Wall Street had had its paytime. And Marcus Deane had gotten exactly what he needed: a wake-up call wrapped in a bonus letter.
At 10:00 sharp, a chime sounded over the floor speakers. “All hands to the conference center on 44.”
They shook hands. Marcus walked out of Julian’s office, through the trading floor—now half-empty, littered with abandoned coffee cups and strewn papers—and into the elevator. When he reached the lobby, he paused at the glass doors and looked out at Wall Street. The sky was already dark, but the buildings were lit up like monuments to something he couldn’t quite name anymore. Greed, maybe. Or fear. Or just the endless, brutal arithmetic of survival. wall street paytime
By 9:45, the floor had become a nervous organism. People huddled in clusters, whispering. Some faces were lit with private joy—those who’d beaten their internal estimates. Others wore the gray mask of disappointment. One analyst from the MBS desk, a kid named Tommy barely two years out of Cornell, was openly crying at his desk. He’d made the firm $6 million and gotten a $90,000 bonus. After taxes and his student loans, he’d be lucky to afford his studio in Long Island City for another year.
“Yes, sir.”
Marcus closed the door. “I want to talk about my future.”
“Come in.”
Marcus felt a flicker of empathy, then buried it. On Wall Street, you ate what you killed. And right now, he was trying to figure out if $2.1 million was a feast or just a very large meal.