The Paper Trail | 2 December 2022

As Calum opened the box he had pulled from his recently deceased father’s office safe, his heart sank.  This revelation was interrupted by laughter from one of the offices down the corridor.  He thought, “How, of all the days, could someone be laughing here?”  As he got up from the scattering papers strewn across the floor to see who was exhibiting such behavior, the elevator doors opened and his mother and sister exited, talking as they proceeded towards his father’s office.  He turned in a panic, closing the door behind him, and fell to the floor, frantically gathering papers.

BNR Response

He could hear the voices of Tom and Harold emanating from the hallway.  They stumbled out of Tom’s office, floating on a sea of champagne, and happened upon Alice and Bernadette, all converging abruptly in front of the office of the President.  Calum had summoned them with the portent of bad news, and he reckoned all of them sounded rather merry given the circumstances.  Calum had managed to close the safe from his position on all fours, using a swift but awkward backward kick of his heel.  The giddy lot entered the office, and he hoped they hadn’t seen him in this unfortunate posture under his father’s desk, still frenetically shuffling papers together in a stack.  Alice, otherwise known as “Bunny” to disguise her motherhood, glided into the office, swinging her arm to casually lob her Birkin on one of the Eames lounge chairs and sidling up to the ample bar cart.  She sighed easily as she poured herself three fingers of rye, “The view never gets old.”  Tom and Harold followed suit and bellied up to the bar cart like calves at the teat, all familiarity and greed.  Bernadette perched herself on the arm of the midcentury sofa, about to ask Harry to make her a dirty martini when she thought she spied movement under Paw-Paw’s desk.  Without saying a word, she deftly lowered her head to knee height and locked eyes with a cowering Calum. 

“Oh, there you are, you cheeky rascal.  Bunny!  I’ve found Calum.  Get out of there, you little devil child.”  Bernadette scolded him as if he were perpetually six, a habit she’d had since childhood, even though she was only a year his senior.

“Brilliant.” Bunny crowed dryly, “Now he can explain why it was so important that we leave the dogs to rush over here to the firm.”  Bunny didn’t turn to face the room at this natural inflection point.  Rather, she stared blankly at the mixture of smokestacks and chimney spouts that stretched out at varying heights below her.  Her glassy gray eyes were intensified by the mirror effect of the floor-to-ceiling pane glass that stretched the 50-foot length of Earl’s office.  She gripped the edge of the peacock maple bar cart in what appeared to be an effort to steel herself for the conversation ahead – when in reality she was steadying herself after necking her fourth drink of the afternoon.  Calum took a deep breath and, clutching the top edge of his father’s desk, used the weight of the heavy piece as a fulcrum to hoist himself upright and off the floor.  “Hello, Mommy,” he murmured, looking at his shoes.

“Bun-NY.”  Alice/Bunny corrected with hostility.

“W-w-well” Calum began by nervously clearing his throat.

“YES?!”  Bunny interrupted impatiently, unblinking.

“P-perhaps we’d better adjourn to the residential quarters downstairs where we can discuss this in private.  As a family.”  Calum proposed.

“Poppycock!”  Alice/Bunny retorted.  “Tom and Har-Har needn’t isolate themselves up here in the C-Suite graveyard any longer.  Let them join us.  Plus, they’re dining with Bernie and I for dinner in 15 minutes and it’s more efficient.  I will be livid if we miss the second half of the race given that the first half was interrupted.”

Calum’s admonitions were feckless.  “Mom-Bunny,” Calum corrected himself, “I’m not sure if-“

“Nonsense, Calum.  My mind is made up!”  Bunny smacked the bar top authoritatively with the flat palm of her hand, causing Calum to jump at her proclamation.  He scrambled to get to the door ahead of the pack, but Bunny was quick to snatch her bag off the lounge and lead the others with surprising speed and unison into the awaiting elevator.

Tom and Harry were whispering conspiratorially over their tortoise shell glasses and below arched eyebrows, respectively, speculating at the latest family intrigue.

“Mo-BUNNY!  Bernie!  Please!  You must listen to me!  It’s about Paw-Paw!”  Harold reached a limp hand out in a half-hearted attempt to hold the elevator door, while Bunny proceeded to push the “24” button inside.

In a panic, Calum blurted, “He DIED an hour ago.”

<Beat>

“Oh is that all?”  Bunny yawned, all eyes on her.  Bernadette took her mother’s lead, changing her reaction from one of surprise to one of boredom.

“Let go of the door, Har-Har.”  Bunny instructed, “Let’s go see the body.”

“WE AREN’T IN THE WILL, MOMMY.”  Calum shrieked in desperation, tears in his eyes.  That got everyone’s attention.

“Harold Humphries, stop the door this instant.”  Bunny barked, the elevator doors coming together.  Harold once again advanced a tentative hand, which was swiftly eclipsed by Bernadette’s Kelly bag which effectively prompted the doors to reopen fully.

Everyone then fell robotically in line, each following Bunny’s step-by-step instruction.  First, Calum succinctly recounted having found Paw-Paw lifeless in his converted hospital bed in the residential suite, his live-in nurse remarkably absent.  He concealed that he had felt at once hopeful and terrified to have been the one to make this grim discovery: hopeful at what he might find in the old man’s safe, and, ultimately, his will and terrified at the thought of shouldering the responsibility for telling Bunny et al.  The fact that he was merely the messenger meant nothing.  Bunny shot messengers for sport.  The looks on everyone’s faces represented their curiosity: this represented the culmination of a decades’ long drama – would Bunny hang on to see it through to the bitter end of this May-December romance?  Would the old stiff leave her the inheritance?  The yachts, the homes on the Amalfi Coast, in Split, and in Saigon?  The ownership of the firm?  And who would be named as heir(s) apparent to the leadership of the empire?  Lord knows that Tom and Harold had been made it their lives’ work to lube up the old geezer in hopes of landing twin desks in the President’s office.

Still under Bunny’s instruction, they were now in the tony halls of the 24th floor, marching every closer the bed chamber where Earl was lying in state.

“There must be an explanation!”  Bunny screeched, as she flung open the door to Earl’s inner sanctum.  The group paused when greeted with the quiet.

“Wait, Mommy!  Bernie!  It was quite a gruesome sight.  I don’t think you’ll…” Calum whispered his last attempts to intervene, to delay, to caution.

“To what do I owe this rare pleasure?” a craggy, broken voiced croaked from the shrouded darkness of the four-poster bed.

All held their breath, and the two interlopers stayed behind while the three family members, led by Bunny, stepped gingerly into the bedroom.  Their footfall was silenced as the parquet floors transitioned to plush dusty rose carpeting.

“Paw-Paw?!  You’re alive?!”