When I arrived at the address in New York City, he was already dead. I don’t meant to be so blunt, but how else am I supposed to say it? Passed on? No longer with us? Left this earth for a better place? All true I suppose, but I had never laid eyes on him before so in fact he was dead and that’s all.
When he did not answer the door at his upper east side brownstone I let myself in. I had never seen such opulence although I suppose partly it was only in comparison to what I was used to and there were surely many places to better it. I walked through the living room and dining room glancing in all directions at once. In the first room off of a hallway on the right is where I first laid eyes on him. He was stooped over a desk facing a glowing computer.
The computer screen was open to his checking account with a row of bills and balance transfer accounts along the bottom. I should have been more concerned with the dead body but it wasn’t like I knew him except as an abstract cyber concept.
I was a twenty-first century mail order bride. I suppose some would see romance in the trepidation of meeting someone for the first time and knowing that your future together was set. Others would assume that a family, worlds away, was steeped in tradition and was adding to the family heritage. The truth is I arranged it myself. I wanted to be Holly Golightly, the Audrey Hepburn character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Carefree, enchanting, but above all wealthy beyond belief. I knew I needed to marry well to have all that I wanted while putting forth as little effort as possible. Any relationship would do as long as I could extract far more than I needed to put in.
During the ensuing weeks, I was able to examine and manipulate this poor dead man’s finances. Sizable amounts of money could be transferred from savings to checking and enough online credit card accounts were open so that I could have whatever I needed for the foreseeable future.
I had groceries delivered from Gristedes. Movie and theater tickets were waiting at the box office. Rent and utilities were automatically paid. From the phone calls I heard being screened by his answering machine, there seemed to be nobody close to the man whose body was carefully preserved, sealed in plastic and duct tape, in the half bath at the end of the hall.
Life was good until his hard drive crashed, closing all the windows and erasing the password protected accounts my late benefactor had left open.
isbn 1-59661-068-9
53 pages/$15
“Lou Orfanella uncovers the moments that make a life. A master of the miniature.”
—Dan Pope, author of In the Cherry Tree
“Lou Orfanella’s short stories are as poignant and stirring as his poems. Here you’ll find
an ensemble of characters, places, and images that will touch you to your core.”
—Oscar De Los Santos, author of Hardboiled Egg and editor of Reel Rebels: Eleven Directors
Who Bucked the System and Shot the Flick Their Way
“Without being maudlin, Orfanella knows how to evoke the piquant memories of lost realities.
Reading his work gives one the strange feeling of looking through one’s old family photos,
or postcards from countries that no longer exist”
—J.P. Briggs, author of Trickster Tales
Lou Orfanella is the author of ten books including Excursions: Poetry and Prose, Streets of New York, How I Happened (March Street Press), and Scenes from an Ordinary Life: Getting Naked to Explore a Writer's Process and Possibilities. He teaches at Western Connecticut State University.