2005-09-08 - 7:52 p.m.
Ed Perales is the fourth person in the smoky living room of Nick�s mom�s house. Ed was also not very impressed with the size of Nick�s lighter when magnified by the glass of water in front of it. Ed lives in a room within his mom�s apartment. He recently quit/was let go/got fired from a telemarketing job. He would call people at their homes and ask them if they wanted their air conditioners serviced. Most people did not want to get their air conditioners serviced. Ed thought there were going to be a lot of hot people this summer when none of their air conditioners got properly serviced.
Just the way it goes.
Dewey Stevens is one of my favorite characters. He reminds me the most of myself. At this point in his life he has lived in Ohio twice (once for ten years and once for ten weeks) and Arizona. He will be heading to Georgia soon. He will end up in California. People like Nick with big imaginations often wind up in California. People like Nick usually use their big imaginations to wait on tables in California.
Just the way it goes.
At this point in the smoky room the silence has made Nick feel very desperate. He saw a bud on the table and moved it to be behind the glass of water.
***
Look how big this bud is. It�s like a half-ounce.
***
Chuck does not have a good imagination but there is a good reason for that:
Chuck did a lot of acid in high school. He is now under the interesting grip of perma-fry. It is more interesting to those around him than it is to himself. The ill effects he suffers from, other than not having a good imagination, are trails (that means that objects do not hold their integrity in his eyes as they become celestial dust beacons without any shape when in movement), a very short temper and the occasional back spasm. The last time he had an idea that can be solely accredited to him was when he was on two hits of Madd Hatter. He figured out the reason why snakes slither instead of crawl. He soon forgot his innovative deduction and to this day wonders why snakes were not given arms to pull themselves along the ground or even legs to walk upon the ground. It seems a curse to have to move along your belly to get anywhere.
He met Dewey at a party in which no girls showed up.
Just the way it goes.
Chuck knew Nick the longest of the other three that were not Nick (Nick has known himself the longest of the four) and heard the desperate quality in Nick�s tone when holding the bud to the water. He decided to say something. It was short tempered and lacked imagination.
Listen:
***
That�s a nickel at best, even with Dewey weighing it.
***
Dewey was not working at the time. He was buying quarter-pounds of marijuana (that would be four ounces) for one-hundred and twenty-five dollars. He would keep a half-ounce for himself and sell the other fourteen twenty sacks for twenty dollars apiece. A twenty sack was seven grams. If Dewey sold all fourteen twenty sacks that would make two-hundred and eighty dollars or a profit of one-hundred and fifty-five dollars. The problem Dewey always ran into was his personal cut of two twenty sacks would become exhausted before the allotment of fourteen twenty sacks had all been sold.
So, Dewey never netted the full one-hundred and fifty-five dollar profit.
He did get himself and the other three guys in the smoky living room of Nick�s mom�s house high everyday though.
That should count for something.
***
Hey man, we gotta have money if we are going to make this thing work.
***
Dewey had another job. It paid him less than his job dealing marijuana in seven gram increments. He was the owner, director, writer and producer of the fledgling company of Job Rim Productions. He was the one that called this meeting.
He told the other guys this:
***
I wanna have a meeting at Nick�s mom�s house.
***
Nick�s mom�s house was also a set for the movie they were trying to make. He reached into his pocket for the fifty dollar bill he had in there. He sold fifty dollars worth of weed to one of Chuck�s friends. Chuck�s friend had a name too. Dewey did not know how much fifty dollars was. Thirty dollars bought two twenty sacks but sixty dollars buys four twenty sacks or an ounce. Dewey gave Brian (this is Chuck�s friend from earlier) two twenty sacks and six grams from another one. His scale is off by one gram and he always ends up smoking it.
Just the way it goes.
