Janet nodded her head. “He was holding the bill in his hand and it was about yea thick.” The gap between her thumb and forefinger was a good three inches.
“Hmmmmm…” I took a moment to ponder the American Express bill, but something caught my eye from way out in the distance. It was floating…floating…what in the hell was it? I squinted. Jesus Christ—someone had brought a red, white, and blue plastic beach ball into the office! It was as if the corporate headquarters of Stratton Oakmont were a stadium, the floor of the boardroom was the orchestra section, and the Rolling Stones were about to give a concert.
“…of all this he’s cleaning his fucking fishbowl!” said Janet. “It’s hard to believe!”
I’d only caught the tail end of what Janet was saying, so I mumbled, “Yeah, well, I know whatya mean—”
“You didn’t hear a word I said,” she muttered, “so don’t pretend you did.”
Jesus! Who else besides my father would speak to me that way! Well, maybe my wife, but in her case I usually deserved it. Still, I loved Janet, in spite of her poisonous tongue. “Very funny. Now tell me what you said.”
“What I said is that I can’t believe that kid over there”—she pointed to a desk about twenty yards away—“what’s his name, Robert something or other, is cleaning his fishbowl in the middle of all this. I mean, it’s new-issue day! Don’t you think that’s kinda weird?”
I looked in the direction of the alleged perpetrator: a young Strattonite—no, definitely not a Strattonite—a young misfit, with a ferocious mop of curly brown hair and a bow tie. The mere fact that he had a fishbowl on his desk wasn’t all that surprising. Strattonites were allowed to have pets in the office. There were iguanas, ferrets, gerbils, parakeets, turtles, tarantulas, snakes, mongooses, and whatever else these young maniacs could procure with their inflated paychecks. In fact, there was even a macaw with a vocabulary of over fifty English words, who would tell you to go fuck yourself when he wasn’t busy mimicking the young Strattonites pitching stock. The only time I’d put my foot down with the whole pet thing was when a young Strattonite had brought in a chimpanzee wearing roller skates and a diaper.
“Go get Danny,” I snapped. “I want him to get a load of this fucking kid.”
Janet nodded and went to fetch Danny, while I stood there in utter shock. How could this bow-tied dweeb commit an act so…fucking heinous? An act that went against the grain of everything the boardroom of Stratton Oakmont stood for! It was sacrilege! Not against God, of course, but against the Life! It was a breach of the Stratton code of ethics of the most egregious sort. And the punishment was…what was the punishment? Well, I would leave that up to Danny Porush, my junior partner, who had a terrific knack for disciplining wayward Strattonites. In fact, he relished it.
Just then I saw Danny walking toward me, with Janet trailing two steps behind. Danny looked pissed, which is to say the bow-tied broker was in deep shit. As he drew nearer, I took a moment to regard him, and I couldn’t help but snicker at how normal he actually looked. It was really quite ironic. In fact, dressed the way he was, in a gray pin-striped suit, crisp white dress shirt, and red silk necktie, you would have never guessed that he was closing in on his publicly stated goal of banging every last sales assistant in the boardroom.
Danny Porush was a Jew of the ultrasavage variety. He was of average height and weight, about five-nine, one-seventy, and he had absolutely no defining features that would peg him out to be a member of the Tribe. Even those steel-blue eyes of his, which generated about as much warmth as an iceberg, hadn’t the slightest bit of Yid in them.
And that was appropriate, at least from Danny’s perspective. After all, like many a Jew before him, Danny burned with the secret desire to be mistaken for a WASP and did everything possible to cloak himself in complete and utter WASPiness—starting with those incredibly boiling teeth of his, which had been bleached and bonded until they were so big and white they looked almost radioactive, to those brown tortoiseshell glasses with their clear lenses (Danny had twenty-twenty vision), and all the way down to those black leather shoes with their custom-fitted insteps and fancy toe caps, the latter of which had been polished into mirrors.
And what a grim joke that was—considering by the ripe age of thirty-four, Danny had given new meaning to the term abnormal psychology.Perhaps I should have suspected as much six years ago, when I’d first met him. It was before I’d started Stratton, and Danny was working for me as a stockbroker trainee. It was sometime in the spring, and I had asked him to take a quick ride with me into Manhattan, to see my accountant. Once there, he convinced me to make a quick stop at a Harlem crack den, where he told me his life’s story—explaining how his last two businesses, a messenger service and an ambulette service, had been sucked up his nose. He further explained how he’d married his own first cousin, Nancy, because she was a real piece of ass. When I asked him if he was concerned about inbreeding, he casually replied that if they had a child who ended up being a retardhe would simply leave iton the institution steps, and that would be that.
Perhaps I should have run the other way right then and there, realizing that a guy like this might bring out the worst in me. Instead, I made Danny a personal loan to help him get back on his feet, and then I trained him to become a stockbroker. A year later I started Stratton and let Danny slowly buy in and become a partner. Over the last five years Danny had proven himself to be a mighty warrior—squeezing out anyone in his way and securing his position as Stratton’s number two. And in spite of it all, in spite of his very insanity, there was no denying that he was smart as a whip, cunning as a fox, ruthless as a Hun, and, above all else, loyal as a dog. Nowadays, in fact, I counted on him to do almost all my dirty work, a job he relished more than you can imagine.
Danny greeted me Mafia style, with a warm hug and a kiss on either cheek. It was a sign of loyalty and respect, and in the boardroom of Stratton Oakmont it was a greatly appreciated gesture. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I saw Janet, the cynic, rolling her eyes in the oh-brother mode, as if to mock Danny’s display of loyalty and affection.
Danny released me from his Mafia embrace and muttered, “I’m gonna kill that fucking kid. I swear to God!”
“It’s a bad showing, Danny, especially today.” I shrugged. “I think you should tell him that if his fishbowl ain’t out of here by the end of the day, then the fishbowl is staying and he’s leaving. But it’s your call; do what you want.”
Janet the instigator: “Oh, my God! He’s wearing a bow tie! Can you imagine?”
“That rat fucking bastard!” said Danny, in a tone used to describe someone who’d just raped a nun and left her for dead. “I’m gonna take care of this kid once and for all, in my own way!” With a huff and a puff, Danny marched over to the broker’s desk and began exchanging words with him.
After a few seconds the broker started shaking his head no. Then more words were exchanged, and the broker began shaking his head no again. Now Danny began shaking his own head, the way a person does when they’re running out of patience.
Janet, with a pearl of wisdom: “I wonder what they’re saying? I wish I had bionic ears like the Six Million Dollar Woman. You know what I mean?”
I shook my head in disgust. “I won’t even dignify that with a response, Janet. But just for your information, there was no Six Million Dollar Woman. It was the Bionic Woman.”
Just then, Danny extended his palm toward the broker’s left hand, which held a fishnet, and began waving his fingers inward, as if to say, “Hand over the fucking net!” The broker responded by dropping his arm to the side—keeping the net out of Danny’s reach.