I stick my head in the living room. “We’re gonna make it, Dad!”
He holds up his remote control, bares his old yellow teeth and points at the woman on TV. “How’d you like to plow
“Only if she’s got a friend for you, Dad.”
He laughs.
“You an’ me? There gonna be some world-shakin’, boy!”
And I bound up the stairs to our bedroom. Hell, I didn’t need sleep. I just needed a break. One or two little things to go in my direction. I can see the way now. I take Earl’s job offer and work part time while I augment my income by selling weed. And with the house temporarily safe from foreclosure, I can talk to Lisa, tell her that everything is going to be okay, that the boys can even stay in private school. I can begin the process of winning her back. This is what I’ve been waiting for, the tiny opening I needed, a message I can send in her
Then we saw this couples’ counselor, a big sensitive bearded guy who diagnosed us as “two people with very different love languages.” Many wives, the counselor explained, share Lisa’s love language: the way they feel
Without hesitation, Lisa said, “Blow jobs.”
“Many men measure love through physical affection. That’s their love language,” the unshakeable counselor said. “So, Matt, can we agree that Lisa’s desire for financial and familial security is no more a sign of shallow greed than your need for sexual love is a sign of depravity? We’re just made differently, don’t you see?”
Oh, I see all right.
I glance over at the made bed, Lisa’s side slightly rumpled, mine untouched. Jesus, I am so close to getting back in there. Who
knows…maybe this will be a good thing for us…this trouble. Maybe we’ll come through this better than before.
On the way to the shower, I stop at the window and allow myself a little math daydream. Let’s say I somehow keep turning a fifty percent profit on my weed: roll my nine grand into thirteen five, and roll that into just over twenty and roll that into…I take Earl Ruscom’s job and this opens another vault of thought: the money that Earl no doubt has sitting around, and just then I glance out the window to see an industrious squirrel doing a little last gathering for his chestnut 401K, and I think that as long as we move we are alive; by hustling, that squirrel and me, we can survive even the hardest winter. And as I start for the shower, for just the briefest moment, the old healthy greed returns, and I wonder if maybe I might not even be
CHAPTER 18
HOW MUCH CAPITAL DOES a consortium need
(I’ve got four hundred in the bank)
To buy four million dollars in weed?
A thousand jobless reporters give money to seed
(At four hundred per out-of-work hack)
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
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
“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
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
“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,
“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
