we could do that.” He said. “But it was just an example, there’s a million ways to make a buck.”
“Yeah I know. You ever return shit you never bought? You know, find a receipt for a shirt, and then walk into the Gap and just grab the first shirt you see that cost that much and take it to the return counter for a quick twelve bucks?”
“No, but I knew a guy who used to do that at a recycling center. I guess they were backed up on the processing or something, because there were boxes of bottles stacked beside the road near the depot. He’d stop on his way in and put a couple of the boxes in his back seat, then drive to the depot and the guy there would pay him seven dollars a box. He used it like a cash machine.” Michael said.
“You think shit like that would work at K-Mart? Like on a high dollar item like a VCR?” I asked.
“If you could find a receipt for one. But you’d still have a problem with the merchandise pickup at the store. The electronics department is always far away from the customer service desk. It could still work on a busy day, but you’d have to start with low dollar shit to test it out.” He said.
It was a warm night and we were rich with money and weed. Our ride was cut short when we heard a loud cackle from Julie’s front porch. Mya was with her, and they were laughing at us for some reason. We stopped to say hello.
“The streets are filled with cretins!” Julie yelled as we came up her walk. “For the love of Christ -what bothersome creatures you are!” There was white medical tape from the bridge of her nose down to her nostrils that formed a triangle on her face.
“She’s possessed by demons.” Mya explained.
Julie walked into her house and slammed the door. Mya, who seemed unimpressed with Julie’s performance, looked at Michael.
“Tell your brother I want my money.” She said.
“How much does he owe you?” Michael asked.
“Twenty bucks.”
Michael laughed. “You’ll never see it.” He said. “What’s up with your friend?”
“She’s pissed off ‘cause her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up tonight and he never showed.” She said. “I brought her some wine to help her forget her troubles.”
“Whatd’ya got going?” I asked. “A little Caber-nyea-Soven-yough?”
“Nah, Boones Strawberry Hill.” She said. “And you can’t have any.”
“Then you can’t have any of my dope. I’m just gonna light up my joint, and smoke that shit right in front of you and not give you any.” I said.
“You have a joint?”
“Yup.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? I’m sure we could work something out.” She banged on the door. “JULIE,” she yelled, “quit being a baby and get out here.”
“She have a nose job?” Michael asked.
“No I didn’t have a fucking nose job, you dick.” Julie said sticking her head out the door. “What are you doing here anyway? Who asked you to come?”
“Quit being such a drunken banshee,” Mya said, “they brought weed.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Julie asked, stepping onto the porch.
“Why are you such a bitch?” I pulled the joint from my cigarette pack. “Why does everything have to be some high-drama bullshit?”
“Yeah, that guy Eric’s a dweeb anyway.” Michael said.
I put the spliff between my lips. “Oh my god,” Mya said, “is that real? It look’s like a Bob Marley joint.”
“You can’t smoke that here,” Julie said, “my mom can smell it a mile away.”
“We could smoke it on my porch.” Mya said. “My grandma has tubes up her nose. She can’t smell shit.”
As we walked down the block to Mya’s house, I lit up the joint and nonchalantly took a couple puffs. It was like sucking on a chimney. I tried to pass it to Julie.
“That is illegal you know, you can’t just smoke it on the street.” She said.
“You gonna turn us in?” Michael asked.
“No,” she said, taking it from me finally. “If I did that, you might never bring your brother around again.”
“Oh no, not you too. Does every woman on the planet want to fuck my brother?”
“No,” Mya said, taking the joint from Julie as we walked across her yard, up to her porch. “Just the ones who’ve seen him.”
Mya took a hit and passed it to Michael. “My dick’s bigger than his. Just so you know.” He said. He took a big hit and sat on her steps. We passed it around until it was burning our fingers. We were laughing and talking loud, all of us very high. Mya unscrewed the cap on the bottle of Boone’s and we passed that around too. It was the first time in a long time that I felt happy.
When Julie started talking about Eric and how great his paintings were, Michael scoffed. She said she had one in her room that she looked at every night before she went to bed that made her cry. Michael asked her what it looked like and she gave a long description. When she was done, Michael said it sounded fugly which made Mya and me laugh. “You don’t know shit about art.” Julie said.
“So show me this brilliant painting then. I wanna see it for myself.” He said.
That was when I realized what he was up to. They walked off toward her house together. It was a masterful setup and now he was getting exactly what he wanted, which wasn’t to look at a painting. I’d lost my virginity to an Armenian girl named Yeva at a house party when I was fifteen, but since that sordid mess I’d been unable to repeat. The closest I’d come was with Jenny the filler-person. I’d fumbled around in her panties after school one day. Some of her friends were in the other room watching TV and she was nervous that one of them would walk in on us, so we stopped.
Mya and I were alone on her porch, and although she wasn’t pretty or anything, I wanted to fuck her. The idea never seemed to cross her mind. “She’s so stupid. I can’t believe she’s wasting her time worrying about Eric-The-Genius. His paintings are lame anyway. I fuckin’ hate art.” She said.
“You hate art? Why? What do you have against paintings?” I asked.
“I guess I don’t hate art… I hate artists. Paintings are fine, but the idea of some fuck in a smock putting his deep soul onto a canvas and then expecting everyone to make a big deal over it is just… Pathetic. Who fucking cares about your feelings? It’s really all about getting attention and making money, but they’d never admit that. Making a piece of art is like making a billboard or any other dumb advertisement, they’re just trying to grab peoples attention so they can have everyone make a big fucking fuss over them and get some money. They’re advertising a product and the product is them. Artists are fucking losers.” She said.
“Yeah, well so what? They’ve gotta eat, right? If someone’s gonna pay them to smear paint across a canvas, who cares?”
“Yeah, that would be fine, but see they wanna act like it means something. And of course everyone’s too paranoid to admit the obvious, which is that it’s totally fucking meaningless. Artists are like politicians who say like they want to help people so they can get elected, but the only person they ever really help is themselves. It’s all bullshit. Fuck art, it’s like everything else, it’s just a bunch of assholes desperate for respect and money. Everybody wants that money.”
“You act like there’s something wrong with making a little money. Shit… You act like there’s something wrong with money itself.”
“There fuckin’ is something wrong with money.” She said. “It’s infected every goddamned thing that exists. There’s not one thing that exists in this world that isn’t about making money.”
“What about a tree… or the moon?”
“A tree? Have you ever heard of the timber industry? It makes Billions. The moon? You know how much money we spent to put a motherfucker up there? And you really think that they’re not gonna sell property on the moon? As soon as it becomes normal to go up to the moon and people start doing it all the time, the fuckin’ maggots will invade and make trillions off the moon -please.
Someday they’re gonna make a projector powerful enough to project images onto the moon and then, bam! Moonvertising. One night you’ll look up and the moon won’t even be there, just a big Pepsi symbol looking down at you. It’s inevitable. And why is it inevitable? Money, that’s why.” She shook her head in disgust. “And this is it? This is the best we could do? In all of human history, this is the best world we could come up with? What a joke! Our entire lives are controlled by a system that crushes the weak and rewards the heartless. The only real crime is being poor. Society is a fuckin’ machine that doesn’t care if we live or die as long as we have a little money to spend while we’re doin’ it.”
12
The next morning I had to pee before Kate left for work and I couldn’t avoid running into her in the hall. She was in her work clothes getting ready to leave. “Nick, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.” She said. “Did that landscaping job come through?”
“Yeah it did. What do you think I’ve been doing all this week? I been busting my ass with a shovel, trying to level out some old lady’s back yard.”
“Oh. I thought it must’ve fallen-through because I never see you in the morning. Most landscapers work early.” She said.
“Yeah well, you don’t know Michael’s brother. Not exactly a morning person… Oh and Kate, while we’re talking, I might as well tell you. He’s paying me more than he pays the Mexican guys from Home Depot, but it’s still not enough for me to make the rent next month. Would it be okay if I