Uncle Rigby

My uncle Rigby is stuffing Splenda packets in his jacket pockets like it’s his birthright and the waitress, whose name is Mindy, looks over at us sadly from the other table. I give her an apologetic smile. Uncle Rigby takes a long sip of his tea and leans back in his chair.

“So,” he says, “you need money.”

“Yeah. But it’s not what you think.”

“And what am I thinking, Jimmy? That you’ll flush it all away at the blackjack table like last time? Or maybe you’ll blow it on another mail-order bride from Kazakhstan. What’s her name? Cartinka?”

“Katia,” I correct him. “And actually, something happened—”

“I don’t give a fiddler’s fart,” Uncle Rigby says. “You still owe me five thousand dollars, plus interest.”

Uncle Rigby, who isn’t really my uncle and looks old enough to be my great-grandfather, isn’t known for his warm personality. His eyes are honest-to-God black and he sneers at everyone as though they’re worms he’s about to squish under his shoe. He’s been in and out of my life as long as I can remember, a phantom that pops up every few years to latch onto whatever chaos is going on.

Uncle Rigby takes a sugar packet from his Burberry coat and tosses it over his shoulder. Because he can. Because he’s filthy rich. Because if anyone yells at him, he’ll slip them a fifty and do it again. It’s a cruel sport he can’t get enough of.

“Where’s my money, Jimmy?” Uncle Rigby asks.

“It’s coming, I promise. I got a job doing construction. I haven’t set foot in a casino in a year, I swear.”

Uncle Rigby glares at me. I was given a year and a half to pay back my debt. After a lucky streak on the slots, I almost had the full amount. Then I got greedy and lost it all. Now I’m nearly a year overdue and my uncle’s patience is wearing thin.

“I’m tickled pink that you’ve quit gambling, Jimmy,” he says, “But it’s not enough.”

Another sugar packet goes flying over Uncle Rigby’s shoulder. The man at the next table stands and yells, “What’s your problem, old man?”

“How dare you talk to me like that?” Uncle Rigby cries. “I’m the president of Sweden!”

The man sits back down. Mindy the waitress comes over and asks if everything is alright. My uncle flashes her a twenty, tells her everything is peachy, and stuffs it in the pocket of her apron. She turns away and makes a beeline for the kitchen, probably to alert the manager.

“Uncle Rigby, Katia’s pregnant.”

My uncle stares at me. Then he does something I’ve never seen him do before: he laughs. Loudly. He throws his head back and bellows like a rhesus monkey, tears springing to his eyes. Everyone in the café stares at us. Uncle Rigby takes a deep breath to compose himself. He digs in his coat pocket and pulls out a small black notebook and pen.

“Saints preserve us,” he chuckles, scribbling in his notebook. “You’re a trip, kid. A real trip.”

My heart quickens as Uncle Rigby writes. I’ve seen this little black notebook before. Half of my family has. It’s where he stores his debts. There’s a page with my name on it already—five thousand dollars and some change. My dad still owes him a thousand for the roof. Mom borrowed just eight hundred for her car’s transmission and paid it back early. Everyone’s timetable is different, but we all have one thing in common: we hate how much we need this old man.

“How much?” Uncle Rigby asks.

I’m afraid to give him a number. The truth is, I don’t have a concrete figure. Enough for the hospital bills when the baby is born? Enough for an apartment? College tuition? Would it be an insult to ask for a measly hundred dollars? Uncle Rigby can smell my fear like a shark sniffs out blood. He smiles and says, “Another five thousand?”

I clench my jaw.

“More?” the old man asks.

I think about Katia. How she forgave me for lying online about being twenty-five when I’m really thirty-seven. How she chose to marry me, even though my roach-infested apartment is only half a step up from her village. How she held me when I cried after losing half my savings on the slots. She deserves the world.

I glance at the open page of his black notebook. I can see my debt: five thousand, plus another thousand in interest for twelve months unpaid. If I ask for more money now, I won’t be able to pay it back until my unborn child is in high school. I’m about to back out when Uncle Rigby reaches into his other coat pocket and pulls out a checkbook. Splenda packets fall to the floor haphazardly.

I glance around nervously as his pen flourishes across a fresh page. The last time my uncle handed me a check, he forced me to do a jig on the sidewalk outside of his brownstone. Because he can. Because he’s filthy rich. Because I had rent due and zero dignity.

Uncle Rigby tears the check off and hands it to me. I pinch the edge with my thumb and forefinger and pull. He holds tightly, staring at me deeply with those black, unfeeling coals for eyes. “Double the interest,” he says. “And you’ve got five years to pay me back, plus what you already owe.”

I sneak a glance at the amount on the check. $20,000. The generous, unexpected number knocks the breath out of me. It enough to buy a decent place to live. Enough for a car so Katia doesn’t have to walk five miles to the nail salon where she works. Enough for our baby to have a real shot at life. I can finally give Katia the world and more.

Double the interest, my brain reminds me.

I do the math in my head and nearly pull back. Is it worth it? I ask myself. Only one man ever failed to pay back Uncle Rigby and now . . . well, he’s gone. Frank worked with me at the construction site. I had introduced him to Uncle Rigby because Frank’s mother was in a bad way and I couldn’t stand to hear him talk about hospital bills for one more minute. I don’t know how much Frank borrowed. I don’t know how much interest he accrued or when he had to pay it back. All I know is, one day Frank was at the construction site, and the next he had vanished. Apartment cleared. No note or two-week notice. Just gone, like a puff of smoke.

I used to think stuff like that was a myth, some funny lie about bookies concocted by Hollywood for drama. And maybe it is. Maybe Frank is somewhere in Mexico with his mother, the debt forgiven and everyone happy and healthy. Maybe Uncle Rigby has softened in his old age.

My uncle snaps his fingers, forcing me back to the present. “Yes or no, Jimmy,” he says.

I think of Katia. Of our baby. Of our broken toilet and Top Ramen dinners and the dead mouse I found in the shower this morning.

I take the check from my uncle and quickly stuff it in my wallet.

Uncle Rigby barks a laugh and claps his hands together. “Capital, old boy!” He takes all the Splenda packets from his pockets and tosses them in the air like confetti. Uncle Rigby downs the last of his tea in one gulp and stands, flinging an invisible scarf over his shoulder. He says, “Give my best to the little woman,” and walks out of the café singing Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher.”

I’m left with a table of sugar packets and the bill.

_______

The $20,000 check burns a hole in my pocket as I walk to the bus stop. There’s a rush of excitement—I’m twenty grand richer!—followed by paranoia that it’ll be stolen from me by the next bum I walk across. I hop on a bus headed for downtown and sit in the back. I clutch my wallet as though it’s keeping my heart from stopping.

The line at the bank is thankfully short. As I approach the teller, I think about buying Katia a new dress or a cute onesie for the baby. Maybe we’ll even splurge on a pizza tonight.

“Can I help you?” the teller asks.

I take the check from my wallet and sign the back of it. A smile dances across my face as I hand it to the teller. She studies the check, her blue eyes widening. Then she puts on a professional grin and asks, “Checking or savings?”

My smile fades. This all feels too good to be true. Uncle Rigby was too quick to give me so much money. What if this is a test? What if he knows I can’t pay it back on time and needs a reason to make me disappear? “You’ve got five years to pay me back,” he had said. Five years, plus interest. Plus the six thousand I already owe him. Plus my promise that he’d be getting payments from me soon.

The smart thing to do would be to give the money back. Get a second job, save as much as possible, sell whatever junk I can for an extra penny or two. That would be the smart thing.

But I’m not a smart man.

“Sir?” the teller says.

“Cash it,” I tell her. “All of it.”

_______

$20,000 in cash isn’t as big as I thought it would be. I thought I’d be given a briefcase and escorted from the bank with a special security guard. But the teller simply verified the check, ducked into the vault for a moment, and counted out the cash in front of me.

There are forty $500 bills. A stack no bigger than an average romance novel. I count it twice myself to be sure and the teller watches me patiently. When I’m satisfied, I nod and say thank you.

I practically run out of the bank, tucking the wad of bills in the waistband of my underwear. I hail a taxi and use my last twenty dollars to travel about thirty minutes outside of the city.

“Keep the change,” I tell he driver as I exit the cab.

I enter the casino with sweat pouring down the back of my shirt. As I snake my way through the smoky haze of slot machines and senior citizens, all I can see is Katia’s smile. The joy on her lovely, too-trusting face. The sigh of relief as I tell her how much money I’ve won for us.

I exchange the wad of bills for chips and the attendant barely bats an eye. As I near the roulette table, a warm, familiar feeling of happiness wraps itself around me like a hug from an old friend. Suddenly, it all comes rushing back to me—the lights of the machines, the smell of cigarettes and green felt and alcohol. The excitement of winning. The crushing blow of losing, but still feeling invincible because you know you’ll win it back within a few hands.

I’m not a smart man, but today I’m feeling lucky.

At the roulette table, I slide my chips to the croupier. “All in on black,” I tell him.

“All in on black,” he repeats.

The wheel spins. The ball jumps and dances. I hold my breath and await my future.