Читать книгу The Last Time I Was Me - Cathy Lamb - Страница 14

In my anger management class there are four other people besides me and Emmaline Hallwyler, the woman dressed in white, who yells and tells people not to be pathetic.

There is Bradon King who is African-American, about six-feet-six inches tall, bald, and a man who favored pink, lavender, or sky blue dress shirts. When you look that macho you can wear any darn color you want, you know. After talking to him for several minutes at the beginning of the first class, where I found out he plays the piano because his grandmother insisted he do so for two hours every day so he stayed out of trouble, I could not for a minute think that he would have the slightest bit of a temper, let alone hurt anyone. He is forty-five years old, has been married to the same woman for twenty-five years, and they have five children.

Bradon was there because he is rather unhappy with the way the city’s school system treats minorities, particularly African-American students, and at a recent school board meeting he felt compelled to stand on top of the table, where the all-white school board sat glaring at an almost all African-American audience, and refused to get down. He informed the board that they obviously didn’t care about black kids, didn’t care about their futures, didn’t care that they weren’t getting a decent education, didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t care. He smashed two chairs. He smashed the chairs to show what would happen to black kids’ future if they weren’t educated.

“Their futures are smashed. Splintered. Broken. Gone. Their futures are gone. We need to educate these kids!” he yelled to the raucous, supportive cheers of everyone in the room, except the all white board.

The police were called. Bradon refused to apologize for not apologizing when he yelled that the people on the school board were a bunch of lazy-ass, racist, rich, white people, living in their own tight little boxes, and completely out of touch with the troubles that minority kids face every single day. The paper wrote about it-ya-dee-da-deeah and wham. Bradon King, owner of a very successful local construction company, King Construction, landed in anger management class.

“Every year more black kids drop out of school. Every year no one cares. I think the schools are glad to see ’em go. But what happens to them? They’re teenagers, Jeanne,” he told me. “Kids. And their future is, at that moment, zero. Why doesn’t anyone care? Because the kids are black? You can damn well bet that if a bunch of rich, white sixteen-year-old girls all started dropping out of school and selling drugs on the corner that people would be screaming their heads off and demanding change. And change would happen. So are black kids dispensable? Is that what they’re saying? If not, why aren’t the schools doing something?”

“The answer eludes me,” I said.

“Me, too. That’s why I threw chairs,” he sighed, making his green beanbag look tiny. I could tell by that sigh he was very tired of this fight. “I threw chairs for black kids.”

Then there was Soman Fujiwara. Soman Fujiwara was from somewhere in the Pacific Islands and has worked as an electrician for almost fifteen years. He has a ton of beautiful black braids that drop to his shoulders, kissable lips, and black eyes. He sang for us as a way of “introducing his past and present.” It was a lovely, melodious song, even though it was in a language I didn’t understand. It filled my mind with images of color-infused sunsets, the smell of cooked ahi, and the taste of mango and pineapple.

When he was done Soman told us it was a song of suffering and death.

Before I could even think for a minute that he was a psychopathic killer and that we were all soon going to be mowed down by an AK-47 he had hidden near his groin, he said, “I’m glad to be here.” He patted the side of his yellow beanbag. “I do have a temper. But I have rules to my temper.”

I nodded. I had rules to my warped, selfish behavior, too.

“I don’t ever show my temper around women. My dad taught me that. He thinks it’s disrespectful and so do I. My mama always tells him what to do and he does it. He told me it makes life easier for him. I never hit a woman in my life, no way. None of the men in the Fujiwara family have ever hit a woman and none of them have ever divorced. Ever.” He slammed one giant fist into his open palm, then slipped a glance toward Becky, a woman who looked like she wanted to disappear into her beanbag. “But I’m not married. Never been married. But I would like to get married. Someday. I mean, not tonight, but someday. If I meet, you know, a woman, who wants to get married.” Another glance went sliding to Becky. “Someday. Like, you know, to me.”

I swear I could see a hint of a blush. He flicked his braids over his shoulders, cleared his throat. “I also don’t hit when there are any children around. Children cry when they see that type of shit and man, they get their feelings hurt so easily and they get scared. Can’t do that. I got nieces and nephews and they love their Uncle Soman.” He scratched his chin and looked contemplative. “But I don’t seem to have a problem with sluggin’ men when they piss me off. My fists get like this.” He showed us his clenched fists. “And I go boom, boom, boom, and they’re down. Down and mushed.”

I could relate again. Only I preferred using peanut oil.

“That’s why I’m here. I got a sluggin’ problem.”

Soman sat next to Drake Windham. Drake was a white guy around the age of forty. He wore an expensive suit and a tie. He was about six feet tall and looked slimy in the way that men look when they are dishonest and value money above all else and think women are toys and believe that the more gals they sleep with the longer their dick gets. I am sure that there are women out there who would say Drake was gorgeous with his slicked-back black hair and his not-quite shaven jaw and big lips and big shoulders, but all I saw was this-gonorrhea.

His face looked like a lemon to me. A lemon who didn’t like lemons. He had a snotty, snobby expression as though he thought he was a simply sensational, stylish, and super-fabulous slice of mankind (pretty good alliteration, although not perfect). When he held my hand he did the ole BWBL (Boob-Waist-Butt Look) with his limpid eyes half closed, as though he was trying to be sexy wexy.

He had smirked at me when we first met, his hand limp and wet and reminding me of a used condom. I refrained from saying that.

He leaned close and whispered, his breath smelling like dead garlic mixed with manure: “Looks like we’re the only normal ones here, sweetheart. Goddammit, getta load of this lot of losers. We’ve got jungle men and a drug addict and a counselor who is so New Wave I want to hand her some drugs and leave, goddammit. What a joke. Drink afterward?”

I removed my hand from his wet condom. “Unlikely,” I said.

First he looked shocked, his eyebrows bursting toward his slick hairline. “Married?” He glanced down at my hand.

Sheesh. Men always think this. If you won’t go out with them the only possible reason is that you are married. “No.”

“Ah, got it.” He winked at me, did the BWBL again. “Dating a married man? Don’t worry, honey, your secret’s safe with me.”

Now, how he jumped to that sick conclusion was beyond me, so don’t ask.

“I like married women the best.” He rolled his tongue around in his left cheek like a human weasel. “They don’t want anyone to know what’s going on, they don’t press you for commitment, and all they want is to have sex and go home to their kids and vans.”

This puzzled me. Married women wanted to have sex with Mr. Gonorrhea? “This puzzles me. Do you actually mean to tell me that there are married women out there who wish to have sexual intercourse with you?” (No need to be crass here.)

I heard a gurgle of shock erupt from his throat.

“Do they come back after the first time?”

He gurgled again, composed himself and winked at me. BWBL. “Smart-ass. I like that in a woman.”

“Fab!” I said, not smiling. “So fab!”

“I like feisty women. I like when women pretend they’re not interested when they are. And I like the chase. God, I like the chase. Women love it when I’m chasin’.”

“Women chase you?” I leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Really?”

“Shit, yes, I’ve got women after me.” But he flushed red, the color creeping from his creepy neck to his creepy hairline.

“So, to be clear. When you say women are ‘after you,’ you mean in the sense that they want to have sexual intercourse with you? They do this willingly?”

He flushed redder, but he was royally pissed off, too. “Yeah, they do, I already said that. What’s wrong with you? You can’t hear or something? I got a ton of hot women after me for that.”

“You’re flushing redder,” I said. “Is redder a word, do you think?”

“Hey, whatever your name is, I’ve forgotten it already. I made more money in a week than anybody else here does in a year so get off my case.”

Now, how he jumped to this conclusion was beyond me, so don’t ask.

“You’re kidding me!” I rearranged my facial features so I would look appropriately awed. “You have actually viewed all of our tax returns? Is that legal? Well, rats! It’s that Internet again. So much information! I’ll have to tell everyone here that you’re the richest so we can be impressed together!”

“Hell, all I’m saying is I’m looking around here and I know I’ve got more money than anyone and I’m stuck with this bunch of lower rung losers.”

I opened my eyes real wide. “So you’re making a ton of money, more than anybody else here, more than us losers. So much you can probably buy a bunch of women. A harem.” I snapped my fingers together three times. “In fact, is that why those women are after you? I bet that’s it!” I put my hands on my hips and cocked my head at him, as if the mystery had been solved. “Hookers should not count as ‘hot women after you.’ That’s stretching things a bit, don’t you think?”

“No…” He was totally flustered. “I mean, yes, I mean, no! I got money-”

“Yes, I’ve heard that. You have money to buy women.” I gave him a BWBL, although he had no boobs.

“I don’t have to buy my women-” He was a’flustered.

“Poor hookers,” I whispered sadly. “Poor hookers.”

“I don’t buy hookers!” This he shouted in frustration. Everyone in the loft stared at him and there was quite a silence.

“Well, that’s jolly good to hear!” I announced. “Women should never be bought!”

“Shove off, Jeanne.” He glared at me, all red, all fidgety.

“Shove off?” I tilted my head at him. “I don’t think I can ‘shove off.’ I assaulted my boyfriend and my attorney says I have to be here so it makes me look repentant in court. What did you do?”

“This,” Emmaline announced as she floated toward us, arms outstretched, white silk outfit floating behind her, “this is Drake Windham. He’s in anger management class because he has a history of beating up women.”

I stared at him, pretending to be aghast. “Do you beat up the poor hookers before or after you pay them to have sexual intercourse? Or do you beat up all the wives with the minivans who are panting after you?”

Soman had to step in between us at that point and a little shoving and pushing went on as Drake said bad words to me. When Drake said to Soman, “Hey, Jungle Man, get the fuck away from me,” Bradon had to intervene when Soman shoved him up against the wall, his huge hand plastering Drake’s neck to the wall like a strangled rooster.

Soman said, his barrel voice ringing through that room like thunder, “Only sissies beat up women, you hear that, you stupid wimp white boy? Only weak, scared, sick sissies attack women, you fuck. And only men who can’t get laid go after hookers who are only hooking ’cause they got no choice in the matter, you gay asshole.”

(I did not ask Soman not to swear. It would have been inappropriate.)

Bradon and Emmaline got Soman to calm down. Drake looked like he was about ready to pee his pretty pants. He huffed and puffed against that wall, and when his rooster neck was released he squirreled around with his tie and ran his hand through his pretty hair while whining, “Don’t touch me again and I don’t…I don’t…I don’t buy women!”

Emmaline stepped forward. “I will have no lying in this class, Drake! None! I will not spare you! You have two arrests for soliciting prostitution! Two!” She held up the pointer fingers of both hands. “Disgusting, appalling, horrible! We will be discussing at length that particular perversion and your continual assaults on women!”

Bradon and Soman looked disgusted, both shaking their heads.

“Sick, man,” said Soman. “You fuckin’ sick.”

“Hookers,” Bradon said. “How can you take advantage of women like that? How can you debase someone by participating in that act? How can you disrespect a human enough to pay them to do something that they actually abhor doing? How can you live with yourself after you’ve committed such a repulsive, criminal act? The poor hookers.”

I laughed. Couldn’t help it. Bradon had echoed my words exactly. “I said the same thing,” I told Bradon.

Drake stared up at Bradon’s chin, who was still towering over him. “Back off. I know all about your kind of gangs and you don’t scare me.” His voice quivered and he leaned hard against the wall as if his spine was made of goo.

For a moment Bradon stared straight down at him, all six-feet-six disgusted inches of him. “For your information, I am not in a gang and neither is Soman. I have been married to my wife for twenty-five years and I can tell you she would not approve of my involvement in any sort of gang. Furthermore, we do not allow our children to run around in gangs either, unless it is called the Philharmonic Gang of Portland, in which both of my older boys play their instruments, or the Galaxy Gang, which is a science exploration group that meets weekly after school. All of my children have participated in that program because of their interest in space, aeroneutronics, thermal dynamics, and the engineering involved with the building of the space shuttles.”

Bradon put both his palms, flat down, on either side of Drake’s head and leaned in close, his dark face inches away from Drake’s. “Now you listen close, you white priss. You and I are not going to get along unless you can control that ugly temper of yours, you got that? If you take a swing at anyone in here, or if you are rude or display unsightly behavior again, I will personally shove your head through the wall with one hand, do you get that, you hooker-buying, woman-beating loser?”

Drake seemed to get that. He nodded weakly.

“Good. Now go sit in the orange beanbag and do not speak, so we can all pretend you are not here.” Drake nodded, swallowed hard, and pushed his pretty hair back again. He sat in the orange beanbag with his spine of goo.

And finally there was Becky Norwick. She looked like a blond shadow or, to describe her better, like string cheese and depression mixed up together. She sat in the blue beanbag.

“I’m Becky.”

I wanted to say, “Hi, Becky” like I hear they do in AA meetings, but this was not AA; this was anger management. This was AM, so I didn’t. At that moment I vaguely thought I should get my butt into AA, too.

Becky said, “I’ve got an anger problem because I’ve got a drug problem. I started doing drugs because I was angry about how I looked. I wanted to be thinner.”

I studied her, her blue beanbag almost engulfing her tiny body. She sure got herself the “thinner” wish.

“The drugs destroyed my life which made me more angry. So I took more drugs and got angrier when I couldn’t get more. I started doing things…” She broke off and her voice cracked. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I did things I can’t get out of my mind, can’t believe that I did.” Soman reached over and patted her shoulder.

“Hey, girl, we all done things we regret. It’s okay. Gotta forgive yourself. Get it out of your head, you know?”

“That’s the problem.” Becky looked up and dried her tears. “It’s stuck in my head like an arrow right through my forehead. I went into treatment last year, got out, screwed up, and went back into treatment for a long time, and now I’m scared I’ll screw up again. It’s like the drugs are calling my name. I can hear them.”

We waited in silence for Becky to continue.

“I started in all this when I was a teenager. My brothers and my parents tried to help me, but I ran away. I ran away from all these funny, loving people with my drug dealer. I was seventeen. I lost my family.” She ran her hands through scraggly blond hair, then over her pale, makeupless face. “Seven years ago I lost my family.”

We waited for her to say more, her face twisting in misery.

“For what? For a drug dealer, then another drug dealer. Instead of sleeping in a house with a pink room, I’ve slept in slimy hotels and doorways and parks and cars. Instead of riding my horse in the afternoon, I’ve spent my afternoons trying to buy drugs. Instead of celebrating birthdays with cake and candles, I count the needle scars on my arms. I’m angry. Angry at myself. Angry at how stupid I am. My anger always leaps up at me, it seems. It’s always leaping.” Tears funneled down her cheeks. “I cry and cry. Then I cry more.”

For some reason all of us strangers seemed content with the silence as we contemplated Becky’s leaping anger.

I felt for the poor woman. I did.

It was time for me. I was in the purple beanbag. “I’m Jeanne Stewart. I’m here because I took revenge on my cheating boyfriend. His name is Slick Dick.” That was a little extra information they didn’t need, but I felt compelled to throw it on in. “The police have seen fit to file assault charges against me for a small incident against Slick Dick and now he is also suing me for all my money plus any money I make in this lifetime and in heaven, if I make it there, which is doubtful.” I thrummed my fingers against the beanbag. “I’m here because I’m trying to make myself look better in front of the judge, but my true wish is that I had done more damage to Slick Dick.”

Becky, Soman, and Bradon nodded their heads. Drake glared.

“Some people need to be damaged,” I said. I raised my eyebrows at Drake when I said that.

Becky, Soman, and Bradon nodded their heads again. “Damn straight,” said Soman.

“Although I don’t condone or indulge in violence,” Bradon said, adding, “well, usually I don’t. But the people who are so damn comfortable in their cushy privileged lives that they can’t reach out and change one iota to accommodate or help someone different than themselves are infuriating.”

I snuck a peep at Drake. His pretty face had this stricken look on it.

Emmaline sat in silence.

“I have a lot of anger.” I said this quite matter-of-factly. “Some days I think I live for it.”

I was done. There was silence again.

Becky spoke. Her voice was rough and yet soft, too. Like rocks and cotton candy mixed. “Me, too. Sometimes I think the only thing alive in me is my anger.”

“Yeah, I’m plain pissed off sometimes,” said Soman. “Plain pissed off.”

“I think anger is in my genetic muscles,” Bradon said. He smiled. The man had a beaming smile that reached those dark soft eyes.

“You want to see anger in muscles, man?” Soman asked. He stood up and flexed, making grunting sounds, his braids dropping over his muscles. He did a front flex, a back flex, arms up, arms curved down. He hummed the same song he sang at the beginning of class. We were all quite impressed with his muscles, everyone except Drake who looked rather pale. Like glue.

Emmaline’s voice cut across the loft like a dull razor on a chalkboard. “Pathetic. All of you. You are not grasping the goal of anger management class. This is not a joke. It is not a laugh. Your anger is eating your insides and you all sit there and laugh. Stand up before I throw something!”

We didn’t move.

“I said stand up, you miserable, anger-ridden people. Stand!”

We stood.

“Close your furious eyes and channel your anger.”

We tried to channel. I closed my eyes. I channeled my anger toward Slick Dick and hoped that he would get hit by a piano dropping from a high-rise.

“Unbelievable.” I flicked open one eye. Emmaline had her hands on her hips. “You’re not trying to fix yourselves, not trying to get rid of all this stupid, useless, unproductive anger. I can tell. You’re indulging yourselves. You’re not thinking of peace, you’re thinking of everything that pisses you off. You’re making lists. You’re thinking of ways to get revenge.”

Soman coughed.

Bradon sighed.

Becky said, “My thoughts are stuck.”

“Stop. Now. Keep your eyes shut, you ridiculous people.”

I didn’t feel ridiculous. A flying piano was possible, but I didn’t feel that was the time to bring it up. I wanted a good grade out of anger management class or a sticker or something.

“Hit!” Emmaline suddenly roared, arms outstretched. All of our eyes popped open. I jumped, so did Becky.

“I said hit! Hit! Hit!” Emmaline screeched, flapping her arms.

Knowing that Bradon wouldn’t hit me because he is a gentleman and knowing, too, that Soman wouldn’t hit me because none of the men in his family hit their women, I was not alarmed. Drake shrank into his beanbag. He did not want to get pummeled. Out of the corner of my eye I looked at Becky. Emmaline’s yelling had made her go pale. Was I supposed to hit Becky? Hitting Becky was terribly unappealing.

“The bags!” Emmaline bellowed. “Hit the punching bags! Hard! Release the anger forever! Come on you downtrodden, seething people! Hit!”

The five of us downtrodden, seething people faced those bags and started punching. Soman and Bradon sent theirs flying, but Becky didn’t do too bad, either, for being a skinny gal. Drake punched his carefully, as though he didn’t want to mess up his nails.

I beat mine senseless.

After about thirty-five minutes our fearless leader told us sweating people to head to the craft table that instant.

“The violence is temporarily out of you people, now let’s replace it with art,” she said, throwing little pink towels at all of us so we could wipe our sweaty anger away. Soman and me and Bradon were soaked. Drake had removed his tie and jacket. I knew Becky had cried while she’d hit her bag.

“Art your anger,” Emmaline ordered.

None of us except for Drake seemed to have a problem with arting our anger. All he could think to draw was the two policemen who had arrested him. “I’m going to sue their asses off. They will never work in this town again. I know everybody. Every. Body. Everybody who’s somebody and these two will be lucky if they can get a job in a tiny town in Idaho when I’m done with them.”

“Shut up,” Soman said, standing up again. “Shut the fuck up.”

Bradon stood up, too. Without a word, Soman grabbed one side of Drake, Bradon the other. They picked him straight out of his chair and dropped him back into his orange beanbag.

“Hey, you touch me again, and I’ll sue your asses off,” Drake quivered. “I got a bunch of lawyers in my back pocket. When I say jump, they’ll jump, when I say-”

“For God’s sake,” Emmaline screamed. “Shut up! Really! None of us want to hear any more out of your farting mouth, Drake!”

Drake’s farting mouth fell open in shock. I guess no one had ever referred to his mouth as a “farting mouth.” Soman and Bradon picked up his beanbag and flipped him over on his stomach. He said, “Ooofff,” when he landed, his legs spraddled out.

Soman brandished a very large piece of metal in Drake’s direction when it appeared that Drake might speak again, then settled back into his seat at the art table when he didn’t. He made a six-foot-tall tower using metal and rope. I must say it was quite stunning. Somehow he blended all the rust colors and the ragged edges and the silver shine to form this modern-looking piece of art, like something you would see in the middle of a city park.

“His name’s Oscar,” he said when Emmaline told him to tell the class about his art piece. “Like Oscar the Grouch. Oscar’s sick to shit of his anger, man. His anger is eating him alive and it’s gonna keep eating him until he’s got no guts left and his flesh is green. Plus his anger makes his knuckles hurt when he bashes someone’s face and he’s tired of that, too.”

Bradon grabbed watercolor paints, dipped a brush in water, and sat doing nothing. Finally he painted a scene of a rundown school. In front of the school was a young African-American boy. In his arms he held another African-American boy. It was clear that the boy was sick. On the ground there were two syringes, beer bottles, and a bong. A wooden cross lay at his feet. The boy was looking straight up at the sky, as if asking God why he hadn’t helped. “It’s the hopelessness I see in so many black boys’ eyes,” Bradon told us. “Hopelessness. Emptiness. Detachment.”

Becky traced her hands with colored pencils over and over on the same piece of white butcher paper. The hands arched like a rainbow. She decorated all of the hands with sequins, beads, and glitter.

When it was a gleaming, bright, beautiful design, she poured black paint over the whole thing, covering every inch of the design. “The hands reflect how I was before the drugs; the paint is how I am now. Not very original, but there it is.”

I couldn’t figure out what to do. Art my anger? I grabbed a huge piece of light green paper. I told Emmaline to trace me on it. I used different colored markers to write down on every inch of my body what I was pissed off about. I wrote down Slick Dick’s name on my vagina. I wrote my mother’s name, Ally Mackey, and my father’s name, Grayson Mackey, and my grandparents’ names, Henri and Rosa (Sanchez) Monihan, across my heart. Across my whole body I wrote Johnny’s name and the name of our baby girl, Ally Stewart. I wrote a ton of words all over the paper, too, in various sizes. Lost. Alone. Lonely. Dead. I kept writing and writing and writing.

When I looked up, Emmaline, Bradon, Becky, and Soman were all gathered around, watching me.

“Damn,” said Bradon, awe in his voice. “You are one angry woman.”

Becky patted me rhythmically on the back, sniffling and murmuring, “Everything will work out, everything will work out.” I decided that I should take Becky to lunch one day. I liked her. Soman covered my hand with his, his braids mixed with my gold curls. “Give me some of that anger, Jeanne. I’ll put it in my fist and the next time I smash someone I’ll transfer all your anger to him and that’s a promise.”

I sat back on my rear. “Thank you, Soman, that’s a good idea. ’Cause I swear if I don’t get rid of this anger I’m going to end up looking like your Oscar.”

The anger management class did not end well that evening.

After the art lesson, we sat in a circle in our beanbags: Me in purple, Bradon in green, Soman in yellow, Becky in blue, Drake in orange.

Drake opened his mouth and started farting again. “You people…” He shook his head as if we were all pathetic. “Hey, I’m sorry for earlier, but I don’t even belong here. I clearly don’t fit in.”

“That’d be the damn truth,” Soman said. “You’re like a boil.”

“There does appear to be some differences,” Bradon added.

“Do you all know who I am? Do you have any clue? Well,” he scoffed. “Of course, you don’t. We don’t travel in the same social circles, do we?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, I make it a habit not to hang out with men who buy hookers. In fact, I am rarely trolling the streets to buy sex, so we would not have rubbed elbows, or any other body part.”

“That’s fucking it. I’m calling my lawyers-do you get that, Jeanne? That’s lawyers, in the plural-”

“Gall. Do you get caught so often with your hookers that you need a whole phalanx of attorneys? I love that word! Phalanx.” I snuck a glance at Soman. He grinned and flipped his braids. “It’s so phallic, phalanx is.”

“You’re defaming my character, you loose-mouthed, stuck-up-”

“That will be all!” Bradon roared, leaping to his feet. Soman was right beside him, bright smile gone.

“You will not be mean or rude to women!” Soman shouted. “Dammit! We already told ya this in the beginning of the class! Ya don’t get it? Ya slow or something?”

“Sit! Sit!” Emmaline flapped, her white arms making motions like a seagull. “Sit!”

Soman and Bradon sat, but only after Bradon leaned way down, eye to eye with Drake and said, “Never, never, in my presence, be rude to a lady.”

“Hey!” Drake said, but his voice was a tad more conciliatory. “I’m trying to point out who I am. I own a company. Okay? You get that? I’m a CEO of a company. Ever heard of D.W. Financial Services? I started D.W. That’s me. I’m D.W.-Drake Windham. Built it from scratch two years ago. I employ seven hundred people and control two billion dollars in assets, you got that? Not million, billion. We’re growing each day by millions, nationally, internationally-”

“Sounds like a house of cards,” Bradon said, yawning. “Any company that grows that fast is growing too fast. Not enough capital behind it. Not enough ‘real’ money, as I would say. You got debt? You owe somebody a bunch of dough that you don’t really have? You paying one debt with other loans? How fast could you really get money out of that company or is the money in thin air?”

Drake started to squirm and twitch and his face flushed itchy red again.

“Your face is red again,” I said helpfully. “It looks itchy.”

Drake shot invisible spears at me with his eyes. Pow! Pow! “Debt grows a company, don’t you know that?”

“Massive debt will sink a company and it’ll bring down all the other companies that it’s attached to. When that happens, it hurts lots of innocent people in the process. They lose money, jobs, retirement, the whole nine-yards, all because companies have no capital behind them, only debt,” said Bradon.

“What are you, King Morality?”

“No. I am Bradon King.”

“But you can call him King Bradon, if you want, I should think,” I said.

“Stop! Stop!” Emmaline yelled. “Drake, no one gives a monkey’s testicles who you think you are. You’re here because you beat up on women, because you’re a turd with an anger problem, because you won’t take responsibility for what a prick you are, and the court insisted that you come here. Now again, shut up! Shut your farting mouth!”