A Million for Eleanor: A Contemporary Story on Love and Money Read online

  “You must agree to marry me tomorrow, at two fifty-two in the afternoon.”

  “What?”

  This word was exhaled with as much disbelief as anger while the corners of her lips curved up, making her face resemble a wax mask. He did not like what he saw but was curious how long she’d be able to keep the expression so perfectly frozen.

  “It’s simple. If you agree to marry me tomorrow, October twentieth, at eight to three p.m., this money will become yours. You can choose to divorce me on the very next day, if you like.”

  “Your wedding’s scheduled for tomorrow and the guests are invited, but your bride ran away so you urgently need a substitute?”

  Her face remained unchanged even after she said that.

  “Second time. Now I have to tell you what I love most about you.”

  “You better tell me about the money.”

  “It’s your guesses,” he continued, unfazed. “I absolutely adore your ability to instantly come up with a least evident and yet perfectly sensible version of anything. It doesn’t even matter that you’re always wrong. It’s like being wrong in a novel you’re writing: everyone will think that’s how it was supposed to be anyway.”

  “Oh really?” she said. “Was I always wrong?”

  He kept silence, waiting for her to continue. Eleanor looked around, as if searching for something, and then said:

  “Are you actually serious about this?”

  “Quite. There isn’t a single fake bill in either of these guys.”

  “What guarantees do I have?” Eleanor said after a pause. “I can’t believe someone will give away one million dollars, even if that’s you.”

  “I am not giving it away,” he reminded. “I am paying for a favor. And my guarantees are simple: the money will become yours as soon as you agree.”

  “Listen, it’s silly!” Eleanor exclaimed, as if overwhelmed. “It contradicts everything I can imagine. It’s nonsense!”

  She got up, folded her arms on her chest and began staring into the window.

  “I see no contradiction here. You know I always loved you, and we both know why you never loved me back. Now that I finally have the only thing I was missing, why not consider getting married?”

  “Are you really talking about love again?” she said, her intonation fluttering so peculiarly that the mood behind it could have been mistaken in a million different ways.

  “I always want to talk about love, it’s the only thing in the whole world I profess to understand,” he said earnestly and realized she was watching his reflection in the window, dark and shiny like an ancient mirror.

  Suddenly Eleanor turned around and looked at him as if it were only now that she noticed his presence.

  “Good evening, Mr. Socrates. Should I be honest with you and say you are the last person I wished to see tonight?”

  “Honesty is the only thing I shall accept from you, Dr. Nietzsche,” he replied.

  “You didn’t change at all,” Eleanor said with sudden resignation, smiling in a way that differed from everything he saw so far.

  “Manche Leute ändern sich nie,” he reminded.

  “I never thought you were one of them.”

  “My whole life is a proof of it.”

  “Speaking of which.” Eleanor’s face lit up. “How is it? I still have no clue of what you’ve been up to. Will you educate me?”

  “You want extra time to think? Okay. But tell me, are you actually interested?”

  “How can I not be? You catch the woman you haven’t seen in five years in her house and offer her a million dollars in return for a one-day marriage. I am all ears!”

  “Then sit down, will you?” he said. “And drink your damn tea.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Eleanor said, still smiling and not moving. “Tell me about yourself.”

  He took a pause, sipped some more tea and finally began.

  “The last time we saw each on the graduation day, although it should be noted that throughout the whole senior year we did not exchange a single word…”

  “Really?” Eleanor said with surprise. “Why was that?”

  “A most banal reason: at the end of the junior year you got into a relationship which held through the summer. I both hated the guy and despised you for choosing him, so naturally I left you alone, which was exactly what you wanted. Because of this you didn’t learn about an incident that took place at the dawn of the autumn. I was bored out of my mind and, seeking entertainment, I got into online gambling and one day won five grand in a poker tournament.”

  “Not bad for a novice.”

  “I played poker for money since I was nine years old. But five thousand was a considerable sum for me. The only problem was that I had no clue what to spend it on.”

  “People seldom have this problem.”

  “That’s because people are petty,” he returned coldly. “What can you get for five thousand? A used car? A trip to Fiji? A gold watch? There is no point winning money if you are going to live like you did before. No, if five thousand fall into your hands you must turn them into fifty as soon as possible. And then shoot for half a million.”

  “So, did you manage? Or is this money stolen and you are trying to get what you always wanted before the police nails you down?”

  “Another one.”

  “Another one – what?”

  “Another brilliant hypothesis. Are you already afraid to say “goodbye” to the million?” He remained silent for a moment, examining her face. “Dear me! I bet you wouldn’t be surprised if the police broke in right now.”

  “At least I wouldn’t have to make any decisions.”

  “Sorry, no easy ways for you. The million is mine, and it can become yours any moment.”

  “I thought so. You always make things complicated.”

  “Why delight in simplicity when it comes to love?”

  “Are we talking about love again?” Eleanor rolled her eyes. “I thought you were telling the story of how you became rich.”

  “My bad.” He shook his head guiltily. “I forgot you forget about everything else as soon as you hear “money”. So, where was I?”

  “You just got your first five thousand.”

  “Right. I hated the idea of spending the win, so I decided to invest it. Of course, I wasn’t thinking about the stock market: I needed better returns. That’s why the very day the money was transferred to my bank account I called my best friend in North Carolina and told him I wanted to get into his business.”

  “What kind of business?” Eleanor asked when it became clear he was waiting for her question.

  “He was a cocaine dealer,” he explained.

  “Cocaine dealer?” Eleanor seemed genuinely surprised. “I never knew you had such friends.”

  “Is that your way of saying you thought I was a nerd? But when would I have a chance to tell you if you were always busy with other guys?” She gave him an annihilating look which he ignored. “The truth is: I was lucky with my friend. Most people know only how to waste money; few know how to make use of the most. He belonged to the few.”

  “Weren’t you afraid to get into that?” Eleanor asked suspiciously.

  “At that point I wasn’t, because I participated only as an investor. We struck a simple deal: he’d buy another load with my money and keep seventy five percent of all net profit. That would still more than double me up in less than a month.”

  “Very simple, really,” Eleanor nodded.

  “I had no choice. It was my last year in college, and I had no employment prospects. Besides, I believed I wasn’t meant for a nine-to-five job.”

  “And what happened next? Did the five become fifty soon?”

  “It did, by the end of the school year. That last time you saw me on graduation I already had enough cash to buy the Lexus your boyfriend drove. My friend who also graduated suggested I’d join him down in North Carolina, and I agreed.”

  “Did you parents not object?” Eleanor wondere
d innocently.

  “They didn’t know anything. I told them I wanted to take it easy for the summer. But I did put an explanatory letter in a bank cell, so that they’d know what was going on in case of my death.”

  “So, it was serious?”

  “If you are a cocaine dealer, it always is. Especially if you are a popular one. And we sure were. We ran things differently than other guys. Usually if you are meeting a dealer at a gas station at six p.m. it means that he can be there any time between six and midnight, or not come at all. But if you were meeting us you could count we’d be there at five to six. Naturally, the clients liked it, and the competition didn’t. At some point, someone got so upset they tried to kill us. Should have aimed better, though,” he added contemptuously.

  “You were shot at?” Eleanor said as if refusing to believe his whole story.

  “Multiple times. But back then they only damaged the car. I was even glad it happened. I realized we needed to change our tactics. Our profits’ curve was flattening, and tolerating that under bullets was out of question.”

  It was then that two remarkable things happened, almost simultaneously. First, he noticed admiration in Eleanor’s eyes. It was but a spark, an involuntary subconscious response to something she was thinking, but he caught it. Second, he felt the stirring of a warm and soft sphere in his chest, a sensation he could not confuse with anything else. Comparing love to butterflies fluttering in the stomach had always seemed a cheap absurdity to him because he had his own metaphor for it as long as he remembered himself. However, it was the first time in the last five and half years that he experienced it.

  Eleanor kept eyeing him, and he continued.

  “Soon after the incident, we got a rare chance. Our supplier had a problem: he needed to get a large load from Mexico, and his key man had just been killed. We volunteered, and it all worked out great. Not only we delivered the cargo, but my friend also made a valuable connection along the way.” He grinned. “A flight attendant on international flights who slept with the pilot in command. After that, we started using his plane.”

  By now he knew the story captivated her. The smooth velvet azure in her eyes was glowing brighter with every minute, making the sphere in his lungs inflate, filling the alveoli with what felt like thick amber treacle and making it harder for him to breathe. He drank some more tea, letting the treacle into his stomach where, drop by drop, it ignited like kerosene dripping on a white-hot iron surface. All he was waiting for now was for the sphere to get to his heart and explode in it, not even knowing what would happen after.

  “We had a few very successful trips to Central and South American countries until someone down in Colombia betrayed us. The whole cargo was arrested, and the only good thing was that they accidentally killed the pilot. The girl lived, though, and I thought it was the end of everything, but I was wrong. The big boss was so impressed with what we had done on our own that he took us to San Diego. And that’s how we got into the highest of all drug traffic echelons: sea smuggling. Do you know how much cocaine can be transported in an average container vessel?” he asked, somewhat disturbed by her absentminded, albeit enthralled, look.

  “No.”

  “Just enough to set the whole city of New York on fire on a Friday night and keep it burning until Monday morning. But we didn’t bother with containers. We used oil tankers instead.”

  “Oil tankers?”

  “Yes. You rent one to buy some oil from Latin America, and, in addition to it, get a few metric tons of a certain powder. You don’t know how much a ton of cocaine costs either, I presume?”

  “No.”

  “Between ten and fifteen million, depending on the quality. That’s Colombian wholesale price, of course. Here in the States you can charge a hundred per gram, though we didn’t average even forty, because if you have that much stuff you’re more worried about finding enough dealers than penny-pinching. It was a golden age,” he continued, finally allowing himself some nostalgia. “We had a villa on the shore, just like you’d see in the movies. We used it for all sorts of things, one of them being a cash storage. We didn’t even bother counting when it came to profits: we determined our shares by weight. And even that was taking too long. How is my story?” he inquired in mock derision. “Are you not too bored?”

  “No, I’m not,” Eleanor assured. “But something’s bothering me. It’s about your usage of past tenses. Are you not a cocaine tycoon anymore?”

  “Bravo,” he said, genuinely impressed. “You’ve crafted this question so masterfully I can’t even tell what answer you’d prefer to hear.”

  “Just tell me the truth, then.”

  “I’m not. I quit two years ago. Or, rather, had to.”

  “Did you guys get pinned in the end?”

  “No. The police chiefs were welcome on our villa, so we didn’t have any problems with the law. Those folks are easy: all it takes to hook them is a fashion model.”

  “What happened, then?”

  “My friend died.” He tried to say it in the same voice but failed. “After that everything changed. Two largest Mexican distributors allied against us and began causing a lot of trouble. Our dealers started to die at a faster rate, and the surviving ones demanded an increase of commissions. And then, a day before our tanker’s arrival, I found out the F.B.I. had set a trap at the port. So we had no choice but to call it a night,” he said with sadness, feeling the sphere bump against the last obstacle.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was one hundred and twenty five million dollars’ worth of cocaine on that tub,” he said with sadness. “When you sink all that in the ocean, there isn’t much else for you to do in the business.”

  And then the sphere stormed into his heart. It seemed he wasn’t sitting on the chair anymore but soared above it. He felt exactly like he used to: six, seven, eight and nine years ago; like he didn’t care where he was or what he was doing, like the entire world was reduced to a single electrified thread curling inside. He closed his eyes and didn’t even realize it at first, bewitched by the colorful explosions on the inner side of his eyelids which the sphere was producing with its every jerk. He loved her again and in the very same way he knew he would never be able to love anyone else.

  “Richard, you’re more mysterious than I ever thought.”

  “Not true,” he said, surprised by how distant his own voice sounded to him. “It is only now that you are actually starting to think about me.”

  He opened his eyes and saw the same blue shade shimmer around her pupils. It seemed she got so pensive she even forgot to act, so innocent and melancholic her face looked.

  “What did you do after this?” she asked finally.

  “The company announced bankruptcy, and we dissolved. Frankly, I was glad. In four years I made more money than I cared to spend, and I was tired of knowing I could be shot every moment. Besides, I had an interesting offer. A friend of mine to whom I did a delicate favor had long been interested in my talents and when I became available he made me the managing partner in the New York City’s office of his tobacco company.”

  “What did you do for him?” Eleanor asked lively.

  He looked at her pensively, thinking whether or not he should answer.

  “I persuaded his wife who was divorcing him to reconsider her claims for their property. That saved him the need to kill her,” he said at last.

  He wanted to take another sip of tea, but the cup was empty. Eleanor was now staring at the table, not saying a word. Suddenly, he realized that the sharp sound that was bothering him for a while was the ticking of a quartz clock hanging on the wall right above his head.

  “All in all, it seems you have a good life,” Eleanor said slowly, still looking at, or through, the table. “You know, it’s just… astonishing!”

  “What exactly?” he asked sullenly.

  “Your story. Sounds like a movie script.”

  “No, it’s movie scripts that sound like drug dealers’ lives. The
good ones, anyway. But is it that astounding to you? Did you really have no clue what kind of person I was?”

  “I guess I didn’t,” she said.

  “Did you know anything about me at all? Like what I majored in, for instance?

  Eleanor gave him a perplexed look.

  “Physics, right?”

  “No!” He shook his head, asking himself if it was possible not to adore this woman.

  “Math, then.”

  “How about English?”

  “No way!” Eleanor exclaimed. “Didn’t you always want to prove that humans are alone in the Universe?”

  “I did fiddle with science for a while, but then I gave up. I was too skeptical of its value. Besides, I would have already been thrown out had I brought you my research papers.”

  “Why do you think so horribly of me?”

  “How can I think horribly of you, given all my love?”

  “You always exaggerated it.”

  “No. You always undervalued it. Thus, the farce. But you’ve had enough time to think. Let’s come back to the question. Do you want me to repeat it for you?”

  “As you wish,” she said with unexpected tones of resignation.

  “Eleanor, do you agree to marry me, Richard Charlester, tomorrow at two fifty-two past noon in exchange for one million dollars?” he asked, piercing her with a most penetrating stare he was capable of.

  “Can I make sure I understand everything right?” she asked cautiously.

  He nodded, still eyeing her.

  “You say the million will become mine if I agree to marry you tomorrow at two fifty two p.m.?”

  He nodded again.

  “And I have the right to divorce you on the very next day, or this coming Monday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which will not affect your decision to leave me the money?”

  “Correct. The million belongs to me only until you say “yes”.”

  “In that case, it doesn’t belong to you anymore,” Eleanor said, smiling bewitchingly. “I agree.”