A little stain

Lauren lifted her head out of her freshly manicured hands. She paused for a second before she opened her eyes. 

"Let me take this in," she thought, "I can fake it, they won't even notice."

She opened her eyes and she was correct. Everyone was typing away, eyes fixed to the screen; Bloomberg news sang in the background. No one noticed her pause or fake smile that formed with her red lips.

"tick-tick ACD up 3.4% with heavy trading, Microsoft down 4.9% driving down the whole tech sector: tick-tick"

Lauren took the back of her hand to her cheek and wiped off a single tear, almost scratching her face with her rings. This had not been the first time she cried at work. It was becoming a regular thing. She often attributed it to her hormone cycle, to her fractured relationships with her parents, her keto diet, or to anything else going on in her life that day.

She opened her Chanel compact, looked at her face and applied a fresh coat of red Paloma Picasso lipstick on her lips.

"I got this!" she whispered to herself.

Thirty of her colleagues sat near her. It was one circular desk. A financial transactions assembly line. They lined up, elbow to elbow on this polished table. All you saw was a collection of computer mice and keyboards; each station had two screens.

Lauren looked to her left and right. She knew the names, Joe and Larry. She knew their smells, stomach noises, and what they ate each day or at least the smell of the food. Usually a sub from the deli downstairs. That was all she knew about them. She regularly wondered, given their income, why they didn't eat better, or dress better, or just smell better.

Days are always intense. Trading is always nonstop. While most of the work is done by computers, these traders still have a lot on the line. In a single day, millionaires are lost and won. Occasionally someone will pull a shot of vodka or even a line of coke, but no one seems to notice. She justified the long hours and the independent work environment as the price for the glam she dreamt of since she was a kid. At least most days the justification stood.

One thing she knew was that she was lonely. Between the different markets, she worked 16-hour days sometimes. Not a word to anyone or from anyone for 16 hours. In the six months she had been there, there had been no "hey, Lauren, let's have drinks" or "hey, how was your day, weekend, decade?" In six months at FlatIron Investments, she had said only two words repeatedly, "Bless you," to no reply.

As a 40-year-old woman on her second career, she thought trading would be the best job ever. Intense days, glamorous nights, and a big check to cover it all. She was good, and they all knew it. She singlehandedly made the third-quarter profits for the company.  But to these 21-year-old boys and that one other woman who was just as indifferent, she was an intruder and an outsider. The one who they didn't know or want to relate to.  

She looked at her screen; it was a good day.  Her portfolios were up despite the market. "I won," she thought, "I did it."  So after wiping her tear, she stood up and grabbed her phone. She shut off her monitor, grabbed her LV bag and walked out. She was determined to stop the loneliness. It was not worth it. She had enough in her accounts to live a comfortable life.

She reached the elevator, one of the few manually run elevators left in Manhattan. A minute later, the door opened.

"Early day, Ms. Lauren?" Billy asked as he moved aside so she could get on.

"Yeah, it's my la—" she said, pausing mid-sentence.

She saw herself in the mirror that was the back wall of the elevator. She noticed a little stain on her LV bag. She knew she would need a new one right away, maybe a Birkin.

She turned around.

"Sorry, Billy, changed my mind."

She walked back in, sat on her chair, turned on the screens and started clicking away.