Dead Nolte by Borne Wilder Read Free Book Online Page B

limbo.
    She immediately cracked open a beer and sent a good portion
of it into her plumbing, she was going to have to get a good jag going, if she
was going to make phone calls and spread the tidings of great joy to all of
Nolte’s friends and relatives She dreaded informing the 'relatives,' aka the
brothers the most. She absolutely hated the brothers. Assholes with attitudes
were what they were. Cocksuckers of the first order and then some was Alice’s
lasting impression of the two idiots, Nolte had the misfortune of squirting
into this sad world.
    Martha had immediately bailed on phone call duty. She was
too distraught, having been the one to find Nolte all dead and blue. She was
too something, Alice thought. If distraught was another name for chicken shit,
then Martha was surely distraught.
    “Faker bitch,” Alice mumbled. She knew Martha was over at
Nolte’s at that very moment, rummaging drawers and bagging up everything of
value. At least everything of value, she thought Alice wouldn’t remember or
miss, or wasn’t actually mentioned in the will that Nolte had held over their
heads for so long. Nolte had shown both sisters a copy of his will, so Martha
had a pretty good idea of what would and wouldn’t be missed. The will, as it
was written, had helped make them more receptive to Nolte’s deviate requests
and general debauchery, but it had also pitted them against each other and made
them wish he was dead, all the more.
    As soon as Junior came home from work, she would have to put
a foot in his ass. He could drink his allotment of beer on the drive to
Nolte’s, they would need to get their ass on the road and get there before all
the good stuff was gone.
    At least Martha couldn’t take the Corvette. That was
Alice’s. Basically, bought and paid for in the truest sense of the word. The
returning memories of what she had to do with Nolte, to secure that item, made
her throw up a little in her mouth. She opened another can and washed it all
back down with a swish of beer. What’s a little vomit, she asked herself, some
of the things she had choked down over the years would make a Billy goat blow
chunks.
    “You better slow yer roll on the beer, you’re going to get
yourself all slopped up, Dummy.”
    Alice spun on her heel; the six-pack she had consumed, thus
far, took the turn much slower, causing a short spat of dizziness. At her
kitchen table, naked except for the adult diaper, which had become his chosen
form of casual attire, during the last three months, sat Nolte. His naked
beer-gut, a physical trait most would regard as an object of discretion,
spilled over the front of his diaper, partially concealing the yellowed crotch.
A forced grin bared his diaper matching yellowed teeth. Alice screamed. The
world dropped away from her feet, leaving Alice hanging in the air, while her
stomach somersaulted.
    “I’ve lost my damn mind,” she whispered to herself, unable
to comprehend the impossibility before her. She screamed again in a manner that
revisited the wails of torment she had unleashed on the day that dear ol’ Scout
departed this world.
    Alice’s reality seemed to have shifted from center and was
angling off in a direction that she had been, up until that moment, afraid to
look. Maybe Nolte and Martha were playing a sick joke on her. “Martha just
called and told me you died.” Her statement was shaky, almost a question,
almost a stutter, but for all intents and purposes, just an anchor she was
throwing around her sanity.
    “Yep, yep, I surely did. I think it was a heart attack, hurt
like a motherfucker too.” He jutted his chin in a way he thought, accentuated
his smile. “So what’s new with you, Dummy?” He pointed at the beer in her hand.
“Besides your closet alcoholism.” Nolte was no stranger to day drinking
himself, or morning drinking for that matter. If one were to take an academic
look backward in drinking history, he might have even invented it; he was just
in a habit of hiding