I told Skye I was heading up north for a reunion weekend in the Adirondacks with some of my old buddies, guys I wanted to ask to be my groomsmen. The irony is, it wasn’t exactly a lie.
When I arrived in Langs Valley yesterday afternoon, I wasted no time looking up my old buddy Andy Raymond. Andy and I were co-captains of the varsity football team back in the day, before he developed a particularly bad crack habit and got replaced. I wasn’t surprised to find that he still lives in Langs Valley—too many people get stuck here—and once I got his address, I knocked right on his front door. I know enough about drugs to know what an addict looks like when I see one, and let me tell you, Dr. K, Andy fit the bill. So did his wife—a woman named Shelly from Albany with flaming-red hair and giant pupils.
Andy was shocked to see me, but he remembered who I was as though it were just yesterday we were leading group sprints around the track. For him, it might well have been yesterday. For me, that was another lifetime.
I clapped Andy on the back and got straight to the point, spelling it out plainly. I told him what I needed and what I was offering. He said he knew four or five other local guys around our age who were desperate for some cash, one being my old pal Scott Lynch. I had Andy round them up.
It felt a bit sad, how little it shocked me to see that Langs Valley had been swallowed up by the ever-worsening opioid crisis. This poor town never stood a chance.
But here’s the good thing about opioid addicts: compared to crackheads, they can almost pass for normal. I’d spent enough time high on rocks to know that it turns you into a twitchy, volatile creature if you’re not careful. On the contrary, opioid addicts often look like your average Jack and Jill, and they tend to be quite functional. Sure, they might seem a bit smiley and numbed out, but so do lots of people at weddings. As far as drug addicts go, this is a relatively clean and presentable bunch.
I knew right away that Andy, Scott, and their friends would work just fine. They’ll need to spruce themselves up a bit and commit to being on their A games for the wedding weekend, but my options are limited, and you’ve got to work with what you have, Dr. K.
So, in addition to Skye’s brother, there you have my groomsmen: Andy and Scott, my “childhood friends from growing up in Phoenix”; Dave and Brandon, my “closest buddies from NYU”; Wally, my “only male cousin.” They’ve each promised to bring their wives and act presentable and thoroughly believable in their roles for the weekend of September 21. Wally, who Andy assures me is the most articulate of the bunch, will serve as the best man, toast and all.
This arrangement comes at a cost. In addition to providing accommodations for all five men and their dates, I’ve promised them each $1,500 to see this thing through （$1,700 for Wally）。 They get half the money up front, and the rest after the wedding.
Andy was really into the whole thing and impressed with my plan in general; he said he genuinely understood the logic behind it, and that he would do anything to save his marriage with Shelly. It was nice to talk to someone about it, Dr. K, especially a guy like Andy from my side of the tracks, someone who knows where I’m coming from. Andy even offered to secure a couple of “older guests” to play my aunt and uncle from Phoenix. For a small fee, with a cut for himself. Life isn’t cheap, Dr. K. But you know that. It’s why you charge such a whopping hourly rate.
But I’m looking at this as an investment. Paying off the groomsmen and a couple of wedding guests is going to be chump change in relation to the final payout. And in the meantime, I just have to keep my eye on the prize.
That’s another issue I’m bumping up against. The millions of dollars I stand to make when all of this is said and done. I’ve spent so much time thinking through every elaborate piece of this plan; I don’t know how I missed something so vital.
Here’s what happened. When I was home in New Haven earlier last month, visiting my family for the first time since I left in October, Heather asked me why I hadn’t been transferring payments to our Chase account from my new bank account in Dubai. My new bank account in Dubai—it took me a couple of moments to understand what she could even be referring to. I swear, Dr. K, in my new life as a domestic criminal, there’s a hell of a lot to keep track of. Thank God for this fucking diary.
So, right. My fake bank account in Dubai where I’m receiving a salary from my fake job in the United Arab Emirates. That bank account.
I promised Heather I would get right on transferring the money as soon as I got back to Dubai, and she said that I’d better because the balance in our Chase account was getting low.
Now, this is the part I hadn’t adequately formulated. In keeping my eye so firmly rooted on the prize, I’d forgotten that the prize would not actually be available until several months after my marriage to Skye in September. Possibly longer than that, because we all know legal shit takes forever. And in the meantime, I’d promised my wife steady payments from my new and improved salary.
I don’t know what I was thinking, promising Heather those payments so far in advance. I’d nearly forgotten about it until yesterday, when I got back to my motel room after being at Andy Raymond’s and saw a text message from Heather that froze my blood.
Where the HELL is the money you said you’d transfer? It’s been over a month and nothing is coming in. Our refrigerator broke and I had to pay the guy to fix it and there’s currently $71 in our Chase account.
I’m telling you, Doc, I can’t catch a break. I barely slept last night, but somewhere between three and four in the morning I came to what I believe will be a solid solution.
Now that Skye and I are engaged, we have every reason to open a joint checking account. Couples do it all the time; presenting the idea certainly wouldn’t be cause for suspicion. I’ve already been honest with Skye that I haven’t had the greatest year financially. So, what I’ll do is, I’ll tell her I’m still waiting on several payments to come in from clients, but that in the meantime I’m short on change to cover the cost of the groomsmen’s custom tuxes along with some other wedding-related expenses. I’ll explain that that’s what made me think of proposing a joint bank account, which we’ll probably want soon anyway.
I’ll call Skye on my drive back to New York later today and present the idea. She’s too crazy for me to question it.
APRIL 10, 2019
Dear Dr. K,
Ta-da! This morning, Skye and I officially opened a joint account at Bank of America.
I knew she’d be fully on board, and she is, so long as I promise to update the new direct-deposit information on our Con Ed, Spectrum, and National Grid accounts. Skye hates dealing with bills and bank accounts and numbers in general, which is perfect, because now she won’t have to. I completed most of the paperwork while Skye scrolled through Instagram, oblivious. Once everything was finalized and I saw the numbers—the amount of money in my own checking account—I nearly collapsed in front of the teller.
After we left the bank, Skye headed home and I made my way to the “WeWork” I supposedly work from, actually a coffee shop on the Upper West Side called JoJo’s with Wi-Fi and free refills. I don’t always come to JoJo’s—sometimes I opt for a different cafe. Sometimes I go to a museum or to the movies or take the subway to Brooklyn and walk until it’s time to head home to Skye. But today I sit in JoJo’s thinking about the numbers in my bank account and how I made that happen, and it’s really something, Dr. K. I think about how I’m going to proceed from here.