The Girls of Madison Avenue - Shelagh

Samantha had moved on. The London office had terminated her employment but had arranged for her to fly back to the UK first class with Virgin – ironic or what? We never heard from her again.

I have to admit that going back to my apartment at night and being on my own was quite dispiriting. I really missed Samantha but within a few weeks of being celibate I’d decided to make some changes to my life. I sub-leased the apartment and moved back into the duplex at the Chambers. I took up jogging and used the various trails through Central Park to get rid of some of the flab which had gathered around my middle and which had affected my performance, as Samantha had commented on a couple of times.

The girls in Madison had obviously known that Samantha was ‘numero uno’ and had kept their distance, not daring to come near me or even smile in my direction but now she’d gone, it was like a man-hunt. It was all so terribly obvious that I had to laugh but it didn’t stop me taking advantage of it all.

The first was Shelagh, who despite her Irish name was from Boston. She was some sort of admin clerk. She had a fabulous body, a bit on the short side but terrific legs and long blonde, semi-curly hair. Had Shelagh been another 4 inches taller she would have been stunning.

A couple of lunches was all it took. She literally dragged me back to the Chambers, told me she was a virgin and begged me to get on with it. I was stunned by her revelation given how forward she was but I did my best to help start her sexual education and boy, when she started, she didn’t stop – ever!

She was the original Martini girl – anytime, anyplace, anywhere! Public, private – it made no difference to Shelagh. One of her favourite tricks was to drop a fork in a restaurant and not reappear for 10 minutes by which time I was choking on my food. In the three years she, sorry, we, continued with her education, she built up an encyclopaedic knowledge of Manhattan restaurants which had either discreet dining booths, or long table cloths, or both! I wouldn’t go as far as saying that Shelagh was a nymphomaniac but she certainly erased any memory of Samantha and indeed made her look like Mother Teresa by comparison!

The problem was that she was engaged to be married but whilst the engagement continued, so did her ‘education’ but she’d made it quite clear that once married, that would be it, but in the meantime she’d continue studying!

The last time I saw her was two days before her wedding. I was sitting in Madison flicking through the Wall Street Journal before heading off to see a client for a breakfast meeting when the phone rang – it was 8am. I recognised the voice immediately despite the fact that Shelagh had resigned two months previously to get ready to move to Boston with her new husband.

There was no small talk. ‘My wedding dress fitter is arriving at my apartment in precisely 90 minutes. If you can get here in under an hour, you can give me my wedding present’. The phone was heading for the cradle before she finished her sentence and I was heading for the door where a Town Car was waiting to take me to my client’s offices. A quick call to the client cancelling our meeting and the car was heading off to Queens. Luckily I knew where Shelagh lived having dropped her home and steamed up the lifts on quite a few occasions and even more fortuitous, all the traffic was heading the other way. My driver made it in 50 minutes and we even stopped for champagne and flowers. He got a $50 tip and was told to wait.

I entered her apartment where she was wearing the most amazing French lingerie set and had the most amazing sex of my life. When I left later that morning, that was that – I never saw or heard from Shelagh again.

Then there was Cheryl …….

Easy Come – Easy Go

A couple of months after the Sparks episode where Samantha had managed to upset a crowd of supposedly Mafiosa who were having a nice, quiet dinner until she started shouting about ‘fucking yanks’, word was sent through Pelinni that we would not be welcome in Sparks – ever again. I wasn’t too worried about the ban from Sparks – Harry’s, just off Wall Street does a better steak and its 82 Margaux is also a mite cheaper but it was Richard Pelinni who was worrying me. How come the hoodlums were using him as their mouthpiece and, looking back, I was desperately trying to remember how we had recruited him. I resolved to try and find out about his background but that was for another day.

Today we were going to make some money. I’d been given a tip about Google coming to the market. Not it’s listing – everybody knew the day they’d start trading. I’d actually been given information about HermesDirect, a company in New Jersey used by the SEC to run part of the ‘Dutch Auction’ which was the process by which Google shares would be allocated. It was all relatively simple – get over to the Harborside Centre in New Jersey on several Friday nights and get Samantha to ‘befriend’ one of the guys in Hermes. This was months before the float and long before anybody even knew that Hermes Direct would be used as part of Google’s auction process. Nobody smelled a thing – apart from Samantha!

Everybody knew the Google share price would rocket and to maximise our potential profits we needed to maximise our shareholding right from the start. I spoke to Daddy and he authorised an extra $5 million to be transferred into our trading account which, I have to say took a bit of persuading but eventually he agreed. It was a great move and one which put me in Daddy’s good books for quite a few years.

The 19^th August 2004 will remain with me forever. On that seminal day, as we electronically posted our bids for Google stock, exactly 50 cents over the mid-price of the current bids and as relayed to Samantha by Blackberry by her HermesDirect toy-boy ‘lover’, who just happened to be one of the authorised auctioneers, we were allocated block after block of Google stock. At the end of the day we managed to get our hands on 59,000 Google shares at an average price of $85 each. We used every last cent of Daddy’s $5m.

Two months later we sold the Google stock for just over $40 million. A 700% return in two months!! A fucking triumph. Well it was a triumph until Richard Pelinni came into my office the following Monday morning and tendered his resignation. I was about to give him a $250k bonus for the Google scam but I could replace him and save myself some money so we shook hands and that was that. Or I thought it was. As he moved towards my office door, he turned and informed me that ‘the guys in Sparks would be visiting in a few days and wanted to pick up their $2m’. Without going into details, he said that Samantha’s behaviour that night had caused a bit of a stir and had drawn us to the attention of some ‘undesirables’. The fact that Pelinni knew these guys, was also a complication and did not help as you might think it would. The little turd had started feeding the ‘Sparks’ guys information about our operations and in particular, our coup with Google. They wanted 5% of our profit. There was no point in asking what the alternative was.

That night as Samantha tried yet another position and complained loudly that I ‘didn’t seem up to it’, I let my mind wander to the fact that if she hadn’t had such a big mouth, we wouldn’t be paying out $2m the following week. Ok, she was great in the sack and normally took my mind off everything, but the Mafia, (I assumed that’s who they were) asking for $2m was enough to nullify anything she did to my body. I just lay there wondering why they didn’t use their ‘contacts’ to get their hands on 50,000 Google shares and do what we did but I suppose there was little excitement in that. I also suspected that they wanted us to refuse to pay so they could have some fun, especially with Samantha! All because of a fucking undercooked steak!

I spoke to Daddy and he said we should pay. After all, we’d made $35m profit. $2m was peanuts he said but there was a condition – ‘get rid of that fucking woman’ was his edict.

The following Monday I said goodbye to $2m, and Samantha. I always hated losing money and handing the suitcase over to the guy who arrived at reception looking like a badly shaved gorilla was one of the lowest points in my career. Losing Samantha didn’t come easily either. In a strange way she was probably worth more than the $2m I had just handed over.

That night as she moved her stuff out of my apartment which overlooked Central Park and was just round the corner from the Chambers, I felt a twinge of misplaced sympathy for her. She’d been brilliant in setting up the US operation with me. She’d found Chambers and this apartment and she’d been a huge diversion for me after hours but after one last kiss, she smiled, took her envelope containing $250k and left her key on the hall chest of drawers before closing the door quietly.

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.