I took the boy to the office on Friday. He was excited, although not quite as much as some of my colleagues. They'd heard of his wisecracks and were looking forward to meeting him in person.
'How do we keep him entertained?' asked Frei.
'Shall we show him the table football?' said Pitt.
'No,' said Parker. 'That will give him the wrong impression of what goes on in the office.'
'You mean the right impression,' said Pitt, and everybody fell about laughing.
The boy was on his best behaviour. He shook hands very cordially with everybody and only confused the names of two people. He looked at my Bloomberg console and noticed that the Euro was falling in value against the dollar. He walked around the office and came back to sit at my desk.
'You can use this screen and I'll use this one,' he said generously to me.
We fought each other briefly for possession of the mouse.
Frei made a bet with the boy. 'Look,' he said, pointing at the intraday tick chart of Euro-dollar. 'One Euro is 1.3067 dollars. I'm going for lunch in fifteen minutes. Do you think this chart will be down or up at that time?'
'Down,' said the boy.
'Given how we've been doing so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the boy wins,' said Frei to me confidentially and laughed like a hyena.
Meanwhile, the boy had noticed the football table. It was surrounded by four eager men playing desperately for victory. He waited patiently for them to finish, but they kept switching sides, playing game after game.
Adebayor noticed that the boy was looking at bit forlorn. He went into the football room and muttered something to the men. They looked at the boy sheepishly. They trooped out. 'We got carried away,' said one.
'That's okay,' said the boy.
'I told them that your son was about to cry,' said Adebayor smugly. 'It always works.'
We went in and whacked the ball a few times. It rolled into the goals at random. The boy giggled happily.
When Frei was about to leave for lunch, we took a look at the currency chart again. The Euro chart had been dropping jaggedly all that time, but as we watched, it suddenly spiked up.
'Oh dear,' said Frei. '1.3077. I'm afraid you lost, mate.'
'That's okay,' said the boy.
We also went for lunch soon thereafter.
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