The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Love.”
“Love.”
“How was your day?”
“It was good. All about me the way I like it.”
“From your call it sounded like it was all about hiding the body.”
“Not the body – I buried a little shame though. Chris was rough yesterday, and today I was Paul Bigler. I was cruel and angry and unprovoked – not really.”
“It’s self provoked, Michael.”
“Yeah, that’s it. I just got so spun up over this kid been with me four days. He infuriates me for no reason he could ever stop performing even if he wanted to. No matter how hard he tried.”
“He’s you.”
“Fuck no. This kid’s a mess.”
“You’re a mess.”
“---Truth.”
“But, you’re a different mess. You take these men in your sidecar, and you drive them through your parable of highways and byways, but you forget that you built the GPS before you closed your eyes and let it ride.”
“Um – I got the sidecar and all that, but the GPS…”
“Okay, look. You had James West, Chris Fernandez, Fifi, Dan, Sara, and on and on; and David Lawson. God help me, I thought you learned your lesson with him. But nope here you are, one more project, and in come the troubled kids.”
“They’re not all troubled. Most of them are just people looking for work when I’m looking for workers. Most of them are good people with minds too complex for the work-a-day life of an ordinary J.O.B.. And David Lawson wasn’t my fault.”
“Michael, the kid literally called you at 6:30 in the morning, come give him and his fifteen-year-old girlfriend a ride because they were running away, dad’s a cop, you get the street corner in a sub-division that they’re standing on after walking all night – are you hearing me, Michael?”
“I don’t need to relive this.”
“Oh, you’re reliving, baby.”
“Great, now it’s the Jerry Seinfeld bit.”
“Yeah, that’s right…”
“And here comes Cramer…”
“And you. In all of your divine wisdom, do you tell the kid no? Do you hang up and call his dad?...”
“Yes. I called him.”
“Yeah, you called from the truck on the way to pick the kid up. And what did he tell you? He tells you the girl’s father has been calling for two hours looking for the daughter. And you – what do you do? Do you call 911? Nooo, not Michael. Michael’s got this. Michael….”
“I called Emily, Stefanie. I called her. I called her immediately after I got those kids in the truck, and I left her a voicemail telling her I got the kids, and I’m taking them to the Annex.”
“No, Michael. You got them. You took them to the police station, good work. What you’re missing is that father is out there looking for his little girl snuck out in the middle of the night with a troubled boy, a boy you’re pouring into because you were a troubled boy, and you think you can save them all because you didn’t flush out. You think you can carry them on your back and…”
“Is this the pep talk? You ain’t no counselor neither. Isn’t that what you were leading up to, that I’m not a counselor. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I better stop tinkering with these kids, or someone’s going to get hurt? Well, newsflash, they’re already hurt. I’m trying to give them hope.”
“So you hear me. At least there’s that, and you said it for me so I can save my breath. But hear this. You got lucky. What if that father pulled up at the same moment you did and saw his fifteen year old daughter getting in a grown man’s car at seven in the morning. Damn right Emily was called. The Head of the Major Crimes Division comes to the scene of just that kind of shooting.”
“So it’s the chalk outline?”
“I call the plays as I see them, and you play the calls. My objection stands. You keep hiring these people - guys went un-picked for dodgeball.”
“The guys with time, money, reputation, guys that got shit to do and their own families on the line, they don’t want these people, and the people that did get hired are sick of paying the forgotten-man freight. The man showed up for work. He isn’t any good at it, and he ain’t so cheerful about it either, and god knows he could use a bath, but he’s been there every day.”
“Fine, exhibit B. What about all these Amazon boxes? Which are which so I can get your gifts wrapped and you don’t show up at Mamaw’s like a box hobo. Twenty-eight boxes for Christ sake.”
“You have two days to wrap them.”
“I love this man, I love this man, I love this man.”
“Of course you do. He’s a good dude. You should have seen those two when I unloaded your thousand bucks on them.”
“My thousand?”
“It was your idea. You were all worried they – Cody – wouldn’t have ready money to waste so close to just starting work. That was all you. Don’t act like you didn’t walk me into your little trap. Me celebrating we saved our first buck from coming out of my income every penny of this build so far.”
“Don’t blame me you have a guilty conscience.”
“Guilty – plays me like the pear tree’s partridge, and all the while I’m handing out five golden rings to the men I already pay…”
“Wait, we already have cases on the docket. Stipulate it was your idea too, and we can move on to the payoff.”
“Fine. They were pretty psyched, and when I sent them out shopping for Christmas, we got the double bonus. The team is hanging out together after hours, I get to come home early to watch you wrap my gifts.”
“Fantastic. Buys twenty-eight gifts and lets me wrap them so he gets credit for the work. Click, click, click. Proceed to checkout.”
“It’s not all gifts. Most of this is for the Drip. Like this – a tow strap for when you get that Sentra stuck in the mud again.”
“At least you knew to put it in the skidsteer toolkit, unlike the tire inflator.”
“Ah, the venerable yoke around my neck, the tire inflator that has saved your ass a dozen times since.”
“Birthday, Michael. It was my birthday.”
“April 27, 1982, ma’am.”
“Not when… good one. I almost fell for it.”
“It was a worthy cause. And look at this, true to season they put extra packing paper in the box to protect the thing from shakes of the prying people-like-you.”
“That paper is for people like you to wrap it with, moron.”
“Or staunch the bleeding. This one’s got Drip shit in it too. And I know these two. They’re Kitty food, like always.”
“This one’s promising.”
“There she goes, shaking the box.”
“There’s nothing in it.”
“Give me that. I love this tape. The world has been waiting all my life for this packing tape. Holds box after box shut, but poke a dull finger in and, zip, it’s open. This one has ten air filled packets. It’s mine to wrap.”
“Here’s some paper.”
“This one’s Tommy’s.”
“The Nailer?”
“Yup, eighteen-gauge, baby! And this one is definitely the battery. You can wrap those.”
“It’s an honor.”
“Who you kidding? You can’t bring the Yankee with the opened Amazon box stack and sharpie name cards to Christmas.”
“It’s a lot of years; you’re The Good Yankee now.”
“And how do you think I achieved that? Riding on the back of your wrapping skills, that’s how.”
“What now?”
“So, we got the house listed…”
“Not this. It’s Christmas.”
“It’s not even the night before the night before Christmas.”
“Fine, it’s after business hours.”
“Twenty-four hour help line.”
“For fuck sake. I wanna know what’s in this one, not the one in your endless mind.”
“Oh, that one. That’s been sitting here all week. Says Dillards all over it, Stefanie. That one was, teach you a lesson.”
“All week, teach me a lesson, like a mobster.”
“Not like a mobster, these mountains run me all the way here right from back thar, down here. I slide my way down them hills and hollers soon’s I find out you’s here waitin’ on me.”
“Y’ ain’t got the ear for it, boy.”
“You people ain’t got the market cornered on Redneck, darlin’. Same mountains, differnt Winter.”
“Looks pretty wintery out there right now. I bet the salt plow people are parked and halfway into a Prime video. The news lady’s still out there, though, keeping us posted on the perils of partying Stormageddon 2023.”
“What’s the prognosis?”
“Could be as much as six inches in the valley.”
“Oh, that’s legit down here. I bet The Drip gets ten. Got the shed done just in time. That inverter and stuff would be out frozen to the mud without them kids.”
“Yup, ten in the hills it said. Tossed to frozen Gatlinburg guy with ski town Christmas decorations in the background and everything.”
“So weird, it just doesn’t seem like Christmas, but that’s the prettiest tree you’ve ever done.”
“It’ll look fantastic with all these cardboard boxes under it if we don’t get this pile sorted.”
“It’s been a busy month – to the day – Closing, gravel, fix the washout, cut the Twister game out, more gravel, two new machines, two new men, a shed, solar in the shack, and all the raccoons settle down for a long Winter’s nap.”
“Um, raccoons?”
“Yup. Prints everywhere up there. Guaranteed we got one inspecting for the certificate of occupancy right this minute, in from the cold, nestled up in the corner, cute little head resting on the inverter. Approved.”
“How’d we get from me opening a Dillards gift to a weather report, a monthoversary-sum-up wrapped in a certificate of occupancy from my favorite woodland critter?”
“You called me a mobster, and frankly that didn’t sound like contrition.”
“Contrition. This guy wants allocution, a Jersey style mea-culpa, and two love letters for shaking a box – a couple times.”
“There it is, she admits it, your honor. Spontaneous utterance. I move for a bench verdict.”
“Just tell me. What is it.”
“That does not sound like a lesson learned.”
“I learned. I learned. What is it?”
“I’ll trade you. I need you to understand the plan. You hear me out, and the gift is yours early.”
“Mobster’s back. Keep the box. I know the plan. You sell half the leases in New York. We live on the income from the three remaining. The proceeds go in a managed equities account and automatically qualify for a non amortizing loan of up to sixty-five percent of the whole account value. We borrow no more than fifty percent of that, which leaves time headroom to complete the new build and to sell, the proceeds of which settle the loan for the new build. We borrow money that we have, and we pay prime plus as the interest rate forever and ever amen until we close the loan with the house sale.”
“Well. Okay… And we never mortgage our home. If shit goes sideways, we service the loan ad nauseam. Home safe. Cash leveraged.”
“Yeah, I got all that. Right up until some puzzle piece tromps in while you have too much time on your hands in that skidsteer and the whole plan changes. Now give me that box.”