AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It must be a day for long speeches, my throat is dry once I finish. Or maybe it's wondering how Matthias is feeling after knowing the truth.
But he surprises me. "He should've been more upfront with you, maybe you two could've ended up as still friends. He's not a bad guy, you know."
It might be a while yet before Matthias is going to be able to convince me of that. But for the first time in a long time, I'm seeing my part in the whole debacle more clearly, and realizing that it was actually better that it never did play out.
For more reasons than one.
I wipe my hands with a napkin, and fold it, placing it on the tray. "You know, you never gave me a full tour of this place."
"You're telling me you haven't gone snooping yet?" he laughs.
"Rude!" I poke my tongue out at him "I've either been sleeping or at the club, thank you very much."
"Well, then, let's go, Rissie."
Without telling me, I know this place must've cost over $75 million, which is like petty cash for Matthias Baxter but it takes my breath away. The interior of this place was obviously built with Matthias in mind. Half of the apartment is an open plan, with a living and dining area that boasts sitting places and a view of the entire city through floor to ceiling windows. The kitchen runs along one side of the apartment, with bar seating enough for ten. He has a few pieces of art around. One piece, that I recently heard went for almost $300,000, is right there in the middle of his living room. I guess that tells me who that anonymous buyer was.
"I brought this piece from London," he says, when he sees me looking at a bureau. "It used to be my great-grandmother's.
"It's beautiful." I can smell history emanating from the whorls and grooves in the wood.
"If you want to see beautiful, come see my office."
He pushes on what I thought was a wall. It opens into another room that has a large desk that also points out over the same view. What really catches the eye, though, are the floating wall shelves and display cases in the middle of the room. And on them, hundreds and hundreds of toys.
What in the world? "Matthias, it looks like an adult version of Toys R Us in here."
"Right?" He sounds excited rather than insulted. "That's exactly what I wanted it to be!" He picks up a little plane off the middle shelf and waves it in the air a few times, and then lets go. It whizzes around the room until it lands right in the middle of his open palm.
He puts it down and grabs a toy car and does the same thing, letting it go on the floor. It does a few laps around and then ends up at his foot, like a loyal dog. He claps and laughs with joy.
"You're thirty-six years old."
"I know!" he beams. "Think how many more years I have on this earth to play with them! Can you imagine how many other thirty-six-years-old guys wish they had this many gadgets?"
"They'retoys."
He shakes his head and walks over to the display cabinet. "Look at this." He reaches for a little contraption that he points at a nearby sheet of paper. There's a click and today's date is stamped in the corner. He presses a different button and points. The time appears.
I'm impressed. I take it from him, turning it over in my hand. If I didn't know what it was, I would just think it was a normal ink stamp. "That's ingenious."
"And you can't tamper with the date. That's the tech we've been trying to perfect. Everyone thinks everything is digital these days. It's not. We're hoping to launch in four months," he says with a conspiratorial grin and presses a finger to his lips. "Baxter holds the patent."
"You're going to make a fortune." I shake my head, in awe of the collection that he has here. "What is all this, though, really, Matthias?"
He shrugs and touches his finger to something that looks like a pad of paper, but when he touches it, it comes to life. "I like innovation. I like people who think out of the box. I like solving problems."
"And you like making money off it," I say wryly, then worry he'll take offense.
"Guilty," he admits, "but that's not it. I like things that help people in their lives, and I like it even better when the design is both beautiful and functional. A cross section of necessity and beauty."
"That's.... actually... deeper than I'm going to give you credit for," I laugh and he pulls an offended face.
But it's true. If I keep scratching, I can't help wondering what I might find under that exterior.
A phone buzzes and for a moment I freeze, wondering if it's mine, but he just looks at his Apple Watch and then grimaces.
"You should get some sleep; Paula wants to talk to us at one p.m. Is that okay with you?"
