The Wilderness Years - Paper Planes and Money Trains

 When we last saw our hero he was basking in the glow of his latest fling while simultaneously dealing with the shithead known as Disco Dave getting popped and also finagling a way to work less at the lovely warehouse job that was really nothing more than a charade... for who is anyone's guess but as stated it was more for our hero's mental health than anything... but was it? hindsight being what it is i can say yes it did help keep me a bit grounded but how much is debatable, now with his new found fuck buddy and streams of cash flowing in the old legit job was doing nothing more than getting in the way of the real work... 

Having bullshitted my way into a three day workweek i now had time to relax a bit... if relax one meant driving across town and fucking then driving home and counting money, driving to Stiv's and re-upping and then driving back home for the parade of customers to start... Stiv was quite pleased with my new schedule and enjoyed the fact he could unload all the gear onto me thus getting it out of his hands and into mine so his paranoia didn't run rampant... he'd drive up Saturday or Sunday, hang out overnight with his boy and then drive back in the morning, being super uptight and paranoid didn't help but Stiv wasn't a fool either, he drove the speed limit and took back roads to get over the state line cuz that's what made him the most nervous, crossing that imaginary line drawn by humanity immediately upped the charge to interstate trafficking... we did have some interesting debates, Stiv and i, about the route he took as he claimed he would almost puke as he got close to the line... my thinking was, why take backroads? why run the risk of podunk cops with nothing to do hiding on the side of the road and trying write tickets? take the main roads, drive like a normal person, no sweat... Stiv looked relatively normal, yes his hair was a bit longer, but myself having dealt with smalltown cops knew anything that wasn't a crew cut was going to draw their ire... hence avoid the fucking clowns... 

Every Tuesday after my new morning workout i'd count up the money and grab my laundry... not that i was going to the laundromat but there was this little matter of how does one get 40 or so pounds of ganja in and out of an apartment without drawing any suspicions? easy, just make it look like i was doing laundry there... so i'd head to Stiv's with a duffel bag and laundry basket... i'd park in back as Stiv was worried someone might notice me lugging large bags in and out but that's why i made it look as if i was there to wash my clothes, once inside i'd lay out the money, not that Stiv would count it, i'd have it sorted into the various piles, the regular priced pounds and the specially priced pounds, the discount pounds as i called them since they got the nice price for the weight crew, a $250 deduction per pound which still netted Stive and myself two bills apiece... i would give him the two piles of cash and he'd put them in bags to count and take out his cut later...

Since the day he had let slip that he was making $400 a pound just off me the dynamic had changed between Stiv and i, we needed each other but the facts were he needed me more than i needed him, granted at this point we could both walk away and have a tidy little nest egg set aside, hell at this point we both had more than the average American family would most likely ever have in a savings account and we both knew it would keep rolling as long as we cooperated, problem was i pissed that he had been taking such a huge cut... during one of our exchanges when i was discussing getting beat on something his snide remarks kicked off a little back and forth vitriol where i stated that if i did get beat i'd pay the fucking wholesale price instead of taking on any fucking fees, meaning his profit, the tension hanging in the room like smoke from one of Stiv's Marlboro Reds... if need be we could part ways and i could still stay in the game, i knew of places i could still get pounds, not on this level but i could stay in the game and even with my nickel dimer customers i'd still pad the income well enough to have a good time, yes i'd have to cut back in certain areas but that wasn't a problem... but i wasn't fool enough to walk away from a connection like this unless some serious shit went down... besides i let Stiv know in my own subtle way that i knew he had no way to move this shit and better yet he didn't trust anyone he knew to move it like i did... as the old saying goes, i'm a professional... 

Still it was always a game of cat and mouse and since Stiv had no way of knowing to who and how much i sold i devised a nice little scheme to pad my ever fattening wallet while he was none the wiser... seeing as how things had gradually snowballed from two pounds a week, to five pounds, then twenty pounds, to the now standing order of forty pounds with sometimes an extra run thrown in that week due to high demand, i began to cook the books in my favor... the discount price was only supposed to be for the weight crew, the guys buying five at a time, i had a decent amount of people now buying pounds and half pounds and quarter pounds and even when i broke down one and moved it in small amounts i'd keep track and tack on as sold at the discount price... of course it wasn't, it was sold at the regular price but this little trick meant that i would make $450 on those pounds, at first i'd only do it on a pound or two but once i gauged Stiv's response i began doctoring the books by 2 to 5 pounds a week, meaning i netted an extra $900 to $2250 every week depending on how much i moved... fucking good work if you can get it... 

The most pressing issue at hand though was what to do about the warehouse gig, i couldn't ride this wave of bullshit much longer as at some point they'd decide to just shitcan me, the didn't have part-timers at this place and that is effectively what i'd become... by this point i had the sneaky suspicion that everyone in the place had an idea, if not outright knowledge, of what i did when i clocked out, obviously some guys did as they were on the payroll but except for maybe Kenny, who no one fucking liked, it was the typical sewing circle, they all talked, i'm sure it was the usual "don't say shit about this but Kono is a fucking kingpin", now and then a couple of them would drop hints and innuendos though i think my managers pretended not to hear the whispers in the back of the warehouse and break room, i wasn't doing shit on company grounds so really it was none of their business what i did once i drove home... 

Meanwhile back in the barrio of the East End things kept right on rolling, my Tuesday and Thursday breakfast dates (not to mention Saturday and Sunday) were a regular occurrence... those days when i showed up and we were both pretending to be adults (see not hungover) i'd walk in and Red would hand me a cup of coffee, she'd make me some food and then we'd get down to it... there was one fine morning when before i could even finish my breakfast she had slyly stepped out of her shorts while standing at the kitchen counter, she turned around with a sexy grin, not a word needed to be said... yes it was good to be king, i understood i was living the life, how long would it last? at the moment i didn't care, i just figured it would go on forever... keep shit wired tight and don't sweat it too much... really how could things get any better? it was hard to believe they could...