“Gin!”
“Again!”
“You betcha!”
“You are too good for me!”
“Read ‘em and weep. Ha Ha!”
“I don’t know if I will ever…”
“Oh! Oh?”
“Are you alright?”
“Oh? God! What’s happening?
“What?
“Suddenly, I don’t feel so…”
“You don’t look…”
Thud!
“Beth!”
“Police? Fire? Or Ambulance?” asked the nasally voice on the other end of the phone.
“Ambulance, Ambulance! Quick! Ambulance,” Ray pleaded.
“I’m so sorry, Ray.”
“Thanks, Leo. Such is life. Hey?”
“It was a beautiful service,” said Leo.
“As far as funerals go, hey,” said Ray. "I haven't seen you since then?"
"No, not since the service."
"Oh, Leo."
“So, Ray… er… mate, what, um?”
“What?”
“What? How? I never asked?”
“A stroke. Then a second stroke.”
“Beth didn’t deserve that.”
“No.”
“Still… what was…um?
“What was what?”
“Er… the age difference?” said Leo.
“Forty years,” said Ray. “But, I never felt it. Never.”
“No?”
“No.”
“No one would have ever picked Beth for 75,” said Leo.
“No, no one ever did.”
Leo ushered Ray into his lounge room.
“What are you going to do with the house?”
“I’m not going to do anything with the house.”
“Don’t you have to…”
“The house is mine. Beth left it to me. I don’t have to do anything with it.”
“It’s going to be expensive…”
“Beth left me everything.”
“Everything?”
“The lot.” Ray laughed self consciously, even he heard it.
“What?” quizzed Leo.
“What? What?” said Ray.
“That laugh. What was that?”
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“You don’t know what I mean?”
“No.”
“How long have we been best friends, Ray?
“Since school.”
“Yes, since school.”
“Twenty years?”
“Longer,” said Leo.
“Okay, longer? So?”
“There is something, that laugh gave it away. I know that laugh.”
“You are talking shit, Leo.”
“No, no I’m not.”
Leo lit a cigarette. He offered one to Ray, which Ray took. They smoked in silence.
“Beth, um, had left half her fortune to me and the other half to her children, except I, um…” Ray stubbed his cigarette out in a dish on the side table between the two of them. “I? Ah? Did a new will.” Ray smiled at Leo waiting for Leo’s reaction.
“Did a new will?” Leo creased his forehead in a question.
“Which left, er, me, um, all the money…”
“And her children?
“Well…” Ray held Leo’s questioning gaze and found he couldn’t help but smile.
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“You stole from her children?” asked Leo.
“No,” said Ray. “Of course not. What kind of person do you think I am?”
Leo raised his eyebrows.
“It wasn’t theirs,” said Ray. “It was, um.” He tilted his head for effect. “Beth’s.”
“So, you did?” said Leo.
“Did I?”
“Yes, that is what I am asking?”
“That is what you are asking?”
“Yes, that is what I am asking.”
“I took what was mine.”
“Ray?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Ray?” Leo’s voice went up pitch.
“Well, you asked.”
“Didn’t she have a lot of money?” asked Leo.
“Yes. Yes, a lot.”
“Enough for everyone?”
“Well, um, define enough.”
“Plenty for you and her two children to live on for all of your respective lives.”
“Well, that’s a definition.”
“That’s what you just asked for.”
“And you delivered.”
“And the answer would be?”
“Well, yes, yes there is.”
“So wouldn’t it have been fair…”
“Fair?”
“It means…”
“I know what it means.”
“Wouldn’t it have been fair?”
“I do think fair is so over used, don’t you?” said Ray. “Cancel culture and everyone being outraged today.”
“It is the only thing that separates us from the animals…”
“Oh, Leo.”
“The only thing that defines us as a civilised society.”
“Civilised, smivilised.”
“Oh Ray?”
“What?”
“Did you do it?”
“Yes, I pinched the kid’s money. So, kill me.”
“Ray, I will never be able to look at you in the same way again...”
“Do you want a Mustang?”
“Well, yes.”
“A black one?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, tell me you still love me.”
“I will always love you, Ray.”
“The kids won’t starve.”
“They won’t?”
“No, Beth gave them plenty of money while she was still alive.”
“She did?”
“Yes,” said Ray. “I’m not a complete monster.”
“Not a complete monster,” said Leo.
“Besides, neither of her kids did what I did for her in the last 15 years of her life.”
“You don’t expect her kids to do that, do you?”
“No, I don’t mean go face down in their mother…”
“Euw!”
“It wasn’t euw!”
“Didn’t you do it for the money?”
“No, I never did it for the money,” said Ray. “I liked her, I really liked her.”
“Careful, you are sounding like whoever that actress was.”
“She was different and interesting and smart and amazing and funny and more than once she took my breath away. I miss her so much.”
“You didn’t do it for the money?”
“No, I never did it for the money.”
“Never?”
“No!” said Ray. “It doesn’t mean I want to lose the money now that I have lost her.”
“I think that much is clear,” said Leo. “So, how?”
“How what?”
“How did you get away with it?”
“I made up a new will.”
“Yes, I know you did that, but how did you do it?”
“Well,” said Ray. “I knew what was in her will, and how she wanted her estate to be divided, despite on numerous occasions how she complained about her kids and how she had provided for them only to be thanked by them being too busy to spend any time with her.”
“Wasn’t that because of you?” said Leo.
“Was it because of me?”
“Didn’t they state on more than one occasion that they weren’t okay with their mother taking up with a younger man?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“From you Ray, from you,” said Leo. “So, wasn’t it?”
“I’m younger than them,” said Ray. “And, they just couldn’t put their mother’s happiness above their own.”
“It was all so sudden, so how?” asked Leo.
“She had the 1st stroke and was put into hospital,” said Ray. “She had a 2nd stroke three days later which killed her.”
“A three day window period?”
“So, after the 1st stroke, I decided just to ask her to sign a new will.”
“So, you did?”
“Yes, I put it in front of her in the hospital and asked her to sign.”
“Which she did?”
“Yes,” said Ray. “Then I took it to my lawyer John Walker and he witnessed her signature.”
“In his office, quite separate to Beth?”
“Yes.”
“It kind of plays with the definition of a witness?”
“Oh, John Walker does anything for me, since I found him a,” Ray made parenthesis in the air with his fingers, “girl, who’d let him dress up in a school girl’s outfit for sex.”
“Is this the same guy who was mayor?”
“Yes, he was mayor, what is your point?”
“Isn’t he married?”
“Happily.”
“You don’t see any problem with that?”
“Um, what? No. We used the same pen, don’t worry.”
“I meant,” said Leo. He waved his hand as if to say never mind. “He was in a position of power based on honesty…”
“Yes, I think the fact that he was mayor worked positively towards believability.”
“Then you lodged it?”
“John did all that.”
“And it was accepted?”
“No drama,” said Ray.”
“Did the kids try to fight it.”
“No, not a peep. I guess they are used to me.” Ray shrugged. “By now?”
“They didn’t suspect?”
“Not for a minute,” said Ray. “And the previous will had stood for 10 years. Longer. They missed out on millions.”
“Where did you two meet?” asked Leo. “You and Beth.”
“I’ve told you that.”
“No.”
“On a golf course,” said Ray. It was a glorious day.”
“On a golf course?”
“Beth was my grandma’s golf buddy,” said Ray. “I used to caddy for gran from time to time.”
“You were caddy?”
“For gran.”
“Golf.”
“Yes, a sexy young caddy towards who Beth made several inappropriate suggestions.”
“What did your gran think?”
“Oh, she didn’t hear.”
“And it went from there, from the golf course?”
“No, not exactly,” said Ray. “Sometime later gran had a dinner party and I offered to be waiter?”
“So, a sexy young waiter now?”
“Dressed up in a waist coat and tight black pants," said Ray. "Beth got drunk and told me she was Mrs Robinson.”
“Did you understand the reference?”
“No, not immediately, but in one of those coincidences that happen all the time in life, the film came on TV and I watched it with mum.”
“So, I am assuming it didn’t lead on from the dinner party, if it took until later to get the Mrs Robinson reference?”
“No, by chance we met in a service station in Nicholson Street sometime after the dinner party, when she was filling up her Mini Cooper and I was putting $5 worth in my big old Mercedes.”
“Just by chance?”
“We laughed at the ridiculousness of our fills.”
“Was that serendipity?”
“She asked me if I was interested in mowing her lawns.”
“Is that a euphemism?”
“No, it’s the house in Victoria Road, you know the lawns it has.”
“Oh, yes?”
“And I mowed her lawns,” said Ray. “She made me coffee and cake afterward, and we got chatting. And I found I liked her. She had interesting things to say.”
“Ah, the young lawn boy.”
“Her husband died in a car accident,” said Ray. “Eventually, a long time after, she told me she hadn’t had sex for 10 years, not since her husband.”
“And your relationship developed from there?”
“We had fun, we laughed,” said Ray. “Sure, she treated me to things. But I liked her, I liked spending time with her. We saw plays, we saw movies, we went bush walking with our dogs, we went on a cruise. She had always wanted to go on a cruise, and she could with me.”
"You and Beth, hey?"
"She was lonely. She was happily married. She was devastated when her husband was killed.”
“He was killed?”
“In a car. Head on. The other driver was drunk, veered onto his side of the road.”
“She said that I reminded her of him. I think that’s what drew her to me.”
“Not your 20 year old loins?” said Leo.
“Her husband’s name was Ray. And her first boyfriend she dated at uni was Ray too. She said she is a Ray kind of girl.”
“You were made for that role.”
“She kept me while I finished my law degree.”
“Have you always fancied older women?” asked Leo.
“I don’t know, maybe,” said Ray. I always remember thinking Joy Behar was a good sort and was shocked to find out she was nearing 80 years old.”
“Joy Behar off the TV.”
“Yes, from that talk show where all the chicks yap on.”
“So, what happened to Beth? When she got sick?
“We were drinking Mojitos and playing Gin Rummy…”
“Gin Rummy?”
“It’s a card game. You have to get a certain combination of cards that gives you Gin Rummy. And when you get them, you call out Gin!”
“I’ve never heard of it,” said Leo.
“It’s exciting. Beth screamed out gin! Then she keeled over,” said Ray. “I thought she was kidding, messing about, playing a prank, lying on the floor, but she wasn’t.”
“She’d had the stroke?”
“The first one.”
“So how did you forge her will.”
“John Walker…”
“Your lawyer?”
“Yes, he wrote it up for me.”
“So, what did you tell him?”
“The truth?”
“That you were forging Beth’s will…”
“So, I got everything and the kids got nothing.”
“He didn’t have an ethical issue with that…”
“No, I paid him, he was okay with it.”
“With forgery?”
“He didn’t care, besides, it wasn’t a forgery, not really.”
“How can you say that?”
“John wrote the will. Beth signed it. It’s a real will.”
“But Beth didn’t know what she was signing.”
“Erm...she knew it was a financial document.”
“How did she know that?”
“I told her.”
“What, sign this financial document.”
“Yes, that’s what I asked her.”
“What were her children like?”
“Fiona and Robert.”
“Just the two?”
“They were spoilt, she spoilt them.”
“With a sense of entitlement, no doubt?”
“Oh, um, kind of,” said Ray. “They are just into themselves, and their lives, making money, working the corporate ladder and buying bigger houses and bigger beach houses, the latest cars, sending their kids to private schools.”
“That seems pretty normal.”
“Robert is a big time lawyer with a stay at home wife, Prue, who is so vacuous I feel like I lose IQ points when I have a full conversation with her,” said Ray. “And Fiona is the mayor, or do they call them CEOs now? Of River Council, where her main achievement seems to have been to triple her salary all the while managing to stay in office despite mounting, damning criticism.”
“River Council has been riddled with allegations of corruption.”
“Because she is only there for her own benefit, not unlike the rest of her life. Or the rest of the councillors, for that matter.”
“Just what we need from our public servants.”
“I don’t think that they are, actually, capable of thinking about anyone else.”
“Which cost them?
“Which cost them big time, in this last election.”
“So, what do they think happened to Beth’s money.”
“They think Beth left it all to me.”
“So, you just made the reality fit the perception of reality.”
“Yes, I guess I did.”
“And they were none the wiser?”
“They didn’t approve of me,” said Ray. “But, were happy for me to look after Beth so they didn’t have to.”
“What are you going to do now?” asked Leo.
“I don’t know,” said Ray. “I don’t know.”
“Find another Beth?”
“Ha ha. As if.”
“You shouldn’t lose hope.”
“Live happily ever after,” said Ray. “That’s all that’s left.”
“What else is there to do?” said Leo.
“What else, indeed,” said Ray.
“At least you have Beth’s money to keep you warm,” said Leo.
“You know, it was never about the money. It was always about nothing changing. I just wanted life to go on as unchanged as much as I could make it.”
“Without Beth?”
“I can’t change that,” said Ray. “But I could change the rest.”
“Or stop it changing?” said Leo.
“I’d give up all of it to have Beth back,” said Ray. “Like that.” He clicked his fingers.
“I know you would, Ray.”
