Rigged by Ben Mezrich

here.”
    Reston patted David on the back. “Harriet will take care of you. She’s like our den mother—none of us would have survived without her. After you get settled—ten minutes should cover it—meet me back at the elevator, and we’ll continue the tour.”
    Reston headed toward a row of doors beyond the cubicles.
    “Those are the board members’ offices,” Harriet explained as she came around her desk, straightening her suit with quick sweeps of her long, brightly painted nails. “Mr. Reston’s office is next to Mr. Giovanni’s—who, by the way, won’t be in today, as he’s flying back from London this evening. But he’ll be there at the board meeting tomorrow, so make sure you aren’t late. Your first board meeting is an important event, and you’ll want to make a good impression.”
    She spoke much faster in person, the words running together in some places, and David noticed for the first time that she did indeed have a hint of a Jersey accent, something that hadn’t come across over the phone. He let her lead him to one of the cubicles—directly outside of the two doors that she’d indicated led to Reston’s and Giovanni’s offices.
    “This is your desk for now. You’ll be spending most of your time in Mr. Reston’s and Mr. Giovanni’s offices, or running up and down to the trading floor.”
    David took in the cubicle: desk, chair, IBM workstation, and a steel telescoping lamp. He could have been right back at Merrill—except the other cubicles surrounding his seemed to be vacant, no signs of life clearly visible, no pictures tacked to walls or sad little plants trapped in equally sad little pots.
    “Where is everybody else?” David asked.
    “There is no everybody else,” Harriet answered, turning back toward her desk. “The other board members’ assistants have cubicles on the fourteenth floor. The traders live in caves and eat their assistants during the cold winter months. The fifteenth floor is just for board members. And me.”
    She smiled back at him, chasing an errant, oversprayed lock out of her eyes.
    “And now you.”
    David blushed. She saw the color in his cheeks and laughed.
    “You’re cuter in person, David, but don’t get the wrong idea. I didn’t put your picture up above my desk—Mr. Giovanni did. The old man has an odd sense of humor sometimes. Though I really did like the flowers and chocolates.”
    When she was gone from view, David lowered himself into his chair, testing the springs, getting the feel of yet another cubicle. They never taught you about cubicles in business school. Maybe that was because, until a year ago, business school grads didn’t have to deal with cubicles.
    David put the manila envelope on the center of his desk and went to work on the metal clasp. The W-2 came out first, followed by a letter from the Merc, welcoming him and laying out his payment package. He took a deep breath as he searched for the numbers—then exhaled as they hit him like a club to his gut.
    Fifty-eight thousand dollars, plus benefits. Nearly a third less than what he was making at Merrill Lynch. He knew that money wasn’t everything—but hell, with his school loans and his apartment and his girlfriend, it was going to be a tough year.
    Sometimes you gotta move lateral before you move forward, he sighed to himself, repeating one of his dad’s mantras. The thought brought him back to the night before—to the party celebrating his dad’s completed year of therapy. It had been quite a Russo affair: aunts, uncles, cousins, food flying everywhere, little kids running around with snot running down their faces, David’s mother making everyone toast again and again—hell, the wholegroup would have been thrown out of the restaurant in the heart of Little Italy if it hadn’t been owned by a distant cousin. David smiled inwardly as he remembered how elegant Serena had looked in the midst of all that Russo chaos, sitting right next to his dad the whole time, matching