Flat Broke Read online

  I approached my brother, Daniel, as soon as he got home from hockey practice that afternoon.

  “You guys play any cards?” I asked before he even dropped his gear on the kitchen floor.

  “No. Why?”

  “Your team is together a lot. I just wondered how you passed the time.”

  He looked at me like I was half-witted and then gestured to his bag. “We play hockey.”

  “Well, yeah, sure. But a guy’s got to have a hobby. Something fun to blow off steam. Your team takes hockey so seriously.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “I was thinking about setting up a poker game for you.”

  “Betting is a benchable offense.”

  “Oh. Well … Wait—Coach is probably referring to betting on the game.”

  “You think?” Daniel lives in fear that he’ll tick off his coach and sit out a game. But he’s a poker fiend. He’s the one who taught me to play.

  “Sure. Cards aren’t the kind of betting he was talking about,” I said.

  “Maybe.” Daniel sounded doubtful, but I could see that he was thinking about poker hands.

  “Tell you what: I’ll arrange everything. Gimme your schedule for the next couple of weeks and I’ll tell everyone and get the cards and chips and set up a location. Coach’ll never even know.”

  “I guess that sounds okay. Here.” Daniel dug a crumpled wad of papers out of his duffel bag. “Team roster. And our schedule.” He paused. “Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?”

  “A small fee.”

  “Mom and Dad were serious about taking away your allowance?” I nodded and he grinned. “Well, then, the poker game is a pretty good idea for everyone.”

  I’d traveled with the team before; Coach is always looking for volunteers to help carry bags and make coffee runs for him during away games, so I knew the guys. And I knew they’d be up for a game. They live to compete.

  I sent out an email and before you know it, I had game number two set up.

  I was a natural.

  One of the books I’d read said that the savviest businesspeople always make plans in sets of three because that improves the odds of success.

  So I called Goober, JonPaul’s cousin, because he’s in college and I figured he knew a bunch of guys who wouldn’t mind spending some money on poker.

  “Dude. You’re smart for a little kid,” he said. I let the little kid comment slide, but only because he’d started listing names. “There’s Tommy and Pete and Ben and Chris and Jack. That’s a start—four guys and me?”

  “That’s five guys plus you, Goob, but yeah, that’ll work.”

  “Whatever. Counting’s not my thing. Tomorrow would be great.”

  For a second I hoped his counting aversion didn’t mean he couldn’t identify numbers; I mean, there’s only ten, nine if you count the ace as a face card and not as the one. Oh, what did I care? He wouldn’t be playing with my money.

  “Sure. Tomorrow. I’ll get back to you later with the details.”

  Another book I’d read said you have to spend money to make money. Problem was: I didn’t have any money. But I knew who did. And I could hear her car pulling into the driveway.

  My sister, Sarah, makes me look like a petri dish full of pond sludge. I work hard, but she works all the time. She’s sixteen, so she can drive, and as far as I can tell, all she does is drive to various part-time jobs and then to the mall to spend the money she’s just earned. Except that I snuck a peek over her shoulder at her bank account summary on the family computer once and knew that she saved more than she spent.

  “Hey, Kev, what’s up?” she asked as she came into the kitchen. She must have been in a good mood, because she actually waited for my answer. Usually, when you talk to Sarah, you’re speaking to the back of her head because she’s always on the move.

  “Not much.”

  “Why are you just sitting there?” She dumped her backpack on the table to start her homework.

  “Waiting for you.”

  “I can’t drive you anywhere until after I’ve finished my reading assignment and an essay and this page of math problems.”

  “I don’t want a ride.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Money.”

  “How much? And why? And you know I don’t just give money away for nothing. There’s a vig.”

  I raised my eyebrows, glad that one of the books I’d read had been written by a guy in the witness protection program, explaining his former career as a loan shark. I knew that a vig was the interest due on money borrowed. My sister is a dark and mysterious person. More likely, she read the same book in our basement. I was starting to like her more and more.

  “I need fifty dollars, and I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll still have to charge you five bucks, though.”

  “Deal.”

  She gave me the money and I biked to the If We Don’t Have It, You Don’t Need It store to get cards and chips. I’m a class act—none of those sticky cards from the family room.

  I also filled a cart with huge bags of pretzels and bottles of soda. Everything runs smoother with a snack. I know that from babysitting Markie. I was willing to bet there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between a four-year-old, some eighth graders, a high school hockey team and undergrads. Guys like munchies.

  As I biked home from the store with a backpack full of pretzels hanging from my shoulders, and another backpack, baby carrier–style on my chest, full of soda, and two plastic bags of cards and chips hanging from the handlebars, I thought about my next step.

  I had the players. I had the supplies. Now I had to find a place to hold the games.

  Examine the facts. That’s what smart businesspeople do.

  Fact #1: Auntie Buzz owns a small building downtown that houses her decorating business. Fact #2: It sits empty a lot of the time because she’s either at a job site or at some store buying pillows and crown molding. Fact #3: She’s got a conference table with lots of chairs. Fact #4: Kevin needs convenient space with a table.

  I dumped the poker supplies in my room and turned my bike in the direction of Auntie Buzz’s office. I rode a lot faster than when I’d been carrying all the supplies.

  “Auntie Buzz.”

  She looked up from her desk, started to smile, remembered she was still mad about the way I’d lied to her, and scowled.

  “I’m here to make you an offer,” I said.

  “I have an MBA, I’m wired on too much caffeine and I have a grudge against you. You think you have what it takes to do business with me?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m a sucker for self-confidence. State your case.”

  “I need to sublet space from you because I’m starting a business.”

  “What kind?”

  “Um, it’s, well, still in the early stages. I don’t want to say too much too soon and jinx it, but I need room to, uh, for, like, meetings. And stuff.”

  “It’s the ‘stuff’ that worries me.”

  “I’ll pay you rent.”

  Auntie Buzz just studied me. Finally, she spoke.

  “I’m not so sure I believe you’re about to launch a worldwide conglomerate, but your presence will deter rodents. I’ve noticed mouse droppings lately. Fine. You can borrow my conference room when I don’t have client meetings.”

  “Great.”

  “We’ll talk money after a brief probationary period to see if this works.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Break anything, get anything dirty, leave food around, touch anything in this office except for the doors, the floor and the table, and I will rain misery on you.”

  “You won’t even know we were here.”

  “I doubt that very much. But I’m curious to see what kind of business you come up with.”

  I ignored her skeptical tone. I’d read that every great businessperson has had to overcome doubters. It’s practically a law. So Auntie Buzz was already validating my future success.r />
  The first game was right after school the next day, with Wheels and the guys. I dealt and then watched them mess up a few hands. Finally, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. I put down my hand.

  “Wheels, you bet high when you should fold.”

  He looked furious. “It’s called bluffing.”

  “You’re terrible at it. Stop.”

  For a second he looked like he was going to punch me, but then he glanced at his meager pile of chips and held still.

  “Jay,” I went on, “you get scared when the pot gets above five dollars.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do too. Man up or leave the game. You can’t think about the money. That’s the secret.”

  “I liked it better when we played for points. Money makes me nervous.”

  “Once you win, you’ll like playing for money way better than playing for points.”

  Jay M. fiddled with his chips and looked unconvinced. I turned to Dash, who had been studying the other players’ faces rather than his hand.

  “Dash, you’re too sure you can read everyone’s tells. But that just makes you forget your own cards.”

  “I’m good at reading people.”

  “That doesn’t help if you’ve got a crappy hand.”

  I didn’t know the other two guys, Nolan and Collin, very well. But they were careful players, and they didn’t make mistakes. JonPaul had a meet. Or a match. Or practice. Whatever. He’d said he couldn’t make the poker game. I think the real reason was that he didn’t want to touch the germy cards.

  I watched them play another five or six hands, s-l-o-w-l-y because they were all thinking so hard. But they were getting better, not to mention more comfortable betting—and winning—money. I circled the table, giving advice and making sure everyone won a hand or two so that they got the taste of a win. That would keep them coming back for more.

  Finally, I had to kick them out because my second game was going to start in fifteen minutes. Since I’d dropped out of the game and had started offering advice, not to mention that I’d found the location and supplied the snacks, I explained that it was only fair that I take a cut of their winnings. They were surprisingly okay with that idea. If you say things the right way, people are almost happy about giving you their money.

  As soon as they left, I hustled around Auntie Buzz’s conference room. I set out a new deck of cards, restacked the chips, organized a new batch of refreshments and straightened the chairs. I even ran the vacuum cleaner around the room to suck up the pretzel crumbs. It’s the little things that make the big difference.

  Daniel’s teammates may be scary on the ice, but they’re mellow when they take their skates off. Everyone bought in and settled down to the hand quickly. There must be something to Coach’s discipline, because they were all strong players. They didn’t need my help.

  So I poured soda, handed around snacks, explained how to set aside the house’s earnings at the end of the game (the house—that’s me; cool) and left for Goober’s dorm room.

  For college guys, they were as dumb as mold.

  They were all really jazzed to play, but they didn’t know spit about the game. I had to explain the basics. Several times.

  “A straight beats a pair or three of a kind,” I said.

  “Wait! I know that one!” Chris said. “A straight is when the cards are in order.”

  I nodded. “And a flush, a hand that’s all one suit, beats a straight.” Confused looks. “A suit is diamonds or hearts, which are red, or clubs, which look like black clovers, or spades, which look like … well, they’re the other black suit.”

  Nods.

  “A full house, which is three of a kind and a pair, beats a flush.” They’d started taking notes.

  “Four of a kind beats a full house,” I continued.

  “And five of a kind beats that!” Tommy beamed.

  “You can’t have five of a kind; four is the max. But I like the way you’re thinking, Tom. A straight flush, which is cards in numerical order in the same suit, beats four of a kind. And a royal flush, which is the five highest cards in a suit—the ace, king, queen, jack, and ten—beats everything.”

  The good thing was that they weren’t embarrassed that they didn’t know anything about playing cards.

  I helped them play for a few hands (“Stop dealing after everyone has five cards, Goob”) and then walked out to the front steps of the dorm to reflect on my first day as a genuine, moneymaking businessman.

  The first three games had trucked along, and I already had a pretty good wad of cash in my pocket. The next step was going to be figuring out a discreet way to let Tina know I was fast on my way to becoming a mogul. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl who’d be impressed by money, but I thought she’d be interested in any guy who worked as hard as I did.

  I had told my mom I was working—vague, but no lie—so I’d missed dinner while I was getting the first three games off the ground. But sacrifice, I had read, is part of any success. I headed home to see if there were any bananas and chocolate chips left. A celebration dinner.

  3

  The Successful Person Is a Creative Thinker

  I knew the poker games would be good for some steady cash. And I thought: If the poker games were that easy to set up, I should come up with other ideas. Because now that I had a taste for making money, I—well, I had a taste for making money.

  I’m not a jock like JonPaul and Daniel the hockey prodigy, I don’t fart rainbows like my parents seem to think Sarah does, and other than the lying thing, I’m pretty low-maintenance. I think it’s easy to overlook a guy like me; I could be taken for granted. Being self-sufficient doesn’t really call attention to itself.

  I get along with my dad, but we don’t have a lot in common. And actually, I have never truly figured out what my dad does for a living. I know he’s the vice president of long-range strategic planning for an investment firm, but I don’t really know what that means. He tried to explain once, but when he threw out the term theoretical precepts, he lost me.

  But maybe we did have something in common: we were both businessmen.

  It was starting to look like this moneymaking talent was my special skill. Something that would make everyone, especially Tina, realize how unique I really am. And it would give me a lot of interesting things to say to people, like Dad. Let’s face it, summarizing your day in the eighth grade doesn’t make for the best conversation (“I stared at Tina. All day. It made me sweat in funny places”). But talking about my business strategy—well, who wouldn’t want to hear about that?

  The more I thought about it, the more sense it made to throw everything I had into making as much money as I could while I was still in middle school.

  I wasn’t a dopey kid anymore; it was time to get serious about my future. A whatchamacallit, a financial empire, was not out of the question if I worked hard enough.

  I looked up from the notes I was jotting at my desk at corporate HQ.

  Technically, HQ was an unused storage closet at the back of Auntie Buzz’s office. I needed a real office if I was truly going to be someone important. I sat a little taller in the chair behind the three-legged desk I’d rescued from the Dumpster in the alley and propped up with sample books of curtain fabric. The file folders in front of me were empty, but I labeled them anyway—ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE, CLIENT DATABASE, PENDING TRANSACTIONS.

  I straightened a photo of my house that I’d put in a frame and set on my desk. I’d read that the best leaders never forget where they came from. My modest beginnings. That was how I’d refer to my childhood home during interviews someday.

  Okay.

  Brainstorming. How a fourteen-year-old guy like myself could make more money.

  Quick money.

  Big money.

  Constant money.

  I started by listing all the usual ways: babysitting, yard work, a lemonade stand, car washes.

  I used to do okay Markie-sitting, but other than him, I don’t really know
many little kids. He’s my next-door neighbor, so I started babysitting him, but in general I’m not that interested in little kids. Markie’s more like a little brother or a little me than a kid, anyhow.

  The book about the guy with the lawn service was a downer, because I was already doing yard work for my parents. For free. Part of the If You Lie, Bad Things Will Happen program at the Spencer homestead.

  The lemonade stand had potential, but only if I did something to make the idea more special, more me-like. I put an asterisk next to that one for further study.

  Car wash? Nope. The high school cheerleading squads had the corner on that market. There was no way I could compete with teenage girls in shorts and swinging ponytails.

  Ponder, ponder, ponder.

  I’d always thought I’d be good at creating television shows. I had dozens of ideas for game shows, reality programming, sitcoms, hourlong dramas, documentaries, talk shows. I could fill a week’s worth of airtime with all my great ideas.

  But my parents are always going on about TV sucking the life out of a person’s mind and depriving that person of IQ points, and I didn’t want to start out my career disappointing my folks. Plenty of time for that later. When they can no longer ground me or take away my allowance.

  Think: What does a fourteen-year-old want?

  Pictures of girls in bikinis. Mini-bikinis. Skin.

  If the fourteen-year-old is a male.

  I wondered how hard it would be to produce a calendar. And then I imagined how much fun it would be to hold a casting call for models in swimsuits showing lots of skin.

  I put that idea in a FUTURE PLANS folder, along with the TV mogul idea. For when I could, you know, talk to girls without falling over my own feet every time I tried to open my mouth.

  Like with the Three Bears, I knew there had to be something that was Just Right for Kevin. But the brilliant plans weren’t coming as easily as I’d expected.

  Take a break. Let the ideas find me.

  I took a deep cleansing breath, like my mom taught me during her yoga phase. She spent a lot of time standing with one foot on the other thigh and her hands in prayer position at her heart. Then I wrote BUSINESS PLAN on the top of the list and signed my name on the bottom: Kevin L. Spencer.