Page 84 of Return Billionaire to Sender

Even if I were willing to go that far, which I’m not, I don’t see how saving this random Manhattan building would be specifically important to a pretty young executive coach from New Jersey, aside from the fact that it’s some sort of stretch goal that she seems to have chosen for herself, connected to this video that found its way into her hands by whatever means.

I frequently set my own stretch goals—a certain acquisition, presence in a specific city, running so many miles in a certain amount of time. It’s always more about hitting the goal than the goal itself. Goals on their own don’t make people happy.

Also, why would I want to end our sessions?

A dark thought hits me––doesshewant our sessions to end? She wasn’t at all affectionate today; I chalked it up to the hangover and that mysterious bad news, but what if it’s something else? Did I push her too fast?

I think back to the way her eyes fluttered with pleasure, the breathyyesshe repeated as I moved my hand toward her pussy. The way she asked me to unzip her pants.

Is she rethinking the whole thing? Regretting it?

Is there something I should be doing now that I’m not doing? If I want to keep our interactions going—and I find that I very much do—I need to at least make a gesture toward something that looks vaguely healthy-relationship-ish.

I’m not entirely sure how one works, and I’m hardly capable of developing any such thing, considering my role model, but some gesture…

It’s here that I find myself thinking about my old friend Howie. His family lived next to ours growing up, and he was my main source of information on normalcy before I went off to boarding school. I returned to California on and off in the years that followed, but we were never especially close—he was always a Boy Scout type, more likely to be serving omelets at shelter kitchens than throwing eggs at cars with me. These days he’s a wholesome family man with a cabinetry business, but we’ve kept in touch.

WWHD: What would Howie do? Would he try to get her on a nice date? But what if she won’t go on a nice date? Then what would Howie do?

I give Howie a call.

“Malcolm!” Howie sounds happy to hear from me. “What’s new? Are you in town?”

“I’m in town and I thought we could get together,” I say. “Let me take you out tonight.”

“We’re grilling,” he says. “The kids are excited for it. But you’re welcome to come by for a steak.”

“Hmmm,” I say, not loving the sound of this. I was hoping to get him drunk and soak up some of his secrets, and you can’t exactly do that with kids around demanding attention.

“You can finally meet the rug rats, and you haven’t seen Clare since the wedding. It’s a nice evening—what do you say?”

Reluctantly I agree—I suppose it’s a bit much that I haven’t seen his home or met his kids in all these years. I’m assuming he’s invited me over before this—my New York assistant is responsible for filtering and turning down social invitations. I get her on the line and I learn that Howie has twin girls, both ten years old.

I arrive at Howie’s place at seven sharp with a nice bottle of red, per my assistant’s suggestion. The girls are cute, though their presence makes for underwhelming dinner conversation, to say the least.

Clare and Howie seem delighted with them, and with each other. Clare sometimes watches Howie with adoration, even when he talks about something as simplistic as his predictions for the Giants and his failure to get the girls interested in baseball. The girls tell what they don’t like about baseball, Howie tells the girls to ask me what I call an elevator, a car trunk, a truck, and I dutifully play the Brit, though I’ve long since adopted the American words for those things. I learn many fascinating things like, they can only feed the dog at its bowl, and he howls at fire trucks.

It’s as if they’re this enclosed little social unit with their own little rituals and stories. They even have their own language; the entire family is endlessly entertained, for example, when one of the girls asks me to pass the bloop-bloop and I just sit there mystified. In Howie’s family, bloop-bloop means the ketchup.

Endlessly entertained. I stare down at my plate pushing around bits of corn with the tines of my fork. Everybody could fall off the face of the earth and Howie’s family would be content, just with each other.

It’s strange to see children actually wanting to be with their parents and vice versa, and it’s not an act for company.

My own family, which is to say, my drunk of a father, would have been happy if I’d fallen off the face of the earth. Especially after my mother made her escape to Australia.

Clare brings out cookies on a vintage platter. There are carvings around the edges of tall ships. Howie always loved tall ships. Clare’s smiling at me expectantly now, as if she’s waiting for me to break into song.

“Anything look familiar?” she asks.

I look down at the cookies. Am I supposed to recognize the cookies? “Familiar?” I say playfully, adopting her tone.

“Yes!” She grins, still with that air of happy expectancy. “Really so thoughtful. We love it—it’s a prize piece in this house.”

What?

“Well,” I say. “Excellent…” I stuff a cookie into my mouth as Howie looks on, amused.

Clare looks confused. “I’m not just saying that, you know.”

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