Everything's Eventual

murders on Fridays, fucking on Mondays—but I watch right to the end every day, just the same. I'm especially careful to stay in the living room until the end on Thursdays. On Thursdays I don't even go out to the kitchen for another glass of milk. When World is over, I turn off the TV for awhile— Oprah Winfrey comes on next, I hate her show, all that sittingaround-talking shit is for the Mas of the world—and go out to the front hall.

   Lying on the floor under the mail-slot, there's always a plain white envelope, sealed. Nothing written on the front. Inside there'll be either fourteen five-dollar bills or seven ten-dollar bills. That's my money for the week. Here's what I do with it. I go to the movies twice, always in the afternoon, when it's just $4.50. That's $9. On Saturday I fill up my Honda with gas, and that's usually about $7. I don't drive much. I'm not invested in it, as Pug would say. So now we're up to $16. I'll eat out maybe four times at Mickey D's, either at breakfast (Egg McMuffin, coffee, two hash browns) or at dinner (Quarter Pounder with Cheese, never mind that McSpecial shit, what dimbulb thought those sandwiches up). Once a week I put on chinos and a button-up shirt and see how the other half lives—have a fancy meal at a place like Adam's Ribs or the Chuck Wagon. All of that goes me about $25 and now we're up to $41. Then I might go by News Plus and buy a stroke book or two, nothing really kinky, just your usual like Variations or Penthouse. I have tried writing these mags down on DINKY'S DAYBOARD, but with no success. I can buy them myself, and they don't disappear on cleaning day or anything, but they don't show up, if you see what I'm getting at, like most other stuff does. I guess Mr. Sharpton's cleaners don't like to buy dirty stuff (pun). Also, I can't get to any of the sex stuff on the Internet. I have tried, but it's blocked out, somehow. Usually things like that are easy to deal with—you go under or around the roadblocks if you can't hack straight through— but this is different.

   Not to belabor the point, but I can't dial 900 numbers on the phone, either. The auto-dialer works, of course, and if I want to call somebody just at random, anywhere in the world, and shoot the shit with them for awhile, that's okay. That works. But the 900 numbers don't. You just get a busy. Probably just as well. In my experience, thinking about sex is like scratching poison ivy. You only spread it around. Besides, sex is no big deal, at least for me. It's there, but it isn't eventual. Still, considering what I'm doing, that little prudey streak is sort of weird. Almost funny . . . except I seem to have lost my sense of humor on the subject. A few others, as well.

   Oh well, back to the budget.

   If I get a V ariations, that's four bucks and we're up to $45. Some of the money that's left I might use to buy a CD, although I don't have to, or a candy-bar or two (I know I shouldn't, because my complexion still blows dead rats, although I'm almost not a teenager any more). I think of calling out for a pizza or for Chinese sometimes, but it's against TransCorp's rules. Also, I would feel weird doing it, like a member of the oppressing class. I have delivered pizza, remember. I know what a sucky job it is. Still, if I could order in, the pizza guy wouldn't leave this house with a quarter tip. I'd lay five on him, watch his eyes light up.

   But you're starting to see what I mean about not needing a lot of cash money, aren't you? When Thursday morning rolls around again, I usually have at least eight bucks left, and sometimes it's more like twenty. What I do with the coins is drop them down the storm-drain in front of my house. I am aware that this would freak the neighbors out if they saw me doing it (I'm a high-school dropout, but I didn't leave because I was stupid, thank you very much), so I take out the blue plastic recycling basket with the newspapers in it (and sometimes with a Penthouse or Variations buried halfway down the stack, I don't keep that shit around for long, who would), and while I'm putting it down on the curb, I open the hand with the change in it, and through the grate in the gutter it goes. Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-splash. Like a magician's trick. Now you see it, now you don't. Someday that drain will get clogged up, they'll send a guy down there and he'll think he won the fucking lottery, unless there's a flood or something that pushes all the change down to the waste treatment plant, or wherever it goes. By then I'll be gone. I'm not going to spend my life in Columbia City, I can tell you that. I'm leaving, and soon. One way or the other.

   The currency is easier. I just poke it down the garbage disposal in the kitchen. Another magic trick, presto- change-o, money into lettuce. You probably think that's very weird, running money through the sink-pig. I did, too, at first. But you get used to just about anything after you do it awhile, and besides, there's always another seventy falling through the letter-slot. The rule is simple: no squirrelling it away. End the week broke. Besides, it's not millions we're talking about, only eight or ten bucks a week. Chump-change, really.

III

DINKY'S DAYBOARD. That's another fringe benefit. I write down whatever I want during the week, and I get everything I ask for (except sex-mags, as I told you). Maybe I'll get bored with that eventually, but right now it's like having Santa Claus all year round. Mostly what I write down is groceries, like anyone does on their kitchen chalkboard, but by no means is groceries all.

   I might, for instance, write down 'New Bruce Willis Video' or 'New Weezer CD' or something like that. A funny thing about that Weezer CD, since we're on the subject. I happened to go into Toones Xpress one Friday after my movie was over (I always go to the show on Friday afternoons, even if there's nothing I really want to see, because that's when the cleaners come), just killing time inside because it was rainy and that squashed going to the park, and while I was looking at the new releases, this kid asks a clerk about the new Weezer CD. The clerk tells him it won't be in for another ten days or so, but I'd had it since the Friday before.

   Fringe benefits, like I say.

   If I write down 'sport shirt' on the DAYBOARD

                                              , there it is when I get back to the house on Friday night, always in one of the nice earth-tone colors I like. If I write down 'new jeans' or 'chinos,' I get those. All stuff from The Gap, which is where I'd go myself, if I had to do stuff like that. If I want a certain kind of after-shave lotion or cologne, I write the name on DINKY'S DAYBOARD and it's on the bathroom counter when I get home. I don't date, but I'm a fool for cologne. Go figure.

   Here's something you'll laugh at, I bet. Once I wrote down 'Rembrandt Painting' on the DAYBOARD. Then I spent the afternoon at the movies and walking in the park, watching people making out and dogs catching Frisbees, thinking how eventual it would be if the cleaners actually brought me my own fucking Rembrandt. Think of it, a genuine Old Master on the wall of a house in the Sunset Knoll section of Columbia City. How eventual would that be?

   And it happened, in a manner of speaking. My Rembrandt was hung on the living room wall when I got home, over the sofa where the velvet clowns used to be. My heart was beating about two hundred a minute as I walked across the room toward it. When I got closer, I saw it was just a copy . . . you know, a reproduction. I was disappointed, but not very. I mean, it was a Rembrandt. Just not an original Rembrandt.

   Another time, I wrote 'Autographed Photo of Nicole Kidman' on the DAYBOARD

             . I think she's the best-looking actress alive, she just gets me on so much. And when I got home that day, there was a publicity still of her on the fridge, held there by a couple of those little vegetable magnets. She was on her Moulin Rouge swing. And that time it was the real deal. I know because of the way it was signed: 'To Dinky Earnshaw, with love & kisses from Nicole.'

   Oh, baby. Oh, honey.

   Tell you something, my friend—if I worked hard and really wanted it, there might be a real Rembrandt on my wall someday. Sure. In a job like this, there is nowhere to go but up. In a way, that's the scary part.

IV

I never have to make grocery lists. The cleaners know what I like— Stouffer's frozen dinners, especially that boil- in-the-bag stuff they call creamed chipped beef and Ma had always called shit on a shingle, frozen strawberries, whole milk, pre-formed hamburger patties that you just have to slap in a hot frying pan (I hate playing with raw meat), Dole puddings, the ones that come in plastic cups (bad for my complexion but I love em), ordinary food like that. If I want something special, I write it down on DINKY'S DAYBOARD.

Once I asked for a homemade apple pie, specifically not from the