Mule (6 page)

"The newspapers, right?"

"The magazines, too."

"What are you going to do?"

"I have no idea."

"What about the Internet?"

"Doesn't pay."

"Going to keep writing?"

"How can I afford it?"

Roger rubbed his beard. He said, "Didn't I warn you to get a graduate degree?"

What could I say to that?

The graduate students, I learned when they came over, were serious people in their mid-twenties. The conversation was like that, too. Roger introduced me as his friend who had made it as a freelancer, an actual grunt from the field, successfully published in the national glossies. I wanted to correct him about all of that, but didn't.

I felt strange there, out of place, wished I hadn't come. I escaped into the backyard to smoke a cigarette. Through the living room window, I could see Roger, the students arrayed around him like he was the lord of the manor. Which he was. Was this something I could have had? Was everything that was happening to me my own fault?

Two men came out, asked to borrow my lighter, lit cigarettes with it, and moved several feet away. "Awful party," the clean-cut one whispered.

The hairy one whispered, "What'd you expect?"

"Why are they such arrogant pricks?"

"They give them tenure and they can be."

"He's going to bang that stuttering chick."

"Maybe the big brunette, too."

"You could not pay me enough."

"I bet it seems like good stuff to him."

The clean-cut guy turned to me and said, "You guys were buddies in college?"

"We worked at the student paper together."

"Is this how he was back then?"

"He's happier now."

"You published something in
Playboy
?"

"A year and a half ago I did."

"Did you get to go to the mansion?"

I shook my head.

The hairy guy took out a joint and whispered, "Let's smoke some weed, Eric."

Eric said to me, "How's the money in freelance?"

"There isn't any money in freelance."

"Yeah, I had no idea about the money. It would have been nice if somebody had bothered to explain that part of it to me before I went into the program."

"Then you wouldn't be paying to be in the program," the hairy guy said, and lit the joint off his cigarette.

"You smoke?" the Eric guy asked me, holding up the joint. I shook my head. The whole time at the party, I'd been feeling this intense humiliation. Now I heard myself say to them, "You guys want to try some kush?"

They spun around and looked at me as though for the first time.

I hurried around to the car and fished out a bud from the baggie under the driver's seat, from the ounce I'd saved for Kate. Back in the darkness of the yard, they took turns smelling it. The hairy guy said, "Where'd you get dank like this?" Before I could answer, the Eric guy said, "He got it in Cali."

"You drove this across the country, didn't you?" Eric said to me.

I said, "I took some to a friend in Texas."

"Did you make any money off that?"

"Of course I did."

He took a step closer to me. He said, "You know people out there?"

"My wife grew up with a grower."

Eric laughed. "A guy like you has a source in Cali? You've got to be fucking kidding me."

The hairy guy had papers and he broke off a piece, quickly rolled a spliff. Soon after they started to smoke it, he was giggling. He said, "Am I drooling? Am I drooling? I can't feel my fucking jaw."

Eric said to him, "Go inside, Reggie."

Reggie said, "Are you crazy? I can't go inside there like this."

Reggie looked at Eric to see if he was serious. Eric stared hard at him. Then Reggie shrugged and was gone. Eric touched his finger to my chest. He said, "What kind of sign are we standing under tonight? Let me tell you something. I'm the man in Tallahassee people would kill to meet. I flip ten pounds a week, bring it straight up from Miami. Half the campus is high on my shit."

He said, "Want to make some money? I'll hand you five grand a bag for ten pounds of this. You won't even have to wait. All you'd have to do is mule it and I'd have the cash ready. Nobody else in town can put up cash like that. How do you like it, that our paths crossed like this?"

I said to him, "You know what it's like to drive it?"

"Twice a month, heavy weight."

"How do you manage your speed?"

"Always with traffic."

"You like doing it?"

"No."

"It's pretty goddamned stressful."

"That's what it's like."

I considered him now. He was handsome, fit, his teeth gleamed white like they were capped. His linen shirt was new; he looked like he had money. I said, "What are you doing at Roger's party?"

He said, "I was in Iraq. Marines. Then I came here and earned my degree. I thought I'd stay and do the grad program, write a book about what I saw."

"What'd you see?"

"Invasion force. Combat. What the fuck do you think I saw?"

Eric said, "What about your quality? Can you always come through with this? How about your people? Do they have the production?

"This is for real," he said softly. "Ten pounds, fifty Gs."

We looked through the window at the party. Everything I'd been feeling about it fell away. Eric wanted the rest of the bud in my pocket, and I gave it to him. When he asked what the name of it was, I told him, "I didn't even ask."

"Let's call it Voodoo Kush," he told me. "If you bring me the weight, I'll give you the money."

When the graduate students went home, the big brunette was still on the couch, her long legs folded beneath her, leafing through one of Roger's books. When Roger walked me down the stairs to the basement's spare bed, his mouth was wet with drunken happiness. "You should have got that grad degree." He patted my shoulder. "She's twenty-three or twenty-four. Hopefully, she's not crazy.

"Life has turned out good, hasn't it?" Roger said as he pulled back the bedcovers for me. There was another painting of a voodoo goddess on the wall down here.

I asked him, "What's with the paintings?"

"They're Haitian goddesses of love. Of protection, luck, and money. I got them for next to nothing down there. This one I got in exchange for a meal."

I looked at the goddess before I slept; she was holding an infant child. Around her in the night sky were blood-red hearts; her white eyes seemed to bear down on me. Upstairs, the sound of the girl's laughter rang long into the night. At dawn, I was on the road.

 

Kate looked for work, and her résumé was soon on file all over town. When she'd come home at noon and it was my turn to go out, I'd drive to the beach and go swimming. I'd dive to the bottom of the clear, warm water, sit on the sand, think. How was I going to tell Kate about this?

I called Darren Rudd from Siesta Beach.

"How was your trip, James?"

"Piece of cake."

"Did you drive fast and swerve a lot?"

"That's exactly what I did."

"How are Kate and the baby?"

"Everybody here is fine."

"How did you like making that money?"

"You know how I liked it, Darren."

A line of pelicans coasted past, the beach was otherwise empty. I said to him, "My friend in Texas was happy. People I stopped and saw in Sacramento were happy, too. I had no idea how excited people would get. Now there's a guy here who wants to do it."

"That's how these things get started," Darren said. "Then they just get crazy."

Darren asked me, "Who's this guy?"

"A friend of a good friend."

"How much does he want to do?"

"Ten pounds."

Darren whistled. "How are the numbers?"

"The numbers are great."

"I told you about those Florida numbers, didn't I?" Darren said. "Nobody here would have any problem doing ten times what we already did, as many times as you'd need. That's what we do. We're good at it."

"Would the price be the same?"

"It would be for now."

"I'd have to convince Kate."

"Just tell her about the money."

My mother had women friends who came over to the house, all of them retired. They sat in the living room and played mahjong. "Have they found any work yet, Lynne?" we'd hear them whisper. "Are they still sleeping in all day? What are they doing in that room? They're depressed about the economy, you know."

When we'd come out at last and make an appearance with Romana, they'd assault Kate with advice. Why wasn't the baby wearing a hat? She could freeze in the air conditioning. Why did she never have on mittens? She could scratch out her eyes, the poor little dear.

Lying in bed at night, Kate would say to me, "I can't take this anymore."

I knew about mothers and daughters-in-law, hoped it wouldn't happen to us. I loved my mother and I loved Kate—couldn't they get along?

They didn't. My mother felt that the baby should begin eating rice porridge, that solid food would help her sleep, but Kate read that Romana should have only formula until she was six months old. "It's not the right thing for her, Lynne," Kate would say as the discussion ground on. My mother would say back, "Well, that's not how we did it."

"Well, this is my baby and this is how I'm doing it."

"Well, I'm sorry I give any advice at all."

The slamming doors, the mediations. God, what a wretched time.

We should go out for a meal, I told Kate, spend some of the money we'd made. We'd taken a big chance—why not enjoy it a little?

We dressed up the way we used to when we first met, left the baby with my mother. We ate tapas at Sangria on Main Street, danced at the Gator Club, and at the end of the night we went to Siesta Beach. The stars shone above the dark expanse of the Gulf. No one else was there. I put my arm around my wife as we sat by the surf, held her against the wind.

"Do you love me?" I asked.

"Of course I do," she said.

"There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about."

"There's something I have to tell you, too."

"A guy at Roger's place offered me fifty thousand dollars to bring him ten pounds of Darren's weed."

"Fifty thousand dollars?"

"Yes."

Kate looked at the stars. She shook her head and finally said, "You've known about this all of this time?"

"I have."

"And you've already decided to do it, haven't you?"

"Yeah."

Kate looked at the dark water. "How much would we make out of that?"

"Twenty-five thousand dollars."

"Do you really think you could do it?"

"It would be the same drive as before."

Kate asked, "Couldn't we buckle down even more?"

I didn't say anything.

Then she said, "Did you talk to Darren? What did Darren say?"

"Darren wants to do it."

"How do you know you can trust this guy?"

"He's one of Roger's students."

Kate made a face. "What's a student going to do with ten pounds of weed?"

"He's a graduate student. He's been there for years. He says he moves it through the frats."

"It sounds too good to be true."

"Let's find out if it is."

She whispered, "Twenty-five thousand dollars."

"We could start our lives again."

For a long time, Kate didn't speak. Then she told me, "You have to be careful and check this guy out. If anything feels strange, don't do it. You listen to Darren and make a good plan and then you stick to it. No more showing it off to people, no more telling anybody about it. You talk to Mason and see what he wants, too. Then you come home to us."

Kate said, "We're going to be careful with the money. We're going to make it last. We'll get our own place as soon as you get back and we won't ever do it again."

"Yes, Kate."

"James," she said, "do you remember those two times in the cabin at the end when we didn't have a condom and we did it anyway?"

"I remember."

"We're having another baby."

 

Three weeks after I'd met him at Roger's, I finally called Eric. I was excited, nervous. I was worried I'd waited too long, that the opportunity had passed. The call went to his voice mail. "You've reached the Superstar. Yeah, you know it. Leave me a message." Beep.

"It's James, who you met at Roger's. Sorry I haven't been in touch. I talked to my friends, everything's a go. Call me when you get a chance."

I walked along the beach, drove around town. By the evening, Eric hadn't called, and there was nothing I could do but go home. In our room, the baby was sleeping, and Kate was reading the local community college catalogue in bed. If I really did manage to get that twenty-five grand, she wanted to go to school, something she'd never been able to afford. She'd study business, maybe get an MBA. "I want to be the one in control this time," she told me. She was wearing her reading glasses, looking studious already. She said, "Did you get a hold of him?"

"Voice mail."

"What time was that at?"

"Noon."

She was quiet, her face flat. She let the catalogue fall to her lap. Then she said, "At least we won't get in any trouble now, I guess."

We went outside on the patio. The moon was a scimitar in the sky. Kate crossed her arms as I smoked and said, "Why didn't you tell me about him right away?"

"I was afraid of what you would say."

"What is it with you being afraid of me?"

"What can I do if you say no?"

When we went inside, my phone was vibrating.

"James, my man, I'm glad to connect with you." From the sound of it, he was at a party. I pointed at the phone to let Kate know. She watched me from the bed.

"The Superstar," I said.

"You know it," Eric said.

"Sorry I couldn't call sooner."

"No worries, my man. I've been busy, too. God, it would be nice to deal with someone besides the motherfuckers in Miami. It would be really, really nice to get my hands on that voodoo you had."

"Everything's good with the people on my end."

"So when are you coming through?"

"We have to figure out the money."

"We can't do that on the phone, my man."