Read Online The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jess Walter
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so…shitty. I know it’s shitty. She knows it’s shitty. We both know it’s shitty, going broke, going down the drain. I don’t want this. I don’t want to spend every night tailing her online like some Internet P.I. I don’t want to be sneaky and I don’t want to catch her cheating or thinking of cheating or wishing she could cheat. And hell, if she does cheat, I’m not even sure I want to know about it. I’d rather be the blithe idiot: get up in the morning, go to a job, come home, help my kids with their homework and go to bed with my wife, clueless. Especially now—with this noose tightening around my neck and the sense that it’s all getting away from me…I only want comfort. Peace. I don’t want to have to work on my marriage; I just want to have it.
But it’s all…broke. We’re broke, Lisa and me—something important cracked in us. And I have no idea how to fix it, any more than I know how to keep from losing our house, or for that matter, how to build a tree fort. All I know is that I have a check in my pocket for less than ten thousand dollars, a check that represents the last threads of the money we always assumed would serve as our safety net, and that might be the stupidest thing we did—not starting a poetry-business website or buying shit on eBay or taking the six-month stay of financial execution, not emailing old boyfriends or getting high at a convenience store—no, the truly stupid mistake was believing that when we fell, a net made of money could catch us.
And just like that, I know what to do. “I’m going to the store.”
She doesn’t even roll over to answer. “What for?”
“Milk.”
I drive. Sigh. Park outside the 7/11. Stare at the sign: red stripe, green stripe, orange stripe. I watch people come and go. These are my people—hungry, cold, desperate. No one shops at a convenience store for convenience. They shop there out of desperation. I fiddle with the radio. Find a lunatic radio show where the loons are talking about the United Nations taking over our country—New World Order and Mao suits—and as I listen to the paranoia seep from the Bose speakers, I think we’re all losing it, suffocating in our paranoia—and then I wonder if my fears about Lisa and Chuck are symptomatic of this paranoia pandemic and that’s when I switch over to sport talk, where they’re rating college quarterbacks, and now I’m onto a Dad-loop because I actually think of calling in to ask if there are any quarterbacks now who play with beards and maybe I’m going crazy.
It’s especially crazy to assume that Skeet and Jamie will return to this 7/11, but I don’t know where else to look for them. Finally, after an hour, I give up and drive over to the apartment building where we stood outside last night smoking weed. And I see the tricked Ford Festiva among the rust-buckets in the parking lot, but I don’t know which apartment belongs to the dude who drives it. So I sit in my car agin, waiting, until finally, I see a loping young black kid in huge jeans and a dirty tank top walking toward the building. I don’t recognize him from the other night, but I jump out of my car anyway.
“Hey. I’m trying to find Jamie and Skeet. Or the guy who drives that Festiva.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” the kid says, too fast, and I can see that I’ve spooked him.
“I’m not a police officer or anything. I just…I want to ask them something.”
The kid looks around, shifts in the glow of a streetlight, and then lowers his eyes. “You were here last night. Dude with the slippers.”
But Skeet has my slippers now, and I’m wearing running shoes, so I say, “Yeah, that’s me.” I don’t exactly remember this kid; they all kind of blurred together last night, because I’m so old or because I was so fried. “Look,” I say, and I step in close. “I just want to buy some of the weed we smoked last night.”
“And you’re not a cop?”
Remembering my upcoming
But it’s all…broke. We’re broke, Lisa and me—something important cracked in us. And I have no idea how to fix it, any more than I know how to keep from losing our house, or for that matter, how to build a tree fort. All I know is that I have a check in my pocket for less than ten thousand dollars, a check that represents the last threads of the money we always assumed would serve as our safety net, and that might be the stupidest thing we did—not starting a poetry-business website or buying shit on eBay or taking the six-month stay of financial execution, not emailing old boyfriends or getting high at a convenience store—no, the truly stupid mistake was believing that when we fell, a net made of money could catch us.
And just like that, I know what to do. “I’m going to the store.”
She doesn’t even roll over to answer. “What for?”
“Milk.”
I drive. Sigh. Park outside the 7/11. Stare at the sign: red stripe, green stripe, orange stripe. I watch people come and go. These are my people—hungry, cold, desperate. No one shops at a convenience store for convenience. They shop there out of desperation. I fiddle with the radio. Find a lunatic radio show where the loons are talking about the United Nations taking over our country—New World Order and Mao suits—and as I listen to the paranoia seep from the Bose speakers, I think we’re all losing it, suffocating in our paranoia—and then I wonder if my fears about Lisa and Chuck are symptomatic of this paranoia pandemic and that’s when I switch over to sport talk, where they’re rating college quarterbacks, and now I’m onto a Dad-loop because I actually think of calling in to ask if there are any quarterbacks now who play with beards and maybe I’m going crazy.
It’s especially crazy to assume that Skeet and Jamie will return to this 7/11, but I don’t know where else to look for them. Finally, after an hour, I give up and drive over to the apartment building where we stood outside last night smoking weed. And I see the tricked Ford Festiva among the rust-buckets in the parking lot, but I don’t know which apartment belongs to the dude who drives it. So I sit in my car agin, waiting, until finally, I see a loping young black kid in huge jeans and a dirty tank top walking toward the building. I don’t recognize him from the other night, but I jump out of my car anyway.
“Hey. I’m trying to find Jamie and Skeet. Or the guy who drives that Festiva.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” the kid says, too fast, and I can see that I’ve spooked him.
“I’m not a police officer or anything. I just…I want to ask them something.”
The kid looks around, shifts in the glow of a streetlight, and then lowers his eyes. “You were here last night. Dude with the slippers.”
But Skeet has my slippers now, and I’m wearing running shoes, so I say, “Yeah, that’s me.” I don’t exactly remember this kid; they all kind of blurred together last night, because I’m so old or because I was so fried. “Look,” I say, and I step in close. “I just want to buy some of the weed we smoked last night.”
“And you’re not a cop?”
Remembering my upcoming
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