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I have a cool breeze in my face and the evening sky to my right if little room to manouvre out on the balcony. The stiff breeze ripping up the coast from Patagonia and the south Atlantic had lowered the temperature to a pleasant low 20´s during the day and it was now around 15 Celsius. I feed another log into the woodstove and try not to spill my drink. It´s Christmas and I´m delighted to have an excuse to play with the stove. Parque Camet is busier lately with the tourists rolling in and so I´ve felt safer collecting my branches and I seem to get less stares from people as I ride about on my bicycle. Maybe they´re getting used to me. I had made it home mid afternoon and was glad to find some stale croissants in the microwave to snack on. Dinner is still an hour away at least. I had wanted a turkey or a smorgasboard like mother used to prepare but both meals were out of the question. Isadora had bargained me down to spinach pie and some gnocchis and Mikal was barbequeing meat at the quincho upstairs much to Matt´s displeasure. He promised to bring us down a few portions. Rojas was up there as well with his family and some of the tenants so there was a chance some meat might find it´s way down to us. We managed to find some Patagonian fruit cake and with the sparsely decorated tree and the cooling night, it would do.

I had found a cotton sweater at one of the stalls on Pueyrredon while I had waited for Isadora to finish up at the salon. Then on impulse I had headed up to Luro and bought two used nokias for Isa and Ori. Isa had had hers stolen and Ori had lost hers; or was it the other way around? I had spent almost all the extra cash I had withdrawn from our shared account at the bank but with Isa´s paycheck we should be ok for food next week. Giving them gifts at Christmas was important to me. The ritual was all that was left of my family´s holidays together. Me buying two used cellphones and getting them wrapped at one of the arstesan´s stalls and slipping them into my bag before Isa came striding up Rivadavia to meet me. So there they were under the tree along with the gifts Isa and Oriana have bought and the stove is crackling now and we´re almost onto our second bottle of Saint Lambert, a champagne from Mendoza. I saw the label and had to buy 3 of them, despite Isadora´s protests. Greenfield Park, St Lambert, St Hubert, the Eastern Townships stretching away towards Sherbrooke. Lennoxville just to the south and what was the pub? The golden something ... no ...

Loco, say hi to Diego.
What ... ?

Isa´s out on the balcony and waving the cordless at me. A gust of wind rattles the glass doors and I take the phone. He´s due in a few days at Ezeiza. Apparently there was an inheritance left him by his estranged father. It´s been all Isa and Ori can talk about the last few days. I take the phone and feel my scar tenderly. I feel fairly normal again since the episode but I´m a little nervous over what exactly had happened.

Hola Diego, que tal?
Hola ... Allard ... como ... estas?

Long pauses in his speech. A soft voice but with an edge. We´re both uncomfortable but we plunge ahead and I talk about the weather and my memories of Miami and we loosen up and by the end we seem to be getting along. I hand the phone to Ori who´s gulped down a few glasses already but now just seems content to sip. Kabe has agreed to drive us up to Ezeiza to meet Diego but Isa balked at going. So it´ll be me and Kabe and Ori of course. Isa fills my glass again and glances at me. I miss my family´s tidy little holiday rituals, the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners with our parents and David. It was a renewal, a marking of something half-believed and half-forgotten. Isa is now on the phone with Diego, nodding and laughing. She raises her head when the doorbell sounds. Ori slides quickly to the door and lets in Mikal who´s got a plate of porkchops. I give him a glass which he downs and then he´s back up the stairs to rejoin the party on the terrace. I take the spinach pie out of the oven and Ori ladles out the gnocchis and Isa manages to end the conversation and hang up. She lights some candles and we set the table in the living room and sit down to eat. There were floods in Italy and the Rhine was nearly frozen somewhere in Germany. I´m sure that Matts and Mikal are climate refugees as much as anything else. And more of them are on the way, heading south to Argentina. We open another bottle of Saint Lambert and work our way through what is an unusually large meal for the three of us. When we´re all stuffed, Isa pauses.

Tengo algo para compartir.

We both look at her and wait impatiently. She looks at me first and then at Oriana.

Diego wants us to go to Cruz del Eje with him. He´s inherited one of his father´s properties. And maybe more.
Noooooooooooo!!

Ori´s face is flushed as she shouts. Whether from the champagne or anger is hard to tell. The small town in the northwest of Cordoba is hardly a cultural beacon let´s say. And it´s dry and hot in summer. Isa waits a moment.

Go, not move. To help him sell the properties.
What exactly ... is involved?

It´s easier than me saying ¨how much are they worth?¨. Isa glances sharply at me.

Ni idea ...
Hay mas?
Si. Murieron los otros herederos. En la ruta nueve cuando volco su auto.

We sit silently. With the traffic accident it looks like Diego is the sole reamaining inheritor. Three of them dead in a crash on highway 9. We all look at each other and we all realize that something about this feels wrong. And we all feel scared suddenly. Maybe it was just a traffic accident. And they all just happened to be due an inheritance from Diego´s deceased father. And Diego will be here before New Years Eve.