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.Denny sighs at the ground.From two hundred feet up, one of the vulture birds drops a nasty white dump on his back.Denny says, "Dude, what I need is a mission."I say, "So do this one good thing.Help out an old lady."And Denny says, "How's your number four step coming along?" He says, "Dude, I have an itch on my side, can you help me out?"And careful of the bird crap, I start scratching him.Chapter 12IN THE PHONE BOOK, there's more and more red ink.More and more restaurants are crossed out in red felt-tipped pen.These are all places where I almost died.Italian.Mexican.Chinese places.For real, every night I have fewer options for where to eat out if I want to make any money.If I want to trick anybody into loving me.The question is always: So what do you feel like choking on tonight?There's French food.Mayan food.East Indian.For where I live, in my mom's old house, picture a really dirty antique store.The kind where you have to walk sideways, the way you'd walk in Egyptian hieroglyphics, it's that kind of crowded.All the furniture carved out of wood, the long dining-room table, the chairs and chests and cabinets with faces carved on everything, the furniture's all oozed over with some thick syrup kind of varnish that turned black and crackled about a million years before Christ.Covering the bulgy sofas is that bulletproof kind of tapesty you'd never want to sit on naked.Every night after work, first there's the birthday cards to go through.The checks to total.This is spread out across the black acre of dining-room table, my base of operations.Here's the next day's deposit slip to fill out.Tonight, it's one lousy card.One crapmo card comes in the mail with a check for fifty bucks.That's still a thank-you note I have to write.There's still the groveling next generation of underdog letters to send out.It's not that I'm an ingrate, but if all you can cut me is fifty bucks, next time just let me die.Okay? Or better yet, stand aside and let some rich person be the hero.For sure, I can't write that in any thank-you note, but still.For my mom's house, picture all this castle furniture crammed into a two-bedroom newlywed house.These sofas and paintings and clocks are all supposed to be her dowry from the Old Country.From Italy.My mom came here for college and never went back after she had me.She's not Italian in any way you'd notice.No garlic smell or big armpit hair.She came here to attend medical school.Frigging medical school.In Iowa.The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.The truth is, I'm more or less her green card.Looking through the phone book, what I need to do is take my act to a classier audience.You have to go where the money is and bring it home.Don't be choking to death on chicken nuggets in some deep-fried joint.Rich people eating French food want to be the hero as much as anybody else.My point is, discriminate.My advice to you is: identify your target market.In the phone book, there's still fish houses to try.Mongolian grills.The name on today's check is some woman who saved my life in a smorgasbord last April.One of those all-you-can-eat buffets.What was I thinking? Choking in cheap restaurants is for sure a false economy.It's all worked out, all the details, in the big book I keep.Here's everything from who saved me where and when, to how much have they spent so far.Today's donor is Brenda Munroe signed at the bottom of the birthday card, with love."I hope this little bit helps," she's written across the bottom of the check.Brenda Munroe, Brenda Munroe.I try, but I don't get a face.Nothing.Nobody can expect you to remember every near-death experience.For sure, I should keep better notes, hair and eye color at least, but for real, look at me here.As it is, I'm already drowning in paperwork.Last month's thank-you letter was all about my struggle to pay for I forget what.It was rent I told people I needed, or dental work.It was to pay for milk or counseling.By the time I send out a couple hundred of the same letter, I never want to read it again [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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