The Billionaire Next Door. Jessica Bird

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      The air was stuffy in spite of the air conditioner that was humming, so he cracked open a window. The place smelled of cigarette smoke, but it was the kind of thing left over after a four-pack-a-day addict stops. The stench lingered, embedded in the room’s paint and flooring and fabrics, but wasn’t in the air itself.

      As the breeze came in, he walked over to the TV tray and picked up the Boston Globe crossword puzzle that was mostly done. The date in the upper right-hand corner was from the previous Sunday, the last time his father had sat in the chair with a pencil in hand filling in little boxes with wobbly, capitalized letters.

      Going by the script, it seemed as if his father had had hand tremors. Odd, to picture him as anything other than brutally strong.

      Sean put the paper down and forced himself to walk through every room. It was about halfway through the tour when he realized something was different.

      Everything was clean.

      The cramped kitchen was tidy, no dirty dishes in the sink, no trash collecting in the Rubbermaid bin in the corner, no food left out on the counters. The room he’d shared with Billy had both beds made and a vacuumed rug. Mac’s bedroom was just as neat. Their father’s private space was likewise in wilted but tidy condition.

      Back when Sean had lived here, there had been cobwebs in the corners of the rooms and dirt tracked in the front door and beds with rumpled sheets and dust everywhere. There had also been a lot of empty bottles.

      With a compulsion he couldn’t fight, Sean went through all the closets and cupboards and dressers in the apartment. He looked under each bed and the couch. Checked behind the TV and then went into the kitchen and moved the refrigerator out from the wall.

      Not one single booze bottle. Not one beer can.

      No alcohol in the place.

      As he threw his shoulder into the fridge and forced the thing back into place, he was flat-out amazed. He’d never have thought their father could kick the sauce. The drinking had been as much a part of him as his dark hair and the hard tone of his voice.

      Sean stalled out, but then went into the living room and figured it was time to score some shut-eye. First thing tomorrow, he was going to make arrangements with Finnegan’s Funeral Home for the cremation and the interment. After that, he’d have to pack up the apartment. No question they would sell the duplex. There was no reason to come back here ever again.

      He glanced around. God, how long had it been since he’d stood in this room?

      As he went through the years, he was surprised to realize it had been all the way back when he’d gone away to Harvard as a freshman. Made sense though. College had been his ticket out, and once he didn’t have to sleep under this roof, he’d made damn sure he never showed up again. It had been the same for Billy when he’d gotten a football scholarship to Holy Cross. And for Mac, who’d joined the army the very month Billy went off to college. They’d all left and never returned.

      Go figure.

      Sean went over to his duffel, stripped down to his boxers and grabbed his toothbrush. After he hit the bathroom in the hall, he picked a pillow off his old bed and headed for the couch.

      No way in hell he was sleeping in his room.

      Lying flat on his back in the dark, he thought of the penthouse he lived in down in Manhattan. Park Avenue in the seventies, a perfect address. And everything in that showstopper of a place was sleek and expensive, from the furniture to the drapes to the kitchen appliances to that million-dollar view of Central Park.

      It was about as far away from where he was now as was humanly possible.

      Sean screwed his lids down, crossed his arms over his chest and concentrated on going to sleep.

      Yeah, right.

      He lasted not even ten minutes before he was on his bare feet and pacing up and down over the knobby area rug.

      Lizzie parked the Toyota in front of the row house and got out with the bag of Mr. O’Banyon’s things. Her feet were killing her and she had a headache from having had too many coffees, but at least she didn’t have to be at the clinic until noon today because she was working the later shift.

      As she stepped onto the duplex’s concrete walkway, she stopped and looked up. No lights were on upstairs, but that wasn’t because someone was sleeping. It was because no one lived there anymore.

      Tears stung her eyes. It was hard to imagine her cranky old friend gone. Hard to internalize the fact that there would be no more blue glow from his TV at night, no more sound of him shuffling about, no more trips to buy him the chocolate ice cream he liked.

      No more talking to him the way a daughter talked to a gruff father.

      She tightened her grip on the bag’s handles and hoped he hadn’t struggled at the end, hadn’t felt horrible pain and fear. She wished for him a peaceful slide as he passed, not a bumpy, frightening fall.

      As she went up to the house, she felt as if there was a draft licking around her body, as if the night had turned frigid though it was in fact balmy.

      It was just so hard to come home this morning. To her, there was only empty space above her now. The man whose life had animated the furniture and the objects in the other apartment was gone and the silence overhead was only going to remind her of what had been lost.

      After Lizzie let herself into her place, she put her keys in a dish on her little painted table and shut the door. She was setting down the plastic bag when she froze.

      Someone was walking around upstairs.

      Her first thought was totally illogical: for a split second, she was sure that someone had made a mistake with Mr. O’Banyon and he’d been discharged because he was perfectly healthy.

      Her second thought was that a burglar had broken in.

      Except then she realized whoever it was was pacing. Back. Forth. Back. Forth.

      The son had come into town.

      She started for the door, but then stopped because going up to see him was ridiculous. Though she’d been close to the guy’s father, she didn’t know the son at all and it was just before dawn, for heaven’s sake. Hardly the time for a sympathy call.

      After she took a shower, she sat in her living room with a bowl of corn flakes in her lap. Instead of eating the cereal, she played with it until it turned to mush, and listened to the man above her wear out the floorboards.

      Twenty minutes later, she put on a pair of jeans and went up the stairwell.

      The moment she knocked, the pacing stopped. Just in case he thought she was a burglar, she said, “Hello? Mr.—ah, Sean O’Banyon?”

      Nothing could have prepared her for who opened that door.

      The man on the other side of the jamb stood about six inches taller than her and wore nothing but a pair of boxers and a whole lot of muscle. With a gold cross hanging from his neck, an old tattoo on his left pec and a scar on one of his СКАЧАТЬ