Walk of Shame:
Sordid Tales from
Wall Street West
Mark Cormier
Copyright 2011 Mark Cormier
Clamor Press Edition
Clamor Press Edition, License Notes: This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This work is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters or events here forth depicted is purely coincidental. Use your common sense; they in charge of the nation's wealth would never act this way.
One: A Working Dad's Dilemma
El Commando was dropping Tommy off at his mom's. She would take him to school. Europe was in a tailspin and Asia had closed down hard.
He remembered the old stock market adage that October is always the cruelest month—1929, 1987, 1989, 1997, 1998, 2008 and now this fucking fall ass disaster.
El Commando was slightly front spread with down side exposure and he knew that he had to get to the Wall Street West trading floor as soon as he could.
"Daddy, I don't want Granna to take me to school today. I want to stay with you."
Tommy was clutching his "Poobah."
Tommy went everywhere with his ratty stuffed panda. El Commando's son liked to chew on his toy's furry black and white ears.
"I'd really love to stay with you Tommy but Daddy has to go to work on the trading floor."
"I don't want Daddy to go to work on the trading floor. I want him to stay home with me."
El Commando set the parking brake. He got out of the car and opened Tommy's side door. He unbuckled his son from his car seat.
"No!"
"What do you mean 'No?'"
"No!"
"Tommy, you have to get out of the car. Granna is waiting and Daddy has to go to work on the trading floor or he's going to lose a lot of money."
"No!"
"Tommy, Daddy is getting angry."
El Commando pried his son's hands from the sides of the car seat. Tommy pried them right back. El Commando pried his son's hands from the sides of the car seat. His son pried them right back.
"Damn it, Tommy, you're a stubborn little shit and Daddy has to get to work."
"Ice cream."
"Ice cream?"
"Tommy wants ice cream for breakfast."
"Ice cream isn't for breakfast."
Tommy wedged his feet against the back of the seat of El Commando's King Cab.
El Commando heard his Scythe beep; he had set an alarm on his device to tell him when the S and P Futures dipped below the intersection of their three-month and three year moving averages. He figured he was already down at least fifty thousand dollars; he knew that he had to get to work to start selling SPU's to hedge his short puts or he was positively f-ed.
Then El Commando considered doubling up. But then he remembered the last time that he'd doubled up on a big down day. It hadn't worked out. It hadn't worked out at all. By the time the closing bell had rung, he had dropped a half million in real cash and not just theoretical. When the marks came back into line the next day, he hadn't made back a goddamned dime.
The Old Man hadn't been pleased.
Tommy began wailing. El Commando didn't think that he'd slapped his son that hard. El Commando's mom stuck her head out her front door.
"Jake, why is Tommy crying?"
"He doesn't want to get out of his car seat."
"My neighbors are going to think that something is wrong."
"Something is wrong. He won't get out of his car seat and I have to get to work now."
"Let me put my slippers on. Sometimes, Granna is different than Daddy."
"Hi Granna, Daddy said that I could have ice cream for breakfast."
"Ice cream for breakfast? Who ever heard of such a thing?"
"Daddy said!"
"Well, Granna doesn't have ice cream for breakfast but she does have cinnamon muffins."
"Ice cream."
"There's smiley faces on them."
"Like Elmo?"
"Like Elmo."
"Is this going to be a big day for Tommy, Granna?"
"Yes, sweetheart, it's going to be Tommy's big day."
"Can Poobah have a muffin too?"
"Poobah can have all the muffins he wants!"
El Commando stepped on his cigarette and got back into the car.
"Thanks Mom. I'll talk to you later when I pick up Tommy. The market's down size and I've got to fly."
"Bye dear. Don't you worry about a thing. I'll get Tommy to daycare on time today."
El Commando stepped on the gas and muttered to himself that he could give a shit about Tommy getting to daycare on time today. He had far bigger things to worry about, like whether he'd still have a job when the closing bell rang. Wall Street West didn't like losers and El Commando was on his fourth down month in a row.
And La Gallina, that fat lying bitch, had been doing her best to build a file on El Commando so that she could convince The Old Man to fire him.
El Commando shook his head—he reached for his pack of cigarettes as he ran a red light. He wondered if his fucking ex-wife was fucking The Old Man too. He already knew as well as everyone else on the Wall Street West trading floor that had a pair of eyes and a pair of ears that she was bone dancing with that bastard Gentleman Jim, The Old Man's senior managing partner.
Two: El Commando's Big Day
The trading floor was not as crowded as usual; it was only a half hour to the New York opening, but there weren't as many traders as El Commando had expected buying and selling SPUs and SPYs on the box. El Commando figured that a lot of guys had decided to trade the opening from upstairs. It was a lot safer that way with a lot fewer SEC obligations.
"Can you f-ing believe it? This f-ing market's going to open down seven f-ing standard deviations!"
El Commando pushed Dodge out of the way. He figured that the f-ing prop trader must have been back spread and had already locked in a sizable profit on the box from his long juice. F-ing company guys! They could f-ing afford to be long theta. After all, the f-ing prop guys were mostly all salary.
El Commando liked to stay short the juice. That way, he'd never get caught with a lot of decay on a dull market. His compensation was almost 100 percent discretionary and when he dropped a grand day after day, it didn't take long to f-ing really hurt. It felt like he imagined it would feel to get ass fucked with the wrong end of a rusty garden rake.
Well, today was certainly not going to be a dull market and El Commando had been caught with his pants down. The weird word and phrase that Sal Finagle had coined came into El Commando's head:
"B.O.H.I.C.A., Bend Over Here It Comes Again!"
He vowed that he'd do his best to keep from getting fucked from behind a second time. He'd cover his short and then play it neutral, scaling as best as he could. Maybe he could make some of what he'd lost back if the day trading was any good.
He looked up to the glass wall of the observation deck. His gut tightened. La Gallina stood there like a shadow. The lights were off but she was almost pressing her body to the glass. Her knocked up belly looked like a medicine ball. The f-ing bitch! She'd served him with papers the day before, advising him that she was going to seek full custody.
El Commando muttered that even though his ex wife was knocked up and didn't even have a daddy for her new belly bug, the fat lying bitch was still seeking to take Tommy away from his daddy. El Commando told himself that he hated her.
El Commando grabbed his handheld trading device and a sheath of charts from the booth; one of the clerks had bought a tray of coffees; he clipped his hard badge, "COM" onto his trading jacket—El Commando then grabbed a coffee and made sure that the hole in the top was not aligned with the seam in the cardboard cup.
El Commando remembered the time that a clerk had brought him a cup of coffee. The clerk had without thinking aligned the hole in the lid so that it matched up with the seam of the cardboard cup. It had been the clerk's first or second day on the Wall Street West trading floor.
El Commando remembered that he hadn't noticed and when he had sipped from the hole in the lid, coffee had dribbled out from the cup's seam and onto his trading jacket and shirt. It had made a stain that had looked like a five-legged spider.
"F-ing f f!"
At the time, El Commando remembered that he had been getting "B.O.H.I.C.A.ed" on some long gamma; one of the few f-ing times, that he'd actually bought the juice—the fucking pig of stock was up four points and El Commando had hedged the whole f-ing way up.
He had been mad at himself for even trying to put on a back spread; he had known that he couldn't trade them for jack shit.
El Commando remembered that he had day traded for a negative 356 largo and his position had only made 250. He'd been long upside calls and the fucking stock had gone to straight to his f-ing long strike. His juice had gotten squeezed out like a mother f-ing lemon in a vise.
El Commando remembered that he had been in a bad mood.
He remembered that he had called the new clerk back over. El Commando had pointed to the alignment of the hole in the top with the seam.
"This is f-ing way wrong."
He had taken off the lid and then had thrown the cup of hot coffee towards the clerk's face. El Commando had remembered that he had mostly missed.
"Rule number one—never f-ing put the hole in the lid right where the fucking seam in the cup is. The coffee fucking leaks out. Rule number two—don't ever forget rule number one as long as you don't bear the Sphinx on your thigh."
El Commando remembered that the clerk had wiped some coffee off from his chin.
"Yes sir!"
One of the other traders in the crowd had turned to El Commando after the new clerk had gone back into the booth.
"Dude, that was a little extreme."
"It was for his own good. If a clerk can't get the coffee order right then inevitably they'd screw something a lot more important up. In this business, everything has got to be right. There's too much do re mi involved to be f-ing around."
"Yeah, but you can't just throw hot coffee in somebody's face."
"You treat your clerks one way and I treat mine another, deal with it A-hole."
"Dude, I think that you have 'anger management' issues."
"I might but it doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?"
El Commando sipped from his coffee this day; he stuck a cigarette behind his ear for luck and walked over to his pit.
It was time for him to get f-ing busy.
He tapped the screen and saw that his handheld was still loaded up with the "start" screen to his favorite on line Texas Hold 'Em poker site. His account was up over five grand for the week and his goal for the week was six.
As tempted as he was, he knew that he didn't have time to play even one hand. He'd have to wait until trading slowed down. And this day, El Commando wasn't sure that the trading would ever slow down.
"I'm glad you're here. I've got some size public orders and I'm going to need your liquidity. It looks like all the other traders assigned to this pit are staying upstairs."
"F-ing prop traders! No f-ing balls!"
El Commando remembered the time that one of the prop traders had decided to stand in his spot.
"Dude, that's where I stand."
"Not today."
"You don't understand."
"No, you don't understand. That's my spot. That's where I stand."
"I do understand. I got here first. Today this isn't your spot. It's mine."
The Wall Street West pit boss hadn't arrived yet. El Commando hadn't even thought much about what he had to do. He picked the prop trader up and threw him towards the booths where the phone clerks sat who processed the public's orders.
A clerk carrying a tray of coffees had barely avoided the trader's flying body.
"Man, what was that all about? If I had spilled these coffees, there's a whole crowd of traders over in Softy who are going to rip me a new pucker."
"Sorry, the A-hole was standing in my spot."
"Why the f would he do that? You're El Commando. Nobody stands in your spot."
"Exacalacally."
El Commando remembered that when the pit boss had showed up, the prop trader had tried to explain what had happened and had tried to get the pit boss to issue El Commando a citation for unprofessional conduct.
"But you were standing in El Commando's spot."
"It's not his spot. I got there first."
"El Commando's been trading in this pit for years."
"It doesn't matter. Whoever gets here first should be able to stand where they want to."
"Dude, how long have you had the Sphinx on your thigh?"
"A month."
"A month too long if The Old Man catches wind of this."
Even though El Commando was secretly glad on this day of days that the other traders that usually traded in the pit had decided to stay upstairs, he decided that he had to say something more.
"F-ing weak tailed bastards. What about the pledge we all signed to make fair and orderly two sided markets?"
"I guess not everybody with the Sphinx tattooed onto their thigh bothers to read the fine print. At least, you're here."
"At least, I'm here."
"At least, the S.E.C. given all the hedge funds that make markets a triple wide exemption. That ought to help."
"Like Maxwell's f-ing demon."
"Max demon who?"
"It's a concept in physics. It's a way to design a perpetual motion machine where a demon sits on top of a box and organizes molecules with adding or subtracting energy from the box. It's like making markets. You buy on the bid and sell on the offer and you get to keep the vig in the middle."
"Triple wide's a lot of f-ing vig!"
"I don't make the rules, I just follow them except of course, when nobody's looking. There's a lot of risk in a market like this."
The pit boss assigned to El Commando's pit was Jenny. El Commando was glad. He liked Jenny even though she was an obvious lap lick. He heard a lot of weird stories about her but he thought that she had a good head on her shoulders. What she did after hours was totally her business.
He noticed that she'd gotten another ring in her nose and that her hair was blue tinged instead of the orange it had been the day before. She usually always wore pants but this day, she had put on a dress.
"In drag today, sweetie?'
"In drag?"
"The dress—don't you usually wear pants?"
"How nice of you to notice. My new girlfriend says I need to act more feminine."
"Why?"
"I guess because she wants to act more masculine."
"How do you feel about that?"
"I'm guess I'm OK with it for a while. She's really hot."
"You'll have to bring her down to the trading floor some day."
"I invited her to the Christmas party. The Old Man said that everybody could bring one guest."
"If I go, I'm looking forward to meeting her."
"Why wouldn't you go? I heard that the firm is thinking of having the party on Fisherman's wharf and that The Old Man might spring for a literal ton of fresh Dungeness."
"La Gallina…"
"That's right. You guys have issues."
"Calling what that lying fat bitch and I have 'issues' is like calling a piece of crap Hyundai an f-ing 'Lexis.'"
"You mean an 'L-car?'"
"An 'L-car?'"
"Johnny Ho, the big trader in Genentech, he pays me to double check his trades from the day before the opening. That's what he calls 'Lexises." He calls them 'L-Cars.' He doesn't like to mention them by name. He says the day after he bought his first L-car for cash, he blew his account all the way out and it took him nine months to get the do re mi that he had dropped all back."
"Chinese traders are always the most superstitious."
"You can't blame them. They come from a superstitious culture."
"No shit."
El Commando looked at his trading device—the SPUs had dropped another ten points but the SPYs looked a little stronger. He wondered if maybe he could work the spread as a hedge for his goddamned shitty-assed front spread of a position.
"Are those size public orders to buy or to sell?"
"You know that I'm not supposed to tell."
"If they're size, I'm going to need to hedge. If I know what side they're on I can start hedging right now in the pre market. It'll work out better that way for the public."
"Sell calls, buy puts."
"Little or big?"
"Big calls, little puts—at least they were on yesterday's closing prices. Who knows today? Dodge said the market was going to open down size."
"Well, you know the New York specialists will try to milk it for all its worth especially if they got caught with their pants down."
'Those guys never get caught with their pants down. They're the ones with the crank to the money machine, aren't they?"
"Everybody gets caught with their pants down sometimes even when they're not wearing pants."
"That's true. I'm guessing a hard rally as soon as they can lure some suckers into the market."
El Commando suddenly liked Jenny even more. He thought that even a hard-core lap licker could look kind of cute in a dress.
And he thought that she was definitely smart. He'd thought that he might back her if she ever decided that she wanted to become a trader for Wall Street West. It would be nice to have a fifty percent of a reliable revenue stream. And he figured that she'd be a reliable income stream. He figured she'd probably play it flat most days, not really long or short deltas or the juice.
He'd heard that Jenny and La Gallina had dated but El Commando blamed his ex wife for that. He knew that Diana couldn't keep her f-ing whore paws off anything that twitched, guy or bitch.
El Commando figured it like Jenny had, the New York specialists would probably open the market as low as they could legally get away with so they could cover any losses from their overnight longs with under priced stock. The rally when it came would be hard and violent. It definitely wasn't a day to double up on the short side. That would definitely be a potential "B.O.H.I.C.A."
El Commando told himself that he'd wait to cover his own shorts until the SPUs crossed back over the intersection point between the three-month and the three-year moving average.
And It was just as Jenny and El Commando had called it. The market opened down size. El Commando watched as Kudzu forced another trader in another pit to sell into the hole.
The other trader had had too big a position and The Old Man had picked this other trader as the trader to sacrifice. The Old Man believed in paying the market its due homage; The Old Man said that the market was like a pagan god that way.
El Commando patted himself on the back—even though he was down almost a clean grandiose largo, he'd been smart enough to tuck a thousand lot of tiny puts away down at the very bottom of his graph.
The Old Man could see that at a certain point, El Commando's position would turn itself around and that his losses weren't unlimited. The Old Man always liked to emphasize to his traders that the probability curve for most markets was not that the law of standard deviation dictated and that most markets not only had "high middles" but also "fat tails."
"Just hold your nose and buy'em. One day you'll wake up and there'll be a extra million in your account because some f-ing terrorist A-hole detonated a nuke in the middle of Paris and you were a smart enough rat enough to buy a thousand little puts."
The other trader's hair was a mess, his glasses had slipped down his nose, and his shirt was out from his pants.
His tie was wrapped around his neck like a noose and Kudzu had taken the trader's hard plastic badge "NIK" off and was holding it in his hand.
El Commando wrinkled his nose. He smelled the trader's whose badge had been pulled nervous sweat but he also smelled something else. He wondered if maybe he'd stepped on some shit on the sidewalk on his way into work. El Commando told himself that he'd check the bottom of his shoes in the bathroom later.
"See you around Nick."
"Yeah, see you around."
Jenny slammed her fist against one of the computers that ran the Wall Street West trading floor.
"This Brit f-ing trading system is driving me f-ing loco!"
Jenny had a phone to her ear. She leaned over the counter.
"Sorry, Jake, but this new trading system we leased from the Brits evidently is getting backed up—too much data on the f-ing lame assed server."
"I guess those thick mouthed A-holes aren't used to trading billions of shares along with billions of options and futures at the same time. I heard that things trade by appointment over there along with a good cuppa tea!"
"This is totally random, but do you like Billy Bragg?"
"I do."
"Sorry about that. For some reason, I thought that you would. Anyway, I still have all these public market orders to execute and the prices we're disseminating are totally wrong. I'm not sure what to do. Maybe I should call over the Floor Supervisor."
El Commando smiled to himself. He now knew that he was going to have a very good and big day.
"There's no need to do that. I'll fill them for you right now. You can input the prices later."
"I hope Time and Sales doesn't get too messed up."
"I won't. You said yourself that everything was delayed."
"I guess you're right."
El Commando readied his handheld. His stylus felt like a f-ing knife. It felt like a fucking sword. He felt like he was about to make a big killing and he almost laughed out loud because he was. He looked at his sheets and finished his coffee. He fingered the cigarette tucked behind his ear and wished that Wall Street West still allowed smoking on the trading floor.
Jenny had told him that most of her market orders were selling long or buying short deltas. The disseminated price on the underlying was five minutes old. He could tell from his handheld which was on a different system than the trading computers that Jenny was looking at that the market had already rallied four standard deviations and it looked it might even break into positive territory.
Every single short delta he'd sell or long delta he'd buy, he'd hedge with an underlying that was much higher than where the calls and puts were priced at. He wondered if he'd be able to make more than a half million in the next ten minutes and then El Commando laughed because he knew that if he didn't, make at least that, then something had gone terribly wrong.
"How are the Nike Dec 100s?"
Jenny went through the orders one by one. El Commando fired off his hedges via his handheld and when the opening rotation was finished, reached for the cigarette behind his ear and the lighter that was in the pocket of his Wall Street West trading jacket.
"You can't smoke that in here. It's a five hundred dollar fine. You know the rules."
"Five hundred dollars? I guess that you'll just have to fine me."
As Jenny handed him his five hundred dollar citation, El Commando watched La Gallina as she made her way from pit to pit, assessing how the massive hedge fund had done.
He thought that his ex wife walked like a fucking duck and wondered when her baby that didn't have a daddy yet was due. He knew that now no matter how hard she tried to get The Old Man to fire him, she wouldn't succeed.
El Commando as well as everyone else that worked at Wall Street West knew that The Old Man loved to hang on to his winners.
"Dump your losers and let your winners ride," is something everybody who bore the Sphinx on their thighs had heard The Old Man say many times. And El Commando was certainly a winner that day; it had been El Commando's big day!
He couldn't wait to get to the Iron Duke and crow about how much f-ing do re mi he had raked in. He figured that the local evening news transmission would probably be there to ask about the "market anomaly." The news transmission chumps usually were at the Iron Duke whenever the market really rocked or melted down. They like to interview the traders from Wall Street West for a little bit of "color."
El Commando hoped that they'd shove the microphone and camera in front of his face. He vowed that he'd tell them the truth and if it pissed La Gallina off, then screw her! Even though he bore the Sphinx on his thigh, the f-ing firm didn't control his f-ing mind.
El Commando looked up to window of the observation deck; he saw The Old Man standing there. The Old Man gave El Commando a "thumbs up" through the glass. El Commando then thought that if he did get interviewed, he'd play it cool, not because of La Gallina but because of The Old Man. The Old Man had never done anything "personal" to El Commando. The only one who he still had a beef against was that fat lying bitch, La Gallina.
El Commando remembered that he had wanted to check the bottom of his shoes for shit. He laughed.
Fuck it! He could buy a whole fucking shoe store with what he'd stolen in less than twenty minutes! Fuck it! He could buy a whole god damned chain of fucking shoe stores!
Three: All Aboard!
Sal Finagle laughed like a mad man. The lowly phone clerk for Wall Street West laughed like he had imagined he would laugh when he had first sucked from a tank of laughing gas.
The steel tank of nitrous oxide had been positioned on the stern of the Wall Street West party boat bobbing on San Francisco Bay.
But Sal remembered that after he had sucked from a purple birthday party balloon plump with the gas, he hadn't laughed at all. He had fallen flat on his back and he had gone to a place that he had never been before—a marvelous place, a wonderful place—a place that he never wanted to come back from. He had thought that nitrous oxide should have been nicknamed "dream gas" rather "laughing gas."
He knew that the fat lying bitch was outside but he decided to make her wait; Sal needed to make his on and off again girl friend and boss suffer. His hand hovered over the button.
Sal remembered that he had sucked on the party balloon plump with the gas until he had passed out. When he had passed out, he had fallen backwards and the back of his head had whack ed against the unyielding hard riveted steel of the party boat's deck.
Sal remembered that he had hit from the balloon again and again and Sal remembered that he had thought about worrying whether he had been killing a lot of brain cells but then he had told himself that he had plenty of brain cells to spare.
Sal remembered that after one particularly large hit; he had almost pitched face first over the rail and into the water. When he had come to, Sal remembered that he had seen the face of The Snake looming over him like a ripened cantaloupe.
"Are you OK? Your eyes were fluttering like a seagull's wings when it's taking a fucking dump."
"I'm plenty OK. Where's the goddamned tank? I was high as kite. I keep dreaming the best dream that I have ever dreamed in my entire life"
"What is it about?"
"I can't remember."
"Well, why don't you put a life vest on? That water's f-ing cold. If you fall in, you'll need a wet suit."
"No life vest! No wet suit, just like sex without a condom on your dick, no nothing except my f-ing mind and me. You're not my mom, you homo."
She rang his doorbell again and again. Sal wasn't sure he should even buzz her up—the fat, lying bitch!
Sal remembered that the occasion for the Wall Street West sponsored cruise had been a big fireworks show launched from a big flat barge anchored under the gray steel spans of the Bay Bridge; later on, Sal remembered that somebody had been passing around a bowl of psilocybin mushrooms; he remembered that he had thought that the bowl had looked like it was full of dirty little chocolate truffles; he remembered that he had grabbed a handful and that he had stuffed the mushrooms into his mouth. They had tasted like dirt.
Sal remembered that he had then wandered below decks where there had been a dance floor and massive banks of big black speakers stacked precariously against the insides of the party boat's hull.
He remembered that the had danced mostly all by himself and every time the boat had rocked, he'd had to excuse himself as he had slammed into bitch after bitch again and again.
The Old Man had hired a dozen hookers as "eye candy."
The Old Man had paid for the party boat, the barge, and the fireworks to celebrate the twenty first anniversary of the hedge fund that he had founded just after the market crash of 1987; The Old Man had called it, his "Wall Street West is Finally Legal!" party.
And whenever he had said that, Sal remembered that The Old Man had laughed his booming laugh and had shown whoever was listening, his middle finger; The Old Man had "flipped them the bird."
"When this firm finally goes legal, that's when we stop making money fist over fist! Got it?"
"Got it!""
All of the employees and traders of the hedge fund would then flip The Old Man, "the bird" right back. It was one of Wall Street West's inside jokes.
Sal laughed as he thought about how everybody that worked or traded for the huge hedge fund knew that there were a lot of inside jokes at Wall Street West. Everybody accepted that inside jokes were part of the "rough and tumble" hedge fund's floor trading culture.
Sal remembered that the night of the "Wall Street West is Finally Legal!" party, The Old Man had parked himself in the front of the boat's wheel most of the night with a hooker on each side of him.
"I do have some Navy experience!"
Sal remembered that the hooker on The Old Man's left, a dark skinned bitch with bleached blonde hair and pink thigh high "go go" boots, had laid her hand on The Old Man's upper arm.
"Were you a captain in the Navy?"
"No, a guitarist."
"There are guitarists in the Navy?"
"Not a lot."
And after stuffing a bunch of Franklins in the real Captain's braided blue pocket, Sal remembered that The Old Man had had control of the wheel for as long as he wanted.
"Ladies, the trick is to turn the boat in a small enough circle to catch its own wake."
The Old Man had waved his cigar in the air to demonstrate and then he had cranked the wheel hard to the right.
Sal remembered how everybody on the boat had screamed as the hundred foot boat had leapt into the air like a big metal whale.
"You have to gun the engines right after you straighten out and before the boat climbs the oncoming wall of water."
Sal remembered that a massive wave had washed over the bow but that The Old Man's cigar had stayed lit.
Sal remembered that he had thought the rise and fall of the throb of the boat's engines sounded like a heart about to explode from the beat of its own blood.
Sal's device buzzed in his pocket. Now the bitch was trying to call him. He'd be damned if he gave her he pleasure of picking up.
Sal remembered that after the fireworks had ended, The Old Man had retired to the Captain's cabin with the two hookers.
"Ladies, let me show you a few of the other things I learned in the Navy."
The other hooker, a short and vaguely Asian bitch, had laid her hand on The Old Man's arm.
"I'm out of cigarettes. Maybe you'll let me have a suck on that cigar."
The Old Man had handed her the cigar.
"Anything for a beauty such as you."
"I like to suck on things."
"That's what the guy at the agency told me."
"Adrian?"
"I think that's his name."
"He's an A-hole."
Sal remembered that he had then gone below decks but that he had still seen streaks of light everywhere and that his ears had heard a ringing like out of control church bells.
At the time, Sal remembered that he had wondered if the bright bursts of light in the sky and the big booms of sound from the fireworks had somehow scored his retinas or damaged his hearing. Then he remembered that he had remembered the handful of mushrooms that he had gobbled.
Sal remembered that he had had worried that his heart might explode if he kept dancing so hard. He remembered that he had felt like a marionette. He remembered that it had felt like his strings had gotten all tangled.
His device buzzed again and again. Fuck her! She had lied to him and now La Gallina just had to f-ing wait.
He remembered that on the dance floor that he had waved his cigarette around in front of him spelling out the names of the Wall Street West traders and employees sweating and gyrating around him. He remembered that he had tried as hard as he could to not spill his drink as he had danced but not succeeding.
One of the dozen hookers that The Old Man had hired had been a brunette with pale white skin; Sal remembered that she had had a vintage sailor hat pinned to her head, a bright orange life vest strapped to her oversized chest and he remembered that she had had on nothing else.
Sal remembered that the bitch had been selling shots of tequila to be slurped from her navel for ten dollars. Sal remembered that he had had two shots and then he had offered he another to flip over so that he could sniff a rail of gack off the base of her spine.
He remembered that the hooker's pale white face had looked a lot like a picture he had seen of his real mom taken when she had been in her twenties.
Sal's real mom had also had an upturned nose and wide brown eyes.
"You want half of this rail?"
Sal remembered that, his on again off again girlfriend and boss at Wall Street West, La Gallina had stuck out her tongue at him and then La Gallina had ruffled his hair.
He remembered that he had thought that his hair had been hard and sharp like barbed wire. La Gallina hadn't seemed to notice. Sal remembered that she had licked her lips and then had smirked.
"Why the f not?"
Sal remembered that after La Gallina had gacked, she had smirked again and then she had extended her middle finger to tickle the hairs of the bitch's brunette pussy. The bitch had squirmed and then looked back over the bulky orange shoulder of her life vest.
"That's not part of the ten dollars."
La Gallina had thrown a Franklin at the hooker's pale white face.
Sal remembered that the bitch had smirked right back and then had tucked the Franklin under her bright orange life vest and then had laid her face back down onto the dance floor.
"Honey, feel free to do whatever you want back there. For that price, I can be finger food in any sailor's galley especially if the sailor's an f-ing hot bitch."
Sal remembered that the dance floor had then begun heaving and that the bitch's ass had begun to slide side to side.
Sal remembered that he had wondered if The Old Man had gotten a hold of the wheel again and was again trying to get the big metal boat to jump its own wake.
He remembered that La Gallina had almost gotten a third finger to slide into the bitch's slippery gash before the bitch in the sailor hat and life vest had suddenly slid away like a slippery bar of soap in a tub. Sal remembered that La Gallina had licked her fingers and then had offered him her wet and smelly hand.
"Want some?"
Sal Finagle's doorbell rang again. This time, La Gallina kept the doorbell pressed down. It rang again and again like church bells tugged when there was a big fire in the village or the declaration of war.
Sal laughed again like he had wrongly imagined that he would have laughed on laughing gas.
He thumbed the "listen" button on his intercom.
"Sal, you know it's me. We need to talk."
Sal wiped his nose; he'd been gacking hard all by himself and his nose was running hard like snowmelt down a mountain in late spring.
He thought to himself that of all the people to be ringing his doorbell it was her, La Gallina, that lying fat bitch—and Sal thought to himself, the bitch that was now the cause of all his hurt and the cause of all of his troubles. He'd f-ing show her!
Sal thumbed the "talk" button and in a mocking high voice said:
"Where’s Gentleman Jim? Home wondering if he's the fool that planted the monkey in your belly or maybe he's just counting his stacks of do re mi wondering how much your bitch stupidity is going to cost him?"
Sal toyed with the "listen" button, thumbing the button on and off so that he heard a staccato stutter.
"I’m silence lone. We silence to silence talk silence."
Sal thumbed the "talk" button like he was trying to jam a thumbtack into concrete.
"I can’t hear a word you’re saying, bitch."
Sal then thumbed the "listen" button like he was jamming his thumb into La Gallina's twat and then he held the button down hard just so he could have the pleasure of hearing the fat lying bitch walk away.
Sal was almost salivating as he waited to hear the click of her heels on the hard concrete of the apartment building's outside walkway as her heels receded away and she got the f-ing f out of his life.
"Sal, sweetie, we really need to talk. I'm totally serious."
Sal muttered to himself.
"What the flying f!"
Sal sensed that he needed someone to talk to; he had been gacking too hard and he sensed that if he didn't have something else to do besides sniffing cocaine and switching from transmission to transmission on the tube, he might chew his f-ing lips right off—so despite his best judgment, Sal decided to buzz the fat lying bitch up.
He thought to himself that even if La Gallina was the big fat liar who had lied to him about who had planted the bug in her belly, he still had a sack and a half of gack and he knew that when La Gallina was good and gacked, she got horny like a she dog in high heat—not that Sal would have a goddamned thing to do with her, horny or not.
He opened the door to his apartment.
There she stood.
Four: Legs behind the Head
Sal thought that his on again off again girlfriend and boss looked tired. He told himself not to feel sorry for her.
Strands of hair messily strayed from her bun; it looked to Sal like she had tried to wet them down with sweat from her palm. And as messed up and as stupid as she was, Sal could see from La Gallina's belly bump that she was definitely knocked up; the bitch was showing, and even though Sal knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the monkey in her belly wasn't his even though she had claimed that it was, he still felt a little bit sorry for her.
"You want some of the wrong?"
La Gallina nodded. Sal could see the tracks of the tears that had streaked her cheeks. He could see that yellow gunk now clotted the corners of her eyes. As Sal poured the second half of his first sack of gack onto the mirror, he asked her again:
"So seriously where the f is Gentleman Jim? Home with wifey?"
"You hurt your hand."
Sal had almost forgotten that he had punched his kitchen wall hard because he had been so teed off at how messed up his "situation" was.
He told himself that he'd have to wipe his blood from the kitchen wall before it got too dry. Sal told himself that dried blood was always a bitch to clean off. It got hard like dried jam.
"I had a little accident. It's nothing. So where's your perfumed bottomed Ivy League boyfriend?"
"I could kiss your booboos and make them feel a little better."
"Fat chance. I wouldn't want you even touching me with your hands let alone getting your lips near any of my body parts. It leads to fucking problems. So where is the rich idiot? Off somewhere sticking his fingers up his own ass?"
"I abandoned him at The Finish Line. His wifey is at some five-hour yoga workshop up in Marin so he's free as a bird till this evening and after he dropped her off, he decided come back to the City to see me for a few hours. But that A-hole wants to blow our together time watching some transmission on the tube of a big B-ball game that I don't give a flying F about. I told him I might be back before the game gets over but then again I told him I might not."
"What's his wifey's workshop all about?"
"It's for 'women only.' Something about bitches working both legs behind their heads."
"How come they won't let guys go?"
"The bitches would feel awkward."
"With both legs behind their heads, they would sure look awkward."
"They don't mind looking awkward. They just don't want to feel awkward."
"Bitches."
"I agree, and I can say that because I am one. 'Bitches.'"
"Maybe it's a weird yoga thing."
"Never done it."
"Me neither. Thank God. I think if I could get my legs behind my head, I might try sucking my own cock then I'd never leave this f-ing apartment."
La Gallina punched Sal on the arm.
"Sal, please…"
Sal worked a Franklin into a tube and handed it to her.
"She's preggo too, I hear."
"Who?"
"Gentleman Jim's wifey."
"Karen?"
"That's her name. I keep wanting to say 'Kathleen.'"
"No, her name's definitely 'Karen.'"
"Your rich tailed boyfriend's been busy. Has he knocked any other bitches up besides the two of you?"
"I don't think so."
"Is it safe?"
"Is what safe?"
"Preggo Karen getting her legs behind her head in her yoga thingamajig."
"How the f would I know? Like I said, I've never done it, although, until I started to show, I thought about buying some of those Lili-lime yoga pants. They can make a bitch's ass look awesome especially if she's in shape."
"Yogurt pants?"
"Don't be an f-ing idiot."
"Sorry. Be careful. Those pants make some bitch's bottoms look even bigger than they are. For crime's sake, there ought to be an f-ing license of some kind where a bitch has to pass some kind of test before she can wear a pair of those yogurt pants. Man, I mean sometimes, their asses look as big as a cargo boat in those goddamn stretchy pants. I mean, for crime's sake, those bitches ought to be working for Toyota and unloading cars from their cargo bottoms onto the docks with those big ass cranes over in Oaktown."
"Sal, sometimes, I think that you hate bitches."
"I hate some bitches and I like others. I thought I hated you."
La Gallina traced the rail with rolled up Franklin as she sniffed the gack into her left nostril. Her voice thickened.
"You don't still hate me, do you?"
"I'm still thinking about it."
La Gallina put her hand on Sal's thigh.
"I suppose for a pregnant bitch to get both legs behind her head might have its advantages."
"For delivering a baby?"
"For other reasons too."
"For other reasons?"
"Before a baby gets delivered, it has to get made…"
"You already made a baby with that jerk, Gentleman Jim."
"I can still practice up for the next one…"
Sal poured out another heap of gack; this time from his second sack.
He laughed as he remembered the day after 9/11 when San Francisco's finest, had run bomb-sniffing dogs through the Wall Street West trading floor to make sure that the terrorists hadn't planted any explosive surprises for traders and employees of the prestigious hedge fund.
Sal remembered that the dogs had been looking for bombs but everyone had forgotten that the canines had also been cross-trained to detect illegal drugs.
Sal laughed as he remembered that the cops had had to requisition a full size paddy wagon to haul away all the pills, powders, plant scraps and illegal flowers that the dogs had found stashed in drawers, stored in cabinets, and tucked behind the many computerized trading screens of Wall Street West.
Of course, nobody at the hedge fund had known anything.
Sal shaped the gack into two distinct piles with the hard plastic edge of his Master of the Universe credit card.
He laughed again as he remembered that when San Francisco's finest had questioned everyone to find out whose drugs they had hauled away, the founder of the firm The Old Man and its senior managing partner Gentleman Jim had quickly donated several fat envelopes full of unmarked green to the Policemen's Retirement Fund and soon enough, the cop's questioning had stopped.
La Gallina brushed his hurt hand with hers. Sal winced.
"Are you sure your hand doesn't want a teeny weenie kiss? It might feel better. While I'm at it, I could kiss a few other things too. They might feel better too."
"Maybe later. I want to get a lot more gacked first."
La Gallina ran her hand through Sal's hair.
"F-ing Gentleman Jim and the Deuce. He's so boring when he's glued to the tube watching hoops."
Sal pushed her hand away.
"Well, it is the semifinals, I got 5 Gs on the U dog myself—3 to 2 odds with a two G kicker on the under. The OU is ridiculous. It's 214. Both teams have injured starters riding the bench."
"OU? Ohio University? I thought Baylor and Duke were on."
"It is Baylor and Duke, I meant the over under. What are you already too high?"
"No, just distracted. Sorry."
"Well, you do have a lot to think about. Some more of this wrong ought to set your head straight. So who's taking care of Tommy while you hang with the idiot?"
Sal congratulated himself on getting La Gallina's first-born son's name right.
"I left him with Jenny and her new girlfriend until I can figure a few things out."
"Like how to break the news to your new boyfriend?"
"Something like that."
"What about El Commando?"
"He's been out of the equation for a long time."
Five: Tighty Whiteys
Sal giggled. He couldn't stop giggling. He told himself that he was worse than a girl in middle school.
His mouth watered. He wiped his nose with his sleeve.
He was really looking forward to sniffing the cocaine that he'd railed out.
He was glad when La Gallina finally stopped talking and leaned over the mirror again with the Franklin jammed into her nose.
For a second time that afternoon, La Gallina sniffed the chopped white powder in deeply, this time, into her right nostril.
Sal saw that her eyes now glinted; he thought that they looked like two hard diamonds; the yellow gunk that had been stuck in the corners seemed to have gone away.
Sal watched hungrily as the bitch put a hand inside her blouse and scratched a tit.
Sal's dick stiffened; he noticed that her tits seemed a lot bigger that they had been and that her nipples also seemed a lot bigger too. He thought that her nipples also looked a lot darker; he thought that through her the gauze of her white blouse and her flimsy white bra that that her darker nipples looked like two big fat old-fashioned silver dollars glued onto his on again off again girlfriend's chest.
Sal thought that the fat lying bitch looked like f-ing Lady Liberty herself. He thought that all La Gallina needed was some silver spikes in her hair.
He scolded himself—he remembered how he had vowed to everyone on the Wall Street West trading floor, in the hedge fund's plush red wood paneled upstairs offices and to everybody with any passing interest or with no interest at all in every dive bar, sleazy strip club and lame assed lounge that he had sat in over the past half month that he would never ever under any circumstances have a goddamned thing ever to do with La Gallina, the fat lying bitch ever again!
"They're getting lots bigger. Want to see them?"
"What's getting bigger?"
"My tits. How about copping a little feel? Everything's incredibly sensitive now that I'm knocked up. And if you put your hand on my belly bump, you might even feel Junior kick."
Sal turned away as he mumbled.
"Too bad your heart is still insensitive and hard like granite. Junior ought to kick the living stuff out of the insides of your fat lying gut."
La Gallina suddenly sobbed.
"Sal, I swear I thought that I was telling you the truth when I told you that you were the dad. I was keeping track of everything on my Bluefang."
Sal wasn't sure if she was sobbing for real or whether she was faking it like she usually did. He snarled:
"Like who you sucked and fucked and when? Is there an Bluefang application for that?"
La Gallina pulled out her device. She noticed that she had four missed calls from Gentleman Jim. She put her device back into her purse.
"You don't need an application. It's just calendar entries off the Bluefang's main menu."
Sal looked as his own device; the only calls that he had missed were from La Gallina.
"What if somebody steals your Bluefang?"
"There's a chip of plastique installed inside."
"Plastique?"
"Plastic explosive."
Sal toyed with the gack with his credit card; he pushed one of the rails one way and then the other way; he thought that it looked like a little white worm wiggling.
"That can't be legal."
La Gallina laid her head on his shoulder.
"When has legal ever stopped me or anybody else at Wall Street West? You remember the power contracts we sold to that idiot Blue Stripe Democrat that we had for a governor after we had put the entire electricity grid of the state of California into a headlock?"
Sal brushed her hair with his hand.
"You can't be serious."
La Gallina put her hand under his shirt.
"About the power contracts or the plastique? Come on silly boy, you know all about those power contracts. For Christ's sake, you were negotiating prices with a horn to each ear for three days straight."
"The plastique, of course."
"You're right. I can't be. But you'll never know for sure—just like at the office, no records kept, no emails, everything's verbal and everything's deniable, you know the drill. You took the oath with your f-ing middle finger pressed to your heart. You bear the tattoo of the Sphinx on your thigh."
Sal bent over and through the rolled up Franklin sniffed a rail of gack.
He knew that he was fooling himself about not fooling around with the bitch. He knew from past experience that the more gack he and La Gallina sniffed, the less he’d have to say to her and the less she'd have to say to him and the only thing left for them to do together was to suck dick, eat pussy and fuck.
But then he thought that even though, he detested her and even though it meant breaking his vow about not having a thing to do with her ever again, her tits were a lot bigger and his dick was getting really stiff.
"I do know the drill. I've been working for you money pigs for almost seven years. F-ing f f…I've been working for Wall Street West for so long that the Sphinx on my thigh looks like the faded tattoo of a "putty cat. " I feel like a goddamn tweety bird about to get pounced on and plucked. You want a cigarette? I'm about to open a fresh pack."
"Plucked?"
"Plucked. As in it rhymes with 'fucked.'"
"No shit, Sherlock."
"Here bitch."
Sal handed La Gallina the unopened pack; she slid a painted red nail under its cellophane wrap; Sal knew that she prided herself in getting the wrap off a pack of cigarettes in one piece. He also knew that she also prided herself on being able to unfurl a condom with just her tongue and her teeth.
"I'm out of booze."
La Gallina let the cellophane wrap flutter to the floor.
"No worries, I've got some singles in my purse."
Sal kicked at the wrap with his foot.
"Singles?"
"I stole them from the beverage cart on the airplane."
"That's right, the company flew you to London last week. How was it?"
La Gallina picked Sal's lighter up off the coffee table and lit a cigarette.
"Good except for all the Brits in that goddamned town. I do realize that by definition, they invented the English language but they f it up so much with their weird accent that it ought to be renamed."
Sal shook a cigarette out from the pack.
"What renamed?"
"'English'. Pay attention, I'm talking."
"I am paying attention. You're just not making any sense."
La Gallina let a massive cloud of smoke spill out from her mouth and then coughed.
"I am making f-ing sense. What was I talking about?"
"'English.'"
"That's right. Let's just get it f-ing over with. Let's call 'English' by a new proper name. Let's just call it, f-ing 'American'. I think we could probably fit their shitty little country inside the Great State of Texas with bollocks of room to spare."
"'Bollocks?'"
"That's another word they like to say over there. It means 'a man's balls.'"
Sal stubbed out his cigarette.
"I knew that."
Sal loved it when La Gallina went off. She said such smart and interesting things and her tongue was sharper than any even if she didn't, as some on the trading floor claimed, sharpen it with a file. Sal couldn't believe that she had had one less year of high school than he did.
He remembered that she'd come to Wall Street West from behind the bar of the Iron Duke, a three story dive bar in a narrow thin building built on a city half lot, a block and a half away from the plush red wood paneled offices and the cavernous high tech trading floor of Wall Street West.
Everyone that traded or worked at the hedge fund said that La Gallina had slept her way to the top but Sal knew that they didn't say it in a mean way—they just said it because it was true.
Sal noticed that the birthmark on his on again off again girlfriend and boss's cheek had started to redden. Sal knew that it always got red like this whenever La Gallina got high.
Everyone at Wall Street West knew that she called it her "witch tattoo."
Sal always thought that it looked like a bobcat had clawed her and had left a permanent scar on her cheek of three white parallel lines.
Sal stuck his hand in his pants and scratched himself. He thought that he might want to smoke another cigarette but he also thought that his throat felt a little sore.
He thought to himself that La Gallina's tits had already been bigger than most; Sal thought that La Gallina was like a lot of Southern girls that way. He figured that it must be all the grits and hush puppies they ate as young girls.
Sal couldn't keep himself from wondering what the fat lying bitch would look like naked now that she was starting to show; he couldn't keep himself from wondering what her belly would feel like now that it had started to bulge with the bulk of her and what was probably Gentleman Jim's illegitimate baby. Sal knew for damn sure that the f-ing belly bug was certainly not his. Lab reports don't lie.
"Did you make any deals over there?"
La Gallina lifted her head and then tilted it back. Her voice sounded like she was about to sneeze.
"I scored a few dresses at Harrods."