The Man Who Folded Himself (3 page)

So that's what Uncle Jim wanted to teach me. Money isn't everything. In fact, it isn't anything. It's just paper and metal that we trade for other things.

I knew that already, but it's one thing to know it theoretically; it's another thing to know it from experience.

Okay. So, if money isn't anything, what is?

I didn't exactly drop out of the university—I just sort of faded away.

It was a bore.

I found I had less and less to say to my classmates. I call them my classmates because I'm not sure they were ever my friends. We weren't talking on the same levels.

Typical conversation: “—can I borrow twenty bucks, she is so hot, gotta find a job, everybody hates that instructor, you wanna get high, I couldn't get my car running, my ten o'clock class is a bitch, you wanna hang, lend me ten willya, what're you gonna do this weekend—”

They couldn't sympathize with my problems either. “Problems? With two thousand dollars a week, who's got problems?”

Me.

I think.

I know something is wrong—I'm not happy. I wish I knew why.

I wish the other shoe would drop. Okay, Uncle Jim. I got it about the money. Where's the rest of the lesson?

I think I will tell this exactly as it happened and try to do it without crying. If I can.

Uncle Jim is dead.

I got the phone call at eleven this morning. It was one of the lawyers from his company, Biggs or Briggs or something like that. He said, “Daniel Eakins?”

I said, “Yes?”

He said, “This is Jonathan Biggs-or-Briggs-or-something-like-that and I have some bad news for you about your uncle.”

“My—uncle—” I must have wavered. Everything seemed made of ice.

The man was trying to be gentle. And not doing a very good job of it. He said, “He was found this morning by his maid—”

“He's . . . dead?”

“I'm sorry. Yes.”

Dead? Uncle Jim?

“How—? I mean—”

“He just didn't wake up. He was a very old man.”

Old?

No. It couldn't be. I wouldn't accept it. Uncle Jim was immortal.

“We thought that you, as next of kin, would like to supervise the funeral arrangements—”

Funeral arrangements?

“—on the other hand, we realize your distress at a time like this, so we've taken the liberty of—”

Dead? Uncle Jim?

The telephone was still making noises. I hung it up.

The funeral was a horror. Some idiot had decided on an opencasket ceremony, “so the deceased's family and friends might see him one more time.”

Family and friends. Meaning me. And the lawyers.

No one else.

I was surprised at that. And a little disappointed. I'd thought Uncle Jim was well known and popular. But there was nobody there—apparently I was the only one who cared.

Uncle Jim looked like hell. They had rouged his cheeks in a sickly effort to make him look like he was only asleep. It didn't work; it didn't disguise the fact that he was a shriveled and tired old hulk. I must have stared in horror. If he had seemed shrunken the last time I had seen him, today he looked absolutely emaciated. Used up.

No. Uncle Jim wasn't in that casket. That was just a piece of dead meat. Whatever it was that had made it Uncle Jim, that was gone—this empty old husk was nothing.

I bawled like a baby anyway.

The lawyers drove me home. I was moving like a zombie.

Everything seemed so damnably the same—it had all happened too fast, I hadn't had time to realize what it might mean, and now here was some dark-suited stranger sitting in my living room and trying to tell me that things were going to be different.

Different—? Without Uncle Jim, how could they be the same?

Biggs-or-Briggs-or-something-like-that shuffled some papers and managed to look both embarrassed and sorrowful.

I said, “I think I have some idea. I spoke with Uncle Jim a few weeks ago.”

“Ah, good,” he said. “Then we can settle this a lot easier.” He hesitated. “Dan—Daniel, your uncle died indigent.” I must have looked puzzled. He added, “That means poor.”

“What?” I blurted. “Now, wait a minute—that's not what he told me—”

“Eh? What did he tell you?”

I thought back. No, the lawyer was right. Uncle Jim hadn't said a word about his own money. Carefully, I explained, “Uncle Jim said that I had a bit of money . . . and he was supposed to administer it. So naturally, I assumed that he had some of his own—or that he was taking a fee—”

Biggs-or-Briggs shook his head. “Your uncle was taking a fee,” he said, “but it was only a token. You haven't got that much yourself.”

“How much?” I asked.

“A little less than six thousand.”

“Huh?”

“Actually, it's about five thousand nine hundred and something. I don't remember the exact amount.” He shuffled papers in his briefcase.

I stared at him. “What happened to the hundred and forty-three million?”

He blinked. “I beg your pardon—?”

I felt like a fool, but repeated. “A hundred and forty-three million dollars. Uncle Jim said that I had a hundred and forty-three million dollars. What happened to that?”

“A hundred and forty-three mill—” He pushed his glasses back onto his nose. “Uh, Mr. Eakins, you have six thousand dollars. That's all. I don't know where you got the idea that you had anything like—”

I explained patiently, “My Uncle Jim sat there, right where you're sitting now, and told me that I was worth one hundred and forty-three million dollars and that I could have it any time I wanted.” I fixed him with what I hoped was my fiercest look. “Now, where is it?”

It didn't faze him at all. Instead he put on his I'd-better-humorhim expression. “Now, Daniel—Dan, I think you can understand that when a person gets old, his mind starts to get a little—well, funny. Your Uncle Jim may have told you that you were rich—he may even have believed it himself, but—”

“My Uncle Jim was not senile,” I said. My voice was cold. “He may have been sick, but when I saw him, his mind was as clear as—as mine.”

Biggs-or-Briggs looked like he wanted to reply to that, but didn't. Probably he was reminding himself that we'd just come from a funeral and I couldn't be expected to be entirely rational. “Well,” he said. “The fact remains that all you have in the accounts that we're administering is six thousand dollars. To tell the truth, we were a little concerned with the way you've been spending these past few weeks—but your explanation clears that up. There's been a terrible misunderstanding—”

“Yes, there has. I want to see your books. When my parents died, their money was put in trust for me. It couldn't all be gone by now.”

“Mr. Eakins—” he said. I could see that he was forcing himself
to be gentle. “I don't know anything about your parents. It was your Uncle Jim who set up your trust fund, twenty-one years ago. He hasn't added to it since; that hasn't been necessary. His intention was to provide you with enough money to see you through college.” He cleared his throat apologetically. “We almost made it. If he hadn't instructed us to increase your allowance two months ago, we probably could have made it stretch—”

I was feeling a little ill. This lawyer was making too much sense. When I thought of the spending I'd been doing—ouch! I didn't want to think about it.

Of course, I hadn't spent it all—I hadn't been trying. I started going over in my mind how much I might have left in cash and in my checking account. Not that much, after all. Maybe a few hundred.

And six thousand left in trust. No hundred and forty-three million—

But Uncle Jim had said—

I stopped and thought about it. If I'd really been worth a hundred and forty-three million dollars, would I have grown up the way I did? Brought up by a trained governess in Uncle Jim's comfortable—but not very big—San Fernando Valley home, sent to public schools and the State University? Uh-uh. Not likely.

If I'd been worth that big a pile, I'd have been fawned over, drooled over, and protected every day of my life. I would have had nurses and private tutors and valets and chauffeurs. I would have had butlers for my butlers. I would have had my own pony, my own yacht, my own set of full-size trains. I would have had my pick of any college in the country. In the world. I would have been spoiled rotten.

I looked around my nine-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment. There was no evidence here that I was spoiled rotten.

Well . . . not to the tune of a hundred and forty-three million dollars.

You can get spoiled on a thousand a week, but that's a far cry from butlers for your butlers.