HOPE FOR CHANGE... But Settle for a Bailout

by Bill Orton

  Spreading Capital with a Smile

  “Welcome to Bucksters,” said the barista. “What can I get started for you?”

  “Hi,” said Larry van der Bix, smiling. “Sure is a nice day out.” Larry stood still, smiling,

  “Uh, sure is,” said the clerk. “What can I get started for you?”

  “Bright. Sunny,” said Larry, holding his smile and placing his hand on the counter, leaning slightly forward. “… Yeh….”

  “Okay, Mister, you’re kind’a creeping me out,” said the clerk. “Can I get something started....”

  “Um,” said Larry, straightening. “Large coffee.” Larry’s phone rang and he pulled it out and read “DNA 6” on the screen. “Pardon me,” smiled Larry, “have to take a call. Could be important.”

  “Two dollars forty cents, Mister.”

  “Um, I mean, hello, this is Larry.”

  “Two forty, Mister….”

  A tall redhead wearing a tie under his apron approached the register. “Is there a problem?” he asked the clerk.

  “Just trying to get this creepy guy to pay for his coffee.”

  The redhead looked closely at Larry, who held the phone to his ear, but said nothing. “I know you from somewhere,” he said.

  Larry raised an index finger and pivoted his arm such that the motion might remind someone old of John Wayne. “Ya’ know,” said Larry, again holding a smile, “actually, I’ve stopped taking caffeine. I forgot. Don’t worry ‘bout me.” Larry turned and quickly walked to the front door.

  “It’s the Cheetos Man,” yelled a voice from behind him. “Run away, coward!”

  Larry ran the distance to the Lincoln, climbed in quickly and looked at his phone, which still read DNA 6. “Um, hey, hold on, please….” He tapped on the smoked glass. “Ralphie, head to Lori’s. Skipping the coffee.”

  Ralphie pulled into the Second Street traffic, moving through the heavily congested retail strip.

  “Sorry,” said Larry, into the phone. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Dave,” said the voice on speakerphone. “Someone said I should talk to you about a donation. I have no idea who you are, but I’ll take your money. I give away fixed-up bikes — and some new ones — to kids in Long Beach 90805.”

  “I’m heading to 90805,” said Larry. “My friend lives by Jordan high.”

  “Isn’t that something,” said Dave. “My bike program is in Houghton Park. I’m here. Why don’t you stop by?”

  “You are in the park?”

  “Just look for the building with all the bikes in front.”

  .

  “You don’t look 75,” said Larry, to the man in spandex cycling shorts and a tee-shirt emblazoned with Peacebuilders 90805 across the chest. The two stood alone in the bikeshop, where rims hung from hooks, frames rested against one another along walls and tires of various sizes overflowed from handmade cubby cabinets along one wall.

  “Guess I’m lucky,” said Dave, “and I am. I should be dead, but firefighters saved me during a heart attack. Anyway, this is a 501(c)(3) and all that and I can give you a receipt, but it’s just me, so if you need a grant writer thing, I don’t really do that.”

  Larry looked around and back to Dave. “No, I don’t need anything like that. I could just give you money. How much do you need?”

  “How much you got?” laughed Dave.

  “Couple hundred million,” said Larry. “Some of the taxes are still being hashed out.”

  “How ‘bout all of it?” said Dave, laughing. “No, really. I don’t know, whatever you want to give. I just fix up bikes, you know. They don’t cost much. But there’s a lot of kids who don’t have ‘em.”

  “I’ll be right back,” said Larry. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Why would I go anywhere?” said Dave. “This is what I do.”

  Larry walked across the park towards the parking lot, where he waved at Ralphie, who stepped out and opened the rear door. “I’m going back out in a minute.” Larry closed the door and opened one of two refrigerators in the cabin and removed several lines of sodas, revealing a small safe, which he dialed open. He reached in a pulled out one of several bundles of bills. He closed the safe, spun the knob, replaced the sodas and closed the refrigerator. He put the bundle into his pocket, stepped out of the car and tapped on the window, which Ralphie lowered. “Be right back.”

  Larry crossed the park again and found Dave mounting spokes to a rim.

  “I didn’t think you would come back,” said Dave. “You want some water or something?”

  Larry reached into his shorts and pulled out a bundle of hundred dollar bills. “How about this as a start?” said Larry, handling the bundle to Dave.

  Dave held the bills and just looked at them, before looking back to Larry.

  “Is this Candid Camera or fake money or something?” he asked. He rifled his thumb across the bills, which crisply responded. “These are hundred dollar bills. This is....”

  “Should be ten thousand dollars,” said Larry. “Bikes are good. I don’t ride one, but my friend does.”

  “Bikes are good,” said Dave. “You’re just giving me this? Ten thousand dollars in cash, just like that?”

  “Yeh,” said Larry, “I mean, if you can use it.”

  “Sure, we can use it,” said Dave. “Let me give you a receipt.”

  “That’d be good,” said Larry, now smiling. “The people I hired, they like paperwork like that.”

  Dave rustled about for a receipt book, while holding the bundle. “I’ve never held this much money at one time.”

  Larry kept smiling. “Tell me when you need more.”

  “Do you just carry bundles of money in your pocket all day,” Dave asked, handing Larry a receipt. He then spoke with an air of caution absent earlier. “You know, this isn’t really the greatest neighborhood. Don’t let on that you’re loaded like this. You could have some problems out here, even if you are the Cheetos Man.”

  “W’ull,” said Larry, shaking hands and smiling. “I’m off to see my friend.”

  .

  “Larry!” said a tall, blond woman in her 60s, smiling broadly, and quickly crossing the grass to reach the Lincoln, as Larry stepped out. The woman warmly wrapped her arms around him and he smiled and hugged her back. She kissed his cheek and turned to Ralphie. “Lori’s told me all about your nice friends.” She smiled to Ralphie. “Would you like to come inside for dinner?”

  “Oh, no ma’am,” said Ralphie, closing the passenger door. “I have a book, thank you.”

  “I’ll make sure to bring you a plate when it’s ready.”

  “Much appreciated, thank you,” said Ralphie, heading back to the driver’s side

  “Did you see the new flowers?” asked the woman, pointing to a freshly-planted bed of zinnias, marigolds, alyssum and lobelia along the entire front wall of the house, “Lori will be home soon.... She’s just riding home from the library.” The woman pulled Larry by the hand. “Now that we don’t worry about the mortgage, we’re able to do things we never could before… because of you.”

  Larry smiled, as he looked at the bed of flowers.

  .

  “Bix!” said Lori, as she rode up on her bike. Dismounting, she wheeled her Schwinn into the garage, set it against a '70s green Plymouth and lifted the wicker basket, holding several books and DVDs, off the handlebars. “Heard what’cha did,” she said, hugging Larry.

  .

  “... And you just handed him a bundle of money?” asked Lori’s father, as he passed a plate of bread rolls to Lori.

  “He told me, ‘I have no idea who you are, but I’ll take your money,” said Larry, smiling. “Can’t believe he’s 75.”

  “He’s always looked young,” said Lori. “It’s cuz he laughs all the time. Bread?” Lori passed the rolls to Larry, and followed with a plate of butter. “I didn’t want him to know it was my best friend,” added Lori.

  “You’re the one who told him to call?” said Larry, passing the bre
ad to Lori’s mom.

  “Oh,” said the mother, “I better take a plate out to Ralphie.”

  “Lori worked for Dave,” said Lori’s dad.

  “My first job,” said Lori. “It’s what made me a bike person.”

  .

  Larry sat back in the Lincoln’s leather seat and waited for Ed to pick up.

  “Yo, dude.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me that one of the people asking for money was Dave the bike guy who gave Lori her first job?”

  “Oh, hey Larry…, what was that?”

  Larry sat upright. “DNA 6, you said not to answer, but he gives away bikes to kids and Lori used to work for him. I gave him ten thousand dollars.”

  “You did what?” said Ed.

  “How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “Dude, as I recall, I went through dozens of your missed calls in less than an hour,” said Ed. “Oh, by the way, how’s yer grandmother doing?”

  “I’m going there now,” said Larry. “They’re gonna ease her back today.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Ed, adding abruptly. “Oh, man, ‘Lonely Island.’ Dude, I gotta go.”

  “But Ed, why....”

  “Someone’s gotta swim with the shark, dude,” said Ed, before hanging up.

  Larry looked at the blank screen and put the phone down in the cup holder. He looked at the phone and picked it up. He scrolled down the address book arid dialed DNA 1.

  “Hi, my name is Larry. Who’s this?” He reached for his Southwest Airlines pen.

  .

  My phone buzzed, while the television showed an obviously frightened contestant being led to the edge of the lagoon. Ed was right. There was something compelling about a shark in the lagoon. The buzzing stopped, only to resume a moment later. “L V D B.”

  “Aw, Jesus,” I said, picking up the cell. “Yeh, Larry, what?”

  “I just gave Lori’s first boss ten thousand dollars and I have a list of charities I want to give another hundred and fifty thousand.”

  “What, wait, huh?” I said, “What do you mean you just gave ten thousand dollars away....”

  “Right,” answered Larry. “And now I have this list. I’m gonna have Ralphie drive me around, but then when I give ‘em a register tape, they’re gonna come to you for actual money, so just wanted to let you know. Or I might just pull money and hand out cash.”

  I looked up to the screen. In the water, the camera showed a great white shark swimming menacingly as human legs stood in the distance, on the shore. “Wait, Larry....”

  The phone went dead.

  I went back to “Lonely Island.”

  .

  Ralphie opened the door to the Lincoln and Larry stepped out, in shorts and flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt. He was met by a petite, smiling woman in a red polo shirt, with “Lisa” stitched above a logo of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

  “Nice car,” said the woman.

  “It’s not mine,” said Larry, patting his shorts pocket. “It’s his,” pointing to Ralphie. “I’m Larry.”

  .

  Larry and Lisa sat at a long table with three other members of the humanitarian affairs committee, in a well-maintained union hall. “At Thanksgiving, we give out about 1,500 baskets of food,” she said, while the others, also in red polo shirts with their names stitched above the union logo, listened. “Maybe the person who suggested you meet told you that.”

  “No, not really,” said Larry, patting his pocket. “Just that I should talk to you.”

  “We spend two says putting the baskets together, right here,” said Lisa. “When the turkey and everything else is included, it’s around 80 pounds of food in each basket. The money’s all donated by the workers and the union.”

  “It usually takes about 200 volunteers,” said a tall African-American, with “Chris” stitched onto his shirt. “We just finished our 15th year.”

  “We do toys, too, in December,” said Lisa.

  Larry reached into his pocket and pulled out a bundle of hundreds. The four red-shirted union members looked at one another silently.

  “We don’t take outside contributions,” said Lisa. “It’s all internal giving. But you can go down to the John Mendez athletic center. Or I can introduce you around, if you want. There’s lot of need.”

  .

  “And this is our marine biology library,” said a middle-aged man with a long, graying beard. “We get a lot of graduate students and researchers who come here, but still our biggest source of visitors is from the field trips from local schools.”

  Larry patted his pocket. “And busses are the biggest thing holding back the visits?”

  .

  “There aren’t many tall ships left,” said a woman in her 60s, walking with Larry on the deck of TopSail’s schooner. “Many of the kids we’re teaching to sail have never even been to the beach, let alone hoisted a sail.

  Larry smiled.

  .

  Larry pulled apart the fried calamari and ate, while Ralphie sat behind the wheel, occasionally reaching for a piece. “This may be the greatest day I’ve had so far with this whole money thing,” said Larry.

  “Making good people happy?” said Ralphie. “That’s always a good day.”

  A tapping at Larry’s window prompted Ralphie to lower the passenger’s-side front window and a server from Ante’s handed a plate of meat and cabbage to Larry, who handed it to Ralphie, before taking the second plate for himself. The server then reached for silverware and napkins, in the pocket of his apron.

  “Thank you,” said Larry, passing a hundred dollar bill to the man, who smiled and turned. He put a coin in the parking meter before returning to the restaurant.

  .

  “So here’re the receipts I got,” Larry told me, emptying slips from his pocket – one written in pencil onto a plain sheet of lined school paper —onto my home office desk.

  “Okay,” I said, looking at each. “This is actually better then I was expecting. I thought it’d just be the register tape... which would have worked, but, yeh, definitely better. Thanks for making the effort, Larry.” Each of the sheets had contact information, tax ID numbers, dates with signatures and descriptions. “Emily will need non-profit paperwork, to back up the charitable record-keeping, but, otherwise... yeh... this is really good, Larry.”

  I looked up to Larry, who was smiling more naturally and bigger then maybe I had ever seen in the years we’d known each other. “Looks like philanthropy agrees with you.”

  “This has been a good day,” said Larry. “W’ull, gotta get to Memorial. Doctor says my grandmother is coming out today.”

  “Good luck, Larry.”

  .

  Larry sat holding Emma’s hand, as she lay in bed, slightly turning her hips and torso. Larry’s smile broadened.

  “Bix,” came a female voice from the door. Lori stepped in.

  “Lori!” gushed Larry. “Today’s the day!”

  Lori stepped to Larry, gently placing both her hands softly on his shoulders and then leaning forward, so she could kiss the top of his head. She walked around the bed and took the spare chair, wrapping her hands around Emma’s.

  “I’m so glad you came,” said Larry.

  “Of course.”

  An orderly entered the room, looking at a clipboard. “Van der Bix? Correct?”

  “Yeh,” said Larry.

  “Okay,” said the orderly, with a shrug. “Wheel him in,” the orderly said towards the hall.

  “Hey, this is a private room, okay,” said Larry, standing, as a gurney bearing Calvin van der Bix was wheeled into the spot where a second bed would have been, had Larry not insisted on paying to make it a private room. Attendants busied themselves attaching an oxygen tube and adjusting IV drips, as Larry and Lori silently looked on.

  “Dad?” said Larry, standing alongside the gurney, as an attendant adjusted the gurney’s height.

  “He can’t hear you,” said the attendant.

  �
�… Hell… I… can’t,” said Calvin, in a weak, hoarse voice.

  “Mister van der Bix,” said Dr. Bosch, entering the room and doing a double-take at the gurney. She reviewed the chart at the base of the bed. “Same van der Bix?” she asked.

  “My dad, yeh,” said Larry. “Don’t know what happened, though.”

  “Oh, now I recognize him,” said the doctor, looking in his ears, up his nose, and running a light beam across his eyes. “Doing fairly well for someone who just suffered a massive stroke.”

  “Oh my God,” said Larry.

  “Looks like you have your hands full,” said the doctor. “Good you have friends and people who love you. You’re very lucky.” The doctor moved to Emma and began examining her. “Oh, very good responsiveness. Very good.”

  Larry picked up his phone. He dialed Lawrence.

  .

  I groaned when the phone flashed “L V D B.” I took the call on the fourth ring, just before it went to voice mail. “Yeh, Larry, what?”

  “Copenhagen. I need it now. Fly someone out now.”

  .

  “I just asked my person if he can fly a doctor out from Denmark, and I’m not sure if he will come through,” said Larry, to Dr. Bosch, who was checking Emma’s reflexes.

  “I also made some inquiries,” said the doctor, smiling as Emma slowly opened her eyes and looked about. “Can you tell her that she is going to be just fine?”

  “Farmor,” said Larry. “We’re here in the hospital. Calvin’s here, too,” said Larry, looking across to his father’s gurney. “The doctor says you’re gonna be fine. You gonna be okay, Farmor.”

  “We have an orderly who is Norwegian and a rehabilitation specialist from Sweden, each of whom will be checking on your grandmother,” said the doctor, completing her examination. She spoke directly to Larry. “She’ll be in for a couple more days, getting her strength back, but she should be just as she was before.”

  “Great news!” said Lori, clasping Emma’s hand.

  “Thank you, doctor,” said Larry.