Page 8 of Most Eligible Billionaire

Carly answers it. “For you,” she says.

I go and push the intercom button. “This is Vicky.”

“Certified letter for Smuckers care of Vicky Nelson.”

“A letter forSmuckers?”

“Yes. Care of Vicky Nelson.”

A Venn diagram forms in my mind.

The circle that contains people I know who would think of such a moronic joke does not touch the circle that contains friends who would be up this early. “No, thanks,” I say.

Buzzzzz.

“Reading the envelope,” comes the voice. “Smuckers care of Vicky Nelson. From the law offices of Malcomb, Malcomb, and Miller.”

It occurs to me then that maybe Bernadette remembered her promise to help pay for Smuckers’s upkeep, after all.

She’d mentioned it when she was asking me to care for him, once the diagnosis was in.Take care of my baby. I’ll see you’re compensated,she’d said.

I never thought she’d actually follow through. Bernadette made a lot of promises and vows in her life. She liked making them way more than fulfilling them.

I didn’t offer to care for Smuckers to earn any kind of allowance. The little dog had grown on Carly and me over the years. I couldn’t bear to let him go to a home that wouldn’t love his fuzzy little face.

But what if?

“Coming down,” I say.

I spin and eye Carly. She’s not ready yet. “I’ll take Smuck down and we’ll handle this and wait. Five minutes.” I look over at the corner where Buddy the parrot eyes me. “And feed Buddy!”

I carry Smuckers down all six flights. Smuckers is for shit on stairs.

I never saw Bernadette after that day in the hospital with Henry Locke. She died soon after and Henry’s assistant called me with an alert that Smuckers was being sent over, and it was indeed in a limo. Carly and I just laughed, seeing his furry little snout in the backseat window of the sleek, black, mad-money ride.

Instagram!

I didn’t go to Bernadette’s funeral. Nobody invited me—not that I expected it after meeting jerky hard-ass Henry Locke.

Carly’s been telling me all along to track down Henry and make him follow through on Bernadette’s promise to defray Smuckers’s upkeep. I told Carly I’d take a job as a gloryhole attendant at the Glory Daze massage parlor before I’d approach Henry for money. The Glory Daze is an actual place in the shitty Bronx neighborhood where we used to live before we got our very sweet long-term apartment-and-parrot sitting gig. And it’s what you think.

I will never ask Henry for anything.

Henry is exactly the kind of rich, entitled asshole I’ve constructed my life around avoiding.

I find a courier waiting outside the doorway. He hands over a large envelope and gets my signature.

I thank him and put Smuckers on the green leash that goes with today’s green bow tie.

I open the envelope while he poops next to his favorite light pole with its graffiti-covered base. My heart sinks when I see there are only some letters inside. No check.

Oh well. I walk Smuckers up to the block to throw the poop bag in the trash. He smells the small fence around the scrubby little tree, investigates a sticky dark puddle with yellow bits in it that I’m hoping is a smashed ice cream cone, and noses a crumpled coffee cup.

That done, we sit on the top step of the stoop, just outside of the stream of people rushing back and forth, and I get to reading.

It takes a good minute for me to get that it’s not just any letter; it’s a summons to a reading of the last will and testament of Bernadette Locke.

“Because that would’ve been too easy,” I say to Smuckers, who is straining toward the suspicious possible ice cream cone.

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