This one mirrors Chapter 11 of the original. I've been really delighted with the comments so far and with the new readers coming to the story. If you've enjoyed this don't forget A Bee in her Bonnet is another MAU take on Jane Austen available in full in between updates of this one.
Happy Friday,
Enjoy!
dB walked back in from disposing of the used prophylactic. She asked, in a tone no different to that in which, an hour ago, she'd enquired whether Will kept a spare ice-cube tray anywhere in his freezer:
'Were you thinking of that French woman, then?'
'What?' Will said politely, but sure enough:
'It's OK,' she said, 'Dean called me. He was worried you'd hurt my feelings…'
They both smiled.
'Well bless him for a romantic fool,' Will said, 'And yeah I was, I'm sorry, does that bother you?'
'No no of course not,' dB said, 'Provided it works for you.'
'It's supposed to work for you too,'
'Actually, you know, it kind of does…'
'Great,' he said, and they smiled again, but perhaps a touch too hard this time:
'Were you thinking of Oli?'
'Yes, a little bit.'
Fair cop, he supposed. Still,
'Thanks for putting him off tonight then, dB. Really. I appreciate it.'
She smiled the normal amount this time, she was already half dressed:
'Big day tomorrow then, I take it? You won't mind if I don't stay, I kind of…'
'Yeah no, that's fine, of course.'
'Bye then,'
When she left Will did wonder whether it was Oli she was in a hurry to go and "kind of…" But he soon abandoned that train of thoughts, concluding that he of all people was in no position to mind. He probably didn't, anyway, not while dB was still willing to come and visit whenever he needed to take his mind of things.
Off one pest quant, mostly, these days, and dB was really very good at that. Years of hands-on experience, he supposed. She did it with such easy good grace, though, and with such efficacy too. Because until tonight he'd not seen dB for almost a week, and he was starting to really dislike how worked up he was getting about Raj's pet.
He and the quant had discovered that the least inconvenient way to make the new seating plan work, if you could call it that, was to express their deep respect for each other's work by undertaking never to interrupt it. I.e. they never talked, or looked, at one another, unless they absolutely had to. Of course that didn't stop Will's eyes from wandering her way more often than was good for him, and his observation over the last week was that, even by the standards of someone who (a) had to sit next to someone she detested and (b) had zero talent for dissimulating any kind of emotion, starting with said detestation, these days the quant was even less than usually happy to be here.
Now this was only about to get worse, because Raj wanted her to do a live trade. So that, in the boss's words, she could "experience the full trading workflow in a safe environment prior to re-optimizing the process". The "safe environment" bit of that pompous twaddle referred to him, Will, having to supervise the pest from his workstation and Pimms account.
Now that, clearly, was not going to happen. Not in a million years. Those hands of hers, all over his desk, his dealerboard? No, don't think so. Neil's keyboard and Pimms account would do very well, thank you very much. Raj didn't have to know any different, and she liked Neil.
Still, this whole scheme was shaping up to be one big lose-lose. How was the quant going to take it, when she collapsed into a bundle of nerves and went blushing and pulling her hair as soon as the broker started messing with her, and then Will was the one who had to swoop in to the rescue? That's right, not well.
But conversely, how was he supposed to take it, if she aced it on her first try, and then rubbed it in his face, perhaps while blowing on her blooming finger too?
And yet now, now that dB had worked her magic, Will felt like Will again. Like Will who wasn't about to let some quant get under his skin, just because she was hot.
And smart.
Not smart enough or hot enough to mess with him, though. He'd met hotter girls. He wasn't sure he'd met smarter people, but he'd met plenty of better adjusted ones. Who could walk and carry a coffee at the same time, for instance.
Pah, he needed that quant like a hole in the head.
Apart from on tradePad, mind.
OK, so he needed her on tradePad, but for the rest he needed her not at all.
x
It all started well enough. Will had done his best to limit the potential damage by picking the smallest easiest most liquid and inconsequential buy order on the book, so the pet quant might over-spend if, or rather when she cocked up, but there was zero risk of her selling more than the fund owned. He'd also picked a quiet Thursday afternoon for her to execute it, because the quant usually had lunch out on a Thursday, with someone she didn't detest quite as much as she did him, based on the fact that she normally came back in a better mood.
Ever the contrary so-and-so, however, today instead of coming back from her break wearing the remnants of a smile, and perhaps a splash of mayo or coffee somewhere inappropriate about her clothing, the pest had to come back with an expensive shopping bag. The kind of bag dB should be swagging around, not the quant, so Will opened with:
'Been shopping?', which of course she barely dignified with one of her fuck-off, don't care, French little fucking: Aha. There you go, his point exactly:
'Didn't work,' he went on, in blatant and wilful violation of the Silent Convention on Leaving Each Other Alone. That raised a fairly hostile: What, no question mark intended, because fuck-off, and also, I'm French and hot and smarter than you and you can't make me. Beautiful work on her part, really, and what great fun it was, knowing that he was about to make her.
Trade, that is, and something told him she wasn't going to like it.
'The retail therapy, it didn't work, you need to get out there and spend more,' he said, but sadly this time she ignored him. She just finished taking her coat off and sat down, and then she made a point of sighing as she unlocked her screen. Never mind, he'd get her in the end:
'Spend more and cheer up?' he said, and again at first she ignored him, but then his perseverance was rewarded, and she did the most beautiful thing she'd done since her Peel Hunt pun. She still made a point of not looking at him but she said:
'Can I have your credit card then?'
Well yes, if she asked this nicely she could, the hot French pest, his credit card and the keys to his flat and car, and any physical part of him into the bargain, whenever and wherever she wanted. But that was not the point. The point was that they were… bantering? Dangerous game, that: when had Will ever won at banter with the quant? Had anyone, ever? Oh, but fun too - so much fun.
She didn't want to take the trade on though, and fought it with everything she had. From where Will sat, everything she had seemed to consist mostly of humour – of a quality which confirmed his long-held suspicion that she was as British as he was.
That and flattery: who ever would have thought the quant possessed a flattery mode? What a delightful surprise too: Will could have done this all day. He'd never have thought it possible to have even better fun with the quant than he'd had at the off-site, but here they were. She still hadn't given in, and somehow they'd got on to pig-farming. She made some kind of metaphor about pig-farm accountants not having to take up pig farming. She was obviously the accountant in this scenario, which he supposed made him either the swineherd or the pig itself, and fair enough. So he replied that the world might be a better place if accountants did take up pig farming instead, and then he looked back at her and, what do you know, she was biting back a smile.
That's right, she was: a smile, yes. Aha.
At him.
Thank you very much. He knew he'd get her in the end. Mustn't get cocky though, gloating had been the undoing of many a better trader than he'd ever be. So to the question "give me one good reason" he gave the answer:
'Because you could do your job a lot better if you tried doing ours just the once.'
Which was true and, sadly, the whole point of this exercise. Let trading begin, then.
x
In his supervisory capacity Will was now free under the terms of the Silent Convention to watch the quant as much as he liked, but he didn't need to look at her to know she was going to screw up. He knew that before he was even done crossing his arms and swivelling his chair. Entertaining though she was, the pet quant was also all over the shop, and if there was one thing trading required, it wasn't smarts so much as:
'Focus,'
This went unheard, several times, but never mind. Will leant back and enjoyed the ride. It may have been blindingly obvious that she was going to cock up, but that still left plenty of other fascinating questions open: how did the quant divide numbers this fast? And why? What could possibly be the point of doing this in the middle of a fucking trade? Or was this her way of handling the panic she'd evidently worked herself up into? All over some piddly trade that would be of no consequence to anyone, however badly she screwed it up.
That, somehow, made the fun even better.
She started spewing stuff about Sybase queries. Was thinking about Sybase her way of trying to calm down? Who knew? Did she put herself to sleep, did she dream, in Sybase language? Not a half-bad idea either she'd come up with, if she could indeed make it work.
Also, if the quant could panic, do sums and think up genius Sybase crap all at the same time, why on earth was she being so damn shy and uncomfortable on the phone to some dumb broker?
Hang on, why was she shy with Rob, and such a tease and a cocky pain in the bum with him, hey?
Will frowned to himself, wondering whether he'd rather the quant be shy and uncomfortable with him too but, weirdly enough, he rather thought not. He thought he'd much rather have her the way she'd been a few minutes ago: biting back the urge to smile at him.
Or better still: not biting it back.
And then, was it wrong to find it so damn cute that she was all but losing her shit on the phone with Rob? Was it wrong that it sort of made him want to scoop her up, like the helpless, feisty and now shit-hot-in-more-ways-than-one kitten she was turning into? No no, surely that was wrong. Georgie would not approve and anyway, helpless and blushing was also not how he wanted the quant. He definitely wanted her biting back her smile. At him.
Oh crap, what was she saying now? Better stop her before Rob caught her with her silly quant-knickers down:
'Got any form today?' he asked Rob, a question he'd asked a thousand wankers a thousand times over the course of his illustrious career, but the quant never had. Today for a change, Will asked it with a proper yeah-well-fuck-right-back-off stare at the quant because, what with the Silent Convention currently suspended, he might as well have fun, right?
He made small talk with Rob while watching the pet turn the colour of Dean on a hot-day run, and then try to get herself back to normal. Unfortunately she wasn't quite done by the time Rob finished his spiel on Xstrata so she completely missed her cue – again.
'Go on, make a call,' Will said, not that there was much of a call to make. Rob wanted buyers, she was a buyer, they were all winners here.
Unless of course she wanted to accumulate another three gazillion data points first, and then build a Sybase query, the way quants do before they decide what to have for breakfast. Hell, in hindsight it was amazing she'd managed to deal on whatever was in that gift bag under her desk, all over the course of just one lunchtime.
For a while the quant looked straight ahead of her, thought of Sybase, probably, and somehow she finally psyched herself into committing to buying those sodding shares.
The wrong number of shares, of course, but Will didn't stop her.
x
He did actually feel bad about it but, well, whatever. She'd have expected nothing else of him anyway and besides, what kind of an idiot swoops in just because some shit-hot newbie goes all cute and blushing on him?
But Will did have some valid reasons not to stop her too. Express orders from Raj, for instance. The point of today's exercise was for the quant to realise how many gaps there were in the existing trading process, so that she could plug them in tradePad. And hers was a schoolboy error - schoolgirl, whatever – anyway it was a mistake that every trader had made, at least once.
Because no one on this earth learns to check their prices, quantities and units until they've screwed at least one of them. How else do humans ever learn? Quants, clearly, preferred to learn by accumulating craploads of data and always being right but, well, welcome to real life. Plus, how was the pet ever going to learn to pick herself up if she didn't learn to fall on her face first?
What almost did break Will's heart, though, as he watched her put the phone down and send through her email confirm, was that she still thought this trade was a big deal. It really wasn't, but he didn't have the heart to tell her that either because look at her: so happy now… Typing fast, probably emailing all about her first trade to someone she didn't hate. Maybe her Thursday lunch friend?
And not biting her smile back, the pest, now that she wasn't looking at him. She did have one hell of a smile. One day he'd get her to smile it at him.
'Looks like blowing fifty grand does put you in a good mood,' he said, and despite this being in open breach of the Silent Convention she forgot to stop smiling completely before she replied:
'I thought this was the idea?'
Well no it wasn't. Not officially, anyway. But she sure could stay smiling at him as long as she liked.
Unfortunately it looked on Bloomers as if LTG were printing a lot of Xstrata, so Will was about to suggest to the quant that she check on Rob, when Rob checked on her first. Will watched, his finger over the line, ready to cut in whenever the quant lost the plot.
x
That it didn't take long was no surprise at all, but what shocked him was: it wasn't funny.
Not the least bit amusing.
And that was weird, but really weird, because the pest was going through all the same tricks from the trading off-site: voice breaks, pulling her hair off, Dean-Fitzwilliam-worthy colouring, and yet somehow it didn't work. If anything, it made Will a little queasy to see her like this.
Weird.
Anyway, for now Will got on with a conversation he'd had many times with many a broker: my bad, sorry, where we at, OK, let's put this right, no biggie.
Caught now, this literally was no big deal, but not at all. Not exactly quant-worthy maths either: by the time she had it all tidied up and reported, even if the stock carried on rocketing up she'd be unlucky if the total loss to the fund topped five hundred quid. Meanwhile, the two trades he and Neil had done for the same fund this morning were up about twenty grand each on the day so no one, apart from her, was going to give a monkey's fart. Not the tiniest of a tiny rat's arse. In fact, if anyone was going to give a shit, it would only be those lazy sods in Risk, for having to pull out their rubber stamp over so puny a sum.
And yet Will too was starting to get a lot more annoyed than this piddly trade warranted. This was supposed to be fun for him, wasn't it? So why wasn't it? That wasn't right. Had Rob gone and broken his quant?
In the end, or rather somewhere around the middle of the pointless panic Raj's pet had worked herself into – and all the more pointless it was, for not being funny anymore – she managed to remember to ask Rob what he'd dealt at. Will felt a sudden glow of warm pride wash over him and thought: what the fuck? Am I on team pet-fucking-quant now? OK, never mind, nothing wrong with playing for team Raj together every now and again. And nothing wrong either, with letting her do her bit to tidy up this cute little tiny mess of hers. Provided she wasn't completely broken, that was the main thing.
They hung up with Rob and the pet quant turned to him and said:
'I'm so sorry.'
Sorry?
Now?
The irony was that Will had yearned to hear Elisabeth Bennet say these very words ever since her little number on the reception sofa, that first day. Now here he was: she had said them. Raj's pet was brought down at long last, and begging his forgiveness. Surely this was nothing short of class A triumph, right?
Then why the flipping fuck was he not enjoying it? Why? What could possibly be better than hearing the quant grovel?
Well, as it now turned out: watching the quant bite back her smile was better.
OK, but still: why was this not working for him? What could possibly be the point of all this aggro, if he wasn't going to enjoy her apologising to him? What a fucking waste of everyone's time, seriously. Well fuck it then, might as well keep things moving along but seriously, talk of a colossal waste of everyone's time:
'So are you calling the Portfolio Manager or am I?'
'I'll do it. It's my bad, I'm so sorry,' she said.
What the fuck was she sorry to him for, anyway? She hadn't done anything to him. Not this time anyway.
Rob had, the wanker. Breaking the quant, seriously …
'Save the apologies and get on with it,' Will said, because there was no point prolonging this.
Seriously, fucking Rob.
Fuck him.
x
To her credit, the pet quant did get on with it. Even gave that fat portfolio manager a bit of the old French-fuck-off attitude when he got arsy with her, which made Will hopeful that maybe Rob hadn't broken her quite completely after all. But every time she checked with him over that stupid trading error report she had to fill in, and he'd have to sign off, the quant now turned to him with, what was it? Simpering? Gratitude?
Whatever it was, none of it was the least bit fun either, even though it should have been, which only made the whole experience even less fun.
Hence even more annoying.
Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if Will had felt he'd done anything even remotely worthy of her gratitude, but plainly he hadn't. For fuck's sake this piddly trade was nothing to simper, or feel sorry, or pull one's hair off about. Just get that fucking form over to Risk already, and let's all go home.
But seriously, fucking Rob: breaking the quant and spoiling his fun.
Or perhaps not?
Will couldn't bear the idea of her never rising to provocation, never even trying to wind him up ever again. He simply couldn't go home without checking one last time:
'Great work today, Lizzie. See you tomorrow,' he said once that sorry time-waste of a report was filed. This was open provocation under the Silent Protocol, seeing as the quant was already stuck back into whatever other work she'd not done this afternoon. Either that, or she was soothing her frayed nerves with some good old Sybase. Anyway, all she said was:
'I'm really sorry.'
Oh for fuck's sake, really?
Really?!
Well you know what: he was starting to feel real sorry too. A right fucking pig's ear, they'd managed to make of this, between Raj and her and fucking Rob. Really: sorry? Was this what things had come to? Sorry?
Well, never mind: like hell he was going to let Raj's pet, or stupid fucking Rob for that matter, spoil his evening over some stupid fucking piddly trade.
'Not at all, I've enjoyed this,' he lied, and left.
On the Market is Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved.