by Mike McCrary
“What this clown did is illegal, right?” Todd asks.
“Maybe.”
“No maybe to it. I’ll call the lawyer and figure this out.”
“I can’t pay for lawyers, man.”
“I got this. There’s a friend who owes me a favor. A kid I grew up with who would love to sink his teeth into this thing here. He’ll consider it fun.”
Davis feels some of the weight lift from his chest.
“I’m sorry, man,” Davis says as the shame and guilt eases back to him. “I should have never let it get this far. Shouldn’t have gotten the company involved.”
“Davis—”
“I was just trying to do the right thing and take care of it all on my own.”
“Of course. That’s what you do. You always try to do the right thing. You try to carry the weight alone, even when you don’t have to. That’s what makes you Davis the Great.”
Davis smiles big, remembering the first time Todd called him that.
Davis the Great.
It was when Davis showed him the first version of the software, the original, with bugs and all. Davis ran through his mini-pitch to Todd in such a blur he could barely get the words out fast enough. He was so excited, so filled with passion back then. Todd got wrapped up in his friend’s enthusiasm immediately. They stayed up all night working through the business possibilities—a half-assed plan at best—talking through it all without taking a break, eating, or sleeping for that matter. They both walked into work the next day bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, but happy as hell. They quit that day. Quit that corporate hell with punch-drunk smiles on their faces.
It was a great day.
Today, however, Davis is feeling far less great.
“It’s going to be okay,” Todd says, seeing it on Davis’s face. “We’ll get this right.”
Davis nods, letting the warm coffee provide him some comfort.
“Just don’t pay that asshole anything else. Let me see what I can do.”
17
On the way home, Davis replays his conversation with Todd over again in his head.
We’ll get this right.
It’s going to be okay.
Davis the Great.
He does feel better, but he’s not sure why. Nothing’s really changed. Maybe simply talking it through with someone helps. Maybe bringing Todd into the picture helps ease some of the isolation he was feeling. Bringing a friend on board has its own comfort. The simple fact there’s some kind of plan in place doesn’t hurt either. Davis knows the lawyer buddy Todd is talking about, knows the kind of attack dog he is and what he’s capable of doing. There’s a level of comfort that comes from knowing that guy is on the case.
Maybe this can work out. Perhaps this can still be okay.
Maybe.
Perhaps.
Davis turns up the radio, letting an old Pixies tune take him back to a less complicated time. The music helps him take a mental break from the here and now. Takes him by the hand to a place that always brings a smile to his face. This song, it reminds him of Hattie, of when they were young. Before stress. Before all the pressures that come with adult life. The tugging and pulling of money problems, the house, and the scheduling constraints that come with having children in your life. They love the kids more than anything, and wouldn’t change it for anything, but man, they do cut into your life as a couple.
No doubt.
He remembers them being born. Separate, tiny little people coming into the world without a care. The days of the four of them living in that tiny apartment. Scraping money together, saving a penny here and there. Coupons. Working overtime. Hattie going back to work. Davis’s first business failing. The debt. The crushing stress and strain of debt.
They pulled themselves out of it, but it left a mark. A scar that will never fade.
It hit Hattie the hardest. Her feeling of safety was rattled hard during that time, but to her credit, when Davis told her he wanted to leave his cushy corporate gig to start this new thing with Todd, she didn’t flinch. She did not hesitate. Her support was immediate and unwavering.
“Do it,” was all she said.
He’ll never forget that.
Davis remembers again how he told her it would be different this time. How he promised he had learned some hard lessons from the first business, and things would be so much different this time. The experience forged a new mindset: he would never put them in that position again, would not let them fall deep in the hole like last time.
She’d smiled, held his face and kissed him, but Davis felt her concern. Maybe he imagined it, or perhaps he projected it onto her, but he could tell she was scared.
She was right.
She usually is.
Davis lets the music of the Pixies wash over him. He bobs his head slightly to the beat, hoping this all works out. Hoping Todd and his attack dog can shake Justin’s jaws loose from his throat, that this will all fade into the background. Hoping this will all go the hell away.
He doesn’t know if his family can take it this time. Not sure if Hattie would be willing to live through that again. He can’t blame her. She works hard and makes it all look easy. Davis knows it’s not.
Hattie the Great, he thinks.
He stops at a red light. He turns the Pixies up even louder as he leans back into the headrest of his Accord, letting the beats and words fill in the empty spaces of his broken thinking.
A BMW pulls up next to him. A window rolls down. The green-eyed beauty starts singing the same Pixies song at the top of her lungs from the passenger seat. Justin is behind the wheel, bobbing his head ever so slightly with the music.
Davis’s knuckles pop as he grips the steering wheel tight.
Justin fakes shock to see Davis, then waves. The green-eyed beauty sings louder. Justin holds up a brown shopping bag. It has a colorful store logo and name printed big across it.
Davis’s eyes go wide.
Justin is holding a bag from the clothing company Hattie works for.
“Did you—” Davis calls out.
The light turns green and the BMW takes off with the sound of the green-eyed beauty’s singing trailing off into the distance.
18
Davis steps into the house.
He’s met immediately by Hattie. She’s holding her phone. He can see she’s rattled. Her eyes are red, with the hint of tears in the corners. Tears not caused by sadness. She’s frustrated, angry. Forget that, she’s mad as hell. Davis’s mind races through the possibilities of what conversation she had on that phone. Considering he saw Justin with a bag from her employer, she could be angry about a lot of things.
None of them registering as good.
He fumbles through that list, ripping through the possibilities in his strained mind. He tries best he can to pick them off one by one while forming some form of explanation, but it’s a lost cause. The list is long, the mountain high and steep. He’s losing the will to fight the fight.
He opens his mouth, seconds from unloading everything he’s got crammed and jammed into his mind. Wanting to let it flow freeform out into the space between them. Let his words somehow bridge the gap that’s begun between them. Something in him stops.
He knows the truth is poison now. He’s gone too far.
He closes his mouth, deciding not to try and solve this at all. He knows her better than that. He fights every instinct he has to try and make this better before listening. That’s always his initial reaction to her being upset—fix it. He knows he needs to hear her out before talking. Waiting for what seems forever, he waits for her to talk first.
“My card got declined,” she says, waving her phone at him. “What the hell?”
“I canceled the cards,” Davis says, scrambling to find a logical response. “I told you I was going to—”
“Okay, but—.”
“It’s being taking care of.”
“I called the card company, Davis. The card we keep in case of emergency? We’re late on the
girl’s dance lessons so I tried to use it.” Hattie sighs, shaking her head. “They told me about the cash advance you made. That pushed us over the limit. What’s going on?”
He knows he had to do it. No choice.
No play. Justin had to be fed something to hold him off.
Things can get real weird real damn fast.
Justin’s words dig in. The way he said it.
The ever-so-casual flash of the gun holster.
The less-casual threat of the information contained on his phone.
Davis felt like he needed to buy some time, and he was out of options. Davis can see the questions forming in Hattie’s mind. The doubt building is now showing in her eyes. He knows she loves and trusts him, but she has limits, and those limits have taken a massive beating lately.
“I had to it. The business needed quick cash—”
“Dammit, Davis.”
“I know. I know. But it’s for that potential account in LA. We’ll get a quick turnaround on the money.”
Hattie rocks on her heels, processing, but not giving in either.
Davis feels the nagging guilt of his words tugging at his insides, but stuffs it down. He’s committed now, no turning back now, he has to work the narrative he’s constructed.
“I’ll pay it off immediately. I just needed the float until the client money comes in. It should be really soon.”
“And Todd couldn’t float it?”
“Todd?” Davis searches for an excuse. “He’s tied up in some house flipping thing or whatever.”
Hattie and Davis both know Todd has deep family money.
“I’ll take care of it. Won’t take long. Couple of days,” Davis says.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. Soon as their first payment comes in it’ll more than cover it.”
Hattie nods. She believes him. Davis can see it in her eyes, and it kills him.
The gap grows wider.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m going to pick up the girls. I’ll figure out something with the dance lessons.”
Davis exhales, knows he dodged a big bullet. He can’t keep this up. It’s going to rip apart his life and destroy his relationship with Hattie, if it hasn’t already. But he has no idea what to do now. It’s all spinning out of control. He’s spiraling down, the lies stacking up high one on top of another, and he doesn’t know if he can stop. Like cards shuffling together, the things he’s told her are mixing. Hard to tell where the truth ends and the lies start. All he knows for sure is that telling Hattie everything now will only make things far worse. She will never trust him again. How could she? Why should she?
Todd needs to come through and help him fix this. He has to.
Davis’s phone buzzes.
The text from Justin reads:
thx for the $... excellent start
19
New day.
Feels like the same day all over again.
The texts from Justin fire off at a relentless clip as Davis helps Hattie get the girls off to school and get her off to work. Every buzz of the phone feels like an earthquake.
Davis counts five in the last thirty minutes. He’s stopped reading them. They read friendly, for the most part, but Davis feels a bite behind every character sent. He knows Justin chooses each word carefully. There is only one central theme, one message really. They are all about money. The money Davis owes. Hammering him over and over again with dollar amounts owed.
The phone buzzes again. Davis ignores it again. He’s moved on to his coffee shop slash office. He sits, unpacking his tools: his laptop, along with a yellow legal pad and a pen. He selects the same table every time, one at the back that gives him a view of the place. It’s near the bathroom and he still gets a nice view out the window. When he meets Todd here he chooses a different table. He likes to separate the two.
He sits alone with his headphones planted in his ears checking emails, pouring over numbers, stuffing work into his brain while trying to stop thinking about Justin and the LA problem. He reviews the pitch deck he and Todd put together. It’s a good one.
Still, it’s the one Davis completely screwed the pooch on the other day. Somehow, going over the product details soothes him, makes him feel happy. Proud. In all this, he had forgotten that they have done something kind of great. It’s a good product that can help people. The idea came to Davis while they were working at that corporate hell where he became friends with Todd. They were both buried deep in an email chain between them and some other colleges about a bitch of a project that was coming up.
Davis can’t even remember what it was about now. Didn’t care then, cares even less now. The emails went on for days and days and days. The back and forth soaked up hours and hours of productivity. It was sad. Pathetic. Mainly because it didn’t have to. No reason for it all to drag on that long. It was beyond dumb. The bottleneck that brought everything to a crawl was so minor it could’ve been solved in a snap. There was a simple misunderstanding that all stemmed from the original email sent by the team lead.
This idiot.
This leader.
His words weren’t clear. That’s all. He simply could not communicate his thoughts to his people. The words he used were too passive. His email was thick, dense with walls of words that didn’t mean anything. They all circled around the issue, poked at the intent, but inside that hurricane of words there was no point or any sort of actionable item. Like a thousand toothless sharks swimming in circles around people holding buckets of fish. No bite. No way of doing anything.
Davis combed over the emails and discovered a pattern. A pattern of bullshit, Todd called it. This bullshit pattern could have been solved with a simple algorithm. A bullshit detector, Todd called it.
Davis spent nights, weekends, early mornings, and burned sick days and holidays perfecting his algorithmic solution. He went through countless versions. Started, scrapped one completely, started over and then trashed that one too. Each time he learned something though, and he kept building on the backs of those mistakes until he had something. Something great.
His brainy bullshit detector.
Davis and Todd tested it on company emails on his laptop at night when he got home, even the ones from that same idiot team lead that started it all, and Davis’s software worked time and time again. Davis’s little invention was able to distill, digest, edit and suggest ways to make written communication more effective. He and Todd did some research about the skill of writing and how it has diminished greatly over the years. Social media, emails, and texts have broken what used to be a fundamental skill for the workforce. For people in general.
The art of written communication is falling apart.
One point of research suggested that what we are taught in school about how to write papers, for example, was broken to begin with and probably should’ve never been taught in the first place. The structure of a school essay was designed so teachers can grade a large number of them easily, so they follow a certain A, B, C pattern, usually with a mandatory word count. This leads to, in the researcher’s opinion, students who believe they can get a better grade by filling sections with, well, bullshit. It encourages students to dump endless streams of words onto a page in order to hit a mark.
These students are rewarded with good grades. These students then become adults in the workforce. Those adults then become idiot members of management, and in turn, send out emails that suck and lack any kind of clarity. This causes an entire organization to come to a grinding halt as others try to figure out what the hell is going on. Add to all this the technology aspect of face-to-face business interaction deteriorating, and you’ve got a problem with a fundamental human need.
Communication.
This is what Davis created, what Davis and Todd set out to start a business around. It requires some salesmanship—not as simple as pitching a new flavor of chips—but when clients understand it they buy it and love it. They love it because it works. The first day they started, Davis sa
id he was scared as hell to start the business. Todd was too, but he said something Davis will never forget.
“The hell with it. When you’re all out of good ideas you’ve got to go with the bad ones.”
Davis’s phone buzzes. At first glance Davis shrugs it off as another Justin text, but it’s a call this time. Flipping his phone over, he sees it’s coming from the company he met with in town. The one where his presentation was such a disaster.
Davis’s heart jumps. His hands shake.
Did they change their mind?
He did leave hard copies of the presentation behind. Maybe they looked it over and wanted to talk some more. He clears his throat, then answers the call.
“This is Davis.”
“Well hello, Davis. This is Justin.”
Davis feels his emotions slip away from him, peel off from his body like meat from the bone in a boiling pot. As if hope was on the tips of his fingers, then he had to watch that hope slip and fumble, falling away from him.
“Hello?” Justin says. “This is how I have to get ahold of you now? You know how much shit I had to feed the gay admin to get to use this phone?” Justin pauses for effect. “A lot, Davis. It was a lot of shit.”
“What do you want?”
“What the hell do you think? Come on, you’re better than that, man.”
“I paid you what we agreed on.” Davis sees the people around him are giving him looks. His voice must have shot up. He didn’t even notice. Getting ahold of himself he lowers his voice. “I need a couple of days for the next installment, that’s all.”
“Any idea how long it’s going to take for you to pay me back at this sad-ass rate?”
“Justin. You need to understand—”
“No, pretty sure I don’t need to do a damn thing.”
“I’m doing my best. My wife doesn’t trust me. My accounts are dry. My business is five seconds away from not being a business anymore. This is all I can do. Period.”
Davis thinks of Todd and the lawyer he’s talking to. Todd said not to pay Justin any more money. Davis is struggling hard to buy himself time here.
