The Night Sparks Flew

Daddy didn’t rate the Limos situation as a particular problem. He reckoned it was all a bit of a ‘storm in a teacup’ and felt, like he always does, that a ‘bit of dosh’ would fix things, but he would, wouldn’t he, being three thousand miles away! Eventually we’d paid Limos on Line 6 months worth of fees just to get out of the contract which was probably worth it having seen their faces when the shredded document was emptied onto the table in Privilege. Tanya, our lawyer in London however, wasn’t quite so forgiving and implemented a whole new raft of administrative procedures to ensure we never again fell into the same sort of trap. But then again, she was three thousand miles away. What we got up to and she didn’t know about wouldn’t hurt her!

The fund we’d built up had been doing ok. Daddy was pleased. As long as our numbers beat the median of the other fund managers, we could hold our heads up with our clients and charge even more for our ‘services’ the following year.

Keeping well away from the Street was a great idea of Daddy’s. Madison Avenue was much less frenetic and fewer questions were asked, which was the plan all along but our Friday night sojourns up to the ‘centre of the universe’ kept us appraised of what was going down. Who was doing what and to whom. Names of the big investors whom we would tap up the following week.Who was making the money and, more importantly, who was being investigated.

The delightful Samantha, who had returned from London reinvigorated, was also keeping me well occupied. Her range of skills in the bedroom never failed to surprise me and made me wonder if she’d had another occupation before becoming a respectable PA. I have to say that she also worked miracles when we hosted our clients to some of those little events they expect and which we organise occasionally to thank them for their custom……and our ridiculous charges! She took over the whole balcony of Metrazur in Grand Central one night which apparently had never been done before. The clients were most impressed and one or two of them, after a few too many glasses of Cristal, felt they were entitled to sample the delights of her stunning body as well as the delicious canapés she’d organised. The fact that I was none too fussed about this ‘attention’ had started the problems with Samantha a few months back. As far as I was concerned, they were clients, and good ones to boot. If one of them had wanted to bend her over the balustrade in Metrazur and give her a good seeing to, that was just fine by me. Just as long as he kept his money in the fund.

A few weeks later, on one of the few Friday nights when we didn’t go en-masse to Harry’s Bar which is a short stroll from Wall Street, we ended up at another steak restaurant, probably more famous than Harry’s – Sparks in Midtown. I didn’t know it at the time, but Sparks was where John Gotti, the infamous Mafia gangster had ordered the execution of two fellow Mafia members (Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti) and, according to ‘Mr Fixit’, Richard Pelinni, the Mafia still held court in the farther recesses of the restaurant. How did he know? It bothered me.

I still remember walking into Sparks (pictured). Lots of round tables populated by older guys, sitting, talking with their heads down. Waiters, all men, rushing around in their black dress jackets, making sure no table wanted for anything. I didn’t think anything of it until Pelinni told us of the supposed Mafia connections and then there was a different feel to the place. I’m sure I felt a few glances cast in our direction, but that could have been Samantha, who, as usual on a Friday, wore one of her most alluring outfits. Normally, she dressed like this to attract the Wall Street guys (and get information from them) but now I was slightly concerned about the attention she was attracting.

Dinner went without a hitch. Well nearly! The steaks, which Sparks is famous for, were delicious and cooked to perfection, as you would expect, but for Samantha’s taste, a little too rare. Despite the waiter offering to replace it, Samantha, who had quaffed a few too many glasses of the 82 Margaux, decided that she should lecture the waiter on how ‘the Brits like their steaks cooked’. At one stage she screamed that ‘if she’d wanted raw meat she’d have gone to the fucking butchers’ and then added that ‘fucking yanks have no class’, which was, to me, hysterical given that nobody with any class would order a burnt steak! The waiter was a model of politeness despite the tirade coming from Samantha’s lips and offered to bring another steak but a guy at the adjoining table took exception to her comments and I noticed him whispering in Richard’s ear. Pelinni then whispered in my ear that we needed to leave – pronto. And so we left, without Samantha seeing her steak returned to the table. Outside, Richard said he had been left in no doubt that the underworld traditions of Sparks were alive and well, which might not be a description you could apply to our group if we carried on disturbing other diner’s meals.

As we waited for our limo to take us to the bar at Chambers which we still frequented, I thought it strange that if I’d taken out a gun and shot bullets into the ceiling at Sparks, it’s likely that nobody would have batted an eyelid. But, a rather drunk Samantha shouting about ‘fucking yanks’ managed to get us warned off by a guy who probably had seen, and more ominously, done it all before!

I didn’t know it then but that was the start of our problems in The Big Apple.

The Contract

I’d been wondering more and more about Patrick Pelinni’s position in our company. OK, he fixed things but sometimes I wondered how he’d managed to pull the rabbit from the proverbial hat when all seemed lost. An example was the Jim Levinski ‘Tomato Tsunami’ problem a few weeks previously when I was sure that Levinski would simply have written us off, no matter how illogical it might have been missing out on our projected annual return of 17%. Levinski, however had gobsmacked us by sending a gofer three days later with the requisite $2 million and nothing more had been said – at least from Levinski. Patrick however had mentioned it a few times and it had started to worry me.

We’d been in New York for just over six months and had a nice line of clients generating over $25 million for our first fund. People wanted a good return but also wanted us to keep things quiet. They never asked what we invested in and we never asked them where their money came from.

The six month marker meant we had to tell our clients what sort of progress we were making and a year-end projection for their money which shouldn’t have been a problem given we were already at 14% at the half-year mark.

We also had a number of supplier contracts to renew. We hadn’t known at the start how long we’d be in the Big Apple and we also didn’t know where our base might end up so we’d only signed short term deals with a range of suppliers. As Madison Avenue had proved to be the ideal spot, for a variety of reasons, and I was determined to extend our stay, it was now time to filter out the crap suppliers and negotiate new terms with the good ones.

One of the suppliers who had not lived up to their billing was the company who supplied our on-call limos which magically appeared at the entrance to the office whenever we needed them – apart from the increasing number of times when they didn’t and were late. When they did appear, the cars were ok but the drivers left a lot to be desired. On a number of occasions, I was sure the driver was listening into client conversations in the back and even when the partition widow had been raised at my request, I was certain that some sort of intercom device was allowing the driver to listen in, particularly when, on a couple of occasions, some strange stock-market movements were obvious just after we’d received a tip from a grateful client.

The problem with ‘Limos-on-Line’, was that they’d been recommended by Patrick and he was none too happy when I told him that this was the one suggestion he’d made which had turned out to be a turkey. No amount of persuasion on his part convinced me to change my mind – Limos-on-Line were toast, as they say.

I’d faxed the contract to our lawyer in London, Tanya, to establish our position, and to my astonishment she stated that we’d signed an open-ended contract - no time period and no clauses to prevent us being ripped off year after year as they had the right to raise prices at will.

Although I was concerned about this situation I was sure that (a) we could negotiate (pay?) our way out of the contract, and (b) as Patrick seemed to know the guys at Limos-on-Line, I was equally sure he would be able to ‘fix’ it as he normally did.

I called Frank Zupposi who was the guy at Limos who I used to get Samantha to call when we had a complaint and asked him to pop over and see me with the existing contract. A couple of days later, a gofer from Limos arrived and said Frank and his boss, a guy called Blanco, would meet me in the VIP area at a sleazy strip club called Privilege on W23rd street.

The gofer suggested that I took our version of the contract with us which made me wonder if Limos still had their copy. It was only six months old but I’d heard that Limos were having problems with the Mayor’s department. Maybe we had an advantage after all?

Three days later, Mick, one of my commercial guys and myself were seated in the VIP area of Privilege desperately trying to keep our minds on the business to hand as girls cavorted all round us. Frank and Blanco wandered in as if they owned the place just as I ordered my second gin and tonic. Niceties were short and sweet. I told them their service was crap and they said that that was unfortunate but that we had an open-ended contract and not only that, they had the right to increase the prices as and when they liked and they’d decided to push them up by 50% for the next six months.

I laughed into my G&T and trying to be a true New Yorker, told them to go fuck themselves. Mick who had taken a back seat until now chipped in with a ‘yeah – go fuck yourselves.’

Face red with outrage, Frank stood up and was ready to storm out when I took out my mobile and dialled the office. ‘Lynn – bring over the Limos contract please’. I told her where we were. She’d been expecting my call and had hopefully done what I’d asked with the contract but the surprise in her voice was obvious. ‘You want me to bring it where?’

And so twenty minutes later, a rather sheepish Lynn appeared with a large jiffy-bag and handed it to me, trying to avert her eyes from what was happening on the stage behind her. I then asked Lynn to leave which she did, still trying to cover her eyes as she tried to find the red-curtained exit.

‘OK’, I said. ‘The full contract is in this envelope – and I guarantee that it’s the contract between our organisation and Limos-on-Line. If you guys can point out the clause where it has no time limit and where it says you can raise your prices, I’ll accept it, but, if you cannot point out the relevant clauses, we can forget it and we’ll take our business elsewhere. Agreed?’

Frank and Blanco looked at each other barely able to believe what I’d just said. They knew what had been in the contract despite having to destroy theirs when the Mayor’s Compliance Unit had visited them a few months previously. It was ‘in the bag’ as far as they were concerned.’ Agreed’, said Frank.

I slowly ripped off the top of the jiffy bag making sure all the grey fluffy material went over Blanco’s expensive blue suit but before presenting the contract, I lifted my G&T and finished it. Mick did likewise.

I pulled open the top of the envelope, turned it upside down and emptied the contract onto the table. It was shredded. Well done Lynn, she’d carried out my instructions to the letter.

Frank and Blanco looked at it in disbelief.

Mick and I got up. ‘Go fuck yourselves’, Mick said. ‘Yeah – go fuck yourselves’, I added and we headed for the door. If Mick was shaking as much as I was, it didn’t show.

Naked Came The Vintner

It had been another gruelling day on Madison. We’d checked the screens when the markets opened, made sure nothing was too far out of line, sent a few e-mails to clients whose money was due to be reinvested soon and then had headed off, en-masse to yet another of Patrick Pelinni’s ‘favourite restaurants for lunch, another cavernous dining room where yet again he was greeted as if he was royalty. I was beginning to have some suspicions about Patrick and his background, particularly when he said he knew the owners of the restaurant and then regaled us with stories about their union backgrounds and Mafia links. Still, he’d fixed a few things for us including the problem with Jim Levinski so nothing was ever said or done. He picked up his monthly pay check and didn’t cause any trouble. Why should I rock the boat?

Lunch passed uneventfully, probably because Samantha was back in the UK for a week or so, and we headed back to Madison for the afternoon shift. Nothing much happened to ruin a nice quiet day – not even a call from Daddy asking for his usual daily update.

It was one of those hot, humid New York days. Not so hot that you needed to be within five feet of an AC unit but too hot to wear a jacket. It was one of those days when we all headed to Bryant Park for early evening drinks when the bell tolled 7pm.

Bryant Park on those warm summer evenings is like a huge open-air party. Gorgeous girls are everywhere, champagne glasses clink incessantly and the smell from delicious plates of sweet-potato chips lingers in the air making you hungrier by the second.

Now, I think I’m quite ok to look at. Not a hunk perhaps – just ok (see my profile), but in a crowd of several hundred other, infuriatingly, better looking guys than you, I’d had to think of alternative ways of attracting the opposite sex. Name-dropping the Chambers didn’t mean much to them. Languidly smoking whilst holding a glass of Bolli sometimes did the trick when they approached you to ask for a cigarette or a light but then I didn’t really fancy them. I couldn’t stand the thought of kissing a smoker – God no!

And so over the first few weeks of summer nights in Bryant Park I’d worked out an almost foolproof method for getting the attention of the opposite sex. ‘Excuse me’, I’d say, ‘I bought these glasses of champagne for my friends but they seem to have disappeared. Would you like them – free of course’. They would accept and I’d walk off to be with the boys from the office. Within five minutes max the girls would have sidled over to our group and that was it. How could they possibly refuse a night of free champagne and sweet-potato chips of course? Oh, and anything else which was going!

But it was on one night when our luck was out that a few of us headed over to 48^th and 8^th to a restaurant one of the guys, Joe Zambroski, knew. Joe obviously had some Italian blood in him somewhere despite the Polish surname and his knowledge of Italian restaurants in NY was second only to Patrick’s. Heading north east, it took us about 20 minutes to walk the ten or so blocks to a small place tucked down west 48^th street.

Compared to our usual eating haunts, Masseria was a tiny place, maybe about 50 covers but it was a

pleasant change from the heaving restaurants we were used to. Steve, my IT guy ordered the best Barolo they could come up with and I took a glass and went outside for a cigarette. I wandered, glass in hand around a tiny garden situated in a space next to Masseria. It was a memorial garden to those firefighters who had lost their lives in 9/11 and it caused a rare moment of reflection in my otherwise, live-for-the-moment life.

As I was just standing there looking at the plaque with the names of the dead firefighters from that particular ‘ladder’ as they called the vehicle they were assigned to, and feeling bit wistful (God – it was becoming a habit!), Steve called out that the waiter was about to take our orders. I went inside, ordered, and the three of us had a terrific meal. About 10.30pm Joe decided that he would be the ‘family man’ and set off for his home in New Jersey, leaving Steve and I drinking Barolo and putting the financial world to rights. About 11.30pm Steve uttered his now familiar words, ‘another bottle Nigel?’

We’d almost finished that bottle and Steve had mentioned the possibility of calling it a night when the waiters started to re-arrange the tables and chairs in the restaurant, a strange flurry of activity so late in the day. Steve asked what was going on and was told that “America’s most famous porn actress was about to arrive.” She was launching her new wine range and had chosen the Masseria for her official launch party. Apparently, we learned later, it had all been arranged several weeks before despite the last-minute activity in the restaurant and hence the reason why the waiters hadn’t presented Steve and I with the bill – the normal way of getting rid of unwanted diners to close the place.

It all rang a bell. In a quiet moment earlier in the day when I’d been flicking through the New York Times, I’d noticed an article entitled, ‘Naked Came the Vintner’ which didn’t quite compute when I’d read the piece – porn actress and wine! Was the title of the article a play on words I’d wondered?

Back to the Masseria and I popped out for another cigarette just as a black stretch limo glided up to the sidewalk. A dozen people poured out of its doors and headed into the restaurant leaving the peak capped, huge, black driver desperately trying to park in a space only slightly longer than his vehicle.

He saw me standing there and motioned to me to assist him with his parking. ‘Another six inches’, I said. ‘Cheeky boy’, I heard from behind me followed by, ‘how did you know what I was saying this afternoon?’

I turned and came face to face with a blonde dressed in a sort of cowboy outfit, complete with fringed hat. She was also smoking a cigarette. ‘Nigel Smarther-Blair’, I said. ‘Savanna Samson’, she replied. A quick look told me she had a stunning body but the face looked as if it had seen life. We passed a few moments talking about London, New York and the weather and then she threw her cigarette into the gutter and went inside.

When I returned, Steve was finishing the last of the Barolo and when I mentioned that maybe we should go, as we had a presentation to make to some potential investors in about ten hours time, he replied that with ‘America’s best porn actress’ in the restaurant, he was going nowhere. ‘Another Barolo, Nigel?’ he asked. Another rhetorical question!

Steve and I started on our sixth bottle of that delicious but expensive red wine and watched with interest as Savannah (pictured above) took control of her table of guests telling people where to sit and telling the waiters to start uncorking some of the wine which had been carried in from the limo. There was no problem in working out who the boss was.

About twenty minutes later Miss Samson headed off to the toilets and on her way back to her table, I called her over and said in a slightly slurred voice that I’d been a fan of hers for ages. ‘You’re so kind’, she said as I took her hand and kissed it.

‘Careful’, Steve said. ‘You don’t know where that’s been. Savannah (we were now on first name terms) shot Steve a look which would have shrivelled a lesser man and returned her gaze to me.

‘I just love the idea behind your new wine’, I said. ‘I’ve always loved Italian wine’. ‘I can see that she said’, pointing at the Barolo, ‘but you’ve got to drink in moderation Nigel. I was thinking about it but you’d be no good to me tonight.’ And with that she swivelled on her amazing legs and headed back to her table.

My head went into a spin. Me and Savannah Samson. A winner of countless porn awards including the porn Oscar equivalent of ‘Best Group Scene’ and ‘Best All-Girl Scene’.

I was wistful for a second time that night when Steve interrupted my thoughts and true to form, said, ‘another bottle Nigel?’

Sexy Serena

The problem with the Tomato Tsunami, as it later became known in the office, just seemed to resolve itself. Jim, the client, had appeared back from the kitchen with Patrick Pelinni thirty minutes later with his shirt amazingly clean despite the wave of sauce which had engulfed it. The open-neck shirt however indicated that the pink Hermes tie was not so easily restored to its former glory.

But it was clear that Jim’s demeanour had changed and he refused dessert, gathered his gofers up and off they went, refusing my offer of a couple of limos to take them wherever they were heading. Thereafter I didn’t see Jim for several months, but incredibly, the prat who had ordered a burger that night at dinner turned up the following week with five cheques, each made out for $400,000 and a request to cash one each week. I’d long since learned that there are various ways of doing business in NYC and not to question any of them too closely.

Samantha, of course, was delighted that her unfortunate accident hadn’t killed the deal and was totally insistent that the Chablis throwing was purely to dilute the tomato sauce covering Jim and nothing to do with the obscenities he screamed at her. Somehow I believed her, particularly when, later that week she went off to Brooks Brothers a couple of blocks away and managed to get an identical Hermes tie which she had one of our drivers deliver to Jim Levinski’s office along with a small olive tree – a symbol of peace! Samantha could be a bit of an airhead at times but then she’d surprise everyone with her ability to think of things that none of us would ever have dreamed of.

When I asked her why she’d been so forgiving towards Levinski, she said that she’d have been mortified if her simple but stupid mistake had killed a $2 million deal. ‘In any case’, she continued, ‘I’ve had your clients’ hands all over my boobs and down my knickers last week so a bit of bad mouthing isn’t something that worries me unduly’.

Samantha had also shown a much more vulnerable, but from my point of view, frustrating side since the ‘Tsunami’ incident, preferring to sleep upstairs at the Chambers on at least four nights a week and when she did slide into my bed, it was generally for a cuddle rather than the wild sex which was the norm.

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They say a man thinks of sex, on average, every 10 seconds. Well I must bring the average way down. It’s a constant. Even when I’m scouring several screens for the information which tells me if there’s a deal to be done, lurking in the background is the constant nagging that I might not get any that night.

For the past few weeks, Samantha had taken care of those needs but now because of the Jim Levinski incident, she’d withdrawn her services, not out of any issues with me per se – it just seemed like she’d retreated into a professional shell. She worked hard during the day, refused all offers to go for drinks after hours and headed straight back to the Chambers at every opportunity. This had an effect on me, not just in that I was unfortunately celibate but I actually began to feel sorry for her and worse, began some self-critical analysis of my life. Mummy would have been impressed. Daddy would have been worried!

This self analysis and slowly diminishing desire for the opposite sex came home to me with a bang one night (no pun intended) when I was having a few cocktails at Métrazur in Grand Central. A five minute walk from the office, Métrazur (pictured) was handy, was always full of gorgeous women (not that I was interested that night) and was expensive enough to keep the ‘pond life’ out of the place and further up 42^nd Street.

I’d gone there on my own. I was in a reflective mood and was sipping my second Golden Millenium (gold leaf, champagne and Cuarenta y Tres) when there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned and my immediate thought was that the girl I was now facing simply could not be that beautiful. But she was – and better than that, I knew her.

Serena had been an intern at Daddy’s Barclay’s office and I’d seen her a few times in passing when I’d popped over to their magnificent building located just across from the Tower of London. She’d completed her degree in the US but had come to London as part of some intern exchange programme and as usual, was given crap jobs which nobody else wanted to do. I’d sympathised with her a couple of times and eventually I’d managed to get her out on the town where we both got completely rat-faced. Nothing was said but we eventually headed back to her place in Bayswater snogging like mad in the back of the cab but when I got out to follow her inside, she’d pushed me back into the cab and made it quite clear that her boyfriend would not be too pleased to see me in her bedroom! Damn! What a crushing blow that was, but at least I’d had a great snog.

Five years on and she was again facing me, smiling that enigmatic and very alluring smile. Two bottles of Bollinger later and I was consoling a tearful Serena who told me that she was getting married in three weeks time but she didn’t really want to but felt that she needed to get married, ‘to get it out of the way’, as she put it. It was all a bit confusing for a simple ‘wham, bang, thank you maam’ boy from London.

We were attracting a fair bit of attention as I stroked her tears away, so I suggested a little bar near the Chambers which would be more private. Fifteen minutes later we opened the thick, heavy black doors and entered Bar 27. It was dark inside and it was difficult to see if anyone else was there so Serena and I grabbed a corner seat, ordered yet another bottle of Bolli and snogged like mad. Memories came flooding back. God, that woman could kiss.

A DJ in the far corner was playing an 80’s selection and Serena grabbed me up to dance but all she got was a staggering, swaying Nigel who just managed to stop himself falling over the DJ’s station but nevertheless managed to knock his drink all over his decks.

That was it. A couple of burly black guys grabbed me and threw me out of the doors and across the sidewalk. Luckily, a stack of full, black plastic bin bags had stopped me rolling into the street which, even at that late hour, might have been a problem. I lay there for a second or two wondering what had happened and then I saw Serena, laughing her head off, running from the club’s doors, fly through the air and land in the bags beside me. We both lay there laughing at the absurdity of it all. It was raining now and in addition to small pools of water which had gathered in folds in the plastic bags and which was now seeping into our clothes, there was the unsaid invitation to lick the raindrops off of Serena’s face.

We lay there for what seemed like ages just kissing and licking each other’s faces until Serena spotted a cab and waved him down from her semi-prone position. In London a cab would just not have stopped in those circumstances but here in NY, they stopped for anyone, in any state. We piled in and without even looking at me she told the cab driver to head for Greenwich Village where she had an apartment.

‘I’ve got tomorrow off’, she said. ‘Why don’t we spend the night together making up for lost time?’

I looked at this gorgeous girl and could not believe it when I heard myself say, ‘Sorry Serena but you’re getting married soon and much as I’d love to, you’ll regret it first thing tomorrow, so I think I’ll head back to the Chambers’.

And that was that. The cab stopped, I gave her one last kiss and I got out and headed off in the opposite direction. As I walked the few blocks to my hotel I felt a strange set of emotions. Stupidity and frustration - Serena had offered it to me on a plate and I’d refused. Smugness – I’d turned down the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Dampness – my clothes were soaking!

I didn’t see or hear of Serena until several years later when she contacted me out of the blue and suggested we meet at Zuma, a sexy new Japanese restaurant in Knightsbridge, London. Over seared tuna and salted sea bass she told me that she’d got married as planned but had then divorced the guy after exactly one year. She’d ‘gotten it out of the way’ and had moved on. She was still utterly gorgeous but we never did have that night together. Do I regret it? Yes and no!

The Tomato Sauce Tsunami

Samantha and I were still sleeping together. She’d mentioned that we should move out of the duplex as we didn’t need the top floor anymore but just occasionally, after a stressful day, I wanted my space, therefore the extra $400 a night the top floor cost me, or rather Daddy, was good value as far as I was concerned.

Things had cooled a little between us after an incident at Metrazur where some rather drunken clients had started to grope Samantha and more importantly as far as she was concerned, I had done nothing about it. To me, Samantha was part of the business and if clients wanted to grope her, they could.

Three or four nights later however, Samantha glided down the spiral staircase and snuggled into ‘her’ side of the super-king size bed. Back to normal I thought as she took my hand and put it between her thighs.

The ‘truce’ only lasted a week or so before the next problem surfaced.

We’d arranged to meet some potential investors at a restaurant favoured by Patrick Pelinni, one of the older guys in the office. Patrick seemed to know everybody in the Big Apple and I trusted his judgment implicitly. He could get us into restaurants when there was a queue outside, could get us tickets for the US Open tennis when none were available and generally was a gold-plated fixer. His salary of $200,000 a year was a rounding error on the payroll!

Patrick told our limo where to go and instructed the two other limos, containing Samantha and some other guys from the office, of the address. We set off in convoy which must have looked impressive, even to New Yorkers, and within ten minutes we were piling out onto the pavement on the corner of 7^th Avenue and West 52^nd Street. Jim the client, and some of his guys were already waiting outside when we got there. Patrick took immediate charge and headed into a cavernous restaurant with all twelve of us following in his wake. He was greeted by a rather delicious dark-haired woman who kissed him on both cheeks and showed us to the farthest corner of the completely full dining room.

I was rather disappointed that he hadn’t organised a private room but as we passed the various tables, each diner in turn stood up and shook his hand or shouted a greeting in Italian. Better than that, just as we reached our table the chef came out and grabbed me by the shoulders and planted a kiss on both of my cheeks. ‘Meester Nigel, it eez a pleasure to see you again’. Patrick had done it again – he’d organised things to perfection, even making sure the chef, whom I’d never seen in my life, greeted me like a long lost friend. All to impress the client.

Thereafter Patrick discreetly advised me and I advised the others on the best dishes to have and the best wines available, some of which weren’t on the extensive wine list. The clients were impressed, apart from the complete dongo (one of Jim’s gofers) who wanted a burger. I saw Samantha leaning over and telling him that burgers weren’t on the menu but no sooner had she said it than Patrick called the waiter over and ‘sorted’ it. What a diamond.

The meal was going spectacularly well. I told Jim Levinski, who was the lead investor that our minimum was $2 million and he didn’t flinch – he just picked up his glass of 1958 Barolo and clinked it against mine and winked. No problem there then.

My Pasta Pelinni tasted even better after that. Pasta Pelinni, a ribbon pasta with small pieces of veal and black olives in a rich creamy sauce and named after Patrick who had been giving the restaurant his business for over 30 years.

We were well into our mains (or entrees as I’d learned to call them) when I looked at Samantha, who was seated to my left and directly across from Jim, struggling with a meatball. She’d ordered ‘veal meatballs in tomato sauce’ and I could see the whole meatball teetering on the edge of her fork as she lifted it to her mouth – why hadn’t she cut it? I tried to catch her attention to tell her of the ‘problem’ but it was too late. Thereafter, it was like a slow motion film as the meatball fell what seemed like feet, but in fact was merely inches, right into her plate of sauce. A tsunami of tomato sauce then rose up and headed in Jim’s direction. Bizarrely, I felt that I could throw my napkin over him before the sauce found its target but reality took precedence over fantasy and it was too late – the sauce showered him from neck to waist! I’d seen something similar on crime programmes – blood splatter! My immediate thought was how the fuck could a simple meatball cause such a mess but I was shaken from my analysis of the situation by Jim standing up and shouting at Samantha.

‘You stupid fuckin broad, look what you’ve done’, he cried. My immediate reaction was amazement that guys still called women ‘broads’ but just as I was thinking about this, Samantha decided to take control of the situation and threw her glass of Chablis over Jim, making sure her aim was at his silk Hermes tie. This made Jim, who obviously wasn’t aware of the stain-removing properties of vintage Chablis, even more incandescent.

‘What the fuck …..’, he started again but before I could do anything Patrick had made his way from the other end of the table and ushered Jim into the kitchen. I had no doubt that Patrick would fix the problem with Jim, but just in case, I grabbed Samantha, dragged her to the front door and literally threw her into one of our towncars which was waiting outside. ‘Take her home’, I shouted at the driver and he started the engine. I thought I saw a tear fall from Samantha’s eye as she mouthed the word, ‘sorry’. The car did a tight u-turn and headed back to the Chambers.

Double Chocolate Chip

Well, you all know from my last posting (is that the terminology?) that Daddy wanted me in Monaco and I acquiesced on the basis that I'd set up the office, get it running and then I'd be off to New York.

And indeed I did, setting up a small fund operation out of a rather expensive duplex apartment overlooking the harbour but pleasant as it was, I just couldn't wait to be out of there. Too clinical. Too watched. And amazingly (for me) - too expensive. So New York it was. It was meant to be - I'd had a calling. It was my spiritual home, despite the fact that I'd never been there but over the next few years I grew to love that place for a variety of reasons - who couldn't?

One of them was that the delectable Samantha had followed me from London to be my PA in the Big Apple which made the settling-in a lot easier. Daddy wasn’t too keen on this arrangement, thinking, quite correctly that her amazing body would be something of a distraction whilst I was trying to start a little fund out there. If only he’d known that her body was just one of her charms and that she had a range of skills which would have caused the Kama Sutra to be rewritten had some of her wilder moments been witnessed. But Samantha aside (and she did it that way too), NY is a wonderful place for a rich boy like me to operate. A 24 hour hedonistic temple to all those whose mantra is greed, sex and rock and roll – sorry – forgot the illegal substances which are a necessity for surviving the frenetic lifestyle out there.

Despite Wall Street beckoning, Daddy insisted on a much lower key operation in Madison Avenue. His rationale was that of a man who knew the ropes and had been on them a few times. Wall St, he reckoned, would mean that we would be engulfed by the whole regulatory scene and would be restricted in what we could do. He wanted us to be close enough to ‘the street’ to capture the whispers but not be seduced by them and so for a few months on Monday to Thursday evenings, we’d end up in Grand Central at the Oyster Bar or Metrazur, whilst on Fridays we would head down to lower Manhattan to the street to hear what was going down.

I have to say that despite the obvious attractions, the new office was set up rather well if I say so myself, although the multi-talented Samantha had no little input, finding the ideal premises in a rather nondescript building in Madison Avenue, hiring key staff and generally making everything happen just as if they were ordained to fall into place without so much as a single issue.

The one problem however was living accommodation. There was no shortage of living space, but finding a suitably spacious and luxuriously furnished pad within easy reach of the office and our night-time haunts was something of a challenge – even to Samantha. And yet she succeeded in getting some wonderful apartments after only a few weeks stuck at the Chambers, a boutique hotel just next to Central Park. I say ‘stuck’ but in fact the duplex suite at the Chambers was rather chic with 900sq feet of space and spiral staircases linking the vast rooms, but I suspect it was the balcony with the amazing views which pushed the price up to over $1000 a night. Still, Daddy would never see the bills and all we had to do was one little extra deal a week to pay for this largesse.

I actually became attached to the Chambers despite the fact that it was a ten minute limo ride to the office. It was functional, served great food and the cocktail bar was something of a magnet for the young girls of midtown which I appreciated but Samantha did not. In fact Samantha had been rather over-protective since the night she had come down the spiral staircase into my bedroom (she had taken over the upper part of the duplex) and surprised me somewhat. Until that night, and despite her various attractions (great body, amazing legs and boobs and wonderful smile), we had kept our relationship strictly professional which, I am sure, amazed her as much as it amazed me. But that night, in a sort of 2am slumber, I heard some music coming on. Not loud, but loud enough to be noticeable in the background. The Beautiful South (as I learned later) apparently, singing, ‘Don’t marry her, fuck me’. As I wondered what on earth Samantha was doing playing music at 2am, I saw her shape arrive at the bottom of my bed. The duvet was pulled back and without a word, she started spreading ice cream all over my manhood (I would call them genitals, but that doesn’t seem to do them justice). She then proceeded to lick it off in such a delicious way that the extreme coldness was a mere consideration at the back of my mind. Indeed, there wasn’t much left of my mind when Samantha finished her little culinary treat about thirty minutes later, by which time she had had some ‘cream’ with her Double Chocolate Chip, not that I had any idea what flavour it was as I lay back in the silky blackness of ecstasy!

I discovered it was DCC (double chocolate chip), a particular favourite of mine as it happens, when I reciprocated in kind a little later when my brain had slowed down. Now that's what I call a PA – remembering minute details such as my favourite ice-cream flavour?

After that, the maid only had one bed to make each day as Samantha and I made up for lost time. She was great in the office and fantastic in the sack, but how much of it was down to the champagne and cocaine cocktails she was indulging in on a nightly basis?

Introducing Nigel

Hello fellow bloggers. My name is Nigel Smarther-Blair or ‘Smarter than the Average Bear’ as my fellow grads at Cambridge used to call me, the reason for which, will I am sure, become clear later on. This is my first blog posting so let’s see how it goes – it’s really to keep mummy and daddy off my back. They are such awful worriers and it’s not as if they don’t see me. Daddy comes down in his jet every few weeks or so (mostly without mummy for reasons of potentially damaging divorce settlements !) and takes back the information that I’m fine, living well within my means (!!) and am ‘dating’ the most gorgeous, young Russian girl called Natasha.

So, a bit of biographical history for you all. I suppose there’s not much to say before Cambridge beckoned. I’d been an absolute shit at school but was quite good at arithmetic and maths (must have been in the genes) and good old Daddy knew a Fellow at one of the colleges and so before you could say ‘first class honours’, a sizeable donation was made and I was off to Cambridge (pictured) which, I must say was a blast from start to finish. The ‘first class’ degree evaded me however.

Parental concern about my living standards meant that they just had to buy me a modern pad on the outskirts of the city and also supplied me with a brand new Range Rover (Vogue – what else?) which was kind of them. These two accoutrements, of course, meant that I was a bit of a target for the young ladies of Girton College which was within staggering distance of my pad. They were not an unwelcome distraction to my studies I have to say and it took another ‘financial intervention’ from Daddy to ensure my undergrad results were ‘massaged’ enough so that I could take a post grad MBA. I mean, everyone needs an MBA to work in the city these days. First Class with Hons would have been preferable but boozers can’t be choosers – ha ha!

It was a wrench leaving Cambs and all the lovelies whose clothes seemed to interminably litter every room of my pad, especially my bedroom! Geraldine was a particular favourite but whilst she was a wiz at maths she wasn’t too good on dates and the taking of pills and yet another intervention from Daddy, again financial, meant that I wasn’t encumbered with a preggers girlfriend, thank God! Never heard from her since daddy handed her the envelope. I hope the little sprog she had (I heard from a mutual friend) is doing well and has some of the family’s maths genes. God – he, or she, might grow up to be a genius and a rich one at that. What with her maths ability and my family’s money-making prowess – who knows what she might have produced?

Well, after leaving Cambridge in 2001, which was just as well, as my cocaine habit was really taking off (like my head did sometimes), I was given a nice little position in Daddy’s hedge fund business. It wasn’t called a hedge fund in those days, it was more like an investment club for Daddy’s chums. Daddy had been making a fortune for Barclays for years, mostly as a result of his contacts in the city who always managed to ‘advise’ him of any little corporate surprise before it hit the City wires and not entirely surprisingly, after one particular spat with his Chairman over his ‘pathetic bonus of only £2 million’, he decided to go it alone.

He managed to get his hands on a nice little office in Mayfair (long before it became the Hedge Fund capital of London) and got his pals to chip in some dosh and before you know it, he’s returning a stunning 25% a year and is inundated with cash coming from all directions. Ok he’s been investigated by the FSA a few times but Daddy’s contacts closed ranks and assisted in getting him not only cleared, but cleared with a public apology from the head of the FSA – after all, where would Daddy’s friends be without their annual 25%?

I was provided with a wonderful period drawing room as an office, an unfortunately stunning PA called Samantha and an expense account which was so humungous it must have been bigger than some 3^rd world countries GDP! Daddy gave me a smallish fund to run and I did ok – well it would have been silly to beat his 25% so I came in at a nicely conservative 19% in my first year which earned me a £1m plus bonus. My first salary. Not bad, but I wanted more. I mean my living expenses, excluding my drug habit which had resurfaced, was running at about £150k a month and I was having to resort to a bit of ‘skimming’ to make ends meet. Unfortunately, Daddy’s auditors found a ‘little discrepancy’ in the books and I was packed off to the Caribbean for a year whist things died down a bit. There was no chance of me returning to London so once the sunny sabbatical was up, the choice was New York or Monaco. Daddy had always wanted a ‘nice little tax-free operation’ and Monaco was the most likely destination but I managed to persuade him, with Mummy on my side (it was the shopping!) that I should spend a year in the 'centre of the Universe', Manhattan, New York.