Born To Be A Billionaire.

It's low season on Palm Beach. The seaside mansions are battened down for the hurricane of August and September. The palm-lined avenues are devoid of Bentleys. Reservations at the chic restaurants are wide open from Bice to Amici and the Leopard Bar is empty at 5pm. There is no happy hour at the Colony Hotel.



I'm writing in a spacious dining room. Spacious without being overly opulent. The three glass doors open onto a courtyard, once filled with the carriages serving the Woolworth estate. That family has moved into humbler surroundings. Too many kids. Too little fortune. Same as me. Two kids. No money, although enough to keep my families in Thailand fed, while I hide my destitution from the pitiless mercy of the rich, for nothing unsettles the wealthy more than the other classes requesting a loan no matter how small the amount.

This afternoon I was standing in front of Graf Jewelers, wondering how much they were asking for the 3-carat flawless D diamond in the window. I had a client for a 3-carat stone. He was the manager of a luxury car dealership in West Palm. His girlfriend had been married twice. The diamond ring in the Graf display was out of his league, but I wanted to know the price. The front door was open and I started to enter, except a high whining voice caught my ear as did the blind man tapping of an older woman's high heels on the sidewalk.

Her accent was Mainline Philadelphia. The age of the bejeweled heiress was of indecipherable decrepitude. Her friend looked ten years younger thanks to a dip in a botox swimming pool. Neither of them noticed me. I was in the shadows, but I clearly overheard the older one remark about lending money to the non-rich, "They never pay you back, because they think you won't miss it, so why bother giving them anything other than a glass of wine and a good meal."

I stepped out of the shade and she astutely assessed my value within a blink of her rheumy eyes. Her scrapping voice dropped nearly to a whisper in fear not so much of revolution or theft, but wary of an interloper hearing her inside game. If it had been dark I would have stalked her into the Parigi Alley like a hungry dog hankering a snarl at a bag of garbage. Two seconds and I could have ripped the diamonds from her chicken-bone fingers. Broad daylight re-instilled my good citizenry and I entered Graf to ask, "How much is that diamond in the window?"

"$150,000." The salesman had seen my eyes on the 3-carat stone. I was wearing jeans and a tailor-made shirt. He saw me for what I was, but also with the graciousness that he wasn't too far away from me either.

None of us were born to be a billionaire.

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