The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Ass froze yet?”
“It’s just heating up.”
“Cold, flurries, storm on the horizon, wind blowing in, every news channel has some poor schmuck standing on a street corner as the brine truck drives by on camera, and this guy’s heating up.”
“I’m burning up.”
“Jesus! Do you mean?..”
“No, the lung is fine.”
“You sound down.”
“I am, a little.”
“Don’t make me drag it out of you. I’m neck deep in a warrant application over here, a guy’s got fourteen vehicles he’s registered, and each of them has a different style of tax evasion. One’s a scrap title, the other one says he paid five thousand for a two year old F-250, next he registers a no-tax gift.”
“What ever happened to the days when a guy had the decency to find a fact pattern and stick with it so the poor detective didn’t have to spend all day writing detailed sentences and she could just copy paste?”
“I thought you were feeling down?”
“You are my sunshine.”
“Oh, Christ!”
“I took the boys out to breakfast.”
“So far, plan.”
“Yeah, plan. But then that little shit drops a bomb.”
“He don’t want it?”
“No, I don’t know about that yet. Turns out the guy doesn’t have a license.”
“Are you fricking kidding me? We went over his whole record. First words out of my mouth were, he was a pain in the ass to find because he’s never had a license, and I didn’t have a social for the criminal search.”
“Um.”
“Um, he says. I’m too busy for that. So, he doesn’t have a license. How does that change partnering with Tanner?”
“It caught me off guard. I hedged.”
“You?”
“I hedged hard.”
“Tell it.”
“I went full on aggression. He got me in a centrifuge, and I grabbed the first thing I could catch – beat my way through the wall of the thing, and I spun off pissed.”
“Like, pissed?”
“Seven.”
“Oh, so frustrated, disappointed with yourself, his fault. Got it.”
“Is this in the misdemeanor’s book? Sounds like you got it catalogued.”
“Different book. This one is the Antivenom book.”
“Are we in the same relationship? What is the antivenom book? She says she’s busy, but she has time not only to write two books but memorize them too.”
“Owner manuals.”
“---So, I’m a little pissed. I’m outside smoking to cool off, and the boys are inside getting a table…”
“Seymour Grill?”
“Yeah, they got to The Drip at like 7:20. I snuck in just as Tanner’s coming around the curve, White Reading plain as day through the valley’s haze of morning woodstove smoke.”
“Close one.”
“Good try, kid. I had it locked, but when I got to the ATM to get the cash, there was a car in front of me – odds of that, six in the morning, and there’s a car at the ATM already.”
“I bet they loved that though.”
“I didn’t give it to them yet. We got so distracted at the grill, and if you stop interrupting, you’d know that.”
“Oh, one sec – scans shelf – How He’s Going to Pay For That, Volume Three – Table of Contents – misdirected temper… You better check yourself.”
“Some guys marry a gal like their mother. Me --- I take thee, Stefanie.”
“You got your own little catalogue over there.”
“Yup. So I forgot the Christmas bonus, but I can cover that when they get back from Blount County.”
“What they go to Blount County for?”
“If you weren’t interrupting, you’d already know. So, he has tickets that are on payment plan. He owes seventy nine for the last ticket payment, and then he gets the receipt to submit for the test.”
“That’s not how… Go ahead.”
“That’s mostly the size of it. So I gave him 120 bucks, and I sent them to handle that – on the clock, of course, and I’m sitting here waiting on the soil guy. When they get back, we’ll unbox this solar stuff.”
“That’s a day. Keep me posted.”
“Did you get it?”
“Bro, I paid the last fine payment.”
“Um, no way you took the test already.”
“I went to sign up for the test, and they told me I can’t sign up yet.”
“Why not?”
“I have to wait ten days.”
“Ok, so, what about the partnership?”
“Coming right at it, ha?”
“Well, do you want me to dance around like you do?”
“Some dance is manners. Just a little two step ’fore you say the bad news.”
“--- is that the thing?”
“What?”
“Are you doing the thing? Saying it that way to make me feel bad?”
“No, just say it and get it over with.”
“I ---.”
“Bro, just say it. I didn’t wanna be in the corporation anyway. You wanna buy into that rich man’s bullshit, you go ahead, but not me.”
“Cody, I wasn’t saying any of that.”
“It ain’t you no-how. It’s that Yankee got words in your mouth. Talk to me like that. It’s his teeth knocked out he ever talk to me like that.”
“Look, I’m on the back foot here.”
“Back foot? See you talkin just like him.”
“Cody! Stop this bullshit!”
“Let me out, I’ll walk.”
“So now you’re a girlfriend? Did I forget our monthoversary? Stop this shit. It isn’t we gotta be together. Clearly that won’t work. But you – we don’t have to refuse the gift. Get your own corporation out of it. Dude’s handing shit out gets a guy a chance, instead of we in the valley, we’re from the valley.”
“Took is gamed too. Just change who’s get gamed.”
“Yeah, sort of. Look, man. This is all in my name. Think about it. If he calls the bank tomorrow, wants to know the balance or discuss a payment. They’d tell him, who the fuck is you? They’d tell him. No. Little dude behind the counter isn’t going to lose his job even though he knows who rolled the ball first. The ball rolled away from him into my right to privacy, my ownership. Title is me, and it is mine.”
“I got yer meaning, but you’re talkin’ knots, full conjunctive adverbs and extra prepositions, you buildin’ language rather than just say the thing, move on to the next thing.”
“Next thing. You don’t like this guy, do you?”
“It ain’t I don’t like him. I don’t, but he ain’t no good too.”
“Wait, how do you total as that, no subtotal?”
“Hell are you talking about, can I have the prepositions back?”
“What ain’t no good?”
“He come up here in his flashy car, got his brand new machines, won’t let nobody get in ’em. Said to me, you’re getting mud all over the inside.”
“How you getting mud in, you can’t get inside?”
“Don’t play dumb. He has you fetch em around just like me.”
“You use it all the time. He had you get the solar panels just yesterday - Was that yesterday?”
“It was yesterday. But beside that, only let me run the Ex to rack that frame, got pissed cuz I hit a tree. Let me mulch the brush so he could park near the shed. Let me spread a little gravel so the mail can get in. Other than that, he ain’t let me use it.”
“Cody, you’ve been here four days, and all of them building a shed. What’s your complaint, that he doesn’t let you sit in the seat and hold the board for the roof?”
“That ain’t it. He covets em. Like they’re more worth – like they’s too good for me.”
“I don’t think that’s it. When we set up the corporation, he said that when we finish the build the tools are mine...”
“Ha! Now I know it’s bullshit. Ain’t no man gonna give brand new machines away.”
“But the money isn’t bullshit. He pays me just like he agreed. And he pays the fees and the phone and the insurance. It’s a lot more than twenty an hour when the money lands in the account. And twenty an hour is more than I’ve made anywhere else – more than I made with any man that’s paid me as a cost of goods sold.”
“So, he give you corporation, good pay – still less than he pay Blalock’s, lot less – and you ain’t a product get sold no more?”
“We’re all bought and paid for. I bet he is too. Money made that, not Michael.”
“Cupcakes? What the hell?”
“And candles?”
“Yeah. Weak, I know, but when the soil scientist left, I went to the Wye and I got some Hostess and a pack of birthday candles – and these gift card envelopes. It’s five hundred bucks each for the Christmas bonus. And before you fucks call me weird, hear me out. The shed would have cost ten thousand with a shed builder, and we built it for just short of eight thousand, materials included. That’s two thousand saved. A thousand is your cut. And I get to imagine you getting great shit for your families for Christmas.”
“Um, I don’t know what to say, man. Thank you.”
“Yeah, thanks, bossman. That’s…. That’s thoughtful.”
“And the candles?”
“That’s Cody’s birthday. Sixteen years old and got his first license. Congratulations, boy!”
“Um –”
“Ya, I got there, and I paid the rest of the fine. But… Like always, they’s a system. Gotta wait ten days to schedule the test.”
“Um, can we still have the cupcakes?”
“Oh man. I’m sorry dude. That sucks – like for real sucks.”
“Yeah, ouch – cupcake?”
Cody reached out, plucked a candle – “What’s next?”
“Next is get out of here for Christmas. Gives you two a couple unaccounted for hours to go get the ladies a surprise.”
“I could go for that.”
“While you’re out there, talk it through. Do you guys know anyone else that you trust to work with? We need three. That’s the best design for now. Three guys.”
“I could got someone in mind. You know Rusty, Tanner.”
“Yeah, he’s a good guy.”
“Definitely needs the money. Same pay?”
“Yup. Everyone gets the same pay.”
“Who’s that?”
“Sounds like they’re going slow.”
“That easement needs work.”
“We dug it out of a deer path and a creek bed. We’ll get back at it Tuesday. We gotta get on those solar panels too. Cody can handle the road with the skid, and we can get up with the panels.”
“It’s the mail truck.”
“My locks!”
“For the shed?”
“Yeah, but you’ll see.”
“That’s a big box for a shed lock.”
“It’s all the locks for the shed, the workshop to come, the house. All at once. But it’s all for one thing. The key. The key to our home to come is Stefanie’s Christmas gift.”
(Confounds me to starry spins)