To Have Nothing

About two friends

It's impossible to piss off Jake. If you are like me, you probably know that people have a tendency to become unpleased with the world in general and some things in particular from time to time. Like me, if you've been friends with Jake long enough, you would come to the inevitable conclusion - he is not a human - and occasionally describe him through gritted teeth as "something else". I remember this one time...

We were sitting by the window, Jake and I, looking for something to talk about; a thing a lot of people do I guess. The busy street had nothing, the busy people on it even less and me and Jake, well we were the definition of “having nothing”. We had so much of it, really, that we could bet it all on the double zero over and over for a week and come out with our hands full of it.

“The waitress, ahem, Christine, is looking at you.” he said.
I turned toward Jake and saw him grinning.
“Yeah, I must’ve impressed her.”
“Woop, now she’s laughing.”
“And so am I?”
“Well, you should be, toots.”
“Shut up.”
He laughed. It had kind of a grim quality to it, since like I said, we had nothing and the waitress wanted something and, well, you can see how that can create a mathematical imbalance in nature. As you may know those usually result in a conflict. Apparently calling her “toots” hadn’t convinced her that I was Don Draper and that we are too cool to pay for our lattes. I looked out at the street again. Same old.
“Any other bright ideas?” I said.
He looked toward the restroom and said, “Well, I was thinking…”
“That you’re not going to piss and try to stick me with the bill, because I’d kick your a*s.” I finished.
“You’d never find me.”
“I’m your roommate.” I said.
We laughed again.
“Hey, Joe. You think Sam will catch the next train and help us out?”
“Probably. What time is it, lunch, so I guess he could get here around next week.”
“Okay.” he said, “We’ll wait.” and he grinned.
We shut up for a while after that. I looked at my watch. It was 2AM, so that made it two hours of having nothing. I looked up. Red drapes hung on both sides of our window, stretching down an even white wall, probably chosen to go with the sofa I was sitting on. A short square glass table with a few magazines under it separated me from the two wicker chairs in front and to the right of me and through them, and all around us danced a jazzy hard bop that sounded like something from the sixties. I looked back out the window and tried to put the music and the scenery together.
“Funny how radios run better stuff when you’re not listening at home.” I said.
“Yeah.” replied Jake, “How about government spies?”
“Ugh-huh.”
“Got mugged?”
“Don’t look like it.”
“Pickpocket?”
“The two of us?”
“Could be.”
“Don’t think so.” I said.
“I’m going…”
“No, you’re not.”
“F**k.” Jake said, threw his hands up and leaned back, “Might as well admit it.”
I looked at him, “You in a hurry?”
“Yeah! There’s stuff we should be doing.”
“Like what?” I said and leaned back. Doing stuff bad.
“I don’t know. Writing.”
“Who’d read crap like this?”
“I don’t know. People who have s**t. They wanna feel like they’re doing great ‘cause they have s**t and reading about people who don’t does that for ‘em.”
“You willing to bet money on that?”
“All of it.”
His laugh rang lound and Christine, the Toots scowled at us. She probably thought we were making fun of her or something. I wondered when she would finally girl up and tell us to pay and get lost.
“I’ll take that bet.” I said.
“What bet?”
“All of them?”
We laughed again.
“Back to business, Joe. And this time seriously. What are we gonna pull?”
“Someone’s leg, if possible, if not, a disappearing act.”
“Okay, but tell me one thing. Why’d we think it was a good idea to go to a café with no money and figure it out after we order?”
“Because we can’t lose much, but we can win a lot?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Street smarts. Courage, wisdom, crap like that.”
“All of it, basically.”
“Yeah.” I replied grinning then I paused for a second and said, “Alright, you sold me. Let’s go.”
I called Christine, the Toooots, and sent a “check please” her way. She pulled it out of her pocket, frowned and set it on the table. I pulled out a ten and told her to keep the change. I looked and Jake and wondered whether he’d manage to keep his trap shut until we went out. He did, but then he burst out,
“You said you had nothing!”
“Ugh-huh. I do. I told you, Jake. Until you see the moniker over a paperback, I got nothing.”
His face contorted into what I can only describe as amused annoyance, something like when you hear a joke, but you don’t get it at first and when you hear the explanation you realize the joke’s kind of funny, but really stupid at the same time. We stopped at the traffic light we were to part ways at and he looked at me and said,
“I think I get it. And when you get that you’ve got it all.”

I looked at him and, I swear to you, the m**********r was grinning. To this day I have no idea if he'd gotten onto me and turned the tables or if he had a genetic mutation that gave him superhuman self-control. All I know is this - it's impossible to piss off Jake.