Chapter 4 - The Lights Go Out
By Friday afternoon, the reality of living on zero dollars in an eight-thousand-square-foot luxury estate began to crush Alexander beneath its weight.
I spent the entire week working from my private penthouse office in the financial district, dining at Michelin-starred restaurants with institutional investors and staying at a boutique hotel downtown. I didn't set foot in the Oakridge house for four days.
When I finally returned on Friday evening at seven o'clock, the neighborhood was bathed in twilight. Every mansion along our tree-lined avenue was glowing with warm, elegant landscape illumination.
Except for ours.
The Moretti-Bennett residence was pitch-black. The electric wrought-iron driveway gates were frozen halfway open, disabled by the loss of main grid power. The sprawling front lawn, usually kept pristine by our private groundskeeping crew, was overgrown with weeds and littered with fallen branches after the midweek storm. The automated irrigation system was dead.
I parked my car on the driveway, retrieved my flashlight, and walked through the front door.
Inside, the house felt like a cavernous tomb. The temperature had dropped significantly, the central heating unit offline. In the living room, illuminated only by three flickering scented candles, sat Alexander.
He was huddled on the sofa wrapped in three heavy blankets, shivering visibly, staring blankly at a dead television screen. Empty cardboard boxes from a cheap corner pizza joint were stacked haphazardly on the coffee table.
“Eleanor?” his voice croaked, raspy and hollow. He jumped up from the sofa, the blankets falling around his waist. “Eleanor! Thank God! The power went out on Wednesday! The internet died on Tuesday! The HOA sent a process server to the door yesterday threatening a five-thousand-dollar fine for the unkempt lawn! What is happening?”
I shone the flashlight beam directly onto the kitchen island, illuminating a neat stack of formal notices I had laid out before leaving.
“What’s happening, Alexander, is math,” I replied cleanly. “The high-voltage commercial electrical service for this estate runs approximately nine hundred dollars a month. The gigabit enterprise network is two hundred and fifty dollars. The HOA dues are twelve hundred dollars. The private gate maintenance contract is three hundred. When you announced you would not pay your share, I split every single account with the utility providers. I paid my fifty percent share directly to the companies on Monday morning.”
Alexander stared at me in horrified disbelief. “You paid half?”
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“Of course,” I said evenly. “I am a responsible co-habitant. But unfortunately, utility providers do not deliver fifty percent of an electric current. When an account carries an overdue sixty-day balance of nine hundred dollars on the remaining half, they simply disconnect the meter. Did you ask Margaret to cover your half?”
Alexander buried his face in his cold, trembling hands. “She... she doesn't have the money, Eleanor.”
