Free The Fat Artist and Other Stories by Benjamin Hale Page A

see this shit, so I meet up with him and take a look at it and sure enough he aint shittin me. Shit is fucking gold , man. And I’m broke as a joke right now cause ever since I got out of jail I been trying to go straight. If I sold this shit off for even like half what it’s worth I’m gonna be in good shape, I think. I can not turn this shit down, so I throw down and buy it all off him right then and there for half a grand. And then I go home, and the next day I get a surprise visit from my probation officer. She didn’t search the place or nothing, she’s just like checkin up on me to make sure I got a job and shit, which I do, but she scares the fuckin shit out of me, right? I’m all standin there and she’s talkin to me and the whole time I’m all like shakin in my boots cause alls I can think about is all that yay all rolled up in a sock in my closet, and I’m trying to stay cool, and I do, and she goes away, but soon as she’s gone I’m having some extremeass second thoughts about my little purchasing decision yesterday. You know what caveat emptor means? Caleb goes, what? I go, it means don’t go round buying a shitload of coke when you’re on probation and you got some bitch from the fuckin government coming round at randomass intervals checking up on your ass. So, I say to Caleb, that all happened yesterday. So now I realize how much I fucked up. I bought all this yay, and I realize now, I been in jail for damn near two years, and in that time all my contacts dried up. I don’t hardly know nobody in town no more. I don’t know who the fuck to sell it to. And for obvious reasons I aint about to try to sell it to some dog I don’t know all that well. And that, Caleb, is what brings me to my unhappy conclusion . I have got to get rid of this shit ASAP, and I figure if I can’t turn a profit on it I might as well sell it for what I paid for it just to get rid of it, which is a fuckin steal considering the quality of this shit. So. You interested? And then he lets a couple seconds go by, like he’s all busy thinking it over, like he don’t want to make it look like his pussy’s already all wet over it, but I can see in them little pig eyes of his he’s already made his decision. Yeah, he says, yeah, I’m interested. Good, I say. And then we talk details and he says he’ll give me the five hunnerd I say I paid for it, which is the best offer I got for a bunch of coke that don’t even exist. He says today’s my lucky day cause today was payday and he’s got the cash on him right now if I got the shit on me. I say good for you, but I don’t have the shit on me. My whole unfortunate legal situation’s made me real paranoid about this kind of shit, and I went and hid it in the woods. He goes, what the fuck? I go, I know, it sounds crazy, dog, but I wanted that shit the fuck out of my house. I put it in a fuckin coffee can and hid it a little ways off a trail in Centennial Park. You know up on that hill off Lookout Road? It’s like five-ten minutes from here? He agrees, says yeah, yeah, says he knows it. So I say, you got wheels? I drove the company van down here after work, he says, cause I got the van till close and they aint got no way of knowing what I do with it after. Okay, good, I say. What? Yeah, yeah, we’re still at the Downer. I dunno, nine? Nine fifteen? Yeah no. Yeah. Now Caleb Quinn’s shithoused, yeah, but I figure he’s a pretty good drunk driver from years of practice so I guess he’s still basically good to drive. We’re only going one way, anyway, I think. So he goes off to piss and I call Kelly on his cell, but it aint on, which kinda scares me a little cause he’s supposed to pick up. What? Yeah, I guess it was like about nine thirty, almost ten at that point. Last time I looked at a clock it was nine, don’t know where the fuck a whole hour went. I start leaving a message for Kelly but then I stop and put down the phone cause I see Caleb come out of the bathroom. Now