|
Uncle Harry was rich. Filthy rich. Stinking
rich. Filthy stinking rich! Anyway you cut it, he was in that tax
bracket where money is no longer important. Of course, it was money
that had eventually made Uncle Harry's life basically a lonely,
miserable exercise in isolation. That is until the old bastard watched
some old holiday movie and went around swearing that he was visited
by the ghost of Christmas and completely went over the edge. Then,
he found all sorts of clever ways of proving his mental instability.
You might wonder how such a character
came into the kind of money Harry amassed. You know how people always
say “Who Knew?” when something goes either very wrong
or very right? Well, Harry King knew! He knew that everyone and
their brother would someday be sitting in front of a computer when
he made his first investment in that company known by three initials.
He knew that a camera that gave you your finished picture in seconds
would be an eagerly coveted item in more than a few households.
He knew about videos, oil shortages, foreign investments and played
all those good hunches which can turn a man living in a two room
apartment in Brooklyn into a man living in a mansion in Dix Hills,
complete with servants quarters and a riding stable. Yes, Harry
King knew all these things and every penny he had ever squirreled
away working in the sweater factory went into making him one very
rich, very isolated man who over the years turned into an even richer,
more isolated old man. You know you can get so rich that people
-living, breathing people- become minor details. Like me. Like every
other person who claimed to be related to good old Uncle Harry.
Harry King was a stranger to all until
the old mental orchestra playing in his head began to lose some
volume. Besides taking to wearing paisley print shirts and letting
the frost white semicircle of hair on his head grow to his shoulders,
Uncle Harry decided to do something with his time and became a pseudo
magician. The rest of the time he called himself Santa.
Having forgotten, or simply not caring,
that we were all past the age where bunny rabbits pulled from a
hat was actually entertaining, Harry took to throwing these elaborate
dinner parties in order to ensure himself a willing and appreciative
audience. When you have a relative with his kind of money attendance
becomes mandatory. Especially if you're dead broke and collection
agencies just call you by your initials now.
|
|
We started as a group of twenty-three not
including host and attendants. There were all sorts claiming some
kind of link to Harry's pie. Except for me they were all rather
weakly connected by the fact that Harry was once married, that was
long before the first dividend check rolled in, but now after an
article in Forbes, they were all suddenly wild about Harry. He had
no children of his own and these leeches were all from his wife's
side and all showed up faithfully considering that Uncle Harry -on
the verge of senility Uncle Harry- decided to get everyone's attention
by having a ten thousand dollar card trick at the end of every monthly
gathering. And he announced with a twinkle in his eye, come Christmas
the lucky contestant would be dealing for stakes much larger than
that. Like a nice round million! Now, Harry was pretty good at turning
a store-bought wand into a bunch of paper flowers, but when it came
to card tricks he was rank awful, and after a while we were down
to only thirteen because Harry had decided that each month's winner
could not play again for at least a year. It wasn't like anyone
could lose either. So they didn't show up and if Harry was aware
of that he made no mention of it and so long as the applause was
loud the game went on.
After far too much of my inheritance
had been handed over to people I had never even heard of, I began
to get a little worried. Why my inheritance? Uncle Harry was my
uncle - my real uncle. I was his only living blood link. There,
the only one besides Harry wearing the King name. The only one with
a legitimate claim to however much it was Harry had amassed. I have
no idea what the old geezer was really worth, but let's be real,
thousands of dollars in door prizes for guessing a card right was
ridiculous. And considering that Harry shook like vibrator and never
really bring the card up to his forehead without everyone seeing,
the odds were not exactly in favor of the house. In court all these
pretenders to the throne would be tossed aside and the crown handed
over to me so of course it became my responsibility to bring the
game to an end and make certain there was even enough to bother
litigating over. Wouldn't you do the same? Come on! Harry was playing
with a rusted tuba and those twisted old fingers could barely shuffle
the cards back into the deck let alone pull of a trick. There was
no way to miss, and the few who did, did so because Harry also stocked
a first class bar.
It was simple, really simple.
|
