That night at 930, the duo sat in front of the Board. A piece of cork board with a rough frame hung perilously on paper thin walls. The damned Mexicans were fighting still, or maybe they were partying. One could never tell with Mexicans. The Board was divided into three uneven columns, each column consisting of sticky-notes. Some seemed ancient. The Board required order to be effective, but grasped onto only a tiny bit – even the writing on the sticky notes were illegible and smudged. However, it was enough to get the job done, and Shirley and Toddy currently stared at it as if in awe of its clout. It was their filing cabinet; their means of control; their input and output.
“Did Hugo pay up the other day?” Asked Ryan.
“He gave me half.”
“Where’s the money, then?”
“I dunno. Maybe I spent it.”
Shirley crossed out Hugo’s total and entered the new total – half of the former amount. “Make sure you get that from him tomorrow, you hear? I ain’t no charity.”
Todd sipped his Schwampagne submissively. It would be a great day to get trashed, he thought.
The Board had grown throughout the years into a great web: sticky notes with names scribbled on them represented people and the amount owed for various types of weed. “Nothing was to be advanced” was Ryan’s maxim, but he always let things slip. The first rough column was comprised of people who owed. The middle column was for what he and Todd owed the dealers higher up than themselves; the ones they bought from in large quantities, namely Gato (a man who spoke little English and had lost his left pinky to frostbite while coming across the border from god-knows-what small town in Mexico; They called him Gato because he told them, “I make like cat. I lost a life in desert) and Pruge (A Russian born mafia wanna-be from the upper-north side who’d made it big in the upmarket but realized he could scam the up and coming drug dealers). And the third column, which was always greater in its total, was what Ryan and Todd smoked themselves, therefore, the money they lost. The utter madness of the Board made it hell to interpret.
“We owe quite a bit to Pruge. Whatdyasay we tell him about Mitzi’s batch and try to make a deal with him?”
“That guy always creeps me out, Squirley. Don’t you get the feeling that he’s gonna hit you over the head with his bottle of vodka and shank you with some home-grown Russian spear or something? I don’t like that guy. I don’t like him at all.”
“Well what about Gato?”
Todd mused on this idea. Gato could barely speak English, and dealing with him was hard enough. Plus Gato always wanted to party – “You like to party? Party wit me – I give you weed free homes.” No Gato couldn’t be dealt with.
“Why don’t we just sell the weed that Mitzi gives us and take our cut. Then try to – “
“But wholesale means money fast.”
“I know. But who the hell cares, anyways. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
“No we don’t.”
“Why you in such a hurry, Squirley?”
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