Past Forward Volume 1 (24 page)

“It’s so big.”

“Yeah, it’s one of the nicest buildings in
town. I love it.”

Through doors, an anteroom, and more doors,
Bill led her out to the street. Each step seemed slower and less
confident. Her comfort in the older section of town with its one
and two story buildings transformed into silent terror. Determined
not to make it any more of an issue than it was, he pointed out the
windows, the awning, and the local amenities.

At the door, he introduced her to the man
who buzzed them in. “This is Franco. He’s our security guard.” Bill
nodded at the man, introducing her. “Morning, Franco. This is my
friend Willow. I thought I’d give her the grand tour.”

Franco glanced her way saying, “Nice to
meetcha.” To Bill he added, “I don’t think Ms. Chen has been up
yet.”

Bill led her to the elevator, calling out
his thanks to Franco as he did. “Have a good one.”

In the elevator, Bill gave an exaggerated
groan. “Well, you’ll see me at my worst if Lin hasn’t been there
yet. I’m a bit of a slob.”

Willow hardly acknowledged Bill’s
confession. Her breathing grew shallow once more and she looked
sickly—green. The last thing he expected to hear her say was “I can
clean up for you.”

“Thanks, but she gets paid regardless so,
why don’t you enjoy your day off.” Hopefully that wouldn’t offend
her. Clean his apartment—only a Finley…

Once inside his home, Bill tossed his keys
on the counter and flipped through his mail. Lin hadn’t been there,
but at least clothes weren’t strewn from one end of the apartment
to the other. Willow set her purse on the edge of the kitchen
counter and wandered through the loft. Bill watched as she crossed
the room to the largest window and leaned against the edge. Her
posture relaxed. No trace of her previous fear remained. Trying to
help her see it from his perspective, he said, “Isn’t it
beautiful?”

“I think I could learn to like it, but it’s
still a little intimidating to me. It’s impressive though; that’s
for sure.”

He pulled two bottles of water from the
fridge and passed her one as she continued her tour. At his bedroom
doorway, she turned. “May I?”

“Of course. You didn’t need to ask.”

“Well, the other room doesn’t have walls and
doors, but this one did, so I didn’t know…”

As he’d done the week before, Bill tried to
see the room through Willow’s eyes. Enormous bed facing a wall of
glass—no other furniture. That glass would unnerve her. The cherry
wood headboard blended in with the glossy floor and the black
comforter lay piled to one side of the unmade bed. Crisp white
sheets lay twisted and wadded near the foot. Would she—yes, there
she went.

Unconsciously, Willow grabbed the corner of
the sheet and pulled it to the top of the bed. She walked around
the foot smoothing the sheets carefully as she did, but Bill
stepped forward, blocking her way to the other side. “It’s ok.
Leave the bed. Ms. Chen will take care of it. I think she changes
sheets today anyway.”

Willow blushed. “Oh! I didn’t—” She glanced
back at the bed. “That is just the biggest bed I’ve ever seen!”

Bill laughed as he followed her from the
room. “How many beds have you seen, Willow?”

“Three. Well, four now.”

She went back to the living room and stared
at the treadmill half concealed by a black lacquer screen. Bill
started to ask what the third bed was and then remembered the
hotel. He couldn’t count the number of beds he’d slept in, much
less all those he’d seen.”

“What is that for?” She pointed to the
treadmill and eyed it curiously.

“It’s a treadmill.”

“Well, that tells me what it is, but it
still doesn’t tell me what it is
for
.”

Suddenly, Bill felt foolish. How could he
explain to a woman such as Willow that he owned a machine that’s
sole purpose is to simulate a walk that she made just to go to
church? “Well, it’s for exercise.” The look she gave him told him
he wasn’t going to get off that easily.

“That is so helpful.”

Bill reached for the control panel and
turned it on. Willow stared at him, at the treadmill, and then back
at him. Bill sighed and got on it.

He walked. To demonstrate the range of the
machine he bumped the incline and the speed controls. Feeling
ultra-foolish, he rolled back off the end and took a bow before
reaching to flip the switch.

“No, wait; let me try.” Willow spent a
couple of minutes on it, apparently fascinated with a “walking
machine,” before Bill hit the switch.

“Come on, you’ll get all hot and sweaty and
then you’ll be miserable all day.”

She took her bottle to the sink and glanced
around the kitchen. “Where do you eat?”

“If I’m here, I eat on the couch. I’m rarely
here for meals.”

“How sad.” There was no condemnation in her
voice—just pity.

She leaned against the countertops and
surveyed the loft. “It’s very large, isn’t it?”

“As apartments go, yes. Some of the others
are a lot bigger, of course. All the south side apartments are
larger, but the north side has great lighting.”

They talked until her stomach growled and
Bill insisted that they go find something for lunch. Willow offered
to make something, but a fridge full of yogurt, wine, cheese, and
water didn’t inspire a grand feast. He smiled to himself as she
glanced toward the treadmill on her way out the door. Willow Finley
would never cease to amaze him. “Let’s go down by the RAC and find
a pasty vendor.”

“Pasty?”

Bill took the elevator all the way to the
parking garage and led her to his car explaining the history of
Rockland and their famous pasties. “You know how Chicago is known
for its pizza and New York for their hot dog street vendors? Well,
here we have pasty vendors. We’re world famous for them. We can’t
have a day in Rockland without pasties!”

They walked along the boulevard to City
Park, munching on their pasties and talking. At the park, Bill
showed her the area the city planned to convert into a lake. “It’s
ridiculous, of course. They’ll spend millions in taxpayer dollars
for a lake, and for what? We’ll look like a poor man’s
Chicago.”

“What would you do with the land?” Willow
wiped her mouth and tossed the napkin and pasty wrapper in a
trashcan, picking up half a dozen cups and wrappers lying on the
ground nearby.

Bill watched with a smile as she rinsed her
hands in the water fountain and shook them dry. “I’d sell it.
Developers could buy it, farmers, philanthropists—anyone. I just
don’t think it’s an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars.”

“What if a philanthropist bought it and paid
for the lake. What would you say about it then?”

His mouth opened and closed. Twice. With a
sheepish smile, he nudged her arm with his. “You’re right. My pride
still doesn’t like it, but at least it’d be private money spent
rather than my hard earned and your hard earned money.”

“But I don’t earn any money. Well,” she
continued happily, “not before yesterday.”

“Willow, you have money that makes money for
you while you sleep.”

“Oh, won’t Chad like that. People spend
money to save time… I use time to make money! It lets me live, so I
won’t complain.” Amazed, Bill gaped at her until she noticed and
protested. “What?”

“Lets you live? We went over your accounts.
You never have to work—ever. If you keep living the way you do, and
your accounts still earn what they have up until now, by the time
you are your mother’s age, you’ll have over ten million dollars.”
The moment he said it, Bill winced. “Ok, that didn’t come out
right.”

“Death never does.”

A quick glance told him Willow wasn’t
joking, wasn’t offended, and had no idea how her statement sounded.
Her forthrightness was generally refreshing, but occasionally it
unsettled him, and when it did, he didn’t know how to respond. In a
gesture designed to be comforting, Bill took her hand and gave it a
quick squeeze. “She made sure you were well taken care of. She was
a remarkable woman, Willow.”

“Not everyone’s parents leave them a home
and the skills to keep themselves fed. I’m blessed.”

At the nearest bench, Bill sat down and
faced her. “We discussed your financial situation the day we
arranged the funeral, do you remember?”

“Yes. You said the bills were paid and that
I’d still have the money to keep up with taxes and the things we
have to buy. I know I’ve been a little extravagant since Mother
died, but I mostly used the money in the house so I thought it
would be ok.”

Bill tried again, this time with a different
tactic. “How much money do you think the average American earns and
spends per year on living expenses?”

“Oh it must be thousands! I know our cow
alone is several hundred dollars every year.”

Stunned into a rabbit trail, Bill’s jaw
dropped visibly. “You eat a whole cow every year?”

“Half. Well, between Mother, Othello, and I
we do. The other half goes to the butcher.”

This stunned Bill more than anything else.
He’d always assumed they butchered their own animals. “He takes
half?”

“Well we give him half. We can’t eat it all
so instead of paying him, Mother just gave him the meat we couldn’t
eat in exchange for the work. He wraps, labels, and stores it in
our freezer for us while we’re out fishing.”

Mentally shaking his head at a life he
couldn’t comprehend, Bill brought the rabbit trail back to the main
road. “So give me a ballpark figure. What do you think most
Americans spend to live every year?”

“I don’t know— maybe five or ten thousand?
People have cars and things that cost money so maybe a little more.
Mother and I never discussed it.” Her head cocked to one side, and
she paused, thinking. “I wonder why that never came up.” She
shrugged. “Oh, well. What others spend really isn’t any of our
business. That’s probably why.”

He shook his head. “Multiply that by ten.
You and your mother live on around ten thousand most years. A
little more lately, but the price of everything is going up...”

Willow’s shock amused him. Bill had expected
she didn’t realize how little money they spent of the principal and
interest that grew every year. “I had no idea we spent so much
money! How long will it last?” Uncertainty crept into her
features.

“Indefinitely at the rate you’re spending.
It grows every year, Willow.”

“I don’t understand.”

Bill spent the next twenty minutes
explaining compound interest, cost of living, inflation, and taxes.
He was quite proud of his impromptu lesson in consumer mathematics
and waited eagerly for the light bulb of understanding to
illuminate her features. It never lit.

“I know all of that. Mother taught me about
interest.”

Bill was nearly speechless. In one final
desperate attempt to make her understand, he tried again. “How much
money do you think I have to have to live in my apartment, travel
like I do, and have the lifestyle I have? How much do you think I
earn?”

“Probably about the same as me. I mean, you
have more expensive things, but I have land and animals and you
have furniture and a vehicle.”

“Let’s just say that I earn six figures a
year, and I’ll never manage to save and invest enough to match your
accounts.”

Innocently, Willow mumbled aloud, “I wonder
how much Chad makes. I’ll have to ask him. That is
fascinating.”

“No!” Bill saw her startle at his emphatic
response and tried again. “It’s not generally considered a polite
question. You don’t ask people how much money they make or
spend.”

“You did.”

He groaned and tried again. “I’m your
financial advisor. I’m an exception. I’m trying to get through to
you that you are a wealthy woman. You’ll continue to be very
comfortably well off even if you decided to live a normal middle
class lifestyle.”

As though she hadn’t heard the word,
“wealthy” Willow latched onto his final words. “We live quite well!
Anything we want, we buy. We have all the supplies we ever need!
I’m going to make a new rug this winter!”

Bill stood and offered his hand. He knew he
couldn’t make her understand, at least not right then, that their
wants were amazingly simple and few—very different from the wants
of most of the country. “Let’s go meet the Presidents and sit in
the Oval Office.”

Othello raised his head limply and then
flopped back to the mound that covered his late mistress as Chad
bounced along the drive. He parked, grabbed a bowl of water and
packet of dog meat from the fridge, and trudged out to the grave.
The animal didn’t even attempt to rise to meet him.

Chad tilted the animal’s head and gazed into
its cloudy eyes. He sighed, his breath ragged. “Oh, Othello, you
can’t. She can’t handle more loss. Please… Drink.”

The dog merely whimpered and turned away.
Chad dropped his arms on his knees and hung his head, praying.
Minutes later, when the dog’s eyes froze in death, Chad sighed.
“Oh, Lord, how will I tell her?”

Heart heavy, Chad trudged back to the barn
for a shovel. By the third shovelful, he remembered to pray, but
each attempt fizzled in a buzz in his mind that refused to make
sense. “Whatever,” he muttered as he flung more dirt on the growing
mound beside his hole. How long it took to do it, Chad didn’t know,
but his muscles ached as he shook the last shovelful of dirt over
the little mound.

I hope I did the right thing. She
wouldn’t want to come home to that, would she? Lord, please…
Shoulders slumped, Chad carried the bowl and shovel back to the
barn and dumped them inside the door.

The pup bounced obnoxiously around his
ankles as he filled the water pot and grabbed the milking pail.
Chad called reassurances to Wilhelmina as he entered the pen and
filled the feeding trough with loose alfalfa. The goat stepped
around skittishly and then kicked the puppy, sending it flying
across the pen.