Catch and Release
W.T. Patterson
Consider karma, that you get out what you put in. Then consider Marv.
You see, this high-powered law firm contracted us to work an auto collision case. Some well-paid schmuck turned without signaling and plowed into a family man in an SUV on his way home from work. Dead on arrival. Grieving family. The whole shebang. A week later, me and Marv walk across an overgrown lawn to the surviving family’s house at dinnertime to ring the bell. The bay window is lined with Tibetan prayer flags. This widowed wife, Ms. Perry, answers with eyes ringed red, still dressed in black, hair wild from sleepless nights, staring at the hulking figures in her doorway. Marv introduces himself using his real, searchable name: Marv Holliman. Because, karma.
Every time Ms. Perry blinks, she does it twice. Marv introduces me and I wave from the hip through a tight-lipped smile. I blink twice when she makes eye contact. I tell her we need to talk about the lawsuit she’s filed against the driver. Marv asks if it would be ok if we treated her to a lawn-care service in exchange for hearing us out. He finger-whistles at a waiting pickup truck with a ride-on mower idling in the back. Ms. Perry looks at our white button down shirts rolled up at the sleeves, maroon neckties loose against our collarbones, and product-free hair blowing against the evening wind. Too caught off guard to slam the door in our faces, she agrees and inside of twenty minutes the front sitting room smells like fresh cut grass and gasoline. The woman places steaming teacups in front of us without realizing that she forgot teabags. She apologizes for being so scattered, dabs her eyes, sits in the recliner opposite us, and says it must be allergies. It’s not allergies.
The dense scent of gasoline is sitting on the back of her tongue the same way as the day she leapt wailing from her car into the arms of a firefighter who had to plant his feet to hold her back at the scene. It reminds her of the white blanket rolling back and the busted face of her dead husband that flashes every time she closes her eyes.
“Did you know the car signal was invented in 1929?” Marv asks, pushing the fingertips of one hand against the other. “Didn’t become law until the 1960’s.”
I hold the teacup near my mouth but never take a sip.
“Why so long?” the woman asks.
“Change doesn’t happen until it’s profitable,” Marv says. A small girl peeks in from the kitchen holding a bowl of macaroni and cheese that’s gone stiff from cooling. The spoon stands upright like a flag on the battlefield. She’s pig-tailed and no more than ten. “Signals became law when the government realized cops could write tickets for cars not having them, or not using them.”
“Less money pulled from government funding,” I say, and look at the girl who watches me not drink while I watch her not eat. I wave with one finger. She motions back like a crab pinching the air, like there’s too much talking, like maybe she knows why we’re here.
“The inventor, Oscar J. Simler, based early turn signals on hand gestures,” Marv says, and runs through sign language for right turn, left turn, and stopping. Marv doesn’t mince words as he tells her the idea died out with the advent of electricity, and how all modern safety is built on the backs of corpses.
It’s true and it’s not. Modern safety is built on capitalism by people who figured out how to pull money from tragedy. Someone has to sell those glowing exit signs, those roller coaster seatbelts, the front-door deadbolts. Altruism doesn’t drive an economy. Those human-helping devices aren’t donated, they’re sold by opportunists living the dream.
“I’m suing the driver, though,” Ms. Perry says, cocking her head.
“Should she be eating?” I ask, and point to the girl. She ducks behind the wall and the bowl drops to the linoleum floor. The spoon bounces with yellow macaroni stuck to the sides. The woman peels out of the recliner and skulks into the kitchen. She whispers for the girl to go get a bath ready, and to take two more big bites. For daddy. I look at Marv.
The woman sits down again. In the back of the house, pipes clang with rushing water and this widowed mother rubs her eyebrow with an unsteady hand.
“Drop the suit,” Marv says.
“No,” the woman says. She blinks twice. Her eyes pool. Her cheeks get so rosy that’d you’d think she was in love.
“You have the life insurance payout coming, and auto,” Marv says. “You and your girl, you’re already set.”
“I need to take a stand,” she says. Her voice cracks. “Make an example.”
“Against what? Bad drivers? The non-use of turn signals? We live in America where mass shootings are sexier than serial killers.” Marv says. “Where moral values are handed down by pop stars.”
The woman sits back.
“Sorry, but your cause isn’t important enough to make someone else money,” Marv says. I gulp the room temperature non-tea water in one fell swoop.
“After legal fees, court costs, years of suffering…it’s just not worth it,” I say.
The little girl shrieks from the bathroom. It sounds like she can’t shut the valve off. The woman pops from the chair and hurries to the bathroom. The water halts. My empty cup catches the final rays of the dying day on the porcelain rim. Marv pops a cigarette between his lips and looks at the prayer flags dancing outside the window. He’s lost in a daydream when Ms. Perry returns.
“Do you believe in karma?” he asks without looking at her. “You get out what you put in?”
“You need to leave,” the woman says. We nod and thank her for the time. The macaroni bowl is still on the floor as we let ourselves out. On a table near the door is a small rock with the eternity symbol etched across the surface in blue. What goes around comes around. The girl spies through the cracked open bathroom door. She keeps quiet. I don’t understand why, but I palm the smooth stone into my pocket.
Outside, Marv tosses the unlit cigarette to the asphalt and stomps it with the heel of his shoe. He asks if I want to swing by The Lucky Dragon for takeout.
“Not hungry,” I say, but my stomach screams in betrayal.
“Get in,” he says, and drives us away from the manicured suburban home to the restaurant where he pays for my meal.
That night I sit on the edge of the bed in Marv’s guestroom with a belly full of General Tsao and watch him feed his wife Bailey with slow spoonfuls of baby food. The glowing television turns her skin pale, canned laughter promising happiness and advertisements for the next thirty minutes, her dark curly hair unruly and fraught. She resists, and Marv pleads in broken whispers to take two more big bites, please, for him. When Bailey collapsed from the stroke a year ago it took the light from her eyes, and from Marv’s. He thought he deserved it. Ever since, he’s doubled down on contracts and if money is the measure of happiness we should be swimming. My bank account is fat enough to start anew ten times over in different cities with different cars but I can’t imagine a life away. Marv’s guestroom is the only place that feels like home anymore.
A few winters ago my brother Timmy died. Throat cancer. We didn’t know until it was too late. Both of my folks lived in a nursing home because my mother suffered from dementia and my father couldn’t walk anymore. They cried inconsolable tears. A month later, my dad was gone. My mother kept asking where he was, and how Timmy was doing. I didn’t have the strength to be honest. But she knew, even if she didn’t, because her body withered to nothing. By spring, she was gone too.
Work let me go. They said I took too much time off, that the bereavement PTO wasn’t built for multiple deaths in the same year, that they were sorry but financial advisors had to be there for their clients, that they have an image to uphold, and something about showing up drunk, or bloodied, or not sleeping under my desk. They packed my life into a box and kicked me to the curb.
Because that’s America, baby.
Marv and Bailey took me in. We’d all known each other since childhood.
“I grew up on this side of the street, Gideon over there. We’d be in our yards and wave, but we didn’t play because we weren’t allowed to cross the road,” Marv said. Bailey listened through a wine induced stupor happy to hear the story for the thousandth time.
“One day I got the nerve to cross. Looked both ways for a half-hour and booked it,” I said. “Grounded for a week when Mom found out.”
“Remember the first time we got together?” Bailey asked, pushing up Marv’s pant leg with her naked toes. He smiled and winked. Something about skinny-dipping in Lake Winnipesauke. Being around them made me feel seen, even if the story didn’t involve me.
I spent a month in their guestroom losing weight and ripping through smokes. Every night was an argument with lawyers about how to dissolve my parent’s estate if I couldn’t afford the taxes. My thumb, callused and burned by the hot gears of lighters, lost its imprint.
“If you need money…” Marv said, and I waved him away time and time again until I got the idea that he wasn’t offering a loan, but presenting an opportunity.
“Off the record?” I asked one night.
“Catch and release,” he nodded and tossed a contract to the foot of my bed for more money than I’d ever seen. “Mum's the word.”
A week later we sat in a plush diner booth and, over coffee, told a grieving father that we knew about his coke habits, about the affair, and that it was his own negligence that threw his son from the roller coaster, not a faulty seatbelt. We told him to drop the suit. His soul broke in two right in front of us, and I didn’t feel so alone.
Then another contract came. And another.
Before I knew it, I had more money than a person could spend in a lifetime. My parent’s estate dissolved because I sent lawyer’s calls to voicemail and left them to rot. While approaching what felt like true un-tethered happiness, my small apartment paid for in cash, all debt wiped clean, Bailey collapsed in the kitchen.
Sitting on the bed watching Marv spoon-feed his beloved mashed peas and applesauce, the game did seem rigged. The same insurance companies that denied his claims time and time again also contracted us for shakedowns for triple what they would have paid out otherwise.
My phone dings. Suit dropped. Payout confirmed.
Marv helps Bailey to the twin bed in the corner of the living room and pulls a blanket to her shoulders. She looks at him like a stranger. He wheels the TV around so she can watch until sleep laps her shores with gentle relief.
Marv sits at the round kitchen table and quietly asks if I’m still awake. I don’t answer. He says that if anything ever happens, this journal will clear me. He holds up a blue college-bound notebook and rifles the handwritten pages. It’s nearly full. For the next hour, he writes checks and stuffs envelopes, probably bills, because even basic necessities demand their pound of flesh.
When Marv is done, he tucks the journal into a drawer next to the stove and falls asleep on the uneven couch. I fall asleep tracing my print-less thumb along the infinity symbol carved into a smooth, small stone. Just before dawn, our phone dings with another contract.
A few days later, a second, more enticing contract comes through. We drive to the bank, and then the post office. I stay in the car sipping Dunks. Two creams, no sugar. By the time the coffee swishes the bottom of the Styrofoam, we’re en route to a tech firm in Boston who say they’re getting slammed by government fines over payment processing regulations. The Office of Foreign Asset Control has cost them $3 mil in under a month, and because it’s the government, the firm feels like they have no recourse to push back. OFAC reps will be in town and they’ve requested our services to scare them off. Not as a government organization, but as people.
A receptionist prints badges with our faces and QR codes onto white squares. She has us push our thumb against a scanner in the vast downtown foyer.
“You aren’t reading,” she says, and squints into her screen.
“I’m a nobody,” I say, and show her my thumb up close. She goes flush and manually scans us in. We take the elevator to floor twelve. A manager, this guy in a faded blue polo and khaki pants, greets us with a cold handshake like he’s been sweating for days. He leads us to a windowless conference room. Employees track our trek with scowls, like they know who we are, like we’re getting ready to take something from them. The manager closes the door and we’re alone.
“This is what we can swing,” he says, and jots a number on a yellow sticky note. Marv looks and says the number is generous. He’ll make them triple it just because he can.
A woman walks in and my heart stops. It’s Ms. Perry. She doesn’t blink. Neither do I. Her name appeared nowhere in the contract, which makes sense because the people that hire us prefer anonymity.
“Gentleman,” she says, and sits down at the head of the table. Marv eyes the glowing exit sign over the door. The back of my neck pools and absorbs into the flimsy collar.
“Ms. Perry,” Marv says, and hearing her name out loud puts me further on edge. The manager leaves the room and the three of us are alone.
“Karma,” she says, and Marv smiles from the corner of his mouth. She slides a folder to us. The printed pages break the job down into the details we need. The whos, the whats, the whys. The top sheet reveals that this is her company, that she’s one of the founders, that she is unwilling to lose both a husband and a business that took years to build. I get it.
“Why this number?” Marv asks, tapping the yellow sticky note.
“We put office renovations on hold in that amount. Our company promised gender inclusive bathrooms by Q2, but with OFAC, we have to bump it another year at least,” Ms. Perry says.
“And if we can’t pull this off?” I ask. I track Marv’s eyes to Ms. Perry’s ears. Small pot-bellied Buddhas dangle from the lobes.
“You can,” she says. “The company would go under and I’ll expose you on my way down, but you can do this.”
A door opens and the manager guy walks in. He whispers that they’re here, the OFAC people, and looks at us like a bookworm who hired a jock to fight the bully in the parking lot. Marv nods and looks at me.
“Can they track accounts?” I whisper. My money, my future, is in the Cayman Islands, in Swiss banks, in shell companies offering fake scholarships.
“Who cares,” Marv says, and gears up for battle by rolling his sleeves. We leave one conference room for another and walk down a long hall. The docket says we’re employees in customer support if anyone asks. OFAC is imposing fines on the American based payment processor instead of the banks that allow illegal international activity. Since the processor only operates within the US, they should be in the clear for international transactions, but apparently the government thinks otherwise. They’re calling it a preventative measure and imposing non-refundable fines. My skin goes hot at the idea.
Marv stops the manager before we enter the larger meeting room.
“Triple this,” he says, and tucks the yellow sticky note into the guy’s sweaty palm. Zero hour, outside the door, he can’t say no. He looks at Ms. Perry.
“Do it,” she says, and enters the meeting to greet her guests.
“That’ll gut us…” the manager whispers.
We sit against a long wooden table. An enormous flat screen television hangs on the wall with two cameras on the top like fish eyes. Natural light floods through reinforced glass windows like the room is aquarium tank. Staff and team leads lean back in the roller chairs and stare us down unsure of who to direct their frustration at.
The government suits are too old to be considered young, a guy and a girl. Their clothes fit with custom tailoring, which means they’re more concerned with appearance than execution. Diverted attention means we can kick the legs out.
The woman taps on a touch screen control panel to start her slideshow. Her painted nails click against the surface.
“Thank you for hosting us today,” she says, and smiles. She picks the edge of her long nails. The slideshow fills the large screen with a yellow badge, blue key, and blue balancing scale. The Department of the Treasury. Thugs with badges.
“We value whatever hot takes you have for us,” the guy says, like we’re all friends, like we can ask whatever we want without judgment, like he’s the type of guy that Googled hip turns of phrase.
“Why are you stealing our money?” Marv asks, and the room holds its breath.
“That’s not the way we like to peep the sitch,” the guy says, and tries a laugh. No one else laughs. In one shot, Marv has isolated him. The guy clears his throat and adjusts the knot of his blue necktie. “Because of trade embargos and sanctions with other countries, we need to be vigilant in…”
“Not our problem,” Marv says.
“Where does the money from fines go?” I ask, and look at the woman. Ms. Perry leans against the plate glass wall and fights a smile.
“National debt?” the woman says like the punch line of a joke, like someone told her that humor is that fastest route to trust, like we’re all supposed to chuckle and bend over.
“Whoops,” Marv says. He leans back and leaves one hand on the wooden table. The room subconsciously follows. The guy sees the staff disengage and stands.
“This isn’t up for debate,” he says. Now he sounds like a dad, the type of dad who doesn’t understand that their kid might be different, have a unique identity, might push for gender inclusive restrooms, and the distance grows.
Marv pulls out a cigarette, tucks it between his lips, and lights up. He pulls a drag and exhales through his nose.
“Sir, you can’t smoke in here,” the woman says.
“That’s not how I peep the sitch,” Marv says, and the room chuckles.
“Please,” the guy says. “I have asthma.”
“Do you believe in karma?” Marv asks. “That you get out what you put in?”
Ms. Perry dismisses the room and the staff exits. She dims the windows and it’s three against two. In less than an hour, the OFAC reps agree to offer suggestions instead of imposing fines, to monitor transactions that raise flags, and provide assistance if needed. They sign a new agreement drafted by legal, and leave.
On the way out, Ms. Perry stops us at the elevator.
“Who’s idea was it?” she asks. We don’t answer. I can’t pinpoint what she’s referring to, so I stay quiet. The elevator door dings open and we step inside. They pinch shut.
“Namaste,” Marv says in the final seconds of openness, and we descend.
That night, the television painting the room with ghosts, Bailey shrugs away from a spoonful of squash.
“Smoke?” she says slowly, and sniffs. “You promised…”
Marv puts down the spoon and rubs his jaw. He brings the dishes into the kitchen and runs the water but doesn’t wash anything.
My phone dings. Contract fulfilled. Payout confirmed.
Not a minute later and the screen lights up with an incoming call from an unidentified number. It goes to voicemail. Marv turns off the water and helps Bailey to bed. She looks at him like a stranger again, staring as he falls asleep on the couch after she’s tucked in.
I check the voicemail. It’s the FBI and they want to talk. No other info given.
Bailey mumbles from the bed loud enough that I crane my neck to see if she’s ok. She points to the curtains.
“Win,” she says. “Win.”
The window looks closed, but I wonder if she’s trying to warn me, trying to say someone is outside looking in.
“Marv,” I whisper, but he’s breathing too deep to be awake. Something in my chest goes light like the air is thin. I tiptoe next to Bailey’s bed in the dark and follow her finger. The dark panes reflect the television, happy people jumping out of a canoe into still water.
“Win,” she says again. “Winnipesauke.”
And then she is asleep, and I am alone.
The morning errands hold thick to silence. Bank, post office, onward. I sip Dunks in the passenger seat and watch the clouds roll by. No new contracts. Marv gets back in and pulls onto the freeway.
“I’m disappearing,” he says. “Bailey too.”
The worst year of my life crashes back into focus.
“The FBI called,” I say, and Marv accelerates. Cars honk as he dips in and out of lanes without signaling. It’d be just as dangerous using a blinker. Safety features don’t always translate to safety.
“Consider karma,” he says. All those people we manipulated, all those wired payouts, it was only a matter of time before someone pulled the trigger. It’s the OFAC people, I can feel it. The government doesn’t like getting bullied, and so they ran to big brother.
Marv offers a cigarette and I take it. He slides it between his lips. I spin mine between my thumb and first finger. We’re driving so fast that it feels like we aren’t moving.
“I’m scared,” I say.
“The journal,” he says, and flicks a lighter. He sucks until red-hot embers crackle the tip. I hold my cigarette against his until there’s fire in my lungs. We drive until our sticks are ash. He takes an exit. “It’s time to move on. All of us.”
We roll by Ms. Perry’s home, our windows down to relieve the vents, and see a For Sale sign in the front yard like a battle flag. The little girl with pigtails sits on the front steps with plastic dishes and plastic teacups waiting for a car that isn’t coming back. She holds the cup to her lips but doesn’t sip. We make eye contact. I wave with one finger. She pinches her hand like a claw and looks to the driveway. All at once, everything becomes clear. This is goodbye. This is the chance to start over, to take a shot at family again, to seize the opportunities others scoff at.
You see, Marv and Bailey took me fishing on Lake Winnipesauke when my life fell apart. We spent the day in a canoe casting lines under the blue sky. I caught a fish, and then let it go. Then Marv caught one, and set it free. Then Bailey, and we realized we kept catching the same fish over and over. Isn’t that something? All day, we traded turns with that fish until it got late and we headed to shore. Our catch sizzled on the grill while we joked about how another canoe could have rolled up, how they would have poached our catch, that a fish in the wrong hands would mean none of us would get to eat.
The thing is this: Marv took all the money he made from contracts and sent it to the people he broke. Everyone except the government. Because a fish in the wrong hands means no one eats. Because, karma keeps the game rigged. You get out what you put in.
I don’t have the guts to tell him I already read the journal and followed his lead by withdrawing my funds from offshore accounts and spread it across the more deserving, that money is the illusion of safety, that some people need to believe a lie so they can heal.
You see, the morning of that fishing trip Marv went into town and came back with a large orange cooler. He didn’t tell me what was inside, but I saw it wiggle and buck when he loaded the boat. The three of us spent the day on the clear lake under the thick summer sun until our stomachs screamed. I closed my eyes and imagined throwing myself overboard, drifting to the murky bottom, and waiting for a fishhook to pierce my cheek until they reeled me to the surface, unable to breathe, flapping and fighting against the sun.
When my eyes reopened, I heard a splash and thought nothing of it until my line snapped taught and I reeled in the luckiest, most miraculous catch from the cool waters of Lake Winnipesauke.
I step out of the car and watch Marv drive away. Tibetan Prayer flags flap in the wind. The girl assesses my approach, fills a plastic teacup with invisible water, and offers it to me. I pay with the stone in my pocket, because what goes around comes around. She watches me hold the cup to my lips, waiting to see if I might take a sip, as a silhouette crosses the bay window.
W.T. Patterson
Consider karma, that you get out what you put in. Then consider Marv.
You see, this high-powered law firm contracted us to work an auto collision case. Some well-paid schmuck turned without signaling and plowed into a family man in an SUV on his way home from work. Dead on arrival. Grieving family. The whole shebang. A week later, me and Marv walk across an overgrown lawn to the surviving family’s house at dinnertime to ring the bell. The bay window is lined with Tibetan prayer flags. This widowed wife, Ms. Perry, answers with eyes ringed red, still dressed in black, hair wild from sleepless nights, staring at the hulking figures in her doorway. Marv introduces himself using his real, searchable name: Marv Holliman. Because, karma.
Every time Ms. Perry blinks, she does it twice. Marv introduces me and I wave from the hip through a tight-lipped smile. I blink twice when she makes eye contact. I tell her we need to talk about the lawsuit she’s filed against the driver. Marv asks if it would be ok if we treated her to a lawn-care service in exchange for hearing us out. He finger-whistles at a waiting pickup truck with a ride-on mower idling in the back. Ms. Perry looks at our white button down shirts rolled up at the sleeves, maroon neckties loose against our collarbones, and product-free hair blowing against the evening wind. Too caught off guard to slam the door in our faces, she agrees and inside of twenty minutes the front sitting room smells like fresh cut grass and gasoline. The woman places steaming teacups in front of us without realizing that she forgot teabags. She apologizes for being so scattered, dabs her eyes, sits in the recliner opposite us, and says it must be allergies. It’s not allergies.
The dense scent of gasoline is sitting on the back of her tongue the same way as the day she leapt wailing from her car into the arms of a firefighter who had to plant his feet to hold her back at the scene. It reminds her of the white blanket rolling back and the busted face of her dead husband that flashes every time she closes her eyes.
“Did you know the car signal was invented in 1929?” Marv asks, pushing the fingertips of one hand against the other. “Didn’t become law until the 1960’s.”
I hold the teacup near my mouth but never take a sip.
“Why so long?” the woman asks.
“Change doesn’t happen until it’s profitable,” Marv says. A small girl peeks in from the kitchen holding a bowl of macaroni and cheese that’s gone stiff from cooling. The spoon stands upright like a flag on the battlefield. She’s pig-tailed and no more than ten. “Signals became law when the government realized cops could write tickets for cars not having them, or not using them.”
“Less money pulled from government funding,” I say, and look at the girl who watches me not drink while I watch her not eat. I wave with one finger. She motions back like a crab pinching the air, like there’s too much talking, like maybe she knows why we’re here.
“The inventor, Oscar J. Simler, based early turn signals on hand gestures,” Marv says, and runs through sign language for right turn, left turn, and stopping. Marv doesn’t mince words as he tells her the idea died out with the advent of electricity, and how all modern safety is built on the backs of corpses.
It’s true and it’s not. Modern safety is built on capitalism by people who figured out how to pull money from tragedy. Someone has to sell those glowing exit signs, those roller coaster seatbelts, the front-door deadbolts. Altruism doesn’t drive an economy. Those human-helping devices aren’t donated, they’re sold by opportunists living the dream.
“I’m suing the driver, though,” Ms. Perry says, cocking her head.
“Should she be eating?” I ask, and point to the girl. She ducks behind the wall and the bowl drops to the linoleum floor. The spoon bounces with yellow macaroni stuck to the sides. The woman peels out of the recliner and skulks into the kitchen. She whispers for the girl to go get a bath ready, and to take two more big bites. For daddy. I look at Marv.
The woman sits down again. In the back of the house, pipes clang with rushing water and this widowed mother rubs her eyebrow with an unsteady hand.
“Drop the suit,” Marv says.
“No,” the woman says. She blinks twice. Her eyes pool. Her cheeks get so rosy that’d you’d think she was in love.
“You have the life insurance payout coming, and auto,” Marv says. “You and your girl, you’re already set.”
“I need to take a stand,” she says. Her voice cracks. “Make an example.”
“Against what? Bad drivers? The non-use of turn signals? We live in America where mass shootings are sexier than serial killers.” Marv says. “Where moral values are handed down by pop stars.”
The woman sits back.
“Sorry, but your cause isn’t important enough to make someone else money,” Marv says. I gulp the room temperature non-tea water in one fell swoop.
“After legal fees, court costs, years of suffering…it’s just not worth it,” I say.
The little girl shrieks from the bathroom. It sounds like she can’t shut the valve off. The woman pops from the chair and hurries to the bathroom. The water halts. My empty cup catches the final rays of the dying day on the porcelain rim. Marv pops a cigarette between his lips and looks at the prayer flags dancing outside the window. He’s lost in a daydream when Ms. Perry returns.
“Do you believe in karma?” he asks without looking at her. “You get out what you put in?”
“You need to leave,” the woman says. We nod and thank her for the time. The macaroni bowl is still on the floor as we let ourselves out. On a table near the door is a small rock with the eternity symbol etched across the surface in blue. What goes around comes around. The girl spies through the cracked open bathroom door. She keeps quiet. I don’t understand why, but I palm the smooth stone into my pocket.
Outside, Marv tosses the unlit cigarette to the asphalt and stomps it with the heel of his shoe. He asks if I want to swing by The Lucky Dragon for takeout.
“Not hungry,” I say, but my stomach screams in betrayal.
“Get in,” he says, and drives us away from the manicured suburban home to the restaurant where he pays for my meal.
That night I sit on the edge of the bed in Marv’s guestroom with a belly full of General Tsao and watch him feed his wife Bailey with slow spoonfuls of baby food. The glowing television turns her skin pale, canned laughter promising happiness and advertisements for the next thirty minutes, her dark curly hair unruly and fraught. She resists, and Marv pleads in broken whispers to take two more big bites, please, for him. When Bailey collapsed from the stroke a year ago it took the light from her eyes, and from Marv’s. He thought he deserved it. Ever since, he’s doubled down on contracts and if money is the measure of happiness we should be swimming. My bank account is fat enough to start anew ten times over in different cities with different cars but I can’t imagine a life away. Marv’s guestroom is the only place that feels like home anymore.
A few winters ago my brother Timmy died. Throat cancer. We didn’t know until it was too late. Both of my folks lived in a nursing home because my mother suffered from dementia and my father couldn’t walk anymore. They cried inconsolable tears. A month later, my dad was gone. My mother kept asking where he was, and how Timmy was doing. I didn’t have the strength to be honest. But she knew, even if she didn’t, because her body withered to nothing. By spring, she was gone too.
Work let me go. They said I took too much time off, that the bereavement PTO wasn’t built for multiple deaths in the same year, that they were sorry but financial advisors had to be there for their clients, that they have an image to uphold, and something about showing up drunk, or bloodied, or not sleeping under my desk. They packed my life into a box and kicked me to the curb.
Because that’s America, baby.
Marv and Bailey took me in. We’d all known each other since childhood.
“I grew up on this side of the street, Gideon over there. We’d be in our yards and wave, but we didn’t play because we weren’t allowed to cross the road,” Marv said. Bailey listened through a wine induced stupor happy to hear the story for the thousandth time.
“One day I got the nerve to cross. Looked both ways for a half-hour and booked it,” I said. “Grounded for a week when Mom found out.”
“Remember the first time we got together?” Bailey asked, pushing up Marv’s pant leg with her naked toes. He smiled and winked. Something about skinny-dipping in Lake Winnipesauke. Being around them made me feel seen, even if the story didn’t involve me.
I spent a month in their guestroom losing weight and ripping through smokes. Every night was an argument with lawyers about how to dissolve my parent’s estate if I couldn’t afford the taxes. My thumb, callused and burned by the hot gears of lighters, lost its imprint.
“If you need money…” Marv said, and I waved him away time and time again until I got the idea that he wasn’t offering a loan, but presenting an opportunity.
“Off the record?” I asked one night.
“Catch and release,” he nodded and tossed a contract to the foot of my bed for more money than I’d ever seen. “Mum's the word.”
A week later we sat in a plush diner booth and, over coffee, told a grieving father that we knew about his coke habits, about the affair, and that it was his own negligence that threw his son from the roller coaster, not a faulty seatbelt. We told him to drop the suit. His soul broke in two right in front of us, and I didn’t feel so alone.
Then another contract came. And another.
Before I knew it, I had more money than a person could spend in a lifetime. My parent’s estate dissolved because I sent lawyer’s calls to voicemail and left them to rot. While approaching what felt like true un-tethered happiness, my small apartment paid for in cash, all debt wiped clean, Bailey collapsed in the kitchen.
Sitting on the bed watching Marv spoon-feed his beloved mashed peas and applesauce, the game did seem rigged. The same insurance companies that denied his claims time and time again also contracted us for shakedowns for triple what they would have paid out otherwise.
My phone dings. Suit dropped. Payout confirmed.
Marv helps Bailey to the twin bed in the corner of the living room and pulls a blanket to her shoulders. She looks at him like a stranger. He wheels the TV around so she can watch until sleep laps her shores with gentle relief.
Marv sits at the round kitchen table and quietly asks if I’m still awake. I don’t answer. He says that if anything ever happens, this journal will clear me. He holds up a blue college-bound notebook and rifles the handwritten pages. It’s nearly full. For the next hour, he writes checks and stuffs envelopes, probably bills, because even basic necessities demand their pound of flesh.
When Marv is done, he tucks the journal into a drawer next to the stove and falls asleep on the uneven couch. I fall asleep tracing my print-less thumb along the infinity symbol carved into a smooth, small stone. Just before dawn, our phone dings with another contract.
A few days later, a second, more enticing contract comes through. We drive to the bank, and then the post office. I stay in the car sipping Dunks. Two creams, no sugar. By the time the coffee swishes the bottom of the Styrofoam, we’re en route to a tech firm in Boston who say they’re getting slammed by government fines over payment processing regulations. The Office of Foreign Asset Control has cost them $3 mil in under a month, and because it’s the government, the firm feels like they have no recourse to push back. OFAC reps will be in town and they’ve requested our services to scare them off. Not as a government organization, but as people.
A receptionist prints badges with our faces and QR codes onto white squares. She has us push our thumb against a scanner in the vast downtown foyer.
“You aren’t reading,” she says, and squints into her screen.
“I’m a nobody,” I say, and show her my thumb up close. She goes flush and manually scans us in. We take the elevator to floor twelve. A manager, this guy in a faded blue polo and khaki pants, greets us with a cold handshake like he’s been sweating for days. He leads us to a windowless conference room. Employees track our trek with scowls, like they know who we are, like we’re getting ready to take something from them. The manager closes the door and we’re alone.
“This is what we can swing,” he says, and jots a number on a yellow sticky note. Marv looks and says the number is generous. He’ll make them triple it just because he can.
A woman walks in and my heart stops. It’s Ms. Perry. She doesn’t blink. Neither do I. Her name appeared nowhere in the contract, which makes sense because the people that hire us prefer anonymity.
“Gentleman,” she says, and sits down at the head of the table. Marv eyes the glowing exit sign over the door. The back of my neck pools and absorbs into the flimsy collar.
“Ms. Perry,” Marv says, and hearing her name out loud puts me further on edge. The manager leaves the room and the three of us are alone.
“Karma,” she says, and Marv smiles from the corner of his mouth. She slides a folder to us. The printed pages break the job down into the details we need. The whos, the whats, the whys. The top sheet reveals that this is her company, that she’s one of the founders, that she is unwilling to lose both a husband and a business that took years to build. I get it.
“Why this number?” Marv asks, tapping the yellow sticky note.
“We put office renovations on hold in that amount. Our company promised gender inclusive bathrooms by Q2, but with OFAC, we have to bump it another year at least,” Ms. Perry says.
“And if we can’t pull this off?” I ask. I track Marv’s eyes to Ms. Perry’s ears. Small pot-bellied Buddhas dangle from the lobes.
“You can,” she says. “The company would go under and I’ll expose you on my way down, but you can do this.”
A door opens and the manager guy walks in. He whispers that they’re here, the OFAC people, and looks at us like a bookworm who hired a jock to fight the bully in the parking lot. Marv nods and looks at me.
“Can they track accounts?” I whisper. My money, my future, is in the Cayman Islands, in Swiss banks, in shell companies offering fake scholarships.
“Who cares,” Marv says, and gears up for battle by rolling his sleeves. We leave one conference room for another and walk down a long hall. The docket says we’re employees in customer support if anyone asks. OFAC is imposing fines on the American based payment processor instead of the banks that allow illegal international activity. Since the processor only operates within the US, they should be in the clear for international transactions, but apparently the government thinks otherwise. They’re calling it a preventative measure and imposing non-refundable fines. My skin goes hot at the idea.
Marv stops the manager before we enter the larger meeting room.
“Triple this,” he says, and tucks the yellow sticky note into the guy’s sweaty palm. Zero hour, outside the door, he can’t say no. He looks at Ms. Perry.
“Do it,” she says, and enters the meeting to greet her guests.
“That’ll gut us…” the manager whispers.
We sit against a long wooden table. An enormous flat screen television hangs on the wall with two cameras on the top like fish eyes. Natural light floods through reinforced glass windows like the room is aquarium tank. Staff and team leads lean back in the roller chairs and stare us down unsure of who to direct their frustration at.
The government suits are too old to be considered young, a guy and a girl. Their clothes fit with custom tailoring, which means they’re more concerned with appearance than execution. Diverted attention means we can kick the legs out.
The woman taps on a touch screen control panel to start her slideshow. Her painted nails click against the surface.
“Thank you for hosting us today,” she says, and smiles. She picks the edge of her long nails. The slideshow fills the large screen with a yellow badge, blue key, and blue balancing scale. The Department of the Treasury. Thugs with badges.
“We value whatever hot takes you have for us,” the guy says, like we’re all friends, like we can ask whatever we want without judgment, like he’s the type of guy that Googled hip turns of phrase.
“Why are you stealing our money?” Marv asks, and the room holds its breath.
“That’s not the way we like to peep the sitch,” the guy says, and tries a laugh. No one else laughs. In one shot, Marv has isolated him. The guy clears his throat and adjusts the knot of his blue necktie. “Because of trade embargos and sanctions with other countries, we need to be vigilant in…”
“Not our problem,” Marv says.
“Where does the money from fines go?” I ask, and look at the woman. Ms. Perry leans against the plate glass wall and fights a smile.
“National debt?” the woman says like the punch line of a joke, like someone told her that humor is that fastest route to trust, like we’re all supposed to chuckle and bend over.
“Whoops,” Marv says. He leans back and leaves one hand on the wooden table. The room subconsciously follows. The guy sees the staff disengage and stands.
“This isn’t up for debate,” he says. Now he sounds like a dad, the type of dad who doesn’t understand that their kid might be different, have a unique identity, might push for gender inclusive restrooms, and the distance grows.
Marv pulls out a cigarette, tucks it between his lips, and lights up. He pulls a drag and exhales through his nose.
“Sir, you can’t smoke in here,” the woman says.
“That’s not how I peep the sitch,” Marv says, and the room chuckles.
“Please,” the guy says. “I have asthma.”
“Do you believe in karma?” Marv asks. “That you get out what you put in?”
Ms. Perry dismisses the room and the staff exits. She dims the windows and it’s three against two. In less than an hour, the OFAC reps agree to offer suggestions instead of imposing fines, to monitor transactions that raise flags, and provide assistance if needed. They sign a new agreement drafted by legal, and leave.
On the way out, Ms. Perry stops us at the elevator.
“Who’s idea was it?” she asks. We don’t answer. I can’t pinpoint what she’s referring to, so I stay quiet. The elevator door dings open and we step inside. They pinch shut.
“Namaste,” Marv says in the final seconds of openness, and we descend.
That night, the television painting the room with ghosts, Bailey shrugs away from a spoonful of squash.
“Smoke?” she says slowly, and sniffs. “You promised…”
Marv puts down the spoon and rubs his jaw. He brings the dishes into the kitchen and runs the water but doesn’t wash anything.
My phone dings. Contract fulfilled. Payout confirmed.
Not a minute later and the screen lights up with an incoming call from an unidentified number. It goes to voicemail. Marv turns off the water and helps Bailey to bed. She looks at him like a stranger again, staring as he falls asleep on the couch after she’s tucked in.
I check the voicemail. It’s the FBI and they want to talk. No other info given.
Bailey mumbles from the bed loud enough that I crane my neck to see if she’s ok. She points to the curtains.
“Win,” she says. “Win.”
The window looks closed, but I wonder if she’s trying to warn me, trying to say someone is outside looking in.
“Marv,” I whisper, but he’s breathing too deep to be awake. Something in my chest goes light like the air is thin. I tiptoe next to Bailey’s bed in the dark and follow her finger. The dark panes reflect the television, happy people jumping out of a canoe into still water.
“Win,” she says again. “Winnipesauke.”
And then she is asleep, and I am alone.
The morning errands hold thick to silence. Bank, post office, onward. I sip Dunks in the passenger seat and watch the clouds roll by. No new contracts. Marv gets back in and pulls onto the freeway.
“I’m disappearing,” he says. “Bailey too.”
The worst year of my life crashes back into focus.
“The FBI called,” I say, and Marv accelerates. Cars honk as he dips in and out of lanes without signaling. It’d be just as dangerous using a blinker. Safety features don’t always translate to safety.
“Consider karma,” he says. All those people we manipulated, all those wired payouts, it was only a matter of time before someone pulled the trigger. It’s the OFAC people, I can feel it. The government doesn’t like getting bullied, and so they ran to big brother.
Marv offers a cigarette and I take it. He slides it between his lips. I spin mine between my thumb and first finger. We’re driving so fast that it feels like we aren’t moving.
“I’m scared,” I say.
“The journal,” he says, and flicks a lighter. He sucks until red-hot embers crackle the tip. I hold my cigarette against his until there’s fire in my lungs. We drive until our sticks are ash. He takes an exit. “It’s time to move on. All of us.”
We roll by Ms. Perry’s home, our windows down to relieve the vents, and see a For Sale sign in the front yard like a battle flag. The little girl with pigtails sits on the front steps with plastic dishes and plastic teacups waiting for a car that isn’t coming back. She holds the cup to her lips but doesn’t sip. We make eye contact. I wave with one finger. She pinches her hand like a claw and looks to the driveway. All at once, everything becomes clear. This is goodbye. This is the chance to start over, to take a shot at family again, to seize the opportunities others scoff at.
You see, Marv and Bailey took me fishing on Lake Winnipesauke when my life fell apart. We spent the day in a canoe casting lines under the blue sky. I caught a fish, and then let it go. Then Marv caught one, and set it free. Then Bailey, and we realized we kept catching the same fish over and over. Isn’t that something? All day, we traded turns with that fish until it got late and we headed to shore. Our catch sizzled on the grill while we joked about how another canoe could have rolled up, how they would have poached our catch, that a fish in the wrong hands would mean none of us would get to eat.
The thing is this: Marv took all the money he made from contracts and sent it to the people he broke. Everyone except the government. Because a fish in the wrong hands means no one eats. Because, karma keeps the game rigged. You get out what you put in.
I don’t have the guts to tell him I already read the journal and followed his lead by withdrawing my funds from offshore accounts and spread it across the more deserving, that money is the illusion of safety, that some people need to believe a lie so they can heal.
You see, the morning of that fishing trip Marv went into town and came back with a large orange cooler. He didn’t tell me what was inside, but I saw it wiggle and buck when he loaded the boat. The three of us spent the day on the clear lake under the thick summer sun until our stomachs screamed. I closed my eyes and imagined throwing myself overboard, drifting to the murky bottom, and waiting for a fishhook to pierce my cheek until they reeled me to the surface, unable to breathe, flapping and fighting against the sun.
When my eyes reopened, I heard a splash and thought nothing of it until my line snapped taught and I reeled in the luckiest, most miraculous catch from the cool waters of Lake Winnipesauke.
I step out of the car and watch Marv drive away. Tibetan Prayer flags flap in the wind. The girl assesses my approach, fills a plastic teacup with invisible water, and offers it to me. I pay with the stone in my pocket, because what goes around comes around. She watches me hold the cup to my lips, waiting to see if I might take a sip, as a silhouette crosses the bay window.
