“Dude.” Krista’s in the men’s room, breathless. “Dude, you’re not getting out of here with that tape.” I can hear her pacing in front of the stalls; there must be ten or twelve of them here, and she has no idea which one I’m in. “I’m going nowhere, dude.” Her cell rings. “Hey, I found him. He’s hiding in a stall in the men’s room. What? No, near the E-gates.”
I open my eyes, and finally I can see a little. I fumble with my cell, squint hard at the screen. My thumb trembles as it taps through my phone book and stops at High Rider. I press Call.
He picks up immediately, says, “Where are you?”
A stall door opens. A man says something to Krista, who tells him to fuck off.
“It’s over,” I whisper.
Long silence. “You said to meet at the Galleria.”
“You’re not getting the tape.”
Silence.
“Have you thought about this?” I say. “Have you really thought about who this would hurt the most?”
“Fitzroy,” he says. “When it hits the Internet, that tape will put an empty, narcissistic, greedy man in his place.”
Krista is outside my stall, rattling it. “Dude, it’s over.”
“So that’s what this was all about, then? This whole thing? A big slice of revenge against the man who laid you off?”
Hard kick against my stall door.
High Rider is silent. Finally, he says, “Call it karma.”
I feel the saliva pooling in my mouth. “I’m opting out.”
His voice tightens. “Then you’re not getting your options. We’ll send your correspondence with BusinessWeek to the board of directors, your amorous IMs to all of FlowBid.”
Another hard kick.
“You don’t have to send the IMs.”
“But I will.”
“She’s married, you know? That woman? She’s married.”
“Her name’s been removed. God, you’re an idiot.”
A huge sigh of relief. “Plus, my wife knows. Cut that problem off at the knees.”
“Nevertheless, titillating reading for your colleagues.”
“I swear, when I find you, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”
His voice weakens. “There’s still a chance. You don’t have to do this.”
Hard kick. The door buckles.
“I’m flushing the tape, asshole.”
“No.” His voice tightens. “Don’t. Please.”
Another kick, and the door gives. Krista pushes in a little, grunts, “Stop.”
I reach into my pocket, pull out the tape. “Listen closely.”
Another kick, and the door teeters and rotates on its bottom hinge.
Someone says, “Hey, cool it.”
Krista reaches over the door and swipes at the cassette. My hand trembling, I drop it into the toilet and look at it a second before I wave my hand over the sensor. Water rushes in, and the cassette circles the bowl twice before rocketing down the hatch. I hold my cell over the toilet.
Krista watches, yells, “YOU . . . FUCKING . . . ASSHOLE.”
I’m sniffling.
High Rider sounds like he’s about to cry. “I’ll have them send out your items now.”
I end the call, fall to my knees, and vomit into the toilet as Krista scrambles over the door, lands on my back, and drags her nails across my face one last time.
Twelve
The coast, somewhere between Santa Cruz and Monterey
Two months later
As we walk along the beach, following the boys as they run their toy cars along the hard-pack, the setting sun shining through the tips of the waves, it finally happens.
Kate lets me slip my hand into hers.
It’s been two months. I feel like I’m about to cry, but I don’t want to make a big deal about it. I glance at her, and she’s got that look on her face, that look I haven’t seen in a long time, that look she doesn’t even know she makes—her lids a little lower, her left brow lifting, her jaw sliding in the delight of a nice moment as she realizes that, yes, I’ve always been in love with her, and no one else, that we’re on the way back to being husband and wife.
The boys chase each other in tight circles, their laughter muffled by the surf.
Kate lets me pull her in but keeps her hands at her chest. I wrap her up in my arms, rest my forehead on hers, and fall into her eyes. The softness is returning there, and I’m the luckiest guy in the world.
“What’s next for us, Dan?”
What’s next?
I lost my stock options, sure. In fact, I was fired before my flight began its descent into Boise; the IT guys delivered on their promise to send out all those damaging details about me and then slipped back into the shadows. But we still cashed out, in our own way. I guess I’d never realized that we didn’t really even need my stock options, or anything else; we just sold our house, paid off the home loan, and headed for the coast with a tidy sum. We didn’t buy a shack on the beach, but we found a rental nearly a mile from the water, and that was okay—more than okay, really. It didn’t keep me from walking barefoot around town, from riding our cruisers to the ocean, from taking my dad’s old Coleman to the beach, from talking to neighbors and listening, from walking across the street every morning to check in on Eleanor the elderly shut-in, from having time to take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Yeah, we’ve cashed out.
I look into her blues. “What’s next is, we go get some Mexican.”
“Avocados, too. Harry wants your guacamole.”
“And orange soda.”
“And Calhoun wants to join us.”
She closes her eyes, whimpers. “Not again. Please.”
“No sleepovers, this time. I promise.”
She looks at my mouth. “Okay, and what about the bigger picture?”
I feign confusion. “Bigger picture?”
Tiny nod.
“The bigger picture is, Larry’s just a little misunderstood.”
She smiles to herself, plays along. “Dan.”
“The bigger picture is, no one really knows how those guys ended up in the Alaskan wilderness. Thousands of miles away.”
Closes her eyes, smiles. “Dan.”
“I mean, not even David Duncan will talk.”
“You know what I’m—”
“Hard for the D.A. to charge Larry with anything when the so-called victims refuse to say a word about who had them, why they were shaved bald and dressed like monks. Hard to do anything when Larry just sits there on his porch, day after day, staring into space, as the authorities still have no freaking clue how they ended up in that shed out there in the woods, all the way near the Arctic—”
She pinches my lips. “I’m not talking about this again.”
I shrug, and she releases.
“What’s next for us, honey?”
“What’s next is, we stay here.”
“Keep renting?”
“For now, sure.”
“Hold on to those investments?”
“Investments? We have everything in bonds and CDs.”
“No, that short-message thing.”
I scrunch my face. “Twitter?”
“Yeah, those guys with the short-message rule.”
“We just wrote the check out.”
“Dan, c’mon. How many people are going to use a site that only lets you write a hundred and forty characters?”
I have no answer.
“And who’s going to want to read that stuff?”
“They’re doing okay so far.”
“Dan, they don’t make any money. You admitted that.”
“They’ll figure that out.”
She looks away and laughs. “I just don’t think we should go around funding start-ups based
on the advice of a man who craps in upper decks.”
“Honey,” I say, “Do you understand about Calhoun? That he was employee number eighty at Google, that he’s a millionaire many times over, that he’s friends with this venture capital guy who swears by these short-message dudes?”
“These guys with no revenue.”
“The point is, we wrote the check. They seemed like scary smart guys. And the twenty thousand has already crossed. They’ve cashed it. So I think we chill awhile, see if it turns into anything.”
She smirks, looks away. “So you’re gonna be a venture capitalist? That’s your new job?”
“Never.” I bring her in closer.
“Or you’re gonna be a ‘thought leader,’ like that new guy you hospitalized with the laxatives? That guy they had to rehydrate for two days?”
“Let’s worry about that next week.”
A moment’s pause. Then Kate breaks out into this toothy smile. “Dan,” she says, looking at my chest, “aren’t you wondering why I keep asking about our plans?”
I wasn’t, but now I am.
“Honey,” she says, extra sweet, “I think I’m nesting.”
“Nesting?”
“Got a new egg to hatch,” she says in a mock-girlish voice.
I feel my body sway. “What?”
She looks up at me with tears of joy. “We’re gonna have a baby.” Her voice breaks. “A beautiful little beach baby.”
How is that even . . . Whoa. I’m getting really dizzy.
“Dan?” Finger snapping near my ear. “Honey. Deep breaths.”
Deep breaths? Okay, I can do that. And slowly, with oxygen returning to my brain, it all starts to make sense. Kate’s slightly fuller cheeks. Her switch to virgin margaritas. The time she had me go on a 1 A.M. peperoncini and grapefruit run.
And, just like that, a half-forgotten warning echoes in my ear.
You’re still packing heat the next ten times.
“Dan?”
So be careful where you point that thing.
“Heat!” I gaze out to the sea as if it holds all the secrets. “I was packing heat.”
Kate says, “I’ve decided to look at it this way . . .”
I take a big breath and let it out slowly.
“. . . we can sleep when we’re fifty.”
One day at a time.
Then, just as I’m beginning to feel my face again, a familiar figure appears up on the bluff. Those broad shoulders. That stance, one foot out a little, a hand in a pocket. The hard lines of a profile like no other.
Rod Stone.
What the—
He realizes that I see him.
I stand there with Kate in my arms, gazing up as he lifts a fist into the air triumphantly, then turns and walks away, his fist still skyward, as Harry and Ben attack from behind and pull us to the sand.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge early mentors who offered encouragement I never forgot; they include Dorothy Davis, Clark Brown, Robert Nowell, Sandra Cisneros, George Thurlow, and Nell Doty. For their support, wisdom, and commiseration, I thank fellow writers Al Riske, Mark Richardson, Rachel Canon, Kieran Shea, Jedidiah Ayres, Frank Bill, Steve Pipe, Matthew Budman, Keith Rawson, and Terry McKenzie. Anthony Neil Smith single-handedly advanced my cause years before publishing knew anything about rogue upper-deckers or sociopath retirees who lounge in Speedos. Generous vets like Charlie Huston, Ken Bruen, Tony Black, Marcus Sakey, and Doug Dorst didn’t have to lend a hand, but did. I also am indebted to Victor Gischler, who after a long day of German sausage and beer introduced me to my future agent, the brilliant David Hale Smith, who in turn set me up with the ultimate dream team for this book: Cal Morgan and his thoughtful creatives at Harper Perennial. Mallory Farrugia has been invaluable on multiple fronts. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my people, including my late father, Mil Bardsley, with whom I shared an appreciation of “special characters,” and my mother, Carmen Bardsley, whose “follow your passion” advice never wavers. My sister Jennifer Bardsley has been an amazing scout for low-functioning behavior and a relentless supporter. And finally, I couldn’t have done this if it hadn’t been for the love, support, and feedback of my wife, Nancy Bardsley, my toughest reader, and our sons, Jack and Dylan, whose delight in (and suggestions for) Crazy Larry set me on my way.
P. S.
Insights, Interviews & More . . .
About the Author
A Conversation with Greg Bardsley
Jedidiah Ayres and Greg Bardsley met through the interwebs after their short stories appeared together in a series of journals. Greg is the author of Cash Out and numerous short stories. Jedidiah writes fiction, keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland, and coedited the anthology Noir at the Bar. They and cohort Kieran Shea edited the anthology D*CKED: Dark Fiction Inspired by Dick Cheney, and swear never to do anything like that again.
Jedidiah: Your work tends to feature straight men surrounded, frustrated, and thwarted by a collective of cultural fun-house reflections. Where does that come from?
Greg: Good question. I do have an affinity for oddball characters. A number of friends and family (especially those who dabble in psychology) have tried to understand why—and failed.
What I do know is that I try to write stories I’d love to read, and I’ve always loved oddballs who come in and turn things upside down. I guess I like the fact that they’re defiant and transgressive in their own amusing ways. In a world of rules and convention and required behavior, these characters personify defiance and individualism. They are subversive. This may have something to do with the fact that I started out as a newspaper reporter, which was a subversive job by nature: If you had a good story, no one could stop you from writing it, even if it would piss a lot of folks off.
In terms of my fiction, I have noticed one thing. In my longer fiction, I tend to focus on reliable narrators. But the supposed straight men in my stories (as in “Upper Deck,” “Microprimus Volatitus,” or “Some Kind of Rugged Genius”) often turn out to be anything but normal as the stories unfold. Kind of the way life is, maybe? It’s like my basketball game: I’m right-handed, but I shoot left. Can’t help it.
Jedidiah: I know you covered the crime beat in the San Francisco Bay Area for a while. Is that where you got infected? Do you mine that period for fiction?
Greg: You know, I’m not sure about that. For a few years, I covered crime several nights a week in Hayward, a pretty tough city south of Oakland. The crimes I covered weren’t really funny, and I haven’t really written about them. That said, in order to cover some of these nasty stories, I sometimes had to sit through hours of arraignments or page through reams of court dockets involving smaller-time criminals who kept making really poor decisions. That could be pretty amusing, but it was usually kind of sad, too. I did develop one character based on this profile of the repeat offender, who’s certainly mischievous in a penal-code kind of way but also kind of lovable. But with Cash Out, I just let my imagination go “off-leash.”
Jedidiah: Do your family and friends recognize you in your work?
Greg: Not with the short stories, thank God. No one wants to be “recognized” in stories like those.
At work, most people know very little about my fiction. My friends and family do recognize parts of me in some of my protagonists, including Dan Jordan in Cash Out. My wife is willing to go a little further; she thinks even the kooks are a reflection of my innermost desire to be unbelievably obnoxious. Based on my childhood, my sister probably agrees with her.
Jedidiah: When did you decide you wanted to write?
Greg: I knew in high school that I wanted to write for a living. I’d never done anything else (besides making funny faces) that got the response my writing got, and that felt great
. But I think I was reluctant to share that dream with people. I was afraid someone would think I wasn’t up to the challenge.
Recently, though, I discovered that I must have had this dream, in a subconscious way, a lot longer than I’d known. This past year I was helping my mom pack up her house, and we found my first-grade report card. My teacher had noted that I was working on a “book,” that I was showing a lot of interest in it, sticking with it. Reading that as an adult really blew me away. I’d completely forgotten it, and it’s still only a faint memory. It’s not like I spent my childhood writing books.
Jedidiah: What will you do when your own kids want to write for a living?
Greg: I will support my boys and their aspirations, regardless of their career goals—with the exception of “medical insurance executive” and “aggressive telemarketer.”
Jedidiah: As a satirical novelist, do you hold dear any targets in particular?
Greg: That’s interesting. I seem to write about people and issues that either amuse me or get me riled up. Lately, I’ve been thinking about selfishness in its various forms. That, and arrogance. Oh, and pedigree. And rich and out-of-touch people. Oh, and the pretentious.
Maybe a bigger theme for me as a writer is, In this modern world, how are we supposed to live the way we really should? How can we survive in a meaningful and deep way despite these modern challenges—despite ourselves? When it came to Cash Out, I was interested in that universal impulse to step back, examine your life, and then make a run for it. That was one of the ideas that drove me to write the book. That and the fun of putting all these characters together at a really important moment in someone’s life.
Jedidiah: Are there any misconceptions you’d like to dissuade readers from forming about you?
Greg: Well, I wouldn’t want readers to assume that Dan Jordan is me, or that the events in Cash Out are based on my own experiences. Truth is, it’s all fiction. I’ve never worked with people like the new guy, Stephen Fitzroy, or even Beth Gavin. I’ve never worked at a place like Flowbid; I work at a much older and larger tech company where some great folks run very large, established businesses. And I’ve never had a corporate muscleman rough me up. For me, that was the fun of writing this book: taking a character with my sensibilities and background, and putting him on a collision course with mayhem. Do you remember what you said when I showed you the first seventy-five pages of the book? You said something like, “Pile it on, Bardsley. Pile those problems onto Dan. Make him work.” That’s exactly what I tried to do.
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