Abril Moya was half-Mexican and half-American. Her parents had met and surprisingly fell in love. The love, however, did not last long. When Abril was just ten years old her mother left her. It was something her mother never forgave her for.
She may have never forgiven her mother, but that did not mean she loved her father, in fact, in many ways she hated him more. That made it very awkward that she was now at his funeral. Abril was as polite as she could be and gave as good of a speech as she could, one vague on specifics, but would sound nice to someone who did not know she had issues with her father.
After the funeral, Abril was approached by her father’s attorney, a man who gave off the aura of a varlet, and told her of his last order of her father to him. The attorney told Abril that he had been given instructions to tell Abril to go to her father’s office after the funeral, and that more would become clear when she was there.
While driving there, Abril thought of her father. The reason she did not like him was because of his work. Abril’s father had been a landlord for a lot of people in a run down part of town and he was not liked by his tenants at all. Abril could tell that by the fact that none of them had attended the funeral, even though her father had asked her to invite them all in one of his last letters to her.
In response to the letters she had sent, she had heard many stories about her father, ones that made her sick.
One woman told her that Abril’s father had raised the rent for twelve straight years, through a recession and even though they had told him that it would make them have to choose between allowing their daughter to go to college or not. Abril’s father had said a few racist things in return about how a black woman didn’t even belong in college, and other things that made her shudder just thinking about it.
Another one told her that her father had hired the cheapest, worst contractors he could get to fix a gas leak in their house, and that the occupants did not know if it had actually been fixed or not. The feared that he had paid off the city government to turn it back on and ignore it if any more complaints came in.
Reading through these letters about her father from the tenants had reminded Abril that her dad was a horrible person all over again, that is why she moved out the day she turned 18 and never turned back. She would still get letters from him, and a check every month, which, she guiltily would cash.
She hated him. So when she entered his office, she was unsure of what she would find inside. As she pulled up to a parking spot she was hopeful that whoever bought the apartments and houses that her father had owned would treat the tenants better.
Entering into the room a rush of memories came to Abril. She had not been in this room for years, but it still looked nearly identical. The first thing she noticed was the room smelled how she remembered, a bit stuffy, with a slight hint of something stinky that she had blocked out of her memories. As she looked around the room, trying not to be overcome by the smell she noticed the room was still painted light brown and everywhere she looked she found wood furniture, which she knew must not have been cheap. She couldn’t help but admire how warm the room felt, and she noticed that every piece of wood had a shine to it, the gloss her father had ensured that each piece of furniture had, was still doing its job. She recalled he once told her that natural wood was ugly till it was shined up, then it became the most beautiful thing in the world.
While she was looking around she noticed her father’s work desk, a place he was at most of the time while he was at work, and for the first time she could remember it looked almost empty on top, with one small exception. On top of it, in a bright white envelope which contrasted with the rest of the room was a letter.
She walked over to the envelope and saw written on the outside was her name, “Abril”, in her father’s handwriting. She bit her lip, looking at the envelope, which
looked like the many others she had seen over the years that he had sent to her, and sighed. She sat down in the chair at the desk, her first time ever doing that, and went about opening the envelope. Inside, as she had expected, was a letter.
She was also a bit surprised that the letter was the only thing in the envelope, she had, sadly, gotten used to having a check come with the envelope and a small part had hoped that there would be one last big check for her inside.
She looked down at the envelope and started to read it.
Dear Abril,
If you are reading this letter, it means that I have finally passed on. Writing something that is going to be read after I die is a very strange experience and it makes me think of how I died. Did I get run over by a car, got shot, have a heart attack, or was it the fucking cancer that is tearing me apart day by day? I imagine it was the cancer.
Enough of considering my mortality, this is a happy day for you, so happy in fact, that I left you a present in the top right drawer of the desk you found this letter on.
I am happy to say, that you will be inheriting all my holdings one hundred percent, my stocks, my bank
account, my properties, they are all yours to do with what you want.
As I was saying, there are cigars in the top right drawer to celebrate with.
Abril stared at the letter for a few seconds, then put it down. She needed to think, so she, without really thinking about it, opened up the drawer her father had mentioned and looked in it. He was not kidding, there were cigars there, a ton of them in fact. On top of what looked like, maybe a hundred wrapped up, there was one unwrapped.
Abril grabbed it and looked at it, feeling a small shock when she did so. It brought back the memories of that horrible smell she could smell in very minute detail in this room, the one she had been trying to ignore.
Her father had been a heavy cigar smoker, he would smoke at home and in his office, mainly when celebrating what he thought of as great victories. He made a deal with a new client, cigar, he get paid rent, cigar, he raise rent, cigar.
The smell was something that Abril had grownup with and had hated all her life, she had even been able to block it out, till now.
She was going to put the cigar back when she saw herself in a wooden, full-body mirror that was near the desk. She looked at her reflection and thanks to the fact she had worn a suit to her father’s funeral, she had to admit, she looked nice. She then noticed the cigar, still in her hand and to her surprise, it looked, well, good, there.
She sighed and put the cigar back, shaking her hand, and closed the drawer, then went back to the letter, letting her eyes float over to the mirror and admiring how professional she looked one more time.
With that celebration done, it is time to get down to a bit of business. I imagine you followed my request I made,
I think it was three months ago, and invited all my tenants to my funeral, and I imagine none of them came.
I am not surprised by this, just a bit disappointed. This was a chance for them to make a good impression to their new landlord and they failed at it. I can’t believe how disrespectful they were to me, and to you.
It is that type of disrespect that I find the lower class have all the time, they take and take and take, and expect even more freebies. They talk about dreams of college, or winning the lottery, or getting a pay raise, when I know they won’t get them. They are lazy enough to have to need to live in my apartments, and they expect to move on, ha.
Oh, I forgot, my lighter is in the drawer with the cigars, it might be buried a bit though, sorry, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you that, I hope you can forgive your father.
Abril put the letter down and without thinking opened back up the drawer and looked inside. She didn’t see the lighter so she had to dig through the cigars and find it. She felt a shock as her hand brushed against the opened cigar again, and felt a few more shocks as her hand went searching in the many cigars, finally she found her father’s lighter and pulled it out.
Her father’s tone with his tenants was horrible, and it bothered Abril how he was talking about them, but it didn’t bother her as much as she would have expected. They did have a chance to say their last goodbyes to the person who had been able to put a roof over their heads but failed to do so. It was like her father put it, disrespectful. She shook her head in a bit of shock of her attitude, and looked at the lighter she had just grabbed.
It was an old style lighter with a silver hinge and bottom case. She tried to light it a few times, and succeeded. She smiled and went back to her letter wondering what other things her father’s tenants had done to him, putting her lighter down first.
I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive them however. They are our lessers, they don’t know they are less than us. It is our job to make sure they are taken care of in a way, and if we make money doing it, more power to us.
I would like to conclude with one last thing. I love you, I know you might not believe me, especially since you ran out on me when you turned 18, but I do. It is because of that, that I wanted to make sure you were taken care of and leave everything to you.
With love, your father P.S. Smoke one for me
Abril finished up the letter and felt a small headache form in her head. She rubbed it and soon felt better. She looked down and saw the lighter and with a smile on her face she opened up the drawer of the desk and pulled out the cigar she had
seen that was not in the package, ignoring another small shock. It was time for a celebratory smoke, one for her new windfall and in memory of her dad.
She brought it to her lips, put it between them, and grabbed her lighter. She lit it and brought the flame to the cigar and lit the cigar, something she instinctively knew how to do.
She looked over at the mirror and admired herself. She looked like a very well put together person, one that was much better than the riff raft she had been around before. She took another puff of the cigar and blew the smoke towards the ceiling and started to laugh.
She finished the cigar and then found a roll-a-dex inside a the middle drawer on the right of the desk and looked for a name, one person who she wanted to contact.
She found the name and called the woman.
“Hello”, she started, “Mrs. Brown.” The woman answered that it was her. Mrs. Brown had been the woman who told Abril that her father had made racist remarks about their family.
“Hello, my name is Abril Moya, the daughter of your previous landlord, the one who sent you the letter about him passing away.” Mrs. Brown confirmed that she knew it was her.
“Yes, well, I have been given the properties my father owned and well”, Abril smiled, “I was going over the numbers and found that we are actually losing money on your rent payments.” This was a lie, and Abril felt wonderful lying to this woman.
“Well, I am going to have to raise your rent starting next month by thirty dollars.” Abril waited, and the woman started to complain, and all Abril could do was roll her eyes, if this was too much, the woman would move out. Abril listened to the attempts at sob stories and ignored them, looking down at her nails and wondering if she needed to get them done since she was now a real estate owner.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you Mrs. Brown, I look forward to your rent next month.” She finished, then closed the call.
She leaned back in her chair and smiled, it had felt wonderful to put that woman in her place. She saw the mirror and smiled. She grabbed a wrapped up cigar from the drawer and unwrapped it, not feeling a shock this time.
She brought it up to her mouth and put it in. She lit her cigar and took a puff of smoke before blowing it out towards the ceiling.
She was delighted her father had made up with her.