Trade Me (Cyclone #1)

“So,” he says. “Are you going to trade me?”


I look over into his clear, blue eyes. I think he may actually be serious. There’s not a hint of a smile on his face. He picks up the napkin again and starts methodically ripping it to shreds.

“You’re going to have to be a lot more specific,” I tell him. “Because that could mean anything.”

“You were right the other day,” he says smoothly. “I’m clueless. I don’t know what it’s like to be you, or anyone like you, and I want to fix that. I offer a trade. I work your hours. I pay your rent. I live in your apartment.”

“It’s so cute that you think I live in an apartment,” I interject.

“You get my house, my car, my allowance. You take over my duties at Cyclone, too—to the extent that’s possible. We’ll have to talk about that. There are details to work out. But that’s the gist of it.”

He shrugs, like what he has set forth is no big deal, and I’m left to boggle at him. There are so many things wrong with this that I don’t even know where to start.

I pick apart the one thing that’s simple. “An allowance? Please don’t tell me you’re getting an allowance from your dad on top of everything else.”

“Ha. No.” He has amassed an arsenal of napkin shreds in front of him. “I thought about offering you my salary instead, but…that’s a dollar a year, so probably that wouldn’t work for you. I asked my accountant to figure out how much I usually spend instead.” He shoots me a look. “I’ll give you that and we’ll call it an allowance. It’s probably not as much as you think.”

I shake my head. “Is that how rich people think? ‘I will impress everyone by taking an extremely tiny salary to show how meaningless money is.’”

“It’s more like, ‘Wow, who wants to pay taxes on ordinary income? Let’s shift my compensation to capital gains tax at every possible opportunity.’”

Oh, thank God he said that. I had just been thinking we might have something in common. I wave my hand with more airiness than I feel. “Ah, tax evasion. As one does.”

He gives me a self-deprecating shrug. “Legal tax evasion. It’s the best kind.”

“You asked me to trade,” I say. “I’m just trying to understand your perspective. After all, you can’t be blowing all your billions on something as gauche as a functioning government.”

The tips of his ears turn slightly pink. “Billion.” He coughs. “Really. It’s just one billion. Not multiple billions.”

I choke. I’d been trying for over-the-top hyperbole. What comes out, though is, “And here I thought you were actually wealthy.”

“A billion point four, depending on how you count stock options that haven’t completely vested,” he mutters. “It’s not that much, not compared to my father.”

That number is so vast, it takes me a minute to get my mind around it. He’s worth ten figures. I’m worth…well, after I pay for this meal? One.

The balance of my checking account is less than a millionth of his rounding errors. We’re not even in the same solar system. I feel like this conversation is careening off a cliff into a universe where gravity and ordinary income tax do not apply.

“That’s good.” I feel almost light-headed. “As long as you’re only a billion-point-four-aire, this isn’t awkward at all. How much does a billion-point-four-aire spend anyway?”

“Probably not as much as you’re imagining. Fifteen thousand.”

“A semester?”

“A month.” He shrugs. “I told you. I’m not a huge spender.”

My mind goes totally blank, trying to imagine how someone who thinks he’s not a huge spender manages to spend fifteen thousand dollars a month. What does he do with all of that? Put gold nuggets on his cereal? Fund a small army? Oh, no, I imagine him saying. I’m not a huge spender. We only go through a kilo or two of weapons-grade plutonium every year—scarcely enough to destroy the city of San Francisco. You should see what the other megalomaniacal billionaires can do when they’re feeling tetchy!

“You could buy four thousand pounds of oatmeal every month,” I say instead. “Probably more if you buy in bulk.”

He gives me a puzzled look. “Why would I do that?”

“I’m just saying. That’s a lot of oatmeal.”

The waiter brings steaming bowls of pho and plates of greens and sprouts. I take the opportunity to strip basil leaves methodically into my soup. I can’t imagine what a billion dollars looks like. It’s too big a number. It’s like showing someone a teaspoon of sand and asking her to envision the Sahara.