The Financial Lives Of the Poets

And, as I’m thinking of the falling value of my own home, Dave taps the prospectus in my hands. “After costs, Monte nets upwards of a million a year. You’d recoup the entire purchase price in four years. With his old buyers, you increase the market even a little? You could do two million a year…pay it off in even less time.”

I have no idea what to say. What do you say to an offer like this? You go in to buy a Chrysler and they try to sell you the whole lot, the whole company? “This is why you had me out here? To try to sell me your drug business?”

“The four million includes equipment, property, plants, everything,” Monte says. “And two weeks of transition and training.”

“And you’re not just buying a business.” Dave says. “You get all of Monte’s knowledge, his accounts, access to markets. You get an experienced lawyer-me. And Monte will agree to a noncompete clause so you don’t have to worry that he’ll just go start up another operation somewhere.”

I stare at them. They’re serious. “Look, guys. Even if I was interested, which I’m definitely not, I don’t know what makes you think I have four million dollars sitting around.”

Dave has a quick answer for this. “Monte would carry the contract. I’d arrange it through a foreign bank. You put something down as good faith, say fifteen percent, and after that, Monte gets a percentage of your sales until you pay it off. It would be like making payments, like any home purchase, except rather than paying your mortgage off in thirty years, you could pay if off in four or five. And make a sweet living in the meantime. Tax free.”

“If it’s such a sweet living, why is he selling?”

I think Monte might cry. He shoots a quick glance at Dave and then says, “I’m tired,” his voice cracking. “I’ve been doing this six years. It wears on you. It’s a young man’s game.”

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 di

rection 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-”