The Financial Lives of the Poets Page 16

  Dave puts a hand on Monte’s arm. Don’t mess this up. “It does wear on you…but while you’re enduring the stress, you can make a lot of money. We’ve managed to put away well over a million dollars for Monte’s retirement.”

  It’s quiet in the kitchen, long enough for the irony to register: I’ve been working in the “legitimate economy” for twenty-some years and my retirement amounts to four hundred bucks in the bank and the two-and-a-quarter pounds of knock-off weed I have to come back here tomorrow to pick up.

  Monte nods. “I’m going to Mexico. I’m freaked out by the direction of the country. I think we’re headed toward global socialism. This isn’t the America I grew up in.”

  I just stare. The high is descending on me like drawn curtains. I smile. What do you say to a drug dealer afraid of socialism?

  Monte shifts in his big parka. “I want to spend the money I’ve made but I don’t want what I’ve built to fall apart. I’m proud of it.” He looks at the door. “Chet wants it, but he’d be in jail two weeks after I left.” Monte leans forward to confide in me. “He’s kind of a moron.”

  Jamie laughs.

  “Why me?”

  “Monte has wanted to get out for a while,” Dave says. He shrugs. “He has some stress issues, anxiety attacks.”

  “I can’t sleep anymore,” Monte says, and his eyes tear up. “I had a nervous breakdown.”

  Perfect business for me.

  Dave goes on: “So when Jamie told us he met a businessman who could buy real weight, we talked about it, and I said, ‘Hey…maybe this is our guy. He seems perfect for it.’”

  It makes me realize just how low I’ve sunk in my unemployed funk, that it’s actually flattering to hear that I’m perfect for something, anything—even a drug operation. “First of all, I’m not a businessman. I was a business reporter. Look, I never made more than sixty thousand a year in my job.”

  Monte and Dave look at one another; slight winces.

  “And I don’t even have a job right now.”

  “You’ll find something,” says Jamie. “You’re smart.”

  I laugh and rub my brow, sort of touched by Jamie’s confidence in me. “Shouldn’t you guys…I don’t know…sell to criminals?”

  “You can’t just look up the Russian mob in the Yellow Pages,” Dave says. “And you can’t put something like this on craigslist. And most of our customers—” He glances at Jamie “—aren’t the kind of people who could come up with that kind of money.”

  I look from red face to red face. Fat Monte: confused, a little paranoid, flushed. Pocked Dave: intent, brewing, scheming. Jamie: chewing gum.

  And I think of…Lisa. She loves to shop for houses we can’t afford. On weekends she used to like going to open houses for two- and three-million-dollar homes. We’d park down the block so they couldn’t see we were driving a Nissan and we’d try to look like BMW people, and then we’d walk through these big, grand homes and pretend to be considering whether the indoor lap pool was big enough for our kids (when they came home from boarding school); whether the subzero refrigerator and double Viking commercial oven would work for the gourmet meals our staff prepared for dinner parties with our country club friends. (I’d occasionally crack from the pressure and say something stupid: “I like the double oven; we could put fish sticks on one side and crinkle fries on the other.”) Lisa was the master at looking these shit-for-sure real estate agents in the eye, conveying, You bet your ass we belong. In fact, she always looks like she belongs. Maybe I just miss her, but I find myself wishing she was with me on this conversation, helping me seem as if I can afford a four-million-dollar grow operation.

  I don’t know whether I’m afraid of endangering my drug purchase, or hurting the feelings of my sensitive dealers, or whether I want to be the successful businessman they mistook me for—or I’m just high again—but I find myself feigning interest. I pull the two-page prospectus from the envelope. The first thing I see is a kind of quarterly report, including a graph with three bars—sales in blue, gross earnings in black and net profit in green. As a business reporter, I saw enough of these to know a real winner when I see one. That green bar rises above the skyline like the Sears Tower. I flip to the next page…see assets dwarf liabilities and expenses. The return on investment is insane.

  Dave leans in over my shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  I look up into Dave’s acne-scarred face.

  “You’re thinking, too bad we can’t take this public.”

  When he thinks I’ve had enough time, Dave takes the prospectus from my hand. “Slippers, this is the kind of opportunity that comes once in a lifetime. Ask yourself this: ‘Who gets to buy a potential two-million-dollar-a-year business for four million?’ You think Jack Welch wouldn’t jump at this? Or Warren Buffett?”

  And this is when I finally crack…go all fish-sticks-and-crinkle-fries…burst into laughter. The idea of Warren Buffett owning a grow operation gets me. I can’t do the Lisa-at-the-mansion feint, can’t pretend this makes sense. I’m too high, too tired, unraveling and I simply don’t have it. “Guys, I appreciate you thinking of me, but even if it wasn’t crazy…fifteen percent down is still, what, six hundred thousand? Look, that nine grand I just gave you, Monte? That’s all the money I have. In four days, they’re coming after my house. Which bank do you suggest I go to for this? Which bank specializes in half-million-dollar loans to homeless guys looking to buy hydroponic grow operations?”

  Monte looks stung. “I know it seems like a lot.” Again those cheeks flush. The man is so vulnerable. It’s heartbreaking. He is Piggy, Drug Lord of the Flies. “Dave said it might be hard to raise that kind of cash in this economy. Dave thought you might be able to, you know, put together a—” He glances over at his high school buddy “—a contortion?”

  “A consortium,” Dave says weakly, to his shoes, embarrassed by Monte’s slipup.

  “Right,” says Monte, “a consortium.”

  I am sitting in front of the most hapless drug dealers in the world. “A consortium,” I say, full of sympathy, and again, strangely flattered that—to these guys—I look like the kind of person who could put together a bowling team, let alone a four-million-dollar consortium. “Look guys. I’m going to be absolutely clear with you here. There is no way I’m going to buy a four-million-dollar grow operation—”

  “Okay, okay,” Dave says, and for the first time I see something else on his face; thin-lipped and arms crossed, he is pissed off. “We get it.” He stands and shoves his chair toward the table. And then he turns back. “Three-point-eight?”

  CHAPTER 17

  In Monte’s Fields

  IN MONTE’S FIELDS THE sweet weed grows

  On a basement farm where row by row

  Water courses through plastic tubes

  Feeding unlikely dreams of rescue:

  Roughly four million dollars in B.C. bone

  Who knows what it is that causes the world to seem benevolent: you rise in the morning and it just feels like something has lifted, some weight. Everything that yesterday looked terrifying today seems benign, maybe even munificent. There’s a certain slant of light, or the turning of those red leaves…or it could be the last of a good buzz or simple brain chemistry; hard to say. Whatever it is, I sit up on the basement couch curled beneath an afghan—I can’t say that I wake, really, since I only slept an hour or so—and my eyes land on a small painting that Lisa and I bought years ago at a little gallery, and for the first time in weeks I feel…hopeful. Clear. The painting is the style that Lisa and I both like—not quite abstract but not overtly figurative either, in between: there appears to be a couple standing near a road, and I don’t know why I missed it before, but now it’s obvious to me: the man in the painting is reaching for the woman.

  I walk over and lightly touch one of the squalls of paint on the dry warm canvas—all reds and oranges and browns—and then I climb the basement stairs and glance outside; it’s beautiful out there, trees emerging from leaf
y cover like the bones of an old ship. Dad stirs on the living room hide-a-bed, and I hear Lisa and the boys upstairs, getting ready for work and for school and it sounds so wonderful, so sweet; is it possible to fall in love with your own life?

  It’s not that I’ve caught up on my sleep—other than the thirty-minute nap in Drug Dealer Dave’s car and a quick hour this morning, I haven’t really had any. It just feels as if there has been a slight turn in events, a gentle shift in my direction…a clearing, so that I get a glimpse of the other side of this storm.

  It certainly isn’t Lisa’s reaction that cheers me; she turns away on the stairs, as pissed off as I’ve ever seen her. I was hoping that she’d assume my “sleeping” in the basement was a way of giving her some respectful space. But Lisa is seething—greedily anticipating more space between us. I volunteer to make pancakes for the boys and she wordlessly heads back upstairs to finish getting ready for work. I try to catch her eye as she leaves, to give her a short shrug of apology for ambushing her with guilt last night. She wants no part of me.

  And it’s not Franklin who turns my mood, either, because he’s pretending to be too sick to go to school. “You know what I think?” I ask, pulling a 98.8 digital thermometer from his downturned mouth. “I think you’re worried about seeing Elijah, or that Ms. Bishop will still be disappointed in you. But listen, you have to face your fears, Frankie. You have to look them in the eye and say, “I can handle you.” Franklin gives me the first of what will likely be thousands of rolled eyes, and heads upstairs to brush his teeth.

  Dad doesn’t exactly spread rays of sunshine from his ass, either, when I force him to take a shower and he comes out of the bathroom naked, insisting that someone has stolen his clothes.

  No, the evidence of a shift in fortunes isn’t there, but I feel a shift anyway. And when Lisa leaves with the boys—still without a word—I stand at the window and watch her back out of the driveway. She glances up, and this might be the only opening I’ll get today, and so I give her a slight nod and a tip of my coffee cup, just a beginning, a first entreaty, and even though my move is firmly unreturned (she looks away) I feel better.

  I feel better, because today my long road to comeback begins, because today, rather than just taking all of this shit I have a plan of action. Today, I settle all family business (so don’t tell me you’re innocent, Carlo).

  Today I: (1) Go out into the world and sell the three ounces of weed in my messenger bag to Richard and Amber, and (2) get some names from them and begin compiling my pyramid of future customers. (3) Watch a load of lumber get unloaded in our yard—a clear message to my drifting wife that tomorrow night’s “concert” is off, and that, hopefully, no more need ever be said about Chuck Stehne. (3a) (Afterward, I’ll call and have the lumber taken back…it is not to my liking.) (4) And tonight, go back out to Weedland with Jamie to get the rest of my dope, so I can (5) get to work pulling my family out of debt.

  My phone rings. I look down at the number. Earl Ruscom: “Look, Matt. I’m sorry to call so early, but I felt shitty about our meeting yesterday.” Another good thing about Earl: the man loathes small talk. “Offerin’ you fiftee’ when you expectin’ fifty? Sup’m like that’d make me feel like a neutered dog in a bitch factory.”

  “It’s okay, Earl. In this economy…starting any kind of business, especially a publication…I really do understand.”

  “Well, I don’t want my editor feeling like a failure on day one. So I ran the numbers again, tightened some shit up…and I know it ain’t much, but I can go to twenty.”

  Yes, a very subtle shift…“That’s very generous, Earl—”

  “Naw,” Earl says, “it’s shit and we both know it. But it’s all I got, Matt. Look, even if you just think of it as a thirty-hour-a-week job, if this thing somehow takes off…”

  I tell Earl that it’s still not close to the amount of money I’d need to live on, but “I think I’ll probably take you up on it,” and he whoops and that’s when I get another call on my cell. I hold the phone away to see the number but don’t recognize the area code. “Earl, I got a call coming in. Can I get back to you?”

  He’s still whooping and in the middle of some homespun inanity about kicking one’s own ass with someone else’s boot when I click over.

  A woman’s voice. “Mr. Prior?”

  Yes.

  “This is Joy Addison, with Providential Equity? Gil West asked me to look over your file, and to give you a call.” Wait—

  Is it possible

  that my long-lost lapsed lender

  has contacted me?

  As lifesaving news must often be, this phone call is simple, matter-of-fact. Joy says that I’ve been identified as a strong candidate for their mortgage modification program. In the coming days, I’ll get an application packet, and then an account specialist will contact me about setting up a new payment plan, with a new rate. In the meantime, if I am found to be eligible under one of several federal assistance programs—if for instance, I’ve suffered some catastrophic event, say, I’ve been laid off—Yes, that’s me!—and as long as I have a decent credit rating and no active criminal record—again, me!—then I might also qualify for an interest-free loan so that I can bring my account current and resume making payments. And the payments on that interest-free loan can even be deferred. Of course, I’ll still owe what I owe, but with the payments flattened and delayed, I can hopefully get back on top, says Joy Addison. After that, it will be up to me. And if I default, Providential might still have no choice but to file a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure.

  “Sure,” I say, and “No, no, obviously,” and “Of course, of course,” and “I just want a chance, that’s all.”

  “We all deserve a chance,” Joy says and I want to kiss her. I want to kiss Gilbert West. Want to kiss every person at Providential Equity, every person in Benicia, in California, in the United States of America, on Planet Earth.

  “I was getting sort of worried there,” I say. “Four days…you people really know how to take it down to the wire.”

  Joy ignores this, tells me that a packet will be arriving in the mail, and that I am to fill out the forms, sign them, have them notarized and send them back. And she gives me her direct phone number in case I have questions. I thank her. We hang up, and I immediately call right back and when she answers, “Joy Addison,” I pretend that I’ve accidentally hit the return-call button on my phone, but I’m pumping my fist in the air because I have my lender’s phone number! Take that, Terminator mainframe! I’m back, baby…back!

  I stick my head in the living room. “We’re gonna make it, Dad!”

  He holds up his remote control, bares his old yellow teeth and points at the woman on TV. “How’d you like to plow her road?”

  “Only if she’s got a friend for you, Dad.”

  He laughs.

  “You an’ me? There gonna be some world-shakin’, boy!”

  And I bound up the stairs to our bedroom. Hell, I didn’t need sleep. I just needed a break. One or two little things to go in my direction. I can see the way now. I take Earl’s job offer and work part time while I augment my income by selling weed. And with the house temporarily safe from foreclosure, I can talk to Lisa, tell her that everything is going to be okay, that the boys can even stay in private school. I can begin the process of winning her back. This is what I’ve been waiting for, the tiny opening I needed, a message I can send in her love language—as our couples’ counselor called it. After Lisa’s shopping binge, I was mildly resentful about what I saw as her obsession with money and stability. I saw those boxes in the garage as a kind of punishment, a rebuke for quitting my job (and in the process putting our family in danger). I was angry with her, and, frankly, I was terrified that I’d married a shallow, materialistic woman.

  Then we saw this couples’ counselor, a big sensitive bearded guy who diagnosed us as “two people with very different love languages.” Many wives, the counselor explained, share Lisa’s love language: the way they feel mos
t loved is when their husbands work hard to take care of them, to make the family secure and safe. “And tell me Lisa,” the counselor asked, “what’s Matt’s love language? What makes him feel loved and special?”

  Without hesitation, Lisa said, “Blow jobs.”

  “Many men measure love through physical affection. That’s their love language,” the unshakeable counselor said. “So, Matt, can we agree that Lisa’s desire for financial and familial security is no more a sign of shallow greed than your need for sexual love is a sign of depravity? We’re just made differently, don’t you see?”

  Oh, I see all right.

  I glance over at the made bed, Lisa’s side slightly rumpled, mine untouched. Jesus, I am so close to getting back in there. Who knows…maybe this will be a good thing for us…this trouble. Maybe we’ll come through this better than before.

  On the way to the shower, I stop at the window and allow myself a little math daydream. Let’s say I somehow keep turning a fifty percent profit on my weed: roll my nine grand into thirteen five, and roll that into just over twenty and roll that into…I take Earl Ruscom’s job and this opens another vault of thought: the money that Earl no doubt has sitting around, and just then I glance out the window to see an industrious squirrel doing a little last gathering for his chestnut 401K, and I think that as long as we move we are alive; by hustling, that squirrel and me, we can survive even the hardest winter. And as I start for the shower, for just the briefest moment, the old healthy greed returns, and I wonder if maybe I might not even be underselling the potential of this thing….

  CHAPTER 18

  My Consortium—A Villanelle

  HOW MUCH CAPITAL DOES a consortium need

  (I’ve got four hundred in the bank)

  To buy four million dollars in weed?

  A thousand jobless reporters give money to seed

  (At four hundred per out-of-work hack)