“But . . .”
“No buts. You just always gotta be in the right place. You’re the writer, what’s the word I’m looking for? Ubiquitous. You gotta be ubiquitous. Where do I turn?” he said when we hit Division.
“I’ll just jump out here.”
“No way, pal. I’m taking you door to door. For old times’ sake.”
There he was with the old times again but no mention of penises. How could he act so familiar and not talk about it, like it wasn’t sitting there between us like a goddamn elephant?
“Well,” I said as he pulled up to the house. “Here we are: Rancho Dumpo.”
“Ah, it ain’t so bad,” he said. “You gotta see the potential. They call me the House Whisperer down at RE/MAX. What you ought to do is strike that old canopy and make a few trips to the dump. Get rid of the jalopy. Put a skirt around the bottom of the unit, so it looks more like a foundation. Plant some hedges, front and side, to break up the rectangularity of the place and give it a little buttress. Couple of planters under the window. Half-dozen paving stones and a little paint would add some serious curb appeal, too, and cheap. You own the place?”
“No.”
“Never mind, then. As you were.”
As I climbed out of the car, Freddy appeared on the porch in his underwear to admire the Lexus, scratching the springy hairs of his chest and hocking a loogie. Goble didn’t even flinch—the guy was unflappable. He gave Freddy a familiar little wave and Freddy waved back, visibly confused to see me in a Lexus convertible with a guy wearing a dress shirt.
“By the way,” said Goble, producing a business card. “Give me a call on Monday. I might have a job for you.”
Before and After
Monday morning, I called Goble. He was currently managing six new properties on the island, all in need of regular maintenance. And get this: he’d pay me twenty bucks an hour—cha-ching! He instructed me to meet him out at the first property in an hour, which was on Wardwell, just off 305. I crammed the mower in the trunk of the Tercel, along with the edger, the weed whacker, and the rake, then got Freddy and Nate to give me a push for a compression start.
When I arrived at the first property, Goble wasn’t there yet, so I parked on a hill and began unloading my gear. The house was your typical McMansion. Gray and boxy, with some corny flourishes intended to look classy: a pergola, some pillars, a roundabout driveway. It sat on a big lot, mostly wooded. What lawn it afforded needed some work, especially around the edges.
Just as I was getting ready to fire up the mower, Goble pulled up in his Lexus, top down, auto-tuned pop music blaring.
“Dude, you can’t park there!” he shouted. “You’re blocking my sign!”
So much for parking on the hill. I put the Tercel in neutral and started rolling her down toward the corner. That’s how I wound up with two wheels in the ditch.
Despite his annoyance, Goble was pretty cool about the whole thing. He called a tow truck and gave me his AAA card. My debt to Goble was mounting by the minute.
“I really appreciate it, man,” I told him as the tow truck pulled away.
“Just do a good job,” he said. “I gotta move this place.”
He walked me around the property, soliciting my opinion on a few matters. Should he stage some lawn furniture on the flagstone patio? What did I think about painting the front door red? Should we clear out some of those junk trees around the perimeter?
“Mike, I need your professional opinion here. Where do we start?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really? That’s the best you’ve got?”
“You’ve seen my house. How the hell would I know?”
“You’re a professional landscaper. I asked you, and you said yourself you were good. You’ve got to act the part.”
“Okay,” I said. “The lawn needs some work. The edges are rough, and you’ve got a dandelion problem. The reason it’s bald under that walnut tree isn’t because of the shade, it’s the high acid content of the soil. I’m betting some fescue would take root there. Four bucks at Bay Hay and Feed. Done and doner. And yeah, if you lose a few of those alders, you might lighten up the place. That Japanese maple would do better with more light. I’d also square up that laurel and deadhead those rhodies.”
“Now that’s more like it, Mike. You sound like a gamer.”
“I could also carve you a sculpture out of that boxwood there. Maybe like bald eagle with a rabbit in his talons.”
“Quit while you’re ahead, Mike.”
“What about a fish?”
“No, Mike.”
“In his talons, I mean.”
Goble didn’t even reply this time, just glanced at his cell.
“See how far you can get by two thirty, then meet me at the Baker Hill property.”
“Ten-four.”
“You’ve got the address?”
“Got it.”
“And no sculptures,” he said. “Not ever.”
“Got it.”
Man, it was great working without supervision. No Lacy looking over my shoulder. No Truman peering out the window. No old lady in a wheelchair busting my balls. And let me tell you, in just a few short hours, old Mike Muñoz reinvented that yard. I took out the alder saplings that were strangling the maple and started a discreet dump pile back in the cedar bog, out of sight. I forgot my weeder, so I used the flathead screwdriver from my glove box and must have dug out a hundred dandelions before I mowed the lawn. I cut a new edge along the perimeter. I weed-whacked along the foundation and deadheaded the rhodies. I’d have to come back next week for the laurel, but the place looked way better. I wished Goble were there to see it. I really should’ve taken before-and-after pictures.
Driving to the second property, I felt like a lion. A few blisters from the weeding, but that was nothing compared to the satisfaction of a job well done.
When I arrived at the Baker Hill place, I parked on the incline a few doors down. Goble was already waiting, leaning up against the Lexus, texting. He always looked fresh, Goble. His hair was never mussed—even though he drove a convertible. No wrinkles, not on his clothes or on his person. Just enough cologne. No wonder he was well liked at all those churches—the guy was squeaky clean, at least on the surface.
“How’d it go at Wardwell?” he said, without looking up from his cell.
“Good. Really good.”
In one swift movement, he finished texting and pocketed the phone.
“Let’s see the pictures.”
“I didn’t take any.”
“No before and after?”
“I didn’t think of it until after.”
“So you got an after?”
“No.”
He suppressed a sigh and patted my back.
“Mike, you’ve got to think proactively if you ever wanna get ahead. You can’t just roam the earth dragging your lawn mower and hoping some old lady hires you. You’ve got have an angle at all times. You take pictures, you build a portfolio. You start calling yourself a landscape architect.”
“But I’m not an architect.”
Goble shook his head grimly. “Look, just take pictures next time around.”
The Baker Hill property was another McMansion. Somewhere in its outsized boxiness there lurked a hint of Victorian. And Edwardian. And Tudor. The lawn was in decent shape. The cedars around the edge were a little shaggy and the rhodies needed deadheading. The kidney-shaped flower bed in the center of the lawn could use some cleaning up, and I told Goble as much.
“Okay, then,” he said, unpocketing his cell again. “Hop to it. I’ll swing by Wardwell and take a look. Oh, and Mike, next time park even farther down the street. At least until you get a decent car.”
“Got it.”
I snapped a few pictures of the problem areas before I set to work. The first order of business was bringing up the canopy on those cedars and opening up the yard. They were old trees, with big buttressed trunks and oddly bowed limbs, some of them as low as kne
e level. I took up the canopy uniformly to six feet, cleaning out the scrub plants and vine maple and raking up the windfall along with my trimmings. I started a dump pile down the hill, out of sight from the house. All the clearing and the canopy work gave the place a park-like feel around the perimeter. As I unloaded my mower, my phone rang. It was Goble in his convertible. I could hear his pop music and the wind rocketing past the phone receiver.
“Wardwell looks dynamite,” he said. “Like a different property. One of my clients drove by an hour ago and called me to ask if I’d had the place painted or something. You weren’t lying—you’re good. You’re a landscaping genius. When you wrap up there, meet me at the Harbor Pub in Winslow, say around five thirty. I wanna buy you a beer.”
You heard the man: I was a genius. Imagine how good those words sounded to my ears—almost as good as that free beer. I had a little extra spring in my step as I mowed the lawn. I whistled as I cut the edge, hummed Roger Miller as I pruned, gutted, and raked out the big flower bed. My creative juices were flowing. I even jotted down a few notes for the Great American Landscaping Novel while catching my breath.
The first thing I did when I got to the pub was let Goble buy me that beer.
“Damn, it looks like a park,” he said, perusing the pictures on my phone. “Creating all that space under the cedars was a genius move.”
Twice a genius!
“Did you redo the edge on that big bed?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice. Really makes the lawn pop.”
That’s when Goble reached into his back pocket, took his wallet out, and handed me a crisp hundred-dollar bill.
“You’re gonna pay me daily?”
“That’s a tip. Put it toward buying a new car.”
“So I’m gonna get paid, too?”
“Yes, Mike. That’s how a tip works.”
Truman had never tipped me, that’s for sure. Or the old lady. Or Lacy, for that matter. Even as I thanked Goble, I was a little incredulous.
“Why are you doing all this for me?”
“I needed a landscaper.”
“No, really.”
“Really, I’m just building my network, Mike. Like the man said, a man’s net worth is only as good as his network.”
He was right, of course. Just look at my network: a bass player, a tire technician, and likely a convicted felon in Chaz. No wonder I was penniless.
“Remember how I told you about infiltrating communities? About being there?”
“Yeah. Attendance is gold.”
“Actually, it’s only part of the equation, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you at the time. The way you build an ironclad network is by doing favors for people. Especially if it helps you. Case in point, hiring you: I get a bunch of landscaping done, and you owe me a favor.”
Oh God, here it was. And what could I say? The guy was paying me twenty bucks an hour. He got my car towed out of a ditch. He bought me coffee and now beer. Plus he gave me a hundred bucks. I’m no dummy. Now I had to touch his dick.
“I get it,” I said.
“Do you?”
“This is where I gotta do you a favor.”
“No, that’s the catch. I never call in my favors. Not unless I absolutely have to.”
My shoulders slackened immediately.
“But here’s the other catch,” Goble said, leaning in closer. “Say, I wanna do somebody else a favor, but I can’t really perform that particular favor. Like, say my girlfriend needs a new muffler.”
“You have a girlfriend?”
“No. But say she needs a new muffler. Better yet, say she needs a mental-health professional or a veterinary surgeon. Well, obviously I’m not gonna operate on her dog’s colon. But I know a guy. Are you following me here?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
“And this guy, this veterinary surgeon, I’ve done him a favor, too, see, a couple of favors? I helped him refi, I structured his escrow conveniently, moved some numbers around, and I didn’t charge him for any of it. No closing costs. So he owes me one.”
He took a long draw on his beer and held up his finger to let me know he wasn’t finished yet.
“But here’s the next catch: I’m not really asking for a favor, not for myself, so it doesn’t really count as a favor. I mean, you and I know it does, but it doesn’t, not in the guy’s mind. It’s not my colon. It’s just me doing this girl and her dog a favor, like I once did him a favor on the closing costs. I’m the guy that does favors for everybody. You still following me?”
“Yeah, I think.”
As close as I could figure, this meant that one day Goble was gonna call me and ask me to do a guy a favor—and I’d still owe him one. This was not shaping up well for me.
“So,” he says. “Now I’m one favor ahead in the ledger: I got my girlfriend’s dog’s colon operated on practically pro bono (except for the anesthesia—they gotta account for that stuff), the guy still owes me a favor (which I’ll never call in, because I only call in favors for other people), and I come out smelling like roses. Hell, if the dog could do anything for me, I’d be up two favors in the ledger. But what’s a dog gonna do, lick peanut butter off my dick?”
He took another pull of his beer and patted his lips dry with a napkin. “Sounds sort of sinister in a way,” he said. “But the best part of the whole arrangement? Yep, everybody wins.”
“What about the guy doing all the free colon operations. How does he win?”
“He already won. With the refi and the escrow. Plus I helped him find his dream house. And I listed his sister’s place.”
“Will he ever win again? Does he ever get any credit for the colon operations?”
“Oh, I’ll do him another favor down the line. He won’t even have to ask. I’ll just wait until it’s convenient for me to do it, and it probably won’t be a direct favor. It’ll probably be a favor somebody offers me as payback for one of my favors, but then I’ll just offer the favor to him. Like a pair of tickets to Jersey Boys or something.”
“But wait. Doesn’t that mean that your indirect favors are worth direct favors, but their indirect favors aren’t worth anything?”
“Not bad, Mike. You’re catching on.”
“What if they ask you for a direct favor? Do you do it?”
“If it’s convenient, sure.”
“What if it’s inconvenient?”
“Depends how much you can do for me. Can you help me stash some major assets offshore, or are you just mowing some lawns for me? No offense. I mean, I’m paying you, right?”
“You’re paying me well,” I said.
He sighed. “Not really, Mike. I’m paying you a few bucks over minimum wage.”
“So give me a raise.”
“Not gonna happen. I only pay what the market can bear—and that’s maximum. My last guy was Mexican. I was paying him ten.”
“So why pay me twenty?”
“I know, right? I guess because I like you.”
“No, really, why?”
“Because you do superlative work?”
“C’mon, Goble. Why?”
“Well, you do good work, you really do. But the fact is, prospective home buyers—the ones I sell to—they don’t want to see Mexicans in their prospective neighborhood. You get one Mexican in there, and pretty soon you’ve got a crew of Mexicans in there. You may as well park a taco truck in the driveway.”
“Oh, so that’s how it is.”
“That’s them, understand, the clients,” Goble said. “Not me. Don’t confuse me with my clients. I’m fine with Mexicans. I just ate at Casa Rojas the other day. And yeah, I know you’re Mexican. But not Mexican Mexican. Not that it makes a difference—to me, anyway. Besides, you don’t look too Mexican, that’s the important thing. As long as you don’t grow one of those peach-fuzz mustaches, or start wearing cowboy boots on Saturday night, or listening to salsa really loud, you’ll be okay.”
I needed Goble to stop talking before I punched him in the throat and f
ucked up the best opportunity anyone had ever offered me.
“Anyway,” he said. “You did nice work out there today, Mike. Really nice work. Welcome to Team Goble.”
He raised his beer and I raised mine, at once hopeful and a little heavy of heart, like maybe I just sold part of my soul.
“Goble or go home,” he said, and we clinked glasses.
I was still a little conflicted about my new job when I got back to the shed. More precisely, I was conflicted about my new employer. In a way, he was like Chaz: shrewd, self-assured. He knew how to think big. Like Chaz, Goble always had a plan, an angle, an objective. But Goble was different. Whereas Chaz was chasing his dreams and schemes to achieve personal freedom—the freedom to sleep, the freedom to drink at 9:00 a.m., the freedom to be your own boss, the freedom not to work hard, etcetera—Goble seemed like he was after something more. You got the feeling Goble didn’t even enjoy his freedom. He filled his free time with more work. He worried about his weight and complexion. He ironed his jeans. Quite simply, he strove in a way Chaz didn’t strive. Like Chaz, he extended goodwill, but only if he thought it could help him win. That was the thing: Goble had to win. Old Chaz knew when he was beaten. Once they put you in cuffs and chained the door, you had to shrug your shoulders and start making lemonade. But not Goble. You got the feeling he would never submit. Whereas Chaz was bullishly optimistic, even careless in his pursuit of upward mobility, Goble was calculated. And I guess that’s what unnerved me.
The Monkey
That hundred bucks from Goble hadn’t been in my pocket more than an hour before I texted Remy:
You want to hang out this weekend? Dinner? Beers?
An hour later she replied:
Pizza?
Perfect.
That Friday after work, I drove the Tercel, which nearly quit on me at the junction, and met Remy at Campana’s out on Viking Way, where my mom had worked when I was a kid. Still the same decor, the same hot breadsticks, the same stale mints at the cash register. Remy’s eye wart didn’t seem as prominent in the low light of the bar. She was wearing less makeup, too. Tonight she looked more like the girl I fell for all those months ago at Mitzel’s—minus the frumpy work uniform.