Jess Walter - The Financial Lives Of the Poets

“Okay.”

“And no more smoking that stuff,” Randy says quietly.

Ouch. I nod. Stand. Sigh.

The detectives lean back in their chairs, big men after a big meal.

“Right now, this must be hard to stomach, but I hope you feel proud,” says my grinning born-again handler Randy, kindly assuager of hurt feelings. “You’re working for the good guys now, helping to protect kids like yours-”

Then Lt. Reese, sensei of hard reality, interrupts: “-from drug dealers like you.”

WHOSE WOOD THIS IS I think I know

Blocking the path to my front porch

Sent by the asshole stealing my wife

Sure it is, of course, of course.

Oh, I’m done. I slump against the steering wheel. The world looked so clear this morning, so warm. But it’s the same cold, hard world. I pull out the card Randy gave me. I know there is some debate over the effectiveness of various types of therapy, but I’m not a fan of my psychologist, Dr. Thomas’s methods so far. I suppose I’m not really in a position to bargain, but I wish I could get a little real therapy from my phony therapist.

I feel feverish. Sick. Tired. Think I’m losing my mind. What do you do when you can’t even put your various soul-crushing crises in any rational order? Is it: 1. I’m now a drug-dealing snitch sent out to entrap my friends? 2. My marriage is crumbling, my wife about to have an affair, (2a. And my lame response is to order the material for a tree fort from her boyfriend.) 3. I’m unemployed, broke, and even with the short reprieve on my house, deep in debt. Or is the order: marriage crumbling, drug dealing, going broke. Or broke, drugs, marriage.

I suppose it’s a judgment call. And now, paralysis seems to have set in. Where would a complete physical breakdown fit in with my various crises? I sit in my car, arms dead at my side, leaning against the wheel, mouth slack, staring at the eleven hundred dollars in lumber on my front yard. It looks small from here; amazing how little wood you get for a grand these days.

Maybe I should go inside and see if I can smoke myself to death on three ounces of marijuana. Can you OD on pot? Maybe I can get so high I choke to death on a Dorito. I picture Lt. Reese showing my corpse photo to the next poor sap they arrest. It ain’t a bag of leaves.

My cell rings. It arrives at my face in a quivering hand. Amber Philips. Here we go. Amber must want her weed. I put my thumb on the answer button. But it makes me sick, getting poor Amber in trouble like this. Is this really what I’ve become? I look from my phone to my dark super-spy watch. Okay, undercover operative-what now? I try to remember…Randy said something about protocols…warrants…cell phone traps. Do I answer the call? I suddenly feel so unprepared. Wish I’d paid more attention.

And then, through the windshield, I see the front door of my house open. And out comes my senile old father, staring suspiciously at the pile of wood. These days, Dad doesn’t like any change in his physical environment. He edges over nervously. He’s wearing his pajama bottoms and a Go Army sweatshirt. He has his battle-ready remote control in his hand.

I set my buzzing phone down and climb out of the car. It’s cold outside; steam leaks from my nose and mouth. “Hey, this all goes back, Dad. This lumber, it was a big mistake.”

Dad says nothing, simply pulls the work invoice from the top

of the pile, where it’s been stapled. It’s in a plastic envelope, along with the folded plans for the tree fort. I gently take the invoice from him. There’s a signature from the delivery driver, but it’s not LumberChuck’s. Great. I didn’t even get Chuck to deliver my tree-fort wood so that he could see the home he’s wrecking. Christ, what’s a mad genius to do when none of his mad plans works?

I look up at my father, who has his own mad-genius thing going-wild, gray hair, vacant eyes. I think of asking his advice, but even when he was sharp, Dad wasn’t exactly an expert in the advice department. He almost always deferred to my mother for pep talks, lectures and philosophical discussions. He’d probably be the first to admit that cheering up his children wasn’t a particular parental strength for him-like when I was thirteen and got cut from the eighth grade baseball team. It’s okay, I remember my mom saying; over and over she said this: it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

“But it’s not fair,” I cried.

“Damn straight!” I heard a gruff voice, and looked over at the table, where my dad had set down his newspaper. “What do you say we go kick the ass of whatever sorry son-of-a-bitch told you it would be?”

My father did pass on plenty of wisdom, of course, a lot of it incidental, like other men from his generation, hints and clues glimpsed through his unfailing work ethic and his refusal to ever complain about anything. No matter what happened, the man soldiered on-got up every day and put on that tie and went to a job he knew was beneath his abilities-and anyone who thinks there’s anything more profoundly inspiring than that is fooling himself. I wouldn’t mind talking to that old clear-eyed Sears tie-and-coverall father of mine again. Or better, I wish I was five again, that he’d take my little hand and pull me up on his lap. But we stopped hugging at the time Prior men have presumably stopped hugging for hundreds of years, right around ten or eleven. Teddy, for instance,

is out of the embrace business. Franklin: still in for another year or two. I wonder why I can’t hold Teddy, why my father and I can’t hug.

My dad used to be bigger than me but I’m standing next to him and I’m looking down on that wild hair. His shoulders are thin and drawn in.

“Dad,” my voice cracks. “I need…help. I’m falling apart here.” And my dad turns and looks at me-and I hear his clear old deep voice, Damn straight -and a kind of epiphany begins to form in my mind-

It’s all connected, these crises-marriage, finances, weed dealing-they are interrelated, like the physical and mental decline of my dad, and my own decline, like the housing market and the stock market and the credit market. We can try to separate them, but these are interrelated systems, reliant upon one another, broken, fucked-up, ruined systems.

It’s the same world, the same clear, cool place I woke up to-both sunny and cold.

And just like that…

A plan. “Hey Dad?”

He turns.

I laugh, probably a little crazily. “Think it’s too late to go get the sons-of-a-bitches who told me the world would be fair?”

Dad shows me his remote. “Can we do it after The Rockford Files?”

CHUCK TAKES A STEP back and

looks at me like I’m crazy.

Oh I’m crazy, all right! A crazy man

with a crazy glowing watch!

Fans whir; warehouse breezes blow through Lumberland.

“I’m sorry, but this is just…kind of weird,” Chuck says.

“Yeah, I know,” I say, “but I felt awful about yesterday-”

“Look, it’s really fine,” Chuck interrupts me.

“This seemed like a good way to apologize-”

“Really, it’s not necessary-”

“So much stress with this economy-”

“I promise you, it’s just fine-”

“I’m telling you, this is really good stuff-”

“I’m sure it is, but I’m not interested,” Chuck says sternly.

Come on…“It’s a great price-”

“Look, I don’t mean to offend you, but I don’t smoke pot.”

My watch glows with failure, picks up my insane laugh.

“Never too late to start!” I practically yell.