The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp Read Free Book Online

mousse working, zits congregating around their noses and mouths from the stress of working their first
real
jobs and paying their own bills.
    And you know what? It’s even more heartbreaking than the rain-forest dudes because I know that’s the world that’s waiting for me out there too. I already have to put on the slacks, the stiff shirts, and the ties just to work at Mr. Leon’s. The real world is coming, chugging straight at me like a bulldozer into the rain forest.
    I can sell, though. If I wanted to, I could talk nine out of ten of these young dudes into buying one of those pastel-colored leisure suits from the seventies. They’re coming back in style, I’d say. You look like Burt Reynolds. All you need is a mustache.
    But that’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to spend my days nagging people to buy things they don’t need. Maybe if I could find something to believe in—some radical new product that would save the ozone layer or something—I’d be a helluva salesman then.
    But Mr. Leon’s is what I have for right now. My stepfather, Geech, got the job for me. I wanted to work in a nuthouse, but those jobs are hard to come by, and Geech was so proud of himself for having connections in the business world that he couldn’t hear anything I was saying. “I got into sales when I was fourteen,” he boasts. “And I owned my own plumbing supply business before I was thirty-five.”
    Plumbing supplies. Big deal.
    Anyway, folding shirts provides me with enough cash to make car payments and hold on to a decent chunk of partying funds in the process. Besides, the job’s not all bad. You just have to look for the positive side, that’s what I always say.
    For example, my manager, Bob Lewis, is a great guy. I mean, I love this dude. He has dreams. He’s always talking about how he’s going to strike it rich. Depending on what day it is, he’s all about starting up his own motivational seminars for babies or writing a screenplay about space dinosaurs or inventing a diet involving walnut ice cream and fish sticks.
    He has all sorts of theme-restaurant ideas like places that revolve around the foods of different states—Alaskan Al’s, Wisconsin Willie’s, Idaho Ida’s. I guess the Idaho one would serve nothing but potatoes. My favorite restaurant, though, had to be the miniature golf place. There’d be some different dish to sample at each hole and the price would depend on your score. I could see customers getting pretty full by the time they finished eighteen holes.
    I never get tired of his stories. I egg him on to tell them. But I know he’ll never do any of those things. You know why? Because he doesn’t really care about getting rich. He just likes to dream. What he really, really cares about is his family—his lumpy little wife and two lumpy little children. That’s where his commitment is. That’s where all of his energy goes.
    His wife isn’t attractive in any official way, but she is beautiful. It’s awesome when she shows up at the store—her face beams, his face beams, and I’m sure my face beams just from watching the two of them. Same thing with his kids, Kelsey and Jake. They’re five and seven years old and can’t wait for their dad to hoist them up in the air and toss them around. He calls Kelsey “butterbean” and Jake “spud.” Every time they leave the store, I go, “Bob, why don’t you adopt me?”
    Anyway, since Bob’s the world’s greatest husband and family man, I figure he might have some decent advice to put forth on the whole Cassidy fiasco. It’s late in the afternoon, and a customer hasn’t walked through the door in two hours, so we’re sitting around with our pop-machine pop, shooting the breeze. Bob’s wearing his usual starched blue shirt that shows off his sweat stains royally about this time of day. He’s got the look of a guy who probably had a pretty athletic build at one time—back before he started putting away his wife’s chicken-fried