FIN

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THIS PARTY WAS GOING to be the biggest thing Long Island had ever seen. When you’ve spent so much of your life in the doldrums and you finally hit the big time, you tend to be extravagant. Very extravagant.

I had never spent much time concentrating on my academics, as I’d fully expected to become an all-American football star by the time I entered college. But a nasty injury to my left knee put a stop to my dreams of football stardom and I left high school without any idea whatsoever what I was going to do to make a living.

I was good with computers, so at twenty years old, I took a job at Sam’s Computer Repair Shop in Queens.

I still remember how my boss used to shout my name down the hall. “Have you fixed that CPU yet, Fin? You still have ten computers to fix before you go home today!”

I barely made enough money to pay the rent. I once came home to find all of my things thrown out on the sidewalk in front of the building where I had been leasing a tiny box of an apartment.

Suddenly, I was homeless, and if it hadn’t been for a kind lady who felt sorry for me and offered me a room in her apartment, I would have ended up living on the streets. I would always be grateful to Mrs. Ramirez. She helped me get back on my feet and I swore that someday I’d repay her generosity.

And I did. Mrs. Ramirez now lives in a beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn.

“Be careful with that!” I shouted at the three delivery men as they offloaded a twenty-thousand-dollar golden vase which I’d ordered for the reception area at my 18,000 square-foot home, overlooking the ocean on Long Island’s Gold Coast.

“Don’t worry, Mister Bradley, we’ve got it!” one of the guys shouted as they carefully carried the giant vase up the marble stairs that led to the front door of my house.

I looked out over the front lawn and felt pleased with the striking effect of the massive Koi pond.

I remembered how the architect had suggested that my plan to put such an enormous fishpond right in the middle of the driveway was perhaps, slightly ambitious.

But no one tells Fin Bradley what he can and cannot do. And no one gets away with suggesting that anything I ever planned was too ambitious. So I kindly reminded the architect that I paid him to carry out my instructions and not to argue with me.

The Koi pond was built exactly as I’d envisioned it.

To make sure the goldfish wouldn’t die from incorrect water temperature, I had a special heating unit installed underneath the pond. At forty-thousand- dollars per Koi, I wasn’t about to take any chances, even though it wasn’t really about the money.

I love animals.

My mother always said I cared more about my pets than the women I dated, and perhaps she had a point. But if you knew my history, you wouldn’t judge me too harshly for this.

I thought again about my high school sweetheart, Kelly. She and I had been inseparable since first grade. Her parents came from old money, and she even had her own private chauffeur to drop her off at school. At the time, of course, the fact that I came from a poor family didn’t make much difference to her as we were both just six years old.

Once we got to middle school and I started playing football, things improved dramatically for me. I went from being a reasonably likable young guy to an absolute superstar.

I discovered that I could throw a fierce pass with unerring accuracy and as a freshman at Baldwin High, I became the youngest starting varsity quarterback in my high school’s illustrious football history.

Even Kelly’s dad became a fan.

“Where do you want us to put the stuffed giraffe Mister Bradley?” the delivery guy asked, and I pointed him to a section of the large reception foyer where I was planning on having a full-on display of African wildlife, all fake animals, of course.

“Just make sure you position the giraffe in such a way that it doesn’t obscure passage to the large swirling staircase,” I said.

The delivery guy nodded.

I didn’t want my guests having any trouble moving up and down the staircase to the bedrooms on the upper level of my home. Among others, I’d invited several powerful businessmen, Hollywood movie producers, supermodels and actresses.

My parties were known as sexy and fun-filled events with the emphasis on sexy, I guess.

My mind drifted again to my high school years and my relationship with Kelly. We were very deeply in love and were planning on getting married right after we left high school. Kelly was going to study law and I dreamt of becoming a professional football player.

But then I got injured and everything was turned upside down. I will never forget the sudden change of mind Kelly’s parents had after my knee injury.

Even though Kelly never admitted it in as many words, it was clear that her dad no longer thought of me as a suitable son-in-law, and less than three months after my injury, Kelly broke off the engagement.

I was crushed, and for months I fought the instinct every day not to curl up into a ball of self pity and give up on life.

Once I graduated, I started looking for a job and I quickly found one as a computer lackey. Kelly, of course, continued on her original path and started studying law.

The worst part was that there was a chance I would be able to play football again; but the operation was expensive and I didn’t have insurance to pay for it.

Kelly’s parents could certainly have afforded it, but I guess they preferred making another million on the stock market, to investing in the boy their daughter loved, and they never even offered a loan.

“Mister Bradley,” Maria said from somewhere behind me. “There is a huge delivery van outside and they want to know where they can set up the crane to lift the concert piano into the foyer.”

I turned around and was struck once again by how beautiful Maria was. I didn’t really know much about her, other than she was twenty-three and from Pasadena, and that she was the best household personal assistant I’d ever had.

Her willingness to go beyond the call of duty reminded me of a lot of myself.

Maria’s father had been Spanish and her mother was Puerto Rican. Maria was a smoldering, dark-haired beauty. She had aristocratic features and her chocolate brown eyes were like mysterious dark oceans. To top it all off, she had an hourglass figure.

“I had some guys remove a part of the roof on the left hand side of the house and they can just set up the crane somewhere around there,” I said.

Maria nodded and turned around and left before I could start flirting with her. She had an incredible defense mechanism against my charms, and I sometimes wondered why a beautiful girl like her would resist the advances of a man like me. I was rich, friendly, and in excellent physical shape, even my knee injury was a thing of the past.

After I made my first million, I paid for my own knee surgery. If I’d been a few years younger, I might have considered playing football again, but at twenty seven, I was much too old. Besides I was a billionaire now who had invested wisely in start-ups and was also on the board of several well-established tech companies in Silicon Valley.

I had a good life. I had everything anyone could ever want. Except for one. I didn’t have the girl of my dreams.

I walked over to the kitchen to see how the catering was coming along and felt pleased with what I saw. I didn’t believe in having food delivered to the house, so instead, I had hired a three-star Michelin chef and his entire team to come and do all of the cooking for the party in my kitchen.

I was so excited about all of the exotic and delicate dishes the chef was preparing, but I was the most excited about the twelve-foot-high cake. It was the kind of cake you would expect a stripper to jump out of at some point during the party.

But this cake was real. It had been constructed of several layers of sponge cake with cream filling, and three master-cake-chefs were now busy decorating it with exquisite patterns.

I considered for a moment having the massive cake placed right next to the stuffed giraffe, but then realized that some drunken guests might try to take a bite out of the giraffe if I placed it so close to the delicious cake.

I wasn’t exactly expecting my guests to be well behaved or sober so I instructed the chefs to place the cake on its own table in the middle of the food court.

I went back inside and was just in time to see the concert piano being lowered down through the open roof. I’d flown in a Swedish concert pianist and I knew he would be pleased to discover that I’d made the effort of shipping his favorite piano over from Europe for the evening.

My parties had become legendary around New York, but this one was going to top them all. There were Marquee tents outside on the lawn and enough lights on a string to light up a small suburb.

I’d asked my personal parking attendant to leave my cherry red Ferrari Testarossa parked right in front of the Koi fishpond as I thought that would add a nice touch.

I’d spent a crazy amount of money on the preparations for the party and with a little less than four hours left before the first guests would be arriving, I felt that it had been money well spent. As I stood on the front lawn and looked back at my white stone home, it spelled ‘opulence’ in capital letters.

Kelly was scheduled to be there that evening, and this was exactly the picture I’d had in my mind. I knew she would be impressed. How could she not be?

And things hadn’t changed only for me. Kelly had become a very successful lawyer, but her parents had lost all of their money during the stock market crash of 2009. I’m sure you won’t blame me if I told you I didn’t feel sorry for them.

I guess Karma was a bitch, or a princess, depending on how you looked at her. I’d saved up enough money to start my own tech company right after the stock market crash, and happened to buy up one of the bankrupt companies which Kelly’s parents had held a majority shareholding in. I turned it into a success and the rest is history.

“Is there anything special you would like me to wear tonight?”

I spun around and looked at Maria standing there in a black and white body-hugging dress with a pink collar. She looked as if she’d just walked off a movie set and looked positively good enough to eat.

“No, I think that outfit will do. It will do just fine,” I said and winked at her. Maria blushed slightly and nodded before turning around and doing her little escape act.

A familiar thought flashed through my mind. I really wonder about you sometimes Maria, I really do.

I walked up the swirling staircase to my bedroom to put on a suitable outfit for the evening. I thought a dark blue Armani suit with a white silk shirt would do nicely. I couldn’t wait for the first guests to start arriving and I hoped that Kelly would be among them.