“Nope!” said my loyal assistant. “I asked him, and he growled at me, like a dog. He’s definitely pissed about something, and if I had to take a guess, I’d say it’s the November American Express bill.”
I grimaced. “You think?” All at once the number half a million came bubbling up, uninvited, into my own brain.
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 f**king 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 f**k 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 f**king 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…f**king 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 retard he would simply leave it on 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 f**king 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 f**king 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 f**king net!” The broker responded by dropping his arm to the side—keeping the net out of Danny’s reach.
“What do you think he’s gonna do with the net?” asked the aspiring Bionic Woman.
I ran the possibilities through my mind. “I’m not really sure—Oh, shit, I know exactly what…”
All at once, faster than would seem possible, Danny ripped off his suit jacket, threw it on the floor, unbuttoned his shirtsleeve, pushed it up past his elbow, and plunged his hand into the fishbowl. His entire forearm was submerged. Then he began thrashing his arm in all directions, trying to catch an unsuspecting orange goldfish in the palm of his hand. His face was set in stone, with the look of a man possessed by pure evil.
A dozen young sales assistants seated close to the action jumped out of their seats and recoiled in horror at the very sight of Danny trying to capture the innocent goldfish.
“Oh…my…God,” said Janet. “He’s gonna kill it.”
Just then Danny’s eyes popped wide open and his jaw dropped down a good three inches. It was a face that so much as said, “Gotcha!” A split second later he yanked his arm out of the fishbowl, with the orange goldfish firmly in his grasp.
“He’s got it!” cried Janet, putting her fist to her mouth.
“Yeah, but the million-dollar question is, what’s he gonna do with it?” I paused for just an instant, then added, “But I’m willing to bet you a hundred to one on a thousand bucks that he eats it. Are we on?”
An instant reply: “A hundred to one? You’re on! He won’t do it! It’s too gross. I mean—”
Janet was cut off as Danny climbed on top of a desk and extended his arms out, as if he were Jesus Christ on the cross. He screamed, “This is what happens when you f**k with your pets on new-issue day!” As an afterthought, he added, “And no f**king bow ties in the boardroom! It’s f**king…ridiculous!”
Janet the welcher: “I want to cancel my bet right now!”
“Sorry, too late!”
“Come on! It’s not fair!”
“Neither is life, Janet.” I shrugged innocently. “You should know that.” And just like that, Danny opened up his mouth and dropped the orange goldfish down his gullet.
A hundred sales assistants let out a collective gasp, while ten times as many brokers began cheering in admiration—paying homage to Danny Porush, executioner of innocent marine life. Never one to miss an opportunity to ham it up, Danny responded with a formal bow, as if he were on a Broadway stage. Then he jumped off the desk into the arms of his admirers.
I started snickering at Janet. “Well, don’t worry about paying me. I’ll just take it out of your paycheck.”
“Don’t you f**king dare!” she hissed.
“Fine, you can owe me, then!” I smiled and winked. “Now go order the flowers and bring me some coffee. I gotta start this f**king day already.” With a bounce in my step and a smile on my face, I walked into my office and closed the door—ready to take on anything the world could toss at me.