Flat Broke Read online

  “Why?”

  “I took a good look at the computer at the beauty salon and was able to replicate the calendar system they use for making appointments. I’ll start calling your clients and getting them on a routine.”

  She shook her head and started to speak, but I cut her off. “I also set up an email address where everyone can ask for time slots. You won’t have to do a thing but makeup and hair. Which you’re doing anyway. And collect the money.”

  Sarah looked at me the way I’ve seen her study the gobs of gunk my father pulls from the shower drain. “You are a piece of work, you know that?”

  “I’m your agent. And don’t forget that you’ve got a client sitting in your chair. Remember the upsell—ask if she wants to try out other services you provide. We’ll talk about my commission later. Don’t worry, it’s reasonable.”

  I walked back to my room, thinking it was kind of too bad that Tina’s already perfect. Everything about her is just right—I don’t know how tall she is, but it seems like she’s not too tall and not too short. Blond hair with about a hundred different shades of gold, eyes that are this blue-green or green-blue, I can’t tell, but I’m sure there’s not even a name for it. Someday I’ll have to invent the names to describe her hair and her eyes.

  There’s not a single thing on her that needs fixing except maybe the freckle, or Sarah’s new salon would be a great way to get her into my house. But Connie’s one of her best friends, and I’m sure Tina will be pleased Connie’s not rocking the monobrow any longer and then she’ll ask Connie what happened and Connie will tell her that I saved her from ugliness and Tina will realize that I’m not just clumsy and tongue-tied, but very thoughtful, too.

  So, yeah, Tina will start to think good things about me and that’s when I’ll swoop in and tell her what I told the golden retriever.

  I love it when my plans start to come together.

  6

  The Successful Person Finds Gold in What Others Consider Dross

  JonPaul and I rode our bikes to the hot dog stand for a bite on Saturday. It’s the only time of the week when JonPaul’s not counting carbs and calories and sugar grams; usually he eats organic, free-range, preservative-free food. But Saturdays he pigs out with me. It’s great. A real bonding experience.

  We weren’t really hungry, so we just had a light snack. Jumbo dogs, fully loaded—mustard, relish, sport peppers, extra onions, tomatoes, celery salt—with a couple of sides of extra-large chili-cheese fries and handcut onion rings. Amazing belches. Ah-may-zing.

  “I think we overdid the onions today, JonPaul. Because I can’t smell anything anymore.”

  He shrugged, sniffed and said, “Weird, huh?”

  We were sitting on the curb, licking the last of the hot-dog ooze off our fingers, when shouts came from the storage facility across the parking lot.

  JonPaul, although wussy about his health, is really brave. He jumped up and hustled over. I sighed and followed. Slowly. Hoping that everything would be resolved by the time I got there.

  Turns out some guy hadn’t paid his rent because management hadn’t prevented some mama raccoon from having her babies—her un-potty-trained babies—in his storage locker, ruining his tent and hiking boots and anorak.

  “Look, pal, you gotta clean out your own locker,” the manager bellowed.

  “I’m not touching that stuff—this is your responsibility,” the renter hollered back.

  “I’ll touch it,” I said.

  “You’ll what?” They turned to me.

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll clean it out for you; how bad can it be?”

  “You’ve never smelled raccoon urine.”

  “I can’t smell anything; I think the onions on the hot dog I just ate burned out my smell sensors or something.”

  JonPaul peered into the space. “Looks like a one-man job, Kevin. I’m gonna head off now and catch you later.” He jogged away.

  He’d probably read about germs and wild animals. Now he’d gone home to plunge his entire body into a large vat of disinfectant. I shrugged and turned back to my new job.

  I have never seen two happier faces than on those guys. They offered me a hundred bucks to empty the locker and drag the contents to the Dumpster. The manager loaned me some work gloves, and they went to the office to sign papers.

  It only took me twenty-five minutes to throw everything away. I couldn’t smell a thing, but my eyes were watering and I itched where the wild-animal pee had come into contact with my skin.

  I collected my cleaning fee and headed home to disinfect. A hundred dollars, and it was still early afternoon on a Saturday.

  On my way, I walked past Mrs. Middlebrook, out in front of her house. She waved me over.

  “Kevin, I’ll give you fifty dollars to do to my garage what you did to that storage locker. I saw you cleaning it out as I drove by.”

  “I just threw everything away.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, my young friend, but okay, seventy-five dollars, and that’s my final offer.”

  I peeked inside her garage. Unlike in the storage space, I didn’t see any barfed raccoon goo or other clumps of crud that would have meant animals had nested there.

  “Mrs. Middlebrook, you’ve got yourself a deal. I’m going to need some large plastic trash bags, work gloves and a bunch of cardboard boxes.”

  She nodded in the direction of a pile of supplies in the corner, jumped into her car, which was standing in the driveway (it didn’t fit in the garage because of all the clutter) and drove off.

  Turns out I like getting rid of junk. I found an old radio in the first layer and turned it on. The music was blaring, the sun was shining, and I was finding floor and wall surface that hadn’t been exposed to fresh air in decades. I just dragged everything to the end of the driveway and made neat piles for the garbage truck to pick up.

  When I was done, Mrs. Hedrick from across the street asked what my price was to clean her garage. I screwed up my face and scrunched my eyes in what I hoped looked like the intense concentration of an experienced professional.

  “Let’s see,” I muttered, just loudly enough for her to hear, “the structure is, say, twenty by twenty, and …”

  We haggled for a few minutes and I headed into her garage. I took Mrs. Middlebrook’s former radio with me.

  An hour later I was squaring up the last of the piles at the end of Mrs. Hedrick’s driveway when her husband drove up. Mr. Hedrick looked perplexed when he saw me. He looked worried as he studied the piles. When he saw his beautiful, cavernous, spotless garage, his face turned bright red.

  “You threw everything away.”

  “Not everything; I hung the tools back up on the pegs on the pegboard and I left the lawn mower and the trash cans against the far wall.”

  “But the boxes …”

  “How important could that stuff have been, anyway?”

  “There were items of great sentimental value.”

  “They’re still sitting on the driveway wrapped in papers that predated the moon shot.”

  “Young man, I don’t think you appreciate the seriousness of this issue.”

  “Can you make a list of the items?”

  “A list?”

  “A detailed inventory of what was in the garage.”

  “Er, well …”

  “Just look at your garage—you can park both of your cars in there! And you haven’t even looked in your garden shed yet.”

  “You went into my shed?”

  “Sure. Originally I quoted your wife seventy-five dollars for the garage, but I got done so fast that I threw in the shed for free.”

  “What are we going to do with all those piles of garbage?” Mr. Hedrick asked. “You can’t just leave them; trash day is a whole week away and all that junk downgrades the value of the neighborhood.”

  “For an extra forty dollars, I can take care of that.”

  He gave me the money. I pulled a broken sled out of the pile and started loading. I dragged the sled two blo
cks over to the alley behind the motorcycle repair garage, which is full of industrial-sized Dumpsters.

  Then I jogged back to Mrs. Middlebrook’s house and pocketed another forty dollars for taking her stuff to the Dumpsters.

  It was still only late afternoon. By dusk, I had gutted two more garages, and the Dumpsters in the alley were overflowing.

  Not only was I a really hard worker, but I had psychological insight into people; my talents were more about getting them to let go of stuff than just cleaning their garages. What can I say?

  I’m a people person.

  I wished Tina lived closer to my neighborhood so that I could work my way to her house, one filthy garage at a time.

  Then I took a whiff of myself and was glad she lived on the other side of town.

  But I’d made $475 in one day. Unbelievable! That was more money than I’d ever had at one time. I’d have to take a few bucks off the bottom line for work gloves, and the hydrogen peroxide and anti-infection ointment I’d need to treat the raccoon potty itch, but still, I had launched another business.

  This getting rich thing was turning out to be a snap.

  7

  The Successful Person Knows When to Revise and Expand His Plans Quickly

  Later on Saturday, after I’d scrubbed my filthy skin raw to remove the grit of a thousand cumulative years of dust and crud, we had a family dinner.

  Luckily, my parents had both been working really hard and it was a fast dinner of turkey tetrazzini from the freezer. Afterwards they went to “read.” That means doze on the couch. I waited until Mom’s head fell back and Dad started snoring before I ran over to the college campus to make sure the game at the dorm was going well and collect my fee. Then I ran to the store and then to Auntie Buzz’s office to take Daniel’s hockey team grape soda and tortilla chips and collect my fee. “Don’t make crumbs or spill,” I told them. But I still made a mental note to come by early the next morning to clean up after them.

  I worked fast and was home in time to meet JonPaul on the driveway; he was coming over to watch movies, like he does every Saturday night. I peeked into the living room on our way to the kitchen. My mother was actually reading and my father was thumb-typing on his phone, but neither had noticed I was gone during their little catnaps. I was hardworking and stealthy. Awesome.

  I whipped up a batch of that dry breakfast cereal/melted chocolate/melted peanut butter/melted butter/dash of vanilla/tons of powdered sugar stuff we like so well.

  “Man,” JonPaul said, “there is nothing as wonderful in the world as late-night munchies.”

  That reminded me of the lame lemonade stand idea that I’d set aside. As JonPaul snarfed, I thought back to Goober’s dorm room earlier that evening when I’d dropped off the tortilla chips and soda and gone over the rules again. Then I remembered watching my mother and father drink coffee and come to life every morning of my life before they leave for work. I also took note of the fact that I’m something of a night owl and can get by on less sleep than the average fourteen-year-old.

  “I’ve got it!” I jumped up and started pacing. The best ideas come when you pace. I don’t know why. I guess people with brains like mine need activity to jump-start creativity. Or else I was on a sugar high.

  “Got what?” JonPaul looked at me warily.

  “Our new venture. You, me and Sam. Catering.”

  “Huh?”

  “College students are pretty much fried and dragging at around ten-thirty, eleven at night after a full day of classes and then studying all evening. Right?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, so we rig up a coffeepot and throw together a few batches of cookies and brownies. We borrow Markie’s wagon and drag it around campus at night selling munchies.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  “Why wouldn’t it? They’re hungry, craving sugar, but too lazy or busy to go get stuff. We bring the supply to the demand and bingo! We’ll clean up.”

  “You’re amazing, Kev. The way you …”

  “Thanks, JonPaul, it’s a gift.”

  “How are we going to pay for the cookie and coffee stuff?”

  “I made money today cleaning garages. Spending my own money worked for the poker game; I made back my investment the first night.”

  We figured that Sunday, tomorrow, would be the ideal day to start. The students would have had Friday and Saturday nights to cut loose but would be facing Monday morning and the start of a new class week. We guessed that Sundays were prime cram nights on campus.

  First thing in the morning, I bribed Sarah to take me to the huge warehouse store, where I bought fifty-pound bags of flour and of sugar, small-car-sized boxes of chocolate chips, and plastic bins for the cookies. I made careful note of the ten dollars I paid her. The cost of doing business. I’d have to set up a bookkeeping program on the computer.

  JonPaul and Sam were waiting in the kitchen when we got home. Not only did Sam arrive wearing an apron, but she went right to work setting up stations of ingredients to form an assembly line and speed up the process.

  My dad, getting coffee on the way to the living room to read the Sunday papers with my mom, raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m starting a business!” I gestured to all the stuff on the counters. “All by myself. Well, except for JonPaul and Sam.” Dad had probably noticed them standing next to the oven.

  “Looks like a lot of work,” Dad said.

  “Nah. I’ve got everything covered. Nothing to worry about,” I told him.

  He looked doubtful but finally nodded. “I’m going to take your mother a cup of coffee and tell her there’s a perfect example of capitalism in action in her kitchen.”

  “She’ll be pretty happy about that, I bet,” I told him.

  “She’ll be happy if you clean up when you’re done.”

  I waved off his concerns. But JonPaul looked worried.

  “How are we going to do this in one day, just the three of us?” he asked.

  “Time-management skills, JonPaul, multitasking. Doing one thing at a time is for losers. Professionals know how to maximize their time. We can even do our homework while the cookies and brownies bake. I stayed up late last night thinking this through—I’ve got everything covered.”

  “We don’t have any eggs,” Sam piped up just then, “and the recipe you got off the Internet for these cookies says we need eggs.”

  Eggs. I’d forgotten eggs. And butter.

  I made my second trip to the store. Sarah sighed a lot in the car like I’d taken her away from something more important than long conversations on the phone with her new boyfriend, Doug. After we picked up the butter and eggs and dropped them off with Sam and JonPaul, I had her drive me to church, where I borrowed a coffee urn from the basement social hall. The last time our family had helped with a church party, I’d noticed that one of the urns was in a back closet because it had a crack near the spigot.

  But that’s what duct tape is for.

  When I returned home, Sam and JonPaul had made up a bunch of batches of cookie dough and had them ready to be dumped in spoon-sized blobs on cookie sheets and put in the oven. Except that we didn’t have nearly enough baking sheets.

  Good thing I’d gotten the coffeepot when I did, because it reminded me that we couldn’t sell piping-hot coffee to bare, cupped hands—we needed actual cups. Ooh, and napkins. Rats, this was turning out to be complicated.

  JonPaul and Sam measured coffee while I headed out again, on my third trip to the wholesale store for cookie sheets, paper napkins and coffee cups. And milk. Sarah rolled her eyes at me, but I don’t know why she was annoyed. She could talk to Doug just as easily waiting for me in the parking lot as lying in her bedroom, and at least this way, she was helping me start an empire. Some people only think of themselves.

  The guard checking membership cards at the warehouse store’s door did a double take when he saw me arrive for the third time in a day. Then he followed me around the store.

  As if I’m gonna
shove a 250-pack of triple-A batteries down my shorts or stick the 7,000-piece-of-gum box under my shirt. Unless you’re a kangaroo or a minivan, shoplifting isn’t really an option at the wholesale store.

  Finally, we had all the supplies and the house was filling with the smell of melting chocolate. JonPaul and Sam sat at the counter doing homework while I created a master list of supplies so that the next baking day would go more smoothly. Then I set up accounting systems for the poker games, Sarah’s beauty salon, my cleaning service and the munchies runs. Wow. I wondered what people did when they had more money than they knew what to do with. I couldn’t wait to find out.

  “You know,” JonPaul said, looking at my outfit as we were getting ready to leave the house that night, “blue and orange aren’t really your colors.”

  “I know that. Who in their right mind would wear an orange stocking cap and a shiny blue—what is this material, anyway?—warm-up jacket? But these are the college colors and we’re going to show school spirit. And I really do appreciate your efforts on behalf of this marketing and promotion idea.”

  “I had to think long and hard before I painted ‘Go Huskies’ on my face! This stuff will come off, right? It’s not toxic, is it? Because lead can cause liver failure and kidney disease and brain damage in young people, you know, and I could develop respiratory distress. If I do, you know, start to gasp and turn blue, well, more blue, I guess, underneath the face paint, can I count on you to revive me with assisted breathing until the paramedics arrive?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You don’t sound committed.”

  “Believe me, JonPaul, I’m committed to the idea of not having you keel over dead in the middle of a transaction. Bad for business.”

  Sam had to go home for dinner, so it was just me and JonPaul hitting the bricks with Markie’s wagon and a dream. Mom and Auntie Buzz were going to a book club meeting, so they’d given Sam a ride home. I’d handed them each a cookie as thanks.

  “Next time, save me a blob of the raw dough,” Auntie Buzz said. “The baked stuff isn’t half as good.”