“Beer, when does Jen get here?”
“Soon.” I chewed my lip trying to decide when to tell him about the stranger in the back-shack. The conversation had just gotten a lot more complicated.
I popped the lid off a beer and passed it to him.
I turned on the flame under the pasta pot, took the aluminum foil off the sauce, combined sauce with the meatballs, and slid the whole dish into the oven. I was feeling kind of proud of myself for having done so much prep-work that I could sit down and have a beer with Cooper. I had thought we would be celebrating, but instead I was even more necessary for consoling him.
I got a beer for myself when the screen door opened. Jen called, “It’s me!”
He said, “Dammit, now I gotta discuss all this again.”
She bustled in, dancing, with her phone playing music, singing, “Celebrate, good times… come on!”
Then she stopped.
“What…? What, no ‘celebrate good times’? What happened?”
Cooper said, “I didn’t land the investors.”
Her face fell. “Ah shit. That sucks.” She slumped into a chair and snapped her fingers at me. “Beer, please.”
I laughed and got her a beer. “Bossy, do I look like your bartender?”
“Well, you already heard the story, it’s my turn.” She focused on Cooper, “They didn’t like your plan? You can talk them into it, right?”
“They liked it, they just don’t think it’s the ‘right time’.”
“Ugh, that’s even worse.”
“Yeah. There’s no talking an investor out of an opinion on right and wrong time, it’s too ephemeral. ‘Nah man, it’s the right time.’ He says, ‘No, it’s not,’ and what have I got? Just back and forth. I was thinking about it on the plane. What if I convinced him that it was the ‘right time’ after concerted arguing? You know what would happen — it would be provisional, right? If the investor believes it’s not the ‘right time’ and I convinced him to invest anyway, it would probably be half the money. Possibly there would be even more strings attached. Or a higher interest rate, or… I mean, I don’t know what he would want, but my margins are slim enough. I have no room to negotiate. I need all the money I asked for.”
He spun his beer bottle while he spoke, then drank. “It’s a moot point anyway, the investors didn’t want to talk about it. No discussion.”
Jen said, “Damn, that sucks.”
“I guess this is a sign.”
Jen frowned. “This is not a sign, Coop, this is just a momentary setback.”
I said, “That’s what I was saying... see Coop, we agree.”
He said, after draining his beer, “So where’s Dude? He hasn’t greeted me yet.”
I said, “Oh, he’s probably just… somewhere, um…”
He narrowed his eyes. “Is Dude okay?”
“Yeah, he’s just, um… he’s probably down at the back-shack with…” I gulped. “Look, I have to tell you something, but it was going to be funny and an easy conversation when you had goodnews, remember that, now that you have terrible news, it’s not really that great?—”
His brow went up. “Someone’s visiting? Your uncle? You know I like him. That’s not an issue.”
“Not my uncle, remember that guy who crashed here on the lawn the other night?”
His eyes went wide. “What have you done, Lexi?”
“Well, the short story is that he was in the hospital and he didn’t have anywhere to go. So he’s staying in the back-shack and the rest is a long story, for a different time.”
“Lexi, is there a homeless guy living in your backyard? While I was out of town?” He turned to Jen. “Have you been a part of this epically dumb decision making?”
