Jake got out of his car and eyed the mailbox at the end of the driveway. It was only a ten second walk across a small patch of grass that masqueraded as a front lawn, but it was a trip that was growing more painful by the day. Jake reached the end of the yard, shoved his hand in the standard issue black box with its red flag, and pulled out the day’s torment. He carried the thick stack of mail across the grass, past the “For Sale” sign that he and the real estate agent had pushed into the soft ground a week ago, and up the four stairs of the front porch.
The days were numbered for the house where he had grown up. The sadness he felt added to the burden he now faced. For the majority of his life the house had been a source of good memories—the normal stuff of childhood and the teenage years. Birthday parties, holiday gatherings, pictures on prom night. He got his first kiss on the very porch where he now stood, the same porch where his mother had sat him down and broke the news of her cancer.
He fumbled for the key to the deadbolt, balancing the stack of mail in the crook of one elbow. He stepped across the threshold of the foyer, threw his wallet and keys on the small table resting at the foot of the stairs, and made his way through the living room. The mail went on the coffee table, next to the disaster area of bills that already waited for his attention.
He changed clothes in the laundry room off the back of the house, grabbed the last beer bottle from the fridge, and made his way to the sofa. He sipped the cold suds and stared at the pile of mail.
The stack of envelopes stared back.
His mother’s medical treatment, which ultimately failed, had cost a fortune. It was a fortune she didn’t have. Health insurance covered the initial diagnosis and treatment, but when she reached the maximum lifetime limit of the policy, the debt outpaced the ability to pay by roughly the speed of light. When the house sold, if it sold, it would bring in enough money to cover almost half her debt. The rest was unrecoverable. It was a deal his mother had agreed to, giving up everything she had worked for in exchange for more time with the only thing that mattered. The collectors were already on the hunt, and Jake hadn’t answered the home phone in three days.
With Who Wants to be a Millionaire on the TV, Jake dug through the stack of mail and pulled out a half-dozen, late-arriving condolence cards. He flipped through the stamped envelopes and answered the questions on the game show playing in the background without looking up. He set aside the bills for the gas, electricity, water, and phone without opening them. The bill from Georgetown University Hospital loomed large on the corner of the table, and Jake reached for the envelope cautiously as if it were booby-trapped. It seemed heavy to the touch. Jake sighed, opening the multiple-page invoice slowly, squinting as if it would ease the pain of the six-figure debt announced within. Three hundred twenty-two thousand dollars and change. Jake thought about the sum, shook his head, and reached for his beer.
He had five hundred twenty-seven dollars in his personal bank account, another forty in his wallet, and a ten-year-old Subaru station wagon in the driveway with a full tank of gas. The balance of the medical bill was out of his league. Way out of his league.
They had survived the last six months of his mother’s life on loans taken out against the equity of the sixty-year-old home. Jake wasn’t responsible for whatever balance the sale of the house wouldn’t cover, but he would be left with nothing, his mother’s life insurance policy long since cashed out. But he would need to come up with money for the bills and the monthly mortgage until the house sold. Not to mention whatever money he needed to live. Uncle Steve offered to help, but Jake couldn’t force himself to take money from an out-of-work roofer who was barely getting by.
The only thing certain about the future was that he would be facing it alone. He was looking for work and an apartment near the university, but things were slow on the job front. Before his mother had passed and reality set in, he had made a pact with himself to hold out for what he had taken to calling “meaningful employment.” No more working until two o’clock in the morning in the service industry. The race between dead-broke and waiting tables was one he wasn’t sure he’d win. After an eighteen-month hiatus, rejoining the Masters program in English Literature at American University was the only real plan he had. Three months of summer vacation and then ten months of serious studying until graduation.
He needed cash. School loans would come in September and provide enough to make it through the fall semester, but that was still three months away. If he limited himself to frozen TV dinners and skipped lunch, he would be broke in two weeks. He could forget about paying the mortgage for July. The prospect of a long hot summer made him sweat. He had exchanged the burden of taking care of his mother with the burden of taking care of himself. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
The refrigerator was barren and the thought of having a few more beers leached into Jake’s brain. Ten minutes later, he made the responsible decision to get drunk. It had been a long time since he had sucked down dollar drafts for Happy Hour at McFadden’s. And if he drank enough tonight, his stomach wouldn’t be in the mood for food tomorrow. With the money he would save by not eating tomorrow, he could afford a beer or two. It had been a year and a half since he had tied one on. He could use the temporary break from himself and his life.
He made some calls looking for drinking recruits, pounded out a few text messages, and then made the eight-block walk to the bar.
Jake showed his ID to the doorman and walked un-accosted through empty space to a stool at the bar. Georgetown, George Washington, and American University were on summer vacation, and the pub business in downtown D.C. was feeling the usual summer pinch. For certain bars, the influx in summer tourists just couldn’t make up for the weekly binge-drinking student crowd.
Jake ordered a draft—each glass was selling for seventy-five cents until eight-thirty. He had already saved a quarter from the usual one-dollar Happy Hour price. He downed his beer, called over the bartender, and saved another twenty-five cents.
Maroon 5 played on the sound system and echoed off the walls of the empty bar. Jake realized it was the first time he had ever breathed clean air in the maze-like, three-story establishment. McFadden’s was relatively new, a modern steel and concrete watering hole in the midst of some of the nation’s oldest bars—joints with missing mortar and cracked walls. McFadden did what most bars trying to simulate old age did—they put in wood-paneled walls, threw antiques around the room like a blind interior decorator and, for a finishing touch, turned down the lights. Jake had once been a Thursday night regular, right after his evening class on nineteenth century authors. He looked around the bar and missed being a student, missed the carefree lifestyle that was now a distant memory.
“I’m Matt,” the bartender said, introducing himself. The bartender knew the first rule to pulling in the tips, in the absence of a perky set, was to establish rapport.
“Jake. Nice to meet you.”
“From around here?”
“Born and raised.”
“Not many of those around.”
“No, not too many real Washingtonians left,” Jake answered. “It’s quiet in here tonight.”
“It’s summer. Most of our customers are GW students. It’ll pick up a little later. It’s still early, my friend.”
Jake looked down at his watch. Five minutes after eight. Twenty-five minutes until the seventy-five-cent drafts bumped up to a full dollar. He ordered another.
“Drinking alone this evening?”
“Depends if anyone feels like coming to look for me. We’ll see.”
“No shame in downing a few by yourself,” the bartender answered. He was in the wrong profession to point out any of the AA telltale signs of alcoholism.
“Yeah, well, it’s been a bad year,” Jake said, without elaborating. He wasn’t going to share his life story with a bartender. Drinking by himself was one thing; weeping into his beer with his head on the bartender’s shoulder was something else entirely. A man does have his limits.
The bartender didn’t press for details. When a customer says, “It’s been a bad day,” he tended to ask. When a customer says, “It’s been a bad year,” he didn’t want to know. He brought Jake his third beer in twenty minutes.
“Redskins fan?”
“Absolutely. Hard to grow up around here and not be one.”
The two fell into football chatter, the kind of serious emotional banter that is the glue of the male social infrastructure.
“Snyder ruined the team,” Jake said. “A billionaire businessman with no more football knowledge than you or I.”
“He did do one thing right.”
“What’s that?”
“Hired the hottest cheerleaders in the league.”
“Unfortunately they can’t catch for shit.”
The conversation continued through the return and departure of Joe Gibbs, stupid draft picks, free agency, the upcoming schedule, and predictions for the playoffs.
“No one looks better on paper than the Redskins in April.”
“Amen to that,” the bartender answered, pouring a beer for another patron at the far end of the bar.
The quiet mood of the bar was broken with the entrance of eight twenty-something ladies in a bachelorette party. The group of well-accessorized and fully primped females filled the gap around the stools between Jake and the bar’s only other patron. A brunette from the group ordered eight lemon drop shooters, and the young ladies threw them back with synchronized gusto.
The bartender looked at Jake with a raised eyebrow and a smile. “Looks like you have some drinking competition.”
Jake laughed a little and tried to eye the females without staring.
Matt, the bartending matchmaker, jumped in. “Ladies, let me introduce you to my good friend Jake.”
The group gave Jake a cautious once over.
The bachelorette was wearing a t-shirt with a scavenger-hunt list of items she needed to collect, or tasks she needed to accomplish before the end of the evening. The list ran the gamut: from scoring a kiss, to unbuttoning a guy’s shirt using only her teeth, to getting a guy to hand over his underwear. Lacking an alternative male audience, the women moved in on their prey.
“Hi, I’m Kate,” said the drink-ordering cute brunette with shoulder-length hair. She pulled her friend-of-honor closer so that Jake and the bachelorette stood face-to-face. “This is Paula. She is getting married next week.”
“I figured as much,” Jake replied, lightly flicking the bachelorette’s ridiculous looking tiara with his finger.
“You wanna help us out with her scavenger list?”
“Sure he does,” the bartender answered for Jake before he had a chance to think about it.
Jake scanned the list on the girl’s shirt. A kiss he could do. A public spanking was within the realm of possibility if he kept drinking.
“What about your boxers?” Kate asked.
Jake looked up and tried to remember what he was wearing under his khaki cargo shorts. He turned away, pulled up his t-shirt, and pulled out the top of his boxers. A reasonably new pair with a conservative dark green checked pattern. He turned back toward the ladies who tugged at his waist to get a look at the goods up for negotiation.
“I’ll tell you what. Let me have another beer or two and I’ll think about giving you my boxers.”
The ladies cheered. Paula the bachelorette grabbed Jake’s beer off the bar and pushed it toward his lips. He drank as fast as he could, beer trickling from the corners of his mouth. He wiped the beer from his face and swiped at the drips on the front of his shirt. He apologized for his lack of manners to the heart-breaking brunette with mesmerizing brown eyes.
“If you give me your phone number, I’ll give your friend my boxers,” Jake said, backed by the confidence of four beers.
“Deal.”
“I’ll be right back,” Jake said hopping off the stool and heading toward the restrooms in the back of the bar, beyond the pool table.
“Where are you going?” Kate asked.
“To take off my boxers.”
“No, no, no. You have to take them off in front of us. Right, ladies?” Kate said. More cheers and one “hell yeah” shot from the group.
Jake moved back to his stool. “I’m not drunk enough for that.”
“No boxers, no number,” Kate taunted.
Jake’s reinforcements rolled through the door halfway through his next beer. Tim and Aaron divided the sea of eight ladies who encircled Jake and were taking turns pulling at the waist of his knee-length shorts.
“What do we have going on here?” Aaron asked, dressed in a suit and fresh from another day of summer employment at a Washington think-tank that analyzed world migration.
“Hey guys,” Jake answered. He turned toward the women and made introductions. “Ladies, meet Tim and Aaron.”
The women surrounded the new recruits and began tugging at the belts of the complete strangers. There was something magical about inebriated girls out on the town for a bachelorette party.
While Aaron entertained the ladies with his well-rehearsed pick-up lines and shovels of bullshit, Tim, wearing old Birkenstocks and a t-shirt, pulled Jake aside. “We bought tickets for Europe this morning. It’s still not too late to go.” Judging by his attire, Tim was already in boarding-pass mode.
“Not going to make it. Cash is a little tight at the moment.”
“I can loan you the money. I’ll hit my parents up for it. I’ll tell them my car needs some work. They live in Colorado. They’ll never know. It’s going to be the trip of a lifetime. Six guys, hitting the highlights of Europe. French, Spanish, and Italian women.”
“Those are the highlights of Europe?”
“Is there anything else?”
“I’d love to go. If something changes, you’ll be the first to know.”
“It’d be good for you. Take your mind off things.”
“I’d love to, but I can’t.”
“Suit yourself. But if you aren’t going to go, at least let me buy you a beer,” Tim said, motioning toward the bartender.
The evening turned into a blur. The guys crashed the bachelorette party and led them on a pub-crawl up Connecticut Avenue past DuPont Circle. They stood back and watched the ladies get nine of the ten items on the bachelorette scavenger list. Then they added another ten X-rated tasks on the back of her t-shirt in permanent marker.
In the middle of the action, with an early nineties disco remake pumping in the background, Jake magically took off his boxers without removing his shorts, a feat no one at the packed bar had ever seen before. The drinking lasted until just after midnight, when a member of the bachelorette’s party didn’t return from a trip to the restroom. A waitress approached the group and asked if they knew a redhead in a black skirt. Tim and Aaron helped drag the semi-conscious, kamikaze-loving girl from the tile floor and put her in a cab.
In the midst of the commotion, Jake and Kate made their exit. No one noticed their departure until they were in a taxi of their own, making out in the back seat.
Lee Chang made his daily call to the bank, and with the afternoon wire transfer settlement, the money poured in. He transferred the money to a bank in Shanghai under a different name and closed the account in Hong Kong. He moved the money to two other accounts, which he also closed behind him with zero balances. By the time his cousin withdrew the funds from a bank in Beijing, the person at the end of the money trail was a gray mist.
Like taking candy from a baby.
Lee Chang took out two more pictures and smiled. Certainly a man who is willing to pay one hundred thousand dollars would be willing to pay five hundred thousand, he thought. Maybe even a cool million.