I know what it is to be the victim of financial spite, and maybe at times to be its perpetrator. Dollars make for compelling carrots when they dangle from sticks and turn so easily to flogs and whips. As much as some people –shared blood, usually– try to use money to communicate, it’s interesting how quickly and terminally it leads to a lack of speaking, save for a post-mortem “you know what you did.”

So when Leona Helmsley’s bequests exclude her progeny “for reasons which are known to them,” and leave a dozen American Dreams to her Maltese, I’m grateful. Not for her death or the manner in which she left, not for the independence afforded the generation left without her wealth, not for the culture of revenge, nor the needed karma of dogs in the wake of Michael Vick.

I’m grateful that when I imagine saying goodbye, it’s with gifts and letters and without conditions. Despite their offers, I don’t want to read my last parent’s and grandparent’s wills. I’m thankful that I trust they’ll leave me in love, whether there’s a check attached or not. And I’m grateful to believe that anything that has to be said can be said while we’re here.

I didn’t know Ms. Helmsley and I don’t know her family, but it’s pretty clear that this is indeed her will and it certainly is her last testament. And it will last. I wonder what she really got for her money. Usually when you pay a queen’s ransom, you set something –or someone– free.

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I rarely spend more on a drink than I do on an entree, but the moment got the better of me. And context is everything. I’d rather have the time and place to enjoy a beautiful scotch amongst music and art and legitimate women, when for the same money be pressured to buy another watered-down cola at a strip club or be similarly victimized by the passionless allure of Vegas, where the currency of bottles leaves the evening so desperately and equally empty.

Here there’s no contrivance, no conspiracy of regret, as I raise a bell glass of single malt. My eyes taste it first and the fumes make me blink hard, opening my eyes through a Highlands fog that’s traveled all this way to find me.

It takes two sips to adjust. A soda back to process. I don’t see how I’d finish but I can’t see how I’d stop. Conversation continues, eases. The warmth comes over, like a sailor’s wool sweater cable-knit from within.

This is the good stuff. The last drop now smooth like cream. I could have this anytime, I think. I could keep a bottle at home. Think of the money I’d save. Think of the nights I’d never have to leave you.

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