Jess Walter - The Financial Lives Of the Poets

The business plan calls for one tech person and one advertising person on staff, he says, but this could also take a while. Everything will take a while.

“Fine,” I say, and my cell phone rings-it is my Drug Dealer Dave-but I click it off because I’m not about to fuck up this meeting and just then the voice in my head starts in, that awful Matt-this-is-all-too-good-to-be-true voice. I don’t want Earl to see that things have been going so badly for me recently that I would distrust his offer, but the voice tells me: distrust his offer and so I start down the mental list of what I might be missing. The obvious thing is pay, but I feel the need to circle around to that: “Benefits?” I ask. “Health insurance?”

“This is a start-up, Matt,” he says, and shrugs. “I have a plan for the people in my construction and real estate offices, but this here’s more like my restaurants. I could let you buy into the plan at a pretty good discount, certainly better than anything you can get out in the world, but I can’t match or go employer-based. I mean, you can’t give a virgin the biggest bed in the whorehouse, right?”

Whatever. Still love this guy. I take a deep breath. “And pay?”

“I gotta pay you?” He smiles, then makes a face. “Nah, this here’s a start-up, Matt. Ain’ no one gettin’ rich. I ’spect my ranch-han’s to put in some sweat equity, ’specially in the first couple-a-years. In exchange, you’d get real ownership shares, which-let’s be hones’, neither of us knows if they’ll be worth the paper they’re shit on.”

Yes, this is exactly what I was afraid of. “Look, I understand that, but I can’t work for free, Earl. And I can’t just work for stock. I’ve got a family.”

“No one expects you to work for free, or jus’ for shares.” He looks genuinely pained. “But this bird, she ain’ gonna fly weighed down by salaries. In the beginnin’, I’m sorry but I could only pay

you fifty, Matt.”

Fifty? I pretend to have to think about it. Fifty!

Love this guy!

“Look, I know it’s significantly less than you was makin’,” he continues, “but I’ve crunched the numbers and if we don’t keep payroll at a bare minimum, this thing’s gonna go like the salt block at a slaughterhouse.”

No idea what that means!

“You’d have to supplement your income elsewhere…maybe even jus’ do the job part-time at first, but it’s the only way.”

Fifty grand? Part time? Love this guy! Don’t look too eager, I tell myself. I wish I could call Lisa right now. “Don’t suppose you could go to sixty,” I say.

He wrinkles his mouth. “Fifty…five?”

Love! Him! Fifty is what we need to basically support our lives…to tread water…at fifty-five, we can slowly start to chip away at our debt. “How about fifty-eight?”

“Aw screw it, what’s a few hundred bucks,” Earl says and sticks out his hand. “You got a deal, my friend. Fiftee’ thousan’, eight hunnerd.”

I laugh. “That’s funny.”

“What?”

“It sounded like you just said fifteen thousand eight hundred.”

He stares. “That is what I said.”

“But you meant fifty-eight thousand, right?”

“Fifty?” he says. “You sayin’ fifty? Fu-u-uck.” And then laughs. “Shoot, Matt I can’t pay no fifty. No, I said fiftee’. Fiftee ’-eight! Fiftee’ thousand, eight hunnerd.”

“But…earlier you said fifty. Then I said sixty.”

“I said fiftee’. Then you said sixtee’.”

“Wait. Fifteen thousand dollars? A year?” And now I hate this

country shit with his stupid country-lisp-whistle that cuts the last letter off every word so that fifteen actually sounds like fifty. “I can’t live on fifteen thousand a year, Earl.”

“Well, hell Matt, I don’t know why you took this meeting then. I tol’ you it was gonna be sweat equity early on. That it might even be part time. Hell, you’re the one been telling me for years they ain’ no money in this shit.”

“But…fifteen?”

“I got no problem findin’ people will work for that.”

And the awful thing is that I have no doubt that he does have journalists who will work for fifteen grand a year, for ten dollars an hour, there are so many out of work, and I also have no doubt that I can’t entirely afford to walk away without at least considering this offer.

“I got people will gimme shit on the Internet for free,” Earl says apologetically. “An’ I ain’ so sure it’s any worse than the crap I’m payin’ for.”

And I think this is likely true, too. I sigh. Look around the restaurant, then down at my cell phone, which is displaying Dave the Drug Dealer’s text message: “1 hour…”

“I don’ t…know if I can,” I tell Earl. Deep breath. “I might have to do something else.” I rub my brow. “Look, can I get back to you?”

“Fine,” he says. “Sixtee’. But that’s as high as I can go, Matt. I want you. We both know I like havin’ you on my side. But I pay any more’n that…I’ll jus’ be shittin’ in my own soup.”

(ALL PRESSURE-TREATED STOCK)

18 eight-foot four-by-fours

to build the side walls and

30 more for the floor,

6 three-and-a-half footers

for the fort’s side door

(Foundation underpinnings

are 16 four-foot boards)

and 6 two-footers more, for

the other fort door

16 one-footers for top cops

and spacers for the door

12 four-foot galvanized spikes

(although you may need more).

This list, along with the requisite tools-circular saw, framing square, twenty-eight-ounce framing hammer, measuring tape and heavy-duty drill with various bits-constitutes, according to my new friend Chuck, crowned prince of Lumberland, Duke of cuckolding, Earl of Homewrecker, the basic raw materials for the simplest tree fort I can build, Frontier Fort #2, a tree fort so simple it doesn’t even require a tree.

“So wait, it just sits on the ground?”

He looks up from the book? “Hmm? Yeah. It just sits on the four-bys. That’s why you gotta make sure the wood is treated.”

So…Chuck is a Hmm-er, one of those people who hears you but pretends he doesn’t, says Hmm, and then answers your question. Lisa is going to hate that after a few years. She’s going to say, Why do you say Hmm, if you heard what I said? And he’s going to look up from his newspaper in my living room and say, Hmm?

It’s only a beginning, but I am starting to find weaknesses in my opponent.

After the disastrous meeting with Earl I still had an hour to kill before meeting Dave the Drug-Dealing Lawyer. I couldn’t bear taking a meeting with Noreen my unemployment counselor, who would no doubt encourage me to take Earl’s $16,000-a-year job so she could scratch me off her list of unemployables. So I canceled and came once more to the mystical land of lumber for a bit of recon behind enemy lines.

Chuck stands while he types at a plastic-covered computer. This seems unfair to me. I had really hoped to tower above him. As Chuck goes back and forth from the tree-fort book and his computer, I whistle a song I downloaded earlier today. He doesn’t react to it. My whistling is a bit rusty, so the song may not be immediately recognizable, so I try the chorus, which it pains me to sing: “She’s sweet/and oh-so vulnerable/a man’s wet dream/or his worst nightmare.”

Chuck doesn’t say anything. He just runs his finger down the list of supplies I need and then switches back to his computer keyboard.

“You know that song?” I ask.

His brow is wrinkled up in a difficult math problem. For a second, while he calculates, he looks right at me, but it’s as if he doesn’t recognize me, or is looking through me. There is a low hum of space heaters in Lumberland, as all around us men are gathering the materials to build things; it’s what we do at Lumberland. We come get stuff to build stuff. In this way, over time, men like us built all the stuff in the world. “Hmm?”