Chapter 70.5: Billionairfare

Chapter 70.5: Billionairfare

Forty-Thousand Feet Above Sea Level, Pacific Ocean. January 2012.

Money makes the world go round. Common refrain that at present was driving me dizzy.

Two tweety birds tetchily tickled my ears in a ring of swirling feathers and sparkling stars. Being proverbially in orbit didn’t stop there, either, considering my chartered jet was currently at cruising altitude over the Pacific.

“Haah…” My head momentarily ceased doing barrel-rolls as my cheeks pressed up against the chilly window. The chirping hadn’t stopped, but I did my utmost to ignore it. Instead, I gazed longingly at the puffy, white freedom outside.

You ever sat in a car or a train, watched the world go by, and fantasised a tiny version of yourself racing across the blurring scenery with supernatural agility? My mini-me waved tauntingly at me as the bastard glided effervescently on cloud nine; free as a bird—so I flipped him one.

Ah! I shouldn’t have used that dreaded word, though. It only re-summoned that incessant squawking to my consciousness louder than ever. 

I sighed, the exhale fogged up the view port, and my imaginary buddy disappeared behind my breathy mist. I hope his parachute malfunctions.

Peeling away from the reinforced plastic, I resumed proper seating position. Which drew my eyes back to Ben sitting directly across from me. There were only four passengers on this flight. Including the two of us, it was just Anita and Fedex—discounting crew. Separate jets carried the other vacationers to their respective homes; we were headed to LA. Point being, despite the several other free seats around the fuselage, Ben had deliberately chosen to make this nest unavoidably within my line-of-sight. 

Lip-reading wasn’t part of my vast and varied repertoire of skills, but I gave it my best shot, anyway. Yet, every time Ben opened his mouth, moaning and groaning about something, all I could hear was that wooze-worthy warbling. Womp womp, wa-womp…

Whatever he was saying was presumably important—to him, at least. Maybe a bit of pandering might help him speed up? I pretended to follow along with his nauseating nattering by nodding along, but the rocking motion inadvertently soothed me into nodding off. Darkness crept into my fading vision as his bird-sound themed white noise lulled me to sleep.

Then, suddenly, his tittering was gloriously interrupted by a pair of tits—and not of the ornithological variety, either. 

Cock-a-fucking-doodle-do!

Both my heads immediately jolted awake. “Excuse me, Mr Rhys. Your apéritif.” The stewardess spurned my armrest, choosing instead to steady herself by salaciously placing her hand on my thigh while she stretched across me and set a glass on my seat’s sidetable. A botanical bouquet under a hint of sweet sweat. My sense of smell was only heightened because of her sense of shamelessness. “Oops!” The only reason I now knew her preferred brand of laundry detergent was because she’d quite purposely swiped my nose with her uniform; sorely tempting me to turn this plane into a motorboat. Talk about a tide commercial. 

Nonetheless, I wasn’t a mere pervert! So, I did the polite thing—the gentlemanly thing by turning my face away. The window beheld more beautiful views I ought to focus on. Specifically, the unobstructed reflection straight down her shirt. 

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s mini-Bas! Hurtling alongside me like superman as he made his return. Bet that X-ray vision will come in handy as we both stared deep into her mole-dappled decolletage. What can I say? Air hostesses were my kryptonite. 

“Thanks.” I hadn’t taken a sip of my drink, but I was gulping. Mostly drool. However, my ogling went neither unnoticed nor unappreciated when I saw her mirror image smirk invitingly at my indiscretion.

“You’re very welcome, Mr Rhys.” She languidly raised herself. Her fingers shifting from my leg, up my torso, and ending in a squeeze on my bicep. “Dinner will be served soon, so just a little something to whet your appetite.” Brushing a final nail against my jaw, she sashayed down the aisle.

My natural reaction was to lean sideways to follow lines absent behind her exceedingly tight pencil skirt. A 2B pencil, to be precise. The Bs stood for boing-boing. Ben also proceeded to be an absolute b by shoving his ugly mug in, ruining my view. 

I desperately tried to wave him off, but he stubbornly mimicked every jerk and twist until my sexy stewardess vanished behind the pantry partition. Christmas had come and gone, but clearly, there was plenty of cake left over. More than enough to bake a birthday cake, in fact. “I wanna have kids…”  

“No. Not her.” Fedex piped up from nearby, quiet enough for the cabin pressure to keep her voice from travelling farther than she wanted it to.

“No?” My tone was sulkier than I expected.

“Loose lips.” Fedex implied several things. Namely, I reckoned Fed’s warning was in the vein of viral news, venereal disease, or potentially both. 

I contemplated clicking the call button for her, regardless. But thought better of it. Huffing in defeat, I flopped back in my chair with folded arms. Ben relaxed in turn. “Is this really the only thing that gets your undivided attention, Bas? Butts?”

“Don’t ask dumb questions you know the answers to, Ben. It’s beneath you.”

“Nothing is beneath me. Nothing, you hear me!? As long as it’ll get you to listen, I’ll happily beg, scrape, prostrate, anything.” No thanks, Ben. You’re not who I want on their hands and knees.

“Pointless, I’m afraid.” Gripping the tumbler that had been left for me, I lifted it to my lips and sipped. Yeuch, aperol. The cucumber garnish on the rim wasn’t doing the flavour any favours, either. Bitter to better suit my blue-balled mood. “Until and unless you can grow a nice, plump dumper I can—”

“—Hump?” Ben rudely intercepted his own crass rhyme, wrong as it was.

“Have some class! I was gonna say: take to the rumpus room.” 

“Anita, fix him!” Was his phrasing synonymous with repair or neutering? Could be either, but my agent remained staunchly on holiday.

Plucking the two cucumber slices off the rim of her own glass, Anita draped them over her eyelids, reclined her seat flat, and wore a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. “Keep me out of it. I’m not suffering a peep of your math mumbo-jumbo. I’m still officially off. Talk to me when we hit the tarmac.”

Swallowing another astringent mouthful, as well as my amusement watching Ben deflate, I showed mercy. Not like I’d be participating in any other form of in-flight entertainment until we landed. I stretched my bare foot across the gap between us and jostled his bouncing knee. “Alright. Lay it on me. I promise I’m all ears.”

Ben latched onto my ankle like a lifeline—scratch that, probably more akin to a shackle. “If there’s one thing you’ve gotta internalise, it’s to please, please, stop spending so much.”

I tried to shake my leg free, but no dice. “What? That’s it? C’mon, man, how much could I have possibly spent?” I wasn’t exactly buying ten-dollar bananas, after all.

“More than you’ve accounted for, buddy! You’ve been dodging this conversation for way too long, and now that I’ve got a hold of you,” quite literally, “I’m not letting go. Two-and-a-half years ago, remember that discussion? What were you worth?”

“Five-hundred-mill—”

“—Half a billion bucks! And in that intervening time ‘til now, I’m gonna, with excruciating detail, list how much and why you’ve squandered.” This was gonna be tedious, wasn’t it? Well, at least one foot’s resting on an ottoman. “First, let’s look at the part of your ledger that you’ve just given away. Potter ended, and you celebrated by making thirty-million rain on the Leavesden crew.”

“I’m generous.”

“You’re frivolous! As if that wasn’t crazy enough, you dropped an additional fifty million on a donation that’s a hell of a lot more charitable than it needs to be. Even if the org is planning to run primarily on interest and earnings of that principal amount, it’s still the principal of the matter!” 

I jerked my limb out of his grip and put my foot down. “Hey. Don’t even go there. Mrs Stephens and Hidden Gems are poised to do valuable work—I won’t apologise for even a cent of that.”

Ben threw his hands up in placation. “Fine, fine… then we’ll move onto the rest of your shopping spree. You bought a yacht for yourself for a million, plus nearly half more of that for Anita’s Mercedes a while back.”

“Don’t be jealous, I’ll buy you a car, too.” Reluctant to neglect my consigliere, I asked for her opinion as well. “What say you, Fedex? How about a Ferrari? Or maybe a delivery truck is more your speed?”

And now his upraised hands waved frantically. “Stop, stop, stop, stop! Your lifestyle already costs approximately four-hundred grand a year on average given the million, or so, you’ve spent just existing. I refuse to pick up any of your habits. No cars!” 

“Just chalk it up as a business expense.”

“Hell no. Wanna talk about what a real business expense is? Then please refer to the three million you’ve poured into the fees, op-ex, and certification for BASNIZ; coupled with your purchase of that anime studio and production financing for Dwayne Johnson’s Knight & Day. Those are the only items I can legitimately claim on your taxes.” 

“Making my decision to set roots in Fiji all the more sensible. It’s not exactly the Caribbean tax haven everyone else hides in, but not too bad an option, yeah?” Forget getting caught with the whole Panama papers scandal, no-one’s liable to discover my Fiji folio.

“And now, we get to the crux of the issue; that damned island purchase of yours. Three million for the freehold, which would’ve been bearable had you not also insisted on tossing Mandarin Oriental seventeen million on top of that. I don’t care if it bought the construction of your house, the development of the island, or free board across any of their properties. It’s still a steep price to pay.”

“Worth it.” Oligarchs could build whatever doomsday bunkers they wanted. The self-sufficient way Tivi was being constructed, my paradise would see me through the apocalypse—or COVID quarantine in a few years, at a bare minimum. 

“Bas, I’m begging you. A hundred-and-six million dollars burned in less than three years is a big problem.” Ben tugged at his hair.

I shrugged. “Only if you don’t balance it out with my income. I can’t convince you yet that my new home is an investment, so let’s dig into the nitty-gritty of my actual stocks. Starting off simple, what’s Uniqlo’s status?”

“Ain’t a whole lot to tell. Steady growth in the company’s value combined with the stake they keep gifting you as remuneration for the ad campaigns, endorsement and merchandising means you own one-and-a-half percent stake overall. You’re up from thirty-four to a little under ninety-three million there.” Ben was easy to manage. All it took was changing which way the cash was flowing.

“So sixty mil richer there, and my stunt with Netflix only increased that label to filthy, yeah?” 

Ben licked his lips. Dry. He snagged his own snifter and slurped. Didn’t see why he needed the apéritif, though. His appetite was already abyssal. “Twenty-two million a couple years ago. It shot up to a hundred million with no additional stock purchasing at the time you sold last year. A few months on from the NFLX crash, you bought at the dip, doubling your initial stake to a touch shy of two-and-half percent, valued at one-twenty at the current rates. Accounting for the good chunk I left liquid to experiment with, and the short-term capital gains tax that I’ve had to allocate—and mitigate—for the transaction. You’re still wealthier by one-fifty million in totality.” 

The creative bookkeeping didn’t end there. “Cute boost. But none of that is my day job salary, is it? My movie earnings, in order-ah! I’d rather we avoid the minutiae of itemising what my salary was, how much I fed back into production for revenue share, and whatever dues I had to afford on payout. Let’s keep it simple. I’m gonna name the movie, you just reveal the box office and what my ultimate reward was, ‘kay? Taking from the top: Black Dynamite.”

Ben followed my instruction and succinctly rattled off the requested numbers. “Box office gross, sixty million. Your net, seven-point-two.”

“Half-Blood Prince?”

“Box office, one-point-three billion. Net, forty-nine million.”

“Deathly Hallows Part One?” 

“Box office, one-point-four. Net, sixty-seven.”

“Hallows two.”

“Point-seven billion. Seventy-six mill in your pot.”

And for the pièce de résistance, “Limitless.”

Ben sighed, his eyes went hazy–guess I wasn’t the only one daydreaming anymore. “Three-hundred-and-fifty million USD in ticket sales. Your take home is calculated at right around one-fifty-seven. Beyond that, you also have residuals coming in, and I’ve busted my butt with real, logical trading, too.”

I ticked off each feature one-by-one on my fingers. Couldn’t be bothered with my wage from Game of Thrones, though. That was mostly pocket change I blew on this whole trip. “In summation, my half-a-billi got a two-hundred-ten million investment injection, which you’ve bolstered more on the side. My thespian career added nearly three-hundred-sixty million more.”

“Don’t forget that insane one-o-six you tossed out the window!”

“Right, sure. Despite my excesses, though, my net worth’s crossed nine fucking zeroes. Barely a billionaire is still a billionaire!” I’m not a mathematician, I’m a mathemagician. “I just beat capitalism, Ben. Are you still gonna complain?”

The birds were back. 

I watched bewildered as Ben scowled in abject avarice. His face scrunched up, drawing his nose in sharp, beak-ish relief. He stabbed his curled fingers like talons midair; but before he could crow about making more, a pair of flying headphones grounded him. “Ow—!”

“Nuh-uh, he won’t!” Anita had flung her fury, forcing Ben to rub his forearm injury. “That thing was useless, and so are the both of you! The moment we land, I’m scheduled for a call with Disney about Bas’ next role. George Miller and I have to iron out the details of Mad Max, and not to mention what other lucrative BS Bas is gonna inevitably pull besides that. I’ve got a busy year ahead, so shut up and lemme sleep already!”

Truth be told, as callous and elitist as it may make me seem, the money itself was immaterial to me. It only mattered insofar as what whims and wishes it helped me fulfil; as long as I got to live life as I see fit, I was content. 

My aim wasn’t to be a magpie with its hoard of shiny trinkets. My nest-egg was secure. I gained far more satisfaction from soaring free, descending wherever and whenever any curiosity caught my eye.

Casting a last, forlorn gaze at my forbidden stewardess, I consoled myself by focusing elsewhere. 

Anita metaphorically yanking Ben’s greedy pants down wasn’t the spanking I’d been hoping for, but cheeks were cheeks.