Self-Esteem (24 page)

“Strange things? Like what?”

“Well, for one,” Dorothy said carefully, “I had this guy call me on my mobile phone a little while ago. I was at the dry cleaners and he was sitting in a van in the parking lot with a Happy Pappy mask on.”

Peters snickered, which Dorothy thought odd.

“I’m sorry. A mask?” he asked.

“Yeah, a mask. I thought he was following me when I came in here.”

“Did you call the police?”

Dorothy was almost offended by the question. “No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I thought they might laugh like you just did.”

“I’m sorry,” Peters said. It was the only time Dorothy could remember Peters showing anything close to remorse. “It’s just your husband is a famous self-help book writer. You’re going to get some weirdoes every now and then. I even get them and I’m not famous.”

“You’re a little famous,” Dorothy said exhaling heavily. She really was exhausted.

“Dorothy. Do you want to come to my place this afternoon? Just relax and talk about this?”

She didn’t look up. “You know that’s an embarrassing question.”

“Why? It shouldn’t be. I just want to help you.”

She looked up at him as her eyes filled with tears. “That’s nice of you, Phil. But I can’t.”

“Why not? I’d like to discuss something with you, Dorothy.”

“Something important.”

“What, Phil? Tell me.”

“At my place, okay?”

They walked onto the sidewalk where the afternoon sun was starting to introduce itself from behind the morning clouds. Dorothy figured it was around two in the afternoon. It looked like she was going to waste her entire day. Of course, her main task was to decide what she was going to do if Jim didn’t come home, as well as what she would do if he did.

And what about Cal? He had always been the most important consideration. But the way he had been acting lately, she didn’t want to think of him at all. She had weathered the hardest parts of her marriage with a
what’s best for the child
attitude, but now that Cal was months away from being legally grown, that defense wasn’t standing up.

“I really enjoyed our little chat, Dorothy,” Peters said awkwardly.

Dorothy knew this was a polite remark. They hadn’t really had a chat at all.

“I appreciate it, Phil. You’re a good friend to both of us. You know that?”

Dorothy, still feeling unsettled and vulnerable, put her arm around Peters and gave him a hug — the first she’d ever given him.

“Anything I can do, Dorothy,” he said softly.

Dorothy looked up at Peters’ tall frame. He looked so respectful and authoritative, so in control. She thought about her husband and how weak he was, how his petty affairs were so demeaning — not just to her but to him as well.

She caught herself holding onto him a moment longer.

“I’d like to show you something, Dorothy. But it has to be at the right moment.”

“What?” she asked. Peters was the most remote person she had ever met — though she knew she didn’t really know him well.

“I’d like to show you something, something special.”

She paused a moment.

“It’s something that can help you,” he said.

It was noon and Lee Burns had his head cocked back and his eyes closed. He couldn’t help it; he was in ecstasy. He had just spent the morning with his second top selling writer, Donovan Heller, who cracked the corporate business/motivational market just three months ago with a top seller called
You Can Sell It … and Keep It Too
. Lee and Heller had just spent the morning working out the details of his next release entitled
Fortress Around Your Account
, along with an accompanying wall calendar.

Donovan is so easy to deal with, Lee was thinking. So professional. Never humdrum or difficult about anything. Always thinking of money. No silly aspirations to be an artist.

Since the publication of Crawford’s last book, Lee had been wondering how long the franchise would hold out. He knew, for example, that the
Happy Pappy Show
was going to be a dagger in the heart of the
Self
Series
in the long run. But the way he saw it, it was going to sink pretty soon regardless. He always knew this, even though he never gave a hint to Crawford. Yes, there’ll be a time when you can write your little novel, he often thought. Yes, self-help books have to go sometime. Even most diet books don’t cross generations like novels do. There’s no self-help
Catcher in the Rye
. The next generation looks back, sees that the people who bought those books are still fat and miserable, and they try something else.

Lee’s head eased further back as he let his mind drift away from business. Thing was, Kim Cox, Lee’s devoted secretary for the past seventeen months, was on her knees performing an act that would allow her to take the rest of the afternoon off with pay.

Surprisingly, the suggestion of such an arrangement had actually come from Cox herself after reading Crawford’s formative work
Self-Confidence
.

When we have self-confidence, we not only see opportunity awaiting us, but we create it proactively. For example, have you ever thought about suggesting a mutually-beneficial arrangement with someone like your spouse or your boss, but chose not to for fear of being rejected?

Cox loved the way Crawford put things into perspective.

It could be any arrangement at all. It could be suggesting to your wife that you make dinner one night a week in exchange for having a group of buddies over to watch the big game that weekend. Or…

She thought he was so diplomatic, too. She always imagined what a wonderful home life he must have.

You could ask your boss what you might do in exchange for new benefits or enviable responsibilities.

She also loved that his suggestions allowed you to be creative.

It’s all really just a matter of self-confidence.

Lee was breathing intermittently as his eyes lolled. As he leaned back further, he thought of how well all the tie-ins were doing, how effective the promotionals were, he thought of…

The phone was ringing. Lee came back to the present.

“Hello?” he said into the air. “Why isn’t someone answering the phone? Oh, yeah. You wanted off early,” he said to his lap. “Hold your horses, there. It could be my wife.”

Kim looked up at him, insulted. She had been making an effort, putting on a performance that contradicted her mood.

“Hello?”

Cox got off the floor and slapped Lee’s chest. “Now I’m going,” she said.

“Fine. Go,” he said, gesturing with one hand and muting the phone with the other.

She walked out, slamming the door.

This better be good, he thought. “Hello?”

“Lee? Lee Burns,” a voice grumbled.

“Yeah. Who is this?”

“It’s your star fucking client,” the drunken voice said.

A faint “That’s right” could be heard in the background.

“Jim? Where the hell are you?”

Lee knew that a taxi was the only way to get to the East L.A. address Crawford had given him. He wasn’t about to drive his own car and have it disappear from those streets. In fact, he tried to think of a way of not going at all. But when he thought about giving the task to an office grunt, he realized he had no choice but to deal with it personally. Not only was he going to make sure that Crawford was on the Jan Hershey show the next day, he also was going to make sure that no one with any credibility would be able to report that Dr. Crawford was getting shitfaced in a bar the day before.

The driver looked Mediterranean — dark hair, a swarthy complexion, an unfamiliar accent — but Lee had no idea what the hell the man was.

But if one characteristic redeemed Lee of his ignorance, it was his keen awareness of his unawareness. He knew he was lacking in many subjects, but he could easily accommodate it. He was the type of person that always laughs at erudite jokes, even when he didn’t understand the reference. “Just roll with it,” was his attitude. So “Oh, that’s clever,” was his customary response.

Years ago, he even told Crawford of this weakness and suggested he make a story out of it for one of his books. Lee came up with
The Man Who Laughs at Jokes He Doesn’t Understand
. Crawford initially agreed and then decided to ditch the idea, thinking it too much a part of human nature. “We all laugh at jokes we don’t understand,” he argued. “And sometimes we don’t laugh at what we want to. It’s as old as civilization.”

Riding in the back of the cab, Lee was attempting to be civilized. He was trying not to laugh at what he thought funny: the thick black hair on the back of the man’s neck that looked like a dyed-black Brillo pad scrubbed to nonexistence. And he was trying to laugh at what wasn’t funny: the cab smelling of a combination of cheap perfume, antiseptic and a vile combination of blood, urine, and vomit.

In order to ensure he got to where he needed to go, and equipped with awareness of his ignorance, Lee would try to communicate with this man for the duration of the ride. He also thought it might help him ignore the nauseating smell of the interior of the cab. He leaned forward to look at the man’s name on his license, but didn’t even try to pronounce it.

“So, uh… sir?” he said sheepishly. “Make trips down here often?”

In broken English, the man said, “Not les hahf to.”

“Know anything about this place? It’s called Sharkey’s.”

“Badtha.”

“Bath?” Lee asked, thinking the guy could use a bath.

“No. Bahd-tha,” he said slowly.

“Bad?”

“Yah. Yah. It’s badtha place. Loots av badtha peepahl.”

“Peephole?” Lee asked.

“Badtha peepahl. Badtha place.”

Lee thought the driver might be using slang by saying
bad
then wondered if
peephole
was slang too. “Sir, I want you to stay outside for me, okay?” Lee said slowly. “You understand?”

The cabbie rocked back and forth. “Yah. Yah,” he said.

Lee spoke deliberately. “I want you to stay and wait because I’m coming right out. I’m going right back to my office. Understand?”

“Yah. Yah,” the cabbie said again.

Lee could see the man cupping the address in his hand just above the steering wheel.

“Almost there,” he said.

Lee leaned back in his seat then leaned up again, remembering not to touch anything.

The cabbie looked closely at Lee in his rearview mirror. “Oolmoost der.”

“So you’ll stay and wait for me?” Lee asked nervously.

“Yah, Yah. Shoor, shoor,” he said. “Here tiz.”

As the cab pulled to the curb, Lee knew the place was bad — bad like
bad
— no question. The first thing that crossed Lee’s mind was to tell the cabbie just to keep on going past the place, which was surely filled with bad peephole.

Crawford was getting stinko in this dump? Lee thought. This guy is becoming more of a liability than an asset every day.

Becoming? Hell, he’s been a fucking liability since you met him.

No, that’s not true. What about all those books he’s sold? he thought.

No, those books
I’ve
sold
for
him.

And that TV show, what a moneymaker, he thought.

Yeah, but I could get any asshole on the planet to write a book telling about how he was down and out and pathetic and wanted to kill himself and he came back and put his life back together and put his family back together and bought a nice RV and crossed the country in it while he wrote all these big secrets that allowed him to get his shit together and now he’s passing them on to you, the consumer, who…

“Here tiz, mistour,” the cabbie said.

“You’re waiting for me, right?”

“Yah, Yah. Shoor, shoor.”

“Wait for me, okay? I’m coming right out, understand?”

The cabbie rolled his eyes like a teenage girl raised in Southern California. “Under-stadt. Yah, Yah. Shoor, shoor. But need fare for dis trip.”

Lee got out of the cab and handed the man a fifty. “I’ll be right back,” Lee said, stepping on the sidewalk then over a man (or woman) passed out in front. That’s when Lee heard the cab squeal away.

The cabbie yelled out of the passenger’s side window in nearly perfect English, “Got another call, buddy!”

“Asshole!” Lee yelled after him with his middle finger in the air. “Asshole! Understand that!”

The putrid lump of flesh lying face down on the pavement rolled over. “Hey, man. You got any change?”

Lee assumed it was a man. “Fuck off, buddy,” he said.

Boom chicka boom chicka boom…

The first thing Lee noticed when he entered the bar was the rhythmic Machiavellian sound. It was like a drum beat made with sticks and stones — primal, harrowing, evil — that and Crawford slouched over the bar with a wide grin on his face, staring straight ahead. J and B, were clinking bottles and playing imaginary bongos on their thighs, accompanying Rakim in his rap version of
The Happy Pappy Song
.

“Yo. Be kind to yo-self,” Rakim, with his sneakers squeaking heavily on the bar’s sticky floor, did a side-to-side step in front of Crawford and pointed at him. “Be fond of yo-self.”

Oh Christ, Lee thought in desperation, before thinking that maybe Crawford could do a self-help rap album.

“If you’re not a chum you be a fuckin’ bum to yo-self, bitch. Be a friend to yo-self, without end to yo-self.”

J and A leaned in, making percussive sounds with their lips.

“Yeah,” Rakim nodded, “yeah,” then turned to smile at Crawford, who was next to him. “Ah-ite?”

“You bet,” Crawford said.

Lee walked over and put his hand on Crawford’s shoulder. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”

Rakim began to slow down, “Yo Happy, yo Pappy, Yo Happy, Yo…”

“Have you forgotten about the show tomorrow?”

“The children’s show?”

“Yeah. It’s called
Jan Live with Jan Hershey
. You’re coming with me to my house tonight, Jim.”

“I’m going to my own home,” Crawford said trying, to raise his glass. “I don’t need your sorry ass.” Crawford took a giant swig of the beer, much of which ran down the front of his shirt. “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled. “I should go.”