LITMIR.BIZ

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off that straight vodka. For a second I was hardly listening, I was sort of suddenly desperate for a drink myself and wondering if there was any way to make one without losing anymore ground. Doug looked at me with a puzzled weariness, like he was sincerely curious what I might say in response to Pete’s nasty prodding, but also like he didn’t believe, really, that anything horrible was going to come out of my mouth. Seriously, he was just such a tired and sad person. It was like he’d already been through so much bad luck that he didn’t think anything, really, could get any worse.

      “I…”

      “According to Tina Finn, who claims she is not a thief, evidence on hand notwithstanding, Dad left the apartment to her mother, you remember the oh so lovely Olivia—”

      “Jesus, Pete.” Doug looked away, disgusted and embarrassed. “Knock it off, would you?” He stood and grabbed the bottle of vodka, heading for the kitchenette and the little freezer full of ice cubes. The drinking was apparently going to continue with both these fellows.

      “I’m just getting to the good part. Dad left the apartment to Olivia—”

      Doug turned at this, confused and concerned, and about to interrupt, but Pete had more up his sleeve.

      “And Olivia left it to her daughters.”

      This stopped Doug in his tracks. He turned and looked back at me, sceptical but wary. The whole idea was clearly so ridiculous that he couldn’t take it in.

      “She didn’t actually leave it to us,” I said, embarrassed as hell. “I mean, she did leave it to us. She didn’t make a will and there’s this, you know, she died intestate. And that means—”

      “I know what ’intestate’ means,” said Doug, going for the ice. “This would explain what you’re doing here.”

      “Yeah,” I said.

      “Is your mother even in the ground yet?” he asked, a sort of edgy tone underlining the question. No more friendly expressions, so sorry for your loss, now I had to tough it out with both of them. To hell with it. If they were both drinking, then so was I.

      “The funeral was yesterday morning,” I said, grabbing my half-empty glass of vodka and grapefruit juice and following him into the kitchen, defiant. “So we went from the cemetery to the lawyer’s and then we came here.”

      “Very efficient.” Doug nodded. He dumped some ice in my glass and handed me the vodka bottle.

      “Well, we didn’t, it’s not like, I mean I had no idea about any of any, you know, they didn’t even tell me until after, I was standing there at the graveside, you know, honestly, when they told me about it.”

      “’They’ being…”

      “Me and my sisters.”

      “Right, there are several of you,” Doug reminded himself. “Four of you?”

      “Three. Me and Alison and Lucy. And Daniel, he’s Alison’s husband. But no kids. None of us managed to, I guess.”

      “Fascinating,” Doug nodded. “And someone told you…”

      “This lawyer, he said he was my mom’s lawyer.”

      “That idiot Long,” stated Pete. He was lying on the couch now, spread out the whole length of it, so now there was nowhere else for anyone to sit in this dreary little room. He had the little jewelry box on his lap, the one that had Mom’s perfume bottle in it. In fact he was actually looking at the perfume bottle. “And he said you inherited our apartment. You inherit all my mom’s stuff, too?

      “That was my mom’s,” I said. I wanted him to give it back.

      “That was not your mother’s,” Doug informed me, cold. He was just considering me now, like he was trying to decide what to do with me, like maybe he was thinking he could just lock me in a closet and leave me there. I started to wonder if maybe he was not the nice brother at all; maybe he was just a little less sparky than the other guy.

      “Yeah it was too,” I said. “She had it her whole life. So I just, that’s why I was looking through their stuff, I knew it was in there and I wanted to have it.” I set my drink down and walked over to the couch, reached out my hand to take it from asshole Pete. He closed his fingers over it and dropped it back into the jewelry box and shut it.

      “Everything’s up for grabs though, isn’t it? Isn’t that what Long told you?”

      “No, that’s not what he told me. What he told me was everything was ours.”

      “Everything of ours is yours, that’s what he told you?”

      “He told me, he told everybody—”

      “Oh, look at this!” Pete found the little tarnished silver box, with all the keys in it; he had been lying on it, on the couch. “You take a fancy to this too?”

      “I wasn’t stealing anything!” I said.

      “Except our home,” said Doug. He leaned up against the wall, looked out the window.

      “Oh look, my mom’s wedding ring,” Pete observed, picking it out of that silver box. “Glad to know you weren’t stealing that.”

      “Look, you guys are mad. Okay, I get it,” I said.

      “Like her mother, a regular rocket scientist,” Pete murmured.

      “My point being I’m not the one who fucked up this situation. That would be your dad, right? Didn’t he tell you he was leaving the apartment to my mom? Didn’t he even tell you that?”

      “Who are you again?” said Pete, really pissed now. “Have we met? Do I know you? Then what the fuck are you doing here in my apartment? I grew up here, with my family, and my mother. My father was happily married to my mother for twenty years, not two years, twenty years. This is our apartment! What the fuck are you doing here, sleeping in my bed? What the fuck gives you rights?”

      “Well, apparently some document that your father signed gives me rights.”

      “He was a fucking drunk!”

      “Yes, that’s real news. I was here for fifteen minutes I figured that out.”

      “Because booze was the first thing you went looking for.”

      “No—”

      “Just like your mother.”

      “Go tell the judge. Go tell Stuart Long. What are you yelling at me for? You think I’m making this up? You think I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t given me the keys?” I snapped back at him. “Go yell at your father. Oh, sorry. Guess you missed that chance.”

      That shut old Pete up. He glanced at Doug, who looked at him for a second then looked out the window. It was pretty fast but there was no question.

      “Holy shit, he did tell you, didn’t he?” I said. “You knew. That he was leaving her the apartment. He told you. That’s why you’re so mad. Because you knew.” They both looked at me real surprised for a second, like it hadn’t occurred to either of them that I might actually put that together.

      “You don’t know anything,” said Pete, deflated as hell all of a sudden.

      “Well, I don’t know a ton, but I’m learning as we go,” I retorted. “What’d you do, piss him off? That’s just a wild guess.”

      “Don’t push your luck,” he said, but he was tired now.

      “I don’t think we should be talking about this,” Doug observed, instantaneously cool as a cat. Seriously, these two were a mixed set, they were like salt and pepper shakers. They maybe fit together? But they were not alike. Both of them knocked back their vodka at the same time, but I could see it wasn’t going to bring either of them any peace. Oh well, like vodka brings anybody peace, ever.

      “Let’s

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