Delicious evening to stroll the beach. Which lay at the end of a private boardwalk across the dunes and through a coded security gate... But Pascal had no interest. A martini by the pool. That's where he was headed, after driving through the (also coded) security entrance and parking the Porche.
Headed around back of the "cottage," as they called 26-room beachside mansions in Southampton. Early evenings in late June were perfect, here, wherever you parked your ass, if your hand held a drink.
He'd have to make it. No guards, no servants, no family, no dog. The CEO of a $5.37 billion hedge fund could afford to be alone. It wasn't cheap. The staff groomed the grounds, cleaned the house, prepared the dinner, checked the security system—and got out or got canned. Except for a 24-hour Safe House Company vehicle parked a discreet quarter mile from the front gate.
Pascal Lapin's was a "short-course Olympic pool: 25 meters, 82 feet. Long-course (54 meters, 164 feet) would have given him agoraphobia, panic attacks, terror of receding horizons or intergalactic black spaces.
Shit! This was an outrage!
But interesting. She sat on a chaise at the far end of pool, the dune end toward the sea. Whoever the hell she was. Automatically, he waved—a one-pass, straight-armed salute. Part of the continuing struggle to inhibit his visceral anti-social impulses.
Then, he waited. He could discern her smile 82 feet away, but she didn't wave back. Jesus, she was in a black bikini and the wrapping was too small for the package. Let's see...had his vice presidents ganged up and surprised him with a $2,500-an-hour strumpet. Fire them all Monday morning. Seriously. They wouldn't dare.
He was resentfully plodding along the edge of the pool toward her and she was watching, smiling. Her legs were crossed, long legs. Maybe $3,000 an hour... They wouldn't dare.
Why was Pascal, in his walled, guarded, expensively solitary estate going to her? Why not call the security guards, have her strip-searched, and arrested? The strip-searched fantasy was the clue. If you wait to surprise a billionaire executive in his private space, be sure you have the boobs for it.
Let's see: "How did you get in here?" "You realize you're trespassing?" "Leave at once or I'll call security?" "Get your fucking ass off that chaise and get out of here!"
"Beautiful evening to sit by the pool. Where is your cocktail?"
What a smile! Lips as pink as candy. Pale, lovely face, but with jet-black hair, short. Eyes so dark Pascal couldn't identify the color. Black. Black as coal and shining out of mesmeric depths. "I don't drink anything." She placed a palm on the rolling hills above her bikini top. "Can't extinguish the home fires!" A murmurous, gusting voice, like wind wooing from a cavern.
"May I ask how you got in here? Perhaps security notified me, and I missed it..."
"No security against me," she said brightly. Pink lips like darting sea creatures when she grinned. This just had to get much less interesting. Keeping banter aloft was like a tennis rally; the faster and more furious it went, the sooner it ended in the net or out of bounds.
Fuck her. Pascal paid to be alone. Ten years ago, even two years ago, he would have said, "Why don't you strip and take a dip, so I don't fall asleep?"
Who fires a hedge-fund CEO? His board. No, his customers. Divest investments with dirty, disrespectful, diversity-adverse old white men.
Sixty-two wasn't so old. But about twice as old as she.
"Southampton woman alleges hedge-fund billionaire pressured her to skinny dip." Classic New York Times front-page breaking international news. Plus, an op-ed column or two to drive home the moral. "Mr. Lapin, through his lawyer, stated that the woman had trespassed on his five-acre oceanside estate in Southampton and had been scantily clad."
It was becoming alarming just looking at her. Wasn't she taking ridiculously deep breaths? Her breasts rose like two pans of banana cake dough in a hot oven.
"I'm sorry, but these are not my business hours," said Pascal, actually bowing slightly. "Please make an appointment to see me at my offices next week. May I show you out, now?"
He remained slightly bowed, awaiting his cue.
"I wondered if you wanted to win the 'Big Balls' Super Lottery, this week? Grand prize is $542 million, last I checked."
"I thought they sold lottery tickets at gas stations? This is how they're peddling them, now? Oh, you want me to buy 50,000 of them, maybe? You get a commission?"
She laughed with throaty delight. She had top social skills. Pascal had been told, authoritatively, by his ex-, that his jokes were not funny. Not ever. This babe laughed as though he had come up with a fresh anti-Trump joke.
She half-turned to him. Nice midriff. Navel seemed to protrude. "No, you buy one ticket. Just asking if you want to win."
"The banter ball had hit the net and was rolling off the court. No save possible. But Pascal was born to try. "So, this is a poll? Do even hedge-fund CEOs yearn to score the 'Big Balls' grand prize this week?"
"No, Mr. Lapin!" She had stood up. Christ, would the security cameras catch it if she attacked him? Then, he could slam her into the pool in self-defense. The attack is clearly visible, folks, in this video footage. "No!" she repeated. She sounded annoyed. "Just, do you want to win the lottery?"
"Never buy a ticket. The Pascal's Wager Fund closed up $250 million on the week. At 15 percent, assuming we qualify for the annual bonus, that's $37.5 million in income. This week."
He loved her black hair. Pixie cut. Gamin. With little points beside her ears. Black eyebrows on the heavy side. She was frowning. It was about time she stopped grinning.
"Hadn't realized you were that loaded. Knew you had the estate and the Porche, of course." As though to herself, she added, "Weak research. Lousy briefing. Assholes!"
"Excuse me?"
She shrugged nice shoulders, which were on the right side of bony. She held his gaze; it gave him agoraphobia. "So, anyway, would you want the $542 million?" She added, rather lamely, Pascal thought: "Easy money."
"Buy one ticket? So, after the drawing, I look like a fool? And you write up the story for Vanity Fair? And Wall Street giggles for the rest of my career?"
"Not just a ticket. You would have to give something. That would be disclosed after you commit to the deal."
Now, right here. This was exactly what he felt when the waiter took forever to bring his first martini. Encroaching whole-body irritation, agonal twitching. The urge 'accidentally' to swipe a glass off the table to get some fucking attention.
Unfunny jokes, however, were his personal lifelong ego-signature, his pet tic. "I bargain my soul to the Devil for riches? I've already done that."
She made an expression of terminal impatience. She pointed two slender fingers at the surface of the pool in a sort of droopy 'V for Victory' sign. She frowned, concentrating. The first bubbles swarmed to the surface as in a champagne glass. A moment later, they were larger, much larger. Then, the surface was a rolling boil. Then, the whole pale-green surface did an Old Faithful, steam clouds rolling into the summer-evening sky, mounting like a thunderhead. The pool's water level visible fell, boiling away.
"Jesus!" shrieked Pascal. "Fuck!"
He was staggering back, almost falling over a chaise. Yes, he did actually scream. "Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Stop!"
With a contented burp, the water subsided, a last puff of white steam wafted up, and serenity settled, again, over the world. Most of the world... "Whatizis?" demanded Pascal. "Whatta fuck izis?"
His face expressed disbelief melded with a heroic attempt at reproach.
"I am not the Devil," she said, smile faintly dismissive. "Not personally." She had to add—vulgarly, Pascal thought—"You aren't dying to meet Him, are you?"
It was odd; you never believed in the Devil, or Hell, but you knew all about them. Everything look absolutely normal, now. Maybe it didn't happen. She looked very much alive, soft... No brimstone. (Anyway, what in hell was 'brimstone'?)
Pascal liked to lecture colleagues: Be prepared for a 'paradigm shift.' Well, if there was a Devil, then for Pascal that was a paradigm shift. Or was it a 'black swan'? She was pale and graceful like a swan, but with black markings. He was stalling. Get rid of her. Get his martini. He needed time to think about this; never make a deal under pressure.
"No, I think I'll pass," he said.
"On the $542 million? Just by buying a ticket?"
"But you said I'd have to give 'something more.' I'll pass. No deal."
She was nodding her head, her eyebrows raised, and kind of rolling her eyeballs-like someone digesting a ridiculous pronouncement. "We wouldn't be asking you to risk all your capital, you know? It's just one deal, not the whole store."
He shrugged. "Yes, but it's only money. And I'd have to check the tax implications, anyway." He added: "Give it to someone who needs it. Where it would make a difference. An orphanage or the Libertarian Party or something."
