The $542-Million Lottery - Or Me

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."

She was shaking her head. "Doesn't work that way. When your name is up, you're up."

"So, make me another offer. Do you have to check with the office, or something?"

"What in Hell do you want?"

"Ha. Ha. Ha."

"Yeah, sorry. What do you desire? Today, right now?"

"A martini. Like half-an-hour ago."

"I should go make it? Because I'm the woman?"

"I make it myself. The recipe's a secret."

"I make a Hell of a martini."

"Ha. Ha. Ha."

When he returned with his martini, she was sitting at the edge of the pool, with her svelte legs over the side.

"You don't drink anything at all?" I think you said.

"Keep the home fires burning."

He was examining her breasts, this time with a side view. "Is it painful-the fire?" He indicated his own chest.

"Physically, no," she replied, thoughtfully. "Spiritually, yes. But it isn't for eternity, you know. That's an old wives' tale. Not even the national debt is infinite."

"Like to ask you about that, sometime," Pascal said, noncommittally, and raised the glass to his lips.

"So, what is your unfulfilled longing?" She didn't look at him; she was comfortably flapping her feet in the water. The home fires apparently were all internal.

"Why should I tell you?"

She shrugged. "I made a bona fide offer."

"Okay, since this conversation is deniable. I never stop thinking about hitting on our receptionist. Hot Jewish girl. Like the young Monica Lewinsky."

"Uh-uh!" she grunted, already shaking her head, lips pursued. "That's trouble." She glanced over at him. "Without leaving the company?"

"I am the company."

"With $542 million, you could get all the sex you wanted."

"Who wants to buy sex?"

"Well, rephrasing that, a bit: You don't want to buy sex..."

"When you're old enough to collect Social Security-although we advise clients to delay that as long as possible," he added, for the record—" no one wants you for sex."

"You want just sex with this receptionist? What's her name, by the way?"

"Rebecca. We call her 'Beck.' Yes, more or less. She's about twenty-five."

Her face turned to him and she sort of gazed up from beneath her eyebrows. Pascal went on: "Is that the kind of thing that gets you in trouble down there?" With a crooked forefinger, he pointed downward. "If you do it in the workplace?"

"Oh, Hell no." She sounded offended. "We are a very ancient institution. Give us a little credit for not trying to re-invent human nature. We are not politically correct."

"Good to hear that," he said, perfunctorily. "Yes, I would have expected a little realism."

"Unfortunately, this month our specials all have to do with money." She added, a bit defensively, Pascal thought, "It has limitless potential, for us."

"You'll be back, then, since I've nixed the lottery thing?"

She nodded. "But I realize that leaves you a little out of luck. I mean, on a Friday night, beginning of a beautiful Hamptons weekend."

He sipped the martini, staring down into the glass. "Money can't buy happiness," he said knowingly, as though he had just coined the phrase.

"Well, you don't mean happiness, do you? I certainly wouldn't call it happiness. You mean a so-called 'good time.'"

"No," Pascal insisted, "I mean happiness. Fucking Beck would make me happy."

"Oh, isn't that a tad ridiculous?" she said, with a distinctly condescending smile, it seemed to Pascal. "I mean, big breasts and a nice smile... You think Bill Clinton was happy?"

"I think that I would be happy," said Pascal, taking his stand in the redoubt of a merely subjective report.

She was gathering herself to stand up, swinging her legs out of the pool. She had not a ripple of extra flesh at the waist. Her head kept shaking as she pushed off from her butt and stood up. He watched her over his glass. "I don't think you even know what happiness is," she said, glancing down at her wet shins. "I'm a bit surprised. A man of your age and accomplishments..."

"But I have always wanted to make love to a girl like Beck. As long as I can remember."

She spread her hands, palms up, as though uncovering a surprise package. "A girl like what, for Pete's sake? Big hips, big boobs, nice smile? That's the answer to your lifelong quest for happiness? I can't believe you're saying this!"

He put the cocktail glass down on a table beside the chaise. Actually, banged it down. "Oh, for Christ's sake! Don't you..." He paused, glaring at her. "By the way, what is your name?"

She wrapped her trim Michelle Obama arms around herself beneath her breasts. It lifted them slightly-as though they needed any more elevation. "As a matter of fact, it's 'Venus,' which I know..."

"Are you chilly?"

"No." She gave herself a firm hug. It did things to her décolletage.

"You don't need to apologize for your name."

"I am not!" she snapped. "Why should I apologize? You assume because a woman has a name that means 'sexual desire,' she has to apologize?"

"You want to know something-honestly?" asked Pascal. He did not wait for an answer. "I find you very defensive. Yes, Monica Lewinsky is a really sexy girl, and so is Beck...but..."

"Okay, okay!" Venus literally seized her head in her hands, as though to screw it off for repairs. "Okay, just stop saying 'girl,' for one thing! I'm amazed you have survived as a CEO! Monica Lewinsky is a middle-aged woman! And I am not defensive! I am not at all defensive because you happen to imagine that those women are so-called sexy!"

"That is bull!" said Pascal, just short of shouting. "Everyone thinks Monica Lewinsky is sexy. And we aren't even talking about her, by the way! Beck is not middle-aged."

"She is not a 'girl'!"

"Oh, so that's the point you have to make? I thought that your...your firm wasn't PC? Why do women always get discussions totally off a logical track! You don't even remember what we were talking about!"

"About the fulfillment of your dearest dreams with a big-breasted woman."

"Well, not with the girl from Hell," said Pascal stiffly.

"Ha! Ha! Ha! You've been having fantasies about me ever since you ogled me from the other end of the pool!"

Fists jammed on hips, he stared at her. He did not reply.

She glared back, chin slightly outthrust.

Then, he said quietly, in a small voice. As though unseen ears might be listening. "Sure, I'd like to fuck you." He added, "I don't know about your schedule, though."

"I suppose you mean getting back there?"

He nodded.

"There is no 'back' and no 'there.' It just isn't like that."

"Okay, then." For no particular reason, he kept nodding.

"All I've said, so far, is that you've been having fantasies about me."

"You implied I could find happiness with you."

"I most certainly did not imply that! I implied that you wanted a fuck and it didn't have to be that receptionist. It isn't about happiness. You need to get laid."

"You arrive here, uninvited, and in 45 minutes you're telling me what I need and what makes me happy?"

"I thought you were fooling yourself. I thought it was obvious. You needed to hear it. Most men do."

He was examining her bikini bottom. It seemed about as big as an eye patch. The skin around it was smooth. She must be shaved.

She scrutinized him, for a few moments, then raised a hand, forked fingers aimed at him.

"No!" he yelped. He remembered the pool. He did want to boil like a lobster. But nothing seemed to happen as he stared fixedly at her outstretched hand.

Except, after a second or two, he felt a very faint evening breeze that he should not be feeling in that particular spot. He glanced down and actually jumped back a few inches, with cry of panic.

But it jumped with him, because what had startled him was his own crotch. He was naked. His penis flapped with the jump. He was reaching down with both hands to cover himself. It was instantaneous and instinctive.

"I like to have a look before I commit," she said. Her head was tilted to the right. a little, as though assessing what she saw.

Pascal's heart raced. He was panting, too. Most of all, he was watching her as though a great cat were crouching to spring. He did not cover himself, however; he stopped his hands in time. A small humiliation headed off. He was beginning to get an erection. He was quite confident about his endowment. He used to like being looked at by women.

"Another martini?" she asked.

"You can just make one?" He held out two forked fingers to illustrate what he meant.

"What, satanic power can't mix a drink?"

"My secret recipe?"

"Oh, I really don't know..."

"Well, how does it work?"

"How does what work?" she asked. "The powers of darkness?"

Pascal thought she was like hedge fund managers offended when he asked how they made their profits. Oh, my, it just wasn't that simple.

"Well," she said, "I sort of think the thing, then concentrate really hard. You know, 'martini,' then give a good mental heave."

He nodded, "Try 'refill the glass'"—he gestured at the little table—"that way it will know what to do."

She looked at him with dawning admiration. "I wouldn't have thought of that. I'd have done 'martini.'"

"Probably that would have defaulted to some bar guide."

She frowned at the martini glass, forked her fingers, and pressed together her lips; she looked, Pascal thought, as though she was straining on the toilet. It was cute. And the martini glass was full, now.

"Okay," he said, scooping up the glass with a grand gesture, aware, however, that he was still naked, and raised it to his lips. "Best one I ever had," he said reverently.

One thing brings to mind another. Without looking at her, he asked, as casually as he knew how, "Is it very hot, in there?"

"Hot in where?" She was exasperated by his vague way of referring to things.

He merely twisted his outstretched hand, with the forefinger extended. It pointed vaguely below her belly.

"You mean, in my pussy?"

He nodded, tilting back his head for another sip.

"I think you have to decide that," she said, primly.

"No, I mean hot like 'home fires,' as you said."

"I told you that was spiritual."

He put down the glass and walked over to her. She watched him warily. What was her problem, wondered Pascal? He was the naked one.

"I see that I don't really understand what (he nearly added "the hell") is going on. How come you even have a body if you died?"

He was reaching behind her back. She stood obediently, let him. The bikini's bra had a single large button. Two fingers on each strap, he lifted off the garment. He had to tug it just a bit out from under her pressing breasts, which rested only delicately on her rib cage. They were quite nearly round, squashed only slightly at the base. The thick, dark nipples—same melanin as her hair, Pascal supposed-were balanced on top. She glanced down at them, as though taking attendance. Then she smiled at him. He jerked away just slightly as he felt fingers down there take hold of him. She smiled more broadly.