The first time I bought a house, the real estate agent - a sweet, motherly woman who was later indicted for fraud in an unrelated transaction, said: Don’t worry darlings, the money will come. It just does. She may have ended up in jail, but she was right.
If money is your goal, you have no goal. I asked a girl who worked here what she wanted to be. Rich, she answered. I corrected myself. What do you want to do? I don’t know, she answered, something. It was clear that she wasn’t cut out for fast food. We ran the gamut from cookery to fashion to the performing arts, but everything got dismissed as somehow beneath her status as a very rich person, which she was in no danger of becoming, consequent to her cart being before her horse.
I used to have a boss who ran all the arcades in town. He loved me and I loved him. I used to go there after school and help him count money, which I was very good at doing. His desk was in front of a wall-sized safe with double doors, constantly full of cash and usually standing open, so that he was framed in money, which was better than a window. He always said: money should be behind you, never in front - that’s when your reach exceeds your grasp. On Fridays he would place five twenties on the desk in front of me. That money is between us, he would say. Get it behind you.
Take room service. You sure aren’t thinking about money when you pick up the phone. You’re thinking about a cheeseburger, a couple of fried eggs, a piece of chocolate cake. If you were thinking about money, you’d have put the menu down before you ever decided to eat. The sandwich is the thing. The price, you complain about later.
I never complain about the price. I either pay or I don’t, but I’m no chump. I love to argue with the Chinese, dick with the Italians. We all know what’s fair. But it’s never really about the money. It’s the meat, the fish, the eggs and the cheese. After that, it’s all face. The money comes last. Money we can all afford, otherwise we wouldn’t be there, arguing, ready to walk away. Because if you aren’t ready to turn your back on the money, you’re in for the worst deal of all.
