Sorority Girls With Guns (14 page)

"Oh...right." I'd forgotten about that. "Well, fine, I'll just go back to my shitty motel room." I push off the railing and whirl around, heading for the sliding door.

"Would you be any happier sulking in an expensive suite like this?" Richard asks me. There he goes again, trying to convince everyone else that money can't make them happy.

I spin around. "Yes. Yes, I would. Because if it hadn't been for this stupid bet, Tiffany would never have gone on a fake-happy kick, Hoolio would never have ditched me for her and she would never have gotten mad at me."

Richard leans back on the railing and raises an eyebrow in that infuriatingly sexy way of his. Damnit, why do I find him so sexy? The guy annoys the crap out of me. "You think Hoolio would have gone out with you in the first place if you hadn't been doing the bet? After what he said about you and Tiffany, do you think you would have had a chance with him?"

I can't think of any upside to lying in this situation, so I don't take the extra step. "Yes, I do, because Hoolio isn't like you."

His dimples twitch as if they can't decide which direction they're going. "What do you mean?"

"You blame everything on the money itself," I say, reaching for the door. "You're like those people who blame guns for killing people and spoons for making people fat. I think Hoolio just didn't like my attitude toward money. You're right about one thing - he would have dumped me once he found out how I felt about money. But you know what? If a guy is going to dump me because I don't like shitty motel rooms, then he obviously didn't care that much about me to begin with, and I'm better off without him."

Richard screws up his face like a bad actor in an antacid commerical and tosses his beer can over his shoulder. "I never said I had a problem with the money. It's how it makes you people act. The whole point of this bet was to get you all to change your
attitudes
about money."

"And what attitude would that be? That money isn't the root of everything that's bad in the world?"

"
No
," Richard snaps. "It's this attitude that it makes you better than everyone else, that it gives you the right to do things and get away with things just because you have it. It's like this little protective shield that you all wear so you don't have to deal with anything."

I take my hand off the door and walk back over to the railing. "You're suffering from tunnel vision, Richard."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He folds his arms over his Tommy Hilfiger shirt, which I'm guessing he bought at an eighty-percent-off clearance sale.

"Everybody finds something they can use as a protective shield," I say. "Poor people just have to think of something other than money. Even rich people have to do that sometimes. You do realize you can't buy off
everyone
for
everything
, right?”

Richard sighs. "Maybe. But rich people use money to make themselves feel superior a lot, Shade. Maybe not
every
rich person
every
time, but a lot." His forehead wrinkles, making his blue eyes suddenly look cloudy. "They have a handy, built-in, get-out-of-jail-free card always ready to go. And that's just not fair."

I catch his eye and hold it, hoping he'll blink or look away first. "I know what you are, Richard. I have a cousin who's just like you."

If it wasn't for the railing, I think he'd fall off the balcony right now. "What?" He jerks upright. "You think I'm gay? Not that I have anything against gay people - they're another group that takes a lot of crap, just like the poor. But just because I'm the only guy who doesn't want you doesn't make me gay!"

I give him my patented half-snort, half-laugh. "That's not what I'm talking about."

Richard finally blinks, then turns around and stares out at the ocean. "Then what are you talking about?"

"Let me tell you about my cousin." I turn back to the ocean as well, leaning on the railing just close enough to Richard that I feel his shirt sleeve brush my arm. He smells like cheap aftershave and expensive champagne. It's a potent combination.

"My cousin's name is Cliff," I say, watching a seagull swoop down and snatch something from the ocean. A fish or a piece of floating trash? "He's a few years older than me, and he grew up rich and hating it. I think maybe one of his problems was that his parents didn't pay enough attention to him.

"Now, every time I'm in a big-box store, I see poor people ignoring their kids. The little brats will be running wild, ripping shit off shelves, leaving it for other poor people who work there to clean up. But Cliff, he didn't care that poor people ignore their kids, too. He just blamed whatever problems he had with his parents on their money.

"That was just the first thing. When he was fourteen, his dad was arrested on some sort of insider-trading charge. I don't remember the details, just that he eventually got off with a slap on the wrist. He even got another job in stock trading! Well, I don't know if he was really innocent or not, but Cliff got the idea that he wasn't. I think he overheard some conversations between his parents about how easy it was for dear old dad to get off."

Richard shakes his head. "Is this supposed to convince me that my generalities about rich people are wrong?"

"No. Just let me finish." I scan the beach for Richard's beer can and spot it rolling along the shore, almost submerged in the tide. "The final blow came when Cliff was sixteen. He had girlfriends in school, off and on, but then one night he went to the movies with some friends and he met this girl who was working at the snack counter. Julie. She shoveled some greasy, artery-clogging popcorn into a bucket for him and he fell madly in love.

"Of course, his parents weren't happy about him dating someone whose parents qualified for welfare. They kept accusing her of being a golddigger, going after the family fortune. Cliff's mom was convinced Julie wanted to get knocked up so Cliff would be stuck paying out to her for eighteen years.

"I honestly don't think they were right about her. I met her once, and I really think she just liked Cliff. She obviously wasn't into clothes or fashion - she wore Keds for crying out loud. And no makeup. And I've never met a sixteen-year-old girl, poor or rich, who had any desire to get pregnant, get fat, get stretch marks and be tied down with a kid.

"Plus, all she talked about was this comic book she and Cliff were designing together, and she was always talking about how brilliant his drawings were and crap like that. I mean, the guy couldn't draw a stick figure. A golddigger would have been encouraging him to apply to business school like his father wanted. Julie thought he should be a freelance graphic artist. That would be like digging for gold in a kid's sandbox. At any rate, it was just another reason Cliff's parents didn't like her."

"So what happened to them?" Richard asks.

"All I know is that Julie's father got a great job offer in another state. He was some sort of construction worker, and the offer didn't exactly make him rich, but it was a big enough raise that he couldn't turn it down - not if he wanted to send Julie to college.

"Cliff tried to keep in contact with Julie, but she shut him out for some reason. He never figured out exactly why, but he figured his mother had something to do with it. And he found out the company that made Julie's dad such a good offer was owned by some friends of his parents'."

"What does this have to do with me?" Richard asks.

 
I drum my fingers on the granite railing. "Here's the thing about Cliff," I say softly, turning to look at Richard. The dimples are twitching again. I think that's his tell - he's hiding something. Or trying to. "For all those reasons, Cliff hated everything about being rich. So when he went away to college, he decided to become...not rich."

"He refused his parents' money?"

I laugh. "No. He wasn't a
fanatic
about it. He let them pay for his tuition and board and everything. And he never turned down the checks they sent every month."

Richard rolls his eyes. "Sounds like he didn't hate the money that much, after all."

"Well, even Cliff was smart enough to see that the money itself wasn't the problem. He just decided the problem was how money made other people see
him
. So he went around acting poor, telling people he was there on a scholarship, bitching and moaning about how much everything cost, hanging out with other kids from middle-class families." I look Richard straight in the eye as I say this, or at least, I try to. He jerks his eyes away as if he just saw Honey Boo Boo's mom wearing a thong.

"He got caught after only about a month," I continue. "See, he did an okay job of pretending to be poor, but unfortunately he failed to inherit the wicked-good liar gene that most of the rest of us have." I smile, still trying to catch Richard's eye. He's still ducking me.

"You know what did him in?" I ask.

Richard shrugs, staring at his shoes as if he's never seen Nikes before. "What?"

I shove off the railing and get up close to Richard, taking his arm and tugging him around to face me. "I told you he bitched and moaned about the price of everything, and that was precisely the problem - he bitched and moaned about the price of
everything
, not just things that were truly high-priced.

"He complained about prices that were genuinely higher than the audience at a Willie Nelson concert. He complained about prices that were just average. And he complained about prices that were really fucking great. Well, one day he and his roommate decided to pool their money and get a pizza. The pizza place was having a five-dollar special on medium, one-topping pizzas, and they still let his roommate use a two-dollar off coupon. His roommate honestly thought the guy took a coupon he shouldn't have, but he took the discount.

"So, they got a pizza for three dollars. And Cliff started right in, complaining about how high the prices were, and how awful the pizza place was for screwing over poor students like that. And that's when his roommate figured it out.

"Why? Because he was a cheapskate?" Richard gives a hunch-shouldered shrug. "That doesn't mean anything. Some people get to be millionaires because they're cheap. Have you ever read the book-"

"Yes, I
have
read that book," I say. "And you're absolutely right - not
all
rich people are oblivious to prices. But, by necessity, all people who are oblivious to price
are
rich."

Richard rakes a hand through his hair, like he's hoping he can wipe it all off and look like Bruce Willis. "But he wasn't-"

"When I say oblivious, I don't mean that he didn't care," I explain. "I mean, he was unable to discern the difference between a good price and a bad price, so he just complained about every price he encountered. Sometimes he was right, but sometimes he was ridiculously wrong. And eventually, he was so wrong that someone noticed and figured it out. You see, there's only one reason that a person gets to the age of eighteen without being able to tell the difference between high, reasonable and low prices - and that's because they never needed that skill. And the only explanation for someone not needing that skill is always having a generous supply of cash to pay for things."

Richard takes a step back from me. "I still don't see what that has to do with me."

I follow him, backing him into the balcony corner. "The other day, you complained bitterly about the price of coffee, which was three bucks for one and get one free.
Before
you complained about that price, I heard four other people in line say what a great deal it was. I didn't hear one other person in that coffeeshop say the prices were anything but great in the whole half-hour we were there."

Richard hitches one shoulder up, as if trying to shake off what I'm saying. "That doesn't prove anything."

"You're wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt." I point to the flag logo. "Why did you choose it?"

"My shirt?" He looks down, his brow wrinkling with confusion. "I've had this for months. I bought it at a clearance sale."

"That's what I figured," I said. "If you're pretending to be poor, of course you only shop clearance sales, right? But why Tommy Hilfiger?"

"Poor people wear cheap clothes," he says through gritted teeth.

"How much did you pay for the shirt?"

He frowns. "I don't remember."

"Well, what do you usually pay for a shirt at a clearance sale?"

He shrugs. "I don't know, forty or fifty bucks?"

I nod. "How much does a rich person pay for shirts?"

"A hundred, hundred-fifty? Maybe more, depending
how
rich they are."

"Cliff did that too," I say. "His roommate informed him that poor people usually don't pay more than ten or fifteen bucks for a shirt. They either get them at an eighty-percent-off sale - as opposed to a fifty or twenty-five percent one - or they buy them at a thrift store, slightly used."

He rolls his eyes. "That doesn't make me rich. That just makes me slightly less poor than your cousin's roommate."

"Well, coffee prices are on a much smaller scale." I lean close to him and stand up on my toes, so we're face to face. "Being unable to tell that a dollar-fifty is a good price for flavored coffee
does
make you rich, Richie Rich. And now I know why you hate that nickname."