HOPE FOR CHANGE... But Settle for a Bailout (3 page)

“Frozen burritos barely qualify as real
food,” said Lori.

“Hey,” said Larry, defensively, “they’re as
many calories as a slice of pepperoni pizza. Thirty-three cents;
250 calories. The best caloric value around.”

“You’re gonna get hypertension with all the
salt you’re pouring in to your system.” Lori grabbed her two bags
and headed inside Wash-A-Teria. Larry followed, fiddling with his
tablet, causing him to bump into the glass door. He didn’t take his
eyes away from the screen and he kept walking. Lori dumped her bags
onto a washer and began sorting colors from warms and hots. A
television mutely displayed “Married with Children,” as she turned
each garment inside out. She went to the sole change machine and
fed a five from the tip jar. “F-u-c-k-!” she yelled, as the machine
swallowed the bill and gave no change. Lori pounded on the machine
as she cursed, and then turned to Larry, sweating. She held out
several bills.

“I need change,” she said.

“I got’ch’yer change,” said Larry. “Just
call me Barack.”

Lori sneered. “The only change I’ll get from
Obama is if they put his face on a coin.”

“A dollar coin, maybe,” said Larry. “The
Obama Buck.”

“More like the Obama Half-Penny… worthless
from the start,” scoffed Lori.

“Anyway, my grandmother deposited my
allowance, so I got yer hope for change covered.”

.

“Thanks for the roll,” said Larry, as he set
two single bottles of German beer, a bottle of club soda and a
heaping armful of bagged snacks on the counter. “My lady friend
sure will appreciate it.” Larry unzipped a pocket in his wallet,
unsnapped a snap and dug out a VISA card. A folded lottery ticket
was also in the hidden compartment. “Also, three bucks on
MegaMillions... gotta invest in my retirement future.”

The clerk printed the new ticket, rang up
the order, swiped Larry’s card and handed him a credit
authorization slip for signature.

“And can you give me tonight’s winning
numbers?” The clerk picked up several orange slips from a pile of
narrow orange papers sitting atop the computer unit of the lottery
terminal, handing one to Larry, who put it without a glance into
the snapped compartment of his wallet. “You really ought to think
about stocking Tuborg or Carlsberg,” said Larry, as he signed the
authorization slip. “Danish beer is good stuff.” He walked out with
a wave.

.

“Bought you some club soda and other
essential survival supplies,” said Larry. “I hear Hermosa Beach is
pretty primitive.”

“Why do you throw your money away on that
shit?” asked Lori. “Salt, sugar, fat.” She took the club soda and
sifted through the snacks, pulling out a bag of trail mix.

“See? I know what you like,” said Larry. “So
can I hang out with you in Hermosa?” Larry opened a bag of
Cheetos.

“I don’t know,” said Lori. “It’s not my
place and I don’t even know if I’m gonna go there. If I do a
‘stay-cation’ thing and just don’t show at work, I can avoid the
‘open carry’ people.”

“Sort’a yer call, isn’t it?”

“Yeh, I may just stay at the beach after my
swims or something.” Lori pulled a narrow bottle with “eco” on the
label from her bag and poured a capful of liquid into each of the
three machines she had loaded with clothes. She closed the lids and
set the temperatures, fed in coins from the roll of quarters Larry
had brought and started each load.

“Aw, c’mon,” said Larry, as he
systematically moved bright orange puffs to his mouth. “You’ll need
company. I can be your bodyguard.”

Lori laughed, as she popped a handful of
trail mix, while watching the muted TV over Larry’s shoulder. The
sitcom had broken away to a FOX News teaser, showing Mr. Mocha
Latte and several of his open-carry compatriots, standing in front
of Bucksters Coffee, one with a handmade sign reading, “We Want Our
Freedom... & our coffee!” Mouths moved mutely to the sounds of
washing machines chugging. The news teaser cut to the nodding,
solemn, seldom-moving face of the redhead. Lori watched motionless
as the teaser morphed into a Chevrolet commercial.

“I can see what’s in it for the manager,
sending you here,” said Larry. “You, alone in an apartment in
Hermosa... without your bike... his keys, his raise, his vacation,
his benefits.” Larry licked Cheetos dust from his fingers. “Sweet
deal for Peter Pan.”

“Peter Pan didn’t have red hair and my boss
is too dorky to make a move,” said Lori.

“So…,” said Larry, pulling out a bag of
Doritos, “you stopped talking about whether to reenlist. Does that
mean you’re gonna go back in?”

“Maybe,” said Lori, hopping up and sitting
on one of her three washing machines. “Still talking to a
recruiter. Can’t make a commitment yet… cuz… I got another big
thing that I might take on this summer. Don’t know yet, but, yeh,
probably.”

“Where would they put you?”

“Probably Afghanistan.... Hopefully as an
E6, like I came out,” said Lori.

“What’ta’ya think you’d be doing?”

“Convoys. Fuel. Vehicle repair. The stuff
where you only carry a personal sidearm.”

“Such a girl,” said Larry.

“There’s actually a lot of women in
theatre,” said Lori. She glanced up to the muted TV, which was
showing a commercial for psychic telephone readings. “But all of
’em are so… young… tattoos and piercings and the big nails... it’s
like high school, except now I’m the Old Lady…. Thankfully, I’ll
have some rank. PFCs and corporals can go
way
past
annoying.”

Larry looked around the empty Wash-A-Teria
and, with no one inside or outside to object, pulled out a beer
bottle, lodged his key ring under the bottletop and over his finger
and pushed down on the ring, popping the cap up.

Lori watched Al Bundy slumped in sofa as his
big-haired wife silently chattered and sauntered.

Larry pulled out his wallet, unzipped and
unsnapped it and pulled out the two folded, orange-tinted slips of
paper, with the admonition to “play responsibly” printed along the
side. Larry held the slip with the winning numbers that the clerk
had handed to him in his Cheetos hand, and the ticket he spent
three of the dollars that Lori had given him earlier in his
relatively clean hand.

Much of the orange paste on Larry’s thumb
and index finger rubbed into the winning numbers slip, obscuring
the draw date under an orange-tinted slick of oil that penetrated
the paper and a coating of flaking orange matter that Larry smudged
into the paper with his thumb and forefinger, with which he had
clamped onto the ticket as he looked back-and-forth between the two
slips.

Larry van der Bix stood motionless, hands
raised close to his eyes, each clutching an orange slip. “Lori?”
Larry asked, urgently. “Do you have a pen?”

“Larry, we’re at Wash-A-Teria. Why would I
have a pen?”

Larry began laughing.

When he didn’t answer Lori’s question of
“what’s so funny,” and just laughed more loudly, she hopped off her
washer and looked at the slips in his hands. Soon, she was
laughing. The two hugged and danced in spasmodic fits, each
returning to look at the slips and resume laughing.

If Line 3 of his three-dollar ticket was to
be believed, then it appeared that Larry van der Bix had hit it
big, on a night when a nationwide pool of dreamers and malcontents,
each yearning to breathe free of debt and fear of losing a job, had
driven the MegaMillions jackpot to $235 million. The man who
eschewed the money of his vulgar, illegitimate father and subsisted
on an allowance from his grandmother, suddenly appeared to be
richer than all of them, then his whole lineage, or likely anyone
on Treasure Island, or Naples, or any of the toniest parts of Long
Beach.

Lottery Larry had won it all.

CHAPTER two

Banking the Old Fashioned Way

So, Saturday night, I get a call from Larry,
all excited. “Hey, don’t need to hit you up anymore,” he says. “I
need you to be my banker. I’ll need a week of your time,” he said.
“I’ll pay you for it.” Who knows what the hell Larry ever means?
Wanted me to meet him and some “mystery person” on Monday outside
the state Capitol building in Sacramento or, better, drive up to
Sac with them.

Eight hours on Interstate Five with Larry? I
think I’ll do JetBlue.

I felt compelled to say “yes” to Larry, in
part because he said he’d pick up my airfare if I wished to fly. I
can’t recall a time when Larry ever spent money on me, aside from
picking up a round at the Reno Room or the 3636 Club or whatever
bar he would drag me to. I called my District Manager on his cell
that Saturday night, and asked if I could take an emergency
vacation that coming week. I hadn’t taken a vacation or a day off
since this new incarnation of my old bank had rehired me at reduced
pay, just after Lehman Brothers and The Collapse, to sit at the
same desk and do the same work as before. Only two years of perfect
attendance, said my District Manager, kept him from firing me over
the phone for springing such a request. “It’s been almost three
years of perfect attendance,” I noted. He told me to be back the
first thing that following Monday, and that meant 8 am, if I valued
my job.

I called Larry and told him I’d meet him in
Sac on Monday, but I preferred to fly. Alone. He gave me a VISA
number for JetBlue. It didn’t get declined.

.

What can I say about Larry van der Bix?

He likes to play the lottery. He has been
addicted to it ever since we could buy tickets, when we were just
about out of high school.

Another thing I can say about Larry is that
he still doesn’t know my name, even though we grew up on Treasure
Island together and went to Naples elementary and Will Rogers
middle school together, before going to Woodrow Wilson high school.
Sure, for most people, “Larry” for Lawrence is an easy jump, but my
name is not Larry. I hate the name, and it isn’t just because Larry
van der Bix barged in to my life, usually to beg for money – as
though his family doesn’t
have
any – or to sleep on my couch
and spend days and evenings as my wife’s perpetual companion. That
may have been years ago, but how do you forget stuff like that?

I married the girl that Larry and I both had
a crush on in high school, although it didn’t last. Lori had always
been Larry’s girl in high school, pretty much from the day she
transferred to Woodrow Wilson from Thomas Starr Jordan, in north
Long Beach, after the Rodney King riots. Only her ranking as one of
the district’s top swimmers allowed her family to get the transfer
approved, since otherwise Long Beach Unified didn’t allow whites to
transfer out of Jordan. Something about racial integration
numbers.

Each of them said they weren’t dating and
would go silent if I questioned it, even after Larry’s car crash,
which put him into an upper-body cast for most of our senior year.
He’d say, “What are four shattered ribs between friends?”

Larry had begged his grandmother for that
car he totaled. Calvin said there was no way in hell he’d ever
spend a dime on a car for Larry, no matter how much money he made
from building tract homes and doing redevelopment projects for the
city. When he got that car, Larry drove every morning at 5 am up
Atlantic Avenue, to pick up Lori from her house near Houghton Park
so she could make swim practice before school, and take the same
route, past boarded-up storefronts and the graffiti, to drive her
home. When she’d visit Larry on Treasure Island, the two of them
would go in a rowboat to circle the Naples canal or row together to
the Queen Mary or to Marina Pacifica to see a film. When she’d do
her ocean swims, he’d row ahead of her, so he could keep visual
contact and so she could climb in when she tired. There had always
been an ease between them that suggested something was going on
with them, even if they insisted there wasn’t.

Lori seemed flattered when I started asking
her out, when I’d pick her up for a date or open the door or hold
her chair. She was always grateful when I’d pay for dinner or the
movies. We were nice to each other then. It felt easy, like we were
part of something larger.

To his credit, when Lori told Larry just
before we graduated that me and her were going out and, later, that
we were getting engaged, he said that he only wanted Lori to be
happy. “If that’s your choice,” he said. After that, how could I
hate the guy, even if it seemed he lived on our couch and ate all
our food? Still, he was always a shadow I couldn’t catch; the
person I couldn’t be.

When Lori filed for divorce and left me to
enlist in 1999, she said it was so she could unwind. All through
her army years, she’d send Larry long letters, saying she loved
feeling useful and free. After 9/11, she wrote how she kept getting
bumped up the ladder. When her contract expired, she wrote how she
was “totally fine” that the army wouldn’t let her out, and how she
quickly accepted a cash bonus and a bump up to E6 to volunteer to
stay in theatre that last 18 months.

.

Me? I always wanted to be a banker, ever
since I saw my Dad in the business. It felt like the industry I
grew up in was gone forever after The Collapse. Decisions were all
pushed up the ladder, making the branch managers little more than
another face at the shop. Post-Lehman, all management cared about
was cash flow and capital-on-hand. It had never mattered before
what the branches had on hand.

Corporate’s mantra had been: “Don’t let
business walk out the door.” Paperwork, verifications, salary
history... details just hindered us from capturing business. “If a
customer walks out the door with a mortgage, we’ve got them for
life,” the District Manager said at every staff meeting for years.
“Nothing is more certain long-term than a mortgage.”

I didn’t move mortgages or sell financial
products. Perhaps if I had, I would not have been threatened with
being fired for calling the District Manager to ask for a vacation.
Instead, three years after The Collapse, every footstep at work is
like walking on eggshells. My own profession was generally
ridiculed at work. Accountants, intoned the District Manager, got
us into this mess, by failing to see the warning signals and apply
the brakes…. It was just like Enron, he’d moan.