Jess Walter - The Financial Lives Of the Poets

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 Times reclines in a red bath)

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 are considering it.”

“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 out of big mistakes, not into them. You have to choose such people carefully-better than Lisa and I apparently have.

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 after Ike, which means if there’s another layoff-and there’s always another layoff-he’d be next. “Those of us left,” Ike says, “are like survivors in a cancer support group.”

“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, I’m sorry,” Ike says. “You’re the last person I should whine to about this.”

“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 peanuts and dust and is, all in all, a shambling mess of a man. Our nickname for him in the newsroom was always Bubble Boy. In the old caveman days, we’d have pushed him out of the pack and let the wild dogs get him. Today, Bubble Boy wears the requisite uniform of a news reporter, the outfit of small town city councilmen and strip-mall

insurance agents-reluctant business attire-khaki pants, mismatched jacket, a short-sleeved button shirt whose lumpy collar rejects the badly looped tie like a drunk rejects a liver transplant. Still, it makes me wistful, seeing-in uniform-a soldier from my old decimated unit.

“It is …you know…illegal,” I tell Ike.

“Yeah, but is it… illegal -illegal? Isn’t it more like wink-wink-nudge-nudge illegal?” He shrugs. “It’s just pot.”

“I’m pretty sure running your own grow operation is illegal -illegal. Besides, I don’t want to end up paranoid like these guys, Ike. You should see them. The lawyer’s creepy intense. And the grower? I thought he might start crying at any minute.”

Ike swirls the dregs of his coffee and throws it back. Sets his cup down. “So…what are you gonna do?”

“For now…stick to my original plan. First, go sell this.” I hold up my messenger bag, which is on the chair next to me, and which contains a baggie with the three ounces I got from Monte last night. “Tonight, go get the rest of my two pounds. Sell that. Buy more. Keep going until I’m on top of my debts.”

“How long will that take?”

“I made sixty percent on a few hundred bucks this week without even trying, so assuming I can keep selling, even at a fifty percent profit…spread the word…keep using the money to buy more weed…” I grab a napkin and sketch out the numbers for him. “At fifty percent-say I roll my original investment over four times-nine grand becomes thirteen-five becomes twenty becomes thirty becomes, what…forty-five thousand? That’s all I’d need. Show me another 300 percent profit I can make in a few weeks.”

Ike spins the napkin to see the numbers: 9, 13.5, 20, 30, 45. “How much is that?”

Below those numbers, I write: 2, 3, 4.5, 6.75, 10 pounds.

He adds it up, scoffs. “You’re gonna sell twenty-six pounds of pot?”

“I think so, yeah. From what I’ve seen, there’s no shortage of buyers. I’m telling you, Ike, this thing spreads virally-everyone knows a weed-smoker who can’t find any, who doesn’t want to buy lawn clippings from his kids’ friends, or risk going to jail.” This is true. I’ve already gotten extra orders from friends of both Amber and Richard. “Then, after a month or two…I quit with my forty-five grand. Get caught up on the house, pay private school tuition.”

“Then what?”

“Then…I’ll go back to work. I got a job offer…sort of…”

“From who?”

I say into my coffee cup: “Earl Ruscom.”

Ike winces like someone who has just heard that Earl Ruscom had offered his friend a job. “Not his stupid good-news paper.”

“He’s done his homework this time. Problem is, early on, he can’t pay much.”

“How much is not much?”

“Twenty.”

“Twenty?” Ike, on deck for the next layoff, gapes. “Is it that bad out there?”

I channel Earl: “It ain’t rainin’ silver dollars.”

And then a yawn overtakes me and something about it bothers me…it’s like a deep crack in the plaster…and I begin to worry: what if this good mood, this seeming good fortune, the clarity with which I can finally see my way through this trouble, what if it’s all just a further sign of my deterioration, some trick of sleep deprivation…

“You okay?”