AUNT EUNICE AND THE ENVELOPE

AUNT EUNICE AND THE ENVELOPE

“I don’t understand.” Kevin stared apprehensively at the man before him, a burly middle-aged man with pink bonbonnière in his lapel and a smoldering cigar hanging out of his mouth who had just stepped out of a pristine powder blue Cadillac. It just didn’t make any sense, what this man, who up until a few minutes ago had been a complete stranger, was saying to him! Everything seemed upside down and backwards now.

He closed his eyes and, like rerunning a movie tried to remember the last 10 minutes.

Starting when he had arrived at the corner of Washington Boulevard and State Street. This barrel-chested man with the stinking cigar had shaken Kevin’s hand as though he was pumping a lever on a slot machine at the casino, and then stuck both thumbs under his suspenders and grinned at him.

“It’s your lucky day, Kevin. I’m Cap Morgan. Happy to make your acquaintance, and you should be happy to make mine. “

Sure, alright, maybe, but who was the man who had come here to meet Kevin in the middle of downtown Detroit? Was Cap Morgan a good guy or a fraud? Was he actually a captain? Of what? He couldn’t have been more than shoulder-high with Kevin, but he had that self-important air about him, coupled with a gravelly voice like the jazz singer Louis Armstrong. What was it that said okay about a person? Did that Stetson Twenty Sovereign with the jazzy red hatband on Cap Morgan’s head say trustworthy? Kevin guessed that everywhere he went Morgan probably left a trail of throat-assaulting smoke from what were probably expensive Cuban cigars, although Kevin knew nothing about either Cuba or cigars, since he had never once in his nineteen years left his squalid neighborhood of Highland Park. Even more of a status symbol, Morgan had stepped out of that new 1954 Cadillac. An El Dorado, like the one Elvis drove. Was that a character trait in his favor, Kevin wondered. Or maybe it meant the Cap was a slippery character, an untrustworthy shill. It was confusing.

Kevin hoped otherwise. He was nervous about this meeting, and his mouth was dry. It had mattered that Cap Morgan was going to deliver what had been promised because 1954 had not a good year for Kevin Paul Lindsey, but then neither had been 1953 or 1952. Kevin needed a helping hand.

“The way I figure it, a young buck like yourself has his mother if it’s in the cards, his best friend if he is lucky, and...” , Cap Morgan had tapped him on the shoulder with the cigar-holding hand, “ Someone like me, a guy who knows how the world works, Kevin.A gent he can trust to make decisions, the big one, and the whoppers. Not like picking out something on a menu or buying a tie. And that rag around your neck, Kevin, Polka dots? You shoulda asked me. If you paid more than a buck for or that rag you got robbed.”

“No, it was a gift from my grandmother. “

Cap Morgan had tapped his cigar ashes in the street, laughed, and pointed down at his shoes with his cigar. Kevin wished he could cover his mouth and nose. Cuban or not, It smelled like burning rubbish

“Look at these, Kevin, how much you think I paid for these fancy clodhoppers?

Kevin had looked down at Cap’s shoes. They were snappy two-tone wing tips. They looked out of the box brand new.

“How much?”

“Gee, a lot more than I could afford, Mr. Morgan. I know that. I haven’t bought a pair of dress shoes in…”

“Seventeen fifty big ones, Kevin, 17.50”

“Cool.”

“Maybe I’ll buy that rag of a tie from you and shine my shoes with it. Or do you think my shoes would be insulted by a dime store rag like that? What do you think?” Cap Morgan gave another self-satisfied chortle and stuffed the cigar back in his mouth.

What did Kevin think? What he was beginning to think was that this old man seemed cocky, a bit shady even. Could his aunt be wrong about this Cap character?

It mattered. Because Kevin needed help. A pair of fancy wing tips or a nice tie weren’t the only things Kevin couldn’t afford. He was two months behind on the rent. The finance company was threatening to repossess his beat-up jalopy, and now that his aunt Eunice had moved in, he was feeling desperate. He needed to find a way to get some money out of this possible conman.

. It seemed so unfair for a 19-year-old to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. A 19-year-old who had lost his mother and then been abandoned by his deadbeat dad a year later. As if that hadn’t been enough, Aunt Eunice had appeared out of nowhere one day to make his life even more complicated. In fact until she had appeared on his doorstep, Kevin hadn’t even known he had an aunt! Eunice was a tall slim redhead, who had probably been a knockout in her younger years, but was now a difficult demanding woman, always complaining about her migraines and her bad knees and her failing eyesight, pointing out every flaw (and there were plenty) in the rundown walk-up they were now sharing in one of the shabbier neighborhoods in the Motor City..

But Eunice had a feather in her cap, according to her. She and this Cap character standing in front of him now were good friends. (Eunice had intertwined her fingers when she said this with a wink) And according to her, the Cap whom she had met him years ago on a train ride between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. was “loaded.”

That train ride had been an opportunity for him to tell her his life story from growing up poor in the projects to getting “stinking rich” in real estate by converting ugly tenements into toney town houses. Old Cap had taken quite a fancy to Eunice (according to Eunice) and money had changed hands, from his to hers. Money that apparently Eunice, given her love of “nice things” had gone through by the time she had appeared on Kevin’s doorstep, a small overstuffed suitcase with a broken handle in one hand , a pink hatbox in the other and a baneful expression on her face. “Kevin, honey, will you be my savior?”

Of course, what choice did he have? So, when she told Kevin all he had to do was to meet with Cap downtown and be agreeable and friendly, and take the envelope he would give him, the envelope with the cash inside, Kevin asked “Is he for real?” And Eunice gave him her crooked smile, “Well, folks say you need to watch your watch, your wallet, and your wife round old Cap, but he’s been square with me.”

Hmm. Kevin had been biting his lip and wringing his hands all the way there to their meeting place in downtown Detroit this morning to meet the Cap but what other alternative did he have and it wasn’t it his duty as the man in the family, so to speak, to protect his probably near penniless aunt ?.

That’s when the Cap had said ““Kevin stop daydreaming!" How about that little gift I gave your auntie the other day? Is that why you came here to thank me? That should put some shoes on your feet and food in your belly, and a hat or two on Eunice’s head, son?”

“The other day? Aunt Eunice said I was to pick up an envelope from you today. Is there another one? I’m so confused. ?”

Cap looked at Kevin for a long moment and shook his head. “No, there is no other one”. Then he bent over, stamped out his cigar, and shook his head again. “I’ll be a son of a gun! “That envelope was delivered yesterday and it’s probably tucked away in Auntie Eunice’s traveling handbag by now...”

“What do you mean? Aunt Eunice sent me here to…”

“What I mean, son, is that your aunt and my cash are probably halfway to Montreal right now, cozy as two pigs in a poke.’

What? I don’t understand. …then why are you here? “

“Eunice told me that she was sending you here to personally thank me for that gift. Ha! More likely this is giving your auntie time to skedaddle with that $500”

“I don’t understand. She’s leaving town with the money that was for both of us?”“

It’s simple Kevin. Eunice isn’t your aunt ….”

“But she told me….”

“And her name isn’t Eunice. In fact, by the time she gets to Montreal, it will probably be something like Genevieve. Or Felicia. “

“But all isn’t lost, Kevin. Here’s a fiver. There’s nothing like a new tie to make you feel like a new man.”