Small Businessmen

I went to a party recently at a giant house out somewhere in the mountains around Malibu. It was one of those houses with lots of rooms and pools and splashing ponds, room for tennis and volleyball and outdoor living, enormous stones from some exotic river had been sent across an ocean in a shipping container, then dragged up the hill by smoking and squealing trucks, arranged along the pathways and then dramatically uplit. It was the kind of place that you walk around and think, instantly, this house belongs to a Bond villain.  I expected piranhas in the koi ponds and guys in matching jumpsuits...