Business

by J. P. Meyboom

  The Dipshit Kid. Theo. Theodore. These days he calls himself Ted. He stands on the porch with a loopy grin. He’s grown into a good-looking young man who hasn’t shed his dopey vibe. Awkward, he shuffles from foot to foot. I wave him in.

  “I want to start something for myself,” he says after pleasantries. “Something I can build up, like you and Mr. Hornsmith.”

  He tells me he’s graduated from Queen’s with a shiny new business degree. He’s only twenty. Some species of genius. What a waste.

  “Why?” I say. “You can do anything you want.”

  “Exactly,” he says. “I don’t want to grind away at some insurance company or investment firm. I don’t want to go for the M.B.A. or law school. I want to take control of my own destiny, build my own business. I want you to tell me how it was for you. How you and Mr. Hornsmith did it. What worked and what didn’t.”

  “I don’t know what stories you’ve heard, but they’re all lies. We hustled. We bottom-fed. We threatened and cajoled.” I say it to throw him off the scent.

  “That’s business.” He smiles because he presumes he knows what he’s talking about.

  “Coffee?”

  I go to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

  “I’ve got an opportunity,” he says from the other room. “I could use some help.”

  Gas lit and water on, I go back to sit with him. At first, I think I want to give him something to carry in his hopeful heart. Something that gives him courage to continue down his road. Something he can take out occasionally and stick in those bastards’ eyes when they leave him outside looking in. Instead, I figure the best thing to do is send him on his way.

  “Stay with what you know,” I say. “Play the game. You don’t have to fight so hard or get that lost. Stay calm. Colour between the lines.”

  “I don’t want that. I don’t want to be one of those smug assholes in a glass tower. I don’t fit in.”

  “It’s possible,” I say, “that with a bit of perseverance, you might actually grow up to become one those assholes. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about?”

  The kettle whistles from the kitchen. It’s hard to say if he understands what I’m talking about.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I say. “Stick with it. In a little while, what I’m saying will make more sense. You’ll feel a lot better about yourself, and your mother will worry less. You’ll see.”

  “I want to make my own way, like you and Mr. Hornsmith,” he says from the other room while I fix the coffee. “Only better.”

  I dig around under the sink, between the detergent and the garbage bags. Somewhere there’s a bottle of rum down there. Emergency rations. Give the genius a shot of Dutch courage in his coffee and try to move him on to something else. I take a shot, too, for old times’ sake.

  When I hand him the hot cup, the poor bastard looks so earnest and hopeful. He’s certain he’s going to glean some nugget of truth from me.

  “I put some rum in your coffee,” I say. “Careful, it’s hot.”

  The Dipshit Kid. Ted. He takes a tentative sip. He came for answers. He wants to hear how we grabbed the world by the tail. How we brought the rain. How we did the Business. He hopes to get some insight into Hornsmith’s slippery ways. Hornsmith, the mysterious hero from his childhood. The father he never had.

  “Listen,” I say, “it’s hard manoeuvring through the bullshit without getting skinned. You don’t realize what you’re asking to get into.”

  “I want it all,” he says, “for one low price.” He grins again, like he gets it, while he doesn’t.

  “Ever heard of Jim Rohn?” he says after a while. Now he has something important to tell me. I shake my head, no. I don’t care. “He’s a businessman. He mentored Tony Robbins.” The rum was a bad idea. Now he’s going to talk like he knows things. “Jim Rohn said something like, if you don’t have your own plan, you’ll fall into someone else’s. And you know what they have planned for you?”

  I recognize it’s rhetorical. But I can’t help myself. He doesn’t know that I sold these sorts of predictable platitudes once upon a time.

  I say, “Nothing?”

  The kid nods, pleased I understand.

  “You can’t take life too seriously,” I say. “You won’t get out alive.” He looks at me, blank. Like the first day he stood behind his mother’s screen door, his finger in his nose. It’s my turn to smile. I say, “People attribute that to the great philosopher Bugs Bunny.”

  The Dipshit Kid squirms, uneasy in his chair. This isn’t what he came for.

  “Actually, I’m pretty sure he stole that from Elbert Hubbard,” I say. “Look, we did it because we were outcasts. Not because we wanted to. It was a vortex of chaos and daily uncertainty. Business is a fundamentally soulless endeavour, so get yourself a steady situation that won’t grind you too much. Settle in. Get a hobby if you’re looking for some fun.”

  “I have a real shot,” he says, petulant. “I can do it.”

  “Doing it is the easy part.” I start to feel for the misguided runt. “You can persuade anyone they can become number one. Inspiration by aspiration. That’s what you’re selling. That’s what it takes. The actual shot makes no difference. The hard part is you need to want it. ‘It,’ with a capital I. You understand? It.”

  The Dipshit Kid seems at sea. I’ve talked to brighter dogs. It would be so easy to rope him into a plan. Hornsmith would’ve eaten this sad sack alive. The perfect shill. Listening to my rum talk, I fancy I could get back into it if I had the urge. No, let’s banish that, for now.

  “You don’t even look the part,” I say. “The first thing is you need to look the part.”

  I get up and open the drawer in my desk where I keep a cash stash for the just-in-case moments. I peel off a couple hundred, so the kid doesn’t leave empty handed. He watches from his chair, uncertain what’s transpiring. Or is he?

  I give him the money.

  “Now, fuck off,” I say, friendly like. “Go find yourself some decent shoes. Those sneakers don’t cut it.”

  “Shoes?”

  “They say a lot about a man.”

  For a moment I’m curious: What’s his shot look like? Does it have legs? No. It’s undoubtedly idiotic. That’s it. I’m not telling him another thing for now. Let’s see what he does with this.

  “Let me know how that goes.”

  The kid sits for a moment. Sighs. Shifts his ass on the chair. Stretches his neck and scratches the back of his crewcut head.

  “Okay,” he says and takes the money. “Okay. Thanks.”

  When he stands, the sound of the chair on the blond hardwood floor rings off the bare white walls. His squeaky rubber footsteps echo across the room. He closes the door behind him without looking back.

  After he’s left, I stand by the open bay windows above the Pacific Ocean. The cloudless steel-blue morning feels thin and raw. A briny draft creeps up the jagged cliffs. In the distance stands a gnarled cypress bent against the wind and rock. Down below, past the undulating green dune grass and the glistening yellow sand, silent alabaster waves churn on the open sea. Gulls screech and swoop lazy circles under the sun while a lone dog plays happily in the relentless surf. Life: it goes on.

  Pretty sure I stole that from Robert Frost.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With thanks to Alexandra Leggat, David Adams Richards, and Russell Smith for your help along the way.