by Dave Eggers
In April she sold her car to pay the mortgage. I guess we were always quiet people, but after that, whole days would pass without a single word spoken between us. Then my sister, Caroline, fell off the earth, and we went ghostlike.
I knew we were in real trouble, but all I did those months was drink beer with Cody Thompson and fail my classes. Nobody said anything to me about that. Then I saw the ad and called.
It happens, you know? And if it’s happening to you, it’s not your fault. It’s them. They’re the ones that are sick. They’re the ones with problems. It’s you the victim, he said, as if he hadn’t heard me, like he was reciting from a doctor’s office pamphlet.
No one is messing with me, I said.
So why’d you call, Theo? If it’s not that, what is it? If it’s just the money, the money’s good, man. But it’s not just the money for us. For us, it’s a lifestyle. You know, we’re a family. But the money’s good. Thousand a week if you work it hard enough. Couple hundred, easy.
Thousand a week?
If you work it hard, brother. I know guys who do fifteen, even two, in the right neighborhoods, under the right moon. He laughed. Course, you got to work up to that.
I laughed.
What does your dad do?
Contractor.
Yeah? My dad too, except no one’s building shit anymore. Your mom work?
I didn’t believe him about his dad being a contractor.
She sells on eBay, I said.
He nodded and we both looked out past the low table where the TV used to be and through the windows onto the street where Henry’s van was parked behind my dad’s truck.
So, it’s the money.
I nodded.
It’s never just the money, Theo, he said.
I heard the back screen open and smack closed and then my parents were standing in the breakfast nook looking over at us. Henry stood up right away and smoothed his pants with his thick hands.
Mr. and Mrs. Lanting, we take good care of these kids and Theo’s just the kind to make some real money. I really think he’ll do well.
Then he looked straight at my dad and said, At the very worst, he’s bringing in two hundred. I mean, that’s the honest low right there and I got to tell you, sir, I’m expecting much much more. I mean, the boy would have to want to fail to make so little.
So, if you or Mrs. Lanting don’t have any other questions, all I need now is your permission. Henry gestured at a piece of paper that, twenty minutes before, he’d unfolded and set on the polished tabletop with a flourish, like he was proud of it. My dad bent over, and my mom smiled like something lovely had been decided. Henry smiled back at my mom like he was proud of her, and of all of us. My dad signed and then he walked into the backyard, where I knew he was smoking and pulling on the side fence, worrying about how much it gave and how he should have used roofing tar on the posts.
Pack a bag, brother, Henry said, folding the release form and returning it to his pocket.
How long until he comes back?
That depends on Theo, Mrs. Lanting. He can come home anytime he wants to. Anytime at all and, of course, anytime you want him home, you just call that number I gave you.
She came around the table and hugged me and whispered, It’ll be good for you to get out of here for a while, kiddo. Come back in September, do those classes over. It’ll be a good break.
I went into my room and packed my old Bruins duffel. I didn’t sit on my bed or look out the window. It was as if I’d already gone.
At the van, it was just Henry. He opened the passenger side and waited for me to climb in. If it had been Cody holding the door with that kind of ceremony, I would have said, What—no corsage? But I didn’t say anything.
The windows were rolled up and the AC was on high. Henry steered with one hand and pulled out the knot of his tie with the other.
We drove out to the Weston Inn on Blue Lakes, which took about five minutes, and I followed him through the lobby. He started taking his shirt off in the hallway and was bare-chested by the time he was knocking on a door. He wasn’t quite as tall as I was, but he was built like a running back.
The motel room smelled of cigarettes and beer and hair spray and the curtains were drawn. It reminded me of parties I’d been to with Cody at the ISU dorms—guys sitting on the floor, backs against the wall, and a couple of girls at a table around a bottle of Smirnoff.
Nora had long, brown hair, too pale skin, and large breasts beneath a tight, torn-up old T-shirt. Cody would have gone crazy for her. Henry sat in the middle of the giant bed and leaned back against the headboard. It was hard to believe my parents were only five minutes away.
Give Theo your chair, Nora. Be a good host. Come sit over here. She smiled at me when she crossed the room. All of them looked exhausted and sick.
Go ahead, Theo. I sat on Nora’s chair with the duffel on my knees. Give him a beer, Mattie, Henry said. A guy with wide black eyes threw me a can from the other side of the room, where he sat on a chair by the window.
This is your crew, T. Look around you. You’ll be with Mattie tomorrow. He’s a Mexican but you’d never know it the way he works. He’ll show you what you need to know. Nobody here sells like Mattie-O except Nora and that’s why they get the bed. Highest sellers always get a bed. Lowest sellers on the floor. And if you don’t sell at all? He stared hard at a hangdog kid leaning against the bathroom door. You’re a Bunker Baby. The kid kept his head down. But you’re no Bunker Baby, Theo my man, right? We keep all your money on the books. Each day you get a twenty-buck draw for whatever. You need more than that, say the word, and if it’s in there it’s yours. Motel’s always ten a day. A sale’s a slap and you get eight a slap. Mattie’ll teach you the rest, cool?
I nodded. He bit a Life Saver out of a roll, got up off the bed, and pulled a copper money clip from his pocket. You need to use that handsome face, brother. You want a first day bonus?
I nodded again.
T, you got to speak the fuck up. So, you want that bonus?
Okay.
Okay? He looked around the room and laughed. Some of the others smiled, but no one said a thing. Mattie-O, you’ve got some work to do tomorrow. Got him, Mattie-O said, looking out at the street.
Henry took a step closer to me so he was looking down and I was looking up. Give me a smile, T. Smile gets you a bill. He withdrew a hundred from the clip. Come on, T, smile for me. Smile for your crew.
I did what he asked.
With teeth, brother, let me see it with teeth, show me what I want to see.
And I showed him.
Hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s the smile that sells. He returned the bill to the clip. That’s a hundred on the books, plus I’ll give you the room tonight. So you start tomorrow with one twenty. Cool?
Thanks, I said.
Tomorrow we jump. That means packed and gone by seven.
He nodded at me and left, saying into the hallway, Keep ’em under control, Mattie-O, and the door closed behind him with a quiet and solid click.
No one said very much that night. Mostly we sat around the table getting drunk, playing quarters, listening to that coin crashing against the glass, until midnight, when Mattie called bedtime. They all told me their names but I only remember Nora and Mattie, who slept on the bed while all the rest of us slept on the floor. One of the girls lay down next to me and wrapped a blanket around us like we’d been doing it every night the same way. That girl was so thin. I’d never been that close to another person before and when she slid in there and covered us up and pulled my arm around her and hung on to it tight like it mattered, I began to cry.
In the morning, I woke with the thin girl’s sharp spine against my chest. I could see the red numbers burning inside the alarm clock on Nora’s side of the bed. I liked the way they lit up her face. Whatever time it was, it wasn’t too far from when we were supposed to be in the parking lot. I got brave for a second and kissed the neck in front of me and whispered wake u
p wake up, but the girl didn’t move until Henry pounded on the door. Then she rolled over and looked at me and smiled and said, Thanks for keeping me warm. Everyone was awake by then, gathering their stuff together while Mattie stood by the door watching us.
Henry took us out 93 and onto the bridge. I looked down at the Snake and thought of Evel Knievel strapped into his rocket. Once, my dad snuck Caroline and me out to where the ramp had been. I sat on his shoulders and held on to his ears, terrified by the ripping wind and the depth of the vast canyon, but Caroline stood right on that fenceless edge with her arms spread, leaning forward while my dad held the hem of her T-shirt in his fist.
My dad had been there for the countdown, had shot the whole thing on Super 8. Caroline used to beg him to set up the projector and let us watch those reels—the soundless crowd, the launch, that sky cycle dangling from its parachute, blown nearly all the way back to the ramp, its long silent fall into the rocks. Sometimes, after the film ran out, my dad would lie on the floor with Caroline on his feet and fly her through the white light so she could watch her shadow sailing across the screen.
I could see her little-girl face, but not the one she had now. I tried to imagine her out there, tried to see her eyes, but all that came was the uniform and the M14 and the shadow beneath her helmet.
In Boise, Henry dropped us in around the North End. Power houses, Henry called them. Fat and white and full of money, he said. Everybody was on their own except for me and Mattie.
When they were all gone, Mattie said, Listen. You’re with me all morning, but at the next pickup he’ll give you your own pad case and drop you in alone. You need to sell. You understand me? You blank one or two checks, fine, but you blank the whole day, the night’s ugly and I can’t do anything for you. Mattie had big eyes and long lashes but his mouth at rest was down-turned and there was the same cold thing about him like with all the rest of them. You understand me, Theo?
I said I did.
He took the ring out of his lip and dropped it into his shirt pocket. Hope so, he said and started walking. I trailed him and between houses he taught me what he could. You knock at the door, you smile, you talk. You adapt to each house, each face.
Hello, ma’am, my name is Mateo. Excuse me for bothering you, but I’m at Boise State and I’m trying to win a scholarship to study in Spain next semester. I’m only ten subscriptions away from winning the prize. Ahead of everybody, he’d say. Sometimes he’d speak Spanish to make his point and he always smiled.
He sold seven that morning. All cash. In Vegas it had been UNLV. In Salt Lake, Brigham Young, in LA, USC. It didn’t matter, he said. You make up your own story, but don’t get behind. Make your own shit up, whatever feels natural. You get behind and they own you. Sell, don’t drink too much, go easy on the weed, never go joints for points, always take cash, never touch the meth or anything else.
Henry picked us up a few hours later. Is my man T ready? Oh, I like that, he said. T-Ready. You want that name, Theo? T-Ready? T. Ready, he said, drumming hard on the steering wheel. So is he ready, Mattie-O, Mattie-O?
Mattie looked out the window, so still, a foot on the dash, and told him I was, I was.
Well, today you stick with Mattie-O. Make sure you have a proper education. Kid writes more business than anyone I ever seen. I was sitting behind them in the first row of seats, watching Henry’s fingers drumming drumming drumming. We drove around in the foothills and then he dropped us in again, around Camel’s Back Park, and tore out of there, nearly sideswiping a mailbox.
Stay away from all that shit, Mattie said first thing. He shook his head. All of it.
Mattie and I did another two hours and he sold eight more with that smile. The guy was convincing. He made me want to buy from him. At the last house he said I could come up on the porch with him. I was supposed to be his big brother. Rich white kid helping a Mexican from the streets, he said. The woman who answered started out serious and hard the way anyone does when there’s a stranger at the door. He did a pitch about being out of a gang for a year now and almost graduated from high school. He was pointing to me saying that my family had saved him from the gutter when he stopped, looked at his feet, shook his head, and said, Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you’re just making me all nervous here. I have a hard time talking to beautiful women, so I’m sorry if my voice is shaking, but no woman like you ever opened the door to me. The lady looked at me with her mouth open and she was shaking her head like she couldn’t believe there was anyone so sweet in the whole world. She bought six believing she’d just secured him a full ride to BSU.
I’d never seen anything like that.
Mattie-O, man, you’re smooth, I said.
Don’t I know it, T-Ready. Don’t I know it.
We had another hour of work before the pickup, but he cut it short and we walked down the hill and sat inside a Starbucks to get out of the heat. They had big day-old cookies for a dollar and Mattie bought me one.
What are you doing here, Theo?
Same as you, I guess.
Nah, man. You’re not the same as me.
I don’t know, I said. Need to make some money.
You want money, go get a job. This is no job. Nah, man, you’re not the same as me and you’re sure as hell not the same as Henry or any of the fools around here. It’s all over your face and not just because you’re a baby.
I’m seventeen, I said.
You’re a baby. Man, we come from shit. You understand me? From shit. But you, I’ll bet all the business I just wrote that your mom’s like any other Jones we’ve been lying to all day. You ever even been in a fight, Theo?
I shook my head and looked out at some kids scrambling around in the parking lot.
You see? So what the fuck are you doing here? Is someone messing with you? Someone coming into your bedroom at night?
No.
No? Come on, man, what is it then? Your parents still alive?
I nodded.
Live in a little white house together?
Blue.
Blue. We both laughed.
Who’s the most famous person in your family?
What do you mean?
I mean, who do they always talk about? Some uncle who invented the staple? Your cousin in a Pepsi commercial? Who is it? Who’s the T-Ready family legend? T-Ready, he said again and shook his head. Fucking Henry.
My grandmother, I guess.
Your grandmother. So what’d she do?
She was a model.
A model. Go, grandma Theo. So, that’s it?
Her older sister ended up some famous artist.
Yeah?
That’s what my mom says. World famous.
That’s it?
My grandpa was a boxer. Three-time heavyweight champion of the army.
Damn.
I nodded. I loved the way he looked at me like he was impressed.
We’ve got photos of him in a nightclub with Frank Sinatra and Joe Louis. You should have seen the building my grandparents lived in, man. Like a hotel. Doorman. The whole thing. And you think you came from shit? My grandpa came from shit. He came up from nothing, went through the army, got out, started a company that made bricks, and got rich. He belonged to country clubs and ate steak. You should see the photos. They were all style. Drove around in a convertible Mercedes.
He shook his head. You see what I’m saying? So what happened? They have money?
They used to.
Why used to?
They lost it. Gave it away. Had it stolen from them. I don’t know.
They’re both dead?
I nodded. On the inside of his right arm were three long burn scars the shape of fat worms.
Got a brother? You know all the Theos sit around a long table eating Thanksgiving dinner. Turn off the TV, pass the potatoes.
No.
No what? No potatoes?
No brother.
Sister?
Caroline.
Caroline. Caroline and Theo in the blue house on th
e hill and their deep, dark family secrets. Man you need to go home, Theo. Where’s she in college?
She was here. At BSU.
How about you? Where you from? You have a sister? I asked, but he ignored me.
What’s she do now? She’s a lawyer, right?
She’s in Afghanistan.
What the fuck is she doing in Afghanistan?
That’s a damn stupid question, I said, sounding exactly like my father.
I watched one of those beautiful UPS trucks come swinging around the corner and head up the hill toward the golf course.
What? She’s in the marines or some shit?
Army.
And she went over there?
ROTC. Second Lieutenant Caroline Lanting.
And you’re out here.
She’s twenty-two, I said.
Mattie stared at me with those wide black eyes, and then he said we needed to get out of there. He had his hands on the table like he was a second from standing up.
I was in a fight once, I said, to keep him there.
Okay, badass, go on, tell it.
Before my dad lost his job, my parents sent me down to visit my grandparents in LA.
So what, Theo?
So when I got down there my grandpa had gone all fat. The apartment smelled like piss. You’ve never seen so much mail. Piles all over his office and he just sat there in his big leather chair right in the mid dle of it. You know, that place had just gone to shit. The carpets were worn out. They had these red leather couches and they were all cracked. There was lettuce rotting in the fridge. I found yogurt under the sink.
Theo, we got to go, he said, but he was still sitting there, and I kept on talking.
There was this game room in the building, and one night I taught my grandma to play pool. Every time I made a shot, she said, Fat Man, you play a great game of pool.
Mattie laughed.
After the game, we’re standing right outside the apartment and she says to me, Theo, you know how much I love you? I love you more than I love your father. And right then the door opens and there’s my grandpa in his dirty old robe saying, I’m gonna break your jaw, trying to steal my woman. He squared off and threw a punch. He came out into the hall and threw another.