Chapter 1
A hot, moist Thursday evening found things not so cool on the 30-something home front. Mark and Susan’s modest two-bedroom east Charlotte home was entering foreclosure. One of their two cars, a four-year-old Nissan Sentra, had just been repossessed last week. Their remaining motor vehicle, a paid-off, eleven-year-old Dodge Neon with 187,781 miles on it, urgently needed a new transmission; sometimes it could barely make it up the driveway.
Another five-figure medical bill had arrived in the mail. There was already a stack of them on the far end of the kitchen counter; the pile was almost four inches high. Somewhere in the stack was a dead, flattened roach that Mark had crushed last Leap Day. Moreover, there was enough financial stress in their home to break the suspended back of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The trouble all started when Susan, who had been healthy her whole thirty-four-year life, got bit by an insect or spider – the doctors never were exactly sure what it was – on a camping trip two summers ago with her female friends in the Green River Cove area of the Pisgah National Forest. As a result, she almost lost her left leg. A combination of antibiotics spared her from an amputation, but her left knee was shot.
Susan hobbled around now. Standing for more than five minutes was hellish torture. As a result, she started taking prescription painkillers. Hydrocodone worked to her satisfaction for the first few months. But then she needed something stronger. It wasn’t long before she was popping oxycodone like Mentos candy. Then she got a script for the time-released version, OxyContin. When she found out that she could crush the pills for a more zonking stupor, it was game over.
Mark tried to intervene, but she was hooked. He would tell her that she needed to get off the pills and find a sit-down office job. She would just give him a lazy smile and retort, “I’m through with pain, baby – done with it.”
They were barely making it when they had both incomes. Without Susan working, things got very tight. Mark started riding his refurbished ten-speed bike to work in downtown Charlotte to save money. It was only 4.8 miles one way and it kept him in shape. He actually grew to like it.
But then there was that frosty March morning when he made the right turn onto the Briar Creek Greenway Bridge a wee too fast. His front tire slid like a hockey puck on the frozen wooden planks. Mark went airborne over the handlebars as the bike crashed into the bridge’s industrial-style metal railing. He had broken his right arm in three places, as well as torn his rotator cuff. When he tried to stand up, he realized that he had broken his right ankle as well. His thoughts were very dour. When it rains, it pours; when there’s frost, there’s a cost. Why did I take that turn so fost? [sic] I knew it would be covered in frost. There’s always condensation on that bridge in the early morning. What was I thinking? Why was I riding so fast in the first place? I’m thirty-eight years old for crying out loud. I’m too old to act like the Lance Armstrong of east Charlotte. He re-entertained these thoughts numerous times over the next sixteen months.
As a result of the crash, Mark gave up the bike commute to work. He had to. It was just too much pain for his right ankle, which seemed to be taking forever to heal. He couldn’t afford any more doctor visits or medical treatment.
The gasoline savings were gone. And so was the free parking. Mark now had to pay to park downtown, which was a considerable expense; his data-storage company stopped giving him a voucher. “We are in a recession and can’t afford this perk anymore, Mark,” his boss told him. Something about the bottom line and a recommendation from the accounting department.
They were in the money vise, feeling the maximum squeeze. Mark mused while staring at the dirty floor. There must be some sideline business that I can do for extra income. This thought was in repeat mode as of late in his squirming, nearing-panic-mode brain.
Mark started to actively search the dubious Business Opportunities listings in print and online. He saw a lot of overt pyramid schemes that would even make Ponzi blush. He passed on them. He remembered one day, while on the toilet in a public bathroom, noticing that all the screw heads were strangely aligned, what an old college friend had told him a decade ago: “MLM = Most Lose Money.”
That was true for most people. But, he most certainly was not most people – not even close, he thought. He felt certain that he could and would come up with a duplicatable, universal system that even someone with a middle-school education could do successfully. Or, so he told himself day after day.
The company that got the hook in his thin wallet was called InstaBagel. He signed up online to receive a free sample, which came in the mail three days later. The package was very neatly wrapped, and very professional-looking. He thought: Ah, they must be a first-rate company.
In the box, they were like hard pretzels. The instructions said to add the special flavor packet to a bowl of tap water, and then to dunk them in the powdered water. The last step: Microwave for forty-five seconds and enjoy! Seems easy enough. And, it was.
When he bit into the first one, he was amazed at the taste and texture. They were just like those gourmet-bagel-shop bagels – but at less than half the price. Who wouldn’t want this? I am going to be rich!
He immediately joined at the decision maker level by buying $500 worth of dehydrated bread. He could see himself rising to the platinum level in just ninety days. He thought to himself: There’s dough in this dough, bro. Big money train, here we go! My revenue-generating ship has arrived.
However, a year later he had only two active partners in his downline, and had racked up $38,000 in credit card debt from paying for lunches for prospects and hotel ballroom rentals for bagel-sample fests. His sure-fire plan was a complete bust – a resounding flop.
Now they couldn’t even make the interest payments on their credit cards. Soon a new stack of bills began to pile up next to the medical bill stack. And now their phones were being lit up by the bill collectors all hours of the day and night. Some calls originated from Moldova of all places.
Susan seemed resigned to imminent destitution. But as long as she had a steady supply of oxies – her slang for OxyContin pills, she really didn’t care. If the house burned down, they’d find her charred corpse on the couch.
Her mood grew more sullen and distant. She and Mark stopped having sex. Mark didn’t physically cheat on her; he went back to porn.
Susan started eating more – more of the wrong foods: the fatty ones. She gained ten, fifteen, twenty pounds. To compound the problem, she wouldn’t exercise. She thought that bicycles were just for kids; she thought that running and jogging looked ridiculously stupid; she thought that walking just made you vulnerable to attacks by men and dogs; she thought gym memberships were a waste of money.
The mutual disdain for each other grew by the hour. “Why did you join that stupid bagel scam?” she would often scream. “You worthless MLM junkie!” Mark could hear her tonsils sloshing around. It was primal and beastly. It was pure detestation.
Then while watching the local 6:00 news, Mark started paying attention to a story about the history of gold in the Charlotte region. The reporter was out at the historic Reed Gold Mine, twenty-two miles east of their house in the Merry Oaks residential area of east Charlotte. The Amerasian female was talking about the German boy who found a seventeen-pound gold nugget in a small stream near Midland in 1799. She was standing on some rocks in the middle of Little Meadow Creek when she said, “Could you imagine finding a gold nugget in a North Carolina creek?” Boy, could I, he almost thought aloud. Did Susan hear me?
“Can you turn the damn news off?’’ Susan demanded. “Please change the fucking channel. I’m sick of news, news, news.” Susan closed her invective by yelling, “Screw the news!” While sprawled out on their green leatherette couch, she thought: Why does he have to watch the same news loop fourteen times? What’s the point? Life is a horror movie. It sucks. It always has, and always will. You need to numb yourself to it. ‘Get it, Mark? You still can’t understand that?’ What the hell is wrong with him?
“Ok, what do you want to watch, dear?” Mark asked in angry tone. “Don’t tell me that you want to watch the E channel. Watching those worthless, smug, stuck-up, it’s-all-about-my-pretty-face celebrities will do nothing to improve our situation. Only a braindead idiot thinks that celebrities care about them.” Mark was barking back. Spittle was flying from his mouth. He was becoming enraged. He continued with his tirade. “These conceited, self-important flakes don’t give a damn about us! Let me repeat: They don’t give a damn about us! Got it now?!” E has got to be the worst damn time-wasting, unproductive, non-inspiring channel of all time. And of course, it’s her favorite. Just my rotten luck. / Why did I ever choose to get mixed-up with him? What a freaking mistake! Worthless loser.
“At least I get to imagine escaping from this horrible reality that you’ve created.” Why doesn’t he go rob a bank and make himself useful? Heck, he’d probably get caught before leaving the parking lot. / Her debilitating addiction is my fault? Un-fucking-believable! Her brain is now opioid mush.
“That I’ve created? What? You have got to be kidding me!” Why does she always blame me for her own self-induced misery? She’s the one sitting on her ass all day popping pills.
“I’m not kidding. And, I’m sick of your stupid-ass, money-losing ideas that go nowhere. I want a divorce!” Wow, I finally said the ‘D’ word to him. Finally. / Glad she said it first.
“Hey, that is certainly fine by me, my dear ex-wife-to-be. I won’t contest it, either, sweetheart. I’d love to be divorced from you and your sour attitude towards everything.” The oxycodone has cooked her brain. She’s headed for pain-killer casualty-ville, and her ticket is one way. She’s not going to get better. I want off this train that has already wrecked and gone off the tracks, and is now sinking in a cesspool.
“Screw you, you damn loser,” Susan screamed as Mark slammed the door. What a freakin’ drug-addled monster. God, I can’t wait to be free of her. Could she just hurry up and die. C’mon, baby, overdose tonight. You can do it. Make things easy for poor Mark. / Gosh, I hope he gets hit by a dump truck!
It was another veritable van Buren evening, always striving for perfect strife. And more often than not as of late, succeeding in spades – spades that could be utilized later.