Michael Crichton - Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

“Supposing,” I began, “supposing you couldn’t get anyone around here to do the run? Would you consider letting her do it then?”

John looked pained. “Peter,” he said, “you don’t seem to understand. You know how I feel but you don’t seem to understand. Well, I’ll tell it to you all over again.” He paused and then said, very deliberately and carefully, “Chicks… fuck… up.” He looked at me.

“I was just wondering.”

“Well, you can stop wondering.”

“Even if you couldn’t get anyone around here, and you had a run set up and a courier was all you needed, you wouldn’t let her do it?”

John was quiet when he said, “Never. Never, never, never. I’d change the run, I’d can the run—Christ, I’d even do it myself. But I’d never count on a chick to get anything through. Chicks fuck up.”

I shrugged, and stood up. There wasn’t anything else to say. I knew that if Musty called in a few days and told John that he only had a day or two to get somebody out to San Francisco to make a quick run before he split for Oregon, John would bust his ass to get somebody. What I’d been hoping was that John would at least admit the possibility of letting Sukie be that somebody. But he wouldn’t, so I had to get to her. There was no other way.

I NEEDED A HUNDRED AND sixty bucks to get to the Coast on a plane. I wouldn’t have needed anything to hitch, but I didn’t have the time for that. So it was all or nothing, and after a few minutes in front of the Student Union Jobs board I began to think it was going to be nothing. I could get two-fifty an hour translating Sanskrit into German for Professor Popcock, which wasn’t exactly my field, or I could get two-eighty bartending on weekends. But I’d already turned down a few of the bartending boys’ jobs in order to make the run, and they took an exceedingly dim view of those who didn’t exercise the right to work when it was waved in their faces. I could go in there bleeding right now, on my knees, begging for a gig, and they’d tell me to beat it. That left a kitchen job as the only real alternative, at one-eighty an hour, which would be two fifty-hour weeks, and I was just about to run down and sign up when I noticed a little note saying that students couldn’t work more than twenty hours a week. Far out, that was about all I had to say.

I went out into the courtyard to take a walk and think.

Once outside, I met Herbie, who was going to the library. I walked along with him, and asked him how I could make a lot of money in a short time. He said, “Eye Tee Gee.”

“What?”

“Get yourself twenty shares of ITG. In six weeks, you’ll be rich.”

“What?”

“ITG,” he said patiently. He had learned, in his seventeen years, to be patient. “Over the counter. It’s really taking off.”

“How much is twenty shares?”

“Two hundred dollars,” Herbie said.

I said I didn’t have it.

And Herbie, to my dismay, said he didn’t know any other way.

“Are you sure?”

Herbie sighed. “Peter,” he said, “you’re talking about legal bread, right?”

“Yeah. Legal bread.”

“Well, that’s a problem, making money fast and legally,” Herbie said, as if it was something I really should have learned a long time ago.

I WANDERED AROUND THE NEXT two days, looking for jobs and asking people what they knew, but nothing turned up. I was just starting to think that hitchhiking wasn’t such a bad idea when I got the note from the Senior Tutor. That was the end. I knew what he’d want. He’d want to tell me that I’d screwed the economics exam—probably royally—and that if I continued to screw things he wasn’t going to be able to help me very much, except to plead my case before the Ad Board and try to keep them from booting me out. Which was cool, his concern and all, but that wasn’t really what went down at a meeting with the Senior Tutor. Those meetings consisted mainly of him telling you how much he worried about you and your work and your habits, which was a drag, and they always ended with him asking you a lot of nosy questions he didn’t really want the answers to, but somehow felt compelled to ask. His field was the minor poets of the eighteenth century, that was the kind of dude he was. Well, the hell with it. I had to go and see him.

He met me at the door of his study, and escorted me to a padded chair with an arm under my elbow.

“Well, Harkness.”

“Sir.”

“Well, sit down.”

“Thank you, sir.” I sat down. As I did he turned away from me, to look out the window. All I could see of him were his hands, which twisted and turned as he built up steam for our little chat. Finally he turned again to face me.

“Harkness, you probably know why I’ve called you in today.”

“Sir.”

“I said, you probably know why I’ve called you in.”

“Yes, sir. I have a fairly good idea.”

“A fairly good idea. Ah-ha.” He went over to his desk and began to fill his pipe. The Senior Tutor had a way of repeating things that you’d said as if they were meant to be funny. It was not very amusing.

“And what would that fairly good idea be, may I ask?”

“I suppose that I screwed that economics exam yesterday.”

“You suppose that you—ah-ha, yes. You mean to say that you suppose that you did poorly on the exam.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You did poorly, Harkness, you did very poorly.” Pausing to light his pipe. “You flunked it, as a matter of fact.”

“Sir.”

“I said you flunked it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well,” he said, looking up from behind billows of smoke. “Is that all you have to say?”

“What else is there to say?” I said. “What’s done is done.”

He smiled benevolently at that. It was one of his favorite sayings. “Well, yes,” he said. “Now I assume that you know what your failure means?”

“I think so,” I said.

“It means that your period of academic probation will not end this spring, but will continue next fall. Until the end of the fall term,” he explained.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Having finished with that, the Tutor seemed suddenly relieved. He sat down in front of me on the edge of his desk, as if to show me how he was letting his hair down. Business was done, and now it was time for an intimate chat.

“Now, Harkness,” he said. “I’ve been looking through your folder. While I’ve been waiting for you, you see, just glancing through. But I must say that I don’t understand your case at all. Not at all.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve been looking at your high school records, both scholastic and athletic. And your recommendations. And the comments of your freshman proctor and advisers, that sort of thing.”

“Sir.”

“And I don’t understand it at all. You’re not performing up to expectations, Harkness. You know that, of course.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes. Well, I was wondering if you could give me any clues as to why. From all the indications of your record, you should have been a sort of Harvard Frank Merriwell.”

“Thank you, sir.” Bloated ass-hole.

“I’ve been wondering if there are any problems you might be having. Personal problems, family problems, financial problems? That I might assist you in straightening out?” He looked at me, but I tried to look blank. “After all,” he said expansively, “that’s what I’m here for.”

“No, sir,” I said. “I don’t think there are. But thank you anyway.” Nosy bastard.

“Well, Harkness,” he went on, “I was wondering, because I’ve noticed a certain trend in your behavioral development, if I may say so. For example, you came here all All-American in football, and yet you quit after the first half of the season.”