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novel: Roses from Rain

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An envious creature dawned deep within me, to the point where I began scheming day after day over ways to make certain things mine.  A nice pair of monks, a ballsy wristwatch, maybe an Afghan rug for the flat.  As time passed, my cravings grew stronger, and the hunger for more costly items soon became my monkey, things far pricier than I could afford and that longing for often triggered depression. 

A particular thorn in my side remains from this period, and although the exact day escapes me, my memory of the heat is quite clear.  An unusually muggy afternoon for San Diego, I’d been walking home along El Cajon Avenue and stopped at the corner of Euclid, waiting for the light to change.  Overhead lingered a wispy blanket of clouds, with the remnants of an earlier rain coupled to the salty scent of the Pacific.  A minute or two passed and then from behind me came the low grind of gravel beneath tires, and a flat-black Maserati coupé rounded the corner. As it eased by, I caught sight of my exhausted reflection wavering down the passenger door and window.  I stood melting at curbside: a sack of oranges in one hand, a liter of ginger ale in the other.  The dude in the chariot was in on his elbow.  His hair was slicked back hair, and he wore tight shades, a worthy suit.  His hand slumped over the wheel like a fish.  I stood there for I don’t know how long, stalk still, watching as the car rolled down the avenue and disappeared into traffic.   On the way home, I cursed everything I had ever done to pave the path of such a penniless existence. 

            Picking a point where things went wrong, something like that is difficult to pin down, for so many things add up to make the whole, and a lot of it is beyond your choosing, like your parents or the religion that you were raised under, or being mugged on a dark street.  Such things have a way of dementing you, twisting your inner fiber from cotton to steel or vice versa, and bringing about a meltdown.  There is a subconscious layer of unwanted fat that runs through the meat of everyone’s personality, and if you fail to trim it in time, it can become a real killer.  Maybe around the time Jill, my ex, and I split up is when I seemed to come under the gun, but it’s a tough call.  She was a petite woman, Jill, with firm thighs and stunning green eyes, and the personality of an M-80.  Why we carried on for such a long time, I’ll never figure.  That woman, though, could raise the roof.  I’m so tired, her voice would crack in plea.  Never getting ahead, never able to plan our future.  Look at what our friends have.  Look at my sister!  Three years younger than me, three years, Sam!... and she has kids, a home, a career.  And why?  Because her husband’s an earner, he busts his a*s to make money!

It sucks when the truth hurts, especially when that truth is something you believe in, like having to tell yourself that your favorite shirt is worn out and needs to be put in the trash.  Jill wasn’t always so cruel and accusing, but in her mind, our troubles stemmed from a lack of money, which was rooted directly in my line of work; and the more she harped on the subject, the more I began to believe her.  Back then I nicked info for Eco-Assassin: a clandestine nonprofit �" established, managed, and bullied by Max.  Max was a stand-up gent, no second thoughts about it, but if you were at odds with the man, he could be a square kick in the head.  On the wall behind Max’s office desk hung two oversized black-and-whites.  One of H.D Thoreau, the other Bruce Lee.  Now a good many are familiar with what Bruce Lee looked like, but Thoreau… I’d wager most people couldn’t pick him out amongst a lineup of historical U.S. presidents and hillbilly moonshiners.  According to Max, the Lee print was from ‘Enter the Dragon’, with Bruce’s right arm extended, fist like a brick, wearing a Gung Fu jacket and a face of determination, much in contrast to the scratchy woolen suit, chinstrap beard, and bulbous drooping nose, of bowtied H.D.  Max looked like neither man, especially while dressed in his brown, checked sport coat and army boots; however, the brass knuckles he kept at the base of his desk lamp revealed something of a shared nature. 

So I’d nab all the info available, and Max would use what he could to bloody the noses of environmentally delinquent corporations.  Heady job, but as with most nonprofit work, the chance of earning a high salary was nix.  More than once I had approached Max about a pay raise, but the answer forever came back the same.  He’d tell me how invaluable I was and what a struggle the job would be in my absence, and then the inevitable: But the beef is lean, Sam, and you’re getting all the scraps.

It was true; I had laid eyes on the books.  Attorneys’ fees devoured most of the funding, and what was leftover went to travel expenses and other general expenditures to keep Assassin running.  So I carried on with work, and Jill carried on with her wrangling, and then came the day when she bailed.  Shortly after, my apartment took on a grey, bare nature, where in the morning I would climb out of bed and trudge into the kitchen, accompanied by my coffee and the faint drone of the fridge, and think back to the night before, when I lay awake in bed staring into darkness, cursing myself for Jill’s leaving and livid for doing nothing to prevent it.  I wondered about the major choices I had made, and if they had amounted to anything worthy.  Where would I take my career?   Was my upbringing psychotic?  Was I a bad dresser?  Was I good in bed?  Maybe I should buy a new car….  Old, lost, powerless, approaching an anxiousness that bordered on regret.  Within months even the littlest things had become so overwhelming, probably more so in my mind than in reality, but nevertheless, my troubles had mounted to such an intolerable level, and with everything in San Diego a tainted reminder of Jill, escape became paramount, at least until my head cleared, which is why I accepted the assignment that landed me in Mexico.

            Unlike everything else, the decision came without deliberation; my bags were packed before Max even offered the job.  And although I had worked a copious amount of cases similar to this one, thereby making oil conglomerates old hat �" dig regulations, company bylaws, scratching up figures and facts �" it wasn’t an issue of challenge that spurred my acceptance.  Simply put, it was anything to get me out of California, and Guatemala seemed like the perfect, lonesome distance to go.    

The buzz of an outsized, illicit oil dig near the Guatemalan border had spread throughout the green community, sounding an alarm of ecological disaster, and causing an anonymous and rather wealthy investor to approach Max, whereby Max approached me.  Whatever can be used to harm the dig or those behind it, he said.  So I headed south and set up shop in a matchbox flat, central Guadalajara.  Chinked floorboards, chipped stucco, faulty wiring.  It lay in near proximity to the main bus station, though, and to a respectable coffee joint, Rojo café, where a fresh cup of Mexican Mundo was nabbed each morning.   

            As with most pinch-and-take jobs, down time was unavoidable, and it was then that I struggled so hard with thoughts of Jill.  But time passed quicker than expected, and some fifteen months later I had compiled a nearly tell-all file, linking a US oil firm, Mexican investors, bankers, and a handful of sordid Mafioso all to the deal.  I say nearly, because, in fact, I reneged on the job.  As intent as I may have been to bust this scheme wide, my doubts and desires never ceased, and over time my gluttonous cravings ballooned into all-consuming beast of inexorable force. Witnessing such a vast contrast between Mexico’s classes �" the lime gardened, luxurious city mansions of Las Lomas opposed to the children of seaside towns, sprinting in tattered clothes and bare feet over stone-layered clay streets to fill jugs from the spouts of clanging water trucks �" lit a fire within me that burned white-hot, fueling my hunger for fortune and security.  One might have hoped that such experience would have had the opposite effect, not only reconfirming the problems that I had witnessed in the States, but also invigorating my yearning to work for such causes and improve them.  However, that just wasn’t the case.  Instead, an entirely new class of ambition stirred up within me, an unscrupulous savage monster with sharp, steely teeth, never to be kept from the world of pecuniary privileges.   

            It was high time to leave Max and Eco-Assassin for a thriving corporation beyond the NPO realm, one that provided real security and green.  My way out?  To become someone I wasn’t.  To devise the guise of a man with a morally different outlook on life, a gent tailored for the times, someone whose history of experiences justified his voracity and opened doors to a moneyed future. After all, necessity is the mother of invention, or in my case, reinvention.  And if done correctly, the world would be mine to consume.