I also remember teasingly inquiring as to whether he’d flown in on a Citigroup jet again. (He’d called me from one in December.) “It’s one of the perks,” he replied a bit sheepishly.
Things were much more relaxed by the time I walked him back to the Ritz - which was along the way to my South Beach condo. When we passed a homeless man along the way he made a bit of a show of opening up his fat leather billfold and producing a dollar — “There but for the grace of God…” he remarked melodramatically — and I gave him a lot of heat for that, because who exactly did he think he was kidding? I said give the man a job. Heck, you’re the head of a bank! But when we reached the hotel entrance, the tension returned. He got this funny look on his face, and asked:
“Do you want to go upstairs and…cuddle?”
