Wife Donna-the-numbskull wore a very expensive and very lowcut bright red dress, which hid her fried-egg breasts. She was about to tell the gathering it was a happy frock for a happy occasion but stopped herself just in time. Donna also wore her traditional Coke-bottle eyeglasses and perpetual frown. Colin and Donna’s spirits were as joyful as the clothes they wore. An antidote, perhaps one could say, to the family attorney’s depressingly dark office.

When everyone was seated, a dour old lawyer named Biggs, who breathed through his mouth, opened the matriarch’s last will and testament and read its contents aloud. The text amounted to one simple sentence: “Edna Durch has left her entire estate—her cash, her real estate, her jewelry—to her son and firstborn, Arthur Durch.”

What followed was the most pregnant of pauses.

Then Colin Durch whispered, “To who?”

“To your brother Arthur,” answered the lawyer.

Donna Durch whispered, “To who?”

“To your brother-in-law Arthur,” answered the lawyer.

“Arthur?” screamed Donna. “Arthur Durch? My brother-in-law Arthur Durch? Edna Durch left every single thing to my fucking brother-in-law? She left everything to that worthless no-good cocksucking son of hers! Please tell me I’m deaf. Tell me I heard wrong.”

“I believe you heard correctly, Mrs. Durch,” said the lawyer calmly. “Your brother-in-law Arthur will inherit every cent of your mother-in-law’s vast fortune.”

“Every cent?” whispered Colin.

“Every cent,” said the lawyer.

“Every cent?” whispered Donna.

“Every cent,” said the lawyer.

Donna Durch dropped dead.

Billy Constable telephoned Jimmy Joel Jenks and asked Jimmy Joel whether he could meet him at Billy’s office after work. Billy waited for Jimmy Joel Jenks outside on the pavement by the Century Apartments’ canopied entrance. When Jimmy Joel arrived, they hugged and slapped each other’s backs. Then they took an elevator to the seventeenth floor. Billy led the way to Sonny’s office/home. They walked into the apartment, and there on the inside of the front door was a large bronze plaque that read:

INTERNATIONAL BOXING PROMOTIONS
SONNY LIEBERMAN—PRESIDENT
BILLY CONSTABLE—ASSISTANT

“Wow,” said Jimmy Joel, wide-eyed.

“It used to be on the other side of the door but the apartment people made my boss take it down.”

“Wow,” repeated Jimmy Joel.

“If only my family could see this,” said Billy.

“Take a picture.”

“Don’t have a camera.”

“I’ll loan you mine. I got me a cheap Kodak. Takes good pictures, though.”

“Don’t matter,” said Billy, shrugging his shoulders. “My folks don’t care much what I do. Don’t know why I even brought it up.”

Billy showed Jimmy Joel around the office. He told Jimmy Joel that his boss Sonny Lieberman had hired two new secretaries and a publicity man named Wayne Whitmore. “Wayne used to do publicity for the Military Academy at West Point,” said Billy. “My boss thought it was real important to have a white-bread guy like Wayne workin’ for his company.”

“Whataya mean a white-bread guy?” asked Jimmy Joel.