PART III - THE PROFESSIONAL HEIR

         “What’s with the Michigan tags?”
         “I live there, in L’Anse.”
         “And where the hell is L’Anse and what happened to the house in Red Hook or wherever it was?”
         “In the Upper Peninsula on a bay off Lake Superior. I still own the house in New York, renting it out. Values keep going up there.”
         “You drove all the way here from Michigan? I don’t understand.”
         “Tourist season up there, best time to get away.”
         “Who is watching Alabaster.”
         “She was run over last January when I was still in the Red Hook house.”
         “Oh, my God.”
         “She heard the engine of the UPS truck, lunged and snapped the chain and ran after it. The car never had a chance to avoid her. Chain was supposed to be for dogs up to one hundred pounds. She was ninety-two but it snapped. May have been the metal was more brittle in the cold.”
         “Are you bringing suit?”
         “Come on, Julie. Stop being a lawyer. I don’t want to talk about her anymore.”
         “When did you move?”
         “Found the house in late April. It was cheap. Bought it for cash and moved in late May.”
         “I don’t understand. I loved that house on whatever that route number was, up there on that hill looking over all that land. You did too. You kept telling me that.”
         “It turned out to be a house that only held bad luck. Nothing good happened there, and nothing good ever would.”
         “What’s Michigan like? Do you have clients in Michigan?”
         “No, everyone mails their stuff or calls me, just like they were doing in Red Hook. I do get to Philly on occasion and still have the desk in Sharon’s office. I will be there the day after tomorrow, having learned SO MUCH at this seminar. My house up there is on five acres. I can see the bay in the distance. I am kind of alone, but like it.”
         “By the way, did you sign in to get your CLE credits?”
         “Don’t need them, have enough already. Only came to satisfy my curiousity and give out some goose bumps.”
         “Well, you sure did that.”
         “Look, I have to stop at a WAWA and pick up some smokes. Need any?”
         “I quit, four months now, but are you smoking? Have you lost your mind?”
         “It’s relaxing. Congrats to you. Hard to believe, but congratulations.”
         “Hard to believe you are smoking. Drinking yet?”
         “No, hate the carbonation of beer and soda and hate the taste of most liquors.”
         “That was one of your attractions to me. You knew that. Brad still pours the beer down every night, and god knows how much he drinks at lunch during the day. For your sake, I hope your cigarettes are just a temporary thing, and please don’t smoke around me.”
         “Funny, but I remember you filling up the ashtray in this car whenever we would take it.”
         “I’m sorry.”
         “Don’t be sorry, I was the fool who said you could smoke in it.”
         “Maybe I should take it up again. Might lose some of this weight.”
         “Stay where you are, better for you.”
         “I decided to stay where I am a long time ago, you remember? Julie and Brad, together forever. It’s miserable but I have my work.”
         “I could make a comment, but here’s the store. I’ll be out in a couple of minutes. Sure you don’t need anything?”
         “I’m sure.”

         ‘My hair is still damp. I should have dried it longer. Why did I drift off to sleep? I guess I’m lucky to have woken up in time. C’mon Bobby, get your damn smokes and let’s get to that restaurant.

         ‘Michigan? Alone up there. Can’t imagine him without Alabaster. I should worry about him, he seems like he is getting more anti-social every day, but lord, I have enough on my plate right now.

         ‘How stupid could I have ever been? “Oh, you’re in the same business as me. That will make our meetings look like just business.” What was I ever thinking?

GREENWICH CT, 45

LOOKING FOR LONG TERM MATCH

WatRYadooinDaRestufyrlife. WPF, 45, a few too many pounds, is looking for a non-games playing single man 45-55 interested in making commitment to a future. Brains and the ability to express thyself is a definite plus as is honesty. Submit your resumes, gents.

         ‘What a great ad. Who am I kidding? Brenda couldn’t get her emails through to me because my mailbox was filled with pure bullshit from some of the greatest fakers in the western world. Delete, delete, delete, delete. How I ever noticed Bobby’s reply was beyond me. Of the sixty-three responses, I remember his was one of four that sounded like they weren’t rank idiots. Wish I saved it. It said something like “Single Professional Male, 50, is seeking same. Been there once, done it and want to try again. Beware of my large dog.”

         ‘He’s still that way. No bullshit, he is who he is, an impossible man for an impossible woman and god damn, he still plays that horrible music. “Oh, that’s my reaction to Barb. Barb was so refined that I rebounded in the opposite direction. Barb wore gowns, I wore work boots, jeans and denim shirts once I got out of Shapiro’s office.” I like country music, but what century and country is this shit from?
Twang, twang, diddly twang.

My race is nearly run
My strongest trials now are passed
My triumph has begun
Come now angel band
Come and a-round me stand
Oh bear me away on your snow-white wings
To my immortal home,
Oh bear me away on your snow-white wings
To my immortal home.

         ‘Oh brother, maybe I should be thankful for Brad. All I hear from him is the “This Bud’s for you.” Bobby, why’d you have to come back here and do this to me?’

         “Ok, Teach, it’s off to Piccolomini’s and some first class Italian food. Hope you are hungry.”
         “Well I lost my lunch thanks to you.”

         He made the turn off Lancaster Pike onto Haverford Road. It was only another couple of blocks, and from there another three or four miles to his old office, and if he chose to do so, another two-hundred and twenty-five miles would bring him to Red Hook where a right on 199 would take him to the bi-level high on the hill above the road.

         “Why Dutchess County?” they all said. He talked Sharon Lipper into taking Nisse on; she owed him as much for the three juicy cases he sent her that last year in Wynnewood. Nisse was quite profane about the move. “Why the fuck did I ever tell you about the Internet.” That was the day he showed her the properties he was looking at in Dutchess and Columbia County. Bobby would take a lot of crap from Nisse; she was his height, but thin with long arms and sharp elbows. He suspected she had a good jab. They were born on the same date, but fifteen years apart.

         “Why did I ever give you a computer, Nisse? Seems like you spent half your time here playing solitaire and the other half looking for Jon’s replacement on the Net.”
         “I’d move with you if it weren’t so far away from Roxanne’s Daddy. And there is nothing there from what I read.”
         “Where’s Daddy now?”
         “He’s back in my apartment.”
         “You wanted a man in the worst way, and that’s how you got one.”
         “Well, look at you, Mr. Perfect. You lose once and you fold your tent and run away to Japip. You’ve got that neat little house and Mrs. Z left you everything you need to have a good time, but you’d rather go hide in the country. If you didn’t have her money, you wouldn’t be leaving here.”
         “Maybe you are right, but I do have her money and I can do the work by phone, mail and fax and I will be coming back to Sharon’s office to check up on you. I don’t want hear any complaints about you from her.”
         “I just don’t understand why you chose wherever it is?”
         “Drove through there the last time Barb and I spent the season in Saratoga. It was so lovely. Cagney retired there, had a horse farm somewhere there. Revisited it a couple of years ago.I was futzing around on the Net and I typed in “Dutchess County” and saw I could look at real estate and from there I was hooked.”

         The house was so easy to find. Julie only had to get off the Parkway at the exit for Pine Plains/Red Hook and she was two miles away. The Parkway was a road her 300SL loved; her only fear was another speeding ticket that could result in loss of license. Even her New York tags would not protect her from the State Troopers. Why they did not raise the limit to the more humane 65 she never knew.

         They’d met in a public place first, and quite a public place it was. Mrs. Zilber might have written Bobby out of her will had she seen the prices on the chalkboard at the Old Stagecoach Inn in Dover Plains. It was no more than twenty-five miles from his house. He arrived before she did, waited in the car rather than the bar, and was surprised she had a New York license on her car.

         “I thought you lived in Greenwich, and I was surprised you agreed on this spot. I know you work in Stamford; I even found your name in a legal directory.”
         “That’s correct, but we live in Pound Ridge. Couldn't use Pound Ridge on the Net. It's a simple jaunt up 684 and 22.”
         “How is Mr. Thorpe today.”
         “Don’t know, he wasn’t home from work yet. Forgot to ask you, how did you know about this place?”
         “I have clients in Mt Kisco. They took me to dinner here just after I moved to Red Hook.”
         “My god, look at the prices.”
         “I told you, the first one is on me, and Mrs. Z.”
         “Who’s Mrs. Z?”
         “Didn’t I tell you about her in one of my emails or chats?”
         “Don’t think so.”
         “Mrs. Z is every probate lawyer’s dream. The client who leaves everything to her lawyer, except that I did not write the will or have anything to do with it. I left the portfolio in her broker’s hands; the Australian bank stock I thought was so risky went from thirty to seventy-six. It represented over half of her portfolio at the time of her death. He had balls, I will give him that. He sold it and now I have nothing risky. In fact I am getting just like Mrs. Z., except I don’t call him and bitch. But as I said, the miracle was that I had nothing to do with it. I was standing in the right place when the money fell.”
         “Uh Huh?”
         “That’s right. I earned every frigging bit of it. The woman would call every week to cry about interest rates, but she never spent a dime. She broke her hip once. She was afraid to mail her information, and wouldn’t trust Nisse, my secretary, to pick it up or deliver it, so I had to walk to her apartment over a mile away twice in busy season. The next year she made it back to the office and when I finished her return, she smiled at me with her sweet old lady’s smile and said, ‘You remember what you promised me when you came to my apartment last year.’ I had no idea. She went on, ‘You promised to give me something if I made it back to your office this year.’ I knew it wasn’t a kiss, but then it hit me. 'I promised not to charge you if you could make it here.' Her face lit up. I had to tell her not to go telling the story to the other old ladies in her building."
         “Good story. You told me your practice is small. How much do you gross, if I may ask?
         “$130,000 last year. It was my first full year up here. More tax returns than probate work. Love to get my teeth back into that, but it is the one place I miss Nisse. She was good at organizing estates, keeping books, etc.”
         “Why can’t she do it long distance?”
         “Nisse out of sight is Nisse out of mind. She is a wonderful worker when motivated, but I have to be there to kickstart her.”
         “I might be able to do something there. You could probably get a lot of estate work up here. Are you advertising?”
         “Not even in the phone book.”
         "Bring in the clients. My office can handle the administration. That is what is so great about this. We are in the same business. Meetings will be natural."
         "Only I am a bit of a small fish for you. How many attorneys in your office?”
         “Fourteen.”
         “As I said, small fish. This is a funny way to start off our secret rendezvous. I know we have chatted on line and emailed each other and know something about our personal selves, but here we are negotiating a take-over. Not sure whether its hostile or not.”
         “Well, I’m not sure you’re even a lawyer. Look at you in this fancy restaurant in your blue jeans and denim shirt. That flannel lined shirt jacket really sets the tone too. I never did hear why you relocated up here, Mr. Country Lawyer.”
         “So I could be a big fish in a little pond. My god, I’ve read your articles in journals and I hear you give speeches. Little me sitting here with this well-known attorney who advertises her availability on line, and not for her legal services. Funny kind of ad, I would say.”
         “Did you notice my head swelling? I am serious though about expanding your business. And if we hit it off, as I think we are doing in our shark-like lawyer way, it will be the perfect cover for whatever we want to do.”

         God, did he know which buttons to push. I told him too much in those on-line chats we had and in that email I sent after I found out what he did for a living. “I think both of us being in the same line of work is SUPER. We will have to attend seminars together.” You found a live one, Julie, and you threw yourself all over him. You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into. You thought you knew, you thought you had it all worked out, but you didn’t ask yourself the right questions. You should have known that lawyers never ask questions if they don’t know the answer.

         “I think you will like Piccolomini. They have great individual pizzas, you know, ‘designer pizzas’ they called them a few years ago, and their bruschetta is to kill for.”
         “Little less expensive than the Old Stagecoach Inn, huh? You remember that place?”
         “Hard to forget it, even though it seems like it happened in some other century.”
         “I wish it hadn’t happened at all, and I did all the leading. Now you’ve tracked me down and found me. What’s going to happen now? Is the condemned woman to enjoy her last meal?”

         Barb knew her Bobby. He would not play hangman no matter what she did to him. Barb always had Bobby pegged as the second fiddle, the man who would never win the audition. There was so much money in law, but Bobby would always be buried in a back office taking home his good salary while his bosses were raking in the gold. She knew he never cut a great impression on employers, but despite the 'Zippy' nickname, with his dark hair and dark brows and brown eyes, his face could take on a Byronic look were it not for his eyes.

         Brian was sure the divorce would be a knockdown, drag-out affair. “He’s a lawyer; lawyers litigate. It will take years.” Barb knew better. Bobby's eyes were soft, soulful and sensitive; they never betrayed anger. “He may go through a few motions, but he will accept it. He’s not a fighter. He’s satisfied making 60K working for Ralph. We’ll have no trouble. He’ll take the house with the mortgage, I’ll get my instrument and my annuity and some cash. He won’t fight.”

         Bobby never looked on the pot of gold dropped on him by Mrs. Zilber as God’s way of evening things up. Harold Green heard about it and called Sharon Lipper:

         “I hear a pile of money fell on your client."
         “There are stories to that effect. I can’t comment on them. Attorney-client relationship you know, Harold.”
         “I wonder if I have the guts to tell Barb. She thought he’d never amount to anything and that he was too easy going and accepting, that she would always be living on the south side of Bryn Mawr. If they were still married, I would have suspected her of slipping some arsenic into the old lady’s food.”
         “Funny thing is that Bobby told me when he met the lady and her sister-in-law, he found the latter a lovely independent old lady, while Mrs. Z, as I shall call her, had to call him at least once a week. The sister-in-law, name was Toler, lapsed into senility. Bobby said the last time he saw her, she came in with her daughter, who he said struck him as a real brassy woman counting the days until her mother died. He has no idea if she is still alive, but he knows he will not get that estate either as probate attorney or as an heir. Bobby’s funny. He asked me if he should list “professional heir” on his updated resume.”
         “Well, just between you and me, I understand Brian has never found full time employment in the Frisco area. Barb is working her substantial butt off to support them. Had she only waited would we have had a really fun divorce.”
         “Damn right, Harold. I still don’t know why he let her walk off with that viola when there was less than 100K equity in the house.”
         “Maybe he knew it would only be a matter of time before his strychnine would take the old lady away.”
         “He did not know he was the heir.”
         “Do you believe that?”
         “You just don’t know Bobby, do you?”

TO: "PART IV - MASTER BEDROOMS"