The Book of Joe

than I could have expected to make in a lifetime of working in brand marketing, which is what I used to do before I got a life.
    “You now officially have your fuck-you money,” Owen announced gleefully over steaks at Peter Luger’s. He’d transformed the reporting of my monthly sales figures into a casual dinner ceremony compliments of the agency, although if you did the math, I was the one who really paid.
    But I chose not to think of it that way, because it was fun to be important, to be a major breadwinner for the agency.
    Also, as I said before, I don’t have very many friends.
    “My fuck-you money,” I repeated.
    “You bet,” Owen said, sipping at his wine. He’s somewhat overweight at thirty-one, with stringy blond hair and a ruddy, freckled complexion. Exceptionally literate and flamboyantly aggressive, he’s fast becoming one of the most influential agents in the industry. Something about his full, grinning lips, his baby face, and the way his fat bulges forcefully against the constraints of his expensive, custom shirts all contribute to a subliminal impression of secret, nihilistic excess. A Roman emperor between orgies.
    “What, exactly, is fuck-you money?” I asked him.
    He picked up two fries, dipped them into his ketchup mound, and tossed them into his mouth, their twin ends protruding briefly from his lips like the legs of the expend-able cast member being devoured by a Spielberg dinosaur.
    “It’s money,” he told me between noisy, sloshing chews, “that allows you to say fuck you to anyone: your boss, your family, ex-girlfriends, whoever. Anyone you ever had to take shit from because you depended on them. You’re your own dog now. You don’t need anyone anymore.”
    I looked across the table at him. “So I break even.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Nobody needs me, either.”
    Owen made a mock sad face at that, then grinned wickedly and said, “I need you.”
    He was right about the money. It’s purchased me my new apartment, my new Mercedes convertible - a CLK 430 Cabriolet - and its obscenely expensive parking spot, a ridiculously large home entertainment center, and an assortment of other predictable extravagances. And I was right about no one’s needing me, a fact I usually manage to avoid with an elaborate array of scrupulously employed defense mechanisms. But confronted with the prospect of seeing my father and Brad again, and returning to Bush Falls after almost seventeen years, smoke and mirrors will no longer protect me from what I’ve really known all along: that I’m pretty much alone in the world. Me and my fuck-you money.
    Have I mentioned my penchant for self-pity? It’s part of my charm.
    I roll slowly out of bed, feeling twice my age, pull on a T-shirt, and pad down the hall for a late-night snack of cinnamon toast and POWERade. There’s no avoiding the imminent onslaught of my hangover, but I’ve recently discovered, in an enterprise born either of desperation or an abundance of free time, that POWERade laced with liquid Tylenol effectively softens the blow. I’m not looking forward to morning, but still, it seems a long way off. I turn on my absurdly large flat-screen television and watch an Australian dude hopped up on caffeine dive into a swamp with two large crocodiles, ostensibly to demonstrate the proper way this sort of thing should be done. Shortly after three A.M., my nerves jangling from the electrolyte rush of my hangover cocktail, I say screw it and call Owen. I figure I owe him fifteen percent of my sleepless night.

Four
    All roads lead back to Bush Falls.
    I’m not speaking metaphorically. Just about every highway leaving the island of Manhattan to the north can get you there. You can take the Harlem River Drive to the Cross Bronx Expressway, which becomes the New England Thruway, and ride that all the way up to Bush Falls. Or you can take the Henry Hudson Parkway to the Saw Mill to the Cross County to the Hutchinson River Parkway, then get on the Merritt Parkway, which winds its way in a serpentine trail through the southern half of Connecticut. From the Merritt you pick up I-91, which will take you all the way out to Hart-ford and just past it to the Falls: more highways, less traffic.
    Or you can combine the two routes by taking the Merritt and then switching to the Thruway via the I-287 interchange. Despite this veritable smorgasbord of highways, I haven’t once, in the last seventeen years, seen fit to take any of them to Bush