19
Rupert and Jesus stood outside a FloridoMart, watching Tweakers come and go with their Slurpits, and trying to wrangle up some Crack Planet customers. Today, Rupert did better selling Tommy’s Tropical Supreme than either of them did with the tickets.
“Delayed gratification, Jesus,” Rupert said as an FFG meal bag blew up against his shin, then escaped back into the wild. “People want the smaller reward now, instantly, rather than have to wait for a larger reward later. That is, assuming there is a reward later at all in this case.”
Jesus rolled his eyes and then looked at Rupert.
“Yes, gringo. It isn’t just not wanting to delay the reward. People tend to perceive the delayed reward as less valuable depending on how long they have to wait for it. The longer they have to wait, the less they value what is in actuality an equal reward. Exponential discounting, Rupert.”
Rupert smiled. “I like you. You’re a reader.”
Jesus laughed. “You’re tolerable.”
Rupert hissed through his teeth.
“That’s right,” Jesus said. “You oughta put some Vapor Rub on that.”
“That was not a burn.”
“Was.”
“I am making more meth sales than you are tickets sales.”
“Truth,” Jesus conceded. “If Fulva finds out, she gonna be pissed.
“So, you keep up with the news . . . what’s new?” Rupert changed the subject. “I haven’t really heard much since I’ve been down here.”
Jesus glared at him. “Well. Just in the last week, some stalker guy shot that one singer on The Croon.”
“Shit. I don’t watch The Croon.”
“You didn’t seem like the type. Happened right here—”
“Here?”
“Well, in Florida. Orlando. And another guy shot up a gay club. Killed forty-nine—”
“Shit.”
“—wounded fifty-three.”
“Shit.”
“Also in Orlando.”
“ . . . the fuck?”
Jesus paused to think. “A two year old was attacked, mangled, and drowned by an alligator at a tourist resort—”
“Orlando?”
“Nope. Golden Oak.”
“Where’s that?”
“Near Orlando.”
Rupert sighed. “All in Florida. What about the rest of the country?”
“Have you not noticed that the longer you’re in-country, the less relevant the rest of the country becomes?”
“I’m still interested—”
“No you’re not. You just don’t want to talk about how Fulva’s gonna ream you out with MeeMaw’s Whackin’ Dick—”
“Not true.”
“You’re really interested?”
“Not really.” Rupert acquiesced.
“Don’t feel bad. Your interest, or lack thereof, is also irrelevant. Shit just ceases to matter here.”
“Unless you’re getting shot or eaten by alligators.”
“Yeah, but to be fair . . . we eat an awful lot of gator down here.”
Rupert shrugged his capitulation. “Fair, indeed.”
“Could be.”
“Where is Orlando?” Rupert wanted to know exactly how close death loomed.
“About 130 miles, north-ish.”
“Too close.”
“Bróder, it’s all the same. You’ve seen it.”
“I have.” Rupert slumped.
“Anyway, Fulva’s gonna go through the roof. And Tommy, for that matter. Maybe not through the roof, but . . . ”
“Through the roof of his car.”
They both laughed. Though Rupert kept selling his supply of Tropical Supreme, he had been avoiding Tommy Bananas since the prospect of a cooking lesson fell through, though he’d heard things.
“Did I tell you what happened to Bananas?” Rupert asked. Jesus shook his head.
“So, Tommy likes to have these long, excruciating meetings in his car—”
“How are the Ebonics lessons coming along?”
“Fuck you. Anyway, after I left the last one—when I asked him about cooking—I guess that precariously mounted whatever-the-hell-it-is I told you about fell over into the front and impaled Tommy, pinning him to the seat.”
“What?” Jesus snorted a laugh that sounded painful. “Is he okay?”
“Well, as you know, the cops didn’t show up when he called, because the last time Tommy called the fuzz, he tried to barter with the dispatcher—three bucks and a chicken dinner for sex.”
Jesus doubled over, laughing. “Chalé! Stop . . . ”
“He spent twenty-seven hours trying to break the antler off the head and work himself up over the end. Said it went right through.”
“I can’t breathe.”
“And, of course, he can’t leave his car, so he can’t go into a hospital, so he plugged both ends with a couple of socks he dug out from the back and said he was fine.”
Jesus stopped laughing, “Oh man, he’s not fine.”
“Fuck no he’s not.”
“Who told you this?”
“Guy working at the Gorge (Fine Men’s Clothing), store #7.”
Jesus shook his head. “Serious talk now, it’s a good thing he’s, um, incapacitated. I’ve heard things. I had notheard what happened to him, but I have heard things.”
“That’s not at all cryptic. Heard things? What things? Who are you even talking to?” Sometimes, this place—these people—irritated Rupert. Little did he know, this general gossipy activity was not exclusive to Floridians.
“You might find this hard to believe, but when I’m not slumming with you selling Crack Planet tickets to Piperos, I actually have a very fulfilling social life involving a broad variety of reasonably stable people.”
“One of these reasonably stable friends of yours has news about Tommy Bananas?”
Jesus considered Rupert for a moment. “I don’t even have to tell you.”
Rupert looked at Jesus for an equal space of time, expressionless, then Jesus gave in.
“Bananas is under the impression that you are secretly making and selling his dead father’s recipe.”
“You said he was still alive.”
“Depends on one’s perspective, eh?”
“I’m selling Cancer Nanners.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“He never told me the recipe.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s convinced that—get ready—at some point during one of your car meetings, you hypnotized him with—no joke, get ready—your Ebonics talk, and got the formula out of him.”
Rupert was silent for a long time, watching myriad bits of trash swirl around their feet in the hot, lazy breeze.
“I’m just . . . ” he began. “I’m not going to . . . I am choosing to recognize that as . . . I am choosing not to respond to that.”
“Good choice.” Jesus’s eyes scanned the horizon for potential customers. “Ironically, like I’ve said, Papa Bananas is alive and well, making and selling his formula, but only to the lowest, most desperate Geekers. Shit’s no good . . . ”
“But Tommy thinks I’m making bank on it . . . ”
“Yep,” Jesus replied and grinned, still scanning for clients. “Must be your hypnojive powers, ese.”
“Jesus, I am trying . . . no, I am choosing not to react—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, look, all I’m saying is that you should consider yourself fortunate that your man, Bananas, is incapacitated.”
“Impaled or not, the dude can’t leave his car. I’m not sure how less capacitated he actually is.”
“Never underestimate a tweaking Dollaboy. Getting run through with an antler’s not going to slow him down . . . more . . . ” Jesus stopped and addressed an especially desperate looking Jibby, about to ease into his Crack Planet pitch. The guy looked through Jesus and floated away. “Dang. That guy is spun like a bun on the run . . . ”
“Yeah, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be working for Tommy anyway,” Rupert said.
“I don’t know how much longer Tommy’s going to be around,” Jesus said. “You know that shit’s infected.”
“Yeah.” Rupert squinted down the street at nothing in particular. “Well, since Bucket taught me how to—”
“Seriously hermano, you don’t want to get into that. Sell some tickets, make some easy money, do a good deed, and that’s that.”
Rupert sighed. He realized his drive to become big time here grew stronger than his desire to get the hell out and go back to DC, burning him up like a lab fire ignited by an unvented, lithium-filled bottle. Rupert sighed again, bothered by this involuntary use of simile.
“Well, Bucket wants to get together again to further discuss the New Thought Movement,” Rupert said, still undecided as to whether he wanted to interact with Bucket anymore. That one’s Nutbag Level was indeed exceptional.
“So,” Rupert continued. “You know Bucket. You said everyone knew about Bucket. That guy—”
“Did Bucket tell you about Bucket?”
Rupert stared at Jesus. What now?
“Well, I guess it’s not a thing a person is much willing to bring up. Remember back in the 80s, that kid that got stuck in the well? It was on all the news channels.”
“Yeah,” Rupert said, thinking. “I remember that. In the end it turned out to be as simple as dropping the well bucket down there and pulling him out, but they’d made it more complicated than that and the kid almost starved to death.”
Take a simple situation, add a group of people with their egos and their individual subjectivity, and watch it devolve into a state of complete chaos—social entropy, and Bucket’s story is only a microcosm of what we do all over the world, every day, and not just the shit that makes the news. In our lives, in big and small ways, all rippling out in the form of a billion devastating repercussions. Rupert considered the Butterfly Effect of just that one, particular fuck-up.
“Really? The kid in the well—that was Bucket?”
Jesus nodded.
“Well, that explains a lot.”
“You know that little bridge over the inlet that the kayakers like to go under. You go over it to get to Van Weasel?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kids have been selling for him for years. They start at around eight and age out around twelve, but the firstgroup, years ago, they thought he was a troll—the troll living under the bridge. Then they got a little older and found the well story out somehow. They’re the ones that started calling him Bucket and it just got passed down through the generations.”
“Thought forms.”
“What?”
“Those kids, man. What a bunch of little—”
“He’s pretty stoic about it, though, right? I don’t think he remembers his real name.”
He deliberately forgot it. Rupert stared ahead, thinking.
Jesus looked at Rupert. “That dude is in rough shape. I wouldn’t mess with any of that.”
“Well, he’s happy enough,” Rupert said. “But no joke, Jesus. I gotta.”
“What?”
“I gotta get in on this game.”
“What the hell for? Tickets, man. It’s the way up.”
“Man, these things are going nowhere. They’re a scam.”
Jesus eyerolled again and Rupert matched him. They eyeroll-battled for a full minute.
“Jesus, if I could get some production going, I could make all these small-time operators disappear. My shit would be the best shit. And you’d be my right-hand man.”
Jesus looked appalled.
At that moment, a guy came around the corner, not looking like he wanted to go into the store, but went directly to Jesus. He didn’t look like a Geeker, but he was a little twitchy. He cast a wary glance to Rupert.
He looked like a pretty regular guy. A little thin, unshaven in defiance of his receding hairline, and maybe a bit dirty, but not on-the-street dirty. More like shops-at-the-Homeware-Wearhouse dirty. He had his cell phone out, but shoved it into his back pocket before addressing Jesus.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey Joe,” Jesus said. “What’s cookin?” Jesus laughed, but Joe didn’t, not because he didn’t think it was funny, Rupert thought, but because he didn’t get the joke. Rupert now knew this guy cooked.
“Hey,” Joe said to Rupert.
“Joe, this is Rupert.” Jesus introduced them. “Rupert, Joe.”
They exchanged nods.
“Jesus, Mom’s been buggin’ me about getting one of those damn tickets,” Joe said, finally getting down to it.
“She’d have the time of her life,” Jesus replied.
“Yeah, that’s what she says.” Joe digs into his front pocket and pulls out a fold of bills—it looks like a hundred dollars worth of singles.
“Let’s do this then,” said Jesus, as he dug around in his shorts pockets for a ticket, but pointed to Rupert. “He’s the money man.”
Joe paid Rupert, who counted it with swift expertise—ninety-nine one-dollar bills and ninety-nine cents in change. Joe—or his mother—was exact.
“Thanks, Jesus,” Joe said, examining the ticket, and about to turn. At this moment, Joe’s ass spoke. Or, more precisely, his cell phone did—it was an FFG joint he’d accidentally butt-dialed. The tinny voice announced its business and location, then asked how they could help Joe. Joe took out his phone and put it to his ear. “Sorry,” he said, to the FFG employee, and Rupert and Jesus, then hung up without waiting for a response. This seemed routine.
Rupert stopped him—noticing again that his social anxiety seemed to have vanished.
“You wouldn’t be interested in—?” he started, but Jesus interrupted.
“He don’t want it. He and his mama make it at home.”
“Oh yeah?” Rupert said like he didn’t know. “Like a real lab, all set up?”
Joe put both the ticket and phone back into his pocket and faced them again, then crossed his arms in front of him, suddenly affable. “Oh yeah. You should see it. Mom is a master at constructing clean and efficient labs. People around here’ll tell you, hers is the best, you know, as far as quality and how it goes down. Best cookies, too.”
“You don’t say,” Rupert said. “I’d love to see it. I mean, it sounds impressive. I don’t know much about how it works, but—”
Jesus glared at Rupert and Rupert ignored him.
“Yeah, it can be fascinating,” Joe said, fiddling with his back pocket again. He pulled out the ticket and looked at it. “Jesus, be straight with me, right? Does Crack Planet exist?”
“Real as you and me, son.”
Joe offered a feeble nod and was about to turn once more when Rupert stopped him again.
“Joe, would you like to go to Crack Planet with your mom?”
Jesus looked at Rupert like he’d dropped his pants and took a dump right there in front of the FloridoMart. Rupert wondered just how shocking that would really be. Not very, he suspected.
Joe thought for a moment. “Well, yeah, I guess. Sure. But I gotta save up again and she’ll want to go soon . . . ”
“No need,” Rupert said. “Jesus, hand me one of those Golden Tickets.”
“You know Fulva counts these.”
Rupert made a grabby hand gesture and Jesus threw the ticket at him. It bounced off his elbow and clacked to the ground.
“Nice catch, noir niño,” Jesus said.
“God, shut up,” Rupert replied, picking up the ticket and handing it to Joe. “On the house. One condition.”
Sock it to me...