How the Rich Think

[Arroyos]

How the Rich Think


He was steaming, my guest, this former indigent, homeless, street person who had somehow suddenly, inexplicably become rich enough to buy the Dozers! My Dozers! And he’d had the temerity to rename them some wish-washy name that I struggle to remember. Who gave him the right? His money, that’s who.

Arroyos! That was the team’s new name. The powerful push of bulldozers replaced by dry stream beds, what kind of deal was that? I was relieved when I first heard he was buying the team. He bailed us out after the former owners, the so-called Consortium, consorted their way with our money leaving us as dry as a fuckin’ arroyo. (Okay, so maybe the name does fit, after all.)

He saved us, I admit it, but what his money bought he believed was his and his alone. Thank the stars Roberta was able to hold him in check, keep him in line to a certain degree. She made him come here to meet with me, he wouldn’t have given me another thought if it were left to him. He’d have fired me and forgotten me. Instead, here he was, meeting with me … yet I was beginning to wonder if he still didn’t plan to do me in. Would his money buy him an assassin? You’re damn right it would! At least in this place with its underpaid, overworked orderlies and security staff, the former with access to a galaxy of drugs, the latter with weapons. Maybe I’m not as safe here as I thought.

But there’s no defense, not in this place. Refuse to take the drugs and they tie you down to administer them. Refuse to obey the orderlies and they wheel you down the long sloping hallway to the room marked “Therapy,” where they make you forget who you are and what you want and everything that was once important to you. Oh, it comes back, some of it, pieces strung like popcorn on a yule tree, eventually. Or not. You never know, you no longer care. You eat and sleep and shit and drool, until one day you wake up and you remember where you are, maybe your own name, but still no idea why you’re here.

So, with no defense, what to do? Go on offense. Play the game until the game plays you.

“This is the future of Yumankind,” I told him, pointing to my wall of charts and stats. He seemed impressed. I doubt he expected how much of his team was still being organized by an old man in a mental hospital. Maybe that’s why Roberta sent him. So he would see. Maybe.

We will see, what we will see.

He leaned in to study the charts taped to the wall. I wish I’d taken Nurse Mary’s offer to print out some of the data. It would have looked neater, more impressive, than my scribbled lists and numbers. Still, he was studying it.

“How does it work?” he asked. “The draft. You send your list to Roberta so she can make the selections?”

I smiled. “Nope. I make them.”

He looked at me doubtfully. “You? From here?”

“Not this room, no, but from this hospital, yup.”

He studied the wall some more, then asked what he’d been itching to ask since he walked in the room. “How?”

“There’s a computer room, down the hall. They roll me into the room and I log onto the draft website and sit and wait my turn.”

He seemed to take it in, spin it around, chew it over, and reconsider it before he asked, “They roll you in?”

“Yup,” I said grinning. He looked dubious. “Wheelchair,” I explained.

“But,” he said, pointing at my legs where I stood in the middle of the room.

“I could walk, but hospital rules don’t permit it. Ambulatory patients can use the computer in the TV Room. You sign up for 30 minute sessions. The draft lasts 3 hours, and I need a quiet room, so the nurses put me in a wheelchair and peddle me down to the handicapped computer room.”

“The nurses conspire to help you do the drafting?” I nodded. “So, are they on our payroll too? Since they’re making it possible for you to continue, at least in a limited way, as Yuma’s GM.”

I laughed. He was deadly serious. When it came to money, the guy had no sense of humor. He was rich, what did he fucking care if the nurses were on the payroll or not? Then I remembered how rich people are about money, like it’s the only thing of value. The rich stay rich by being tight-fisted. Fuck him.

“No nurses on the payroll,” I told him, “though there’s one that should get some sort of bonus. She takes damn good care of me.”

“One nurse,” he said.

“Mary,” I said. I’d forgotten her last name. Something to do with trees or bushes or plants of some sort. Names are the first things to go, they say. If you live long enough, you end up with sentences constructed entirely of verbs and adjectives. What’shisname couldn’t fly to youknowwhere because he suffers from whatchamacallit. Welcome to the universe of the elderly.

“You wanna pay her,” he said, refusing to ask, always stating matter-of-factly.

“Yup,” I said, like some chirping bird. “Yup, I do. She makes sure the computer room is reserved for some nurse business, then hustles me in there so none of the staff notice. She helps me log on—as a nurse, of course—makes sure I get connected, then comes back and checks up on me from time to time. She’s a big fan.”

“Of yours,” he said as if he knew.

“Of ours,” I said. “A Yuma Bulldozer—well, Arroyo fan.”

“Really?” he said, finally asking, then continued just to make sure I didn’t have a chance to answer. “She does more then than just push the GM around.”

He smirked, angling for some tawdry joke. I looked him in the eye, unsmiling. “She stole a cell phone for me, way back, so I can make trades without using the pay phone.”

“She stole a phone!”

“And she replaces it every once in a while with a new one. Or newer, it’s never new, actually.”

“Like every year?” His curiosity forced him to ask.

“Every year, every two years, how do I know? I don’t know how long a year is, I don’t know how long I’ve been in here.”

He thought about that, then asked, “How many seasons per phone?”

That was a good question. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I thought back to when Mary swapped out the latest phone. “Two seasons ago.”

“Middle of the 2030 season then. Two years per phone. Not bad.” He thought it through some more. “Nurses here are paid well, I take it.”

“Are nurses anywhere paid well? Or even what they’re worth?”

He shook his head. “I ‘spoze not. So … I wonder how she affords a new phone every two years.”

“Not new, I told you.”

“Yours, no, but hers, probably.”

“What?” I asked. He’d lost me.

“She gives you her used phone, buys the new one for herself. A new one every other year. That’s a fair piece of change.”

I looked at him. I couldn’t believe that he, with his millions, thought a new phone was expensive. But then, the rich think differently than us regular ol’ Yuman beings. “Anyway,” I said, “she deserves some sort of bonus, if you’ve got any human kindness in you.”

He sat down on the edge of my bed. Plop! Just like that, like he owned the place. For a moment I wondered if maybe he did. Then I remembered where he was spending the night. All his millions weren’t going to buy him a private room.

“If I started paying bonuses to every human being who deserved it, who was underpaid or under-appreciated, who didn’t have a home or a car or a job … I’d be back on the street myself in no time. And the Arroyos would be belly-up, broke and bankrupt both. You’d be out of a job.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you pay bonuses to every man, woman and child who deserved it, not even to every nurse in this one damn hospital. Just one nurse—one who has earned it, one who has given her time, her money, risked her career for your baseball club. That too much to ask?”

He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Nope,” he said.

I waited. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to say anything else, I asked, “No it’s not too much to ask? Or no, you’re not going to give her a bonus?”

He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Both.” Then he slapped his hands on his thighs and rose from the bed. My bed. “Look,” he said, “it’s been a, uh—well, it hasn’t been a pleasure, but it’s been real. Meeting you. And now I’ll just pay a visit to that head nurse of yours—what’s her name?”

“Peters.”

“Her, right. Let’s see if she can call me a taxi. I think I’ll fly home rather than sit on that damn train for hours.”

“There’s no airport here.”

“What?”

“No airport. Not in Camarillo, not in Oxnard. You have to drive an hour to Burbank to get a flight. And then there’s no flights direct to Yuma. I suppose you’d fly to LAX and catch a shuttle to Yuma, if such a thing exists. Or maybe you could fly to Phoenix and then rent a car and drive back to Yuma. What is that? Maybe 3, 4 hours of driving.” I studied his face. He was exasperated. “Train’s your best bet.”

“Fuck,” he said. “Okay, train then. You got any idea when the next one leaves for Yuma?”

I laughed. “You want maybe the 3:10 to Yuma?”

He got it. His lips nearly smiled.

“There’s only one Amtrak a day going east out of LA.” I refused to say more.

He looked at me expectantly, finally burst out with “So when does it leave?”

“About now, I think.” I laughed aloud.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he said, taking a step towards me.

“Don’t fuck with me,” I said. “There’s an orderly in that hallway right out there, and if I so much as scream, he’ll have you on that gurney to Therapy so fast it’ll make your head swing.”

“Swim,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Make your head swim, that’s the saying.”

“No swimming here,” I said. “Heads swing, side to side, up and down, and around in big circles.”

“Heads swinging is a euphemism for hanging. Like in the Old West. You know, like … Make him swing, boys!” He suddenly sounded like some old cowboy.

I gave him the blankest look I could.

“It means they’ll hang you. From a tree.” He gestured like he was pulling the noose tight around his own neck. “Get it?”

“Oh, I got it,” I said. “If they wheel you down to Therapy, you’ll damn well wish they’d have hanged you instead.”

He just looked at me. I didn’t know whether to be afraid or sorry for him. For a moment, no one moved, no one said a word. Then he asked, “So what is this therapy thing, exactly?”

Before I could explain, someone knocked on the door and an orderly burst in.

“Time to get y’all back to yer room, Mr. Slemmon,” he said, holding the door open for my guest.

“Slummings,” he said, correcting the orderly. “And we haven’t finished our business.”

“Ya gotch yerselves all day tomorrah,” the orderly replied, smiling and gesturing toward the hallway.

Slummings stepped closer to the orderly to look at him, face to face, and said, “I want to speak to the Head Nurse, Peters.”

The orderly just smiled. “Her shift done ended an hour ago. Y’all can talk to her tomorrah.”

Slummings wouldn’t budge. “Who’s in charge tonight?”

“Head orderly. My boss,” the orderly chuckled. “The one who done sent me down here ta put y’all ta bed!”

“I’m not sleeping in the same room with all them crazies!”

“Oh, yessir, ya certainly is, ain’t no question ‘bout that. Now, it can be yer way or my way. Which do y’all prefer?”

“I prefer not.”

I wanted to point out to Slummings he was quoting my favorite short story, but it didn’t seem like the right time.

The orderly smiled again. “That ain’t no option. I can walk y’all down to the Men’s Ward to tuck ya in, all nice an’ easy. Or I can git my boss and we can strap y’all to a gurney and wheel yer ass down there and tie ya to the damn bed.” The orderly flashed his toothiest smile. “Which way y’all want it?”

Slummings started to say something, thought better of it and turned to look at me. “They treat you like this?”

“They don’t like it when you question their rules and procedures and such. So …,” I sort of waved at him, “sleep well. We’ll continue our conversation tomorrow.”

Slummings shook his head, but said nothing. The orderly held the door open for him, and Slummings walked into the hallway. The orderly winked at me before he left.

My empty room never felt so comfortable—so comforting—and so spacious. I looked forward to a long, quiet night’s sleep.

[Ghosts]

Please keep writing

[Arroyos]

Please keep writing

Thanks, Dan. I will. I do. I am.

[Sandgnats]

I am a huge Slummings fan. May he live forever.