I made a mental note, to make sure that Stephanie and Toni would never be in the same room together. That probably wasn't an impossibility. Vaclav’s affair’s didn't seem to usually last more than a few months based on my limited experience. On the other hand, Emily’s Christmas party was only maybe five weeks away.
Fireworks might definitely fly. After all, they were likely from two separate branches of Catholicism, which weren’t coming back together anytime soon. And Stephanie was a vampire. And she seemed to revel in the kind of seductiveness her new existence had given her.
I handed the folder over to Vaclav and said none of that.
Stephanie lowered the tray onto the coffee table by our sides, leaned over to pour the scotch into the three glasses.
Vaclav smiled at her and picked up one of the glasses. And then he nodded at her and she held the glass to me to pick up.
“Well go ahead,” he invited me drink. “It's a fifty-year-old. To… new arrangements,” he toasted.
We lifted our glasses, I glanced at the vampires then sipped from mine. It was far smoother than I’d expected. Whether it was from last century or maybe the one before, it was pretty good.
So we drank our scotch, and when we were done Vaclav nodded at Stephanie and she withdrew to one of the couches on the other side of his large fireplace to pick up a tablet laying there and begin swiping.
And then he looked at me.
“I think they're going to be some changes in our arrangement after this situation is dealt with,” he told me. “I have already broached this with Emily, although I can tell you she is not entirely happy about it.”
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I looked at him, puzzled.
“What kind of changes?”
I put down my glass.
“Well you see Johnny,” he told me still holding his tumbler. “I've been a lawyer a long time, you know that. A very long time.”
That was true, he'd shown me old documents going back to the nineteen twenties. I couldn’t read them, of course, as they’d been written in either Czech or German.
He was inordinately proud of his personal history. And clearly glad to share some of it with someone. Whether it be a business partner or someone more intimate.
Although I wondered how truly interested Stephanie was in that kind of ancient history.
He took another sip from his scotch,
“You see I had been in property law for almost thirty years now, ever since I left Sudetenland,” he told me. “In fact as long as I've been on this continent property law has been my primary field of work. But as you know things have been changing dramatically on a national, even global scale.”
I nodded, although I wasn't exactly sure how he met the term recently. Vaclav often referred to the disco era as ‘recent’. And that well explained his penchant for wearing bellbottoms when he threw a party.
I was about to find out.
“You know Johnny ever since the world became so much more liberal in the last couple of decades, I’ve seen an opening to embark on a new adventure within my chosen profession.”
“I've been thinking of moving on from property law,” he confessed, opening up his palms. “To something I think will be something more challenging and new and perhaps exciting. To be honest, I haven’t felt such verve since I became what I am.”
He finished by turning his long white fingers at his chest.
“Really,” I replied, growing interested and curious myself. “Exactly what you're looking into?”
“Well I think that the real growth area in law has to be none other than estate law,” he told me. “You are familiar with the changes brought on by the Phoenix act, are you not?”
“Estate law,” I replied. “Yes I can see that.”
There would be plenty of fireworks in that area as the relationship between the living and re-animated were ironed out by the courts. Many newly risen wanted to keep what they had in life, which wasn’t a surprise.
He smiled widely at me.
“I can’t remember when I’ve felt so excited.”