A knock sounded upon my front door at the crack of noon.

Stumbling out of bed and down the grand staircase of my new home in the Hollywood Hills, I opened the door and was stunned to find my father standing before me.

“Pater,” I greeted him coldly.

“Filius” he replied stiffly.

“How have you been?” I asked, trying to be polite.

His head tilted to the side, and he gave me a disapproving look.

“Abandoning our Latin already, are we? This early in the conversation? How far have you fallen child?”

God, I hated this.

Convinced that learning to speak Latin would make me seem sophisticated, my father had forced me to take lessons throughout my childhood, with terrible downstream effects on my social life. I was all too aware that my foolish decision to flaunt my Latin skills at the ninth-grade talent show had single-handedly destroyed my dating prospects for the remainder of my high school years. (Eheu!)

“What brings you here, Pater?” I asked, hoping this joyless reunion would end sooner if I kept things moving along.

“Your mother was worried sick about you,” my father explained.

Pausing, he then mumbled, “No, we both know that’s not believable.”

“Look, I just wanted to make sure your conservator didn’t let you spend your money recklessly,” he confessed.

“So, you basically came to perform an appraisal of my new home?”

“If one wished to express my motivations in the crudest of terms, yes.”

“Then come on in,” I invited him, opening the door widely. “Look around. Take your time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to tell my armed bodyguard that there’s an intruder in the house. Best of luck!”

“I see the neighbor’s house is also for sale. Are there any issues with the neighborhood? Did you investigate?”

“No, the place next door just listed yesterday. I know the guy. And I know why he’s moving.”

“Let me guess. It’s because of you. You’re the problem in the neighborhood, aren’t you child?”

“I am twenty-six years old,” I growled. “For the love of God, will you please stop calling me child? It sounds creepier every year.”

He dismissed my protest with a wave of his hand.

“Now, child, did you know that people conventionally put furniture inside their houses after moving in?”

It was a fair critique. So far, I had purchased an oversized lounger for Jim to sit on, and a mattress for my bedroom. The place did not look crowded.

“Are you here to look at my house or to decorate it?”

“I’m simply concerned that by taking you shopping for antiques to furnish your dorm room, your mother left you helplessly unfit to create a habitat suitable for human life. She coddled you.”

He was really upsetting me.

“The woman I spoke with perhaps twice annually from birth through the age of ten…who then had me shipped me off to boarding school? That’s who you think ‘coddled me?’ Are you serious? I think you should leave.”

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“But I haven’t looked around,” my father protested.

“I’ll send you photos. Just go. I don’t need any more of your BS.”

“I’ve been thinking of adding you back into my will,” he offered, sounding desperate.

“No, you haven’t.”

He paused, holding his breath, then exhaled deeply.

“You know, you’re right, Terrence. I apologize for my clumsy attempts at deceit. I admit that I have not been completely honest with you.”

“This is difficult to say, but the truth is, I’m dying child. That’s why I’m here.”

“I only wanted to see you,” he confessed softly. “One last time.”

Oh, please.

Not the old “I’m dying” routine again. It had worked to stop my complaining that one Christmas, when I was four, and my parents had forgotten to buy me gifts, but the act was definitely getting tired the fifth time around.

“Awesome,” I replied. “Then we’re done. You’ve seen me. You can check that item off your bucket list. Enjoy the remainder of your life. Now leave.”

He would seem to have preferred a different response, based on his crankiness.

“Is that what you want your final words to your pater to be?”

I scoffed.

“Final words? Are you trying claim that you’re actively dying, right here and now? I’m confused. Should I call you an ambulance or an acting coach?”

“There is so much of your mother in you,” my father hissed.

“Great seeing you, Pater,” I lied, ferrying him out the front door.

Once outside, my father prevented the door from closing with his foot, and picked up a bottle of liquor sitting outside. I had no idea where it had come from. He must have left it there himself before knocking on the door.

Handing the bottle to me, he spoke encouragingly, “Say it one more time. Tell me, ‘You have got to go, Pops, but I’m keeping the McDunn’s Single Malt Whiskey.’”

Pops? Whiskey? What was he talking about?

“No,” I replied. “I don’t drink. I don’t want this.”

I tried to hand the bottle back to him, but he pulled away.

“Just do it. Just say what I told you to and I will be on my way back to the airport.”

What was happening? Had my father lost his mind, or was this just another one of his con jobs?

“What’s your angle here, Pater? What is really going on?”

“You won’t do it?” he asked in a pitiful tone of voice.

“Of course not,” I replied angrily.

I watched him deflate. He shouted out to no one.

“Alright everybody. It’s over. We’re done here.”

A small film crew emerged from the shrubs around my house. Things came into sharper focus.

So my father had done all of this simply to film me holding a stupid bottle of liquor?

“Tell me, ‘Pops.’ Did you invest heavily in a distillery?”

“Yes. I took a major position in McDunn Whiskey, and I’m taking a bath on my investment. I need you to make a viral video promoting it. For some reason, beyond my reckoning, you seem to have a knack for these things.”

All in all, it had ended up being one of the most pleasant interactions I had ever had with my father. I hoped that we would do it again, in a decade or two.

“All the best, Pater,” I scoffed, slamming shut the front door.

It was then that Jim finally showed up to see what was causing the racket. Some bodyguard he was.

“Why is there a film crew here?” he asked, gazing out the window.

“My father brought them here,” I explained.

“Your father? Which one’s your father?”

“See the guy with the white hair? The one who looks like a retired timeshare salesman? That’s him.”

“Aren’t you going to invite him in?” Jim suggested.

I was about to launch into a diatribe when Jim’s cell phone rang. He picked it up, answered the call, and handed it to me.

“It’s Emily. She needs to talk to you.”

Emily didn’t ordinarily call out of the blue. I knew the call couldn’t be good news.

“Did you know your father called the judge who ordered your conservatorship? He is questioning my fitness after seeing inside your house. Is it really completely empty? You need to get that place furnished immediately. This is my reputation on the line. The judge has scheduled a meeting for…hold on, I have another call…”

She disappeared.

“That was your father. We cut a deal. He will call the judge and withdraw his complaint if, in return, we let him decorate the house. The expense will come completely out of his pocket, so it is a highly beneficial deal for you.”

I was about to lose my mind.

“Nothing about this is beneficial,” I howled at Emily. “I don’t care about the money, at all. You are trying to let a vampire cross my threshold. I am not letting that man in my house.”

“Give the phone to Jim, Terrence,” Emily instructed me.

“No,” I replied petulantly.

“Fine,” she threatened, “I’ll take care of this.”

The call ended.

Outside, I saw my father receive a call, walk up to the house and hold his phone up to the window for Jim to see.

It was a video call from Emily. She was on the small screen holding up a piece of paper with handwriting reading, “Open the door Jim.”

She gave a little thumbs up sign, to confirm that she meant it, and Jim followed orders.

The front door opened and my father swept in with his film crew.

I walked upstairs to crawl back into bed. It was all too much to handle before coffee. Before I could drift off to sleep, a text message arrived. It was from Emily. She wrote, “Don’t forget about New Jersey tomorrow.”

I didn’t know how much more I could take. I felt completely overwhelmed.

I had totally forgotten about New Jersey.