Лайонел Шрайвер - The Mandibles - A Family, 2029-2047

Las Vegas was the Anti-Willing. Everyone is drawn to what they are not.

Yet as the sun began to set and Nollie drove past the storied strip, his heart fell. Casinos like the Wynn, the Venetian, the Bellagio, and the Singapore were hulking and dark. The fabled main drag had grown funereal. A sprinkling of neon spangled only farther out. More traffic coursed the freeway than in Manhattan, but the preponderance of vehicles were haulage trucks; extravagant motors like their own were scarce. The immediate touch and feel of downtown was disappointingly serious.

Jarred’s address was located on the very outskirts in the far southeast. As they drew from the center of town, sprawling white stucco ranch houses with manicured cactus gardens gave way to smaller, cheaper-looking dwellings with no landscaping—rows of identical homes plunked on barren red dirt. Jarred’s development, Aloe Acres, had been left half-finished. Terra-cotta roof tiling its sole cursory nod toward Spanish Modern, the bleak white house numbered 2827 was surrounded by abandoned, partially built rectangular walls rising waist-high. They’d either run out of money, or the developers had hightailed it when the famously renegade state grew more insubordinate than investors were prepared for.

Jarred was not expecting them. He answered the door wearing boxers and a rifle.

“Christ Almighty, it’s my right-hand man! And one of the only old ladies I can stand!” Abjuring social protocol, Jarred threw medical caution to the winds and embraced them both in a bear hug, the rifle cutting uncomfortably into Willing’s chest. “Full faith and credit, mi hermano y mi tía ! I was hoping you’d make it! And what do you make of that treasury at the border, huh? I actually bothered to kayak across the Colorado, when I could have driven the fucking pickup on I-70 without so much as a wave good-bye. Felt like such a yunk! Come in, come in.”

Inside was stark: a small laminated table, two straight-backed chairs. Everything but the concrete floor was white, and nothing hung on the walls. As the last of the crimson sunset winked through a stingy window, Jarred switched on a dangling bare bulb. His wild black curls were if anything longer, escaping a careless ponytail. Before his uncle left to throw on a robe, Willing noted that at fifty-three Jarred had finally grown a potbelly. Whatever he was up to, it wasn’t tilling, planting, and slopping out hogs.

As if realizing what Willing was thinking, Jarred said on return, “Man, you’ve got even skinnier.”

“Slavery is slimming,” Willing said.

Jarred fetched a plastic stool, a bottle of tequila, and three mismatched glasses. “Smartest self-starter around here is the guy who decided to plant blue agave after secession,” he said, pouring. “No good having Patrón headquartered in town if they’re cut off from their Mexican suppliers. Now this local harvest stuff is all over the Free State, and the guy who makes it is stinking rich. Cheers! To the indomitable Mandibles, may we forever flourish!”

“So there are rich people here?” Nollie asked.

“Better believe it,” Jarred said. “This state needs practically everything. Figure out what hole to fill, and you can make a killing. What’s more, you keep it. Flat tax of 10 percent. And that’s not 10 percent plus sales tax, property tax, state and local, Medicare tax, and Social Security. Ten percent, period. Fucking hell, nobody even resents it.”

“I can’t picture you, my boy,” Nollie said, “not resenting anything. You must be desolate.”

“I could always resent,” Jarred posited, “not resenting anything.”

“Do some people not pay the 10 percent?” Willing asked.

“Oh, probably. But the police force is biggin’ small, overstretched, and easily annoyed. I wouldn’t cross them. Justice is pretty rough. They’d probably show up at the door, take whatever continentals they could find, and beat you up. If only for being a nuisance. With no, I mean no , welfare—no unemployment checks, no disability payments, no aid to dependent children, zip—there are some seriously down-and-out lowlifes in this town, and the crime rate is monumental. Hence the rifle at the door, sorry. You still have that sexy little Black Shadow?”

“Naturally,” Willing said, patting the pack on his hip.

Nollie looked edgy. “It’s sounds as if we shouldn’t leave our things in the car.”

Willing frowned. “There’s not much out there that’s worth anything.” He didn’t want to immediately pile their luggage into Jarred’s house, as if they were moving in—especially if that’s just what they were doing.

“Maybe not to you.” Nollie scuttled out the door. She returned laboring with a box, and Willing leapt up to take it from her.

Jarred guffawed. “Not the foul matter !”

He didn’t want it to be true, but Willing worried that his great-aunt was starting to lose it. Yes, the elderly had their attachments. But she had dragged those old manuscripts into every hotel room on the road trip here. She’d plunked the box beside her in the booth when they ate at Final Feast. She’d even kept it beside her doing odd jobs in Ely, where she’d also arrived at locals’ houses for dinner, arms wrapped around its failing cardboard like a toddler clutching a stuffed bunny. Fair enough, the documents were totems of her lost life as a professional author. Yet the ferocity of the clinging was off. Willing and Jarred locked eyes with shared embarrassment.

After breaking out corn chips and salsa, Jarred extended the bottle for refills, and Willing put a hand over his glass. “Since when are you so abstemious?”

“I’m not. I’m sentimental.” Willing unzipped an outer pocket of his belt pack. Delicately, he withdrew a bundle of fabric. He unwound the sock. It was the same knee sock he had once packed with coinage, and used to threaten the red-haired boy into abdicating his fatty ground beef. Willing placed the object inside daintily on the table. “Pour the next shot into that.”

“Hey, I recognize that!” Jarred exclaimed. “It was my sister’s, God rest her. She had a fucking fetish about those things. Biggin’ unlike her, too. Charming, in fact. Don’t take this wrong, but your mother could be a drear. For her to be infatuated with one pair of thingamabobs that were frivolous, and fancy-schmancy, and preposterous—it was a huge relief.”

Even in the crude glare of the bare bulb, the cobalt stem gleamed like the windows of a cathedral. The tiny cup was warm and loving. “I always meant to give it back to her,” Willing said. “I was keeping it safe. This is all we’ve got left of Bountiful House. It’s our inheritance.”

Jarred poured, and they toasted: “To our inheritance!” Hygiene be damned, Willing insisted that they all have a sip from the goblet, which passed between the three like a Communion cup. The ritual sanctified the evening. It seemed to bind them in a pact of some sort. To do what wasn’t clear.

To crown the festivities, Willing brought out the ridiculous candied kumquats. When you saved symbolic gestures for too long you could miss your opportunity. If they did not eat the goofy fruits now, he might own the pointless jar in perpetuity. He explained its provenance.

“Now I believe in fairies. You found a colony of the über-rich!” Jarred said. “I always figured the feds promoted the myth of this loaded elite to justify draconian tax rates. Presidents always rail against ‘billionaires and trillionaires,’ and then the top bracket conveniently kicks in, not at a billion, but 250K.”

“They’re not fairies,” Willing said. “More like an endangered species.”

“Say, your mother was right about those sell-by dates.” Nollie licked her fingers. “Little sweet for me. But not bad.”