The box of Arlene was hidden in the attic of Mrs. Lindqvist because Arlene did not trust anyone in her own house with what was inside it, and I learned that in the attic itself, at ten that morning, kneeling on a plank with a flashlight in my teeth. Rosa Medina had come with me. Mrs. Lindqvist sat in her kitchen below us with a cup of tea and said, “Arlene brought it up here in 1984, Dewey, on a Sunday, with a stepladder and a Bible. She made me promise not to tell you until someone took it.” There was a pale rectangle in the insulation, where the box had been.
Tanner had taken it. He had come, I learned, because Jordan found a note in a recipe tin that belonged to Arlene, and the note, in her loopy handwriting, said, “For Jordan, if Dewey ever forgets who loves him: Lindqvist, Desert Inn, back corner.” Jordan believed it was a message for her. She told Tanner, who rented a Pickard shirt from a costume shop and went to the attic himself, thinking it would be money. Mrs. Lindqvist, who is ninety one and sharp as a tack, had watched him from the kitchen and written down the license plate of a black Dodge Charger.
Tanner brought the box back that same evening, to my front door in Paradise Palms, with a face the color of paper. Inside, he said, there was no money. There was a stack of the old service tickets Arlene kept from 1980 to 2021, every free call I made to a widow or a veteran, each one stamped “Paid in full,” with her signature. Beneath them was a single sheet. “Dewey, you gave away more than you ever kept. I counted. Do not let anyone tell you that you did not get paid.” I held that sheet for a long time.
A metal box gave one boyfriend the length of a birthday week to bring his girlfriend grandfather back to the truth in Las Vegas.
I gave my terms to Jordan and Tanner at my kitchen table at six o clock that evening, with the old swamp cooler humming on the roof and a pot of coffee between us. I laid the power of attorney on the table, unsigned, and the box beside it, open. I said that Tanner would return the Pickard shirt, apologize to Mrs. Lindqvist in person and pay for a new insulation job in her attic. I said that no one in this family would be asked to sign anything for me, and that Jordan would hear the whole truth tonight, from me, about the company and the money.
Tanner rubbed the back of his neck. He said he had been out of work for months, that the real estate business was a story he told, and that he owed a man on Boulder Highway eleven thousand dollars. He said the power of attorney was his idea, and that when Jordan mentioned a message about a box in an attic, he saw an opening. He said he hated himself on the ladder. “Mr. Pickard, I was ashamed of the fan,” he said. “I mean, I was ashamed of the joke.” I said the fan was the best gift I had received in years, because it taught me everything I needed to know.
Tanner leaped up, snatched the power of attorney off the table, meaning to run out to the Charger with it and burn it in a fast food parking lot, and he bolted out the front door and across the lawn in his rented boots. Jordan shouted his name. Rosa, standing in the kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder, said calmly, “He did not take the box,” and picked it up. I stood in the doorway with my hand on the frame and thought that Paradise Palms had never seen a better show.
At that exact moment a wedding party was passing in the street, on the way to a chapel on Desert Inn Road, and every guest, the groom and the bride were dressed as Elvis. Fifteen white jumpsuits. Fifteen pairs of sunglasses. A white limousine at the curb with a banner that read, “Thank you, thank you very much.” Tanner ran into the middle of the party and was swept into a line dance before he knew what happened. They taught him the hip move. He sang the second verse of a slow song while the bride held his hand, and the whole block cheered.
Tanner tore up the paper himself, at my front gate, in front of fifteen Elvises, which was probably the most witnessed apology in Las Vegas history. He worked three weeks to pay for the attic of Mrs. Lindqvist, and returned the shirt to the costume shop with a letter. He moved to Reno. Jordan did not go with him. She came to see me the next morning with a casserole, and she cried, and I held her. I told her about the company, the money and the two thousand free calls that Arlene counted. She had no idea about any of it, and she asked to hear it again.
In the name of Arlene, who passed in 2021, I started the Arlene Pickard Cool Air Fund. It pays for emergency air conditioner repairs and electric bills for older people during the summer heat, in Clark, Nye and Lincoln counties. In the first year we kept forty four homes cool through July and August, and the first was a retired Air Force mechanic in Henderson named Mr. Baird, whose unit failed on the hottest day of June. The technicians who worked for me for thirty years now volunteer on weekends. Mrs. Lindqvist has a new attic, and she keeps the old service tickets in a drawer.
On my eighty first birthday, Jordan took me to the same buffet at the casino, and this time she brought a gift bag with a fan inside, a plain white one from Walgreens. She had written a note on it with a marker. “For the AC guy. Works great.” I laughed until my chest hurt. We ate crab legs, and she told me she was going to study to be a technician, not a spa girl, and I said I had a truck waiting. Outside, the heat rose off the Strip in waves. I took the fan home and put it on the shelf next to the box.
