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stares from the men as I walked by. The guys surveyed the length of my skirt and the fit of my sweater, just in case I had missed a button or, God forbid, had visible panty lines. It was something I’d have to get used to.
    The energy in the room was palpable. People bellowed out numbers, screamed instructions to pick up phones, yelled just for the sake of yelling. The shouting made my ears buzz, and I didn’t know how anyone was able to understand anything above the chaos. There were at least four hundred people on the Cromwell Pierce fixed-income trading floor. Most of them were loud. Most of them were aggressive. Most of them relished the opportunity to mess with the new kids.
    Most of them were male.
    Chick suddenly threw his hand up in front of my head and intercepted a football that had missed its intended target. Unless of course, the target was me.
    â€œWatch it, Smitty! Hitting the new girl in the face with a football on her first day will get you called to the principal’s office.”
    I tried to find something to say to break the awkward silence, and the best I could come up with was, “You guys play football?”
    â€œSometimes we do. You don’t. You’ll be too busy learning to have time to play. Capiche?”
    â€œSure. I’m really excited to be here and I’m ready to work hard.”
    â€œThat’s good, Alex, because we don’t want you here any other way.”
    A slight, pale man with red hair and an absurdly thin blond girl approached us. They stopped, and the guy nodded in my direction. His skin was translucent and his eyes so light they were almost clear. I was immediately reminded of the weakling on the high school football team who had to carry the equipment because he wasn’t big enough to actually play in the games. I had always assumed those scrawny kids bulked up later in life. I was wrong.
    â€œWho’s this?” he asked, his voice almost robotic.
    â€œAlex. My new kid,” Chick answered curtly.
    â€œHi,” I said.
    â€œHi!” The blond stick figure gushed, as she threw herself on me. “Oh, this is great! I’ll have a friend now! There aren’t a lot of girls to talk to in this place!” she said as she hugged me.
    The redheaded leprechaun surveyed me and said, “Chick, yours is cute, but mine is better.” He snorted as he walked away, the girl trotting off quickly behind him. I wondered if he took the train to work, or if he just slid down a rainbow into the lobby.
    I held my breath. Chick started walking again and said, “That was Keith Georgalis, more commonly known on the floor as Darth Vader. He’s a prick. He runs the high-yield desk. His sidekick is his analyst, Hannah. She’s a freaking moron, but she’s a treat to look at so we keep her. She doesn’t work for me, so what do I care? If you make even half the mistakes that idiot has made, I’ll bounce you out on your ass so fast your head will spin.”
    Before I could say a word Chick stopped in front of a group of people and waved his arm in a sweeping motion as he proudly announced, “This is the desk.”
    A “desk” was the Wall Street term for the team of people who worked in a specific product area. My desk, the government bond sales desk, was composed of forty people sitting in three long rows like diner counters—covered with papers, phones, and flat screen monitors. Each person sat in an aerodynamic chair, his specific workspace segregated from the person sitting next to him only by a thin black line of grout, the same way tiles are connected on a bathroom floor. The workstations were so close together that if you extended both your arms you would touch your neighbors. The concept of “personal space” didn’t seem to exist here, and I realized that if I ended up sitting next to an asshole—or worse, in between two—my days were going to be miserable.
    I stared at the wall