Dead, Broke.

(Or, Photographer, Professional, Father)
(Or, Dreams Of Ridiculous Men)


A busy dance of light and color flutter around me, forging a rhythm with the shooting pain in my back. Light, color, intense pain, and standing over me is Jared, nodding at me and smiling, an occasional thumbs up between losses of consciousness. There’s paramedics. They move about in quick dashes, bouncing over the sidewalk to the back of an ambulance parked near me, pulling out equipment, hesitating, and putting it neatly in its original place. What are they doing? They’ve brought a gurney now, I can tilt my head just enough to see them raising it, applying the necessary adjustments, then, now on second thought, lowering it, realizing I couldn’t possibly be lifted to a height of three feet in this condition. They ask Jared to step back, he complies, still smiling at me and giving me the thumbs up. My camera is slung around Jared’s back because I had asked him to hold it. He takes a picture of me. “For evidence,” he says.
The paramedics must be new, that’s all I can think about, they sent the new ones, these guys have no idea. “Don’t move him, don’t move him!” says one, complicating the assembly of the gurney and using the added time to think. The other one has a breathing machine out, he’s attaching a tube to a tank and attaching the mask he neatly tore out of the package to the tube. “He doesn’t need that,” the other paramedic says, hopping back to the ambulance and moving out of sight. Lights, intense pain, the blaring sun. Jesus God, why a sunny day? What were we thinking? Darkness.
I awake to the sound of a man talking on his cellphone. He has this device attached to his face, jabbering to himself like a madman. He’s the owner of the house, I imagine. I try and make out what he’s saying. “So we don’t have to pay a dime? Nothing? You’re sure?”
“His back is broken,” I hear from one of the paramedics, “what do we do?”
“We slip this thing under him and lift.”
Jared’s making money signs at me, rubbing his thumbs, index and middle fingers together, smiling like a lunatic. The man with the phone is talking excitedly. Finally the paramedics lift, a slight jostle, then nothing.

A year earlier, on the day, it was tax time. I sat at home putting all the paperwork together excitedly. I knew my check would be perfectly reasonable. I worked for a newspaper for over a year and claimed zero on everything, and with my hours being so abundant and the addition of all the extra overtime I accrued, I figured I was all set.
When the money came in, it amounted to a little over two-thousand dollars. I was ecstatic. I immediately cleaned out the refrigerator in my one bedroom apartment to make room for all the new products I imagined I’d fill it with. This was no easy undertaking; the refrigerator was a burial ground haunted by the inky remnants of things, one day, on some nameless improbable health kick, I thought I should be eating: fruit rice cakes, vegetable juices, tofu, all of which I purchased at a health foods store near the apartment –a meticulously groomed asylum frequented by clean looking people with strollers and paper sacks, hatchback cars and well bred K9’s. When I finished up with the cleaning, I went out to the bank to cash my check and have a stroll. After walking around town for an hour or so I started feeling out of shape and went back to the health foods store to load up again. It wouldn’t be long before the refrigerator was nicely packed with rice cakes, hummus, vegetable juice, and a nine dollar cheese I would never finally understand. It didn’t matter, I had a bit of extra income again and I was excited. Next in line would be exercise, maybe cycling or something. Maybe I would join a local sports team and spend some of the extra money on gear. I had to think about it. People buy gear for all sorts of things, it just seemed like something I would need. I had a bit of extra money here, there was a whole range of opportunities.
A month later I lost my job at the newspaper due to re-staffing and went on unemployment. I worried about what I would do for work. Then I worried about Sarah, my girlfriend of two months, she was moving in. I wondered what the cost would be on something like that, a girlfriend living with me, is that tax deductible? Would this affect my food-stamps? These were important questions, but she was dead-set on moving-in, there would be nothing I could do.
It began with a bracelet, something she left on the nightstand, then there were these moon earrings. I tried putting them in a neat little pile in the key tray near the door, as if stacking them somehow made them look like one object, and as if that somehow made it all less threatening, but soon there would be no way to ignore the things she left behind after her visits: there would be more earrings, a coat, a scarf, a coffee cup, and later it was a desk, a nightstand, and finally her: a grown woman named Sarah sleeping in my bed. I couldn’t stack her on the key tray, there was just no getting around it, she was set in, living with me, soaking up the heating, doubling the water bill, a human being.
So I put it all together: girlfriend, furniture, tax check now down to about $900.00 with the grocery store excursion, credit card payments and other expenses, and finally a vacuum I bought for Sarah’s sake...I figured we could vacuum together, like this is just something couples do when they live together. The last of the newspaper money went to rent but more unemployment would come in and with that I’d be all set. I’d have money to invest in a hobby, I could purchase gear of some kind.

I decided on photography. Working at the news agency drawing comics, I’d often go out to lunch with the journalists. Overtime I developed an interest in their gear. The way they would speak to one another in technical terms, showing off their 35MM. cameras with zoom lenses the size of telescopes, the way they always seemed alert and ready to make a ground-breaking shot, it was fascinating. So I went down to this camera shop on the outskirts of town and had a look around. There was so much to choose from, all non-digital SLR cameras, weighty and shiny, resting peacefully on racks behind glass windows. There were leather cases too, these interested me very much. I wanted something leather, a brown leather, heavily polished with brass buttons. Already I could see myself downtown, taking pictures of pigeons in black-and-white and showing them off to Sarah later on, maybe putting on a gallery showing. The second I walked in the store I knew this is what I’d do with the extra tax money.
“Anything I can help you with?” a dynamic looking man with horn-rimmed glasses asked, studying me over a mess of spools and black plastics he had strewn about the countertop.
“Just looking, but I’m thinking something old-fashioned, you know? Like the stuff they used in the Vietnam war? Something with black and silver, unnecessary hoses and lenses,” I told him excitedly.
He brightened up, nodding at me like he understood exactly what I meant. “We specialize in non-digital cameras, you’re in the right place.”
I made my way over to the camera accessories. There were leather straps and buckles, zoom-lens casings, there were patches meant for sewing onto blazers so as, I gathered, to protect the jacket from the camera constantly rubbing up against it. I would need something like that, I would need a special satchel of lenses, I would need light measuring instruments.
The man showed me a network of cameras, everything from Minolta’s and Nikon’s to Chinese and Russian plastics popular for light-bleeds. I gravitated towards the more inexpensive ones that had a special look I was in search of, something a little more vintage. “I like this one,” I told him, pointing to an older Minolta in the case.
He pulled it out along with three others and spread them out on the countertop. “These are all pretty similar, but I’ve organized them according to price range and quality. Do you think you’ll be needing autofocus? What about quick-shot photography? This one has a battery...”
“What do you think?” I asked him, smiling and leaning in with a whisper.
He nodded his head and pushed the last camera forward. It was massive and had a battery attached to it, there was a flash mechanism on the top and a network of levers and focus systems I would never understand. My stomach sunk and I could feel my throat clenching up.
“This is one of Nikon’s finest, it’s perfect for you; something for advanced photographers.” He brushed the other cameras to the side. “It has an autofocus, push-button snap shooting system, battery hookup for a shutter speed of one and eight-thousand, and this...” he said, turning around and pulling out this enormous object from a leather case, “a super-telephoto 360-1200MM lens...you’ll be able to read over the shoulder of a passenger on a commercial airplane from right outside the store.”
I nodded my head, still smiling at him, and held the lens with him as he talked, periodically inspecting a series of numbers and focus dials and giving him looks as if to say everything was in order.
“...This camera comes with Fuji black-and-white and color film, also a case...” he nodded in the direction of the leather cases hanging down by the window and back at me, “for both the zoom lens and the film...”
I watched the cases dangle in the alcove: beautiful, baroque, resting intently in time and nostalgia, referencing morning coffee, leather-bound books and centuries of good journalism.
“The camera is nine-hundred and the lens is four.”
I could feel the room spinning as I nodded at him, gritting my teeth, perspiring, smiling.
“Will this be cash, check or credit?”
“I have a credit card.”
“Excellent.”

My credit card statement would be significantly beyond what I could afford to pay. I would reduce it about nine-hundred with the tax money, but then there would be this four-hundred dollars I’d have to deal with. I walked home quickly instead of taking the bus, dangling from my hand and rocking up against my kneecaps with each stride was a very heavy purchase I tried ignoring. What was I thinking? I thought I would just take it back, wondering if he had given a receipt. Then I remembered the pigeons downtown, the gallery showing, crouching in bunkers during the next war taking shots of the poor soldiers scattered about the battlefield holding-in their insides. My photos would be remembered, discussed, scrutinized for years to come.
The next few evenings were spent trying to hide the camera from Sarah. I knew it wasn’t her place to question me about it as we hadn’t been dating all that long and she just kind of moved in, but then I felt guilty, we were, after all, living on ramen noodles and milk. She would start asking questions, she would ask to be taken out to dinner, I would say we can’t afford it and need to start tightening up and then she’d ask why. I could see it all playing out this way. I would have to divert her somehow.

“Food-stamps,” Jared said one day when I approached the subject with him, sitting outside our usual coffee shop.
Jared was a friend from college before we both dropped out. He worked for his mother’s investment firm, which appeared to be constantly on the rocks. I’ve never actually seen him go to work, nor had he ever really mentioned it.
“Really? Don’t they only give those to poor people? Like ethnic types and stuff?”
A woman at the table nearest us half turned in my direction and shook her head.
Jared leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his neck, “Dude, no way, everybody deserves food-stamps when they need them, and besides, you are poor, you just don’t want to admit it. Maybe this is just what you need to get back into the game.”
“What game?”
“The game of life man, the game of life.”

I went down to the office and got the food-stamps the next afternoon. There were a lot of rough looking people waiting in line. One man had an eye patch and a cane, he was talking to this woman about his business while she frantically searched through her purse for lipstick. “Motherfuckers come up in here, stagnate my whole process, I gotta territorialize, you get me? I gotta draw a line up in this bitch...”
Another man wore an overcoat that went down to his feet. He would swoop forward and back again while shaking his head rapidly, occasionally brushing his hair back and inspecting his hand then wiping it off on his coat and start the swooping again. He had licked the line-order ticket and stuck it to his forehead.
“One-forty-seven?” A woman behind the counter hollered out.
I looked at my ticket and raised my hand. For a brief moment the room went quiet and everyone starred at me. I put my hand down and walked to the desk embarrassingly and handed the woman a form I had filled out on one of the countertops.
“Cubicle four.”
I followed the direction of her pen and swung back around. “Am I eligible for food-stamps?” I asked.
“Cubicle four, sir.”
In the end my paperwork was approved by a quiet man that hardly ever looked up when he talked. It was all very quick. Jared had told me to dress down and look depressed and I tried following this advice as much as I could, but the man didn’t seem to notice.
“Here is your card and this is your identification number,” he pointed to a series of computerized digits with his pen. “Don’t sell the card, reproduce it, or loan it out to anyone.”
He handed me the card along with a list of rules and numbers to call if anything went wrong, also included were a change of address form and a pen with the words, “Broke’s not beaten” written on it. I tried shaking his hand before I left and he just looked at me in amazement, shaking his head.
A week later when the card kicked in, I bought food and cooked a big meal for Sarah and I. There was salmon and a special cheese, there was a plate of fruit. It worked perfectly, all my fears went away. I could distract Sarah with these food-stamp meals and continue to spend my money however I liked.

By the time my third unemployment check came in I was able to cover a few of my credit card debts and organize my affairs into a plausible level of comfort. It had been a few weeks since I had bought the camera. I tried taking it out a few times to the park and taking a few shots but I couldn’t figure out how to disconnect the battery. I would press down on the button and ten or twenty shutter sounds would go off and before I knew it I’d be out of film. When I went and had my film developed there were twenty pictures of an out-of-focus pigeon in a park and thirty-three of my foot. There was a cute girl behind the counter that tried not to notice how terrible I was at photography and I decided I wouldn’t take my film there for a while. I would do it anonymously at random locations throughout the city. I thought I’d eventually get the hang of it and start going back there, maybe even buy that jacket patch I had seen several weeks earlier.
Things were going OK, then I got the phone call. It was my aunt, she was in the hospital. She said I should come down and visit. There was an ominous tone in her voice and on the bus ride all the way down there all I could think about was what it meant. I wondered what was wrong with her; I figured she wouldn’t call me unless she was dying because we hardly ever spoke with one another, although she was one of the few family members I remained in contact with, other than an occasional brief phone call with my sister and her son, my nephew. I had other relatives, a whole network of them, but I hardly ever spoke to them either. We had reached a comfortable and pleasant disenfranchisement from one another, and as the years went by this comfortable distance lengthened, passively moving along a course where, one day, we’d all be complete strangers. That was OK in my book; I had never really been a family oriented person, and anyway I was old enough not to care. I was comfortable with my few friends, with the occasional girlfriend, drifting along on unemployment without being made to feel guilty about it by some nameless relative, but nevertheless I worried about my aunt. I wanted her to keep a pleasant distance, not die. I worried about what I would find when I walked into the hospital room. I wondered if other relatives would be there. I wondered if her divorced husband, a drunk that had stumbled off into the distance one morning and never came back, would be there.
When I arrived in the hospital and gave them my name they showed me to her room. There was just no way I could have prepared for it. It was this terrible lump of mass lying on the bed. It appeared to be a woman, although I couldn’t be sure, she looked ninety years old.
“Fucking Christ...” I said, starring at it and shaking my head. The body looked charred and grizzly, as if it had been mauled by a bear while on fire. I could feel tears welling up for the first time in, I don’t know how long, and surprised even myself.
“No, no, no, it’s the next one over,” the nurse said from behind me.
She showed me to a little cubicle behind a curtain and a wave of relief washed over me. This one was definitely her. She was awake and starred at me with a worried smile, looking me over and scrutinizing every wrinkle in my clothing, studying my unshaven face, the worry marks on my forehead, my first two or three grey hairs on the sides of my head just above the ear.
“I’m going to die and you’re going to take care of your nephew because your sister is on drugs,” she said quickly.
“I can’t afford that,” I told her.
“No, you can’t, but I’m leaving you money. He’ll be eighteen eventually. It’s only a few years. He goes to school in the mornings, likes pizza and macaroni...and horror movies scare him.”
I took a moment to process all this, weighing out the costs, wondering what Sarah would think. “Will it be temporary?”
“No...” she said, shaking her head. The shaking upset her chest and she started coughing loudly, hacking at the air violently and reaching for my hand. “You’re going to be his legal father, Charris.” She gripped my hand tightly and looked me squarely in the eyes, “Of course you’re not my best choice but you’re all he’s got. He likes hockey, but don’t let him play it, the other kids like to get rough with him and push him down, he’s smaller than the other boys. Oh, and he has asthma. He’s a sick boy, Charris.”
I tried talking but couldn’t. I opened my mouth and the words just wouldn’t come out, so I just kind of shook my head stupidly and squeezed her hand. You can’t escape family, they’ll run you down. They’ll creep after you and hit you with everything they’ve got.
I managed to say something comforting: “It’s not so bad...”
“Charris, I’m dying, obviously,” she kind of waved her hand in the air and gestured towards whatever was happening behind the curtain nearest us. I could make out the silhouette of a man holding his chest with one hand and reaching out at the air with his other, there were gasping and choking noises. She was right, this room just wasn’t a place where people get better. Every cell in my body suggested this woman was dying, that she was, already, extremely dead, there’s just no getting around it. I wanted to get the hell out of there, and then I felt bad for feeling that way. Here’s my dying aunt, this man in the next cubicle having some kind of fit, the transparent skin of the woman near the door, and here’s me thinking about leaving, and when I thought about it, my family history was just pretty much that; a series of long, drawn out female deaths and men just kind of waiting for the right time to make the slip.
She started talking about giving me money to take care of my nephew, Charley. I changed the subject and we talked about other things. She told me she was holding out to see me, she had to see me, she said. We talked about my sister for a while and inevitably the conversation drifted back to money and death, death and money. I told her I had money and not to worry about it, but I knew whatever I said it wouldn’t make a difference, there would still be money, money I needed, money I didn’t want to spend on a nephew I’ve never seen.
“No you don’t,” she said.
I sat there for a few moments and held her hand and then she died. It was just like that, she said I didn’t have any money and died.

A few days later I was sitting out on the balcony of our little apartment adjusting the zoom lens on the Minolta. I could make out crows on power lines half a mile away. I had successfully forgotten what my Aunt had told me about taking care of the kid. I imagined she was delirious, that my sister was taking care of her son and doing fine and that this would be something I wouldn’t have to worry about. There was a funeral planned for the following Sunday and I was able to put it off until then.
I was expecting Jared. He was bringing his Nikon 35MM camera by and I was going to take a look at it. He had just bought it at the same shop I bought mine. He had went in and chosen one of the less expensive ones and, much like me, walked out with one of the finest cameras in the store. The man behind the counter had told him the camera was for advanced photographers like himself, that the intense network of levers and dials were all things he, of course, thoroughly understood.
The bus pulled up and Jared walked out, waving at me. Slung around his shoulder was a vintage leather camera bag and a lens case. He was wearing a blazer with a leather patch sewn into it, the same one I wanted.
“How’s it going Charris?” Jared said from below. “Sorry about your aunt!” he hollered.
I buzzed the gate open with this electronic remote the landlord had given us and he followed the little garden pathway up the outdoor steps to the side of my apartment and walked in, tramping through the living room and out to the balcony. On closer inspection there were two blazer patches and I couldn’t help but be a little annoyed. He sat down next to me and removed his camera from the bag and set it down on the table, starring at it as if it were some complicated math equation, or as if, at any moment, it would get up and start walking around.
“Looks good,” I said, picking it up and turning it around in my hand. I adjusted various wheels and switches and returned them to their original order.
“Yeah, it was one of the best ones,” Jared said dejectedly.
I sat it down on the table, “Uh huh.”
We talked for a while about the camera and went online looking for some instruction sheets containing information we pretended to already know. We watched a video called, “Market Your Photography” and Jared took notes. We discussed putting on a gallery showing soon. We imagined ourselves wearing woolen scarves and horn-rimmed glasses, swooping around the city hurriedly and making groundbreaking shots. We would photograph the evasive occurrences whisked aside by a society engulfed in movement and linear thought. Jared and I were photographers, we were absolutely certain of this.

The following Sunday, Sarah and I were all intently groomed and prepared for a day of silence and remorse. I brought the camera along. I thought I’d take a few photos of the procession and everyone wearing black, of distant family members looming heavily behind the relatives closest to my aunt, of handshakes and condolences. I wasn’t quite sure if this was frowned upon but Sarah assured me people photograph funerals all the time. Suddenly the day didn’t seem like such a burden, I could busy myself with turning the lens, loading black-and-white film, possibly even figuring out how to work this lever on the side of the camera, this protrusion I didn’t know what to make of.
It was all going very smoothly, although there were a few instances where I received a few ill-regarded glances in my general direction, but for the most part people were grieving and didn’t notice the eye of the camera, poised and aimed, zooming in on tiny spasms of emotion and grievance. One man asked me if I was the photographer for the procession. I told him that I wasn’t, that I was her nephew and he gave me a strange look and went away. I stood outside at the cemetery while relatives passed immediate family members and whispered condolences, others were hovering around the casket talking to the priest. He nodded gravely, occasionally lifting his head to the sky and making this gesturing motion with his hands. I took a picture of this.
Sarah and I were talking about my relatives. She was interested in each of them, the faces they would make, the way the heads of the older men in my family would vibrate a little whenever they walked, as if they were muttering to themselves with their mouths closed. She liked how none of them talked to one another, and particularly, how not a single person there was the least bit interested in her. I told her, that makes two of us.
“Charris?”
I swung around. It was my sister. I began to greet her, swinging an arm out in the air to give her a half hug when she grabbed my hand and wrapped it around her wrist. I took a step back. It wasn’t her wrist. There was a little boy down there, hiding behind my sister’s dress. I tried talking but couldn’t find the words. She walked away, slowly uncovering my nephew. He looked down at his feet and kicked the dirt. I stared at him in amazement, completely perplexed. My mind went blank, then suddenly, “He’s a sick boy, Charris.”
I ran after my sister. She spun around. “You’re going to have to sign some papers and stuff, good luck!”
“I can’t take care of a kid!” I told her. She looked sick, strung out. She looked me in the eyes, mumbling incoherently. I nodded and waved her off. By the time I reached Sarah and my nephew I was resigned. I had a kid. I was a reluctant owner of a child. Girlfriend, son. Human beings.
Later that afternoon, two men appeared at our front door. They had papers, dockets, clipboards and ties. I invited them in and watched them mill around our apartment, looking through the cupboards and taking notes. They told us they were there to insure the child was going into the right hands. They gave me papers to sign, numbers to call. They gave me instructions for going to a certain building where there would be a certain desk I would need to approach. I would need to tell them my name and sign more paperwork. We talked about taxes and numbers and this excited the men almost excessively. They were thoroughly interested in speaking with me about deductions, what to claim on my taxes, how this would affect my unemployment.
The next day a court official granted me parental control of Charley. I had another, separate appointment with another man downtown who would write a check for ten-thousand dollars, signed over to me by my aunt. Charley was fourteen. I had four years with him. Four years until he’s eighteen and I can send him packing. Ten-thousand dollars. What about college? This wasn’t nearly enough. I had to come up with some more money. I asked him if he even wanted to go to university and he told me he was unsure. I dropped the subject.
The following few days were spent just getting him ready for school and putting him on the bus. I had to go online looking for the public bus routes. I made him a print sheet. I cooked him dinner. We made a little bedroom out of sheets in the living room near the window. He said it was like a fort. I told him that’s exactly what it is, “Your own fort.” I bought him rubber balls and things to play with in there. When he wasn’t at school he’d roll them around on the carpet. I was deeply annoyed with my sister.
I went online looking for work. There was a man that had been interested in my comics while I was still working for the newspaper. He was part of a private firm that hires out artists and writers for literary journals, catalogues, N.R.A pamphlets, just about everything. I had blown him off when I was working but now I needed him. Charley was eating breakfast and watching television, Sarah was cleaning up. This could work. I could get a job and, anyway, it’s only four years.
“Dear Mr. Gosmond, I’m emailing you in regards to the comical strips...”
That’s not going to work. Comical strips? How do people talk to one another? I had been home long enough on unemployment that I had forgotten how to communicate. But is that true? Is this kind of letter communication or just the opposite?
“Dear Mr. Gosmond, you motherfucker...”
I closed the laptop and watched Charley eat breakfast. We looked at the classifieds together. He had his highlighter out and was highlighting jobs for me. Architecture jobs, sales analyst jobs, environmental cleanup. He wore his highlighter on a string around his neck. He had asthma. He was particularly small for his age. He never had a chance. A cute kid just the same; shaggy brown hair around his eyes, excited about absolutely everything. “Legal guardian,” the paper read. Jesus. “Son,” I thought again.

One day, while Sarah was at work and Charley was in school I gave Jared a call. We met up at our usual coffee shop. He was drinking coffee and writing the names of local bands and show dates down on a napkin, shows he would never see. Jared reads Boudellaire and exercises to avoid hangovers. I was pretty certain there never was an investment bank job and was almost completely certain he operated on unemployment and food-stamps, but we never talked about it.
“Jared,” I said, bouncing up to him at the coffee shop while he pretended not to notice me. “Jared!” I said again, and slapped him on the back of the head, knocking his little train conductor hat off.
He jumped with a start and looked around the coffee shop embarrassingly and signaled me to join him outside. He pulled a cigarette out of a package as he stood up and paused for a moment and put it back in.
I asked him, “You’re quitting?” as we made our way out.
He took out rolling tobacco from his other pocket and began rolling a cigarette. When I looked around I noticed the other customers had rolling tobacco out on their tables as well.
I told him about Charley and my situation, about money and my fears I wouldn’t find work, about the ten-thousand dollars. It had been over a month since I had last seen him and this was unusual. We usually spoke twice a week.
“Invest,” he said.
“What?”
“Invest, that’s your only option.” He rolled his cigarette and lit it cooly.
“Invest in what? Why?”
He shrugged, “You know, stock. Invest in stock.”
“What kind of stock?” I asked him.
He leaned in, speaking in a whisper, “Orange juice.”
“What? Orange juice? Is that a stock? Why?”
Jared leaned back in his chair and looked around us, drawing in the tobacco and exhaling, puffing circles into the air. “We’re seeing serious gains, highs, you know? Market peaks in share value, in layman’s terms.”
“You invest?”
“Of course.”
“In orange juice?”
“Frozen orange juice.”
“Is that really a stock?”
“Traded on the I.C.E...Inter-continental-exchange, in layman’s terms.”
“Intercontinental is one word,” I told him.
“I know.”
“And you’re making money on frozen orange juice?” I asked.
“I’m seeing my investment, anyway, spring will come, you know, more oranges? If you put in now you’ll make your money back. Serious gains Charris,” he leaned forward as if to impart a secret, “market peaks in F.O.J.”
“Do you even know what any of that means?” I asked him.
“Not really.”
I leaned back in my seat and watched the cyclists and motorists cruise up and down the street. It struck me they were all very polite to one another. Men waved at one another, people walked dogs, a woman stopped to talk to a jogger on the sidewalk. The jogger had a walkman strapped around his chest and a headband, or maybe it was a heart watch, I couldn’t tell. They were talking about real estate, smiling at one another intently. I leaned back in my seat and looked over at the back of a newspaper the woman nearest us was reading. The headline read, “Court grants Rutherford $12,000 for expenses, home owners required to clear ice from sidewalks.”
“Investments man...the foundation on which this country is built...” Jared said resolutely, nodding his head as if just imparting something extremely profound.

Things were going OK with Charley. He would come home from school and we would cook a light dinner together. He’d go through all the cabinets and pick out things to put in the macaroni and I’d commend him for his foresight while putting everything back in its original place. Sarah would get home a little later and clean up and her and Charley would watch a movie together and go to bed. Charley liked the movies Sarah brought home; romantic comedies that made them both cry. They’d eat popcorn together on the couch like that and cry with one another and I’d read the news, contemplating this stock thing Jared was talking about. As it turned out, frozen orange juice was climbing steadily. The market depended almost completely on weather. Investors make decisions based on the time of year and climate changes and invest in concentrate, which is then sold to larger companies. It was a real commodity, something literal and tangible. It made sense. People drink orange juice, companies buy concentrate. I began to see oranges in monetary value. We had a bowl of them on the countertop and I’d pick one up, roll it around in my hand, attach value to it and think, I could invest thousands of dollars in these. I could make a killing. I’d wear a suit and reel around airports talking fast on a cellphone, I could read the business section in the smoking room, I could guffaw at the stewardesses in business class, I’d make friends with balding men in cigar clubs. This was all entirely possible. I could be an investor.
I settled on giving it a few day’s rest. I thought I’d concentrate on doing something for Charley, maybe open up a certificate of deposit for a college fund. I was thinking about his future and decided I’d ask him how he felt again. So when the weekend came around I sat him down on the couch and asked what he wanted to do. He gave me a look that suggested he had no idea what I was talking about and, looking at him like that, a fourteen year old kid, I realized I didn’t really know either, so I said, “Today, I mean, what do you want to do today?” He shrugged. “Anything,” I said, “what do you want to do?”
“Go for a walk?”
I said, “Really? Out of anything?”
“Out of anything,” he replied.
We went to a park and walked around. We were both silent. After a while, I asked him if he missed his mom and he said he really didn’t know. I asked him about going to college again and he said he really didn’t know about that either. So we walked around with our hands in our pockets, kicking up dirt around the baseball field or watching the kids play around on the slide. There was a grown man at the top of it hurling his kids down and laughing excitedly. He went, “Lift off!” and threw his children down the thing and they bounced and fell in the sand. They were insane with excitement. He looked like a good father. I suddenly realized I could do that, I could become a father. I could take interest. I could teach Charley how to play catch.
“Charley? You want to go on the slide?” I asked him.
“No.”

That evening we went out for dinner just the two of us. He had a grilled cheese sandwich and I ordered a steak and orange juice. I looked at the orange juice for a while and then at Charley and thought, What am I doing?
Later, as we walked around the block back to the house we happened upon a lighting store and Charley wanted to go in. The store apparently specialized in elaborate lighting: strobe lights, black lights, squiggly rubber things for kids. He said he wanted something for his fortress. I was happy he had decided to do something after all.
There was an overweight man behind the countertop who eyed us over a stack of boxes while we wondered around the shop warily. For a lightbulb store it was considerably dark. I had realized I had never been in a lightbulb store and wondered how these people could possibly stay in business. Real estate costs were soaring in the neighborhood, there was an entirely new breed of people setting into town; men looked increasingly like the patrons of airport smoking rooms, women had triple seated strollers, couples rode along the streets tandem wearing bright colors and smiling at one another. The lightbulb store didn’t stand a chance. I wondered, in what dimension would the store thrive? I thought, that’s the world I’d like to live in, a world where those backlit moving waterfall pictures were invariably mountains of exchange and success, where blinking cardboard cutouts of Burt Reynolds were hot commodities. Then I looked at the man behind the countertop again and put the elation aside. It would be a world of people eating chips on couches and making a big mess, it would be a world of reality television and small, Asian puppies that yelped whenever you walked by. Things were OK the way they were.
Charley picked one out. “That’s a good one,” I told him. It had rubber shooting off everywhere, corkscrewing in multicolored bursts. It looked like a small pineapple sun hurling solar flares into the room. It was an excellent lightbulb.
When the man behind the countertop noticed Charley taking an interest in the bulb he came around looking more brightened up than before. He took Charley on a little tour around the store while I stood my ground, running my fingers along the stacks of boxes in the cluttered little shop. The two got along very well. The proprietor was an overgrown kid, but he had a passion for something. He took something, no matter how inane and silly, and latched onto it. He knew technical names, he spoke a technical language. He referenced entire schools of thought according to various spokespeople in his catalogue of luminescent heroes. There was something to that. I realized I needed something like that, I needed some sort of passion. I was a photographer, sure, I was a comic artist, but I also needed to be an investor, oh, right, and a father. I could be an artist that makes investments for the sake of his family. The thought reinvigorated me. There was something to the lightbulb store.
Charley decided on the lightbulb, a strobe light, a lava lamp, and two vintage space rockets that light up when you shake them. I thought, our energy bills are going to be ridiculous. We wound up spending over two-hundred dollars there. The lightbulb salesman would wave to me every time I passed his shop from that moment on.

I called Jared the following week, “Alright, let’s do it.”
“Do what?”
“The frozen orange juice concentrate thing, I’m ready to invest in frozen orange juice concentrate.”
“You’re making an excellent decision,” he said.
“Let’s hope so.”
“How much do you think you’ll invest?”
“I don’t know, what is...uh...viable?” I asked.
“Now you’re talking.”
“What? Oh, you mean viable. Yeah, I’m, you know, trying to be dynamic.”
“Yeah, you have to know the lingo in this market, Charris, otherwise they’ll eat you alive.”
“Really?”
“You know it.”

We met up a few days later at our usual coffee shop and discussed it more thoroughly. I had brought a few charts of the last few years of the F.C.O.J. market. It fell significantly during a hurricane in Florida and another along the south-central coastline. It was also affected by trades with neighboring countries, government spending, tax reform, and, rather strangely, the morale of certain southeastern Native American tribes, particularly on reservations near Disney World.
“Research is for pussies, Charris, just do it,” Jared remarked as I tried putting everything in a manageable order we could look at and dissect.
I thought about it. My aunt had given me exactly ten-thousand dollars. My unemployment wouldn’t last forever, and I had yet to email Mr. Gosmand about the comic strips. We needed a house. Charley needed to go to school. I could invest three-fourths of this money into a series of commodities and live on the rest. Six-thousand dollars could be fifty, ten years down the line. I wondered if it really worked that way.
“It’s hurricane season, Charris, we can get those stocks at hardly nothing.”
He was right, if we invested during hurricane season we’d double our investment by spring and just pray hurricanes didn’t actually hit.
“Then there’s California,” he said, “it accounts for a portion of the market, the situation is safe there, you’ll always have a fallback, even if the situation is dire in Florida, the stock would always recover with California. They lean on one another.”
“Where did you learn that?” I asked him.
“I might have made it up.”

The following week I met Jared’s mother. She was, in fact, a stock broker. She wore raiser sharp horn-rimmed glasses and a pinstripe business slip. She spoke quickly and in technical terms, she moved her hands when she talked, she told me I was making an excellent decision investing.
“Investing in frozen orange juice? Really?” I asked her.
“Absolutely, these markets are chaotic but safe. They are constantly in a state of minor fluctuation. So long as there isn’t a full market crash, you’ll be fine.”
“Do you see anything like that happening?”
She smiled, “It’s completely implausible, but if you like, you can take a little time to weigh out the pros and cons,” she looked down at her watch, “reconvene in ten minutes?”
I went outside and thought about it, walking up and down the sidewalk with my hands in my pockets wondering if it were a good idea. There was a man taking pictures with a zoom lens in the urban park across the street. A Japanese businessman walked briskly by checking his watch with the hand holding his leather briefcase followed by a man with a little boy on his shoulders. The man and the child whistled and laughed with one another. Artist, investor, father.
“Alright,” I said, wheeling through the door of Jared’s mother’s downtown office. “I’ll put in six-thousand.”
“You’ve made an excellent choice, but I recommend ten.”
“Really? That only leaves me with one.”
“Nine!” she said quickly.
I thought about it. Jared was nodding his head, his mother winked at me. “OK,” I said, my throat clenching up.
“Excellent!”
She gave me all the papers I needed to fill out. I asked her if investing nearly all of my money in only one stock was a good idea and she told me, “It’s always a good idea.” I wrote her a check and that was that. I was given receipts. She informed me on where I could go about checking up on the stock and told me she would be my personal investor. Her percentage was relatively small, it was a smart investment. We didn’t put a buy or sell cap on the stock, so I could de-invest at anytime.
“You’re an investor,” she told me.
I nodded my head at her with my hands in my pockets. Jared made money signs at me, rubbing his thumbs, index and middle fingers together, smiling like a lunatic.
For three weeks I didn’t touch the newspaper, I didn’t read up on stock or check Bloomberg, I didn’t even return Jared’s phone calls. I wanted to let my investment exist on its own, free of mine and Jared’s interpretations, free of any sort of impact. I was neither afraid of the outcome nor the initial investment. I wanted a break.
One evening I took Charley out to the park and photographed him running into a group of pigeons, right at the moment where they were poised in takeoff, nearly soaring off into the sky. I was getting better at photography. I knew how to manage light, I knew the best times to photograph –right after a rainstorm. The pictures were coming out increasingly better. I was ready to take my film to the store where I purchased my camera. This roll would be my best.
I hadn’t seen Sarah in a few days. She said she would be working late. She apparently came home after I had already went to bed and woke up before I did. I didn’t ask any questions. Taking care of Charley was pretty easy. He didn’t require diapers or an excess of emotional support, nor did he require large financial expenditures. Relatively speaking, I couldn’t have hoped for a better kid.

I finally finished the email to Mr. Gosmond:
“Dear Mr. Gosmond, I understand you’re interested in putting together additional comic strips for your clients. I’d love to lend a hand. As an avid gun supporter I’d be perfect for your N.R.A. pamphlets, and as an investor I’d do well illustrating for any clients in the business field. As a venture photographer I’d be a steady hand in your art magazines and finally, as a father I’d do well illustrating your family oriented reader’s journals. I hope my esteemed catalogue of illustrations finds you well. If so, you can contact me at this address...”
I included a series of past strips working for the newspaper, everything from black-and-white single box cartoons in the editorial section to strips in the comic section. I had opted, at the beginning of my career with the paper, stupidly and for no apparent reason, to sign the rights of any strip I’ve created over to the newspaper’s publishing company. Submitting my strips to Gosmond, even for career reference purposes, could result in a lawsuit. I betted no one would be the wiser.
I showed the letter to Sarah, “What do you think?”
She was washing dishes, looking tired and somewhat disoriented, “Looks great.”
I was almost certain she was cheating on me, but she did well helping out with Charley and she started paying her half of the rent. I felt these things were important and felt obligated to seemingly let it slip by unnoticed. This created a certain tension as, according to a feeling and not necessarily any rational series of events, I had this idea she was aware I was aware, and was biding her time, waiting for me to expose her so she could make a clean break. I knew this transaction was going on behind the curtain of our everyday conversation and domesticated mannerisms, and was absolutely intent, maliciously intent, on letting her cheat on me without any sort of confrontation or affect. This, I felt, annoyed her to no end, and it wouldn’t be long before she was a little more obvious in her affairs, coming home reeking of that special scent, that postmortem saturation of sex and deceit. The stronger and more obvious this affair was the more resolute my complete ignorance would be, thus perpetuating and strengthening her conspicuousness. And all this was happening on an undercurrent, behind a facade of a normal, American relationship. I felt, for the first time, I was making a general and unannounced leap into adulthood.
For starters, the entire affair could have been in my head, and this was even a likelihood, but in reality it didn’t matter in the least, because whether Sarah was being unfaithful or not wouldn’t change the fact the subject successfully eluded mention, so therefore changed nothing. She was paying bills and helping me with Charley, every penny of which found its way into my calculations; nine-thousand in stock, food-stamps, depleting unemployment stipend, and a healthy one-thousand dollars for general spending. If Sarah suddenly left I’d be nearly out of resources to cover Charley on my own. I couldn’t let that happen.

I caved. Taking Charley to school one day I passed a newspaper machine and put the quarters in on a sudden whim. I frantically flipped to the business section while Charley stood there on the sidewalk looking up at me confusedly. Up. F.C.O.J. was up several points. Most of the stocks in the I.C.E. were up and the jumps were significant. According to an analyst in the commentary section, the leaps were owed, mostly, to a change of power in China, a new leader who, known for being incredibly oppressive, shut down certain private industries in and around Jiangsu. This caused an uprising in key areas throughout the continent where goods-for-export were produced, sparking a renewed interest in American national investments, thus strengthening the made-in-America market, particularly in the area of produce; farmers were purchasing seed, equipment, parts and raw materials from American businesses, strengthening those business and creating investor-faith in national corporations that don’t outsource. The peak in investment was small all across the board, and actually completely natural, subject to change, but then, right at the perfect moment, a government in Northern China, or a faction of its police, began executing Tibetan monks during a protest. Two events spinning into one another forced a market pinned to a World economy to drop, forcing investors to look elsewhere. This news was broadcast internationally and was running constantly. Stocks were moved, fortunes changed companies, and frozen orange juice, as well as many others, benefited from the entire affair. There were, in other cases, massive plummets, especially in plastics, but the affect it had on F.C.O.J was too small to outweigh the gains. I was officially a smart investor.
I took Charley home and put on a suit and left him in the living room. I needed to go out to a coffee shop and check my email, talk on the phone, drink coffee and look at the business section in front of everyone. This was extremely important to me. I called Jared and he came right over. He was, strangely enough, also wearing a suit, carrying himself completely differently than he normally did.
“Told you stocks would jump!” he said, sitting down with me after ordering a cup of espresso. He set it gently on the little napkin on the little plate it came with. He had a little spoon he stirred the espresso with, too, although he had no sugar or milk in the cup. I watched this all take place for a few moments and felt embarrassed.
“What does it mean? Should I pull out now? Take my money and run?” I asked him.
“No. I’ll tell you what you do, you take a trip, go enjoy yourself. Come back and let it ride for a while. Your money isn’t going anywhere. It will stay where it’s at,” he said, finally putting the spoon down.
I thought about it. I had never even entertained the idea of going on a trip, but it might be good for Sarah and Charley to get them out of town for a while.
“Leave Charley at home,” Jared said.
“I can’t do that, who’s going to take care of him?” I asked him.
“Get a babysitter. He’ll be fine.”
“You think spending the little money I have is wise?” I asked him.
“If you’re running out and the stock is up, just pull out a little, but for now, I’ve noticed it’s best to just take a break from the whole thing. My mother told me new investors have a tendency to get excited and make a lot of dumb moves. You should avoid these by enjoying yourself for a week or so. Why not? You’re on food-stamps and you receive unemployment, do you really need to be here?”
He was right, I hadn’t thought about a trip. Maybe going off to an island somewhere with Sarah was exactly what I needed. I could take a break from Charley, well, provided I left him with a reputable baby-sitter, and I could take a break from looking for work, which sounded enticing. I could also separate Sarah from whomever I imagined she was sleeping with, if this was indeed even happening.
I slouched in my seat and watched the man nearest us drink his coffee and read his paper. The headline read, “Man with similar case to Rutherford’s rejected in court, judge heard to say, ‘We’d like to avoid faked injuries.’”
“What do you think?” Jared asked.
“I’ll think about it I guess, maybe ask Sarah what she thinks.”

That evening I was resolute. Sarah had come home tired and stinking of sex again and I figured we needed a trip. When I asked her about it she agreed, in her own distant way of expressing herself.
“I think we could leave Charley with a babysitter,” I told her.
She set her keys on the nightstand and took her shoes off, half-sitting on the armrest of the couch. “Let’s try it, it could be fun.”
“Where should we go?” I asked.
“Hawaii, let’s go to Hawaii.”
“We can’t afford that.”
“I’ll help pay for it, why not? We can be like real tourists, it will be cute. We’ll eat seafood by the ocean and everything, you can wear a big stupid hat. I think it would be nice.”
Hawaii. I had been there once when I was younger. I worked on a cruise ship for a month and was eventually fired, or quit, I couldn’t really recall. I worked a tour group stand near the dining gallery. Pride of America, the ship was called. I knew nothing about Hawaii, and they hardly told me anything relevant, but that didn’t stop me from selling immense portions of little tour excursions at nameless prices. The thought of going there and being a tourist sounded vaguely intriguing.
“Alright, let’s do it,” I said.
I was surprised at how enthusiastic she was about the trip. I thought this would be a long, painstaking endeavor trying to convince her, that I would eventually just wind up going alone, but she was excited. I suddenly had a renewed interest in our relationship. Suddenly we were doing fun, spur the moment things, making spur the moment decisions that only severely romantic couples make.
“Why are you wearing a suit?”
I looked down at my pinstriped slacks and shrugged.

A week later and we were off to Hawaii. Honolulu, to be precise. All the way there Sarah worried about Charley. We had left him with a babysitter, a woman I found through Jared, apparently a distant relative of his. She was in her mid-twenties and had long, thick dreadlocks, a peculiar smell and a way of speaking that bordered a remoteness I couldn’t quite put my finger on, as if there were only half of her talking to you, the other half wandering around aimlessly. Charley was aloof and could care very little. He would go to school in the mornings, she would pick him up, they’d cook dinner and watch television with one another. This is how I imagined things would go. She might watch politics and ask him questions, she might afflict him with her world view, she could forget to have him shower here and there and might even have her boyfriend over. I didn’t want to think about it, and it didn’t matter, she was cheap, that’s all I cared about.
Originally we were embarking on a cruise but at the last second I backed out. Bad memories of turtle-like people wandering around empty corridors looking for the bathroom, ageing social butterflies and swingers eyeing me strangely, obese children, overachieving waiters, the shift of a drunken ship barreling through the roaring ocean uninvited, no thanks. We could find an in-between, a middle ground on the beach somewhere. We could be tourists, this is what we wanted, listless tourists, but not so far removed from reality as passengers on a ship. We settled for Waikiki.
Sarah bought me a hat like she promised, this big stupid cabana hat and purple sunglasses with the bobs on the back to go with it. I got her back with the nineties jeans that go up to the bellybutton, expanding and lengthening the curvature of the ass, as if it began in the mid-back area and dropped somewhere before the bend of the leg. We walked around like that on the beach saying, “Ooh and Ah” at every little touristy trinket we came across. We were absolutely inconspicuous. We were a couple, I an investor, on vacation.
We were staying at Yolanda’s Bed and Breakfast on Waikiki Beach. We had a week in Hawaii and we were three days in, days spent sleeping off the initial hangover after getting into town and drinking at the hotel bar. Benjamin, our personal waiter, tour guide, mainland expert, snorkel boat captain and presuming chaperone, would oversee our vacation the entire trip. His rate was a hundred dollars a day and when I heard that price I declined but Sarah said, “No, lets keep him, it will be fun.” By nature his goal was to up-sell just about everything. Four dollar margaritas had to be twelve-dollar margaritas, tacos became lobster, snorkeling off the reef became a special excursion ten miles out, only reachable by boat, piloted by Ben for seventy-five dollars extra. Three days in and already I was nearing the end of my bankroll.
On the fourth day I thought I’d go out alone in the morning and get a head start. I had breakfast in the bamboo bar and made my way out to the beach, but when I got there I had this sudden burst of energy, a brief moment where things began to make sense, and I realized I would be spending the day alone. I was suddenly invigorated. I calculated costs in my head for horseback riding, parasailing, offshore fishing. I settled on kayaking: twenty-dollars for a full day. Fun, cheap, and good exercise. I went back to the room and found Sarah there still asleep so I packed up a few things I thought I’d need: water bottle, binoculars, sunscreen, and an anthropological book of birds off the shores of Hawaii, illustrated with remarks, dates, theories on lineage and technical discussion. The thought of reading it out on the kayak excited me very much. I’d read about them and watch them with my binoculars. Then I remembered the camera. I searched frantically in the suitcase to see if I had brought it. It wasn’t there. I searched in Sarah’s suitcase. It was there. She had brought it along, zoom lens and all. She must have known I’d forget it and wanted to surprise me with it. I eyed her gratefully while she slept. The morning light was pouring through the windows and highlighting the reddish tint of her hair. I considered myself lucky for the first time in our relationship.
I had my knapsack slung around my shoulders, white sunscreen on my nose and the big hat and sunglasses on. I must have looked like a dork but it didn’t matter to me, in fact, it felt oddly pleasing.
Benjamin was out by the dock putting lifejackets on his boat when I greeted him.
“Are you ready?” He asked me.
“Yeah, how did you know where I was going?”
“You’re going on the boat.”
I stood there for a moment, confused. Then I remembered we had made plans to go whale watching and suddenly felt hopeless. He must have sensed it because the next thing I know he says, “That’s okay, I’ll just take Sarah out.” He seemed excited about this last prospect.
“Really?” I asked him, “You don’t mind? I wanted to go kayaking.”
Now he was elated, “Kayaking? Why didn’t you say so, we’ve got kayaks...” He pointed towards the kayaks stacked up in the sand near the bar.
“I know, twenty-bucks,” I went to hand him the wet twenty I had in my bathing suit pocket, not quite dry from swimming with Sarah the night before when we were drunkenly fucking in the ocean.
He waved his hand at me and shook his head, “No, twenty’s for the two seater, the singles are forty.”
“Well give me the two seater,” I said anxiously.
“Can’t, it wouldn’t be kosher, two seaters are for two people, I’d love to make an exception but...you know...regulations...”
“Why are two seat kayaks less, wouldn’t they be more?” I asked him.
He brushed his shoulder-length, bleach blonde hair back and scratched his bare chest and gave me a mumbled, nonsensical explanation. Burning daylight and impatient, I told him I would take the one seat kayak for forty and began to make my way back to the room to get more money.
“Wait,” he said.
I doubled back and hung there in the sand for a moment.
“There’s a ten dollar deposit on the lifejackets, I can’t let you go without one...”

My mood cleared up when I got out on the water. It was slow going at first, having to paddle harder against the waves. A couple times I nearly lost it but I was able to gain control once the first set of waves passed. It eventually leveled out and I was able to get off the surf. It went well after that. My aim was for a small island I saw out in the distance, but the more I paddled the further away it seemed to be. I thought I could reach it in a few hours but two hours in and the shape in the horizon hardly changed. I wondered if I was hallucinating or just moving against the current. I wondered, once you’re past the surf, doesn’t the current take you out? I resigned myself to taking a break for a while and looking in the bird book. I pulled the knapsack out from the plastic compartment behind me and found the book. It was authored by a man named Ale Borsanni and had colorful birds all over the cover. The title was, “Birds of Hawaii.” There were brown Noddy birds, Myna’s, White and Red-Tailed Tropics, colorful Cardinals. There was a certain story about the migration of a Japanese White Eye flock, carted into the land by the Japanese during the war, or so supposes a naval captain that had apparently discovered an abandoned Japanese ship three-hundred miles off the coast of Hawaii after the war. He said it was like a ghost ship, not a single person alive onboard. No bodies, nothing, just crates and crates full of Japanese White Eye’s. Assuming the birds were infected with a virus and that this was stage-one of a Japanese plan to wage germ warfare on America in the wake of Hiroshima, he ordered his men to sink the ship by firing a torpedo into the hull. Apparently a number of the birds escaped, thus the reason why the island is populated with them today. The captain gave a detailed account of ordering his men to shoot the birds down in the sky and how he felt when they realized they couldn’t get them all. He was quoted, “The sea was red with little birds.” This story was largely unsubstantiated but I enjoyed it immensely.
After reading through the bird book for an hour I decided I would see if I couldn’t spot some of the ones in the pictures. I began to take out the binoculars when I realized I could just use the zoom lens from the camera and possibly even get a few photos while I was at it. I looked around, the sky was empty, and then I noticed, while scanning the horizon, the island I had been kayaking towards. It was no island, it was an oil rig, way out in the distance. My stomach dropped. From what I could tell it wasn’t moving, there was no wake, in fact, although I wasn’t close enough to tell for sure, it appeared to be manless, red as if rusted. I took a picture and decided to aim for it anyway. Maybe there would be a ladder I could climb. I could explore it, that is, so long as the vessel is empty. Vessel. I was thinking like a sailor. Suddenly I felt full of energy and completely pleased with myself.
By the time I got close enough to figure out what the hell its story is it was nearing three O’clock. It wasn’t quite a ship, more like an island on stilts. I had heard about these: oil rigs that served their purposes now abandoned by the companies that owned them. Too much trouble to move, more trouble than it was worth, apparently.
I paddled hard until I reached a floating deck near the stilts. I grabbed my knapsack and tied it around my shoulder, steadying the kayak up against a floating deck and wedging it between two planks and began climbing the ladder. I kicked the kayak after the first or second rung up to make sure it was wedged well enough and made my way back up.
The structure reminded me of a business complex set in a parking lot in suburbia. With all the cranes it looked a great deal like a strip mall outlet under construction. There were several rows of ladders and zigzag staircases built up around a large cube-shaped building. The building looked like a command center of some sort, and on the very top there was a triangular structure coming to a sharp point, beyond that just antennas positioned almost excessively skyward, as if the rig was nothing of utility, instead a monument, an iconic symbol of man’s great leap, now totally abandoned. I made my way up the rickety ladders and zigzag staircases, I entered the command center, now just metal, plastic, and dust. There was a seagull on some inanimate control panel that must have come through the broken window. The office looked like a children’s toy fashioned after some archaic vision of the future. I stood there in the doorway for a moment and made my way back down to the main deck.
Between exploring the rig and getting lost in an area reminiscent of an abandoned parking garage, I had spent over an hour on the ship. I checked my watch, 2:00. I had plenty of time. I started taking pictures. It was a wave of inspiration, one I hadn’t felt in a long time. I took great shots of the cranes, and the bird sitting on the control panel in the office, looking as if it had always been there. I took photos of a pelican standing on the rustic-looking helicopter pad. I took shots of the zigzag staircases and the incredible obelisk on the command center. I had more film, I kept going. It was the best I ever felt.
After the photo frenzy I decided I had better make it back before it was too late, so I set out on the ladder and made my way down to the floating deck. The kayak was missing. I looked around the stilts and wondered if I was on the wrong side of the rig. I wasn’t, this was the only ladder. I was stranded on an abandoned oil rig way the hell off the coast of Hawaii. This felt typical. Less than a six-months before, I had lost my job, became involved with a girlfriend, had an aunt die, suddenly had a son I couldn’t take care of, and now this. I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Fuuuucckkkk!” I screamed, over and over again. Then I saw the kayak, about twenty yards away. It was possible. I could swim after the kayak, swim it back by the little handle, and head back to mainland. I dropped my knapsack, took off my clothes, and made the plunge. I expected it to be like a swimming pool. I figured I could just jump in and swim after it, but although the water appeared to be calm, one thing I didn’t account for was the current. I felt it pulling me away from the kayak, away from the rig. I swam harder. No dice. I made it back to the floating deck and pulled myself up, completely naked, panting, crying. Fucking Jared. Fuck you Jared. You moron.

I awoke to the sound of a helicopter. It was morning. The previous evening was spent making more attempts with the kayak, but the more I waited between attempts the further away it floated, till finally it was gone completely out of sight and darkness gathered. Now there was a helicopter. It wasn’t far and I knew if I got up near the command center I might be able to wave it down. I yelled at the top of my lungs and jumped up and down, waving my hands, but it didn’t matter, the helicopter was coming straight for me anyhow. Whoever it was, they were looking specifically for me. I cleared out of the way so it could land on the launch pad. Ben was piloting the helicopter. I wanted to hit him.
“Get in!” He yelled out at me, opening the door.
“What?”
“Get in the helicopter!”
I grabbed my knapsack and put on my shirt and the next moment I was in the helicopter lifting above the rig.
“How did you find me?” I yelled out at him.
“You didn’t come back last night, the kayak was still missing, so I called it in. This has happened before.”
“Really?” I asked him, I felt oddly reassured.
“Several times actually. People aim for it thinking it’s an island, park the kayak. The current is strong near the rig, without a tie the kayak is not going to last wedged between the poles.”
“How’s Sarah?” I asked him.
“She’s fine,” he hollered at me, “out on the beach sunning, didn’t even notice you were gone.”

We landed on the roof of a hospital not too far from the beach and I rode with Ben back to the Bed and Breakfast.
“Where did you learn to fly a helicopter?” I asked him on our way back. “They let you do that?”
“I took a training course. The coast guard doesn’t need to put on elaborate rescue missions every time some yahoo goes nuts, so provided we’re trained and clock so many hours and get licensed and so on...they let us out there.”
“Why don’t you go to work as a pilot?”
“What do you mean? I make way more money doing the tour excursions. By the way, that rescue mission is four-hundred dollars, they charge me two-hundred just to take it out.”
When I found Sarah out on the beach it was just as Ben said. She was tanning, half naked. She didn’t have a clue I was gone. I wished they had left me out there longer. I could have grown a beard, gotten skinny, maybe made the news. When I told her she just said, “Oh, okay.”
“We have to get back. I’ve maxed out my credit cards,” I told her, gritting my teeth.
She just looked up at me and smiled, shaking her head.
“What? We need to go Sarah.”
Just then, Ben approached. Sarah stood up.
Ben said, “Maybe you should just head back, brother.”
I stood my ground, watching the two of them. Ben put his arm around her, she looked indifferent. Ben smiled, Sarah wrinkled up her eyebrows and nodded her head at me. I clenched my fists and took a swing at Ben. He tilted back and grabbed me from the side. I felt this flash of heat on the back of my head and then nothing.
I regained consciousness in the hot sand. I was sunburnt, I must have been out for over an hour. It was mixture of being knocked flat out and desperately needing sleep. I sat there for a while watching the waves and rubbing the back of my head. This seemed about right. What else could I have expected? I wondered about Charley, about the apartment, what we would do if Sarah wasn’t there helping out with rent. I had to talk her out of this. I made my way back to the bungalow and found all my luggage piled up outside. I went for the door handle but it was locked. I knocked on the door. Nothing. I could hear her and Ben inside, talking. Sarah sounded as if she were crying.
“Sarah? Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
“Sarah? We need to talk about this. Please answer the door. I’m willing to forgive you Sarah, whatever you did, it’s OK.”
When I looked up it was Ben and not Sarah standing in the doorway.
“How’s your head?”
“Sarah!” I saw her sitting on the bed behind him, but when I tried getting past Ben he blocked me. “What about the bills!?” I yelled out at her. Ben closed the door. I hammered on it desperately. “The bills!” I screamed.

The whole trip back I iced my head down with the scotches I procured from a sympathetic stewardess. I had money, being maxed out wasn’t particularly true. I had about six-hundred dollars left on another card, and with the nine-thousand I had in stock, which had climbed to thirteen before the trip, I wasn’t looking too bad off. I needed all of it now, every last penny. I would have to take it all out, look for a smaller apartment, set some money aside for Charley and move on. When I arrived home he was there, sitting on the couch next to the babysitter. It was midnight.
“Why isn’t he in bed?”
“You’re back early!” the babysitter got up and started picking through an ashtray.
“Come on Charley,” I said, dropping my bags down and trying to pull the kid off the couch. He screamed. It was a loud, painful scream, as if I were coming at him with a blowtorch. “What is it!?” I yelled. Then I saw it. He was wearing a sling around his arm, this bizarre hemp contraption. I looked up at the babysitter with a questioning glance, she looked frightened. “What in god’s name happened?”
“He was playing hockey with his friends, hurt his arm real bad. I put some oil on it and applied a...”
I interrupted, “You did what? Oil? Why didn’t you take him to the hospital?”
She got defensive, suddenly huffing at me and pointing, I took a step back, “Hospitals are the problem, man! You put your kid in a hospital? You know how corrupt they are? Like, insurance and shit? I’m into homeopathic therapy, sustainable, non-...”
“Get out!” I hollered.
“What?” she backed up towards the door.
“Get out!” I said again, this time angling towards her with a closed fist.
“My money...”
I let out a loud yell and leapt across the table at her. She dodged and bolted out the door.
I sat next to Charley on the couch and calmed down. He looked like shit. “Come on, we’re going to the hospital.”

It came as no surprise when I learned the hospital bill would be over a thousand dollars. He had a broken arm and I was there all night with him. He watched TV and ate apple sauce and hotdogs. He asked where Sarah went, I told him she was in a tragic accident, that she was badly disfigured, most of her body burnt, charred and ugly, that I left her like that, smoking on the beach. He began to cry and I stopped talking. We were silent for a while.
Even though I told Charley he could stay home he wanted to go to school anyway and show off his cast. He wanted me to sign it with the highlighter he had strung around his neck. I called Jared when I was leaving the school. He said we should meet up, that it was urgent. I already knew what he was going to say. The stock plummeted, massive hurricanes in Florida, labor unions going under, a prosperous Chinese economy...
“Orange fever,” he told me when we met up at the coffee shop. I ordered a coffee and took a seat next to him.
“What?” I asked him.
“Orange fever. The stocks plummeted because of orange fever. Has something to do with Cubans, I don’t know...”
“You don’t know?” I interrupted.
“We’ll get it back Charris. It’s not all gone.”
I told him about Sarah, about the medical bills, about the oil rig. I told him about my debt. We left the coffee shop and walked down the street together. It was a sunny day. I hung my head and told him everything. It felt good to let it all out. It just kept coming. I told him about my need to be an artist, an investor, and a father, even though I don’t know the first thing about any one of those things. I asked him about the lever on the side of the camera I had brought along, and before he could reply, I asked him whether applying oil to a broken arm really works. I told him I could be a helicopter pilot if I wanted to. I told him painted light bulbs require a special kind of paint, so it wouldn’t just burn up when the light is left on.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said.
He stopped me in front of a nice house near the coffee shop. “What?” I asked, not looking up.
“I’ve heard about this.” He began talking excitedly, some guy named Ruther-something-or-other slipped in front of some guy’s house and made all this money. It’s some city ordinance. They have to clear the sidewalks, man! We can fix this. I just push you down, you know? Like this,” he made a sweeping gesture with his foot and pushed at the air hard. “Look!” He pointed at the sidewalk where there lay three leaves and an earthworm, “This sidewalk is filthy! The owner should have cleared it, right? If I push you down real hard, they’ll think you slipped, and we collect, split it, like forty-sixty. You take sixty, I’ll take forty, right?”
I thought about it. The idea seemed too bizarre, it was hard to register in this emotional state I was in. I remembered something about this case, but it all seemed blurry and convoluted.
“Fifty-fifty,” he said.
I thought about the camera, about the big zoom lens. I thought a tripod might be nice, or one of those leather carrying cases. I thought about taking Charley to the park. We could buy a dog and walk it together and I could talk to women who have dogs of their own. I could take black-and-white pictures of the dogs running into flocks of birds. I could take them to that girl that worked at the camera shop and tell her she could have one.
Jared made money signs at me, rubbing his thumbs, index and middle fingers together, smiling like a lunatic.