Chapter 191: All Good Things Come to an End

Saturday, May 7, 2005 (Continued)

Toward the end of the meal, I discovered one thing about Chinese culture that was most welcome: they take it as a compliment when you eat a lot of their food. They were VERY complimented by me! Mrs. Cheng took considerable pride in how much I put away, and she joyously encouraged me to keep adding to it.

I did my best, but even I have a limit; a highly complimentary limit, but a finite one.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered another thing I liked about Chinese culture, they love to package up their hugely excessive leftovers and give them to the guest of honor. That may have been something they did just for me this time, but it was this time that mattered the most to me, so I considered it a triumph of Chinese culture.

I was given enough food to EASILY last until Monday's lunch, so it looked like I'd be eating Chinese for lunch after all.

Between their fantastic food, their very friendly dinner table atmosphere, their generosity with the aforementioned fantastic food, and their giving away their daughters into sexual servitude, I was rapidly becoming a fan of Chinese culture.

#1: <Julia would like us to include that they have better cellphones too. Apparently that's VERY important!>

The goodbye process was long and involved. A great deal of handshaking, bowing, and a HUGE amount of smiling; FAR, FAR more than Americans would have done. So much for the Chinese reputation of being expressionless.

With their lack of English, some of the Chinese resorted to little acts. Grandfather tapped the side of his glasses were I'd placed the loop of hair, and made several enthusiastic signs of approval. Mrs. Cheng pointed to my belly and extended hers, rubbing it as if it was extremely full. She laughed and gave several thumbs-up signals, happy that I'd eaten so much, which made two of us.

In the course of the goodbyes, I asked Lily, "Would it be okay for me to thank the people that worked in the kitchen?"

The two women had been going back and forth all evening. Mrs. Cheng had often gone to the kitchen to check on things, but she'd spent about 75% of her time at the table, so the others had done a lot of the work during the evening, although there must have been a HUGE amount of prior work involved in cooking so many different dishes.

Lily passed my request onto Mother, who was only too happy. She rushed into the kitchen to fetch them, and FOUR Chinese emerged! The two women I'd seen before, plus two men I'd never seen before.

[Later, at school, I asked Lily to explain who the men were. She said, "Chef number 1, chef number 2," which wasn't a particularly helpful explanation. It didn't seem worth pursuing though.] [[They'd been hired to help from a good Chinese restaurant in Portland. Mrs. Cheng had done all the organizing, menu selection, etc., but the two chefs had done most of the cooking, with Mrs. Cheng strongly in charge of Quality Control; several dishes had been deemed not of sufficient quality. One of the women was the Cheng's housekeeper/cook, and the other was a local Chinese woman who was a general helper for the evening.]]

I gave a short (because it had to go via Lily) but heart- and stomach-felt speech, praising them and Mrs. Cheng for the BEST meal of my life. There were loud agreements from all my invitees. The recipients of our praise beamed happily and bowed often.

The goodbyes had to be restarted, in the course of which Mr. Cheng said something to Lily, who rushed off. She quickly returned carrying a pad and pen. Lily knelt at my feet, placing the pad on the floor beside her. She undid the laces on my shoes, removed it and my sock, put the pad under it and traced the shape of my foot. She redressed my foot, then repeated the procedure with my other foot. Mr. Cheng carefully observed, and seemed satisfied with the job Lily was doing.

When Lily stood, I asked, "Why?"

Lily smiled sneakily, saying, "You see Tuesday."

#3: <Apparently Chinese girls also know about, "You'll enjoy it more if you don't know in advance.">

After further goodbyes inside, we moved outside, where my group started saying goodbye to each other. I wanted to kiss all my girlfriends goodnight, but Lily and her parents had followed us out.

I quietly asked Lily, "Would it dishonor you in front of your parents if I kissed Chloe goodnight?"

"No, no. Is fine." Lily made shooing motions, urging me to do so.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sure." I was shooed some more.

I had to kiss Chloe right now, as the travel arrangements had me dropping Alexis and Pat at their houses then taking Julia and Ava on to Julia's house for the night. Mom and Dad were dropping Chloe at her home. She didn't want a boy to drop her off, in case her parents saw, further reducing my opinion of them and the diminishing likelihood of Chloe being an enjoyable girlfriend for me.

I was a little concerned at how Chloe might react if I just grabbed her for a kiss, so I asked her first, "Chloe, can I give you a kiss goodnight?"

A variety of emotions passed across her face, doubt and happiness being the main two. I took her in my arms and gave her a reasonable kiss. She was too inexperienced to give me a reasonable one back, but she'd look awesome in a tiny bikini, so I made allowances. She was smiling afterward though, so at least I'd left her happy. It was probably the high point of her sexual life, and that's more of a sad fact than a joke.

When I moved to take Lily into my arms to kiss her, she got all shy, whispering to me, "Only hug." Clearly because her parents were watching, which seemed weird given that they both knew that Lily was going to be serving me (Mrs. Cheng had also made a quiet but happy reference to that during the meal). Sometimes girls think strangely.

I thanked the Chengs again and again for such a wonderful evening, until we finally made our departures.

While still putting on our seatbelts, I said, "I am MIGHTY glad that I wore loose pants!"

The rest of the trip was spent with everyone enthusiastically endorsing my sentiment, and praising the evening in general. We'd all had a great time.

Ava amused me with a little comment though, "Mom was very glad to see so many people come out of the kitchen at the end. Now she's got an excuse when her dinner tomorrow doesn't compare to the Chengs'."

I said, "Dinner in the White House wouldn't compare to the Chengs'! That was spectacular. Tell her not to worry, because I don't expect to be hungry for at least another week. If I keep eating like I did tonight, something's going to burst, so something very simple would be welcome. If she's still not reassured, tell her I'd prefer to eat lighter so I can have sex with her daughter properly afterward. I'm going to have trouble doing that tonight!"

Amid the chuckles, Julia said, "I'm so stuffed there's no room in my body for you to insert anything more, haha."

Ava agreed, "Me too. The food was just too delicious to stop, and there was always another dish I hadn't tried yet."

I felt sorry for Julia. Not only because she was going to miss out on my inserting anything into her (hehe), but also because she can only eat very small amounts. I'd guess a third as much as I do (or maybe only a quarter if I'm pushing myself). Presumably she gets the same enjoyment from the taste of the food as I do, but she can only enjoy as third as much of it. That'd be a real bummer on a night like tonight!

Alexis and Pat both gave me enthusiastic kisses when I dropped them off, thanking me for a great night.

I insisted, "It was no trouble."

Shortly after we were down to just Julia, Ava and me, and were heading toward Julia's place, Julia raised the subject, "Would you like to know what I thought the value of the Chengs' house was, Mark?"

"Yes please! I thought you were never going to tell me."

"Of course I was going to tell you. It just requires more explanation than I could give you while the others were around." I couldn't see how it could require any explanation at all, but it soon turned out that I was wrong (what a surprise).

Julia continued, "Ava, our man said we can afford to buy a house costing up to $2.5 million. He wants to know what I thought the Chengs' house was worth, so he'd have an idea what sort of house $2.5 million would buy. He's too busy to go looking at houses himself, although we'll obviously show him our shortlist when we get that far, so he can choose which one he likes the most." I remember Dad's explanation about how that'd work. They'd let me keep choosing the one I liked the most, out of a reducing selection, until I chose the one they wanted, then they'd congratulate me on my wise decision.

^-- Julia proceeded to disprove my idea that a single number was a sufficient answer, "There are two problems with valuing the Chengs' house. First, I didn't see the kitchen, which is the most important room in the house..."

#1: <No argument about that! Especially a kitchen that works as well as that one did!>

" ... I asked to, but Lily said the people were far too busy for us to get in their way. I didn't appreciate how true that was at the time, but I certainly do now. There must have been an enormous amount of work involved in putting that dinner together. I'll just assume they have an above average kitchen. It seemed to function very well, but I wish I'd seen how it was designed because that makes a big difference. The second problem is that their house is on a small property in town. We're looking to buy at least a few acres, which means out of town. That makes a numerical comparison misleading.

^-- "If I said the Chengs' was worth $1 million, the first thing Mark would do, would be to try to imagine a house twice as good." (I was already trying to do exactly that.) "But that's not including the value of the land or of the location. That house on the same-sized property located twenty minutes drive from town would probably be worth less than half of it's value in town. But if it was located on twenty acres 5 minutes drive from town, it could be worth triple its town value. I can't give Mark a fair comparison unless I talk about land and location too, and what we're looking to buy is not the same as the Chengs have got. Do you understand that, Mark?"

"I got it, thanks. I'm impressed by how well you understand real estate."

"Every time I say something smart or knowledgeable, you assume I thought of it myself. Most of it comes from Mom or Google, or in this case by my spending all day talking real estate with a realtor. She talked about property values in terms of their size and distance from town several times. All I'm doing is parroting her.

^-- "To give you the comparison you want. If the Chengs' house was located outside of, but fairly near to town, on three to five acres, then the listing price would probably be about $1.5 million. If it was located twenty or thirty minutes away from the nearest town, and had twenty to fifty acres, then it'd still be listed at about 1.5. Those are the two types of properties that we're mostly looking at, so I won't give you any other examples. They didn't have a swimming pool, much of a view, or other things that would affect the value, but put simply, the houses we're looking at are about 25% larger and about 50% more expensive than the Chengs'."

"Wow. That's incredible. I can't even imagine how a house could be better than the Chengs'."

"Haha, Mark. There are dozens of ways the Chengs' house could have been easily improved: a marble staircase, more wood paneling, better bathroom fittings, but I can see you don't understand. Don't worry about it, we'll show you before you need to choose."

I wasn't worried about my "needing to choose," because I knew I'd have LOTS of 'guidance' for that 'decision'. I was just highly curious. During my tour of the Chengs' house, I'd tried to do what Julia had suggested: to visualize the rooms without the furnishings. Even 'naked', the Chengs' house had been better than the Williams' house, and there was simply no point in comparing the Chengs' house to our current one. Ava had said the average house was worth $205,000. I'll take a guess that ours is worth $150,000, about one-tenth as much as the Chengs' (ignoring land and location, which Julia would tell me off for). That our mansion might be 50% better again was unimaginable to me. Nice to think about though.

The rest of the drive was spent with Ava and Julia gushing about houses, and how wonderful I was to be rich.

One thought did cross my mind, #3: <Julia could have just told us - even back at the dinner - that our new home was going to be about 50% better than the Chengs'. That's all we really needed to know.>

#1: <Good point. I suspect Julia likes lecturing, and she's certainly excited about the whole mansion shopping process, so she's probably happy to have an excuse to talk about it.>

#3: <Yeah. And we do learn things from her lectures. Not that we particularly wanted to understand the ins and outs of real estate, but her style is often good for us.>

A little later, Ava commented that it was a pity her parents didn't know about me being rich.

I told her, "I intend to tell them at dinner tomorrow night."

"REALLY? That's fantastic! Thanks Mark. Oh boy, they're going to be so impressed."

"Would you like to be the one that tells them?"

"Hehe. That'd be great. Can I tell them you're looking to buy a house?"

"Sure. That's part and parcel of the same thing. Is that how you want to tell them?"

"Yeah. They'll be blown away by your buying a house."

#1: <I bet that, for a woman, spending $2 million-odd on a house is somehow more impressive than having $6.7 million in the first place.>

#3: <To be fair, our buying a mansion still impresses the heck out of me.>

Speaking of her parents' reaction to my house buying reminded me of their reaction to my having multiple girlfriends. I asked, "Ava, before dinner your parents were a little bent out of shape about me having too many girlfriends. What were they like later?"

Ava had spent quite a while talking to her parents, too far away for me to eavesdrop over the considerable ambient noise. The Wests had certainly seemed happy enough by the time we'd exchanged "Goodnights" at the end of the evening, but I was curious to know.

Ava answered, "I told them to stop being so silly, haha. It's not often I tell them that, so I enjoyed surprising them. There's no way I can get a boy as good as you for my own, so it's silly of them to make an issue out of it."

"Well put," agreed Julia. "I said much the same thing to my parents at the beginning, except I never used the word 'silly'. I missed my chance, haha."

When we got home, we had to go to the kitchen to put the food we had in the fridge. Prof and Vanessa were having a coffee so we chatted with them for a little while. I refused milk and cookies, probably the first time I'd done that since my appetite increased two and half months ago.

The discussion got on to Ava's parents, and how they were managing to accept my differences.

Ava happily told Prof and Vanessa, "Mark's given me permission to tell my parents about his buying a house and being rich. Oh!" Ava turned to me, "Mark, can I tell them about the shopping trip to LA too?"

"Sure. It's all part of my having money. Don't bother checking individual things with me, Ava. You can tell your parents anything about my money and what I do with it, unless I specifically say not to mention something. Also, I'd like them not to tell anyone else until after we get back from LA, but then it'll be public knowledge."

"Okay. Thanks." Facing Vanessa again, "That'll super-impress Mom and Dad. It's so funny that they were worried about me saying too much in case Mark might be after our money. He could make what our house is worth in a few minutes."

#3: <"A few minutes"? It's about one-twentieth of what we earned. Ava thinks we earned it over four days, so a fifth of a day. A couple of hours then. That should impress them. Do you think they'll stop worrying about the number of girlfriends we have after they learn that we can easily afford them?>

#4: <We probably couldn't afford very many Julias.>

#3: <That's true.>

Prof and Vanessa told us that the Wests had asked them several questions about me, and they'd listened carefully when other people were talking about me.

Vanessa summarized by saying, "We told them some facts about you, but they're only just starting to absorb some of the implications. They're handling it well, and I don't believe they'll become so angry that they try to pull Ava out of the relationship."

The conversation moved onto discussing the Wests' health, which I listened to carefully because I didn't understand hardly anything about what was going to happen to them.

In the course of that discussion Vanessa suddenly said, "Mark, can I have a private talk with you in our study please?"

All eyes swiveled around to Vanessa. Julia asked, "What about, Mom?"

Vanessa chuckled, "Is my daughter unaware of the meaning of 'private'? After our talk, Mark can choose to tell you, or not. Shall we go, Mark?"

"Sure."

In the study Vanessa said to me, "When Katie and Carson came for the dinner party here, they said they were going to work for as long as they physically could, not take any vacations nor spend any money unnecessarily, so they can pass as much as possible on to Ava. They're overreacting, because a 17-year old girl doesn't need as much as they're going to leave her, but I understand their desire to leave her with as much as they can.

^-- "The pity of it is that they'll never get to do some of the things they've probably been thinking about doing after Ava leaves home. Prof and I have talked about doing a tour around Italy after all our kids are independent. I want to tour Tuscany for the usual reasons, and Prof wants to visit the areas of some of the famous Renaissance mathematicians because he's a bit of a math history buff. If the Wests had hopes for a trip of their own, they would've given them up. They're losing their last precious months of health to their jobs.

^-- "I suggest you tell them to go on vacation together, and you'll reimburse Ava for whatever they spend on themselves. You'd want to put a limit on it, but my impression is that they're very frugal people, so I doubt if they'd have profligate plans. If you did this, it'd raise their opinion of you a great deal. Not just because you can afford it, but because you're kind and caring enough to make the offer.

^-- "You'll have to make it soon because as they get sicker, it's going become more difficult for them both to be feeling good enough at the same time to travel. So whatever it is they want to do, they should do it as soon as possible, which unfortunately doesn't give you weeks to get to know them before you decide whether to do it or not."

#1: <I'm starting to think we didn't win enough money.>

#4: <Yeah. I remember that we had $3.4 mil' after tax and the emergency fund. If the house is 2.4 that'd leave a single million for everything else. The trouble is that we don't have a clue what renovations and furnishings are going to cost, and if it's a lot, we're going to start running out. Which is an insane thing to be worried about at the end of the first day we've known we were rich, but it's starting to look like it.>

"I'm not against the idea Vanessa, but I'm getting worried about running out of money. After buying the new house, I'm going to have about one million left to cover the renovations, furnishings and whatever else comes along. I'd hate to run out of money before we bought a bed, haha. Binion's aren't going to let us back, that's for sure! And no other casino will take bets anywhere near large enough to make a difference, even if they let us in the door after seeing our photographs from Binion's. At the VERY most we could make $3,500 per spin, and they're not going to let us win many of those in a row before we've got trouble."

"I agree that it's a problem. We should do a budget for you, but that can't be usefully done until we have the new place under contract and the renovations are costed. I'm not suggesting you be frivolous, but I wouldn't worry too much about running out. You're giving us and your parents a million each. I'm sure we'd have no problem spending some of that on the new house."

"But that's supposed to be a gift to the parents, not to be spent on the house! You should spend it on yourself."

"So I'll spend it decorating our bedroom and study. Perhaps in buying a bed for my daughter if you run out, haha. I'm not too worried about money. We'd prefer that you concentrate on your studies rather than spend time on moneymaking schemes, especially given how worrying the last scheme became. I have no doubt you'll earn very good money in the future, so don't worry too much about running low. I'm fairly confident that Ava's parents won't even have planned anything grandiose. I'd be surprised if they'd spend more than $10,000 on themselves."