"What was she supposed to say?" Hello, I'm Oliver, I just stole three hundred and thirteen million dollars of your father's money, do you want to come and have a big piece? Charlie and I just wanted to know if he was alive. But after meeting you... and spending time with you... I never meant to hurt you, Gillian, especially after all this.
"You could have told me last night..." "I wanted to... I swear."
"Why didn't you do it then?" "I just… knew it would make you damage.
"And you think this doesn't hurt me?"
"Gillian, I didn't mean to lie to you...
-But you did it. You did it," she insists with a shaky voice.
I look away from her, unable to meet her eyes.
"If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't," she whispered.
Gillian sobs at my comment, but that doesn't help the situation for me.
"Gillian, I swear to you..."
"It's not even that you lied to me," he interrupts. And it certainly has nothing to do with a bunch of dirty money," she adds, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. She's still in shock, but I catch the first signs of anger. Still don't get it, Oliver? I just want to know why my father was killed!
As she speaks those words, the tremor in the back of her throat makes her shoulders shudder and she reminds me again what we've come here to do. She lifted her chin and looked at me in the mirror. Dark bags under her eyes. Black hair on my head. And my brother who is still missing.
Please, Charlie—wherever he wants you to be—come home.
"What is he doing there?" an older woman asked, lightly touching Joey's shoulder.
"Sorry, just looking for a lost sock," Joey replied as he walked away from the laundry area. Once in the hallway, Joey turned to look at the woman and saw the "Garbage Room" sign on an adjoining metal door.
-You live here? the woman asked defiantly. She was carrying a plastic container for the clothes and a Gold Medic Alert bracelet. "Of course," Joey said, walking past the woman and peeking into the junk room. Smell of rotten oranges. A waste chute in one corner. Neither Oliver nor Charlie.
"Listen to me, I'm talking to you," the woman threatened.
"I'm sorry," Joey said. It's just that these are my mother's favorite socks. She told me to come here to do the laundry because the dryers are better on the lower floors...
-They are better...
"... I completely agree with you, but now that sock has disappeared, and... the fact is that it was her favorite sock."
Joey stepped away from the woman, hit the elevator call button, and hurried into the elevator as the doors opened.
"I'll keep an eye out in case he shows up!" the woman yelled. But before she could finish the sentence, the doors closed.
"Was it your favorite sock?" Noreen teased through her headset.
"Come on, die," Joey said. I have done my job.
"Yes, ma'am, you've managed to fool the ninety-year-old retirees again in that nest of spies: the Wilshire Residential Complex & Communist Inn."
"Where do you want to go?"
"All I'm saying is that I don't see the point in searching that place—much less the third floor and the laundry room—just because Oliver and Charlie's grandmother once lived there.
"First of all, if Grandma lived on the third floor, she's the one you'll know best. Second, never underestimate a laundry room as a hiding place. And third, when it comes to human behavior, there is only one thing in the whole world that you can count on without a doubt...
"Habit," Noreen and Joey said in unison.
"Don't tease," Joey warned as the doors opened as the elevator reached the lobby. Habit is the one thing that all human beings share. We can't help it. It is what makes us always drive home on the same road; and we buy the coffee in the same place; and brush our teeth and wash our faces in the same order. She stepped aside to let a group of older women in lavender T-shirts and headbands pass by; Joey followed the sign to the pool area and left the building. It's the same reason my father only enters his house through the back door. Never through the front door. I call it a nutcase, he thinks it makes his life easier...
"And that's how all habits are born," Noreen interrupted. Brief, insignificant moments of control in a world dominated by dark chaos. We all fear death, so we all put on our underwear before our socks.
"Actually, some people tend to put their socks on first," Joey pointed out as he looked at the older man by the pool with a horse betting slip and his black socks pulled up to his knees. But when we have problems we look for what is familiar to us. And that is the most basic habit of all.
Joey walked past the pool examining Oliver and Charlie's old favorite playground. For the two kids who were competing in the pool in the Marco Polo Super Bowl, there was no better place than this. But as he watched the brother and sister chase each other around the shuffleboard, he knew that the best games never go away. To his left was a path leading to the condominium sales office. To the right stood the club. One was full of employees. The other was practically hidden by trees and bushes. Joey didn't hesitate for a moment.
"They have a club," he told Noreen as he walked past the hot tub and onto the tree-lined concrete driveway. One turn to the left, another to the right, and the pool area was out of sight. After glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was near him, Joey walked slowly to the door.