Megan Abbott - Wall Street Noir

“Good. That’s great to hear.” I try to sound casual. “Hey, listen, Compliance is all over me to do my semi-annual supervisory thing. Can you pull all the personal trading records of Howard Ranieri for the last two years? And tell the back office I need it over the weekend.”

“Sure thing.” When Terri says it’s a sure thing, I know she means it.

To: All Equity Personnel

From: Howard Ranieri

It is with deep regret that we announce Mark Barston’s resignation from the firm, effective immediately. As Mark steps down as co-head of Equity to spend more time with his family and pursue other opportunities, please join us in wishing him the best and thanking him for effectively teaching me everything I know, which kindness I repaid by stabbing him in the back...

It is six hours later, and I’m mentally composing my resignation announcement. It’s customary on Wall Street to extend the courtesy of ghostwriting the memo announcing one’s involuntary departure, but I’m finding little joy in my imaginings.

Having escaped the offices of Fischer Brothers, I’m on the 4:36 p.m. Metro-North train out of Grand Central to Greenwich. I’m unaccustomed to the brightness that floods the filthy confines of the bar car; for over a decade, my profession has required me to keep coal miner’s hours. I’ve rarely left the office before nightfall. Still, I’m somewhat surprised that the bar car is so well-populated. Must be advertising types.

With their game faces off, the commuters look positively miserable. They are die-hard junior execs with their eyes still on the prize, feverishly making love to their BlackBerries and Dell Inspirons and Motorola RAZRs. I make my way up to the bar.

“Two Absoluts in a cup, straight, wedge of lime.”

Just as I get my cocktail, the train pitches suddenly to the left, and someone collides with me, nearly upending my double shot.

A striking blond girl in a pastel sundress murmurs an apology around a dazzling smile. “So sorry.”

I’m taken aback. This is a radiant burst of genuine friend-liness, and I have an instant attraction to this girl — and not all of it sexual. It’s more that she seems a beacon of positive energy on a suddenly very hostile planet. She makes me think of lemon meringue pie.

“It was my fault, actually,” I offer.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter much either way, does it?” The girl holds my eyes for a moment while I try to place the accent. Australian, I guess, with the vanishing r’s. I’m intrigued.

“My name’s Mark,” I say, surprised at my own cojones.

“Fiona.”

“Ah. Can I get you a drink, Fiona? A Coke?”

“I’d much prefer a Foster’s, actually. With a vodka chaser.” With that, Fiona flips open her cell phone to smile-and-dial.

When I return with the drinks, I tune in to bits of her conversation. It is peppered with an exotic slang, putting me in mind of A Clockwork Orange

“It’s choice... That’s spot-on... Did you dip-out for a moment? What a complete saddo she turned out to be... Ah, Viv, Ranieri can be such a drongo sometimes.”

Ranieri . Could it be?

And now I realize I’ve seen her somewhere before — on the trading floor, maybe...? Fiona accepts the shot and the beer and slugs down four quick throatfuls — we have a party girl here.

Kia ora , baby” she says. She snaps the cell phone shut and turns to me. “That was my mate Vivica. She’s my cozziebro. I trust her with my deepest secrets.” Fiona hoists her beer in a toast. “Thanks for your kindness. I’m not used to that, especially in New York.”

“It’s nothing really. Are you from Australia?”

“Australia? How insulting.”

“I didn’t mean any offense—”

“No worries. I’m from New Zealand originally. But for the last year, I’ve lived in Greenwich.”

“I live in Greenwich also.” I struggle to sound casual. “I couldn’t help hearing the name Ranieri. Would that happen to be Howard Ranieri?”

“Yes,” she says in amazement. “I live with Mr. Ranieri.”

“You what?”

She choke-laughs, and a geyser of imported beer spews forth, making her laugh even harder. “That came out completely wrong. His family, I should say, I live with his family. I’m an au pair. The Ranieris are my host family in America.”

Ranieri’s au pair! This makes perfect sense — the trophy nanny to go with the trophy wife. It was all Ranieri.

“And you just dropped his children off in the city.”

“Right,” she says.

“At Fischer Brothers. For the family vacation in Spain.”

“Which got canceled, thank you very much, and screws up all our plans. Wait a minute — how did you know that...?” Her voice trails off as she tries to decide whether I’m a clairvoyant or a stalker.

“So happens I work with Howard Ranieri.”

“Bloody hell!” With a mock-naughty face, she hides the beer behind her back and giggles. “Don’t tell him you bought me a beer. He’ll flip out.”

“Deal,” I say conspiratorially. “That is, if you tell me what you meant when you called Ranieri a drongo .”

Fiona draws in a sharp breath. “Ah, yes. A drongo. Well, the American equivalent, I guess, would be dickhead.”

I double over in laughter. Things are definitely looking up.

So, for the next forty minutes I’m treated to a private performance of Fiona Hensleigh’s one-woman off-Broadway show that might well be titled The Greenwich Nanny

She riffs animatedly about her adventures since being plucked from Christschurch, New Zealand and plunked down in Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S.A., the very vortex of history’s most excessive bull market. And she dissects the archetypes of the Connecticut Gold Coast in deliciously bitchy detail: the beauty-shop-addicted, Prada-obsessed prima donnas, whose sense of entitlement is without limitation; the insecure, cigar-smoking Master-of-the-Universe wannabes, whose self-worth is measured by the girth of their Range Rovers; and their worshipped, fretted-over, unlovely offspring, spoiled beyond belief and taught at the youngest age that viral disrespect for authority is a virtue.

As Fiona speaks, I’m picturing the Ranieri household, and it’s a fascinating insight into my rival’s secret world. Mrs. Ranieri, apparently, is something of a bitch on ice. And Ranieri himself is no candidate for sainthood, prone to moodiness and shouting matches with his better half. I bide my time, awaiting an angle, a vulnerability to use against my blood enemy. Fiona tantalizes me with the possibility that she has some juicy tidbits about Ranieri that she wants to share, but she doesn’t trust me enough to give up the goods. Smart girl.

Now, I cannot say this with absolute certainty (for I am admittedly out of practice in such things), but I think this Fiona Hensleigh finds me attractive. There is a certain tilt of her face, a certain way she lets the gleaming wisps of her blond hair tumble over her eye. Then, in an instant of startling clarity, I suddenly realize how the distance between our bodies has shrunk. A chill prickles my skin with each incidental contact between Unless this is purely my imagination — and I’m willing to concede it might be — there is an unmistakable electricity between me and Ranieri’s nanny.

Fiona is telling me how much she misses some dreadful-sounding Kiwi delicacies — Minties, Jaffas, Moro bars, Wattie’s tomato sauce, and Vegemite — when the Old Greenwich train station rolls into view.

“My station,” I say, and feel a genuine pang of regret that this encounter is coming to an end.

“Well, it was very nice talking with you, Mark.”

“Likewise, Fiona.” I offer my hand and the New Zealander’s equivalent of aloha . “ Kia ora .”