A Million for Eleanor: A Contemporary Story on Love and Money Read Online Free PDF

subconscious response to something she was thinking, but he caught it. Second, he felt the stirring of a warm and soft sphere in his chest, a sensation he could not confuse with anything else. Comparing love to butterflies fluttering in the stomach had always seemed a cheap absurdity to him because he had his own metaphor for it as long as he remembered himself. However, it was the first time in the last five and half years that he experienced it.
    Eleanor kept eyeing him, and he continued.
    “Soon after the incident, we got a rare chance. Our supplier had a problem: he needed to get a large load from Mexico, and his key man had just been killed. We volunteered, and it all worked out great. Not only we delivered the cargo, but my friend also made a valuable connection along the way.” He grinned. “A flight attendant on international flights who slept with the pilot in command. After that, we started using his plane.”
    By now he knew the story captivated her. The smooth velvet azure in her eyes was glowing brighter with every minute, making the sphere in his lungs inflate, filling the alveoli with what felt like thick amber treacle and making it harder for him to breathe. He drank some more tea, letting the treacle into his stomach where, drop by drop, it ignited like kerosene dripping on a white-hot iron surface. All he was waiting for now was for the sphere to get to his heart and explode in it, not even knowing what would happen after.
    “We had a few very successful trips to Central and South American countries until someone down in Colombia betrayed us. The whole cargo was arrested, and the only good thing was that they accidentally killed the pilot. The girl lived, though, and I thought it was the end of everything, but I was wrong. The big boss was so impressed with what we had done on our own that he took us to San Diego. And that’s how we got into the highest of all drug traffic echelons: sea smuggling. Do you know how much cocaine can be transported in an average container vessel?” he asked, somewhat disturbed by her absentminded, albeit enthralled, look.
    “No.”
    “Just enough to set the whole city of New York on fire on a Friday night and keep it burning until Monday morning. But we didn’t bother with containers. We used oil tankers instead.”
    “Oil tankers?”
    “Yes. You rent one to buy some oil from Latin America, and, in addition to it, get a few metric tons of a certain powder. You don’t know how much a ton of cocaine costs either, I presume?”
    “No.”
    “Between ten and fifteen million, depending on the quality. That’s Colombian wholesale price, of course. Here in the States you can charge a hundred per gram, though we didn’t average even forty, because if you have that much stuff you’re more worried about finding enough dealers than penny-pinching. It was a golden age,” he continued, finally allowing himself some nostalgia. “We had a villa on the shore, just like you’d see in the movies. We used it for all sorts of things, one of them being a cash storage. We didn’t even bother counting when it came to profits: we determined our shares by weight . And even that was taking too long. How is my story?” he inquired in mock derision. “Are you not too bored?”
    “No, I’m not,” Eleanor assured. “But something’s bothering me. It’s about your usage of past tenses. Are you not a cocaine tycoon anymore?”
    “Bravo,” he said, genuinely impressed. “You’ve crafted this question so masterfully I can’t even tell what answer you’d prefer to hear.”
    “Just tell me the truth, then.”
    “I’m not. I quit two years ago. Or, rather, had to.”
    “Did you guys get pinned in the end?”
    “No. The police chiefs were welcome on our villa, so we didn’t have any problems with the law. Those folks are easy: all it takes to hook them is a fashion model.”
    “What happened, then?”
    “My friend died.” He tried to say it in the same voice but failed.