I’ve been working for my boss, the Chief Investment Officer of a global multi-billion-dollar asset management firm, for three years and two weeks.  When you’re someone’s assistant, once you overcome your terror and absolve yourself of your life choices, you have to make a conscious decision as to how this relationship is going to function.  It takes a certain amount of psychological parrying and logistical trial-and-error to reach the precise balance of confidante, spouse, Sherpa, sounding board, and doting child that any good boss/assistant dynamic should ideally be.  It fortunately wasn’t too long before we hit our stride, melded our minds, and began to enjoy the benefits of a trusting, generously pseudo-professional rapport.  The time I told him to fuck off, and meant it, he responded with a sheepish grin and a shrug.

So egalitarian has our relationship become, in fact, that I sometimes forget our great disparity: his wealth.  His unconscionable, obscene wealth.  He is rich to the extent that my own perspective of personal finance is irrevocably skewed; zeros have lost all meaning after years of scanning his tax returns.  Ordinarily his money is abstract and intangible, that is, until those brief, focused moments when it smacks me in the face with the brute force of a frying pan.

“Hey,” I asked, poking my head into his window-lined office, “I accidentally left my wallet at home.  Can I borrow some cash for lunch?”

“Sure,” he replied, whipping out a leather wallet that dripped threads, having long ago buckled from the strain.  He peeled off a twenty, then another, then another, barely making a dent in the stack.

“Is this enough?”

I stared at the $60 in front of me, stunned.

“Uh,” I said, my cheeks warming, “I only need six bucks for the food truck outside.”

“Oh.”  He looked at the cash.  “So…I guess that should be enough, then.”

I took a twenty, and we spent an uncomfortable moment looking at the others, their patent absurdity slowly burning a hole into his desk, until he clumsily picked them up and stuffed them back into the wallet.  Rarely are we at a loss for what to say to one another.  We exchanged awkward smiles as I thanked him, left his office, and went back to my desk.  I gathered my purse, kicked off my heels and slid into my worn Birkenstocks, and, before I left, neatly labeled a post-it with an IOU and stuck it to my cubicle wall.