Outrageously expensive. And ugly. Monstrously ugly. Or so the young man thought as he pulled up to the curb in his outrageously expensive but tasteful car. He sat on the buttery soft leather upholstery for a moment, studying the offensive edifice. He didn't think he'd ever seen so much money put to such contemptible use. The gargantuan pile was such a pastiche of stylistic elements from different periods, of building materials of every conceivable kind, that he could only assume that the designer and owner had worked very hard to make certain that no period of history had been neglected and no expensive specimen of wood or stone had been ignored in its building. It's no distance at all between Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, but it was light-years away in every other respect. Brighton Beach was a somewhat down-at- the-heels community of Russian emigres. Manhattan Beach was quickly becoming an extraordinarily expensive enclave of very successful Russian emigres, many of whom, like the man he was about to see, had their business virtually around the corner in Brighton Beach.
