Gold Digger – Story 4 – DINNER?

It’s Thursday and I need to tell you about Richard.

Not everything about Richard. Just the beginning.

The beginning is the best part anyway. The beginning is where the plan is still clean and the spreadsheet makes sense and I haven’t done anything yet that complicates the columns.

I found Richard the way I find most things worth having.

Deliberately.

A charity auction. The kind where the wine costs more than the cause and everyone knows it and nobody says it. I was there with Claire, who’d been invited by someone at her firm, who’d gotten the invitation from someone else, and so on up the chain until you reach a man with a family name on a building somewhere.

I wore the black dress. Not the obvious one – the other one. The one that looks like nothing until you’re in the room and then it looks like everything. I know the difference and I dress accordingly.

I had done my research.

Richard Ashworth. 51. Widower – three years. Old money, the kind that doesn’t announce itself. Sits on two boards. Known for being quiet in rooms where other men perform loudly. His late wife was apparently remarkable and everyone who mentions her still looks slightly sad about it.

Acquisition difficulty: high. Projected timeline: long. Net worth: the spreadsheet has a color for this and it is very green.

I did not approach him.

This is important.

I have learned – and this learning was not free, it cost me a full yellow entry and three wasted months – that men like Richard do not respond to approach. They respond to presence. To the specific, unhurried confidence of a woman who is interesting and knows it and isn’t going to explain why.

So I was interesting. Across the room. For most of the evening.

I laughed at the right moment with someone else. I asked a question during the paddle raise that was smart enough to turn two heads. I did not look at Richard more than twice and both times I looked away first.

Claire watched me do all of this and drank her wine with the expression of someone reviewing a satisfactory quarterly report.

“Third glance in four minutes,” she said quietly.

“I know,” I said.

“Don’t smile yet.”

“I’m not an amateur, Claire.”

She almost smiled. Almost.

Forty minutes later Richard did exactly what Richard was supposed to do.

I know because I’d been pretending not to notice him for thirty-eight of them.

He didn’t use a line. Didn’t open with a compliment. Just appeared beside me during the gap between auction lots and said his name and asked what I’d thought of the Basquiat that had just sold for an amount that made my spreadsheet emotional.

I had looked up Basquiat on the way there.

Thank god I had looked up Basquiat on the way there.

We talked for twenty-two minutes. I know because I checked afterward. It felt like less. That was new information – men like Richard usually feel like exactly as long as they are.

He stood up when I moved to leave.

Actually stood up.

I had not prepared a reaction for that so I used the one I had available which was genuine and I’m still slightly annoyed about it.

In the Uber home I opened the spreadsheet.

Changed Richard’s status from identified to active.

Added one note: pays attention. dangerous.

Went to sleep.

Woke up to a message.

One word.

Dinner?

I smiled at my phone.

Which was embarrassing.

Because I had absolutely been expecting this.

Spreadsheet status:

Richard → active. acquisition: initiated. note: stood up when I left. filed under concerning.

Noah → pending.

next. D → [row does not exist]

I looked up Basquiat. Worth it. – Mila