Enough already?

‘ “Comes into” money’ what a wonderful phrase! What a coy concept! Like being ‘well off’ or ‘well to do’.... what? What a staggering reality! True, the money was not quite what Jack had expected when he had placed his ad. in the paper:

‘Balding, paunchy, ageing white male seeks elderly ailing well-off person, view inheritance’.

The draft, of course, had specified ‘widow’, as Jack was well aware of the injustice of women living longer than men, hence there being more widows than widowers. However, over a drink, he had seen the wisdom of his even cluier mate, Bazza, whose view was that discretion dictated a non-discriminatory approach.

Mind you, the going wasn’t easy; it was a very muddy track. Even though he had avoided all the young things on social media who were most likely in their prime, by going for the dead wood of traditional print media, the initial silence had turned into an avalanche of responses. All well and good, but how could Jack tell the chancers from the really deserving respondents? He had no methodology lined up; Google proved no help; and he had no intention of sharing with anyone, whomsoever wheresoever howsoever. So all the work fell to him.

He had tried the obvious option: the old perfume test, sniffing envelopes and stationary in the hope of identifying a well-heeled but doddery correspondent. To no avail. What Jack did not know about Chanel No 5 and its pricier competitors could have filled several weekend supplements and then some.

Nor could he find much detail about relative wealth in most of the replies. For some reason to do with what a still greater misogynist than Jack would call female self obsession, not to mention illiteracy, he read letter after letter that seemed more concerned with the writer's health than Jack’s prospects of inheriting great wealth. It was very hard indeed to tell how much credence to give to the claims of ill health. Disturbingly, there was comparatively little mention of impending death, in fact on a closer reading imminent death hardly figured in any. Selfish was the word that came to mind. Unable to read Jack’s unambiguous message properly, Jack thought. Probably quite hard to get along with, too.

Still he laboured on, pondering the opportunity costs of contacting this one and that, and the likely time commitment involved in establishing a) how sick his intended was and b) whether or not she (they were all ‘she’, so there Bazza!) was worth waiting around for, so to speak.

After no little heart break and a very modest amount of drinking, Jack came up with rules of thumb or a rule of thumbs – take your pick he thought. For a start he excluded all the ones with photos. More self-centred than the others, he reasoned; looking for sympathy, he felt. Probably not so ill after all.

That left him with 23 letters, oddly enough. At first he was going to use the addresses as a sort of system, a sorting system, identifying wealthier suburbs and so on. Even that was questionable, weren’t people with real money notorious for finding ways to hang on to it? Could they be trusted to play fair with Jack if he contacted them? Heads and tails came to mind. Your guess is as good as mine came to mind. Suburbs no help at all.

To say that Jack was getting nowhere fast was not something Jack would say, but it was on the tip of his tongue.

‘Do a drive-by?’ ‘No, not shoot them, Bazza you idiot, take a look-see, suss out their houses’ – Bazza had dropped by and was being as unhelpful as ever. Not that Jack wanted to further involve Bazza after the non-discrimination rubbish, but Bazza was a judge and a good one, too, when it came to the gentler sex. Like Jack, he might be getting on, but he had kept up with the times in disturbing ways, like knowing what not to say if there was anyone else around. He was always kicking Jack under the table, and sometimes not kicking him when it became clear, thanks to Jack’s daughter, Jessie, that he should have. Bazza wasn’t quite as smart as he thought he was, in Jack’s view.

‘Still, a pound of flesh is a pound of flesh, as Shakespeare put it. And, not to be outdone, Robbie Burns was known for his ‘the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley’ up a Scotchman’s kilt.’

'What’s that?' said Jack, who had enough to think about without listening to Bazza’s banging on with his book learning and constant mention of things up Scotchmen's kilts. Talk about discrimination!

‘I was saying that your Project seems to be all adrift...’ Bazza had a dinghy and fancied himself a seafarer.

After more such insights and drinking the rest of Jack’s beer, Bazza buggered off.

Relieved, Jack got out his Small Black Notebook, where he kept all his darkest thoughts and self-help lists which had got him into the pickle he was now in.

He read the most recent entries: make a lot of money with little (aim higher, you prick!) make that NO effort.

Bad language he thought, must have been in a mood. Now look at me!

Then came the rule of thumbs. He gave the thumbs down and put a rather vicious line through both ‘eliminate would-be photogenic contenders’ then ‘check for desirable addresses’, leaving only a series of ?????? each as unanswerable as its predecessor.

What really gave Jack the irrits was the wilful obscurantism of most of the letters. Sure the ones that called him a loathsome pervert and a vicious misogynist pig were hiding little of their feelings (a little harsh, he thought, insofar as he had sought out persons irrespective of sex, gender or what have you). In a momentarily generous mood he conceded some medicine might have been responsible for mood changes and Jack-oriented hostilities. A form of projection? Bazza would know.

He turned again to his Small Black Notebook. It had never let him down before and contained many a priceless verse and even what he acknowledged was doggerel, but the purest most elevated form. He turned a new page but alas, no miracle was to be found. The blank page provided little in the way of inspiration.

Of the 23 unphotographed options, only two provided phone numbers, landlines at that, hopefully for people who never got out or about. Probably oldies on their last legs, let’s hope.  A trap for an unwary Jack? Hardly. They already ‘knew where he lived’. Bazza said he should have used a PO Box, but his advice came too late and anyway, Jack had been too excited for paperwork. Subtly wording the advert had been hard enough for what was supposed to be an effort-free windfall.

Jack was not what he would call a religious person. He knew his rights and followed an ‘all care and no responsibility’ philosophy to the letter. But of late he had been won over by quite a series of adverts on free to air TV – you could always go to the club for any sport that was not on free to air and why not? These ads were preaching, pretty convincingly, Jack thought, that there were all manner of things that Jack deserved. Jack was a ‘big picture’ man, so he could not quite recall the detail of what he deserved and yet he had not failed to notice that nearly all the deserving viewers seemed to be women. He seemed to recall that he (too) deserved a new car of some sort - no brand names came to mind, pity the advertiser - and maybe a fancy apartment and some shampoo? Who knew?

So Jack found himself close to praying for just a modest fortune that he richly deserved, when the door bell rang. Not well pleased at this interruption to his communing with his Small Black Notebook and some well-disposed Great Dispenser of Largesse, Jack expleted his way to the door.

Bloody Bazza, no doubt. Well Bloody Bazza could Bloody Bazza off, ‘cos he had drunk all Jack’s beer and unless he had come with a slab of beer or even a six-pack, he was out of luck. And no-one who knew Bazza had ever seen him arriving with a six-pack, let alone a slab.

It wasn’t Bazza.

The busybody at the door asked Jack if he was Jack. ‘Who?’ enquired Jack, fearful that being Jack might not be a good person to be and not for the first time.

‘Jack MacMahon.’ said the bloke, ‘a letter’, he said, as if he had better places to be. Sure enough he was a postman, possibly Post Person or Post It, had Bazza been within kicking distance.

‘Oh’, says Jack, ‘Yeah, right, Jack, that’s me’. He took the letter with a frown,’signed here’ and the deal was done.

Mutual ‘Have a nice days’ later, he was back inside and still frowning. He had little experience of letters you signed for and was not sure he liked them. He already had a lot of letters he did not greatly like and another one was one too many.

Even so, Jack was a gambler and no squib, so he opened the letter. He was preparing to give it the benefit of the doubt when the cheque fell out!

It looked like a cheque; it felt like a cheque; it’s absence of perfume suggested it was not to be sniffed at and the round figure of $20,000 in admirably legible hand writing and the connection between the familiar Jack MacMahon and the equally well written, if inferior, words: ‘Twenty thousand dollars only’, was a connection Jack had never previously dreamt of. Not in his wildest dreams or fancies.

Reading the letter now seemed like a good investment and then off to Bazza’s with a clear intention of doing him some serious bodily harm. ‘Pull the other one, Bazza, it plays “The joke’s on you, cop this one” ‘.

The letter was not Bazza’s style, if he had one.

Dear Mr MacMahon

I can see that you are in dire straits, yet full of a creative spirit.

I enclose a cheque for $20,000 to help you out and hope this will see you through whatever difficulties you are experiencing. I have not provided a return address as I do not want to receive any begging letters. This is my only contribution, now or in the future.

Yours sincerely

Anon

PS. Make that Nellie - anonymous enough in this big city, I think.

N.

Jack’s first thought was to race down to the bank before Nellie could change her mind, but to his horror the cheque had no name on it, which made him all the more suspicious of, and now ready to kill, Bazza that bastard.

But when he got to the bank, just to be on the safe side, they told him it was a proper bank cheque, whatever that was, and all good as gold.

Now all he had to do was decide which new car he deserved most. But $20,000 was hardly enough.

He’d have to give some more thought to those other letters after all.

Expletives came to mind.