Black Buck(62)

He sat down on the polished hardwood floor, his head in his hands.

I walked over to the kitchen and grabbed some expensive faux--gourmet coffee and put it in the machine.

“It’ll be okay,” I said, watching his shoulders shake up and down. He was sobbing. Loudly.

“Get up.” I picked him up and threw him onto the couch. “And drink this.” I handed him a cup of the over-roasted sludge.

“Thanks,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Lucien and the rest of the board said that if we don’t close a significant amount of cash this month I’m out.”

“What do you mean out?”

“Fired, Buck. They said I’m fired at the end of the month if we can’t pull it together. All of this shit, it’s just the excuse they were waiting for to get me out. They’ve always hated us, and I knew it, but now I really know it.”

“But how can they fire you, Rhett? Don’t you and Chris own a majority of Sumwun?”

Rhett tried to muster a smile. “Sometimes I forget you’re still so young. Of course we don’t own a majority of the company. All of those millions we raised came at a cost. The more money we needed, the bigger the piece of the pie we gave away until we were left with less than them. Plus,” he said, sinking deeper into the couch, “Chris is on their side.”

I reflexively took a sip of my coffee and spit it out. “Hold on, Rhett. So why don’t we say fuck them? After all of the cash we’ve closed over the past few months, can’t we just survive off that?”

“No, Buck.” He shook his head. “That’s not how it works. Plus, we don’t have any cash. We’ve been living from hand-to-mouth for the past quarter.”

“Hand-to-mouth? We’ve closed over a million dollars a month since I started. We’ve been hitting the numbers.”

Rhett threw his head back, letting out something between a sigh and a growl. His ceiling was a graffitied version of the Sistine Chapel’s, coincidentally spray-painted by an artist who also went by the name Michelangelo. He said it was cheap, but I don’t see how it could’ve been.

“Rhett.”

He just lay there staring at the multicolored men and women wearing tight-fitting skirts, baggy jeans, basketball jerseys, Timberlands, and other “urban” clothing you’d see in a nineties rap video.

“Rhett,” I repeated, standing over him now, blocking his view.

“What, Buck? What the fuck do you want to know? That we were never really closing as much cash as I said we were? That whenever we just made it at the last minute, the last fucking second of the month, we actually didn’t? That I spent a good chunk of the money we raised on all of this?” he said, stretching his arms around the room. “Tell me, Buck, what do you want to know? Just tell me.” He rolled off the couch onto the floor, sobbing again.

“Rhett,” I whispered. “You can’t be serious.”

“As serious as lung cancer, Buck.”

I sat on the floor next to him and closed my eyes. The room was spinning, and all I could do was rock back and forth, breathing in and out. Trying to figure out what Rhett had just said. Because it sounded like he said that we’d been living a lie. That everything I believed in was nothing more than a myth.

“Do you have any ideas?”

“No, Rhett,” I said in disbelief. “How could I have any ideas?”

“I don’t know, Buck.” He sighed, smaller now. “It’s what I hired you for. When you pitched me that drink, I swore I saw a purer, smarter, more courageous version of myself.”

“And what do you see now, Rhett?” I asked, afraid of his answer.

“Well, Buck,” he said, getting up and walking to his bedroom. “Frankly, I don’t know. Everything is a blur.”





18





Not much had changed by Wednesday. The media was still replaying clips of the FBI raid; everyone at Sumwun was tense, making calls into the abyss to keep the floor humming; and Rhett was looking worse with each passing day.

It was still early, but I decided to head home and see Ma. She had gotten upset when she realized I’d left church in the middle of the sermon, so I was doing all I could to make it up to her. I figured heading home and ordering pizza before she got there would be a good move.

But when I got home and opened the door, something felt off, like the house was heavier. Muffled masculine voices came from the kitchen. And with each step I took, the voices got louder. There was laughter, a thick smell of Javanese coffee, and the click-clack of hard rubber heels. What the fuck is going on?

I swung the door open and found Ma at the kitchen table, pieces of paper spread out in front of her, and two men dressed in the same shit-colored brown suits leaning over her shoulders like mini angels in cartoons. Except they were both devils.

“Oh, hello,” the blonder one with a wrinkled, tanned face said, looking up. He smiled as he walked over with an outstretched hand. “You must be Darren.”

I just looked at it, noticing the gold watch hanging off his wrist before seeing the shock on Ma’s face. She was wearing a white T-shirt tucked into a blue denim jean skirt, which made her look twenty years younger.

“Dar,” she said, quickly shuffling the papers. “I didn’ know you’d be home so early, baby. Why didn’ you let me know?”