by David Eddie
“Just the title.”
“Just the title? What have you been doing all these weeks? What do you do all day?”
“Write letters.”
“Dave, just write the article, man. Get it finished.”
“I just can’t seem to get going on it, Max. I don’t know where to start. I’m intimidated.”
“You’re too close to it, Dave. Why don’t you come out for a drink, take a break?”
“I can’t, Max, I’ve got to keep working—”
“My treat.”
“… I’ll get my jacket.”
We sat on the patio of the San George and had a few drinks. Max kept ordering more. Good old Max. After three or four tequila-gingers, I said: “You know, Max, this is great. I’m really glad I came back.”
“No regrets?”
“No. I’m much happier here. I never felt at home in New York. Toronto has an ambience like a civilized dinner party where all the best people are invited, all the guests go home early, and there isn’t too much to clean up in the morning. Whereas New York, New York’s like a party everyone found out about, a party where everyone lies around drinking cheap rotgut and ripping everything off and leaving cigarette butts and empty beercans everywhere and passing out in their own vomit. New York has the ambience of those apocalyptic adolescent bashes like you and I used to have when our parents went away, where you know no one is going to leave until everything is either consumed or destroyed.”
“That’s good, Dave,” Max said. “You should put that in your article.”
To be perfectly honest, I had already written those observations in note form. I was “workshopping” them on Max. Still, I was encouraged. His reaction gave me the confidence boost I needed to write the article, finally. I think the tequila-gingers helped a bit too, loosened me up. I stayed up late that night writing it, using notes from my notebooks, various articles I’d photocopied, trying to cobble together one good draft. Finally, I fell asleep on the couch, woke up early, and rewrote it, retyped the whole thing. When Max came down for breakfast I showed it to him. He read it over, chuckling as he went along.
“It’s fine, Dave, it’s done,” he said when he finished. “Don’t change a word.”
“O.K. Thanks, Max.”
“One other thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Hand it in right away.”
Max never complained about the money I owed him, he had faith in me. “Just sell one article, Dave, you’ll pay me back the whole whack.” He had faith in me, sure, but I know he wouldn’t have minded also having money in his wallet.
“Alright, alright.”
I handed it in, and waited. And waited.
You know, writing, freelancing, would be an interesting, worthwhile, and rewarding profession if editors actually treated it like a profession, and not some sort of aristocratic hobby. If they got back to writers quickly, and paid promptly. But that only happens to a few at the top of the profession, and they already have plenty of cash.
I phoned the Great Editor. First once a week, then twice a week, then every other day, then daily. I developed a relationship with his secretary.
“Hello, Ms. Fitzwilliams,” I would say. “It’s me, Dave.”
“How are you, David?”
“Fine, thanks. How are your geraniums?”
“They’re coming along very well, thanks. How can I help you?”
“Is The Great Editor in?”
“He’s in a meeting. Can I take a message?”
“Sure. Just tell him I called again.”
“O.K. He has your number?”
“I hope so. You gave it to him yesterday.”
And the day before, and the day before, and the day before. He returned about one call in twenty. Once, he called to tell me he lost my article.
“It was in with a bunch of papers in my office,” he said. “I think the cleaning lady threw them all away.”
My beautiful, immortal words, fruit of my labour, inspiration, and procrastination, now languishing in the “circular file.” It seemed like a bad sign, an excuse. I steeled myself to getting it killed. I sent him another photocopy of the original, and went back to waiting.
Meanwhile, my student-loan creditors had caught up with me. All this moving around didn’t fool them for long.
I don’t mean to brag, but once upon a time the letters I received sounded like this:
Dearest David, Oh, how
I long to be a tear,
To surge from your eyes,
To caress your cheeks,
And die upon your lips.
That’s an actual paraphrased excerpt from a love letter I once received from Francesca. I can’t be objective about the merits of the poetry, but the emotion was sincere, heartfelt, a shining example of the genus epistula amatoria.
Yes, those were the days, when I looked forward to my mail, opened it with trembling fingers, and was buoyed and cheered by the contents. But somewhere along the line, something went horribly wrong, with my mail and my life. Lately it was all starting to sound like this:
Mr. Henry:
Our records show your account with the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC) is seriously in arrears. Unless you start making payments immediately, we will be forced to take dramatic action to bring your account up to date. Mr. Henry, defaulting on your student loan will seriously affect your credit rating, and without good credit you will never be able to own a house or even a mobile home. Contact us immediately!
And that was the good old days. I didn’t advance the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation a plugged nickel, and the language of the letters grew progressively harsher. One began with the salutation FEDERAL WARNING in red block capitals, and went on to threaten me with legal action, withholding my tax returns, and wage garnishment. Another one said if I didn’t find a full-time job immediately, the government would issue me one, and deduct my payments from that.
I have to admit, that one scared me. I pictured myself in a trailer home in the shadow of some huge satanic factory, coming home at night, eating kerosene-heated pork and beans by the light of a bare bulb, then flopping exhausted into bed. In the morning, I’d be awakened by a voice from a huge loudspeaker: “ATTENTION STUDENT-LOAN DEADBEATS! ARISE, AND MARCH IN SINGLE FILE TO YOUR STATIONS!” In the bleak dawn, we would shuffle in our leg-irons towards another day of painstaking drudgery.
It was all too much for my sensitive, artistic nature. I stopped opening my mail, I didn’t even look at it, just transferred it directly to the garbage from its spot on the floor.
This system worked smashingly for a while. Then my predator-creditors started to phone me up. Let’s call my first loan officer Ned Harris. He was an obvious greenhorn, a nervous, excitable type. He phoned me at all hours, and hysterically demanded that I cough up all the money immediately (within 30 days) in cash or by certified cheque. I patiently explained to him he was asking the impossible, he might as well demand I wave a wand and turn the entire state of Vermont into gold. I was a writer, of no small renown in Canada, I implied. But writing was a dicey profession, feast or famine. Surely he understood that?
“But Mr. Henry,” he would say, over and over again (it was his mantra), “you owe us the money.”
I agreed that, of course, objectively speaking, this was true, and I would most assuredly get in touch with him the moment I had any discretionary dough. But at the moment it was out of the question.
On and on it went. From time to time, I considered sending a payment to Ned. The truth is I felt sorry for him. But before I could, he either quit or was fired, I don’t know. I think he was fired. Once, I made up my mind to pay an installment, I phoned the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation, explained who I was, and asked to speak to Ned Harris.
“Mr. Harris has been pulled from that account,” the secretary said.
“Could I speak to him anyway?”
“Mr. Harris is no longer with us,” she said darkly.
I sometimes w
onder what happened to Ned Harris. I hope I didn’t have a negative effect on his debt-collection career. Other times, though, it seems to me he was temperamentally unsuited to the rigours of debt-collection, and the sooner he got out of it the better.
Ned Harris was replaced by a world-weary debt-collection veteran named Adam Cohen. He phoned me early one Saturday morning to introduce himself. He woke me up, I was disoriented, but immediately sensed I had met my match, a Holmes to my Moriarty, a Porfiry to my Raskolnikov. We spent the first 15 minutes of that first conversation discussing the weather in Vermont versus the weather in Toronto. He had a slight cold, brought on by a sudden change of the weather. With the ease of a master, he steered the conversation to my days as a student in Vermont. Had I not found the Vermont weather fickle back then? I agreed I had, but that was a chief charm of autumn in Vermont. And the turning of the leaves, was it not spectacular? I agreed it was. From there, we discussed my student days, the first-rate quality of my education, the liberal spirit of the school, etc. He asked how my career was going. I gave him my spiel about big-shot editors, the unpredictability of the profession, and the decline of readership and literacy in general. He seemed to take only a passing interest in this; not once did he mention the sum of money I owed.
Then he asked me: “Do you have any hobbies?”
Surprised, wrong-footed, I said, no, I didn’t, not really.
“Do you like to cook, for example?”
Yes, I said, but lately I mostly ate out.
The words had just left my lips when I realized my mistake.
“Just burgers and stuff like that,” I hastily added, but it was too late.
“I suggest you review your budgeting priorities, Mr. Henry,” Adam Cohen said.
He pointed out that payments of $60 a month worked out to $15 a week, or about $2 a day. Would I agree I spent at least $2 a day eating out?
He had me, plain and simple; I was cornered. I longed for the halcyon days of Ned Harris.
I vowed to get back on track with my payments, and promised to start paying right away. Adam Cohen thanked me ironically, and hung up.
In the end, though, I never sent him any money, either. That’s the beautiful thing about money, it’s so versatile. The same $60 can go towards the relatively ascetic pleasures of debt repayment, or it can buy you a new shirt, a delicious meal in a restaurant, dozens of drinks. For me, the pleasures of the flesh always win out. Besides, I had other, more pressing financial matters to worry about. Rent Day was approaching, and I had no money, nothing coming in, no one to borrow from. Over the course of the summer, I’d been back to borrow money from my mother not once but several times. The last time, she said gently, “You can’t just keep borrowing money from me, you know. You have to get your own income sometime soon.” Also, at lunch one day, I finally screwed up the courage to put the touch on the old man. He flatly refused, without explanation.
And I’d borrowed the max from Max, as he explained to me on Rent Day Eve.
I was lying on the futon on the floor of my room, pondering my ridiculous fate, when Max poked his head through the door.
“What are you doing?” he asked me.
“Nothing.”
“Thinking?”
“Trying not to.”
“Listen, Dave, I hate to ask you this, but are you going to be able to come up with your share of the rent tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You don’t have it now, I take it?”
“No.”
“Listen, I’d lend it to you, but the truth is I’m just barely able to make my own share. I lent some to Sam, things are pretty tight for me right now. Do you think you can ask your mom for it?”
“Probably,” I lied.
He retreated, and I went back to the sturm und drang of my thoughts. If I couldn’t come up with the rent, we might both get booted out, then where would we be? A terrible problem, deserving of the most acute attention. I solved it by turning out the light and going to bed.
The next day I got up, did a push-up, brushed my teeth, saw blood on the brush, went downstairs. Splayed on the hallway floor was the usual stack of writs, threats, injunctions, and court orders, including something from the Internal Revenue Service of the United States of America. What now? I wondered. What does the IRS want with me? True, I had failed to file a U.S. tax return this year, and then skipped the country. I guess I could see how they would want to be getting in touch with me.
Curiosity trumps fear; so I opened the envelope. To my surprise, out popped a cheque from the IRS, for $440 (U.S.).
I stared at it in disbelief. The attached letter explained the cheque was a replacement for my old, stolen tax-return cheque (the one signed “Henry David”). I’d almost forgotten — in compliance with my mother’s wishes, I’d written the IRS one last time to hassle them about it, but as soon as I dropped that letter in the box I wiped it out of my mind. I never thought anything would come of it.
As I turned the cheque over in my hand, and in my mind, I decided the whole thing was…a miracle! How else could you explain a cheque for exactly the amount of my rent plus a bit of spending money, popping through the slot out of the clear blue, on just the day I needed it most, the day I had exhausted all other options?
I refer to this incident as The Rent Day Miracle, and when I tell people the story, they just laugh and say: “Dave, how can you be so vain, naïve, and self-centred?”
Let them scoff. The moment that unexpected, almost absurdist cheque popped out of the IRS envelope, that’s when I knew some sort of higher power was watching over me — God, or at least a guardian angel.
13
The Sardines of Poverty
It was hard to keep the faith, though, when my whole world was slowly crumbling. It’s all very well to pray for luck and miracles, but it’s another thing when people are phoning you every day, three, four, five times a day, all with the same question: “Where’s our money?”
The phone became a two-way instrument of torture. I phoned the Great Editor, and hassled him. My creditors phoned me, and hassled me.
“Mr. Henry, I know you’re there. Pick up the phone, Mr. Henry. I’m very disappointed you didn’t make our last payment on schedule. Pick up the phone, Mr. Henry.”
First Josephson’s Opticians, then a collection agency representing Josephson’s Opticians, rang me up. The collection-agency lady assigned to my case came off all harsh and nasty, trying to intimidate me:
“I can assure you, Mr. Henry, if that money isn’t in my office by Friday, we will contact our lawyers, and the legal fees will be charged to you.”
I bounced back by telling her I didn’t have a job, nor a nickel in the bank.
“Are you physically disabled?” she asked me. “Are you telling me you can’t get a $10-an-hour job sweeping the streets?”
Just then someone in the background on her end of the line started screaming at someone else. He was really freaking out, giving the gears to some deadbeat.
“That’s a nice full-time job you’ve got there,” I said to her. “What are you, in some kind of basement boiler-room? I’d love to have a job in your office. I can yell at people and threaten them with the best of them. Want me to send you a resumé?”
“Have I yelled at you, Mr. Henry? Have I threatened you in any way?”
Kim-or-Gloria also phoned me endlessly, two, three, four times a day, leaving long, rambling messages. She kept going on and on about a subscription to the Burnished Monocle I had supposedly promised her at some point.
“Hello, Mr. Henry. Are you there? I was wondering, do you remember you promised to get me a subscription to the Monocle? Mr. Henry? Are you there? Oh, you’re a very silly boy… Mr. Henry. I wonder if you remember I gave you $40 to get me a subscription to the Monocle — Mr. Henry? Are you there? Oh, Mr. Henry, I wonder where can you be, maybe you’re writing and screening your calls — Mr. Henry? Are you there?”
On and on they went, sometimes for five minutes or
more, while I sat in the next room, smoking, guts churning, screening my calls, thinking: why is it only crazy people and creditors ever call me Mr.?
To try to conserve money, I went back to my two-sandwich-a-day routine. I lost quite a bit of weight, and I was also very tanned from my long, long walks in the sun.
“Wow!” people would say to me. “You’re looking great, Dave. Have you been working out?”
“No, I’m starving!” I wanted to say to them. “I’m not working out, and neither is my life!”
But I didn’t, of course. I merely batted my lashes demurely and said, “Thanks.”
It finally became obvious to me, what had been obvious to everyone else all along, I guess: I had to get a job, any job.
I will “take” a shitty job, is how I put it to myself. But nowadays “taking a shitty job” is easier said than done. People are lined up around the block for shitty jobs. You see an ad in the paper:
WANTED: Person Friday to sit on a trick chair above a vat of steaming shit wearing a clown costume, while little kids throw softballs at a target, trying to dunk you. Requirements: Ph.D in midway dynamics, 10 years experience, fluency or at least ability to scream “ARRGH!” in Mandarin, Swahili, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Ancient Greek. Native, physically challenged, and lesbians encouraged to apply. Oligarchical white-male oppressors may apply, but we feel it only fair to warn you you’re wasting your time.
You go in anyway, sit in a room with a hundred other hopefuls, clutching your briefcase, thinking: sitting above a vat of shit while a bunch of kids try to dunk me, for minimum wage? That sounds like a great job. I really hope I get it.
I never know where to begin to look for work. I know most people will advise you to make lists, schmooze, massage your contacts, but I’ve never been much good at any of that. Usually I just open the paper, check the ads, or cruise around in a daze looking for “Help Wanted” signs.
There was an ad in Next!, Toronto’s alternative weekly:
RECEPTIONIST WANTED for small ad firm.