I managed to avoid Hank for the rest of the day. I ran into Anna Kay at lunch, who gave me an apologetic smile and said, “I’m okay with the math. I don’t need any more tutoring for a while.”

I had just sat down at the lunch table, between Bob and Christopher, when Natasha sat down in the seat opposite me. Again she didn’t ask permission, she just acted.

“Marvin, I am havink flavor you to ask,” she said.

“You want to ask me a favor?” I said.

“Yes. I have gotted invite to costume party, Saturday after Saturday. I want you as invitink. We are makink funny couple, I think.”

“Who would we go as?”

Before Natasha could answer, Christopher did. “As Boris and Natasha, guy! You’re a midget, she’s tall and thin, and she even has the accent. All you need is a black coat and black hat and a fake moustache, and you two will have the prize locked up!”

“I am not a midget,” I said.

Bob said to Natasha, “So is that the plan? You and Marvin, as Boris and Natasha from the cartoons?”

Natasha smiled big. To me she said, “Please is sayink you will go.”

Well, I didn’t like being reminded (again) that I was short, but on the other hand, Natasha hadn’t needed to invite me. “Sure, I’ll go,” I said. “Is this a date?” I asked Natasha.

On either side of me, Bob and Christopher turned their heads to hear her answer. Natasha was well worth dating—she had pale, almost white skin; pale blue eyes; naturally pale blond hair; cheekbones; pouty lips; and legs, legs, legs. Only her tits were ordinary.

Natasha looked at me and smiled sadly. “I not am dayink you. Do you is sayink nyet now? But I am wantink you as friend, Marvin, party or not party.”

“Not a problem, Natasha,” I said. “I will go to your costume party a week from Saturday, dressed as Boris, even though it won’t be a quote-unquote date.”

“Spasibo,” she said, smiling and squeezing my hand.

That night, I had a light homework load, which meant—a free evening! By 7:30 p.m., I was driving my clunker toward the hospital, to visit my Aunt Claire.

I walked into a hospital room that was stuffed solid with flowers and metal balloons. Aunt Claire was loved by everyone, which mainly explained the generosity of so many flowers and balloons. But the other reason for all the stuff in her room was that Aunt Claire had uterine cancer, and wasn’t expected to last another month.

“Ah, it’s my favorite great-nephew,” Aunt Claire said when she saw me.

“Until another great-nephew walks in,” I said. But I was smiling.

I was shocked by her appearance. I had heard the expression “skin and bones” all my life, but now I was seeing it. Aunt Claire looked like someone had shrink-wrapped skin over a skeleton. But what I said was, “You’re looking good, Aunt Claire.”

She smiled crookedly, as if to say I know you’re lying. But what she said back was, “Yes, I’m almost out of here. And the next time you come to my house, I’ll bake some of my super-secret-recipe chocolate-chip cookies.”

“I’ll enjoy them, Aunt Claire,” I said, smiling. But inside I wasn’t smiling, I was horrified. God, it’s like talking to a corpse, she looks so awful, I thought.

Then Aunt Claire said, “Did you know that your Uncle Warren is in this same hospital? Lung cancer, I hear.” Then Aunt Claire eyed me and added, “I don’t think he’s had a single visitor.”

“What, none of his jailbait girlfriends visit him?” I said, laughing. Somehow my obnoxious uncle always managed to have a gorgeous young girlfriend come with him to family dinners.

Now Aunt Claire replied, “Oh, there are two young hussies who visit him regularly. His nurses are scandalized by those women’s behavior, so my nurses tell me. But my point is, Marvin, I don’t think he gets visits from family.”

I laughed. “Well, after he announced years ago that he was leaving all his fortune to the Eisenhower Library? What do you expect?”

Aunt Claire frowned at me. “So you’re saying the only reason you’re visiting me is that you hope to inherit something?”

“Auntie, do I need to remind you? Uncle Warren is an opinionated jerk asshole.”

“True. But now he is a lonely and dying opinionated jerk asshole.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll go pay him a visit right now.”

As I was walking through the hospital to Uncle Warren’s hospital room, I reviewed what I knew about him.

Uncle Warren had enlisted in the Army in 1942, and eventually had been sent to Africa to fight Rommel. In late 1943 the Africa war was over, and so he was in the first wave of Americans invading Sicily. And suddenly Pvt. Harper, who’d been previously invisible in the Tunisia fighting, was daily putting himself in danger. Rescuing injured comrades, charging machine-gun nests, personally wiping out three Panzer crews—Pvt. Warren Harper should have been dead a dozen times a month. But except for shrapnel in his left arm and a shot in the leg, he went through the war without a scratch. By the time the Army handed him his discharge in September 1945, Uncle Warren was a much-medaled First Sergeant. Then, when he returned to civilian life...

Everything continued to go right for him. Everything.

Always he was surrounded by breathtaking women, and they were all always acting like they wanted sex with him.

And suddenly, Uncle Warren was making money hand over fist. To give just one example: He bought stock in IBM in November 1945, three months before ENIAC came online and began the computer revolution. To give another example: He bought scads of shares of Microsoft on the first day of its IPO; years later, while in Seattle for a stockholder meeting, he bought shares in Starbucks when it was starting up.

But his relatives couldn’t stand him, because of one nasty quirk of his. Uncle Warren thought that Dwight D. Eisenhower was our greatest president ever, and nobody around him could talk about anything without Uncle Warren trolling about Ike’s greatness.

Five years ago, Uncle Warren had announced that the Eisenhower Presidential Library deserved his millions more than did his “moron” relatives. After that, nobody but me acted even a little bit nice to him at family gatherings.

My walk through the hospital completed, I stepped into Uncle Warren’s hospital room. I saw no flowers and no balloons, but I did see something at least as nice: a blonde with young skin and a toned figure. She was standing up against my uncle’s hospital bed, alongside his hips, with her backside toward the door.

And it was a nice backside, let me tell you.

Uncle Warren looked surprised to see me. “Sherry, Sherry, stop that, we have a visitor! It’s one of my relatives!”

Sherry did something with the top bedsheet (that her body blocked me from seeing), then she turned around. Now I could see her from the front, and she had unnaturally large tits—that, or she’d won the Breast Lottery like Anna Kay had. When I finally tore my eyes away from her tits, I was shocked to see that Sherry’s face was flushed with sexual arousal.

Uncle Warren rasped, “Sherry, may I present my brother’s son’s son’s son, Marvin Harper. Marvin, this is my odd-days girlfriend, Sherry Benson. Sherry works as a pole dancer at...remind me.”

Sherry smiled proudly. “Right now I’m working at Club Physique, but next week I start work at the Nimfo Club on Woodrow Wilson. Come check me out—ask for `Bubbles’!”

I decided that Sherry was not a rocket scientist. “Um, I’m three years away from legal drinking,” I said.

Uncle Warren rasped, “Sherry, go find the on-call nurse and bring her in here right now. That’s a good girl.”

“But Warren baby...”

“Do it now, Sweet Lips. Or I won’t let you you-know-what, later tonight.”

Sherry pouted, but walked out of the room, her high heels click-clacking. Now came the challenge: talking with Uncle Warren without strangling him.

“So how’d you get here?” Uncle Warren asked. “Take the Smith Freeway?”

“Right,” I said, knowing what was coming next.

“Good man. You know, President Eisenhower started the interstate system.”

“Uh-huh, you’ve told me,” I said. Many times, I chose not to add.

There was an awkward silence, which stretched out. Unusually, my uncle wasn’t trying to dominate the conversation—was he really waiting on what I had to say?

At last I said, “I got invited to a costume party next week. We’re going as Boris and Natasha—you know, the cartoon characters?”

I expected Uncle Warren to point out that Boris and Natasha were Commies, and President Eisenhower had fought the Commies in Korea. But instead, Uncle Warren said, “A costume party! Been a long time since I’ve been to one of those. Going with a girl?”

“Yep. Her name’s Natasha—her real name’s Natasha, I mean.”

“She pretty?”

“Very. And no, she isn’t a Communist.”

“Of course not. You’ve got more sense than that, Marvin.”

A combination click-clack and squeek-squeek announced that Sherry had brought a nurse. Oddly, the nurse was looking me over. She was an oriental woman in her thirties; her nametag said NGUYEN.

After looking me over, she turned to face my uncle. “You needed something, Mr. Harper?”

Uncle Warren said, “Yes, Nurse, when do I get my next pain medication?”

“At six tomorrow morning, Mister Harper.”

“That’s what I thought. Sorry to bother you.”

“No problem, Mr. Harper,” she said.

I couldn’t shake the weird feeling that this boring conversation was being staged for my benefit. That feeling got even stronger when Nurse Nguyen glanced at me and said, “By the way, Mr. Harper, who’s your visitor?”

“This is Marvin Harper, a great-grandson of my brother Herbert,” Uncle Warren replied.

“Marvin Harper, I’m glad to meet you,” she said. And oddly, I believed her—she was smiling the way I would if I were holding a winning scratch-off ticket.

Nurse Nguyen left, and Sherry took up a position standing by Uncle Warren’s head. Sherry reached into his pajama top and started rubbing his shoulder. She began biting her lip, and I thought, My god, is this blonde stripper actually getting herself hot, rubbing an old man’s shoulder?

Perhaps noticing where my eyes had gone, Uncle Warren said, “You remember how my leg and arm got injured in the war?”

Where was Uncle Warren going with this? Aloud I said, “Yeah?”

Uncle Warren’s eyes bored into mine, as if he was trying to tell me something important. “I got hurt because I didn’t think something through. I bet my ration, Jackson, about that.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. Not now. But by next Sunday, I think you’ll understand. And then you’ll want to talk with me.”

“Uncle Warren? No offense, but you and I aren’t close. I can’t imagine me having a heart-to-heart with you.”

Uncle Warren wheezed a raspy laugh. “Not close? We aren’t, boy, not even slightly. Not today. But I have a feeling we both are going to have a very eventful week.”

A minute later, I had said my goodbyes to Uncle Warren and nodded to Sherry (who gave me a distracted smile in reply). I was just turning to leave when Uncle Warren rasped, “Marvin.”

“Yes?”

“I told my lawyer to read my will right after my funeral. But I also told him not to file my will till a week after I die. I bet my ration, Jackson, that you’ll find this is useful information.”

I thought that Uncle Warren would outlive Aunt Claire by weeks. But nope, he died just four days after our strange conversation.

He died Friday morning. Friday afternoon, as soon as school ended, Uncle Warren’s probate lawyer called me.