Jess Walter - The Financial Lives Of the Poets

“You ready, Slippers?” Jamie interrupts, comes out onto the landing.

“Yeah,” I say, and I let go of Bea’s arm.

And so Jamie and I start down the landing, on our way to Weedland. But I stop after a few steps and my eyes are drawn back up to the landing and that’s where I see her, watching me, mouth slightly open-a distant, implacable look in her blue eyes, not at all what I expected-not gratitude, but something else-as the world teeters.

Monte: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

CI OH-2: Monte, I-

Monte: Good timing, I just finished bagging it.

CI OH-2: No, listen-

Monte: Each of these zips is a quarter. Eight is two pounds, ninth makes two-and-a-quarter, minus what you already got. So, do you want to weigh ’em or-

CI OH-2: Would you listen to me, Monte? I’m trying to tell you: I don’t want this anymore. I’m quitting. I want my money back. I’m-

Monte: That’s funny, Slippers. So you give any more thought to buying this place?

CI OH-2: No, I told you. I’m out.

Monte: I thought you was looking into one-a-them (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

CI OH-2: Consortium, Monte. The word is consortium. Now listen carefully to me. That’s not happening. You can’t sell this place. You need to just walk away while you still can. Give me back my money and quit…you too, Jamie-

Monte: That’s why I need you to buy me out so I can-

CI OH-2: No, you don’t understand-

Monte: I know what you’re saying, Slippers. I knew that shit was high. It was Dave’s idea, starting at four. I wanted to start at three, end up around two-eight, right? So how about that? Two-eight? That sound better?

CI OH-2: Listen carefully, Monte. I am done. I just want my money back.

Monte: What the fuck you-money back?

CI OH-2: This whole thing…the cops…they (UNINTELLIGIBLE)…you guys…Jamie, you need to get fifty miles away from here. Away from Dave. He’s-

CI OH-1 : Come on, Slippers. Stop talking shit-

Monte: What the fuck is he (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

CI OH-1: Nah, don’t listen to that shit, Monte. Dude’s just freaking out is all. Slippers all paranoid and shit-

CI OH-2: -see this watch?

CI OH-1: Come on, Slippers. You’ll feel better out in the car.

Get your shit and let’s go.

Monte: Wait, I want to know what he means-

CI OH-1: What he means? Dude don’t mean shit. He’s just freakin’. I told you-

CI OH-2: No, listen to me-

CI OH-1: Shut the fuck up, Slippers! Get your weed and let’s go.

(UNINTELLIGIBLE YELLING, A DOOR SLAMS.)

Monte: What are you doing here? We’re moving this shit.

Eddie : Ask him what the fuck I’m doing here.

CI OH-2 : (Unintelligible)

Eddie : What have you done, you snitch fuck?

(UNINTELLIGIBLE YELLING)

Eddie : What the fuck are you smiling about?

CI OH-2: I was just thinking-who would win in a fight,

Godzilla or a tyrannosaurus?

Monte: Is it a real tyrannosaurus?

CI OH-1: That’s easy, yo. Godzilla…’cause of the lasers an’ shit.

Eddie: You think this is fuckin’ funny?

(UNINTELLIGIBLE)

THERE HERE ONCE WAS AN Eddie named Dave

Whose deep loathing he heartily gave:

“What am I supposed to do

with a snitch prick like you?”

As his own ass he endeavored to save.

Fear leads to the lowest of poetical forms. And it’s fear that I feel right now, fifty meggies of it, as Eddie/Dave looms over me, his face red with rage. I’ve probably been punched all of twice in my life until tonight. I’ve already matched that, and tonight’s not even over.

I’m lying on the foot-worn carpet of Monte’s living room, between a La-Z-Boy and the World Book Encyclopedia set-I glance over and see that S and T are switched and fight the urge to switch the books back; I remain curled up, covering my swelling eye as Dave looms over me in his seething rage.

“I’m sorry, Dave. I didn’t-”

“You’re fuckin’ sorry?” Dave turns to Monte. “He’s sorry.”

“For what?” Monte asks innocently, miles behind still.

“I know,” I mutter. “What kind of man was I?”

“What’s that mean?”

I start to sit up. “Rhetorical question.”

Eddie/Dave kicks me in the side and I feel the air go out of me and I fall again.

“What…fuckin’ rhetorical question? What the-Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Jamie stands beside Dave, arms at his sides, strangely subdued. I sort of thought he might help me, but maybe not. For his part, Monte is red faced and sweating, eyes going back and forth from Dave to Jamie to me. He looks like he’s going to explode in his parka-like a burrito left too long in a microwave. “W-will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

What’s going on? Okay. Well, Monte-(1) Apparently Bea has called Dave and told him that I warned her to get away. That’s something you can never judge-another person’s loyalty. (And maybe I’m just weak for tall and blond, but I’m not that disappointed in Bea. After all, she did know Dave first, and there is a certain chronology to loyalty.) And (2) Dave has driven out here, smacked me in the face and, now, seems to want to kick me to death.

Then, with my side aching and with Monte’s what’s going on still in the air, and because the shit apparently isn’t deep enough yet, the front door flies open again-and I think once again of Monte’s living room as the set of a play, because, in a hot stampede of rash fat, in comes the character of Chet. As played by Chet.

“I fuckin’ told you!” Chet yells; for the moment he seems most furious with Dave.

So here we all are, in Weedland: me, Monte, Jamie and both of the guys who’ve punched me today, in a less-than-circular circle, me on the floor of the living room of a four-million-dollar grow

farm, surrounded by my angry colleagues (at least one of whom I suspect carries a gun in his car), these four guys who now understand that Slippers is a snitch.

Or three of them understand: “Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Monte asks.

Chet ignores his brother. “What do we do?” he asks Dave.

Then Chet and Eddie/Dave make dark eye contact and I see, maybe for the first time, that this can get worse, and I think of Lt. Reese and his well-timed aint’s- he ain’t stupid -and the lump in the photograph that he showed me- it ain’t a pile of leaves -and all of my cute, sleep-deprived faux-brave responses just leak right out of me-Godzillas and limericks and What-kind-of-man -and all that’s left is fear, more fear than I thought was possible-like a heightened version of the terror you feel during a rough landing on a jet…and then, this unwieldy thought: I desperately want to see my kids again. And Lisa.

Lying on the floor, curled up-this is why I no longer believe in epiphanies, in profound revelations, because how stupid is the one I’m having: I don’t want to die? How inane, “realizing” the thing you always knew, from your first breath, that you’d prefer to live, to see the people you love? What sort of pointless realization is that?

“I told you not to trust these fuckers!” Chet says again.

“Don’t look at me,” says Jamie, hands in the air.