HOPE FOR CHANGE... But Settle for a Bailout (31 page)

“Guess I’m lucky,” said Dave, “and I am. I
should be dead, but firefighters saved me during a heart attack.
Anyway, this is a 501(c)(3) and all that and I can give you a
receipt, but it’s just me, so if you need a grant writer thing, I
don’t really do that.”

Larry looked around and back to Dave. “No, I
don’t need anything like that. I could just give you money. How
much do you need?”

“How much you got?” laughed Dave.

“Couple hundred million,” said Larry. “Some
of the taxes are still being hashed out.”

“How ‘bout all of it?” said Dave, laughing.
“No, really. I don’t know, whatever you want to give. I just fix up
bikes, you know. They don’t cost much. But there’s a lot of kids
who don’t have ‘em.”

“I’ll be right back,” said Larry. “Don’t go
anywhere.”

“Why would I go anywhere?” said Dave. “This
is what I do.”

Larry walked across the park towards the
parking lot, where he waved at Ralphie, who stepped out and opened
the rear door. “I’m going back out in a minute.” Larry closed the
door and opened one of two refrigerators in the cabin and removed
several lines of sodas, revealing a small safe, which he dialed
open. He reached in a pulled out one of several bundles of bills.
He closed the safe, spun the knob, replaced the sodas and closed
the refrigerator. He put the bundle into his pocket, stepped out of
the car and tapped on the window, which Ralphie lowered. “Be right
back.”

Larry crossed the park again and found Dave
mounting spokes to a rim.

“I didn’t think you would come back,” said
Dave. “You want some water or something?”

Larry reached into his shorts and pulled out
a bundle of hundred dollar bills. “How about this as a start?” said
Larry, handling the bundle to Dave.

Dave held the bills and just looked at them,
before looking back to Larry.

“Is this Candid Camera or fake money or
something?” he asked. He rifled his thumb across the bills, which
crisply responded. “These are hundred dollar bills. This
is....”

“Should be ten thousand dollars,” said
Larry. “Bikes are good. I don’t ride one, but my friend does.”

“Bikes
are
good,” said Dave. “You’re
just giving me this? Ten thousand dollars in cash, just like
that?”

“Yeh,” said Larry, “I mean, if you can use
it.”

“Sure, we can use it,” said Dave. “Let me
give you a receipt.”

“That’d be good,” said Larry, now smiling.
“The people I hired, they like paperwork like that.”

Dave rustled about for a receipt book, while
holding the bundle. “I’ve never held this much money at one
time.”

Larry kept smiling. “Tell me when you need
more.”

“Do you just carry bundles of money in your
pocket all day,” Dave asked, handing Larry a receipt. He then spoke
with an air of caution absent earlier. “You know, this isn’t really
the greatest neighborhood. Don’t let on that you’re loaded like
this. You could have some problems out here, even if you are the
Cheetos Man.”

“W’ull,” said Larry, shaking hands and
smiling. “I’m off to see my friend.”

.

“Larry!” said a tall, blond woman in her
60s, smiling broadly, and quickly crossing the grass to reach the
Lincoln, as Larry stepped out. The woman warmly wrapped her arms
around him and he smiled and hugged her back. She kissed his cheek
and turned to Ralphie. “Lori’s told me all about your nice
friends.” She smiled to Ralphie. “Would you like to come inside for
dinner?”

“Oh, no ma’am,” said Ralphie, closing the
passenger door. “I have a book, thank you.”

“I’ll make sure to bring you a plate when
it’s ready.”

“Much appreciated, thank you,” said Ralphie,
heading back to the driver’s side

“Did you see the new flowers?” asked the
woman, pointing to a freshly-planted bed of zinnias, marigolds,
alyssum and lobelia along the entire front wall of the house, “Lori
will be home soon.... She’s just riding home from the library.” The
woman pulled Larry by the hand. “Now that we don’t worry about the
mortgage, we’re able to do things we never could before… because of
you.”

Larry smiled, as he looked at the bed of
flowers.

.

“Bix!” said Lori, as she rode up on her
bike. Dismounting, she wheeled her Schwinn into the garage, set it
against a '70s green Plymouth and lifted the wicker basket, holding
several books and DVDs, off the handlebars. “Heard what’cha did,”
she said, hugging Larry.

.

“... And you just handed him a bundle of
money?” asked Lori’s father, as he passed a plate of bread rolls to
Lori.

“He told me, ‘I have no idea who you are,
but I’ll take your money,” said Larry, smiling. “Can’t believe he’s
75.”

“He’s always looked young,” said Lori. “It’s
cuz he laughs all the time. Bread?” Lori passed the rolls to Larry,
and followed with a plate of butter. “I didn’t want him to know it
was my best friend,” added Lori.

“You’re the one who told him to call?” said
Larry, passing the bread to Lori’s mom.

“Oh,” said the mother, “I better take a
plate out to Ralphie.”

“Lori worked for Dave,” said Lori’s dad.

“My first job,” said Lori. “It’s what made
me a bike person.”

.

Larry sat back in the Lincoln’s leather seat
and waited for Ed to pick up.

“Yo, dude.”

“How come you didn’t tell me that one of the
people asking for money was Dave the bike guy who gave Lori her
first job?”

“Oh, hey Larry…, what was that?”

Larry sat upright. “DNA 6, you said not to
answer, but he gives away bikes to kids and Lori used to work for
him. I gave him ten thousand dollars.”

“You did what?” said Ed.

“How come you didn’t tell me?”

“Dude, as I recall, I went through dozens of
your missed calls in less than an hour,” said Ed. “Oh, by the way,
how’s yer grandmother doing?”

“I’m going there now,” said Larry. “They’re
gonna ease her back today.”

“Good luck with that,” said Ed, adding
abruptly. “Oh, man, ‘Lonely Island.’ Dude, I gotta go.”

“But Ed, why....”

“Someone’s gotta swim with the shark, dude,”
said Ed, before hanging up.

Larry looked at the blank screen and put the
phone down in the cup holder. He looked at the phone and picked it
up. He scrolled down the address book arid dialed DNA 1.

“Hi, my name is Larry. Who’s this?” He
reached for his Southwest Airlines pen.

.

My phone buzzed, while the television showed
an obviously frightened contestant being led to the edge of the
lagoon. Ed was right. There was something compelling about a shark
in the lagoon. The buzzing stopped, only to resume a moment later.
“L V D B.”

“Aw, Jesus,” I said, picking up the cell.
“Yeh, Larry, what?”

“I just gave Lori’s first boss ten thousand
dollars and I have a list of charities I want to give another
hundred and fifty thousand.”

“What, wait, huh?” I said, “What do you mean
you just gave ten thousand dollars away....”

“Right,” answered Larry. “And now I have
this list. I’m gonna have Ralphie drive me around, but then when I
give ‘em a register tape, they’re gonna come to you for actual
money, so just wanted to let you know. Or I might just pull money
and hand out cash.”

I looked up to the screen. In the water, the
camera showed a great white shark swimming menacingly as human legs
stood in the distance, on the shore. “Wait, Larry....”

The phone went dead.

I went back to “Lonely Island.”

.

Ralphie opened the door to the Lincoln and
Larry stepped out, in shorts and flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt.
He was met by a petite, smiling woman in a red polo shirt, with
“Lisa” stitched above a logo of the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union.

“Nice car,” said the woman.

“It’s not mine,” said Larry, patting his
shorts pocket. “It’s his,” pointing to Ralphie. “I’m Larry.”

.

Larry and Lisa sat at a long table with
three other members of the humanitarian affairs committee, in a
well-maintained union hall. “At Thanksgiving, we give out about
1,500 baskets of food,” she said, while the others, also in red
polo shirts with their names stitched above the union logo,
listened. “Maybe the person who suggested you meet told you
that.”

“No, not really,” said Larry, patting his
pocket. “Just that I should talk to you.”

“We spend two says putting the baskets
together, right here,” said Lisa. “When the turkey and everything
else is included, it’s around 80 pounds of food in each basket. The
money’s all donated by the workers and the union.”

“It usually takes about 200 volunteers,”
said a tall African-American, with “Chris” stitched onto his shirt.
“We just finished our 15th year.”

“We do toys, too, in December,” said
Lisa.

Larry reached into his pocket and pulled out
a bundle of hundreds. The four red-shirted union members looked at
one another silently.

“We don’t take outside contributions,” said
Lisa. “It’s all internal giving. But you can go down to the John
Mendez athletic center. Or I can introduce you around, if you want.
There’s lot of need.”

.

“And this is our marine biology library,”
said a middle-aged man with a long, graying beard. “We get a lot of
graduate students and researchers who come here, but still our
biggest source of visitors is from the field trips from local
schools.”

Larry patted his pocket. “And busses are the
biggest thing holding back the visits?”

.

“There aren’t many tall ships left,” said a
woman in her 60s, walking with Larry on the deck of TopSail’s
schooner. “Many of the kids we’re teaching to sail have never even
been to the beach, let alone hoisted a sail.

Larry smiled.

.

Larry pulled apart the fried calamari and
ate, while Ralphie sat behind the wheel, occasionally reaching for
a piece. “This may be the greatest day I’ve had so far with this
whole money thing,” said Larry.

“Making good people happy?” said Ralphie.
“That’s always a good day.”

A tapping at Larry’s window prompted Ralphie
to lower the passenger’s-side front window and a server from Ante’s
handed a plate of meat and cabbage to Larry, who handed it to
Ralphie, before taking the second plate for himself. The server
then reached for silverware and napkins, in the pocket of his
apron.

“Thank you,” said Larry, passing a hundred
dollar bill to the man, who smiled and turned. He put a coin in the
parking meter before returning to the restaurant.

.

“So here’re the receipts I got,” Larry told
me, emptying slips from his pocket – one written in pencil onto a
plain sheet of lined school paper —onto my home office desk.

“Okay,” I said, looking at each. “This is
actually better then I was expecting. I thought it’d just be the
register tape... which would have worked, but, yeh, definitely
better. Thanks for making the effort, Larry.” Each of the sheets
had contact information, tax ID numbers, dates with signatures and
descriptions. “Emily will need non-profit paperwork, to back up the
charitable record-keeping, but, otherwise... yeh... this is really
good, Larry.”

I looked up to Larry, who was smiling more
naturally and bigger then maybe I had ever seen in the years we’d
known each other. “Looks like philanthropy agrees with you.”

“This has been a good day,” said Larry.
“W’ull, gotta get to Memorial. Doctor says my grandmother is coming
out today.”

“Good luck, Larry.”

.

Larry sat holding Emma’s hand, as she lay in
bed, slightly turning her hips and torso. Larry’s smile
broadened.

“Bix,” came a female voice from the door.
Lori stepped in.

“Lori!” gushed Larry. “Today’s the day!”

Lori stepped to Larry, gently placing both
her hands softly on his shoulders and then leaning forward, so she
could kiss the top of his head. She walked around the bed and took
the spare chair, wrapping her hands around Emma’s.

“I’m so glad you came,” said Larry.

“Of course.”

An orderly entered the room, looking at a
clipboard. “Van der Bix? Correct?”

“Yeh,” said Larry.

“Okay,” said the orderly, with a shrug.
“Wheel him in,” the orderly said towards the hall.

“Hey, this is a private room, okay,” said
Larry, standing, as a gurney bearing Calvin van der Bix was wheeled
into the spot where a second bed would have been, had Larry not
insisted on paying to make it a private room. Attendants busied
themselves attaching an oxygen tube and adjusting IV drips, as
Larry and Lori silently looked on.

“Dad?” said Larry, standing alongside the
gurney, as an attendant adjusted the gurney’s height.

“He can’t hear you,” said the attendant.

“… Hell… I… can’t,” said Calvin, in a weak,
hoarse voice.

“Mister van der Bix,” said Dr. Bosch,
entering the room and doing a double-take at the gurney. She
reviewed the chart at the base of the bed. “Same van der Bix?” she
asked.

“My dad, yeh,” said Larry. “Don’t know what
happened, though.”

“Oh, now I recognize him,” said the doctor,
looking in his ears, up his nose, and running a light beam across
his eyes. “Doing fairly well for someone who just suffered a
massive stroke.”

“Oh my God,” said Larry.

“Looks like you have your hands full,” said
the doctor. “Good you have friends and people who love you. You’re
very lucky.” The doctor moved to Emma and began examining her. “Oh,
very good responsiveness. Very good.”

Larry picked up his phone. He dialed
Lawrence.

.

I groaned when the phone flashed “L V D B.”
I took the call on the fourth ring, just before it went to voice
mail. “Yeh, Larry, what?”