The Financial Lives Of the Poets

town.”

Monte’s high round cheeks instantly go red; this amateur botanist drug kingpin is so easily embarrassed.

The whole operation is fascinating to me, and yet there’s something about all of this that is bothering me, too- and not what should be bothering me, that I’m matter-of-factly taking a tour of a sophisticated, illegal grow operation. No, I can’t help wondering something else.

Monte looks back down the dark hallway. “Come on,” he says. I follow him and Jamie back into the rec room. Then Monte closes up Weedland, and we move upstairs.

Dave rejoins us and we sit around the Formica table-Jamie and me on one side, Monte and Dave on the other. Monte’s chair strains beneath his considerable weight.

Chet circles back in, still on his phone, and opens the refrigerator again. “Bullshit…Come on…Not possible…It’s bullshit, that’s why…Come on.”

I glance over at Jamie, who is glaring at Chet through angry, squinted eyes, like a dog about to pounce.

“Chet!” Monte calls. “What’s the matter with you?”

Chet turns to his brother, and shrugs. Then he closes the fridge and moves out of the room onto an enclosed back porch. “Bullshit,” he says on his way out. “Come on, no way.”

When the door closes, Monte smiles. He rests his big red-raw steak-slab hands on the table. “When Dave and Jamie told me about you, I wanted to meet you right away. Nine grand is an impressive first buy.”

“’Course we did a background check on you-make sure you weren’t a cop,” Dave says.

Monte shifts nervously, as if afraid that I’ll be angry at this invasion of my privacy. “We Googled you is all,” he says.

Drug Dealer Dave shoots a glance, perturbed at Botany Monte for popping the illusion of an intensive background search. These guys are worse than Lisa and me, with their glances back and forth, their miscommunications, halting awkward affection for one another. “Anyway,” Monte continues, “we’re excited by your contacts, the new markets you might open up. We’ve always thought there was a…a…”

Dave finishes for him. “A demographic we weren’t reaching.”

Monte glances at Jamie. “I mean, the people we use now are great, but Dave and I always thought there were people outside the usual smokers we know. Older people, people with good jobs and money, people who used to smoke and maybe would again if there was a safe place to buy it. And you’re just the kind of guy Dave says would know ’em: Respectable. Not flashy. No criminal record, no reason for the police to suspect you of anything, no tattoos or drug habits or unsavory associations-”

As much as I wish I could stop myself, I can’t, and at the words tattoos, drug habits and unsavory associations, I glance over at Jamie. He is chewing gum, his neck tattoo twitching at every chomp. He pushes his glasses up on his nose and smiles at me.

“-Like I told Dave, if you can come up with nine grand for a first buy? That’s a guy we should be in long-term business with.”

“I appreciate that,” I say. This all seems oddly formal. “But I should tell you: I’m only going to do this a little while, until I get a few things paid off, get back on my feet.”

“Sure,” Monte says. “Sure. But-” And then he leans back in his chair and the legs on the chair splay just a bit, gritting on the

old linoleum floor. I worry the old chair is going to snap. “Dave, do you want to-”

And with that, Drug Dealer Dave leaves again. This must be when I get my dope.

Instead, Monte hands me a small pipe and lighter and I fire one up, feel that first hot burn in my throat and then the sweet smoke. Ah yes. There it is. Two hits and I set the pipe on the table. I feel better already.

Monte holds out his hands.

I take the envelope of money from my pocket-and feel a tug of regret (there it goes). Monte doesn’t count it. The money just disappears in his coat. Then Monte rises, goes to a kitchen drawer, opens it and takes out a quart Ziploc bag (Stoned stock analyst side-note: Watch for SC Johnson and Sons-makers of those popular Ziploc bags-to go public) with a big cigar-sized roll of rich green buds in the bottom. He also removes a baby scale, which he puts on the kitchen table. He sets the baggie on the scale and I see that it’s three ounces. Then he hands me the baggie and takes his chair again.

“I need a little time to get the rest of it together,” Monte says. “You can’t just pull two-and-a-half-pounds off the shelves. And I needed to make sure you actually had the money.” He shrugs apologetically. “Tomorrow night, you pick Jamie up, come out here and get the rest. That’s a little taste. Three ounces. I’ll take it out of the two-and-a-half.”

“Just enough for your glaucoma,” Jamie says, and laughs.

I’m a little confused, and feel stupid that I let them take my money. I wonder if that’s why he had me smoke first-to loosen me up. And why’d they have me all the way out here if they were only going to give me three ounces? Why couldn’t I wait and pay him tomorrow? I shift…there’s a hole in my side where that big stack of money sat.

Monte holds the pipe up. “You good?”

I say that I am and he puts the pipe away in that giant file cabinet of a parka. “Put that away,” Monte says, and so I put the three ounces of weed in my messenger bag. Then Monte yells, “Dave!” and Dave comes back in with his briefcase again and I think, Oh great, more contracts, but instead he pulls out an envelope that is red-stamped Confidential. He slides it across the Formica table to me. “I trust you’ll keep this between us.”

“What is it?”

“A kind of…prospectus. A business plan. The real reason we wanted you to come out here tonight. Now, obviously, you can’t take this with you. You have to just read it here.”

A prospectus? What kind of drug dealers have a prospectus? I glance over at Jamie. He is unflappable, never looks confused, but also never seems to entirely grasp what is going on around him. Maybe he should be a writer.

I look at Dave, and then back at Monte, who has that same tentative, eager-to-please look on his round, red face. He runs bratwurst fingers through his side-parted hair. “Everything you’d need to know is in there.”

Then, as I’m still trying to understand, Chet comes back through the room, eternally talking on the phone: “No fuckin’ way.” He opens the refrigerator and grabs a beer.

“Chet!” snaps Monte again.

“You gotta be kidding,” Chet says into his phone, waving his older brother off. “No fuckin’ way. You gotta be kidding.” And then Chet is gone. I’m actually starting to wish Jamie would crack his skull.

I turn back to Dave. “Why do I need a prospectus to buy weed?”

Dave pokes Monte in the big parka. Nods at him.

“There’s something I’d like you to consider,” Monte says. And

he looks at Dave again. “I’m looking for someone…I mean…Ask yourself this: why go on buying milk when you could have your own cow?”

I look from Dave to Monte. “Because…I don’t want a cow?”

Dave puts a hand on Monte’s arm. “What Monte’s trying to say is that you should think about buying the farm.”

I laugh. But they’re serious. I look from Monte to Dave, to Monte again. Yes. They are serious. “I really just want a little milk. I don’t want a cow.”

Dave shakes his head. “Look, that wasn’t the best analogy. But you really should consider this…it’s a once-in- a-lifetime offer.”

And I don’t know what makes me ask this, maybe the bowl I’ve smoked, maybe simple curiosity: “How much?”

“Well,” Monte says, a little embarrassed. “I’d like to get four million.”

“Dollars?” And I laugh again.

Dave sits back, crosses his arms. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously, Slippers.”

“No,” I say, “I’m certainly not taking it seriously. No way I’m going to buy a four- million-dollar drug business.”

Monte looks hurt again, those cheeks venting pink. “It’s worth a lot more than that.”