Lawn Boy(43)

“I’m also a writer,” I said, a divulgence I regretted immediately.

“A writer, huh?” he said, doubtfully. “You make any money in the writing racket?”

“Not yet.”

“Hmph. Who the hell has time to read, anyway? So what else you been up to? Inquiring minds want to know.”

I was becoming increasingly certain that “buy you a cup of coffee” was some sort of euphemism. All I could think about while he was chatting me up over the rim of his cappuccino was his little salamander between my fourth-grade fingers, rapidly engorging with blood. Was he expecting me to do it again? Just like that? Not that I would. Not for a cup of coffee, that’s for sure. It was all so confusing, you know? I didn’t know what I was supposed to be feeling. Was I putting out some kind of signal I didn’t know about? Why would Doug Goble buy me coffee after all these years if it didn’t have something to do with touching penises?

“Let me give you a lift,” he said.

There it was. The proposition. Or maybe it wasn’t. Fuck, I didn’t know. All I knew was that a lift would save me two bucks in bus fare, but it wasn’t worth sucking Goble’s dick, or even touching it. I figured if he tried anything, I’d punch him in the throat and jump out of the car.

On our way out the door, we passed Marlin, banging out a ham-fisted rendition of “Tom Sawyer.” Doug stopped to watch him for an instant before dropping a fiver in his guitar case.

“Hey, I got a request,” he said. “How about ‘The Sounds of Silence’? Go ahead and learn that one.”

Marlin looked a little pissed off until he glanced down and discovered it was a fiver.

“Peace, bro,” he said.

“Get a job,” said Goble.

With that, Goble led me briskly across the parking lot to a black Lexus convertible.

“Nice car,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

At the stoplight on 305, Doug pulled out a tube and started applying cream around his eyes. I thought it was sunscreen at first, but then I recognized the extra-long yellow nozzle.

“Dude, hold up!” I said. “That’s not sunscreen!”

“Yeah, I know. It’s for hemorrhoids. It contracts the blood vessels—gets rid of my wrinkles.”

“You don’t have any wrinkles.”

“That’s what you think.”

He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen again. “I’ve got an open house at five thirty,” he said. “Kinda late, I know, but I wanna wow them with the sunset view. It’ll distract them from the fugly kitchen.”

“Look at you,” I said. “Driving a Lexus and shit. I can’t walk a hundred yards without seeing your face. What I don’t get is, how did you make any of this shit happen? You came from the res, just like me. Your mom, she didn’t have any money, just like mine.”

“Money’s not the only resource, bud. There’s sweat.”

“Then I should be rich.”

“You gotta sweat smart, though. You can’t just grunt your way to something better. Landscaping, you any good at it? You a pro?”

“Hell yeah, I’m good. I’m fast as hell, and my edges are gold. I can make your yard look like a million bucks. But my real specialty is topiary.”

“What, like bird watching?”

“Plant sculpting.”

“Hmph. How much do you make landscaping?”

“Actually, I’m between jobs.”

“How much did you make?”

“Twenty bucks an hour,” I lied.

“How much does your boss make?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, there’s your problem right there.”

“Is it?”

“You’re good, you said so yourself. But you don’t even know what you’re worth. How are you supposed to advocate for yourself when you don’t know what’s at stake?”

“How should I know?”

“You’ve gotta know exactly where you stand; otherwise, how can you possibly make your position seem better? You’ve got to leverage yourself. How else can you create the perception that you’re actually in control when you don’t even know what it is you’re trying to control?”

“I give up.”

“You wanna get out of the ghetto, Mike, you gotta follow the money.”

“What money?”

“There’s always money. You just gotta look closer.”

“Like under the couch cushions?”

“No, Mike, that’s not what I mean at all.”

“You mean like I gotta think big?”

“Anybody can think big. Prison is full of big thinkers. Think smart, Mike.”

“You mean like smoke and mirrors?”

“No, Mike. I don’t even know what that means. Look, I’m not sure why I’m telling you any of this. These are the keys to my success. This is about the will to power. This shit is gold. I don’t even offer this stuff in my seminars. I guess I find you nonthreatening somehow. And maybe I feel a little sorry for you—which is unusual for me. But the way out of poverty is to infiltrate communities. Communities within communities. Communities under communities. Communities that exist invisibly inside other communities. Communities outside your community that might possibly profit from your community. ?Comprendes?”