Free I Think You're Totally Wrong by David Shields Page B

guarantee.” Let me tell you about “no guarantee.”
    DAVID: When Laurie and I had the debate whether to have a second child, I had published four books.
Remote
had just come out. It’s not as if
Remote
set the world on fire, but it did get a lot of attention. I was an associate professor, with tenure, at the UW. I had found my métier: I was working on
Black Planet
and I thought, man—
    Train whistle blows
.
    DAVID: Baroooouh!
    It does feel selfish. Everything is selfish. If you have four children, you’re doing it for yourself. You’re doing it for them, but you’re doing it for your own self-fulfillment. I feel okay about it. It’s not as if, you know—did I let Laurie down?
    CALEB: You want the kid entering the world to a welcome.
    DAVID: I’m sure, if we had had a second child, it would have brought greater complexity and joy into our lives. It was mainly a financial thing.
    CALEB: If you knew you’d be making a hundred and twenty-five grand in the future—
    DAVID: I was making about thirty-five, and Laurie was making twenty-five, and I wanted to be able to pay for Natalie’s education.… Ah, here’s the meth lab house.

    DAVID: I can see how, in the construction business, cocaine must be a bit of an occupational hazard.
    CALEB: I worked in Snohomish with this Coupeville guy who blew almost his entire paycheck on crack. He’d cook rock on the job. Smart guy, though. I’m in college and by the time I graduate he’s leading a crew, youngest guy on the job, but loved the drug. Then got into meth. He’s now doing time in Monroe. Barouh’s stayed away from that kind of trouble.… Okay, we got Barouh’s map. Let’s see, Highway 2—this trail takes us to Dorothy Lake.
    DAVID: We have to drive, then hike?
    CALEB: Seven miles of bad dirt road, then an hour hike. Here’s my Washington State Parks pass.
    DAVID: Is it a tough hike?
    CALEB: A lot of up and down.
    DAVID: That’s fine.
    CALEB: A man’s hike!
    DAVID: A mile each way?
    CALEB: Two.
    DAVID: Basically, with my back, I can’t do a lot of bending, but I’m up for exploring.

    Driving very slowly on a U.S. Forest Service dirt road
.
    CALEB: How do you say it?
    DAVID: Deus ex machina—god from the machine. In ancient Greek plays, a god would descend from above the stage and come to the rescue.
    CALEB: Sometimes I watch TV with Terry, and every time a deus ex machina pops up to save the day and get the writer out of a jam, I point this out. She tells me to shut up and enjoy the show.
(phone rings)
Speak of the devil.

    CALEB: Did my mother hug you yesterday?
    DAVID: Maybe she craves touch.
    CALEB: Terry’s parents are divorced and remarried, so I have two fathers-in-law. My mother freaks them both out with her hugging.
    DAVID: Don’t they give her a little leeway?
    CALEB: It still freaks them out.

    CALEB: George Bush is not really evil.
    DAVID: He’s not?
    CALEB: I would say not.
    DAVID: You don’t think what he did in Iraq is evil?
    CALEB: And I imagine you think Cheney is even—
    DAVID: Of course.
    CALEB: My friend Vince and I were talking about George Bush. He listed the usual: no weapons of mass destruction, oil, Halliburton, revenge for his father, and then he said that even though he’s against capital punishment, he would have liked to see George Bush assassinated. That’s just odd.
    DAVID: I very strongly want Bush to feel the awfulness of what he’s done. I wanted
Checkpoint
—
    CALEB: —
Checkpoint
?
    DAVID: —Nicholson Baker’s fantasy about Bush getting assassinated. I wanted it to end with Bush dead.
    CALEB: Hillary Clinton signed on. The U.S. didn’t do it alone. It was multilateral; a lot of nations signed on.
    DAVID: Not really.
    CALEB: Bush is many things, but he ain’t “evil.”
    DAVID: He’s the embodiment of evil.
    CALEB: In that chapter of yours, you portray him