TWENTY-TWO

Victor

Mother of Fuck, I’m calling them!”

Victor had yet to release the phone from his hand. “Hello?” came a mystery voice—male, professional, confused. “Is this Victor Wexler?”

He had forgotten how to handle this situation. The problem of not knowing who was on the line, much like the problem of dialing the wrong number, was in danger of extinction.

“And who may I ask is calling?”

My mom can’t talk right now, she’s in the shower.

“I’m looking for Victor Wexler.”

Victor caved. “This is he.”

“Victor, this is Silas Gardner. We met at Caroline and Felix’s wedding.”

He tried to picture a Silas. All he saw was corn pipes and barn raisings.

“I believe we met in the bathroom,” Silas said, trying to help.

Got it. Aviators. Explosive diarrhea. Got it.

“Hope you guys had a nice time at the wedding.”

Silas was still confusing Victor for someone who kept tabs on his peers.

“So listen, Victor, I am sorry to bother you. I know this is a bit unorthodox.”

“Calling people is unorthodox?”

Come to think of it, it was. Victor never called anyone for anything, not even Kezia.

“For what I’m calling for it’s unorthodox.” Silas was fumbling with paper. “I got your number from Caroline. Is this an okay time to talk?”

Victor heard cursing as Matejo threw freezer-burned hamburger patties from his fire escape below. They sounded like bells when they hit the pavement.

“Now works.” He took a stealthy pull of whiskey.

“I’m an estate and probate attorney in real life.”

Victor sat up straight.

“There’s been an incident in the family.”

“Are Caroline and Felix okay?”

“They’re fine.”

“Oh, phew. Wait, you mean my family?”

“No, I don’t know your family.”

“Obviously.” He stifled a burp.

“I have some sad news. I believe you met Felix’s mother, Johanna.”

Victor got up and turned off the air conditioner. The silence of the room surprised him. Ting, ting, ting went the patties. Silas didn’t have to tell him. The truth of what had happened, though still unspoken and abstract, orbited close by.

“Johanna had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was diagnosed a couple of months before the wedding. I don’t know how familiar you are with cancer but . . .”

“I had an uncle with skin cancer.”

“I see.”

“He had a mole on his back that got huge but they removed it. He’s okay now.”

“I’m glad to hear it. With Johanna, well, once it’s in the lymph nodes, it moves quickly. It was a pretty rare cancer.”

Even the Wexler family cancers were subpar cancers. Victor was distracted, watching an old beer bottle on his table. An ant crawled down a cigarette filter toward a pool of stale beer and all Victor could think was: She was dying while this still life was in the making. Dying when he bought the beer at the bodega, dying when he opened the ones before it, dying—of cancer, no less—while he smoked the cigarette, dying as he left for the wedding where he’d meet her, dying as he slept on her bed on the second-to-last night she would spend on this earth. Because of him, she spent it in a guest room. There was an odd weight to his role here.

Silas continued, a lawyer’s diligence regurgitating a doctor’s expertise. Victor looked at the pants again.

“Caroline and Felix have delayed their honeymoon for the funeral. Victor, I’m sorry to lay this on you, but I’m calling you because I’m acting as executor of Johanna’s will and, as far as we know, she was of sound mind and body up until the end.”

“People really say that?”

“Yes, that’s how you say that.”

All of this was so foreign to him. Victor’s last living grandparent had stopped doing so back in college. He was not fluent in death documents. But Johanna was. That would explain the intermittently vacant look in her eye. Victor had assumed she told him her story because she wasn’t all there, because she was a woman whose confessional filters had widened with age. But she knew what was coming and felt like sharing a secret. And she liked him.

“The night after the wedding,” Silas continued, “she sent me an e-mail with a few logistical concerns. Most of it had to do with tax rollouts. I didn’t look at it right away because, frankly, I didn’t know I’d need to. And I don’t check work e-mails on the weekend. It’s terrible for you.”

“I don’t check work e-mails on the weekends either.”

“I read an interview with Arianna Huffington about it and I’ve never looked back. Anyway, at the end of this e-mail is a note regarding her jewelry, saying that when the family needs to know where everything is, we should ask you.”

“You’re shitting me,” he mumbled. “I didn’t realize she knew my last name.”

“She barely knew your first. But may I assume that you’re the only”—Silas pulled up the e-mail and read—“‘Caroline’s tall friend, good listener, V-something, with the nose’?”

Silas’s watch face smacked against his desk as he put his hand down.

“That’s me. I’m the one with the nose.”

Victor could feel all his organs trying to exit his throat. Did the Castillos suspect him of stealing? His defenses were quick to hold his organs in place: How dare they. How dare they come down from their gilded perch and lean on Victor, of all people, for information. Where was the trust? Even the truth wasn’t so bad. It’s not as if he had taken any jewelry, only one picture of one piece of jewelry.

“I’m coming to New York tomorrow with Caroline and Felix. Are you free to have lunch with us so we can get to the bottom of this? Sometimes it helps just to listen to any interaction you had with the deceased. We might be able to pick up on details you deem irrelevant. Unless, of course, you do know what she’s talking about.”

“I . . . no.”

“It will take us some time to comb the house more thoroughly than we already have but all the safes have been inventoried . . .”

Safes! Plural! Matejo would die.

“Anyway, we’d love to hear more about that night, more of anything she may have shared with you. I wanted to get you thinking about it.”

There was no catalyst required. All Victor could think about was Johanna’s story—her aunt’s story, really. About Paris in the fifties, about the mysterious château and the missing-but-not-missing necklace.

“I was pretty drunk.”

“You’re welcome to have your own representation present if that would make you feel more comfortable.”

“Because I was drunk?”

“Because Johanna’s collection is worth about what the Hope Diamond is worth.”

“The Hope Diamond is in the Smithsonian.”

He got up and began to pace, brought the beer bottle over to the sink and ran the faucet. The water hit the trough of a dirty spoon and splashed all over him.

“Crap.”

He put the bottle under the tap, drowning the ant. He wanted to admit what he’d done. How the hell was he going to get through a lunch pretending to be clueless, when the only conversation he recalled not about jewelry was about outdoor showers?

Victor smacked the faucet shut. A swirl of ash water drifted down the drain. His mind raced, ping-ponging from thought to thought. They didn’t know where to look. Her own family. Forget the necklace, they didn’t even know about the drawer. But even if he told them, what would they do? The key was buried around Johanna’s neck.

I wear this all the time.

They could always crack the dresser, drop it out the window like rock stars in a hotel suite. But Victor was pretty sure that thing belonged in a museum, too.