Windfall

by Byron TD Smith

  Henry was well aware of D&D alignments and couldn’t disagree if he wanted to. “That sounds pretty alright.”

  He shifted the subject back to her cloak. “And where would I find such a fine garment, if I wanted one?”

  Frieda held the sides of the cloak wide open, showing off its size. “Online,” she said with enthusiasm. “It’s got hidden pockets, and it came with a set of lock picks.”

  Frieda produced a little leather pouch from inside the cloak. Henry picked it up and looked inside at what could be mistaken for evil dental instruments.

  That’s actually pretty cool, Henry thought, with more envy than he cared to admit.

  “So, you’re still picking locks?”

  “Oh, sure.” She waved a dismissive hand at him. “The set that you bought me was just for beginners, though. I’ve learned way more on YouTube. I can pick almost anything now, except those ones with the circular keys. That set’s too expensive. You’re on the bar, by the way,” she said, returning their attention back to the game.

  After a few quiet turns, Henry resigned himself to the inevitable and dreaded topic.

  “Hey, Fred. Things have changed because Sarah and I aren’t together anymore. I just want to say that if you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask. I’ll do my best to answer them.”

  “Okay,” she said. Then she added with a smirk, “You remember how to play this, don’t you? It sure doesn’t seem like it.”

  In spite of her trash-talking, the tides turned at the end, and he managed to stick a number of her pieces on the bar, sending them back to the start and beating her soundly.

  They cleared their bowls. Henry made the unfolded sofa-bed while Frieda watched and brushed her teeth.

  “Are you still my uncle?” she asked through a mouthful of foam.

  Henry stopped cold. A lump began to form in his throat. He swallowed it back with as much grace as he could.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “I do, too,” she said, and she popped her brush back between her teeth.

  They said their goodnights as Henry withdrew to the bedroom. It seemed not so long ago that she would have asked him to read her a story. Her favorites had been Tintin adventures. “Go back to the peril,” she would say, and he would re-read the dangerous bits over.

  What does being an uncle even look like anymore?

  Henry woke up once in the night, confused by the new surroundings. He felt around the strange bed for Shima, who was usually at his feet, if not sleeping right on his chest. He peeked out of the bedroom door at Frieda. Relaxed and asleep, her face rounded and became even more cherubic. Under her arm, the old cat looked up at Henry and gave a light coo. Henry returned to bed.

  He tried not to dream of crosswords.

  Chapter Six

  Frieda Duran played what she called ‘Daredevil’ whenever she woke in a new location. She lay still and alert and tried to take in as much information about her surroundings without opening her eyes.

  She remembered that she was lying on Henry’s sofa-bed. She felt Shima lying next to her, his paw outstretched onto her arm. Frieda heard the old cat yawn and deduced by the smell that he had already been fed. She heard light sounds of dishes being placed onto the table, by someone trying to be quiet. There was an unmistakable aroma of fresh coffee and she lifted her head.

  “Good morning, Fred,” Henry said from the kitchen.

  Frieda got up and joined him in the kitchen. She wore a blue T-shirt with a Superman logo and red shorts with a yellow band. She picked up a clay mug from the table and sipped at the coffee, steam rising into her nose. Henry had let her drink coffee for a couple of years, in moderation. Although, in one of those contradictions that made sense only to adults, he would get upset if she used too much sugar, so she had learned to drink it black.

  Henry was already dressed. His suit and shirt looked baggier than the ones he used to wear. She had heard that old people shrink.

  Poor Hen. Maybe it’s starting early for him.

  He checked his hair in his reflection on the kettle. “I’m heading off to work. Help yourself to toast and fruit. There’s leftover pizza that you can have for lunch. I’ll be home around five. After today, I’ve got the rest of the week off, and we can do some hanging out. Fair?”

  She nodded, peering at him over the mug as she sipped.

  Henry cleared the dishes, speeding up as adults do before they leave the house.

  “Do you have your keys?” he asked. “I put the money I owe you on the fridge. Do you need more money? You have my number, right? Do you know what you’re going to do today? Any questions?”

  “Yes. No. Yes, schoolwork. No.”

  At this, Henry stopped puttering, looked at her, and laughed. This wasn’t his out-of-control sort of laugh that sounded like hiccups and looked like he was stifling a sneeze. This was his single loud burst, as though he’d been surprised, which sometimes upset people at dinner but never Frieda. Having expelled his guffaw, he looked relaxed and happy. She remembered him always being that way when she was younger.

  Henry continued to tidy, and Frieda played with Shima next to her on the chair. She dangled her earbuds over the little tuxedoed cat, and he tried to scoop them into his mouth.

  “They smell like ear,” she said to no one in particular.

  “Please don’t encourage him, Fred.”

  I miss the old Hen.

  After Henry left, Frieda dressed and returned to the table to start her work. She had scheduled a Skype session with her French tutor, math, and creative writing for the day. She tried to sandwich the bad stuff in between the good.

  Midway through her math, Frieda got stumped. Trying to Google for help with the first problem, a geometric proof, had led to a Wiki rabbit hole, a series of TED talks, followed by YouTube, and now it was nearing lunch.

  Frieda shunned the pizza, helping herself instead to an apple, a piece of cheese, and a box of crackers. With a loud, “Come, Shima!” she marched the short distance to the couch and laid it all out in a picnic. The old cat watched and purred while she ate. When she was done, he followed her to the door where she sat on the floor.

  She laced her boots. “Hen’s going to notice if I make more coffee, little man. I’ll be right back.” Frieda tucked her creative writing book into her satchel and beamed at her own play on words. Write back. That’s awesome.

  She had discovered the convenient little café across the road on one of her visits to feed Shima. There were booths next to the windows facing the street and small bar stools affixed to the floor the length of a long counter. They reminded her of mushrooms in video games that you scored points for jumping on. She took a seat at the bar.

  A woman wearing a black apron around her waist brought a menu. Frieda observed the name tag on the woman’s chest and said, “Just a coffee, please, Deborah. Dark and bitter, just like me.”

  Frieda was pleased with her quip. She heard someone say it once and everyone had laughed. When Deborah only raised an eyebrow in surprise, Frieda worried.

  Was that racist?

  She opened her notebook to the back, where she kept her lists and added a couple of entries.

  18) origin of “dark and bitter just like me”

  19) understand racism

  She wrote and sipped for more than an hour. Deborah didn’t seem to be too offended because she called Frieda “Honey” and “Darling” and kept the coffee topped up. Frieda’s list grew.

  20) what is an appropriate tip for exceptional service???

  Frieda left the café, work done for the day. At least, all the schoolwork that she was going to do. She was puzzling through details of her new story in her mind and didn’t see the man in the hallway until the glass door was nearly closed behind her.

  He straightened up quickly from a crouching position next to the door across from Henry’s. At his full height, he towered over the small girl. By the snapping sound of the door’s mail slot, Frieda figured that he must have been trying to see i
nto the apartment. He knocked on the shadow of the number two with a slow beat of deliberate patience. Standing with his back to Henry’s apartment, he turned to acknowledge Frieda. The lower half of his face widened into a smile, but his eyes remained serious, scanning her up and down.

  The man’s grin was so broad that Frieda could see the wet inside of his cheeks. His hair and clothes were a mess.

  Upstairs are two women, and the old man downstairs is in his eighties, Frieda recalled. This guy’s older than Hen and Dad, but not as old as Grandpa.

  Frieda drew her shoulders back and slid one hand to her satchel, in case he was a purse thief. As she approached, she smelled his stale odor. She walked past Henry’s door, stepping over a newspaper on the floor, to the stairs at the end of the hall without looking back. She imagined her ears pivoting to face the hallway behind her, attuned to each little sound.

  At the top of the stairs, she broke into a sprint to the nearest door and knocked.

  Is that my door?

  Tess Honma straightened up on her stool.

  A second, more insistent rapping lasted a little longer.

  She dropped her brush into the glass of gray water on the corner of her drawing table. The water darkened a little further. She hopped off the yellow barstool and padded her way across the wide-open apartment, the hardwood warm from the sunlight beneath her bare feet.

  Tess opened the door to see a young girl about to knock on Bernadette’s door across the hall.

  “May I help you?”

  “Hi. Can I come in?” the young girl said, as she ducked under Tess’s arm and slipped into the apartment. Once in, the girl added, “Thank you. I’m Frieda.”

  “Right. We met yesterday. You were with your mum, and you were visiting the guy downstairs.”

  “That’s Henry. He was married to my mum’s sister but not anymore. That’s why he has to rent. May I have a glass of water, please?” Frieda stared at the open door.

  Tess closed the door and noticed Frieda’s shoulders relax. She fetched a glass, filling it from the kitchen faucet. By the time she turned around, the young girl had already settled down in the living room. The choices in the living room were few. Tess couldn’t recall ever having had a guest to her apartment in the several years she had lived here, so there was little need for more than the necessities: a small kitchen table and chairs, a couch from which to watch television, bookshelves, art on the walls, and her makeshift art studio.

  She handed her curious young guest the water.

  “Thank you,” Frieda said, her mouth already on the glass, taking a long drink. She sat on the couch and looked for somewhere to set the glass down, deciding on the floor.

  Tess studied the girl. Frieda had that clash of styles that spoke of the early days of youth’s individuation. Rather than being limited by stereotypes and categories—punk, goth, prep, jock, geek—the young girl in front of her sampled from all the buckets, trying things on without the burdens of matching and clashing. Blue streaked hair; a hippie leather satchel; a writing pad swollen and stuffed with additional loose pages; a T-shirt bearing what could only be a recipe for poutine: Fries. Curds. Gravy.

  Curious and amused, she took a spot next to Frieda on the couch. “So, are you making the rounds and introducing yourself to everyone in the building today? Or am I special? Bernadette across the hall is very nice, and Mr. Benham, below your uncle, is always looking for people to talk to.”

  “I’m, uh, I’m staying with Hen and Shima for a bit. He’s at work right now, and I’m supposed to be studying, but I felt like some company. You seemed nice, and I thought I would say hello. So, I guess I am sort of making the rounds. But I wasn’t planning on meeting everyone.”

  “I didn’t know Henry lived with anyone.”

  “He doesn’t. Shima’s a cat. He’s real old. Like, older than me.”

  “That is old. Well, it’s nice to meet you more formally, Frieda. You can call me Tess. That’s what my friends call me.”

  “Hi, Tess,” Frieda said, smiling and picking up her glass.

  As the girl drank deeply, her eyes ran over Tess’s hair, face, shirt. It was an innocent inspection, suggesting the curiosity was mutual. Frieda’s eyes stopped at the tattoo on Tess’s forearm.

  “Is that real?”

  Tess looked down at the black-ink stylized man in a suit, his head the dot at the bottom of a question-mark that floated above him. “It is. I got it when I was twenty.”

  “How old are you now?” Frieda asked with the directness that only youth or seniority can muster.

  “Thirty-eight.”

  The young girl worked the numbers in her head.

  “I’m thirteen. So, I wasn’t born then.”

  Tess laughed. “No. You wouldn’t have been. What sort of studying were you doing?”

  “Writing. I’m a writer. I was doing math earlier, but I’m a writer. I’m homeschooled, so I get to choose my curriculum and develop my strengths. It’s better because then I don’t have to study information that I will only ever use to pass a test.”

  “But it gets lonely sometimes?”

  “Sometimes. There are a bunch of us homeschoolers that get together for field trips and things, but I probably won’t see them this week.”

  Frieda rose from the couch. She walked to the bookshelves, each overflowing: the first with paperbacks and hundreds of random magazines, the second with graphic novels and comic books. She reached out and ran her hand over the spines of the comics.

  “Are all these yours?”

  Tess straightened up and grinned at the surprise in the girl’s voice.

  “Yup. All mine. If you like comics, and there are any you’d like to borrow while you’re staying with Henry, you’re more than welcome to take them downstairs.”

  Frieda looked back over her shoulder at Tess with wide eyes.

  “I do. I will. Thank you.”

  “In fact, if you’re a writer, then you are probably a big reader, too. I would recommend this one.” Tess walked to the bookshelf, her hand knowing instantly where to find the thick hardcover. “It’s called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. If you’re a fan of classic stories, Edgar Allan Poe, Dracula, the Invisible Man, then this is for you.” She handed the book to the girl.

  Frieda looked at the cover. A motley team of people was gathered together, looking resolved and stern: a woman, an old man, a monster, a tall Sikh fellow, and the Invisible Man. She pointed to an image on the corner of the book. “That’s your tattoo.”

  “Right. This book changed my life. It’s where I learned that some stories are so great that people love them for decades, centuries, even.”

  Frieda looked at the book as though it had suddenly become a holy tome. “I’ll take really good care of it,” she said, putting it upright in her satchel so that it stuck halfway out. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to laugh?”

  “Of course.”

  Frieda recounted going to the café alone, returning, and seeing the man in the hallway downstairs. “He was super awkward, like he wasn’t supposed to be there. Like he was casing the place. And I had this thought that was kind of, ‘Frieda, don’t open Hen’s door in front of this creepy guy.’ But I couldn’t just turn around and leave, so I pretended that I lived upstairs here.”

  “That’s okay.” Tess looked at the clock in the kitchen. It had already been a productive morning. “We can hang out here for as long as you want and go down together later.”

  “And then, when you come down, you can meet Shima,” Frieda offered.

  “That sounds great. I love cats.” The girl’s company was refreshing. “Say, since you like comics . . .”

  “What?”

  “Let me show you something you might think is cool.”

  She had never shown anyone her art studio set-up before. In all the world, this was the place most sacred to her. She hesitated and looked again at the girl who had interrupted her day. As she turned to walk to the front of the apartment, she g
ave a nod to Frieda in the direction of her studio.

  Chapter Seven

  The phone in Henry’s pocket gave a jolt and buzzed as he let it ring silently.

  “I’m sorry. What was that?” he said to the portly, middle-aged man whose handlebar moustache received all the grooming and attention that was denied his oily hair.

  “An omnibus. It’s a gift for a friend, and it has to be an omnibus.”

  The phone gave another irritating shake.

  Per Mr. Munroe’s policy, Henry did not simply point in the direction of the science fiction section. He signaled for the customer to follow and, in long, quick strides he led him to the stack of copies of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

  The store phone which had not, in Henry’s recollection, ever announced its presence before, rang and was cut short on its second bell. Mr. Munroe was in the back office and must have picked it up.

  The mustachioed man eventually appeared at the end of the aisle and caught up, whereupon he delivered a lengthy and detailed explanation on the virtues of having an omnibus of all five volumes of Douglas Adams’ classic saga.

  “You don’t mean a box set?” Henry asked.

  The man rolled his eyes. “If you had read the books, instead of just watching the movie, you’d understand. It’s not five stories; it’s a single, epic tale of the vast potential of the human spirit. And it deserves recognition as such.”

  “Oh, I’ve read them. I only mention it because it’s cheaper to buy them separately.”

  Henry handed him the thick, single tome.

  “Why?”

  Henry shrugged. “I guess because we have so many?”

  The customer’s conviction vanished, and Henry waved as the man left carrying five books under his arm.

  Henry shot his hand into his pocket. One missed call, no voicemail, and a text.