Bikini-bottomed Lucie looks at the world through Chanel Tortoise Wood CC sunglasses. She and I are lounging side-by-side in our chauffeured speedboat, weaving across the sun-sparkling Tyrrhenian Sea.
We launched the vessel from the bougainvillea canopies of Positano, Italy on the Amalfi Coast. Now our sun-browned captain is guiding us beside the coast’s mountainside. Oh, the stunning cliffs. Ah, the terraced vineyards.
During timeless eras, this is where emperors and aristocrats have found sumptuous retreat amid the watery myths of Homer’s sirens. Our legendary destination? Lucie and I are leisurely en route to shop designer boutiques on Italy’s Capri island.
“It’s paradise out here,” I say.
“I told you so,” says Lucie, her golden curls tickling the breeze.
Lucie talked me into taking this holiday. A month prior, she’d caught me in flagrante, spread across our bed, for my daily massage.
“Let’s go to Positano,” she’d said, clasping her lubricated fingers between my toes.
I playfully think of Lucie as my demitasse concubine of refined taste. She calls me “The King” and “The Animal.” She knows how to get what she wants: culture, sophistication, elegance. She’s my radiant muse, so I give it to her. But I wasn’t feeling generous of late because she’d been picking fights. My little Lucie from the big city was going through something existential—she wouldn’t say what.
“Do the research and bring me the bottom line,” I said dismissively.
“Hold on,” she said.
She toweled her hands, plucked her phone, straddled me and brought her screen to my attention. She had an entire Italian trip already plotted, and she flipped through screenshots of Rome, Positano, Venice, Naples.
“We can stay in this seaside terrace in Positano. Look at the dramatic views.”
Wearily, I glanced into her azure eyes framed by wavy hair. My problem was that Lucie herself was my destination. She was the only place I wanted to go, day and night. And I was reluctant to spend a small fortune on another Lucie impulse.
But lying there vulnerable, I remembered the story of my acquaintance Jensen, a CEO who allowed himself to become tightfisted with his teenage daughter whenever she said something like: “Daddy, please would you buy me tickets to the BTS show?” or “Daddy, can we go to St. Barth’s?”
Jensen routinely told his little girl “sure” or “we’ll see,” placating her with bad concert seats and giving her almost no allowance on holiday in Paros, Greece.
One day Jensen was dining in Big Sur, California, with a woman who is everyone’s favorite motivational guru. The guru made Jensen aware of his mediocre parenting by telling him about a client whose adult kids backstabbed him for penny-pinching his wealth.
“You get the children you deserve,” the guru said, and Jensen’s gut felt punched with each turn of the guru’s tale.
Jensen left lunch with vigor to stop artificially hemming his daughter into a beggar’s mindset. He bought her front row seats. He even window-shopped with her. His life improved with hers.
“I feel like a new man,” I heard him say. “I don’t think I’m buying her love. I think I was squandering her love until now.”
Back in our bed, I worried I was becoming cheap and lazy like Jensen had been. Lucie beckoned me with a nurturing tone.
“You always have to be talked into these trips but you love them when we go.”
I regarded her half-smile and thought about my friend Paige. Paige’s dad, a self-made member of the half-a-billion club, was extremely tight with giving her money. He made her work a middle-class job without the benefit of his connections.
But Paige’s daddy didn’t hold back on splashy expenses. He bought her a sprawling house, and he flew her around the world so she could experience a full life: Earning her own career but shining in the diamond life.
“I love my daddy more than anything,” Paige told me too many times to count.
So I looked at my Lucie—I know I’m the lucky one. I swept her hair out of her eyes. I thawed my sometimes-Scrooge heart. And I said yes to everything. Elated, Lucie snuggled kisses against my neck. I wrapped my arms around her little back and vowed never to pause again; not for the trip, the villa, the limo or the speedboat.
Especially the speedboat. Look at how blue the sky is over the Mediterranean. My motto now: Just say yes. I can always earn more money. You can’t take money to the grave, but you can take it to Capri.
