On the camelback couch that I had picked out after agonizing over color and style for at least six months.
“What brings you here?” he asked hopefully.
“I would like for you to sign over the car title to me so I can make my annual pilgrimage to the tag office,” I said.
“I would like an apology.”
“And people in hell are partial to ice water. I’m not going to apologize. I had nothing to do with the glitter bomb.”
“A likely story.”
“Believe what you want, but I’ll be sitting here until I get that title.”
Brave words, Stella, considering how disgusting it smells in here.
He frowned. “Even if I wanted to give it to you, I couldn’t. I don’t know where it is.”
“Ken,” I said. “Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”
“I seriously don’t know where it is.”
My bullshit detector suggested he just might be telling the truth. “Fine. Then I’ll look for it.”
“Sure, look away.” He sat down in his battered recliner, confident I wouldn’t be able to find the title. All the better for me if he stayed out of my way.
If I were my car title, where would I be?I asked myself.
I’d probably be upstairs in the office in a pile of mail that Ken hadn’t opened because he didn’t like to open mail and was used to my handling such things. That would be my first guess. I got up and walked a path upstairs, both familiar and awkward, to the second bedroom. The last time I’d made this trek, I’d been holding a bottle of champagne and shedding clothes as I went.
Don’t think about that now, Stella.
I avoided looking at the main bedroom and focused on the smaller bedroom we used for an office.
“What the heck happened up here?” I asked as I surveyed the papers and mail strewn around the office. I immediately regretted it because Ken might come upstairs to answer me.
Blessedly, he didn’t respond.
I started sifting through papers, stacking them in piles according to where I would’ve filed each one. Muscle memory could make a person do the oddest things. I found unpaid bills and bit my tongue to keep from asking him if he knew they were there.
I unearthed tax forms still sealed in their envelopes and could see no evidence that Ken had asked for an extension. For the first time I felt a swell of gratitude that my name wasn’t on any of the official documents. If the IRS came calling, they wouldn’t be looking for me.
The urge to help him was strong—it was hard to overturn almost twenty years of habit in one afternoon—but no. When I found a receipt he’d printed from the internet for Honeymoon Haven cabins, I said nothing. He’d written “business expense” at the top, but I could tell from the dates that it was his supposed honeymoon with Eloise. The man was always trying to claim something as a business expense that he shouldn’t. It was one of our annual fights.
Not my tax return, not my auditors.
After going through all the papers on my desk, I looked behind the upholstered chair that sat beside it. Next, I sifted through the mail on Ken’s desk. I checked underneath his chair and even in the trash can. That’s when I saw the corner of an envelope that had fallen behind Ken’s desk and to the floor.
Eureka!
I opened the envelope, which had been mailed earlier in the spring, and there it was: the title to my Corolla.
After I’d placed it back in the envelope, I tucked it into the back waistband of my jeans and prepared to indulge in some pettiness of the highest order. I gathered the piles of papers one on top of another and then tossed them all in the air over his desk, letting them fall like a wintry mix.
Yep. Pretty much what the room had looked like when I walked in.If you want me to do your paperwork, then maybe don’t sleep around on me.
I grabbed a pen and hopped down the stairs.
“All right, Kenneth,” I said as I approached where he still sat in the living room. “It’s time for you to sign this title over to me.”
