But what if she acted like a credit card company? What if she stopped calling when the bill was due? What if, in very fine print in her very long contract, she said she would bill them $750 for every day that they were past due and after 15 days she would automatically charge their credit card on file? Only she didn’t write out the $750. Instead, she calculated it down to a percentage of their total fee, which seemed such a minuscule amount. Less than 1 percent, really. So that even when people did bother to read the clause, they usually shrugged, the amount seeming so nominal.
She thought the idea so bold when she implemented it, she was certain she would lose clients or have wild fights about it when her invoices went out. Instead, she discovered something else about the ultra-rich. The only thing they enjoyed less than parting with their money was talking about it. It seemed to physically pain them. She had one person ask what the fee was and as soon as she explained that they could refer to item 26a in their contract they apologized, said they would FedEx a check, and hung up the phone.
The Eikenborns were particularly reticent to talk about bills or budgets or anything of that sort, yet maniacally uninclined to spend a penny, Olga noticed, on other human beings. Mrs. Eikenborn delightfully coughed up cash for luxury bathroom trailers, fine wine, freshly shucked oysters, Kobe beef steaks, and custom tuxedos for Victoria’s two dogs. Yet, she balked at the cost of feeding the staff who installed the tents and lighting, proclaimed outrage at the photographer’s need for breaks, and once booked Olga on a double layover to save $200 on a $750,000 event.
The flight to the Vineyard was a quick shot from LaGuardia, Olga knew. Yet she and Meegan somehow found themselves with not one, but two layovers. A two-hour flight turned into a six-hour ordeal. They had insisted there was no need for Olga to book a hotel, as the estate had a large guest cottage. Upon arrival, however, they discovered the cottage was under repair, as was a guest bedroom, and so she and Meegan found themselves sharing a drafty, twin-bedded spare room next to the bride’s suite. In the dark, they whispered their complaints about the awkwardness of the situation to each other, terrified that they would be heard through the walls. For her next visit, the food tasting, Olga refused to allow them to book her travel, instead suggesting she bill them back. The bride insisted that if Olga “really needed” to fly direct, she should fly up with her father, Mr. Eikenborn, who would be coming up on his private jet. This, the bride felt, would “save money” and “reduce the carbon footprint” of the wedding.
By this time, Olga had come to detest the bride. She had a shorter fuse for younger brides, whose senses of taste and style were so loosely formed, they clung to their mothers’ opinions in a way that Olga found pathetic. Victoria was no different in this regard, but her beigeness was coupled with a hypocritical sense of social justice. Victoria’s day job was at a global human rights foundation, and during the many lunches, dinners, and car rides together that planning events of this scale required, she often filled the empty space with impassioned monologues regarding inequity of women in Ecuador or Yemen, always buttressed by her mother’s proclamation that “Victoria is out to change the world!”
Olga ruminated on this as she willed herself into a meditative state while riding to Teterboro to fly with Richard Eikenborn III up to the tasting. Rather than be irritated, she thought, she should focus on the infallible hilarity of the ultra-wealthy to be penny-wise when it came to compensating human sweat, and dollar-foolish when it came to everything else. She shouldn’t be irritated at all, she counseled herself, and instead laugh her way to the bank.
She boarded the jet, a newish-seeming Legacy, promptly. Despite having charged his credit cards and cashed his checks, Olga had never met Richard Eikenborn III. Though she had Googled his image before, as she waited—at first for minutes, then an hour, and then a second hour—she began to picture him as an old fifty-four. Pot-bellied and balding. As time went on, she grew first hungry, then eventually desperate to use the bathroom, but refused, lest he board the plane while she relieved herself. He should, she felt, see that he had kept her—a person whose time was also valuable—waiting. With each passing moment, he grew increasingly homely in her mind’s eye. When he did finally arrive, she had her legs crossed tightly, her face buried in an out-of-date magazine.
“What,” she barked, “is the point of flying private if you still have to wait on the tarmac for two hours?” She rose, not to greet him, but to rush to the bathroom. As she peed, she thought to herself: That is one fine white man.