Unrivaled feelings of luxury. Steam. Relaxation. Focus. I walk out and it billows behind me. I shut the door to the steamroom as fast as I can without slamming it. This is basic etiquette. I walk along the slate gray floor. I slide feet first into the cold pool. I do not like the coldest one. I prefer the warmest cold plunge this spa has, which is around sixty-two degrees. The coldest one is forty-five, the medium one is fifty-something. I come here to relax. I do not have patience for hushed conversations between couples. I want total silence. Some people can just not keep their mouths shut. Here I go again, giving in to negative thought patterns.
What am I to do? The cold chills my body. Sixty degrees is not warm for water. That is brisk—like the North Atlantic Ocean swimming in the early part of the season. Rocky beaches, cold fresh oysters with a squeeze of lemon, fried fish sandwiches, ice cold light beer. You get used to it after a while, but it’s cold. I pop up out of the pool and sit on a marble bench that is heated. I feel the warm blood rushing back into my legs. I slide into the saltwater pool, something like eighty degrees. I feel my body regulate, normalize, reenter a state of equilibrium. I keep my focus on the goal, total body relaxation. Total physical recovery.
I was on the brink of drug induced psychosis less than four years ago, now I own a boat. I used to look out of the peephole of my apartment door and grind my teeth so hard I wouldn’t be able to open my mouth the next day. They say that the American Dream is dead. They have been saying that since the American Dream was first dreamt, by Uncle Sam or Ben Franklin or Whoever, but you can still get lucky, a couple of breaks in a row is really all you need, and if you’re smart, that can basically set you up for life.
For me, it was insurance sales. I was one of three employees of a commercial insurance broker, and essentially two of them dropped off for unrelated and unfortunate reasons, all at the same time. Because of this, I was able to receive a much larger commission than I was truly entitled to. This happened right before several huge transactions took place, and I was the one who benefited. It was what they call a perfect storm. The broker didn’t care either way, his nut was unaffected. He made way more money than I did, but I kept more of mine. He owned a huge apartment and a second home. He had kids in private school. I was just starting out, still living in the studio apartment that I had been renting for seven years. The same studio apartment I lived in when I was a bartender. The same one I would bring hookers back to, a baggie of coke always in my pocket. At my normal income pace, I was already making a lot of money. I was already saving a lot, but when the windfall hit, I finally had a serious nest egg and I didn’t spend it all.
The broker I work for used to have happy hours with his clients at the bar I worked at. Commercial insurance is all relationships, it’s a lot of drinking, a lot of partying. So we got to know each other. He was always dressed in fine suits so he stuck out like a sore thumb. I finally asked him what the hell he did for a living. He explained it to me, and said if I got my license I could come work for him. I was paranoid back then, but for some reason, I trusted this guy. He seemed to have it figured out. Getting paid to hang out in a bar seemed easy enough to me. So I took the test and got a job working for him. Once I was out of the bar scene, working till 4am every night, it was easy to cut back on everything. I still drink at work functions, but I just have one or two beers then I have club soda with a lime, no one knows there is no alcohol in it.
So I started to save all the money I was making. I could easily live off the base salary they gave me, plus I wasn’t buying any extra goodies. Then Rick, the broker, had me work on my first few transactions and explained how there was a split of the commission until I was a full broker in his position. I saw the check and was shocked. I put all of the commission away. I invested everything extra. When my big check came, I just did what I usually did, except I put a small chunk into some riskier bets that paid off. I couldn’t believe my string of luck. It just kept happening.
So after a couple years of that, it was time to buy my boat. It’s a seventeen foot speed boat with an inboard outboard engine, 250 horsepower. I keep it in a marina on the north shore, which is okay, but when I really have money I will move it to the south.
People are always asking me to take them fishing, but I refuse. Fishing is boring, and to me, it’s a form of torture. I don’t mind fishing to eat the fish, but I’m not getting a bunch of fish guts all over the interior of my boat. It’s not for fishing, it’s more leisurely travel, it’s for riding around, it’s for hanging out.
I showered at the spa, they have really nice showers, it’s one of the best parts about going there. The shower hits your head and it also shoots out of the walls right at your abdomen. I still live in my little apartment, because I’d rather splurge on things like the spa and my boat. I find spending a ton of money on your house pointless, but I know others disagree. They say things like, Steve, you live there all of the time, shouldn’t that be the thing that you spend money on? I say back to them, well, first of all, I travel a lot for work, so that’s number one. Number two, you get used to your living situation really fast. Like super duper fast. Get a new big house, you’re used to it in like five minutes. You’re sitting on the couch, what are you doing? Reading? I doubt it. Watching TV? Looking at your phone? Why do I need a big house to do that? Plus you have to clean it. I have a nice place. It’s small, but it’s clean. My bed is very comfortable. I have tasteful, expensive furniture. I can spend good money on what I have because I don’t need a lot of it to fill up my place. I don’t have a fucking huge house full of Amazon endtables and shitty Ikea bookshelves. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but that’s how I prefer to live. Maybe you’d like to have a huge, new construction house that will fall apart in twenty years, full of your medium density fiberboard furniture, some kind of strange simulacra of something nice. Maybe that’s how you get your kicks. Me? I like boats.
I leave the spa and get on the train north to my apartment. I sway while standing, gripping the vertical handle, imagining the train as a daysailer out on the bay. I watch a stupid man get jerked around by the surf, too proud to open his hand and hold on. When I arrive back at sea level, I feel born again by the early spring sunlight. I walk around the corner to the laundromat that I bought two years ago. When I bought the boat, I bought this business too. The ledger must always be balanced. One asset, one liability. That’s all you need.
I notice right away that this guy I helped buy a policy two weeks ago for his warehouse in Maspeth is standing in the back of my laundromat, in a full slate gray suit, hunched over my vintage Galaga/ Ms. Pacman game that I bought and had shipped here. He seems to be rigorously pressing the shoot button, so he must be playing Galaga, the better game in my opinion, and why I bought it. I couldn’t care less about Ms. Pacman. His technique is quite novice, he is pressing the button way too hard, wasting his energy. He could get further in the game with less effort.
I am watching him play, judging his technique, and I realize something. I don’t own this laundromat, a holding company that I set up in Wyoming owns this laundromat, and that holding company has no name registered to the LLC because Wyoming does not require you to register one. So I am standing in a laundromat that is itself an operating LLC in New York, owned by a holding company in Delaware that is owned by another holding company in Wyoming. So how did this sketchy fuck from Maspeth Shipping and Logistics find me here? Is this a coincidence?
Just as I am wondering about all this, Abe turns to me and smiles.
“I just donated a couple dollars to your game here, Steve,” he says.
I try to walk towards one of my big commercial driers that has towels and sheets spinning in it.
“Hi Abe,” I say, looking at the clothes.
He walks over to me.
“Why are you pretending to do laundry, Steve?”
“What?”
“I said, why are you pretending to do laundry, Steve? I’ve been here all morning, I saw you walk in. I also watched the old Mexican woman put her towels into that drier. Are you an old Mexican lady, Steve?”
“That’s my wife, and she’s not old,” I try to smile but my face twists into an ugly grimace.
“That’s not your wife, Steve,” Abe says, laughing, “I’m pretty sure you aren’t married at all, let alone to that old woman, who you couldn’t pick out of a lineup if your life depended on it. And she is old, she’s as old as you are a liar.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t have to, friend.”
“We aren’t friends, I don’t know you,” I feel around in my left pocket for my knife. I always carry a small pocket knife with me. I have since I was in middle school. It’s a smart thing to do.
“We are friends, Steve. Aren’t you going to ask me how I knew this was your laundromat, how I knew where to find you?”
My mind has already been there. I am thinking that he is some sort of spy or secret agent or something. He is working with the government. The IRS perhaps. They are trying to nab me for tax evasion. Is he one of those postal service police people? Maybe I mailed something I wasn’t supposed to?
“Well I just asked your boss, don’t freak out. Your face got all pale on me for a second.”
I release the knife that I was clutching so tightly it hurt inside my pocket and pull my hand back out. I look down at my palm to see the red imprint of the fiberglass reinforced nylon handle. Of course he asked Rick, that fat slippery fuck. I should have never told him I was buying a laundromat, but I wanted him to know how far I had come.
“Jesus Christ on the cross, Abe. What do you want?”
“I’m Jewish.”
“I know you’re Jewish!”
“I’m just letting you know. Anyway, I wanted to ask you about another policy. I thought we could get lunch.”
“Why didn’t you just call me?”
“This was more fun, Steve. We need to get to know each other.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re doing business together now. This is how things are done. Nice place you have here, by the way. I think there is more we can do together. I have some store front property in Brooklyn.”
“That is actually interesting,” I say, exhaling.
“See, this is why I like you. You can put business first. You understand how it’s done.”
“Sure, man.”
I look around. Everything seems to be in order at the laundromat. I really just planned to walk in and see how things were going. I look at Abe’s mess of brown hair, his smirk, his top button undone and his loose blue tie. Who wears ties anymore, on a Saturday?
He walks towards the door and I follow him, he holds it open for me.
“So when you buy the policy on this place, do you sell it to yourself and keep the commission?” he asks as I walk out the door.
“Yes,” I say.
“I love that,” he says, as the door closes behind him.