Walter wasn’t sure what exactly to do now. He had deposited the check for the inheritance and his balance was now $950,000.00. Almost a million dollars. That was more money than he ever thought he would have in his entire lifetime. He hadn’t moved yet or bought anything substantial, he felt the same as he did before, kind of alone and lost. Floating through life, not really tethered to anything. He was single and had no kids, he never really even dated that much. He was kind of a loner, somewhat shy. He didn’t dislike people, he just didn’t feel like he fit in anywhere so he tried to stay out of everyone’s way. He thought about paying off a year’s rent at his current apartment and almost did but then thought better of it and decided that he would think it through before doing anything rash. He didn’t want to blow this opportunity that his uncle Fred had given him by dying.
Should he invest his money? He had never done anything like that before. What the hell would he invest it in? How do you invest money anyway? He couldn’t even imagine going into a bank to talk to some man in an expensive suit with a three hundred dollar haircut and a thousand dollar watch about stocks or bonds or anything of the sort. Walt didn’t even know what some of these words meant, he just knew that there was a street called Wall St. in New York where a lot of things happened with money and people yelled at each other and traded and raked in what he assumed were large quantities of money. But that was all alien to him. He had heard of a “closing bell” but again had no idea what it was. Maybe like a dinner bell? Could that be it? They rang the dinner bell on Wall St. and then all the men in the expensive suits went out to eat somewhere together? Not in a cafeteria, he couldn’t imagine that. They made too much money. Was there a cafeteria on Wall St. with lunch ladies who fed the investors and bankers? Meatloaf and fish sticks? That didn’t seem right. He had it all mixed up.
If Walt were a banker he would eat at steak houses exclusively. Nothing but rib-eyes and sirloin and steak tips and prime rib, all the time. The most expensive cuts of meat, served up on gleaming silver trays by buxom German girls named Elsa and Heike. He would go out to dinner once the dinner bell rang with his banker friends and they would all eat meat for hours and talk about all the stocks they made and the bonds they sold, and then they would compare their wallets and see how fat they were, and the one with the fattest wallet would make the others pay for the dinner. That seemed fair. And then they would all get in limos and go out on the town, go out to the most expensive cigar bars and smoke thousand dollar cigars for hours. He would sit in a room full of smoke with his Wall St. buddies and smoke until he gagged and coughed, because that showed how much money you had. The more you smoked the more money you had in the bank. Five thousand dollar cigars lit by petite French girls named Astrid and Collette. They would smoke cigars into the wee hours of the morning, talking about their yachts and mansions and mistresses, about their second and third homes, about their vacations in Switzerland and Italy. Then when they had had their fill each one of them would take home one of the French girls and sleep with them and when they were done with the girls they would send them away in limos. And then Walter and all of his Wall St. pals would do the same thing the next day. Money, yelling, meat, cigars, limos, girls, sex. Every day.
Walter was getting way ahead of himself though. He was sitting on the edge of his bed in his underwear and socks, trying to decide if he should microwave some leftover Chinese food or order a pizza. He hated leftover Chinese, the fried rice was always dried out and no matter how much water he added to it it was never as good as when it was fresh. Usually he added too much water and it turned into mush or kind of a rice soup. It seemed like such a shame to just throw it out though. He didn’t know what to do. Finally he decided he’d order more Chinese and then mix in the leftover rice with the new rice and maybe that would help. It seemed like a good idea. Walter splurged and got three orders of steak teriyaki.