The Financial Lives Of the Poets

CHAPTER 22

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 know 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?”

“Yeah.” God, I want out of there. I feel sick…can’t spend another second near this guy. “Call me if you need more.” My hands are shaking.

“I might do that.” The pot disappears in his coat. “I’m going to have some time on my hands. Have you heard? I’m leaving, too. I quit rather than be a part of this any longer.”

“No. I hadn’t heard,” I say, though I have heard, of course. And I also know that he’s really being forced out. But unlike the scores of people he slagged, M-gets to go out on his own terms, probably with a bonus. A guy like him saves the suits a few hundred grand by marching good people into the wood chipper, then gets to pretend he quit in indignation (even though he stuck around to do the layoffs first, protecting his Vichy loyalists to the end) so he can save face and go around speaking in front of college classes and journalism groups, eventually getting another job ruining some other newspaper.

M-nods, and seems to take my silence for sympathy, which I’m in no danger of actually feeling. “I’ll be okay, though,” he says. “I can always teach. And maybe there are still papers out there looking for a good old-fashioned newspaperman.”

With his last ship still listing in the bay, Queeg wants another one. I suppress a scoff.

Meanwhile M-is warming to our postwar camaraderie. “So you’re out there…in the world. What’s the job market like for old ink-stained pros like us?”

Us. “I don’t know…if you’re willing to work…there’s always something. In fact, I picked up a little freelance work today.”

He smiles wearily and I think his eyes rim with tears. “That’s great, Matt. I’m happy for you.”

I have to look away to keep the sympathy from welling up in me.

“I don’t mind telling you, I’m a little bit scared,” M-says, and tightens his scarf. “Fifty-six? And no job?” He wipes at his eyes. “What if it’s…you know, the end?”

I don’t say anything.

“Well.” He pulls the bag of weed from his coat and smells it again. “Thanks for this, Matt. I think it’s going to help.” And then he puts his pot away again and considers me seriously. “It’s too bad you and I didn’t spend more time together.”

“Well…” I twitch and shudder, glance at my glowing watch and hear myself laugh maniacally again. “Never too late to start!”