CATCHING THE BILLIONAIRE

"Hello! I’m Niel Thompson, calling from St. Mary's Foundation—” Click. “Hello! I’m Niel Thompson, calling from St. Mary’s Foundation—” Click. “Hello! I’m Niel Thompson, calling from St. Mary's Foundation—” Click. Oh f**k it. I knew it! I shouldn't have agreed with Beny when he told me to volunteer tonight. I was supposed to be doing this fund-raiser thing where we called up wealthy persons who were originally from here, to enticed them to help their hometown. But to be honest, I wasn’t exactly an ideal candidate for the role. I had no f*****g clue how I was going to work “and how would you feel about giving us some penny to help the orphans and whatnot” into a casual conversation with a complete stranger. My best friend Beny was originally the one who’d signed up, but he’d come down with a flu. A total nasty one, where he's bedridden and all. Which meant his friends ended up asking me instead. I knew as soon as they gave me what was supposed to be two days of training in ten minutes that it was going to be awful. And a quick glance around the only slightly dank basement confirmed my worst fears: the rest of the volunteers were all engaged in life-enriching conversations with opera singers, human rights lawyers, and well known surgeons. Whereas for me, I don't have a f*****g clue how to have a very productive speech. I dialed the next number. They’d told me you could hear the smile in someone’s voice, so I made sure I was grinning even though I wanted to smash the phone in tiny bits and run away, far away from here. “HelloImNielThompsoncallingfromSt.Mary’sFoundationpleasedonthanguponme.” Silence. Then a second pass, “How did you get this number?” “God, I don’t know. It was just on the list they gave me. I’m just one of the volunteer…” My mind blanked out. Something about that implacable voice shook me to the core. “…for this fund raiser thingy.” “Huh???” “The St. Mary's Annual Foundation. Um, you heard about it, right?” “Isn’t that why I’m on your list?” “Oh yeah.” I decided to pretend my utter incompetence was funny. “Good point. But there was a letter. You should have gotten a letter.” “I don’t have time to read letters.” “Well, no wonder you miss stuff.” A laugh, quiet but totally sexy, ghosted down the phone to me, and I felt it like fingers caressing against my spine. “I assume that if the message is important, the sender will find a more efficient way to deliver it.” “Efficiency isn’t always better, though.” “Under what circumstances is being effective at achieving what you set out to achieve less good than the alternative?” I knew the answer to that. They have informed me about it. But for the love of God, I'd completely forgotten all of the ideas they crammed in my head. So I did what I always do—improvised, and prayed that he won't ask more because I really don't have any idea on what we were talking about. “Only if what you want to achieve is communicating something as simply, directly, and immediately as possible.” “You have a point.” God, his voice. From the moment I’d heard it, I’d thought it was pretty sexy, in a chilly, upper-class way, but when he sounds amused, it was as rich as honey. Very f*****g irresistible. I grinned foolishly at the receiver. “But if I wanted to say something with more nuance, something personal like I’m sorry or, thank you, or…or y’know…I love you, then maybe a letter would mean more than a text message or a Post-it note.” “I had no idea that one of the volunteer of St. Mary's felt quite this strongly about me.” I snuck a peek around the room, in case I was doing it wrong and everybody could tell, but nobody was paying any attention to me. I moved a little closer to the phone and confessed, “To be honest, you’re the only person who hasn’t hung up on me halfway through my opening line.” There was another moment of silence. I might have been imagining it but it felt a little charged. “You asked me not to.” “I was honestly pretty desperate.” “Well, it seemed to work.” “I guess you took pity on me.” “I wouldn’t call it pity.” I nearly asked him what he would call it, but I didn’t quite have the balls. I wondered what he looked like. What he was doing right now while he was talking to me. Probably he was sixty-five and tending a bonsai tree, but his voice made me imagine a man in a very expensive tux sitting in an expensive leather chair, while sipping his whisky. I shivered and suddenly realized how silent the other line had been. I didn’t know this man, and he didn’t know me, and if I didn’t say something soon, it was going to get super f*****g uncomfortable. “So…um…” I fumbled with the cheat sheet of helpful icebreakers. “When was the last time you were here?” “Ah.” A chill syllable, as devastating as a dial tone. “I was wondering when we’d get to this part.” “Um, what part?” “The part where we exchange charming stories about life and then you ask me for money.” I actually yelped. I’d been sufficiently distracted by the awkward conversation part of the arrangement that I’d managed to totally forget about the whole fund-raising thing. He laughed and it wasn’t like the other time. It was cold and harsh, and very, very resistible. “What else does it say on your list?” “Pardon?” “Your list. What else does it say about me?” I hadn’t expected the call to last more than five seconds, so I hadn’t bothered to read anything beyond the number I was dialing. I looked now. “It says you’re Matthew Bloomberg and you graduated in 2010 with a first in politics, philosophy, and economics." “And apparently you’re the CEO of a multinational banking and financial services holding company. I don’t know what much of that means.” “You can look it up on the Internet. Anything more?” I stared at the next line. “It says you’re a lovely person, and very kind to animals.” “Niel.” It showed how screwed up my priorities were right then, and for a moment, all I could think was, He remembered my name. f**k he remembered! “Uh, what?” “What does it really say?” My name, and the touch of sternness, raised all the hairs on my arms. “It says you’re the third richest man in the UK with a net worth in the region of twelve billion quid.” I waited. No idea what for. I’d done as he’d commanded, but he wasn’t exactly going to shower me in praise for it. I expected he would hang up but he didn’t and so we were stuck here, with the silence deepening between us. “Um…” I skimmed desperately over the cheat sheet. “It says here that I should ask you if you’re enjoying it. But I don’t know what the it is. Oh, right. The answer to the previous question. How are you enjoying being the third richest man in the UK?” “I’m finding it quite enjoyable.” “You recommend insane wealth as a potential future for the others, especially the ones who needed it most?" And then…then he laughed again, the laugh I liked. And I could breathe. “I do. What’s your next question?” I checked. “Do you get the Arrow?” “Since I don’t know what that is, it seems safe to assume I don’t.” “It’s the Book of Making You Feel Bad About Yourself. You know, the Reader's Choice magazine? It’s full of stories about people who are living amazing lives and achieving amazing things while everybody else were miserable." I paused. “I guess you don’t read it, with being a billionaire and everything.” “I don’t, no.” “And you don’t have time for the post, so the whole thing’s a bust really.” I must have sounded a bit disappointed because he said, sounding embarrassed. “There isn’t an e-copy you could sign me up for?” “Oh my God,” I wailed. “I’m doing it wrong, right? I'm really bad at this, aren't I? But really you don't want to come back?" “I haven’t thought about it since I left.” “You don’t have any good memories?” “It’s not that. It’s simply that I prefer to focus my energy on the present.” “And you never look back?” I tried again. “Never miss anybody or feel thankful?” “The past is merely a string of things that have already happened.” I knew I was a dweller by nature, reliving every moment of embarrassment, every harsh word, every little loss, but I wasn’t sure his way was the answer either. “That sounds alienating. Living out of time.” “I would rather control my future than concern myself something to I can’t change.” Something in the way he said it made the back of my neck prickle. “You can’t control everything.” “On the contrary, with enough wealth, power, and conviction, one can control anything. And Anyone.” Aaaand that really wasn’t helping with my inappropriate thoughts. I tried to laugh it off, but it came out way too shaky to be convincing. “You sound like…There’s this line in Ulysses where someone describes history as a nightmare from which he’s trying to awake.” “I’m already awake. And I haven’t read Ulysses.” “You want to know a secret? Me neither.” “But you can quote from it.” He seemed to have warmed up again. Maybe he was even smiling. And I thought, What would a man like this look like when he smiled? I sat back in my chair, tucking a knee beneath me. And felt oddly sad suddenly. I don't know why, but I just remembered how I'm living my life. I’d basically squandered the last three years being disorganized and lazy and preoccupied with getting laid. Wasting my time to things that didn't really matter. I should've done more. But truly, I don't know what I wanted to do. Until now, I'm still working on finding something that I like to do with my life. But I'm still unsuccessful. He was quiet for what felt like far too long. “I think,” he said at last, “when you claimed to be bad at this, you were either lying or sorely underestimating yourself.” “I wouldn’t lie to you, Mr. Bloomberg.” It was hard to tell because we were on the phone but I thought I heard him draw in a sharp breath. Something I said? Or his name, which felt intimate somehow, in my mouth? Even though the formal address should have maintained a sense of distance, rather than the reverse. “It was just a thing I thought.” “That I should make a donation to my old town? Rather a convenient notion to cross your mind at a fund-raising, don’t you think?” “Well, yes…I mean no…I mean. f**k. All I meant was…I couldn’t think of anything more powerful, or more important, than being able change the course of a life. To be able to give someone who truly deserved it an opportunity that money or circumstance or social inequality would otherwise deny them.” That was when the magnitude of what I was suggesting finally sank in. I squeaked. “Or…or you could just buy a plant for the Town Hall. That would be cool too.” I was relieved to hear him laugh again. “You are a very dangerous young man.” “I’m really not.” And I wasn’t sure whether it had been intended as a compliment anyway. “I’m going to say goodbye now and think about what you’ve said.” This was all moving a little fast for me. I wasn’t even entirely sure what had happened. “God. Are you sure? You don’t have to.” “No, I do. Charming though this conversation has been, I’m a very busy man and I never make financial decisions without considering them thoroughly first.” “I meant…you don’t have to…give any money. Or anything.” “Courage, Niel. Never back down before you seal the deal.” “But I wasn’t trying to…to deal with you.” “Perhaps that’s why you succeeded. I had forgotten how potent sincerity can be.” Maybe I should have been celebrating but I felt terrible. As if I’d accidentally perpetrated an epic deception on a billionaire. And then I suddenly remembered there was a formal dinner and I was supposed to invite anybody who seemed donatey. “You should come visit,” I blurted out. “Pardon?” “Before you decide anything. You could come to the dinner at the end of the week. I mean, it’s free food.” Oh, what was I saying? “Though I guess that probably isn’t much of a motivation for you. But can…do you think…would you…” He cut over my flailing. “Put me down as a maybe.” A click. And the line went dead. Uh. Huh. ________________________________________________