“Yeah, no—the house is fine. It’s nice. It’s that big one on Montreal? With the turret thing on top? They were gonna make it a historical site or something back in—anyway. It was my aunt’s, and it just comes with a lot of . . . unreasonable obligations. She was kinda . . .” He made a pained face.
Ang nodded. “I see. Well if you want to off-load it . . .”
Larry laughed. He knew how he sounded. She had a way of making him hear himself. “Thanks, Ang. I’ll keep you in mind.”
Someone placed a box of Cheerios on the conveyor belt at his elbow, and he turned. A woman stood there, carefully moving groceries from the basket slung over her arm onto the counter like she was putting a puzzle together. She had small, close-set brown eyes and frizzy chin-length hair, dyed bright blue—the color of five-cent candy whales. Her face was decorated all over with tiny silver hoops and studs, and she was wearing army boots. She was perfect. She looked up and caught his eye. “Sounds like you come here often,” she said, then smiled at Ang.
Larry knew he had no business looking at beautiful people because he wasn’t one of them. He was a thin man—fast-food, fast-metabolism thin, not gym-and-protein-shakes thin. He had acne scars all over his face and a goatee on his chin and an instantly discernible penchant for ’80s- and ’90s-era punk rock. He still wore a wallet chain. He was forty-three.
He had no business looking, but he was looking anyway—he realized he was even staring—and interrupted himself with a nervous laugh that sounded, unfortunately, like a squawk. “Every day,” he said, and then he felt embarrassed about admitting he was the kind of person who went to the grocery store every day. The squawk was not good either.
Ang rescued him—and whether it was on purpose or not, he loved her for it. “Larry’s my favorite customer,” she said. She probably said this about all her customers. “He always brings me the most interesting coins.”
Larry tucked his chin into his chest and cleared his throat. “Ang collects coins,” he explained. “I don’t know anything about coin collecting. I just bring her anything that looks old or different. Oh! Speaking of . . .” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the nickel he’d been saving for her. “This one’s cool,” he said, forgetting about the beautiful, beautiful woman standing just inches from him. “Look at the edges—squared! It has twelve sides. Have you seen one like that before?”
Ang nodded, grinning appreciatively as she tucked his potato wedges into a bag and traded them for the nickel. “Thanks, Larry! I’m excited to take a look at it.”
As he turned to go, the woman behind him cleared her throat, and he glanced back at her. She was looking at him in a funny way, like she’d made the noise to get his attention but now didn’t know what to do with it. “I like your shirt,” she said. And though Larry was wearing a shirt and though the woman was looking straight at the shirt he was wearing, it seemed impossible that she was saying this to him.
He looked at Ang for help.
“Descendents,” Ang read, picking up on his distress. “Is that . . . a . . .”
“It’s a punk band,” said the woman. Then she looked Larry straight in the eyes and added, “Milo Goes to College is such a great album.”
Larry had never fallen in love before; he’d always thought that would be an intentional, gradual process that could take weeks, months, or even years. He was well versed in physical attraction and had had a thousand crushes, meaningless and otherwise, but couldn’t fathom what it would take to decide you loved someone.
But, as it turned out, falling in love was exactly what it sounded like. Love was like a sewer: something you knew about but didn’t think about until someone left a manhole cover open and you just tripped right in and your stomach dropped like you were on a roller coaster and you felt thrilled but also like you were going to barf. Messy, painful, disorienting. Amazing.
It happened to Larry when he looked into her eyes. He got distracted, didn’t watch where he was going, tripped over his feet, and plunged, face first, straight into love.
He nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from hers. “Can I have your phone number?” he asked breathlessly.
The woman burst out laughing, which was good because Larry couldn’t have recovered from such a massive gaffe if she thought he wasn’t joking. But his relief lasted for only a moment. Then it occurred to him that laughter wasn’t a great response to a request for a phone number if it was not followed by a phone number.
His phone started to buzz in his pocket, and again, he couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. Good, probably. He needed to get away. It was over; he’d messed it up. He glanced down at the screen. Glenda. His older sister, returning the call he’d made on his way to the store to complain about the house and the will; their aunt had left her a 1974 Lincoln Continental with no stipulations whatsoever. She could sit in it, she could drive it, she could look in the glove box. She could plant flowers in the trunk for all anyone cared. It wasn’t fair.
“Well,” said Larry, holding the phone up, “I have to take this. It’s the sister. I mean, it’s my sister. Not . . . some random nun.” He cleared his throat. “So. Nice to meet you guys. I mean, not you, Ang.”
Ang looked like she wanted to save him again, but they both knew it was too late.
He turned and walked away fast, holding the phone to his ear and clutching the potato wedges like a purse, thinking to himself that, while he had enjoyed his brief encounter with love, he was probably going to need to avoid it from here on. It had taken everything out of him, and he’d come up with nothing in the end. He felt sorry for himself. First the house, now this.
“Hey, Glenda,” he said.
“How was it?”
“Weird. I got her house.”
Silence.
“But, Glenda, listen, it’s not just simple like that. There are a whole bunch of really weird rules that I have to follow if I want to keep it. Just ridiculous rules. Is that even allowed?”
“Is what allowed?”
“To, just, to make such strange, specific rules and requests in your will. That can’t be allowed, can it? Legally?”
Glenda paused, the way she always did before she was about to play devil’s advocate. Larry hated that pause. “Well, I read somewhere that Napoleon Bonaparte’s will said to shave his head and distribute the hair among his friends. If that’s not strange and specific, I don’t know what is. You could probably look into it, though—ask the lawyer how much of it they can make you follow. What kind of rules did she put in there?”
“Well, I’m not allowed in the attic—”
“Larry. You don’t even want to go into the attic, do you? Not after what happened up there.”
“No, I don’t want to go into the attic. I want to be allowed to go into the attic. That’s different. But here’s another one, Glenda: I’m not allowed to plant flowers in the front yard.”
“You were going to plant flowers?”
“Again: I just don’t want to be told I couldn’t if I wanted to. Glenda, I’m not even allowed to live in the house.”
“What?” Glenda sounded either skeptical or giddy. “She said you can’t live in it?”