Chapter One

After Henry dropped me off on the corner of Chard and Pepper I walked slowly, my hand clutching the ones and fives in my pocket as if rubbing them would make them multiply with each step I took. 

I couldn’t stop berating myself for not staying longer at the pier. Not because I wished I’d sold more bait to the tourists, but because it would have delayed hearing the news that I was now homeless.

Homeless!

Of all the firsts in my life—first time I got high, first time I got a UTI, first time I got fired from a job—this was a first I never saw coming. Not when I was high, not when I was swallowing horse pills in agony, not when I was dismissed in the middle of my shift of work on a Monday morning after having called in sick for the entire previous week.

When I thought of everything inside the cottage that now lay under the rubble of the cottage I felt queasy.

My hotplate was buried, as well as my microwave. All of my clothes. A paperback copy of Forrest Gump, signed by the author when I spotted him in the Piggly Wiggly looking at bottles of wine that were priced between $129 and $150. Never again would I be able to listen to The Wedding Singer soundtrack CD that I stole from the newspaper office where I worked for a day proofreading legal ads.

Of course, my entire remaining stock of worms was destroyed, which meant my livelihood was as much a thing of the past as my former home. This realization made me clutch the money in my pocket more tightly.

At the very moment I was wondering if I could sue Remington Striker for depriving me of my means of survival, I was less than a block from the law office of Elliott Carbuncle. I figured if anyone could manage to win the case of a squatter versus the rightful owner of a squat, it was Elliott Carbuncle.

Now, I know when you hear the name “Carbuncle,” your first thought is of “Uncle Carbuncle.” This is no surprise, considering the reach he has on social media and especially on TokeTube.

Of all the stars on TokeTube, Uncle Carbuncle is the biggest—the King of Ding, as it were. Every time he fires up a blunt and sits down at his pottery wheel, he’s guaranteed about two million views and a few hundred new followers. His antics while “throwing” mugs and plates are the stuff of legend, both in pottery circles and among potheads.

It shocks people when they find out that Tommy “Uncle” Carbuncle has a brother, and that his brother is Elliott Carbuncle, Esq. If there were a video-sharing channel called DUI-Tube or DivorceTube, Elliott Carbuncle would be as big a star as his brother Tommy.

Do I know this from experience? Not directly.

But I do know that Elliott Carbuncle successfully defended a bike-riding menace named Lulu Whippy on a charge of reckless endangerment. Her alleged crime happened at the moment a state senator was being trundled into the back of a limousine by security guards after a town hall meeting with constituents went very badly.

According to the reports in the Winkleton Weekly, Lulu Whippy was speeding on the sidewalk with her arms “flailing in the air above her instead of gripping the handlebars of the bike.”

Nobody doubted this, as she was notorious for wearing a huge pair of headphones and gyrating to whatever music she happened to be listening to while she tooled around town. Thus, nobody was surprised that a day finally came when the luck of Lulu Whippy’s close calls and near-misses of pedestrians finally ran out and produced a tragedy.

Even though the state senator was injured and one woman in his entourage suffered a broken ankle, Elliott Carbuncle got Lulu Whippy’s charge thrown out of court. Then he lodged—and won—a counter-suit against the state senator, his body guards, and the company from whom the limousine had been rented.

It was no surprise that Elliott Carbuncle solicited for Lulu Whippy’s case. He knew that Lulu Whippy’s grandmother, Goldie Bloom, had deep pockets and an even deeper love for Lulu Whippy.

Best known as the most miserly millionaire in Kilter, she once fired a server at the Brown Jug, a restaurant she owned, for putting four croûtons on a side salad rather than the mandated three. She called the police and pressed charges when her son, Ford, left the Brown Jug without paying for the toast and coffee he ordered but did not eat due to the fact that he and Goldie got into a screaming match after he went for a second pat of butter and an extra container of jelly to put on his toast.

In addition to her mania for thrift, Goldie Bloom maintained a pathological insistence that Lulu Whippy, her only grandchild, had never done anything wrong in her 28 years of life.

Yes, I reckoned Elliott Carbuncle might help me make lemonade out of this mountain of lemons I was not in the mood to climb. 

As I approached the glass door of his office, I noticed one of those “Be back at…” clocks attached to the glass with a suction cup. The clock hands told me he’d be back at 2:00, but a note under the clock said, “For emergencies, please go to 49 S. Ginger St.”

I thought my luck must be taking a turn: he was at my favorite bar, to which I was happy to make my way on such a terrible day.

<< Prologue | Chapter Two >>