“Crash” Jenkins, born Charles, schooled as Chip, married as Charles, divorced as Chuck, took on this final name at age 40. He was talking too much that year, and the year before. He couldn’t help it. He was like an antenna for the species, and what he was picking up was pain. He needed some way to put it down. That way? Chatter. “It’s just that I wake up some days and I have a bee in my bonnet, several bees actually, so I have to get them out and then figure out why I was wearing a bonnet in the first place.” He said this to Louis Esterhazy, his business partner. Louis indulged him, always did. Louis was a prince. Louis knew that Crash had kindness flowing through his veins, but also that he was highly animated by both caffeine and a kind of private grief. The two of them had joined forces when they found that they possessed complementary skills: one a gabbling visionary, the other a steady hand. They founded Cloudseed, a financial app whose offerings included stock trading, banking, and retirement investment. “We ask them to climb to the top of a building,” said Crash, “stand by the lightning rod, and stretch out their arms to the gods of prosperity. The next sound they hear will be either their victory or their demise, and in either event we’ll be there for them.” Louis faced into the wind of this explanation and typed out the copy that would appear on the front page of the app: “our offerings include stock trading, banking, and retirement investment.” Crash hadn’t stopped with the victory or demise. He had continued, and was talking now about a woman on his block who wandered out into the front yard wearing a housecoat and talking about President Carter. She was beautiful, faded, fatefully disappointed, beaten down by the fact that time insisted on passing. He was talking now about something he had read in Hegel, and now about something about something he had read in Peanuts. He was talking now about his suspicions regarding the morality of capitalism, even though he also said that he was pledged to help Louis make a mint. Louis didn’t write any of that down. Mainly what you did for a friend was listen.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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