The Financial Lives of the Poets Read online

  Lt. Reese looks at the ceiling.

  “Most of the time it should be off,” Randy says, “so just hold the knob down for two seconds and it’ll go dark.” I put my wrist out and Randy slides the watch on me. “It has a wireless transmitter, but we haven’t figured out how to use that yet, so for the time being you’ll need to drop it off and we’ll download the files and reset it.”

  He slides a business card to me: R. Thomas—Clinical Social Worker/Therapist, MSS, LICSW. “You tell your friends and family you’re seeing a therapist every Tuesday afternoon. If it’s an emergency, you call this number, you’ll get a voice saying this is Dr. Thomas’s office. You say you need an appointment. Got any questions?”

  I have so many…. “When do I start?”

  “Wake up, fuck-chop,” Lt. Reese says. “You started the second you unzipped that backpack. Now get out there and buy us that grow-house.”

  Randy nods apologetically. “The number we’re assigning you is OH-2. On all reports, all contacts with us, you use that number, CI OH-2. Can you remember or should I write it down?”

  “CI…OH-2.”

  “Good. From now on, you only use our money. We’ll requisition the cash and you bring back whatever you have left. On Tuesdays, we’ll inventory whatever cash and drugs you’ve got, take your reports, and send you back out for the week. The most important part of this job, like most jobs, is record keeping.”

  Lt. Reese steps in again. “And listen, jack-stick, if we catch you with more pot or more money than you’ve recorded…you’re goin’ to jail. Mess up my record keeping, leave anything out, steal five cents, misplace one fuckin’ bud, you’re going to jail.”

  “Okay.”

  “And no more smoking that stuff,” Randy says quietly.

  Ouch. I nod. Stand. Sigh.

  The detectives lean back in their chairs, big men after a big meal.

  “Right now, this must be hard to stomach, but I hope you feel proud,” says my grinning born-again handler Randy, kindly assuager of hurt feelings. “You’re working for the good guys now, helping to protect kids like yours—”

  Then Lt. Reese, sensei of hard reality, interrupts: “—from drug dealers like you.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Stopped by Wood on My Front Lawn

  WHOSE WOOD THIS IS I think I know

  Blocking the path to my front porch

  Sent by the asshole stealing my wife

  Sure it is, of course, of course.

  Oh, I’m done. I slump against the steering wheel. The world looked so clear this morning, so warm. But it’s the same cold, hard world. I pull out the card Randy gave me. I know there is some debate over the effectiveness of various types of therapy, but I’m not a fan of my psychologist, Dr. Thomas’s methods so far. I suppose I’m not really in a position to bargain, but I wish I could get a little real therapy from my phony therapist.

  I feel feverish. Sick. Tired. Think I’m losing my mind. What do you do when you can’t even put your various soul-crushing crises in any rational order? Is it: 1. I’m now a drug-dealing snitch sent out to entrap my friends? 2. My marriage is crumbling, my wife about to have an affair, (2a. And my lame response is to order the material for a tree fort from her boyfriend.) 3. I’m unemployed, broke, and even with the short reprieve on my house, deep in debt. Or is the order: marriage crumbling, drug dealing, going broke. Or broke, drugs, marriage.

  I suppose it’s a judgment call. And now, paralysis seems to have set in. Where would a complete physical breakdown fit in with my various crises? I sit in my car, arms dead at my side, leaning against the wheel, mouth slack, staring at the eleven hundred dollars in lumber on my front yard. It looks small from here; amazing how little wood you get for a grand these days.

  Maybe I should go inside and see if I can smoke myself to death on three ounces of marijuana. Can you OD on pot? Maybe I can get so high I choke to death on a Dorito. I picture Lt. Reese showing my corpse photo to the next poor sap they arrest. It ain’t a bag of leaves.

  My cell rings. It arrives at my face in a quivering hand. Amber Philips. Here we go. Amber must want her weed. I put my thumb on the answer button. But it makes me sick, getting poor Amber in trouble like this. Is this really what I’ve become? I look from my phone to my dark super-spy watch. Okay, undercover operative—what now? I try to remember…Randy said something about protocols…warrants…cell phone traps. Do I answer the call? I suddenly feel so unprepared. Wish I’d paid more attention.

  And then, through the windshield, I see the front door of my house open. And out comes my senile old father, staring suspiciously at the pile of wood. These days, Dad doesn’t like any change in his physical environment. He edges over nervously. He’s wearing his pajama bottoms and a Go Army sweatshirt. He has his battle-ready remote control in his hand.

  I set my buzzing phone down and climb out of the car. It’s cold outside; steam leaks from my nose and mouth. “Hey, this all goes back, Dad. This lumber, it was a big mistake.”

  Dad says nothing, simply pulls the work invoice from the top of the pile, where it’s been stapled. It’s in a plastic envelope, along with the folded plans for the tree fort. I gently take the invoice from him. There’s a signature from the delivery driver, but it’s not LumberChuck’s. Great. I didn’t even get Chuck to deliver my tree-fort wood so that he could see the home he’s wrecking. Christ, what’s a mad genius to do when none of his mad plans works?

  I look up at my father, who has his own mad-genius thing going—wild, gray hair, vacant eyes. I think of asking his advice, but even when he was sharp, Dad wasn’t exactly an expert in the advice department. He almost always deferred to my mother for pep talks, lectures and philosophical discussions. He’d probably be the first to admit that cheering up his children wasn’t a particular parental strength for him—like when I was thirteen and got cut from the eighth grade baseball team. It’s okay, I remember my mom saying; over and over she said this: it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

  “But it’s not fair,” I cried.

  “Damn straight!” I heard a gruff voice, and looked over at the table, where my dad had set down his newspaper. “What do you say we go kick the ass of whatever sorry son-of-a-bitch told you it would be?”

  My father did pass on plenty of wisdom, of course, a lot of it incidental, like other men from his generation, hints and clues glimpsed through his unfailing work ethic and his refusal to ever complain about anything. No matter what happened, the man soldiered on—got up every day and put on that tie and went to a job he knew was beneath his abilities—and anyone who thinks there’s anything more profoundly inspiring than that is fooling himself. I wouldn’t mind talking to that old clear-eyed Sears tie-and-coverall father of mine again. Or better, I wish I was five again, that he’d take my little hand and pull me up on his lap. But we stopped hugging at the time Prior men have presumably stopped hugging for hundreds of years, right around ten or eleven. Teddy, for instance, is out of the embrace business. Franklin: still in for another year or two. I wonder why I can’t hold Teddy, why my father and I can’t hug.

  My dad used to be bigger than me but I’m standing next to him and I’m looking down on that wild hair. His shoulders are thin and drawn in.

  “Dad,” my voice cracks. “I need…help. I’m falling apart here.” And my dad turns and looks at me—and I hear his clear old deep voice, Damn straight—and a kind of epiphany begins to form in my mind—

  It’s all connected, these crises—marriage, finances, weed dealing—they are interrelated, like the physical and mental decline of my dad, and my own decline, like the housing market and the stock market and the credit market. We can try to separate them, but these are interrelated systems, reliant upon one another, broken, fucked-up, ruined systems.

  It’s the same world, the same clear, cool place I woke up to—both sunny and cold.

  And just like that…

  A plan. “Hey Dad?”

  He turns.

  I laugh, probably a lit
tle crazily. “Think it’s too late to go get the sons-of-a-bitches who told me the world would be fair?”

  Dad shows me his remote. “Can we do it after The Rockford Files?”

  CHAPTER 21

  Agent CI OH-2 Goes Rogue

  CHUCK TAKES A STEP back and

  looks at me like I’m crazy.

  Oh I’m crazy, all right! A crazy man

  with a crazy glowing watch!

  Fans whir; warehouse breezes blow through Lumberland.

  “I’m sorry, but this is just…kind of weird,” Chuck says.

  “Yeah, I know,” I say, “but I felt awful about yesterday—”

  “Look, it’s really fine,” Chuck interrupts me.

  “This seemed like a good way to apologize—”

  “Really, it’s not necessary—”

  “So much stress with this economy—”

  “I promise you, it’s just fine—”

  “I’m telling you, this is really good stuff—”

  “I’m sure it is, but I’m not interested,” Chuck says sternly.

  Come on…“It’s a great price—”

  “Look, I don’t mean to offend you, but I don’t smoke pot.”

  My watch glows with failure, picks up my insane laugh.

  “Never too late to start!” I practically yell.

  I cannot buy a break in this life.

  CHAPTER 22

  A Good Old-Fashioned Newspaperman

  SO THE CHUCKHOLDER WOULDN’T buy any pot and implicate himself in a drug-buying conspiracy. Fine. I knew it was a long shot with a stiff like him. And toward the end there, I was probably flirting with entrapment anyway. But still my mission to Lumberland wasn’t a total failure. Chuck did agree to send a truck tomorrow morning to take back the lumber I can no longer afford. And he also agreed to give me a full refund on the lumber, to only charge me one delivery fee, so that’s good.

  Then, with all of the pot-selling weirdness still in the air, Chuck was doing the paperwork for my refund (I stared daggers into that pot-sticker bald spot) and Chuck finally registered my name and address. And I swear his bald spot turned red. He looked up, slowly—into my mad, grinning face, and he gave me the most gratifying double-take, went pale, coughed, excused himself for a minute (long enough to leave a phone message for Lisa, perhaps?) and then he came back looking awful. So I accomplished one of my goals—showing my enemy the face of the man whose life he would destroy. Of course, I didn’t let on that I knew anything about him and Lisa. And before I left, I apologized for trying to sell him pot, and asked him to keep the whole thing between us. “My wife doesn’t know I’m selling pot,” I said. “It would kill her.” Chuck stared at the ground. And right there, in the cold, high aisles of Lumberland, my enemy Chuck Stain finally saw the anguish of the man on the other side of his harmless little flirtation. Even better, he saw the overlapping layers of stalemate and mutually destructive conspiracy here, the untenable situation we are all in.

  In the car now, I laugh again. It always seems strange when maniacal movie villains laugh for no reason, but I’m finding that when you’re in the grips of mania, you really do laugh maniacally. What can Chuck do…tell Lisa? “Hey, your insane husband came in today and tried to sell me pot.” What’s Lisa do then? Confront me? If she does, I’ll just say, “How did you find out about that?” It would be like admitting the affair!

  No, I’ve drawn Prince LumberChuck into our stalemate now, and depending on how fast his mind works, I bet he won’t even tell her. Out of self-preservation, he might think, I do not want to be in the middle of their shit. I imagine the odd, halting conversations going back and forth between them and I get a strange mixture of nausea and glee, my skipping heart about to leap out of my chest. Is this mania? An anxiety attack? A euphoria that precedes death?

  Whatever it is, I am driven by it, and by my epiphany; for the last hour I have known exactly what to do. I am on the righteous team, Randy. And yes, I screwed up my plan with the Prince of Lumber, but Chuck’s refusal to buy weed does not change my mission: I will be a narco–Robin Hood. It’s the only way out: if I’m going to be a snitch, secretly taping people buying drugs, then I’m only going to sell to people who deserve to go to jail.

  I will be the arbiter of guilt and innocence in this messed-up world.

  First order of business, I call the HR department of my old newspaper from a phone booth. “Sorry,” I tell innocent Amber Philips, my watch sitting dark and harmless on my wrist. “I couldn’t get any weed after all.”

  “Aw, it’s probably okay,” she says, and then she tells me that she and her boyfriend have decided to call it quits anyway. “And I mostly only smoked with him.”

  I hang up, happy with my first pardon: Amber Philips doesn’t deserve to go to jail.

  And yet, deserve is such a difficult concept to define. Take money-man Richard, for instance, he of the Mexican Shipping Bonds and commissions on eighty percent losses…does he deserve jail for that? Even as I call him, I wonder if incompetent is the same as guilty.

  “This is Richard Blackmore.”

  No. Being a bad financial planner is not a crime. Watch remains dark. Heart racing.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Richard. “I couldn’t get any more weed after all.”

  “Yeah?” Richard asks. “That’s okay. Honestly, that shit was kind of strong for me anyway. I didn’t get a thing done yesterday. Fine for you, but I still have a job.”

  God, he really is an asshole. I fight the urge to sell to him after all.

  After I hang up with Richard, I call the number I’ve been planning to call ever since this idea revealed itself to me…the moment I asked my father if we could still get the sons-of-bitches who told me the world would be fair.

  M—’s secretary answers. I tell her it’s Matt Prior. And although it kills me, I tell her to say that I’ve called to apologize. Just as I expected, the Idi Amin of newspaper editors can’t resist contrition from someone he’s tortured. I stammer, shuffle, swallow my pride and offer this ass-bag my (God, this is hard) apology. “I’m sorry,” I say, “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

  “I appreciate that, Matt,” he says, and the worst part is that I’ve given him the chance to sound magnanimous. “And I understand. I think we’re both victims of this economy.”

  “Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. “It was wrong to blame you. I hope you’ll accept my apology. I’ve been under a lot of stress.”

  “Sure,” M—says. “This has been stressful on us all.” Just the sound of his voice makes me strangle the steering wheel, as he explains that it’s been hard on him too, laying off so many people. Turns out he isn’t sleeping well at night. (Yeah? Day Four for me, asshole.) “It can’t be easy to be laid off, but at least those people only go through it once. I’ve had to go through it over and over again.”

  Thankfully I’m not driving or I’d have to veer into a telephone pole to make it stop. The poor assassin—all those beheadings! Noisy crowds…guillotine cleanup…constant blade sharpening…

  “I don’t mean to suggest that it’s not hard on people like you,” he says.

  “No, I hear you,” I say. And then, when my hatred is strongest, I gently release the line into the water. “And I know what you mean about stress. I got a prescription for medicinal marijuana.”

  “Did you really?”

  “Yeah. It’s the only thing that helps.”

  “You can get a prescription for that? For stress?”

  “Sure,” I say. “It saved my life. You should try it. The pot they grow these days, you can’t believe it. It’s amazing.”

  “Yeah, I keep hearing that.” He laughs. “But it’s been years for me. Those days are long behind me, I’m afraid.”

  Circling…“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. I hadn’t gotten high since college.” And I give a little hum. College. (Introduce nostalgia and the carefully chosen word: high.) “Man, we used to tear it up back then, didn’t we?” Wait, wait. And how do I k
now that M—smoked in college? He graduated in the 1970s from a state school and went into journalism, the home for authority-questioning slackers; if he didn’t smoke pot, he was the only one.

  “My roommate was from Hawaii,” M—says. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  I laugh nonchalantly. Then: “Hey. You know what? I ended up getting way more than I can use…I mean…I could sell you some, if you want. You should just try it. Amazing stuff.”

  “Oh,” laughs M—. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “It’s perfectly legal,” I say. “I have a prescription.”

  Quiet for a moment. Wait. Wait.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  Wait. Don’t speak. Wait.

  He laughs. “You know what? That actually sounds good. I’d like that.”

  “Yeah? Okay. I could bring it down today if you want.”

  Just like that. Easy. Maybe I’ve found my calling.

  I meet M—in the parking garage of the newspaper. I don’t have a parking pass anymore so I have to walk in. M—is waiting by his car, wearing his fey 1940s newspaper editor uniform, gray suit, suspenders, fedora. He has a small twitch in the corner of his lying mouth, which is perfectly framed by his pencil-thin beard. M—looks around the parking garage and makes a Deep Throat joke. I pretend to laugh. It’s cold and gray all around us. He holds out three fifties even though I told him two hundred. Is he really low-balling me? Guy’s an asshole to the end. Still, I give him one ounce in a sandwich bag. I’d sell at a loss to get this asshole. He closes his eyes, smells it. Smiles.

  I collect the money with the hand wearing the bright watch.

  “I’m looking forward to this,” he says. “My first newspapering job, we got high in the darkroom every afternoon. Everyone got high then.” And then, perhaps worried that I’m judging him, he adds: “Nobody had kids.” Shrugs. “It was the seventies.” Smiles wistfully. “It was a different time, wasn’t it?”