The Enthusiast Read Free

said.
    â€œNo, it doesn’t. We should be having fun,” she said, pointing to the living room, where “One Note Samba” was on the stereo.
    â€œWe should go to Brazil. To Carnaval.”
    â€œWhat am I celebrating?” Dad said. “Going broke?”
    â€œCarnaval is held for broke people. It cheers them up. Celebrate being out of that job.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Dad said, pulling farther back in his chair as if the bright side were a confession being beaten out of him. He waited for a long enough pause, got up, and went out to the garage. A few minutes later I went out there and pulled a web chair up next to his.
    â€œIs there anything?” I said.
    â€œA salad bar,” he said. “I’m waiting to hear back.”
    â€œThe one on Cathode? Fresh Connection?”
    He shook his head. “In Altadena. In a mall.”
    Seventy minutes away, and not even freestanding. Right then I wanted to join the Communists. That would have been just like me, signing up right before they went bust, but I wanted some heartless comrades to help me kill the directors of Controlled Dynamics, burn their second homes and salt the earth.
    I waited for a lull and then got up, the same technique Dad had used to get out of the kitchen. Given the pension situation, it might be my only inheritance.
    Â 
    T he day after my first kite buggy ride, Don came back and brought a friend. They rode their buggies for hours and let me take a few turns. By noon there were thirty spectators. I called my best friends, Cliff and Andy. We watched all afternoon, clapping when they swung their kites across the sky to change direction. Three days later we drove to Torrance to buy kites and buggies, denting the college money we’d saved from our fast-food jobs. Mom and Dad had figured out that I could go to state college in the fall if I worked part time there, but I was free for the summer. The layoffs were killing the Valleycrest Mall, and all the local burger work had gone to forty-eight-year-old physicists.
    One day Don and his friend left for a dry lake they’d heard about in New Mexico. Cliff and Andy and I set up a slalom in the parking lot and buggied every day, our lines singing over the premises that had stolen our fathers’ balls.
    Dad, in his web chair, asked what part of the parking lot we were riding in. When I told him, he nodded, transit-faced, and said, “Those were the new rows. That was when we put people on for the B-1. Dave Gotbaum used to park there till he got Ted’s job.” I stopped telling him about it.
    We got a few more guys into buggying, and the security guard who’d stayed on for the mop-up waved at us from a window sometimes. One day in August Andy saw him and said, “It’s weird that they’ve never tried to stop us. You’d think they’d be scared we’ll break our legs and sue them.”
    â€œThere’s no money left to sue them for,” I said.
    â€œThat guy is doing it anyway,” Cliff said.
    â€œWhat guy?” I said.
    â€œThis lawyer in L.A. He’s suing them for everyone that lost their pension.”
    â€œWhy?” Andy said.
    â€œIt’s public-interest law,” Cliff said. “It’s the thing where they crusade for the little guy.”
    I found out the lawyer’s name that night, made myself wait until 9:06 the next morning, and called him. “Mr. Troup?” I said. “My name is Henry Bay. I’m a student? I live in Rancho Cahuenga? And I heard that you’re suing Controlled Dynamics.”
    â€œWell,” he said, “our firm has filed a suit on behalf of some former employees against some former officers of that company.” He sounded about sixty, his voice eastern and precise.
    â€œMy father’s a former employee,” I said.
    â€œWe’ll be making claim forms available down the road.”
    â€œOkay. Thank you. Um, the reason I’m calling?