Download PDF­­­ Here

Giving Jimmy a Chance

Message one said, “This is Billy Haywood.”

Now that’s a voice I hadn’t heard in at least ten years, I thought. It was still southern and deep, but much older and tired sounding.

“You may not rememba’ me….  I own Fa-gins.  Call me.”

Of course, I remembered you.  You were the success story I last saw, what, fifteen years ago delivering paperwork for the sale of one of your restaurants.  I met you at House of Babes-- the strip club you owned at the time-- waited for you while watching girls on poles at three in the afternoon.  Music too loud in the near empty room. Two guys stage-side like some Jim Croce song drinking loneliness.  Me feeling out of place.  I remembered your cluttered back office and going over the paperwork with my broker hat on.  After we were done with business you said, ‘Look at the ass on that chick in the poste’ on the wall.’  And I looked over at the poster of this perfectly curved ass.  Then I remembered you saying something about getting strange is always better than the same old thing with the wife-- and giving me that I’ve got it made look.  You may have it made, I thought, but I’m outta here with my paperwork signed and commission earned.  Hasta la vista, baby.

Voice message two was Billy also. “Wasn’t sure ya got the message.  Here’s ma mobile.” So even though I was home.  Even though it was after hours, I called back.

“Billy Haywood,” I said, trying to act enthusiastic, preparing to pass him up, not wanting to waste a minute, doing the time versus dollars cost benefit calculation in my head with every syllable. “Of course, I remember you.”

He went right at it, deliberate. “I want to sell Fa-gins.  This is confidential righ’? My son runs it and can’t handle the paperwork.  I don’ want him knowin’ I’m sell’n.  I had it sold and they pulled out.  I told em ‘You just don’ have the balls do ya?’ and they said, ‘Yea, we don’ have the balls’.  I’m blind now.   Can’t drive. Haven’t for eight years-- and with the liver cirrhosis it’s over for me I guess.”

“I suppose we’ll need to meet,” I said, regretting saying it, thinking-- son doesn’t need to know? Is a debt due?  But I thought I remembered Billy paying me money once for selling one of his restaurants.  He was calling me again. Maybe there was a commission in here somewhere.  We made arrangements for the next day at Fagin’s in the morning when no one would be there.  But there was something that went down on that old club deal that I couldn’t quite remember … 

“Come to the door all the way to the riiight.”

#

Billy Haywood, I thought, looking at the carved marble plaque on my home office wall which said, ‘You Can’t Build a Reputation on What You’re Going to Do’ and another one with Vince Lombardi, ‘Winning is Everything’.  What was it I can’t remember? And then it struck me.  Out of hundreds of sales, I remembered this one from fifteen years ago.  Oh yeah, I reflected, tomorrow we are going to have a conversation about the commission I didn’t get for the sale of your club.  Fifteen years, but it’s come to me. You and your shyster lawyer closed the deal without inviting me, the broker.  I remember not getting dime one, only a judgement-- worthless unless you can collect.  Which I didn’t.  You needed me to find the buyer.  You needed me to sell the buyer.  But once found and once sold I was just an inconvenience.  Paybacks are a bitch ole Billy.

I called to my wife in the other room.  “Sally, you wouldn’t believe who I was just talking to.  Billy Haywood.”

“Who?”

“Billy Haywood.  That jerk strip club owner who stiffed me years ago.”

“I just don’t remember,” she said, and went back to reading her book not really paying attention.

She’s another one, I thought.  She enjoys the money, the eating out, the lifestyle, but has no real appreciation for what I do.  The work it takes. I’d be better off alone.  In fact, a few more sales and I can be alone, maybe file for divorce.  Move on, I guess.

#

The next morning, I pulled into the parking lot.  Fagin’s Good Times was in an old low-slung strip shopping center built in the seventies, mostly abandoned now, looking like something ten years after the apocalypse under ash sky.  The parking lot was in disrepair, trash was wind swept into the gutters.  Fagin’s had the anchor spot of six or eight stores. Spaces on either side said For Lease written on them and a phone number.  The Fagin’s Good Times plastic and metal sign was rusty with letters missing and read Fa-in’s Good T-mes.  The dirty windows were blacked out so you couldn’t see in.  I pulled on the door on the right. Locked.  As I walked away there was a rap on the black window. I went back and the door was ajar and I gave it a hard tug as it was stuck in the frame.

Standing some feet away as I entered was a tall old man in the dim light - long dark stringy grey once blond hair swept down both sides of his thin craggy white face with hanging skin making him look thinner.  I still recognized Billy under it all, remembered him from years before as being a handsome man with a square jaw, high cheekbones, and blue eyes. There wasn’t much left though.   His eyes looked at me but I could tell this was just pretend or maybe to be polite.  Dead eyes have no focus, more like crystal blue marbles, I thought.  His body looked thin, but he had sixty plus pounds on his stomach covered by a dirty red State sweatshirt.  He didn’t have the weight last time I saw him.

Billy smiled a little and I remembered that charisma as he said, “It’s been a whil.”

He offered coffee and I followed into the kitchen.  Stale sour hung in the air. The grey cement kitchen floor was slick. In the near dark Billy felt for the coffee pot and bags. At first, I was confused why the lights weren’t on.  He asked me “Is that reg-lar or de-caf?” handing me a bag.  I said regular, not knowing what I was getting because I couldn’t see it, took the bag, and poured it in the filter.  In a minute the drip started and I pulled the coffee pot.  As I did the coffee hadn’t all dripped down yet from the machine and continued to drip on the burner, down on to the counter, to the floor.  I replaced the pot and didn’t mention it. Grimy work tables, knives in racks, and upright refrigerators looked at us in the dark, apathetic and burned out.

“Help me up,” Billy said, giving me a little embarrassed smile after crouching down to pick something up from the floor.  I gave him my arm and we struggled together to get him standing.  Another embarrassed smile.  “Fuck,” he said when we got him standing, “let’s go si down.”

Sitting in a dim booth, the first one of six or eight all lined up next to the windows, Billy raised himself up a little, as if he was making an announcement to the room, and said, “Can’t is a word I’ve neve’ used my whole life.”  He paused and then said, “I CAN NOT do it,” saying the words “CAN NOT” separately, and then brought himself back down and slumped in on himself.  I noticed he had a cigarette in his hand with a half inch of ash on the end and wondered how he lit it.  He then hesitated, like he wanted to add something but decided against it-- changed his mind and said, “It comes back every few months. Wake up with my eyes. Can even read a paper.  Dies out in a few hours.”

We sat a while, smoke drifting off the cigarette, and I asked him my broker questions, trying to get myself worked up to bring up that old deal.  But he just sat there listening and looking at me with those dead blue marbles.  When he did speak, I nodded at his points and then realized it would be better to say Uh Huh. No sense nodding when you’re listening to a blind man, I thought, feeling stupid again. He shared with me his son Jimmy had dropped out of school and was running the restaurant.

“Billy, you should tell your son you want to sell,” I said.  “He’s going to find out anyway and it will only get in the way.”  I was thinking about the commission.

Billy turned his head my way.  I could see the blood vessels purple tracking down the side of his face.  The skin looked paper thin. Ragged hair pulled behind the ears.  He said, “I’ll tell him after we fin’ a buyer. I’m in a messy divorce with Veronica and I don’ want an’body to know. It’s mine to sell ain’t it?”

“Yes, it’s yours to sell.  I can do it any way you’d like.” But I was thinking about the divorce and how that would make the sale more complicated, and how that was going to make it harder to get my money for that old screw job when the club sold.

With stubbornness and pride welling up like a last gasp, Billy said, “I’m self-made.  Nobody gave me nothin’. I was at the hospital and told em I was leavin’ in five minutes. They told me I couldn’t leave.  I asked why and they said I still had my wrist gear for the drugs. I ripped that gear ri’ outta my arm.  Hurt like hell. Blood everywhere. I told em I wanted to talk with somebody of A-THOR-I-TY ri’ now.”

I was going to say, ‘You know Billy, we’re all looking mortality in the face.  I had a heart attack myself a couple of years ago.’ I was going to say it quietly, offering some kind of false solace I suppose.  But I didn’t say it.  And right then I thought to myself what a weasel I’d become over the years.  Maybe it had been coming on for a while.  I don’t know.  Maybe.  But it seemed it was always the commission, and never the humanity, and I was sick of it.  Is Billy me? In three years?  Less?   Something clicked inside me sitting there looking at this broken man.  Something rolled over that had been on the edge.  I was ashamed. Ashamed for who I was, what I’d become.  I know people don’t change really.  But why not?  Why not even while sitting on faded red booths, while feeling the old springs give way, while talking with a blind man?

Billy’s eyes rested on the black windows.  He was lost in thought, a dreamlike reverie of times past.  I wasn’t sure he remembered I was still here.  The black, nearly opaque, windows made the light flat on the outside.

It struck me he had a son near my son’s age with names in common.   I said, “I have a son just like you and with the same first name, James.  I told my James he could go to any school he could get himself into. He picked the most expensive of course, but I didn’t ever want him to say I didn’t give him the chance. I didn’t ever want him to say I wouldn’t let him go somewhere because I didn’t think he could do it.”  I offered all that because it came to me to say it. Once out though I thought it sounded arrogant like I was saying I was a better father. I felt I had no right to say it but couldn’t pull it back after I did.  And for some reason I couldn’t understand, it was no longer about the commission, and no longer about him and his lawyer screwing me on that old deal.

Billy just sat there with his face turned to those windows, as I imagined he had for many years, now in a dreamlike reverie, remembering dark mornings like this all alone waiting for the day, getting ready to serve all those customers who have now moved on.  He could see what wasn’t there.   I wasn’t sure he was listening, or maybe in his own head he was wondering when ‘I can’ changed to ‘I can not’ and slipped up on him.

I paused and said, “Sell the restaurant to your son on terms he agrees - with owner financing.  If he fails to make the payments to you take it back. Then later he won’t fight you on the sale and you still gave him the chance.”

Billy looked at me kind of quizzical, gave a little chuckle into the dark, and said, “That’s funny advice coming from a broker. There’d be no commission if I did that.” His face then tensed up.  “He called me this morn’n.  Said if someone calls tell em he slept in the restaurant. Not long after his girlfriend calls.  I tell her I saw Jimmy last night sleep’n in the booth.”

“Sounds like he’s been two timing,” I said, trying to make it sound light.

“He’s four and six timin’,” Billy responding quickly, then paused and said.  “Worse, I’m lyin’ for em.  All he cares about is the Porsche… eight-hundred a month... Chee-rist..  I’ll never see the money. What do I have?  Three years?  Maybe?  Meanwhil’, Veronica stopped payn’ my Blue Cross. I know it was spite. I’ve got a daughter.  Attends State.  Two DWIs and one-hundred grand in wrecks.”    Billy then relaxed and said, “Nothing I can do about any of it. Not now. This was my first restaurant. Andy Diakos let me have the kitchen equipment with nothn’ down. I called Andy and said, ‘Andy, I fucked up.  I forgot to order tables and chairs.’  Me and Andy found red picnic tables for nineteen ninety-five each.  Opened with em.”

I could see Billy seeing it new, and not seeing the dirty drop ceiling with water stains, worn out carpet, faded torn pictures of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean on the wall.  He was seeing it all as it was with those new red picnic tables.

We talked about my needing to talk with his accountant and landlord. “Accountants don’t know it all,” he added, and got up to walk me out.

In the doorway I turned to shake Billy’s hand.  He couldn’t see I was doing that so I let my hand drop, once again feeling stupid. He started to turn, looked like he remembered something, and then turned back and said “I heard about your heart attack. I was sorry to hear about it.  You ok?” I couldn’t believe he remembered about that.  I couldn’t believe he took the time to ask.  All I said was, “Thank you Billy for asking.  I’m alright now.”

I thought he’d turn back into the doorway but he just stood there like he had something else-- trying to think it out.  I started to ask if he needed help but before I could he moved in close like he was sharing a secret.  I could smell cigarettes and his blue marble eyes showed runny yellow in the whites.  He said, “I hadn’t thought it.  I hadn’t thought about what you said. Givin’ my Jimmy a chance and all.”

#

At home, there was Sally sitting in her chair watching her shows, all snugged down in her pajamas.  I felt urgent inside, like she’d been waiting for me to show up for as long as I could remember, and I was late.  She looked at my face, puzzled, startled even. She was beautiful.

She said, “What is it? You’re upset. Why … you’re crying.”

“I am upset. I’ve been a shit.  A shit for a long time.  And I’m sorry.”

END