about to sit, she raises one bleached eyebrow in curiosity.

“Oh, is this assigned seating?” I say to the question on her face.

“Now, Ms. McElroy, of course not,” Blythe says crisply, though I can tell my bullheaded move has surprised her.

I glance at the embedded microphones on the table. They're a permanent installation and there's no way to tell if they are on or off. I'm going to guess we're being recorded.

“Belle,” Blythe gushes in her false southern tone, and comes around the table to shake my hand. Her accent is like Madonna's English affectation; it tells you where she wishes she were from. Blythe takes a moment to think about how to speak in a way that doesn't sound so defensive and goes forward with this person, altered from thirty seconds ago.

The top of her head only reaches my shoulder and I stoop a bit to shake her hand. It's hard for me to smile at someone I just don't like, but I do my best. Blythe is a fantastic lawyer and a complete sellout. Each time I took a maternity leave, she'd read me a speech that basically said Feagin owed me
a
job but legally didn't owe me the exact position I was leaving behind. Each time I had to sit there, my head lowered while I took a subconscious bashing for my audacious move of reproducing. Blythe's method of achieving success on Wall Street is to be one of the boys. It's as if she can't understand why any woman wants both motherhood and a great career. To her it should be one or the other and in nuanced, nonlitigious language, she will tell you that.

Other women now begin to enter the room exactly at noon and as a pack. They stand around air-kissing and admiring one another for a moment, but they aren't chitchatters so things quiet down fast. Most have never spent time with Gruss, so curiosity and an innate desire to please others makes everyone sit quickly and snap napkins to their laps and wait for something big to happen.

Blythe instructs everyone to begin eating even though B. Gruss II, the main event, hasn't arrived, and obedient picking of the salads begins. Stories of trades and deals, from Chicago, Boston, the West Coast, are swapped and a waiter fruitlessly tries to pour wine with no acceptor. I move colorful little legumes about my plate and feel my heartbeat pick up when I hear footsteps approach. It's one of the women who guard Gruss's office, followed by the man himself.

He seems taller than I remembered and more fit too. I'm told he now has a treadmill desk so he walks all day while manning his phone calls. The sheen off his head radiates some of the light in the room and he gives us a presidential wave and intense eye contact. His giant smile reveals expensive orthodontia yellowed slightly to appear real and I think to myself that BG could pass for any number of stereotypes: retired retail executive, 47th Street jewelry salesman, or sports celebrity handler, but the biggest deal maker at one of the world's largest investment banks? You wouldn't have guessed that one.

“So it's my girl partners and girl partner–lights,” he crows. “All in the same room at the same time.”

We titter because that's what we're supposed to do. He athletically moves himself to his designated spot at the round table. He settles into his seat and makes a few more jokes to make us feel important.

“I requested that the most senior women of the firm be gathered so we can talk about issues of concern to women,” he says. “I see some memos running around here that I don't like and I thought a good place to start would be by discussing the glass ceiling.” I blush and then hate that I'm blushing.

“However,” he continues, “since you're all sitting here, it's obvious there is no glass ceiling at Feagin or you'd all be taking steno downstairs.” He guffaws at his own humor and I scan the room thinking someone here must be too young to even know what steno is, but no, I at almost thirty-seven am close to the youngest. “So let me now throw the podium your way and let anyone discuss anything she'd like.”

An uncomfortable pause follows, which he uses to pick up his cigar and inhale the contents deeply. His fingers roll it around with absentminded affection while we wait.

“I'd just like to say,” pipes up the woman from corporate communications, “that Feagin has been such a wonderful experience for me and I'd like to tell other women how great it is here.”

I take a hard look at this woman, whose job includes spinning everything and who doesn't work for a profit center of the bank. Her sprawling Upper East Side apartment is dependent on smooth relations everywhere and she will be of no help to me today and I start to wonder if she's been invited here for that very reason.

“And the meritocracy here,” boasts a British banker. “I'd have never gotten this far had I stayed at my other bank.”

I can't believe this. I've been dropped into the bleachers of a pep rally. I have to speak up. “Let's talk about why it's so difficult to attract female college recruits,” I blurt out, shutting down the women trying to outpraise one another, women bowing to the purveyor of their golden ticket.

Blythe is ready. “We've been looking into this and think that our policy of a two-year program for investment banking is too short. When we have great prospects we'll keep them on longer and not force them to leave to get an MBA.”

“So you think they don't take these jobs because our program is only two years long? All top investment banks offer only a two-year training program to an undergraduate, but many of ours don't even make it through the two years. They feel abused here. They don't see any women on the executive board so they don't see much future here for themselves.”

“Nonsense.” Gruss looks up from the cigar. With that single dismissive word he gets up and uses a phone on the sideboard to connect with someone presumably more interesting than us. The table conversation continues while I listen to him on the telephone, marveling at his rudeness. He seems to be trying to land some deal.

“Sweeten the bid by five hundred thousand,” he says.

“Huh?” he retorts, looking like he's going to crush the cigar.

“Okay, okay, seven hundred thousand it is or they can shop their shitty deal downtown.” He slams down the phone and turns back to the table.

“Where were we?” he interjects. “Someone has raised the issue of the ‘girls down in the front of the building.' The women hired from the modeling agency to act as escorts. That's old news and that was a mistake according to some,” he says. “Next.”

Weird. None of us raised any issue about the downstairs girls. I wonder if he had to rehearse his answers before this and lost track of the questions in real life.

“Maybe we could form some version of a guidance team to help new women recruits find their way around here?” I suggest weakly.

“This is a meritocracy, as you've just heard,” he storms. “You didn't have a pen pal when you came here and you survived.”

“Yes, but women can be a little sensitive to the mosh pit downstairs,” I say. “They get repulsed by the behavior around them. What if someone was to mentor her, tell her she could sue the firm if a guy told her to put Band-Aids on her breasts when she gets cold so he doesn't have to look at her nipples? Maybe then women would stick around longer if they felt they had support. Instead they quit and feel as though they did something wrong.”

I'm trying to shock him. He must know how lucky Feagin is to not have our own class action suit to contend with. I'm threatening him in a subliminal way and he doesn't like it.

“But women like you don't quit,” Gruss guffaws. “That's the sort of girl McPherson and I like around here. That's the sort of person we need. Let the quitters go home.”

Someone comes to my rescue. It's Kathryn. The world's most perfect bond trader climbs out on this limb with me. “I'm uncomfortable having a partner who will only entertain our mutual clients at titty bars,” she says quickly.
Titty bar
is not terminology I'd expect from Kathryn's mouth.

“Why does that make
you
uncomfortable?” Gruss asks.

“Because I don't want to go to topless bars, even though the partner on my accounts does. It's just more teamlike to entertain together. We should only entertain in ways suitable to a professional business.”

I see a vein rising in her neck though she doesn't redden. Not one bit. I hadn't known she was assigned a partner. I wonder why she didn't tell me, until I remember that she doesn't tell anybody anything.

“That sounds to me like this is your issue,” Gruss says. “Why are you uncomfortable? Whatever the client wants to do, that's what you should be doing. Yes, that's definitely your own problem.”

A tiny grimace, like she's just tasted something surprising, creeps across the legal lady's face. Her ironed-on smile has an involuntary twitch to it.

“Maybe Feagin could at least take the higher road, and not reimburse expense accounts for entertaining at strip clubs?” I suggest, in a professional voice.

BG is ready. “People are going to go whether we reimburse or not. It's where men want to go to have a good time and it's mostly men who run these accounts. They don't want to go to the ballet. These are men who work hard all day, who are under pressure all the time. What's the harm in letting off steam? There's nothing more bonding than when we entertain our clients and when we do that, in either banking or trading, guess who bonds with our trading floor? Guess what you get to bond with? Your bank account. If some women are that sensitive, they'll never cut it in this business and don't belong here.”

Seeing that this conversation is too narrow, a star currency trader named Caleigh Caruso shifts gears. “Tell me how I should deal with a situation like this: I have a major Boston account that I cover with a man. I'm the senior person on the account. One day I'm on the phone to the account and they say something to the effect that we've got a great day for the Feagin golf outing. I know nothing about this golf outing and I'm a scratch golfer. This was done behind my back because it was being held at an all-male club in Boston.”

“Oh, yeah? What's your handicap?” Gruss laughs and then turns serious. “Look, ladies, all I'm saying is that we have to get along and be the most productive we can be. If that includes adjusting yourself so you work better with the person sitting next to you, so be it.”

“Nobody should have to compromise their morals so that they can have a job,” I retort.

“I haven't heard anything today that sounds remotely like a moral or ethical issue.” He pushes back on his chair, making an expensive scraping sound on the floor, and continues. “My door is always open and I welcome the chance to chat individually.”

With this he rises from his chair and, without touching his lunch, he leaves. The cigar/pacifier is still being fondled in his hand. He's leaving? This is just the beginning. I look at my list of items to cover and realize we've barely touched one of them. His legal counsel is left there alone, awkwardly recleaning her red spectacles.

“How can you stand to defend that?” I burst out, motioning to the closing door.

Without responding, Blythe stands. “Look, every firm has issues normal to the course of their doing business. We are thriving here despite your criticisms. I too have an open door, and invite each of you to walk through it and visit me.”

“Why visit you when we're all here now? When will all of us in the same room ever happen again?” I ask. “Look, some of you have come from California, Chicago, and even London to discuss this. There's been no discussion so let's have a discussion right now, with or without management!” I feel energized, like some community organizer. Defiance is suddenly the most liberating drug and it's surging through my system. I expect to hear a chorus of “Hell yah!”

Except I don't.

Nobody says anything and all eyes are staring at the microphone jacks on the table, the ones that are probably recording every bit of my rant. But I'm crazed and don't care.

“Ask Chungda what it feels like to be back at work when she gave birth four weeks ago,” I beg. “That is not normal.”

Chungda makes clear that she disowns me and wishes I would shut up.

“Ask Kiera why she still isn't a senior managing director after winning the
Institutional Investor
poll seven years in a row?”