Olga Dies Dreaming(17)
These successes had left Dick feeling confident about his place in the world. He had architected a business and a life far greater than the one that his father had mapped out for him. In his mind, having a woman like Olga by his side was the missing piece. Getting her to commit was simply a matter of finding the right approach. His money, he’d come to realize, was not enough. Finally, though, he felt he’d landed on exactly the right tack.
FLYING PRIVATE
Olga had fucked Richard Eikenborn III before she even met him, having siphoned anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 from his bank accounts and credit cards in the form of administrative fees, product markups, and a new clause in her contract that she realized was a true stroke of brilliance: a late fee that automatically kicked in every day that her clients’ payments were past due, which was almost always.
This idea came to her one Sunday at dinner at Tío Richie’s house out on Long Island. One of her cousins was complaining about his exorbitant credit card bill, largely composed of late fees, which then were compounded with interest. Richie started to lecture on the importance of fiscal responsibility and keeping track of his payment due dates and her cousin whined that the credit card company could have at least called him to remind him about the payment before it was too late, not to mention that he didn’t always have the money exactly when the due date came up. Olga started to explain how that might mean he was charging more than he could afford, but then it hit her. Her clients did have the money to pay her when the due dates came, yet they never did so. Though they never failed to pay her, the only checks sent promptly were the first and the last. The “motivation” payments, as she thought of them. The ones they sent when they were excited for her to start and terrified that she wouldn’t finish. Beyond that, she would always need to call to remind them, and it never achieved anything, except annoy them. “Are you implying that I’m trying to stiff you?” one father of the groom once asked. Subsequently, she ended up being tardy with her own bills, which almost always cost her money, none of which she ever passed on to the clients, because, she had long felt, wasn’t the onus on her to manage her cash flow better? She was certain that these families, with their administrative assistants and money people, never sent a late payment to Amex or Visa. Yet with her, just a small shop, barely a company, they never cared when she got paid. As point of fact, they almost seemed to resent having to send the check.
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!”