Act of God

few months ago.”
    Nugent moved away from the lava lamp, swinging her hips slowly, like a teen walking through a meadow with her first beau. “You’ve done some homework, huh?”
    “A little.”
    “So you’re wondering, why did she burn a toll call on me, we aren’t that close.”
    “Yeah, I wondered.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you, I wondered, too. I mean, it was my birthday and all—the Ides of March, like that Shakespeare thing?—but as soon as I heard her ‘baby-girl’ voice on the other end of the phone, I was trying to spot her angle.”
    “She had to have an angle to call an aunt on her birthday?”
    “Aunt and godmother. Barbra—that was my older sister? She made me promise at the christening that I’d always look after her little ‘baby.’ Thank God she never made me promise the same thing about Will-yum.”
    “I take it you’re not nuts about him, either.”
    “Hah. Will-yum’s like a... nonentity, you know? My guess is he’ll go out like a Viking.”
    “Like a Viking.”
    “Yeah. He’ll die with his sword in his hand.”
    “Ms. Nugent—”
    “Whacking off, get it?”
    “I get it. Ms. Nugent—”
    “I mean, Will-yum, he’s the kind of guy couldn’t have gotten laid during the Summer of Love.”
    “Can we go back to the phone call?”
    “The phone call?”
    “From Darbra.”
    “Oh, right. What do you want to know?”
    “Why else would she have called you?”
    “That’s what I was wondering. I was upstairs in bed, had a cold, a cold on my birthday yet, and the phone rings— there’s an extension up there for down here, easier that way—and it’s my loving niece, saying how are you and how’s business, and I said sucky and suckier.”
    Which must have wanned things right up. “And then?”
    “Then she asked me, have I heard from Will-yum, and I said, ‘Yeah, he sent me a card and some flowers, that soft touch, why?’ And she said, ‘Oh, no reason. I just haven’t heard from him in a while.’ Then she finally got to it.”
    “Got to what?”
    “The real reason she called me, the angle.”
    “Which was?”
    “The insurance policies.”
    “The policies?”
    “Yeah. Didn’t your client Will-yum tell you about them?”
    “Not that I recall.”
    A smile. I realized Nugent hadn’t shown her teeth to me, because the two canines would have been tough to miss. They stuck down a little farther than the others, giving her a Bride-of-Dracula look. “When Barbra’s husband ran off— good riddance, he was a fucking bum, dropped more acid than a whole block of Haight-Ashbury —she kind of obsessed about financial security, you know? Took out these policies on herself and each of the kids, Darbra and Will-yum both. She—Barbra, my sister—made me promise to always keep up the policies, so that the kids wouldn’t have it as rough as she did.”
    “But her husband didn’t die, he just took off, right?”
    “Yeah, but same difference, he isn’t there to provide for his family.”
    Not really. “So there were policies out on all three?”
    “Right.”
    “For how much?”
    “I don’t know what the premiums were back then, but they must have been peanuts, because Barbra kept all three up till she died, and I’ve been paying on the other two ever since.”
    I worked through that. “What are the face amounts?”
    “You mean, what the policies would pay?”
    “Yes.”
    “The same for everybody, a hundred thousand.”
    “Payable?”
    “Half to each.”
    “So when your sister died...”
    “Darbra got half, and Will-yum got half.”
    “And now?”
    “And now Will-yum dies and Darbra’s up a hundred, and
    vice versa.”
    “You don’t participate?”
    “Hey, I pay the premiums, pal, which isn’t so easy, this place not exactly being Tiffany’s, you know? Matter of fact, I may have to expand the stock.”
    “Expand?”
    “Into the ‘seventies. God, it makes me gag. Imagine having to put up posters of the Bee Gees and Travolta and carry fucking leisure suits?”
    “But you don’t get anything if either your niece or nephew dies.”
    “No, like I said. I promised Barbra, and a promise is a Promise, but I think it’s kind of... I don’t know, ghoulish to bet against the generation behind you, despite all this stuff I try to peddle from when we were young.”
    I didn’t quite follow her, but I didn’t want to get involved Jn another talk about inventory. “Ms. Nugent—”
    “How about ‘Darlene,’ okay? I feel ancient enough already with