Chapter 24: What the Deadbeat Left Behind
That evening. The bar.
Andrew had seen Gunther earlier and there'd been no mention of renovations, no talk of the place closing. That was something. It meant there was still time — he just didn't know how much.
Monica hadn't come in yet. Weekends ran her ragged; she was still working her way up the kitchen ladder, doing the kind of hours that left you too tired to do much of anything after.
Phoebe, Chandler, and Ross had all beaten him there. Phoebe kept her own schedule, which seemed to involve going wherever seemed interesting. Chandler worked a job that paid well and asked very little of him in return, which he'd turned into an art form. Ross had the kind of academic position where showing up was mostly optional as long as the research kept moving.
The four of them sat at the bar and talked about nothing in particular. Phoebe, to her credit, wasn't weird about the previous night. She'd apparently filed it away and moved on — no lingering awkwardness, no need to make it a thing. She was like that. Whatever was behind her, she left there.
The pool table opened up and Chandler and Phoebe claimed it immediately, leaving Andrew and Ross alone at the bar.
"How's Carol doing?" Andrew asked, keeping his voice casual.
Ross had been carrying something low-grade and irritable since he walked in — residual damage from Chandler and Phoebe spending the first twenty minutes roasting him about the pink shirt. He answered without thinking much about it. "She's good, actually. She seemed really happy when she got home. How was lunch?"
"Good. Carol's new friend Susan picked the place." Andrew put a small amount of weight on new friend — not enough to be obvious, just enough to plant it. "You coming to the gym tomorrow?"
Ross shook his head. "Work."
"If you get a chance, come by. Susan goes most mornings. Be good for you to meet her."
Ross patted his shoulder, already standing. "Next time. I should get back — Carol will be home soon."
He headed out with the slightly hurried energy of a man who still believed being home when his wife got there meant something.
Andrew watched him go and sat with the quiet frustration of knowing exactly what was coming and having no useful way to affect it. Ross was sharp in every way that didn't involve reading a room he was standing in.
He shook his head, picked up his guitar, and went to work.
He got home at eleven-thirty with seventy dollars and the smell of a bar on everything he was wearing.
The living room was dark. Bonnie was on the couch, asleep, curled up with her face pressed into the cushion. She looked younger when she was out like that — the sharpness she carried around during the day smoothed out into something simpler.
Andrew moved quietly. He set his guitar down, slipped off his shoes, and stood there for a second looking at her.
Huh, he thought. She's kind of a lot when she's awake.
He turned off the lamp she'd left on, showered the bar smell off in the bathroom, and made his way back to his room in the dark. He knew the apartment well enough by now that he didn't need the lights. He found the bed, pulled the covers back, and was about two seconds from horizontal when an arm came around him from behind.
"When did you wake up?"
"When you came in," Bonnie said, her voice thick with sleep. "You think I sleep through noise? I'd have been dead years ago."
Andrew settled in. "Fair."
"I'm not wearing anything, just so you know."
"Go to sleep, Bonnie. I've got court in the morning."
A beat.
"Fine." She shifted against his back. "Night."
"Night."
He was up early, dressed in the one suit he owned — slightly rumpled, presentable enough — with the court summons folded in his jacket pocket. He'd ironed it as flat as it was going to get.
The courthouse steps were still empty when he arrived. He walked a loop around the block to burn off the nerves, noticed the security guard clocking him, and found a bench to sit on instead.
When the doors opened he went in, got in line, and didn't wait long. Early morning courthouse crowds were thin.
The judge — a Black woman in her fifties who had the manner of someone who'd heard every possible story and was no longer surprised by any of them — looked at his paperwork without looking up.
"Hold on," she said. "There's another party named in the will. They're on their way."
Andrew's stomach dropped slightly. He ran through the possibilities. An ex-wife he didn't know about. A creditor with creative lawyers. Or — worst case — a sibling, which would mean splitting whatever was left after the debts, assuming there was anything left after the debts, which with Evan was genuinely not a given.
He waited. The judge went through other paperwork. The clock moved.
Thirty minutes later the courtroom door opened.
The man who came in was somewhere in his mid-thirties, wearing cargo shorts and a short-sleeve button-down that looked like it had been slept in. He smelled like a bar that hadn't been cleaned recently. He had large aviator sunglasses on indoors and was navigating the aisle with the careful focus of someone who was still mostly drunk.
He sat down heavily.
"Andrew Sanchez?"
"Here."
"Charlie Harper?"
Silence. Then a sound that was difficult to classify.
"Charlie Harper."
"Wh — yeah." The man surfaced. He took off the sunglasses. Under them was a face that would've been classically handsome if it hadn't been thoroughly road-tested — strong jaw, good bone structure, the kind of looks that survived a lot of bad decisions. He blinked at the fluorescent lights like they were personally hostile. "Yeah, I'm here."
The judge looked at the document in front of her.
"Per the will of Evan Sanchez: all income generated from his intellectual property rights is to be placed into a fund. This fund is to be managed by Charlie Harper, who will receive three percent of the profits as compensation.
Andrew Sanchez will assume full ownership of the fund upon graduating from college, within a five-year window." She turned a page. "In the interim, Andrew Sanchez is to be employed as a staff member of the Sanchez Fund at a salary of two thousand dollars per month."
Andrew sat very still.
"The apartment at 72nd Street, Manhattan, passes to Andrew Sanchez. Inheritance tax has already been settled from Evan Sanchez's estate." She set down the document. "Any objections?"
Andrew had stopped hearing properly somewhere around two thousand dollars per month. He became aware that the room was waiting for him.
"No objections," he said. His voice came out louder than he intended.
Charlie flinched at the volume. "No objections," he said, then appeared to drift briefly. "That girl last night, man, she was—"
"Complete the paperwork at the window," the judge said, with the tone of a woman who had used up her last reserve of patience. "Both of you. Now."
An hour later they were standing on the courthouse steps with matching envelopes of paperwork.
Charlie put his sunglasses back on and yawned with his entire body.
"You're Andrew," he said. It wasn't quite a question.
"Andrew Sanchez. Did you know my father?"
Charlie squinted at him — or at least pointed his sunglasses at him. "Come on. Let's find somewhere to eat. I haven't had anything since yesterday and I'm dying."
He started down the steps without waiting to see if Andrew was following.
Andrew followed.
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