His Small Empire

At the Boat Club in Annapolis, you could often get around the no smoking rule if you asked firmly and had a good reason. This particular afternoon I had a very good reason, and the club manager agreed that I could smoke if I sat out on the Second Deck. I liked the Second Deck because there were parasols and you could smell the boat fuels burning.

I liked the look of a high top with two chairs near the railings. I dragged a over a handsome twill parasol and cranked it to cover the table. My uncle’s executor was going to meet me, and I guessed she was going to be dressed up. It seemed like cooling down the spot would be the polite thing to do.

My uncle Brutus was a bit of a figure in town. In addition to being a professor at the Naval Academy, he chaired the Crabs 2 Go event that the rotary club put on and led private tours at Fredrick Douglass Museum on Sundays. Perhaps less charming was his penchant for heckling St. John’s College students as they passed by his house on Maryland Ave. He insisted aloud that they were “sissies” or “geeks”.

When I finished up at UVA, Brutus had arranged for me to interview at a boutique fund that financed clean energy projects. They hired me—on his good word, I can only imagine—and I found myself in Annapolis, splitting rent on a townhouse in the historic district with some students from the College. I was out of my depths at work, so I put in a lot of hours. My social life wasn’t glimmering, but I would do drinks with the other analysts. A girl I was seeing worked at a restaurant right by the waterside and sometimes I would go pick her up after closing time for a quiet cocktail in the empty bar.

By far my most regular social engagement, however, was weekly dinner with Brutus. This Sunday ritual was unmissable. My mother had admonished me soon after my arrival in Annapolis that I was to make a regular effort to see my uncle. Before long, I had my watch set to match the clock in his foyer so I could avoid the weekly reprimand for my tardiness.

It wasn’t a terribly involved dinner. Brutus was not a talker. We started always with a drink in the front room by a big picture window. In the first year-or-so that I was there, we would go out onto his porch when the weather was mild. He kept a bar cart quite full, but he drank beer himself.

Then, he would present food that he ordered from the Boatyard Grill. I never got a say in what we were eating. He liked that everyone around a table eat the same meal whenever possible. Served on nautical themed plates, burgers or chili or Cuban sandwiches were common choices. Conversation at the dinner table was polite, and made a little tedious by his slow pace of chewing. Not one to talk with his mouth full, Brutus often let thirty or more seconds of dead air hang before swallowing and offering his response.

Once he ate half his meal, he would ask if I were done and would take our plates to the kitchen. I would sit and study the room. He rotated out the trinkets in his china cabinet, which were enough eye candy to occupy me. After tidying up, he would return to the dining room and clap his hands in punctuation. “Wasn’t that good?”

Finally, we would withdraw to his study. He liked a pipe after dinner. When I first arrived in town, there was a tobacconist in a corner building just a few minutes’ walk from his house. It had been hurting since the Academy became a smokeless campus, however, and after a while it was turned into a vape shop. Brutus still had them order in tobacco for him. At our fifth Sunday dinner, he and I walked over to meet the proprietor, César. After introductions, Brutus had César go get something from the back of the store. “I’m sure I’m keeping this kid alive,” he said to me. César returned with a red wooden box, upon which was emblazoned the word ROUSH in gold majuscule. I opened the box at his urging, and for a moment I didn’t understand what it was. A gnarled, lumpy piece of black wood sat next to an ivory sort of cone, both ensconced in green velvet. Brutus grabbed the box from me and snapped the pieces together, revealing, naturally, a smoking pipe. It wasn’t smooth like any pipe I had seen. “I thought you’d like something a little more forward-thinking. Less stuffy,” he said, offering it to me. “Shall we pack a bowl?”

At my high top next to the railing, I pulled out my black pipe and some tobacco. When I was about done filling it, a pair of high heels clicked towards me. “Mr. L’Enfant?” I struck a match and circled it steadily around the bowl, drawing measured mouthfuls of smoke. I waved the match out and offered the shaded chair to my guest. She sat across from me and produced a small wealth of papers. My uncle, it appeared, had done his estate analog. As she flipped through the many documents and their addenda, she had to keep licking her fingers. “I really cannot wait for the hand-written generation to move along,” she sighed. “It takes me forever to transcribe everything.” Having finally found what she was looking for, she slid a sheet out from the stack and packed the rest up. She set about straightening her makeshift workstation on the table. She laid down the chosen sheet in front of her and pushed a little black Moleskine notebook off to the right. From her jacket she withdrew a thick fountain pen, popped it open, and set it above the document. Having arranged everything to her liking, she looked at me and introduced herself as Liesl Clark.

“Cato,” I offered in response. “Thank you for meeting me here. I’m sure you’ve had a bit of a headache dealing with the Club about his membership dues.”

“Honestly, I haven’t gotten to the thorny parts yet. Right now, I’m still tracking down the family to make sure there are no questions about his bequests.” She consulted her notebook and asked, “You’re Mr. Abelardo’s nephew by way of his sister, is that correct?”

“That’s right.” I drew a few puffs.

“Great. Well, in addition to the monetary assets divided evenly between you and your cousins per stripes, there’s a codicil here granting some specific items. Any idea what they might be?” she inquired.

“I would say I might get his pipes. Maybe some of the ship models he had in his study?” I guessed. “We were close, but we never talked much about his stuff. He liked to show things off at faculty parties and things like that, but not with me.”

“Well,” she said, “you’re definitely getting his smoking stuff. I’m surprised he made it so long, smoking like he did.” She eyed me. “Let me know, by the way, if you ever need to put together an estate.”

“Noted,” I laughed, putting the pipe on the table to cool down. “Anything else?”

“That stuff was actually in the Will,” she clarified. She picked up the fountain pen and, without pressing the nib against the page, began following the lines of the document. “The codicil here amends Mr. Abelardo’s library bequest. Whereas before his whole collection of books was supposed to go to the Nimitz Library at the Naval Academy, I am pleased to inform you will be the beneficiary of six volumes. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Sir. Edward Gibbon, published by W. Strahan and T. Cadell in London, 1776.” At this point she was scanning the document itself, informing me of its contents discursively. “You’re going to need to go to Nimitz to get it, because they already have all his books in storage,” she droned. “You should also find a letter addressed to you enclosed in the first volume.” She gave me the instructions for claiming the set.

After confirming that I understood that to which I was entitled, I asked if she’d like a drink. “Since you haven’t closed it down yet, we can just put it on Brutus’s bill,” I joked. She agreed and we had a split of champagne, which she sipped at politely. She ranted about the rise of online estate planning and showed me a few pictures of her children, one of whom was about to matriculate at UVA. I told her about a new wind farm they were building off the coast.

The following weekend I followed my instructions dutifully and showed up at the Nimitz Library, asking for the Acquisitions Services manager. “Mr. L’Enfant?” asked the manager. “I’m Roy. Let’s get you your books.”

We walked down a hallway past the front desk and swiped into a room filled mostly with new books. A young woman was at work removing the dust jackets from the books and sticking barcodes onto their inside covers. Roy walked me past her and into another room which was notably less humid and more dimly lit. Here, books weren’t stacked, but were rather arranged singularly or in sets across a number of stainless-steel counters. “Remind me of the author’s name again?” asked Roy.

“Sir. Edward Gibbon.”

“Ok great, should be just down here.” He led us down a row of tables and stopped before a pile of six books behind a label that read HOLD. “We took the liberty of authenticating the set, and it’s legit. Do you want help packing them up?”

We brought the books in two boxes to my car and placed them in the trunk, buttressed on either side by more of my uncle’s stuff. “Alrighty,” said Roy. “Take good care of them.”

I had set up an appointment with César to look the set over. He had sold his vape shop after a few years and had opened a rare book dealership in Washington. When I pulled up, he helped me carry the boxes from my car and we set them down on a desk next to the register. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” he said, taking the first book out and inspecting the cover. He opened it up and found an envelope with my name on it. “Want this?”

I tore the seal open while he looked over the rest of the books. Inside was a note on Brutus’s letterhead:

Cato,

Get yourself a membership at the Club. I’m tired of using up all of my guest passes on you.

Love,

Your Uncle Brutus

P.S.: Don’t let them tell you there’s no smoking.

I smiled and folded up the letter. César had been busy on his computer, and when I asked him how the set looked, he whistled and said, “This is a really lovely couple of volumes. If you’d be willing to sell it to me, I could give you 20,000 for the set of six?” I was impressed by the value. We shook on it and filled out the paperwork.

Liesl and I worked together over the next few weeks to sort out the estate. Once everything was figured, she gave me her card. I discovered that Brutus had left a letter of support with the Boat Club encouraging that they accept my membership. They helped me find a suitable boat—a nice little picnic boat that one of the members was selling—and I put $20,000 down on her. I named her Roman.

On her maiden voyage, I took Roman up the Severn River a way and idled out in a little inlet. I packed my pipe and had a slow smoke.