Chapter 10 #2
‘Doesn’t music bring people meaning?’ Denise asks.
‘It does.’ I nod in agreement as I flip the first pancake. ‘But it’s often not tangible in anything other than the moment.’ Sure, you could listen to our songs on streaming services but that’s not like a CD or even a record. ‘I think I’d like to be… useful.’
When I fix stuff around the apartment block I feel useful, and that means a lot. It means a lot to Bob and maybe that’s him rubbing off on me. Despite what he must have seen, his time in the military hasn’t dented his belief in the basic goodness of people.
Look for the helpers. There will always be helpers. That’s one of Bob’s favourite sayings. He stole it from Mr Rogers and used to quote it to me all the time despite the fact the show hadn’t been on the TV for two decades.
Maybe I want to be a helper. I hadn’t planned on ruminating about my future here today but my thoughts are crystallising just by being in Holly’s company.
For so long my life has pretty much just been a procession of unplanned days between gigs.
Whiling away the hours until the next venue, the next stage, the next crowd.
With no real direction other than getting to the end of the gig or the day depending on whether we’re playing or not.
Until now. Until meeting Holly. And it doesn’t seem enough any more.
Holly is clarifying. I feel like another Danny. Danny Zuko needing to shape up to be Sandy’s man.
‘You could always do something with food,’ Denise muses. ‘The stroganoff was to die for and they—’ She tips her chin at the griddle. ‘Look ah-mazing.’
I grin as I flip the other five bubbling pancakes. ‘You wait till you taste them.’
‘Who taught you to cook?’ Lucy asks.
‘Bob,’ Holly says.
She smiles at me. I smile back. I like she not only knows this part of my story but jumps in to tell it. There’s an intimacy to it and another way of staking her claim.
‘The building super?’ Denise asks.
I nod. ‘He’s a relative who took me in for a few years when I was a teenager.’
‘What else did he teach you?’ Lucy asks.
I smile at all the pearls of wisdom – some more like bombs than pearls – that Bob has taught me over the years.
‘He taught me how to mend things,’ I tell her.
‘From the thermostat in the basement to birds with broken wings. He taught me that punctuality was important because people’s time was precious and wasting it was rude.
He taught me that if you want to change the world, start by making your bed because how can you accomplish the big things if you don’t have time for the small? ’
To this day my bed is neatly made each morning.
‘He taught me that…’ My gaze shifts to Holly and our gazes lock. ‘Life is short and if something feels good and right, even if it’s only fleeting, grab it with both hands.’
Which was why I joined my first band and went down the path of prioritising my music. Because it’s always felt good and right. But now I have Holly, I realise that Bob wasn’t talking about things. About possessions. Or jobs.
He’d been talking about people.
I might not be able to fully articulate this feeling I have for Holly, and I’m pretty sure as she holds my gaze that she can’t either, but it’s important. That I know, for sure.
And the loud bang of my heart concurs.
‘He sounds pretty damn wise,’ Denise murmurs.
‘He is annoyingly so.’ I laugh as I drag my gaze off Holly. ‘Like a jolly Dalai Lama.’
‘Who clearly makes amazing pancakes.’ Lucy is practically salivating as she eyes the skillet and, when I put a loaded plate between them ten minutes later, they are like seagulls on a discarded packet of French fries.
The first whimper is Lucy’s, and I smile.
Still got it. But it’s Holly’s whimper that grabs at my gut.
I want to make her whimper like that for the rest of my life, I realise, and as much as I have enjoyed getting to know her friends, I suddenly wish we were alone so I could watch Holly devour the entire plate just for the joy of listening to that little noise of appreciation and knowing that I’m responsible.
My phone rings as they eat and I check the screen. Smiling, I say, ‘Speak of the devil,’ and hold up the phone so they can all see Bob’s name flashing on the screen.
‘Tell him he is a god amongst men,’ Denise says around a mouthful of pancake.
I’m laughing as I answer the phone, but it doesn’t last long. It’s not Bob. It’s one of his army buddies – Triton – with bad news. ‘What?’ I say, not quite believing the words he murmurs into my ear, his voice catching like he doesn’t quite believe them either.
Heart attack. Didn’t make it.
‘What?’
It must be by my tone, or maybe it’s just that Holly is as finely attuned to every nuance of my speech and mannerism as I am to hers. She stops eating and frowns just as I seek her out, my eyes fixed on hers. I must look terrible because she stands and says, ‘What?’
But I can see in her face she knows what’s being told to me on the other end. She’s probably had to do exactly the same thing – be the bearer of bad news – so she knows the expression. Denise and Lucy look at me too with the same kind of understanding.
Triton tells me he’ll text me some details then I hang up. ‘Bob’s dead,’ I announce, our gazes still locked.
She doesn’t say anything, she just crosses the space between us in a flash, her arms sliding around my waist, her head lying on my chest, tucking in under my chin.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers as I lean into her embrace and, knowing she really means it, somehow helps.
I stare at the beer in the bottom of my glass.
It’s been ten days since I came to Reno to see to Bob’s arrangements, which luckily he had meticulously outlined on his laptop in a folder marked funeral.
We cremated him today, and tomorrow I will take his ashes back to where Linda is buried not far from the apartment building so he can be next to the woman he loved and adored.
He’s eligible to be interred in Arlington, but Linda is buried next to the stillborn baby they’d lost thirty years prior, and Bob’s wishes were to be reunited with them in his death.
So that’s where I will put him to rest.
But for today, I sit here at his wake surrounded by his ex-military buddies, about a dozen or so grizzled old men, listening to their stories.
They’re not of war even though many of the stories originate from Desert Storm.
They’re stories of his sense of humour. Of the practical jokes he loved so much.
They’re of Bob’isms.
Of his indefatigable – even back then in the middle of a war – sense that people were good and that even at the end of a gun, kindness and empathy went a long way. That people were people the world over and they wanted the same things.
Peace. Love. Security. Being able to provide for family.
Triton gave the eulogy and quoted the Mr Rogers quote, and everyone nodded and smiled to themselves because we’d all heard it slip from Bob’s lips more than once.
As I listen to these men who loved and admired him so much, my own memories play like a movie reel through my brain.
Bob teaching me how to fix a flat. Bob insisting that I help him cook in the kitchen every night.
Bob assuring me my mother loved me, it was just that some people weren’t equipped to be alone.
In so many ways he had provided for me. He’d given me peace, love and security. And I know I’m going to miss his quiet wisdom every day.
I wish Holly was here. I think these guys would like her, especially if she threw in a couple of her own Bob stories.
And I miss her. Even giving her space like I have been doing back home these past weeks, just knowing she was in the same building, within easy reach, has been enough. But she feels very far away in Reno.
Too far.
We talk. Text mostly. Between making all the arrangements and commiserating with these guys and her shift work and study, it’s easier to drop a message that she can respond to when she gets a moment than making yet another call that goes to her voicemail.
Messages can be responded to in those gaps she talks about.
Conversations require much more time and, as she was at pains to tell me, she is exceptionally time poor.
But now I’m heading home tomorrow, there’s an itch in my blood to see her again. Bob’s death has just reiterated some of the things he taught me. Life is fleeting.
Grab it with both hands.
Excusing myself, I pick up my near empty drink and head to the bar, plonking my ass on a stool and indicating through that universal bar sign language that the guy serving should pour another round.
A guy everyone calls Eagle but whose name is actually Ernie takes the stool to my right.
He’s black and built, with a shock of white hair.
He served in Desert Storm with Bob and looks like he could be an enforcer for a biker gang, even in a suit, but it turns out he’s a lawyer.
He’s helped with the arrangements and has been trying to track down Bob’s will, which wasn’t conveniently on his laptop for easy access.
Triton, who’d disappeared for a while, takes the bar stool on the other side, dropping a large duffel bag on my lap.
‘I’ve been going through the RV and found this stashed under the bed.
’ Bob always stayed in Triton’s decaying old RV parked in his back yard when he came to Reno.
‘I’d forgotten about it in the shock of it all. ’
The zipper has a thick paper tag attached to it which is yellow from age. ‘For Danny Colton’ is scribbled on it in black Sharpie.
I stare at it as Triton takes one of the beers the waiter has poured.
It’s bulky and heavy on my lap as I toy with the tag, the sight of Bob’s terrible handwriting taking me back to the notes he’d left scrawled on scraps of paper when some building emergency or other meant he wouldn’t be home when I got in from school.
What’s in it, I wonder? Something related to his service? Some kind of military go-bag in case of apocalypse? Or something more personal? Something that any of these men would probably be more deserving of?
I unzip the bag and for a moment am confused by the rolls of paper inside. And then I realise. It’s… money. A shit ton of money.
Dumbfounded, I pull out a couple of rolls. All ten-dollar bills secured by rubber bands.
I frown at Triton. Then at Eagle. Then back at Triton. ‘This is… money.’
‘Yup.’ Triton chuckles. ‘Sure is. That’s pretty much all the money he’s earned since he’s been coming to Reno.’
I blink, not quite able to believe my eyes. The bag is full of it. ‘There must be…’
‘Couple of hundred thousand,’ Triton supplies casually. ‘He was a lucky sonofabitch.’
Two hundred thousand dollars? In my lap. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Bob usually always won big at least once per trip. He’d get it cashed out and chuck it in this bag. For a rainy day. That’s what he said.’
If this is supposed to make sense, then it doesn’t. ‘Why didn’t he put it in a savings account?’ It wasn’t like he was one of those old guys who mistrusted banks.
Triton shrugs. ‘I think that was always the plan. He just never got around to it. And then I think he liked the idea of having a stash of cash somewhere. You can take the guy out of the army and all that.’
I think about Bob’s modest apartment with its tiny television screen that had been seriously annoying when trying to watch the Superbowl and his old shit box pick-up that he was always tinkering with, fixing one thing or another.
He could have bought himself a giant screen, a new car, put a down payment on a house with this kind of cash.
‘But he could have used the money.’
‘Nah.’ Eagle shakes his head. ‘I found the will. Trust me, he didn’t need it.’
I swing my head in his direction. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means Bob had more money than God and you are his sole beneficiary.’
I look at my beer glass and wonder if I’m drunker than I think. Bob has – had – more money than God? I find that hard to reconcile with the man I knew who always seemed satisfied with so little.
It doesn’t seem possible.
‘How much money?’ Because richer than God implies extreme wealth. Maybe Eagle was overstating for dramatic effect. Not that he looked like a guy prone to hyperbole.
‘With all his investments and extensive share portfolio, he was worth about two billion.’
My brain stops. Literally just goes offline for several beats. Investments? Portfolios?
Billionaire. Bob, who had a TV screen the size of a postage stamp and fixed people’s squeaky doors and dripping taps, was a billionaire.
Not a millionaire. A billionaire.
‘And now you’re worth two billion,’ Triton adds as if he knows I’m not really taking much in right now and I might need help connecting the dots.
‘Yup.’ Eagle nods. ‘There’ll be probate to go through so it might take a while to get everything officially sorted, but… you’re a very wealthy man, Danny.’
I blink again. I feel like I’ve been hit with a stun gun. ‘I… don’t know what to say.’
Triton slaps me on the back. ‘How about you’ll pick up the bar tab?’
Eagle snort-laughs and Triton joins in as he holds up his glass. ‘To Bob,’ he murmurs.
‘To Bob,’ Eagle repeats, holding his glass up too.
They both look expectantly at me and I make an effort to pull myself together. ‘To Bob,’ I say, and we tap glasses.