Flat Broke (8 page)

9

The Successful Person Is Not Afraid to Admit That He Is Easily Intimidated by a Show of Force

I
was walking home after school that afternoon, planning: It was my babysitting day, so I’d pick Markie up at his house, take him to my place and start baking before JonPaul and Sam showed up. Maybe that way I’d have time to make a few extra batches and we could hit another dorm that evening.

“Dutchdeefuddy. I’m learning how to spell,” Markie told me as we cut through the yard between our houses.
“C-A-T. Cat. D-O-G. Dog. B-A-R-F. Barf. F-A-R-T. Fart.”

“How’d you learn to do that, Markie?”

“Mommy gave me a toy where I press the letters and the voice inside tells me if I got the word right.
T-O-O-T. Toot. B-U-R-P. Burp.
”

“Very impressive. Here’s another one:
B-A-K-E. Bake.
You’re going to help make cookies today.”

“Can I lick the bowl and shout
‘BAM!’
really loud?”

“Yeah, sure, just don’t go near the oven. And don’t touch anything sharp.”

“O-K. Okay.”

As soon as we got to my house, I gave Markie the flour sifter and tied an apron around him. He was making a mess, but at least he wasn’t going to slow me down. I had my baking schedule timed to the second.

I’d put the first batch in the oven when my mother pulled a boxed spaghetti dinner from the freezer and put it in the microwave. My family had learned to work around needing the kitchen while JonPaul and Sam and I baked every day. Mom clapped when Markie spelled
M-O-M,
and she pretended not to see the pile of sifted flour on the floor while she waited for her food to nuke.

“Your father has a business dinner, Sarah and Auntie Buzz are going out to eat and catch a movie, and Daniel is at a team banquet. We won’t bother you in the kitchen today. But”—she hesitated, choosing her words carefully—“we’re wondering how much longer we’re going to be eating sandwiches in the family room every evening.”

“Yeah, well, see, the thing is that I’m really on to something here. Everything is going so well: Sarah is booked back to back with clients, I just talked Katie into letting me manage her tutoring job, I have six garages scheduled for this weekend, JonPaul and I are doing dorm runs five nights a week, and the poker ga—”

“Poker?” Even though I’d tried to bite off the last few words, my mother caught them. And she didn’t look happy about my success or proud of my efforts.

“I’m keeping up with my homework.” I tried to show her the bright side.

“Don’t change the subject. What’s this about poker?”

“I’m not lying anymore,” I reminded her.

Before she could continue pursuing the poker game issue, her cell phone chimed. She looked at the screen, frowned and said, “Work,” as she headed off to her desk in the family room. “But we will definitely talk about this poker situation later.”

I took her dinner out of the microwave and gave it to Markie. There. Now I didn’t have to worry about feeding him later.

I sighed and turned back to my pan of cookies, peering at the temperature knob because the oven seemed to be running a little hot; this last batch had looked a tad overdone.

“B-I-G. Big,”
Markie spelled.

“What’s big?” I asked.

“H-I-M. Him,”
Markie said. I looked up and saw that he was pointing toward the back door.

Where a couple of very big, very solid guys about nineteen or twenty years old stood. “Who the heck are you?” I asked.

“I’m Dash’s older brother, Wally.”

Oh no.

Despite my coaching at the game the night before, Dash had still been trying to read the other players’ faces and had bet according to what he thought their hands were rather than what his cards were. He’d lost. A lot.

“And I’m Joe, the resident advisor on Goober’s dorm floor.”

“We work together at the martial arts school,” Wally said. “I was telling him how my kid brother is losing his butt in a poker game and he mentioned that these five drips on his floor do nothing but play poker. They’ve been cutting class trying to get good.”

“What a coincidence that you two would know each other,” I said, trying to put a positive spin on what was feeling potentially very negative.

“You’re the house, right?” Joe asked.

I nodded and felt an ugly clench in my gut, in the place that usually feels really bad just before I spend a whole lot of time in the bathroom. Funny how terror and the runs have so much in common.

“And taking a profit per hand?” Wally asked.

Per hand?
Shut. The. Front. Door.

That never crossed my mind. Why hadn’t I figured that out on my own?

“Um, well, no … see, the games—”

“How many poker games are you running?” Joe squinted at me.

“Three.”

“You’re taking money from three different sets of idiots who don’t know the first thing about cards?” Wally pounded one fist into the other. I hoped it was a nervous tic and not the sign of things to come.

“No! It’s only Dash who doesn’t have a clu …” I trailed off when I saw Wally frown.

“The way I see it,” Wally said, “Dash either starts winning—which, let’s face it, is not about to happen, because that kid can’t play poker—or the game ends so he can’t get into any more trouble.”

“No, wait,” Joe said, “I think
all
the games end so that
you
don’t get in any more trouble.”

“I’m not in any trouble.”

“Yeah. You are.” Joe looked down at me.

“You’re just too dumb to have figured that out yet.” Wally did the pounding fist thing again.

“I never thought anyone would get upset.”

“No one’s upset. Yet.” Joe nodded.

“Stop the games and everything’s fine,” Wally said. “Dash will stop losing money and pay me back what I’ve lent him.”

“If you don’t stop the games,” Joe said as he and Wally headed out the kitchen door, “we’ll have to come back, and we might not be so nice.”

“N-I-C-E. Nice.”
Markie waved goodbye to Wally and Joe from the table, where he’d been eating spaghetti and watching me get threatened.

’Vorces and bankruptcy and now intimidation. Man, for a four-year-old, Markie was really racking up the life experiences.

Good thing Tina and I weren’t officially going out together yet. No one wants a boyfriend who gets caught up in seedy stuff like this.

The timer dinged and I took the cookies out of the oven. This batch was perfect, and my mood lifted a little. The poker games might be over, but my other ideas were still okay. Every business was bound to go over a few bumps. I was just getting mine out of the way in the beginning so that I could look forward to smooth sailing from here on in.

JonPaul and Sam showed up and, as JonPaul made the coffee and Sam packed the cookies in plastic containers, I told them about the end of my poker games.

“Thatwasfast,” Sam said. “You’donlyhadthemforaweek.”

“Maybe I was too diversified,” I said. “You know, I had too much going on and my attention was spread too thin. This is probably for the best. Now I can focus on what really matters.”

“P-O-O-P. Poop,”
Markie sang out.

You got that right, kid.

10

The Successful Person Knows That the Bigger the Problem Seems, the More Extraordinary the Solution Will Be

I
shook off the disappointment of being forced to shut down the games. Guys who want to be successful have to learn to live with setbacks. I started making phone calls to the players letting them know that the game was over, while Sam made a spelling list for Markie, and JonPaul went to get the cart from the golf course.

Goober thought my experience with Joe was subversive and cool. I was mostly surprised he knew the meaning of the word
subversive,
considering he still couldn’t play a hand of poker without referring to a crib sheet. Truthfully, Goober and his buddies were probably glad the stress of counting and keeping colors straight was over.

Wheels and the other guys were just as happy to go back to playing for points in the lunchroom. Much safer.

I was still kind of hoping to be able to keep the hockey team’s game up and running. But then Auntie Buzz popped into the office to pick up a color wheel, saw the cards and the chips and the mess that I hadn’t cleaned up yet and went all psycho on me in a text. I read it in the golf cart while JonPaul and Sam sold our munchies.

“U R gambling in my office! Ill talk 2 ur mthr l8er! Stop rite now!”

Saturday morning, I was busy dragging sleds full of junk from various garages in my neighborhood to the Dumpsters in the alley.

I was also thinking that my neighbors were lazy or they all suffered from a hoarding complex, because I must have single-handedly rid our subdivision of several tons of worthless stuff.

As I was chucking out an ancient space heater, some fondue forks and a stack of old magazines (nothing good—I checked), a huge guy jumped out from behind a tow truck parked in the alley.

“You! Stop putting garbage in that Dumpster!”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the manager of the motorcycle repair garage, and I’ve been sitting out here for three hours waiting to see who’s been dumping all the crap in my Dumpsters.”

Your Dumpsters? Oh.

“Why?”

“You’ve been overloading them! I’m getting charged a fortune in extra fees and penalties by the garbage company for going over our contracted trash allotment.”

“You mean hauling away garbage isn’t free?”

“No way, kid! Nothing is free.”

I should have known that.

Long story short: I was now responsible for an insane garbage bill. The guy gave me a card with the garbage company manager’s phone number so that I could make arrangements.

Then he watched me while I climbed into the Dumpster and removed the junk I’d deposited, replacing it on my sled.

I dragged the sled back to my house and stuck it in the back of our garage. Maybe this was part of the reason all those garages had gotten so cluttered in the first place: it’s not easy to dump your stuff.

I didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to spot the downward momentum. I’d been forced to give up my poker games, my clutter-removal days were probably over and I had to call Amalgamated Waste Management to get on a payment plan.

I talked to a nice guy in accounts receivable who gave me the option of paying the bill or working it off. Work is, all evidence to the contrary lately, a good thing. So is hanging on to the money I’d made. We made a deal: I’d come down to the offices twice a week for a while until I’d gotten square with them. I didn’t even ask what I’d be doing. It was garbage. It couldn’t be good.

I cheered myself up by remembering that all great men took pride in starting at the bottom. This would build character. And make a great story when someone eventually wrote my biography.

It’s looking on the bright side that sets the successes apart from the failures.

Good thing I didn’t have the poker games to worry about anymore, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had the time to work for Amalgamated Waste Management.

11

The Successful Person Is Frequently Misunderstood and Unappreciated

T
he next evening, everything was going fine, or what passed for fine in a collapsing universe. JonPaul, Sam and I were preparing for a busy night of sales.

We started putt-putt-putting along from dorm to dorm, making only right-hand turns at no greater speed than 3.8 miles an hour.

Until a gung-ho security guard zipped up on a Segway.

“You! Stop in the name of the law!”

We stopped.

“I’m ordering you to cease and desist all movement.”

The three of us didn’t move except to look at each other and roll our eyes.

“Refrain from further mobility in the name of the college.”

Well, now, this was getting interesting.

“By the powers vested in me by Carl, the chief of security, I hereby place you under arrest.”

Oh, come on now. “Arrested” by a college security guard. Who was riding a Segway and didn’t even have a Taser or a nightstick. All she had was a radio. And what was she going to do, turn up the volume really loud, talk at the same time someone was speaking to her and static us into submission?

“I’ve been watching you. You filth peddlers and destroyers of fine young minds! You should be ashamed of yourselves!”

Crazy lady on a nifty scooter say what?

“Whatareyoutalkingabout?” Sam asked.

JonPaul did his best impression of a tree stump: said nothing. Sat motionless. I’d like to think it was because he knew that letting me handle things was the best course of action.

“Illegal substances.”

“The sugar, butter, chocolate or caffeine?” I asked her.

“Don’t get smart with me! I’ve read all about people like you. Drug pusher!”

I was flummoxed. “You think we’re selling drugs from the back of a golf cart?”

“You have the ideal setup, and those baby faces of yours are the perfect cover.”

“We’re fourteen years old. We’re selling cookies and coffee.”

“And besides,” Sam piped up, “I promised my mother I would
never
ingest
pharmaceutically
impure substances, much less
sell
them.”

“You sound sincere.” The guard was disappointed.

“We are.”

She finally noticed that we were not on foot.

“Do you have a license to drive that thing?”

“It’s a golf cart; I didn’t think I needed a license,” I said from behind the wheel.

“You need a license to operate a motorized vehicle. That’s the law.”

I tried to explain how our crappy little golf cart really could hardly be considered a motorized vehicle. “It doesn’t go over three-point-eight miles an hour, we can’t put it in reverse and the steering wheel sticks if you try to turn left, so we can only make right-hand turns.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“The golf course near my house. They, um, had retired it.”

Her eyes widened.

“Grand theft auto,” she whispered slowly, and I saw her tremble slightly.

“I wouldn’t go that far. I return the cart every night, I only borrow it when it’s dark and no one’s playing golf anyway and I refill the tank before leaving. It doesn’t even have an odometer.”

“Well, when you put it that way, I guess you haven’t really broken any laws …” She trailed off sadly.

Her dreams were tanking. She made one last stand.

“You have
got
to be in violation of something. Maybe some kind of food-handling codes? I can’t believe you haven’t trashed health department stand—OH, SWEET FDA REGULATIONS! You’re not wearing plastic gloves! You are touching the food with your bare hands.”

“You think that’s a problem?”

“Only if you don’t want to spread salmonella, botulism, and possibly Legionnaires’ disease.”

“Oh. I’m sure that’s not an issue.” I tried to remember if I’d always washed my hands. The odds were not in my favor.

I looked back at the remaining cookies and brownies in the plastic containers on the back of the golf cart.

“They’re
crawling
with
food
cooties!” the security guard said, sounding an awful lot like Sam, who wasn’t saying anything.

How come JonPaul, the king of germs, hadn’t thought about this? I glanced over at him, annoyed. The guy has one obsession in life and he forgets it when it could have helped us out. Geez.

“How’d you get into this line of work, anyway?” I asked the guard. Everyone’s favorite subject is themselves, and if you turn the focus on them, they usually forget where the conversation was headed.

“I need my days free so that I can pursue my real passion,” she said, smiling. “I bead. I make jewelry by hand.”

“Big future in that?”

“It’s a nice sideline. I want to save up enough so that I can invest in my business and go full-time.”

“What kind of clasps do you use?” JonPaul finally spoke up.

“You know about beading?” She beamed. I tried not to tip over in surprise. JonPaul beads? Just when you think you know a guy, he goes and pulls something like this. Sam’s influence? She was smiling, not looking surprised by Bead Boy at all.

We made introductions. The guard’s name was Renee. And then JonPaul and Sam exchanged contact info with Renee so they could get together and make jewelry.

As they talked to Renee, I studied JonPaul. He hadn’t just lost three businesses in two days, and he actually had a real girlfriend instead of just plotting ways to impress someone like I did with Tina, and he seemed to have picked up a new hobby that he enjoyed.

Yeah, I know that even the best businesspeople feel down from time to time, but I was starting to wonder: did I really have what it took to get filthy, stinking rich at age fourteen? Nothing had gone like I thought it was going to.

Nah, I just needed a good night’s sleep. I’d feel better in the morning and would come up with a new plan, a better plan, a foolproof plan.

JonPaul, Sam and I putt-putt-putted back home—but only after we emptied the unsold cookies into a trash can on campus.

They were so jazzed about beading with Renee that they didn’t seem to realize we didn’t have a munchie business anymore. Or maybe they did and they were glad. Neither of them had been as set on getting rich as I was. They’d been working for minimum wage, but I had been pursuing my calling in life. There’s a big difference between working for a paycheck and striving toward a dream, I realized.