The Financial Lives of the Poets Page 17

  How much capital does a consortium need?

  Say a homeless photographer begs ten on the street

  (Assuming he doesn’t blow it on crack)

  He could help buy four million in weed.

  A sexy ex-copy editor goes to work on her knees

  (At forty-a-hummer and twenty-a-yank)

  How much capital does a consortium need?

  Newspapers everywhere are dying, indeed

  (Even the Times reclines in a red bath)

  Let’s go get that four million in weed.

  Success for my syndicate would be guaranteed

  If there was just one journalist decent at math

  To figure how much our consortium needs

  To buy four million dollars in weed.

  “I think you’re considering it,” Ike says, one corner of his mouth going up.

  “What? No, I’m not considering it. Who considers something like that? I’m just saying…you should have seen this prospectus. I’ve never seen numbers like that.”

  “You are considering it.”

  “I swear. I’m not considering it.”

  “Well…maybe you should.”

  Everyone needs a confidante, that person you tell about the crazy shit you’re thinking of doing—as Lisa apparently did when she confided in Dani her plans to go out with Chuck tomorrow night. But I think these confidantes should be the kind of people who talk you out of big mistakes, not into them. You have to choose such people carefully—better than Lisa and I apparently have.

  My own confidante seems too depressed to be good counsel. “I’m just saying, where else are you going to make that kind of money? Not in newspapers.” It seems my old paper has just announced another round of layoffs. It’s cruel the way they do it, not whacking people all at once, but every three months—picking us off a few at a time, like kids in horror movies. The cuts this time came all the way up to the reporter hired six months after Ike, which means if there’s another layoff—and there’s always another layoff—he’d be next. “Those of us left,” Ike says, “are like survivors in a cancer support group.”

  “I’m really sorry, Ike,” I say, and he looks up at me. Of course, if the cancer support metaphor carries through, then I’m a ghost.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Ike says. “You’re the last person I should whine to about this.”

  “It’s fine,” I say. We’re back at The Picnic Basket, where the morning crowd curls over maple bars and lattes—and where the baristas are two striking women in their early twenties. These girls have no demonstrable skill in espresso-making; they alternate between scalding the lattes, foaming them into oblivion and serving them tepid, but they have two qualities that men our age find unbearably attractive: (1) They are somewhat exotic, with their ratty, box-dyed-hair, their belly-rings, nose-studs and back-tattoos that peek over the low waistbands of their tiny jeans, and (2) they are stunningly uninterested in us.

  Ike claims that the owner Marty once told him that the baristas at The Picnic Basket are all former strippers and prostitutes, that Marty’s wife Beth has a soft-spot for such women (“and Marty has a hard-spot,” Ike added unnecessarily). While it sounds apocryphal, we can’t help glancing over when one of them delivers a coffee to the table next to us. Ike sighs.

  “You think becoming a weed dealer is such a good career move,” I tell Ike, “then let’s do it together. What do you say? Want half a grow operation?”

  “I would if I didn’t have asthma.”

  “We’d be selling it, not smoking it.”

  “Yeah, but people are gonna want to try it and you know how I get.”

  I do know about Ike’s debilitating asthma. I also know that he is allergic to wheat and to pet dander and to peanuts and dust and is, all in all, a shambling mess of a man. Our nickname for him in the newsroom was always Bubble Boy. In the old caveman days, we’d have pushed him out of the pack and let the wild dogs get him. Today, Bubble Boy wears the requisite uniform of a news reporter, the outfit of small town city councilmen and strip-mall insurance agents—reluctant business attire—khaki pants, mismatched jacket, a short-sleeved button shirt whose lumpy collar rejects the badly looped tie like a drunk rejects a liver transplant. Still, it makes me wistful, seeing—in uniform—a soldier from my old decimated unit.

  “It is…you know…illegal,” I tell Ike.

  “Yeah, but is it…illegal-illegal? Isn’t it more like wink-wink-nudge-nudge illegal?” He shrugs. “It’s just pot.”

  “I’m pretty sure running your own grow operation is illegal-illegal. Besides, I don’t want to end up paranoid like these guys, Ike. You should see them. The lawyer’s creepy intense. And the grower? I thought he might start crying at any minute.”

  Ike swirls the dregs of his coffee and throws it back. Sets his cup down. “So…what are you gonna do?”

  “For now…stick to my original plan. First, go sell this.” I hold up my messenger bag, which is on the chair next to me, and which contains a baggie with the three ounces I got from Monte last night. “Tonight, go get the rest of my two pounds. Sell that. Buy more. Keep going until I’m on top of my debts.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I made sixty percent on a few hundred bucks this week without even trying, so assuming I can keep selling, even at a fifty percent profit…spread the word…keep using the money to buy more weed…” I grab a napkin and sketch out the numbers for him. “At fifty percent—say I roll my original investment over four times—nine grand becomes thirteen-five becomes twenty becomes thirty becomes, what…forty-five thousand? That’s all I’d need. Show me another 300 percent profit I can make in a few weeks.”

  Ike spins the napkin to see the numbers: 9, 13.5, 20, 30, 45. “How much is that?”

  Below those numbers, I write: 2, 3, 4.5, 6.75, 10 pounds.

  He adds it up, scoffs. “You’re gonna sell twenty-six pounds of pot?”

  “I think so, yeah. From what I’ve seen, there’s no shortage of buyers. I’m telling you, Ike, this thing spreads virally—everyone knows a weed-smoker who can’t find any, who doesn’t want to buy lawn clippings from his kids’ friends, or risk going to jail.” This is true. I’ve already gotten extra orders from friends of both Amber and Richard. “Then, after a month or two…I quit with my forty-five grand. Get caught up on the house, pay private school tuition.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then…I’ll go back to work. I got a job offer…sort of…”

  “From who?”

  I say into my coffee cup: “Earl Ruscom.”

  Ike winces like someone who has just heard that Earl Ruscom had offered his friend a job. “Not his stupid good-newspaper.”

  “He’s done his homework this time. Problem is, early on, he can’t pay much.”

  “How much is not much?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Twenty?” Ike, on deck for the next layoff, gapes. “Is it that bad out there?”

  I channel Earl: “It ain’t rainin’ silver dollars.”

  And then a yawn overtakes me and something about it bothers me…it’s like a deep crack in the plaster…and I begin to worry: what if this good mood, this seeming good fortune, the clarity with which I can finally see my way through this trouble, what if it’s all just a further sign of my deterioration, some trick of sleep deprivation….

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m just tired. Haven’t been sleeping much.” Or at all—

  Ike checks his watch. “Shit, I gotta go.” Ike stands wearily. “I’ll say this about your new life, Matt. You’re the only person I know who has anything to talk about right now other than budget deficits and layoffs and the death of newspapers.”

  Ike nods at one of the stripper-baristas on his way out; she makes his day by continuing to ignore him. Then Ike sticks his head back in the kitchen, where Marty is making pies and sandwiches for the afternoon rush. I can hear Marty’s gravelly, light East Coast accent: “Hey paperboy. How’s the news business?”
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  “Insolvent,” Ike says, and with that, he’s gone.

  I should get going too, but it feels like something is caught in my throat (why should it be so troubling, a simple yawn?). I swirl the last of my latte, drain it and—

  “Mind if we join you?”

  I look up. Two tall guys loom over the table, the bright ceiling lights behind them. I have to squint to see their faces. One guy is my age, balding, wearing glasses, a sports coat and open-collared shirt. The other guy is younger, with hard-parted brown hair, and a leather bomber jacket over a sweater.

  “No, I was just leaving. You can have the table.” I start to gather my stuff.

  “We don’t want to drive you away.” The younger guy smiles. “Why don’t you sit down with us for a minute, Matthew?”

  Oh shit. Shit, shit. Cops. Anyone who ever worked as a newspaper reporter can spot cops. Especially when there are two of them; in pairs, they give off a vaguely threatening Kafkaesque civil servant vibe.

  No, I tell myself, don’t be paranoid. They’re not cops. It’s this season of paranoia, that’s all. No reason to think they’re cops.

  They sit and I get a better look at them. The older one—shiny head, half-smile and glasses, the toughest accountant at the firm—slides a card forward. The card has a shield on it.

  Yep. Cops.

  Shit shit shit.

  They smile.

  I clear my throat. Pick up the card. Greg Reese. Lieutenant. State Police. Coordinator, Regional Drug Task Force. Shit shit shit shit.

  The younger guy is one of those people who smiles for no reason. He picks up the napkin I have set down. He shows it to the older one. “Ten pounds? Of what?”

  “Concrete,” I say. My face flushes. “For my driveway.”

  “Come on.” Lt. Reese frowns. “You’re paving a driveway with ten pounds of concrete?”

  “Patching it.”

  I nonchalantly reach over to my messenger bag, on the chair next to me, and lower it to my sweating, twitching feet. Inside that bag, next to the empty journal that I began not writing in when I lost my job, sits a Ziploc baggy with three ounces of what I hoped would be the first blocks of my pyramid of wealth, my recovery, my last hope, three ounces of recently harvested grade-A knock-off B.C. bud. I slowly scoot the bag away with my foot.

  “Hey man, you okay?” asks the bald one, Lt. Reese. He must be the good cop.

  “Fine.” Okay, think: (A) They would need a warrant or something, wouldn’t they, some kind of cause before they arrested me? (B) And how could they possibly know? (C) They can’t just search people (can they?). (D) Don’t panic. (E-I) Deny, deny, deny, deny, deny. (J) Yes, nothing to worry about. (K) Don’t give them permission to search your bag. (L) Don’t panic. (M) Stop panicking.

  “I’m gonna get some coffee,” says the younger one, still with that inane cult smile. “You want some, Matthew?”

  “No. Thanks.” My heart beats in my temples. “I gotta get going.”

  Most suspects make their mistakes in the first five minutes. Be coy. Quiet. Reserved. Wait, did I just think of myself as a suspect? Shit, shit—

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” Young Cop asks.

  (N) Don’t talk unnecessarily; guilty people ramble.

  I shake my head no.

  “You work for the newspaper, right,” he says through those perfect white teeth. “I was media liaison officer for the SWAT Team. We busted this big meth house and burglary ring a couple years ago? You interviewed me. I think you must’ve been working a weekend shift or something. You wrote it up in the Sunday paper. My mom has the story framed on the wall, that’s why I remember. I can still see your byline. By Matthew Prior. Staff Writer.”

  “Oh…yeah…sure,” I say, even though I don’t remember.

  And a wave of relief washes over me. That’s why he called me Matthew. My old byline. (For a while, it was all the rage in my newsroom to add an initial, New York Times style, to the front of our bylines, I was R. Matthew Prior.) Of course! These guys aren’t here to arrest me—how could they possibly know what’s in the bag? They’re just cops in a donut shop, that’s all. They’ve just recognized me from my reporter days. I smile.

  Still, this close call, this scare, has taught me a lesson. That’s what my yawn was—a gentle warning. So that’s it for me. I’m done selling pot. Too scary. I take a deep breath. Smile like the young cop. “So…how did I do on your story?”

  “Oh, you did great,” the young cop says. “Got everything right. You still at the paper?”

  I can feel myself relaxing. “No, I took a buyout.”

  “I read about the layoffs there. It’s crazy, what’s happening to newspapers.” Young cop shakes his head again and turns to older cop. “Can you imagine a world without newspapers?”

  “Happily,” says the older cop.

  Then the young smiler turns back to me: “So what are you up to now—”

  “Other than being a drug dealer,” interjects the older, bald one, Lt. Reese. His voice is flat, chilling. He is staring at me. No…he’s staring through me.

  “Wha…what?”

  Lt. Reese leans forward. “Maybe we should look in that backpack you keep pushing away with your feet…Matthew.”

  I feel my jaw trembling.

  “You sure you don’t want some coffee?” the younger guy asks.

  And all I can think is: Huh, so they really do play good cop/ bad cop.

  So young cop gets me coffee. And for the next few minutes, I try not to vomit as I listen to gruff old state cop, Lt. Reese, and grinning young city cop, whose name turns out to be Randy Martinez, explain that: (A) For the past four years, they’ve worked together on a federally funded drug task force charged with infiltrating and breaking up the pipeline of British Columbian marijuana that has flooded the West. (B) Near the end of this very successful four-year tour, they arrested a suspect who, hoping to avoid prosecution, became a CI—a confidential informant—and told them about a quaint little farming town where a local grow-op wunderkind and his skeezy lawyer friend managed to shave off a slice of the legitimate smoke market with their home-grown knockoffs. (C) And while it’s not in the task force’s direct mandate to break up baby grow-ops like this—they would normally just turn such information over to local police—this one was big enough to warrant their attention.

  “So here we are, all ready to make a case against this farm,” says young Randy, “and who should come along?”

  I’m pretty sure it’s me, but my voice is too weak to contribute to this conversation, and anyway, I’m still half-afraid I might throw up if I open my mouth. My hand twitches around the coffee that Randy has gotten me. I just shake my head.

  “Some asshole takes a verbal shit all over our wiretap,” says old Lt. Reese, “bragging that he can sell weed to middle-class fat-fuck hypocrites like himself.”

  I don’t remember bragging that, but I’m not really in the position to deny my middle-class fat-fuck hypocrisy.

  The young cop reminds me of someone as he puts out his hands soothingly. “Here we’ve been working four years to bust a bunch of kids and…what? Now their parents want in?”

  Lt. Reese’s turn: “I just wanted to sweep you up with the other losers, but Randy here says, wait a second, I know this guy. He’s not a bad guy.”

  I look gratefully at Young Randy: No! Not a bad guy! Good guy! If only they could get to know me…I used to give so much to United Way.

  “Here’s what I said,” Randy jumps in. “Lieu, this guy, he’s no drug dealer.’”

  I shake my head no. I’m not.

  “I said, ‘In fact, maybe we should talk to this guy. I think he has goodness in his heart.’”

  I do. Good heart. Goodness.

  Old cop rolls his eyes. “Tell me something. You got kids, Matthew?”

  Before I can answer, young cop asks, “What ages?”

  And for the life of me, I can’t remember. “Uh. Ten? And, uh…the little one…eight?”

  Old c
op: “Boys? Girls?”

  Young cop: “One of each?”

  Me: “Boys?”

  Young cop: “Bet they’re cute.”

  Wait. I know this one. Nod.

  “I don’t know.” Old cop, sighing, turns to his partner: “I gotta be honest, Randy. I’m not feelin’ it. You sure you wanna give this asshole a break?”

  Yes, please. Break. Break, please.

  “Lieu—” Randy starts to plead my case. Even when he frowns he smiles.

  But Reese wants none of it. “It’s fucked up, Randy. This is what’s wrong with our country, this lack of responsibility. Drug dealer dads? Cokehead in the White House?”

  Randy looks at me apologetically. “I don’t think Mr. Prior here is interested in our political views, Lieutenant.”

  Lt. Reese turns back to me. “Matthew, you have any idea how deep a pile-a-shit you’re standing in?”

  I look down at my feet to see the shit and my messenger bag.

  Randy puts his hand on Lt. Reese’s arm, maybe trying to lighten him up. “What’ve you got in there, Matthew, two ounces?”

  “Three.” My voice is a low death-rattle. Wait—what happened to B. through N.: coy, quiet, deny, deny, deny, they have to have a warrant? Be quiet. Wow. I’m bad at this.

  Both cops sit back, maybe a little embarrassed. It’s probably not supposed to be so easy.

  Lt. Reese shakes his head. “It’s the hypocrisy. That’s what’s so offensive.”

  He’s right, of course. I look down. It’s the same move Franklin makes when he’s in trouble, and I picture myself in handcuffs, my boys watching the police haul their father away. My head falls into my hands.

  “Hey,” says Randy. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  “Give me a break,” says Lt. Reese. “We’re fifty fuckin’ miles from okay here, Randy. Don’t sugarcoat it for this delusional fuck-stick.”

  Delusional fuck-stick—right. Amazing, how you can misjudge everything, how blind you can be to the truth. The ways you fool yourself. Believing something has shifted, that the world can be benign. No, this is what it means to come apart—not gently unraveling, but blowing out, a tire on the freeway.