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I hit the button to unlock the front door of the building and let him enter. In the seconds that followed, my heart raced as I pictured him getting on the elevator to the top floor, where my penthouse was the one and only apartment.
It was like a lightning strike in my chest when I heard the knock at the door. I leaned on the wall with one hand, wanting to put my fist through it. Trying to calm myself wasn’t going to do any good. Instead, I plastered the phoniest smile that I’d ever smiled onto my face and opened the door.
On the other side of the door, grinning that same grin I knew so well and had never wanted to see again, stood Kane Marcus. He looked at me the way you’d look at a brother that you hadn’t seen in far too long. As far as I was concerned, it hadn’t been long enough.
“Hey, buddy, don’t I get a hug?” Kane greeted me, totally clueless about the way I felt. In his little world, his feelings were all there ever really were.
“Sure, Kane,” I said. I hugged him and let him clap me on the back, which made me wish I could clap him on the head with one of my fireplace pokers. He laughed and couldn’t see me grimacing.
Kane grasped my shoulders when we pulled apart, his sickening grin unchanged. “Man, oh man, look atyou!Elijah, buddy, you look like a billion dollars! I’m getting that right, aren’t I? Itisa billion?”
“You look the same, Kane,” I said, not going into specifics about exactly what I meant by that.
He laughed again. “So, are we gonna stand here in the doorway, or are you gonna let an old buddy in and welcome him back with a drink? Iknowyou can afford thebeststuff these days.”
Humoring him, I stood aside and let him enter my home — my sanctuary, my reward for all my hard work to recreate my life. I eyed the pokers at the fireplace as I shut the door. I could afford to hire the best lawyers in Ohio; hell, the best lawyers in the Midwest. Lawyers who could get a jury to believe that I was just temporarily insane from having this plague of a human being come walking back into my life.
Meanwhile, Kane, hands on his hips, admired my place. He looked at the side of the living room taken up with big, tall windows, the polished wood furniture with soft leather upholstery that I knew was making him salivate with all kinds of raunchy thoughts, the brick fireplace, the fully-stocked bar, the 80-inch flatscreen that still had ESPN playing, the modern art on my walls.
He shook his head and made a little clucking sound as if appraising everything he saw in my home. I wouldn’t have put it past him; I guessed he was doing the math from what he could get from a fence after pulling a heist and cleaning me out.
He faced me and said with a crooked grin — the operative word being “crooked” — “Wow, man. This is sweet. Really sweet. You did all right for yourself, didn’t you? I mean,whoo-EE!You arereallyset up here, aren’t ya?”
He actuallycrowedat the sight of my living room.The time when trash most makes itself known is when it’s in the presence of class, I thought.
Words failed me. Not only was he the one person in the world that I least wanted to see, but he had shown up when I was least prepared for him. In business, I was always in charge. Right now, I was at a total loss.
Kane must have seen how I felt, and of course, he misinterpreted it. After all, how could I possibly be upset to see him? Putting up his hands, he said, “Don’t you worry, Elijah. I’ve been clean for quite a while now. I’m not here to get you into any kind of trouble. This is just a couple of buddies catching up, right?”
“Right,” I said for want of anything else to say.
“So, how about that drink?” he asked. I directed him to the bar. I could use a stiff drink myself.
We sat at my bar and drank my best Scotch from my best crystal glasses. It was wasted on him, and I was frankly surprised that he didn’t ask me to break open a bottle of my best champagne to toast our reunion. I wouldn’t have minded opening a bottle of champagne, all right. I would have been happy to break it open the way the Queen of England would launch a new ship: right over his head. That, too, would have been a waste, and a mess that I would not have wanted to clean up.
But, there we were at my bar, drinking my best Scotch, and Kane had the nerve to ask for a double. He’d barely gotten in the door and I’d already had twice as much of him as I would ever want.
“Did you ever think we’d be toasting each other’s health in a place like this?” Kane grinned over my high-priced liquor. “This is the kind of thing we always dreamed about, isn’t it? No worries, no wants, all the best of everything. And, we’ve always deserved it, haven’t we, Elijah?”
“This came from hard work, you know, Kane,” I told him, taking a good swallow for the sake of my nerves.
He scoffed. “Pssshhh…Hard work, hard work. Everybody’s always blabbering on about ‘hard work.’ The world is full of people who work their asses off and never get near anything like this kind of life.” He waved his hand with my expensive Scotch in my expensive crystal as if my penthouse apartment were some kind of kingdom that I ruled. But, I had come to my ‘throne’ honestly, which was more than Kane had ever done or could ever do.
He ranted on, “You know what ‘hard work’ gets most people? A bellyful of grief and just more wanting. Always, always wanting. Always something you know you ought to have, that you’ve got to see someone else with instead. It eats away at you eats your heart right out. That’s ‘hard work,’ Elijah.”
He got up off my barstool, drink in hand, and gazed around my home with the kind of lust a man usually reserves for a beautiful woman.
“Want to know the trouble with ‘hard work,’ Elijah? Hard work wants a payoff. You put your blood, sweat, and tears into something. You go at something and work and work ‘til your ass drops off, you stick your ass back on and you work some more, and what the hell does any of it get you? There’s nothing in the system to make sure hard work gets the results and the payoff you’re looking for. Too many times, hard work leaves you down in the dirt, looking up at the people who got rewarded for it.”
He spun around and raised his glass to me. “Everybody should get the payoff for their hard work that you got, Elijah. But, you were always going places; I always knew that. That’s why I always wanted us to stick together. I knew when one of us made it, they’d pick the other one up. This, Elijah... This is everything we always wanted. And, you went and got it.” He took a hard swallow while my stomach churned. “Good for you, buddy. Damn good for you.”
Kane went over to the windows and stood there, gazing out at the panoramic view. I watched him, thinking one good shove was all it would take to push him through my picture windows and down onto the pavement of that view.
Insanity plea,I thought.Just plead that the sight of a lowlife helping himself to my whiskey and my view drove me mad, pushed me over the edge…
How could I get rid of him?Think, Elijah, think!
I fished my phone from my pocket while Kane gazed out at Cincinnati with his back to me.If I were to set my timer and pretend it was my ringtone when it went off, it was just possible…