Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money Read Free Page A

coming for a long time. You
don’t get to be an old racehorse without learning to recognize the
sound of the starting gate. Or, for that matter, the feel of the
finish wire.
    Sal pulled a strand of hair away from my
eyes, tucked it behind my ear. “We’re gonna miss your smiling mug,
kiddo. I always said you were too pretty to be a broker.”
    I made a shooing motion with my hands,
though I couldn’t stop the grin that slid over my face. It was an
old line with us. Lady brokers were seldom slender, 5’11” blondes
with lots of unruly hair. I’ve never thought of myself as gorgeous
— attractive, sure — but in the early days, the guys gave me a
fairly hard time. After a while, once I’d earned my stripes, it
turned into good-natured ribbing. These days it was all around
Barbie. If I made the company a lot of money, they’d call me
Vacation Barbie, as in, I’d earned a vacation. Or if word leaked
out that I was seeing someone, the guys would say: How’s Ken?
    The Barbie stuff didn’t irritate me perhaps
as much as it should have. The trading floor is always tense. As a
result brokers get their laughs as cheaply and easily as possible:
there’s no time or energy for sophisticated humor, not during
working hours.
    Now Sal said, “Good luck, Barbie,” And,
despite the teeny inside joke, I could see the sentiment was
sincere. “You always know where I am.”
    And I did.
     
    * * *
     
    I was disappointed when, a couple of weeks
after I’d quit my job, I didn’t feel any better and I started
getting seriously worried about myself. Was this what had happened
to those crazy ladies you saw pushing shopping carts filled with
all their possessions? Did it start with some sharp, personal
tragedy from which they never recovered? The moment that seemed
like an achingly clear forecast of my future, I pulled myself out
of bed and made a conscious effort to do something. Anything. And in those first few days of stumbling recovery,
a walk around a couple of blocks chased my breath away. But it
helped. It was like there was a light ahead somewhere, if I only
squinted diligently enough.
    My timing on choosing to return to what was
left of my life was flawless. About when I could manage a whole
meal, cared enough to shower every day and felt strong enough to
catch up on my laundry, my co-op sold and I knew that the time for
introspection was over. In 30 days new people would be moving into
my apartment and would expect me not to be living there. I had to
do something. I just wasn’t quite sure what.

Chapter Two
     
     
    I felt apprehensive until my lungs met the
air outside the terminal. Inside it hadn’t felt very different from
the plane or JFK before that. But right outside the building,
thinking about finding a cab, it hit me in an amazing wave. The
smog, almost dense enough to cut with scissors, the moist heat
after the air conditioned neutrality of the airport, the smell of
the sea and, inexplicably and faintly, the scent of something
vaguely tropical and sweet. This, to me, is the smell of Los
Angeles: thick and moist and slightly mysterious beneath the dirt,
though the dirt is real. I smiled as I hailed a cab. The cabbie
smiled back as he stopped for me. I’d never been in the city
before, but I knew I was home.
    Before I’d decided on Los Angeles I’d
considered Seattle, but that would have been going back. I wasn’t
sure what I wanted, but I knew that retracing my steps wasn’t it. I
had a brief fling with the idea of Canada — cool and clean — but
even though a lot of Canadians speak English, it’s a different
culture and I didn’t feel up to that. I saw some program on
television about Sedona, Arizona. It looked so pretty, so new. But
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get daily Times delivery out
there and, if I decided to stay involved with the markets, that
would be key.
    By then I knew I wanted west and warm and new . It wasn’t that big of a leap to think of LA. I’d heard
so much about the place.