Lawn Boy(25)

“There’s only one brand.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard, then, dog. Just don’t be late. I got shit on my plate.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“And remember: cheesy.”

I heard Nate going ape shit in the background.

“Gotta go,” said Freddy, hanging up.

Just as I’d suspected, Chaz needed me to start his car, the driver’s side of which was caked in dry mud.

“Yeah, I kinda got stuck the other night,” he said. “You got a license, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. You drive today.”

“You’re sure?”

“What the hell,” he said, riffling through the glove box for a mini.

Man, the transmission on that Bimmer was like butter. It was one thing to sit shotgun in the BMW. Driving it was something else. I truly felt like another person driving that car. I would’ve gladly driven all the way to Spokane right then if I’d had the chance, but Chaz directed me about a mile south and instructed me to park on a side street, where we climbed out and started walking toward the center of town.

After about four blocks, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant called Isla Bonita on the main drag and went straight for the bar.

Move a few walls around, get rid of the sombrero behind the bar, and Isla Bonita could’ve been the Tide’s Inn or Tequila’s. The stale air, the queasy light, the hoarse laughter. Within ten minutes, I’d be hearing Lynyrd Skynyrd. The bar patrons were a pretty rowdy crowd for five fifteen on a Monday afternoon. I recognized these people. They were not your characteristic islanders. They were my people. They hung Sheetrock and mowed lawns. They drove delivery trucks and repaired hot tubs. They lived fiercely and kept their blinders on and didn’t look much past their next paycheck. People with grease under their nails and name patches on their work shirts and deep worry lines at the corners of their eyes. People who lived for the promise of a little immediate satisfaction, when they could get it. And they could get it at Isla Bonita. It was a revelation that such a place existed on the island. Chaz must have been reading my mind.

“Don’t let the McMansions and the Mercedes fool you, Mu?oz. Who do you think put this place on the map? I’ll tell you: loggers, berry pickers, and shipbuilders. And they weren’t all Scandinavians, either. They were Japanese and Filipino and Indian. Look at the street names if you wanna know the real story. Forty years ago, it was nothing but mom-and-pops on this island. Yeakel’s shoes, Vern’s Winslow Drugs, the Country Mouse. This place was Mayberry R.F.D.—Christ, you probably don’t even know what that is. But there was no Safeway, no Subway, no Starbucks, nothing the modern world would call culture. There were three cops, and we knew them all by name. Not only that, we knew their secrets.”

“So, you’re from here?”

“Born and raised. Class of ’83. My dad sold insurance at Farmers, my mom sold baskets and decorative birdhouses. This place was a hippie haven, Mu?oz. Artists, outliers, eccentrics. It was an island in the truest sense.”

“No man is an island, but Bainbridge Is.,” I said.

“How do you know about that?”

“My mom had the T-shirt. She’s almost as old as you. I know about Mayberry, too.”

“If you listen hard enough, you can still hear the heartbeat of that place—just barely. But don’t get me started. Look, I like your style, the way you keep your shoulder to the wheel and your ear to the ground.”

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t flattered by Chaz’s confidence in me. He was evasive concerning the precise nature of Razmachaz but kept assuring me that I was the man for the job. He was grooming me. I should be on my toes and ready to learn. Was I reliable? Was I ambitious? Did I want to escape that dump I was living in? It hadn’t yet occurred to me why on earth Chaz might have selected me to be his protégé, when Remy walked in and sat down in a booth. I felt the blood drain from my face.

“You okay, Mu?oz? You’re not diabetic, are you?”

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

As bad as I wanted to run, I’m proud of myself for summoning the courage to proceed. I stood up and walked directly to Remy’s booth, convincing myself that I was capable of things I hadn’t been capable of the first time I sat down in her section. I was making seventeen bucks an hour now. I was the point man for Razmachaz LLC—whatever the hell it was. I was driving a BMW, sort of. And I had poetry in my heart, goddammit. But none of that mattered when the dude in the straight-brimmed Yankees cap and the big black gauges in his earlobes sat next to Remy, draping his arm around her. I immediately did an about-face, I hoped before she saw me.

I looked the other way for the next half hour, which is to say I looked at Chaz, which is to say Chaz had an audience. He told me about everything from floating payrolls, to tax credits, to money laundering. He told me how money didn’t matter, how it was just another tool, how finance should be all about freedom. Personal freedom. Freedom of choice, freedom of mobility, freedom to sit in your office and get drunk. It wasn’t that he was ambitious, more that he was lazy—and by his own admission. That’s why being an entrepreneur was the only life for Chaz. He could make his own hours. He could sleep at his desk. He could make businesses happen out of thin air, which is where credit came in.