Born To Be A Billionaire

Summer was the low season on Palm Beach. The seaside mansions were battened down for the hurricanes of August and September. The palm-lined avenues were devoid of Bentleys. The tables of the chic restaurants were wide open from Bice to Amici and the Leopard Bar was empty at 5pm. There was no happy hour at the Colony Hotel.

In June of 2008 I was writing ALMOST WICKED in the spacious dining room of a Spanish mansion. The three glass doors opened onto a courtyard, once filled with the carriages serving the Woolworth estate. That family had moved into humbler surroundings.

Too many kids.

Too little fortune.

Same as me.

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 unsettled the wealthy more than the other classes requesting a loan no matter how small the amount.

One afternoon I was standing in front of Graf Jewelers, wondering how much they were asking for the 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 Beach. His girlfriend had been married twice. The diamond ring in the Graf display was out of his price range even on 47th Street in Manhattan's Diamond District where I had sold jewelry for over twenty years.

Graf's 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.

The accent was Mainline Philadelphia and 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 and 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.

Within Two seconds 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.

"Good stone." My boss Manny and I sold the same stone for about $50,000.

"The only one of its kind, but we have bigger."

"I bet you do."

"But nothing smaller."

"I like the three."

"It'll be here for a while."

"It is the season."

"It certainly is."

I bid him a good afternoon.

Both of us knew that I wasn't coming back, for the salesman like the wizened heiress assessed me for what I was, but he possessed a sympathetic graciousness, since he wasn't too far away from me either.

Neither of us were born to be a billionaire and I blinked in the bright sunlight of Worth Avenue.

Summer had a long way to go before I had to leave Palm Beach.