One of the worst things to wake up to after a night of drinking your fucking face off is a call from your older sister demanding you meet her in half an hour, with an urgency no excuse short of a hospital stay will garner an admissible pass.
Why couldn’t I have slept through that incessant ringing? Actually, it was probably that damn voicemail alert that jolted me into my still inebriated somewhat consciousness.
Fuck it. I slowly sit up and realize I have no fucking idea whose bed I’m in. I look to my left and see a dark-haired individual, face down in what I can only assume is his own bed. Lucky motherfucker wasn’t even phased by my phone’s screeching. I swallow that jealousy down, and precariously maneuver my way out of his bed, grab my belongings and tiptoe out of his room, heading toward the front door.
Reassembling my appearance so I won’t catch a ticket for indecent exposure, I brave the morning’s blinding light and head to my car.
Shit, did I seriously drive last night? What a fucking idiot…
Twenty minutes later, I arrive early to the intended bar and grill joint at which I will soon face my sisters scolding for being a mess, alongside her telling me whatever reason it is that she’s called me out here for. I amble inside, going straight to the bathroom to take a closer look at what is sure to be a catastrophic appearance.
Making it to the rusted mirror hanging above what I think is supposed to be a sink, I see I’m so much worse off than I thought I would be. Am I missing a fucking eyebrow? Dammit, there’s no rectifying that situation given the stock I currently have in my purse. Taking at least five minutes to decide what the best course of action is, I eventually concede to wiping off my remaining eyebrow using a suds’d up wet paper towel complementary of this filthy hole in the wall’s bathroom.
Leaving the bathroom with my face smelling like that weird mix of cherry vanilla generic hand soap, and short two eyebrows, I head to a low lit corner table of the bar.
Now if I had been sober, I’d like to think I would have had some sort of inkling that my life was about to steer off its current, for the most part, smooth path, to go off-roading in a fucking Honda Civic, a car that has no business near rugged terrain. Too bad I’m too busy trying to stay upright in my seat while at the same time put the brakes on the carousel spin the room is now doing around me. Hindsight can go choke on a dick.
I hear the crusty ass front door of the bar open, followed by the clipping noise of heels belonging to most likely my sister. I haven’t picked my head up from its resting position on my folded arms to verify if it is, in fact, her, in hopes that I’m wrong and I’ll be able to squeeze in a much needed sobering nap. Unfortunately, taking no time at all to clear the bar and make it to my table, what can only be my sister’s booted feet come into my limited, crook of the elbow, line of sight.
“Cute shoes bitch,” I mumble as I tilt my head to look up at her.
“Jesus Brae, you look like fucking shit.”
“I’m not sure if you’re aware, but when someone pays you a compliment, you’re supposed to say something nice back. A simple, hey there’s no vomit on your shirt, that’s cool, would have sufficed.”
My sister half scoff/ laughs and sits down. After blowing out a long breath, she says something that starts to make me think that this is some kind of weird, drunken delusional dream, or that I’m still very hammered.
“So Denny’s a millionaire.”
Yup, still drunk.
I mean, I have to still be drunk, right? Shit, I hope so, or else the ridiculousness of my sister’s last statement is a hint to what is sure to be the onset of her losing her sanity.
“Bitch, are you even listening? Dammit, I knew it was stupid to hope you’d be sober this early in the day.”
My sister’s voice makes the drunken induced sweat currently coating my body pour faster. I know I should look up and make eye contact, but fuck, I think I’m about 30 seconds away from yakking on her incredibly cute boots.
Trying to keep the dizzy spell at bay while maintaining a slouched position over the table that we’re sitting at, I physically lift my head with my hand so it looks more like a gesture of laziness and less like I’m using my hand as a crutch for my face. I need to clarify that this isn’t all some horrible, drunk induced hallucination, so taking in my sister’s appearance and seeing her standing there, put together as ever, I begin to feel that all is right in the world. But as I think about it more I realize, my sister is the spitting image of one of those life-sized Barbie dolls that they sell to petrify children and scar their childhoods, so I could very well be hallucinating. Fuck, is hallucinating while being drunk even a thing? I am so thoroughly fucking confused and I curse the day I decided to make that scaley man-fish Old Gregg my phone’s voicemail alert, as his nasally wail regarding his mangina coincided with the perfect decibel to break through my drunken stupor.
“Millbrae! Do I seriously have to repeat myself because you’re purposely ignoring me? Or are you just having a slow morning due to the astronomical amount of brain cells you undoubtedly killed last night.”
Now if I was hallucinating, I would like to think that I would imagine my sister not talking to me in that ‘reprimanding a puppy’ voice she tends to use on me. It’s weird, all our lives, everyone has told my sister and me that we sound identical, and that’s mostly true, because well, we do. Yet where I lack the ability to infuse even an ounce of authority in my voice, I’m 95% sure that my fun-sized sibling can cause bodily harm with some of the shit she says.
A full-on wave of nausea hits me fucking hard, and I’m back to shutting my eyes while simultaneously taking deep breaths, trying to suppress my overactive salvatory glands and their desire to help last night’s dinner on its fast track towards making a reverse trajectory.
Shit, I now realize I may have wandered off in my own head for a bit too long. It’s incredibly silent, except for the extremely exasperated huff that leaves my sister. Fuck, I wonder if I missed something she said. I take a peek at her and confirm that I definitely missed something, and guessing by the way she’s about one more jaw clench away from cracking a tooth, I’m gonna go ahead and say it was something important.
“Fuck it! I can’t do this with you right now. Call me when you’re not dripping 100 proof tequila sweat.”
“Belmont”, I croak, “I’m sorry. I was listening, I swear. I’d also like to point out that I hate tequila.”
My sister smirks, “Yeah, well we both know if that’s all that’s available, you’re drinking it.”
“Fuck, fine whatever. Let’s just back up here for a second. Now, earlier you mistook my silence for me either being rude or having an aneurysm when in all actuality I was just trying to process what the fuck you had said. So, just to reiterate so that we’re both on the same page, you’re telling me, your dead husband’s crippled-”
“Christ Brae, don’t fucking call him that.”
“I wasn’t calling him anything! He’s in a wheelchair, that he is bound to 24/7. So I was only verbalizing the state of which he lives his life. I wasn’t using the word cripple in place of his name. I may be a drunk, but I’m not a fucking scumbag.”
“Maybe not a scumbag, but you’re still a fucking asshole.”
“Touché. Back to what I was saying, are you seriously fucking implying that Denny will soon be rolling in a shit ton of dough?” Dough… fuck, some bread sounds really good right about now, I can legit smell the sourdough…
My sister’s eyes go a little wide and her mouth drops open like she can’t believe what I just said. Mentally retracing my verbal steps, well shelving my delicious loaf of mental yeast, I realize why my last statement has my sister acting so scandalized.
“Goddammit, I didn’t mean his wheelchair wheels for fuck’s sake! That was a legit slip of the tongue!”
My sister makes a face that can only be best described as the old school, pre emoji, colon plus side dash frowny face. “Yeah, I’m sure it was. But, as you so crudely put it, yes, he’s set to inherit $2.5 million dollars now that Ike is gone. Their father, whom I had been told died a long time ago, actually passed away right before Ike did. Apparently, Ike and Denny are the only extensions of his lineage that he created.”
Taking a second longer than necessary to look at her, I can tell there’s more. I don’t know what, and at this point, I’m certain that I am not sober enough to try and dissect this conversation to figure it out.
“Ok, so for like two minutes, could you just not be you, and instead come straight out with what your point is.”
Monty huffs, or squeaks, our voices are so crazy high half the time we sound like a stepped-on chew toy.
“Fine. After Ike’s death, I found an accordion file folder containing a shit ton of paperwork that I’ve never seen or heard of before. I briefly skimmed through it, setting most of it aside to translate later on since a majority of it was in Spanish. The few things that did stand out were the repeated uses of Denny’s and Ike’s names. Besides that, there was a handwritten ledger filled with all these sequences of numbers. I have no fucking clue what it’s pertaining to. There was also three old disposable cameras, each used up, yet none of them developed. I had planned to sit down the next day and thoroughly analyze everything, but then we found out about Denny’s inheritance. Dealing with the lawyers and banks was such a long drawn out process, by the time everything was said and done, I had to take Denny for his annual appointment with his specialist in Long Beach. Thankfully I took everything that I found in that file folder with me, figuring it would give me something to do while I waited for Denny. When we got back to the house last night, I immediately noticed that two of the front house windows were broken in. Inside the house looked like a tornado had hit, everything was tossed around and even the furniture was moved. The backset of glass french doors was also busted, but none of that was even the weirdest part. What is strange is the fact that nothing was missing, regardless of everything looking like it had been thoroughly searched through then thrown aside, nothing was vandalized or purposely broken. But they did write on the dry erase board I have on the fridge stating, ‘you can’t hide forever’. Now I’m losing my mind, I can’t leave Denny home alone because he’s fucking defenseless and I… I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m positive I need help and at the very least someone living with me and Denny…”
“You want me to move in with you?”
“Please?”
I fucking knew it! Drunk or not, I saw this shit coming from a mile away. My sister is well on her way to sporting a mandatory straitjacket in the assigned confinement of a padded room.
“To accomplish what exactly? Ensure that we’ll all be murdered together as a family when these fucks decide to show back up? Even if I said yes, you do realize that liquor to me is not the equivalent of what spinach is to Popeye right? I struggle to crack the shell of a pistachio nut open. I can barely open most sealed drink containers, and my hand-eye coordination is so nonexistent that I’m pretty sure it’d rank on the negative number scale. Seriously? I’m the best you could come up with for security?”
Monty rolls her eyes. Yeah, like I’m the one being unreasonable.
“Look, I promise it’ll only be temporary. As soon as I can sort out another living situation we’ll move ok? I don’t know what else to do Brae, and everything’s falling apart.”
It’s then that I notice her voice starts to get a little wobbly, and she begins to sniffle. It becomes apparent then that she’s either contracted a cold instantaneously or that she’s truly upset, and I’m betting on the latter. Fucking family…
“Fine. But I’m not sharing a room with the cripple.”
“Millbrae!”
“I’m just fucking kidding jeez”