if anybody would take a chance on her. If only the Realm of Adults would open, just one tiny little bit, and let her in!
Uncle Ryan was interested, yes, and amused and amazed and confused, but not about to take a chance. “Keep studying,” he’d said. “But I must say I’m impressed with your knowledge of the market. How do you know all this stuff?”
“You kidding me? Same way you know it,” she had said. “From the Journal and from Barron’s, and from going online any time night or day for the latest statistics.” She’d been speaking of the modem in her computer, and of the many bulletin boards she could call. “You want to know something about stocks in the middle of the night? Don’t call the office. Call me.”
How Pierce had laughed. “Just call Mona!”
Uncle Ryan had been intrigued, Mardi Gras fatigue or no, but not enough not to back away with another lame comment: “Well, I’m pleased that you’re taking an interest in all this.”
“An interest!” Mona had replied. “I’m ready to take over! What makes you such a wimp, Uncle Ryan, when it comes to aggressive growth funds? And what about Japan? Don’t you know the simple principle that if you balance your United States stock market investments abroad then you’ve got global—”
“Hold it,” he’d said. “Who’s going to invest in a fund called Mona One?”
Mona had been quick on the reply. “Everyone!”
The best part was Uncle Ryan had finally laughed and promised again to buy her a black Porsche Carrera for her fifteenth birthday. She had never let him forget that from the moment she’d become obsessed with the car. She didn’t see why all the Mayfair money couldn’t buy her a fake driver’s license, too, so she could slam the pedal to the floor right now. She knew all about cars. The Porsche was her car, and every time she saw a parked Carrera she crawled all over it, hoping the owner would come. She’d hitched rides three times that way with perfect strangers. But never tell anyone that! They’ll die.
As if a witch couldn’t protect herself.
“Yes, yes,” he’d said this evening, “I haven’t forgotten the black Porsche, but you haven’t forgotten your promise to me, have you, that you’ll never drive it over fifty-five miles an hour?”
“There you go kidding again,” she said. “Why the hell would I want to drive a Porsche over fifty-five miles an hour?”
Pierce had nearly choked on his gin and tonic.
“You’re not buying that child a coffin on wheels!” Aunt Bea had declared. Always interfering. No doubt she’d be calling Gifford about the whole idea.
“What child? I don’t see any child around here, do you?” Pierce had said.
Mona would have kept things going on the mutual funds, but it was Mardi Gras, people were tired, and Uncle Ryan had been drawn into a bottomless pit of polite conversation with Uncle Randall. Uncle Randall had turned his back to her, to shut her out. He’d been doing this sort of thing ever since Mona had gotten him into bed. She didn’t care. That had been an experiment, nothing more, to compare a man in his eighties with young boys.
Now, Michael was her goal. To hell with Uncle Randall. Uncle Randall had been interesting because he was so old, and there is a way a really old man looks at a young girl which she found very exciting. But Uncle Randall wasn’t a kind man. And Michael was. And Mona liked kindness. She’d isolated that trait in herself a long time ago. Sometimes she divided the world between kind and unkind—fundamentally speaking.
Well, tomorrow she would get to the stocks.
Tomorrow, or the next day, maybe she’d work up the actual portfolio for Mona One, based on the top stock performers for the last five years. It was so easy for her to be carried away, with visions of Mona One becoming so large she had to clone it with a second mutual fund called Mona Two and then Mona Three, and traveling all over the world in her own plane to meet the CEOs of the companies in which she invested.
She’d check out factories in Mainland China, offices in Hong Kong, scientific research in Paris. She pictured herself wearing a cowboy hat when she did this. She didn’t actually have a cowboy hat right now. Her bow was her thing. But somehow or other she always had the hat on as she stepped off the imaginary plane. And all this was