Step Three!
Thurber wants to know when the tuna’s getting here.
“First we have to order the fifty bajillion dollar airplane from France,” I remind him. “With the teak wood trim and the gold accents and the shag carpeting and the queen-sized bed with the big sunny windows and the Cordova leather seats.”
“And the Cordova leather baby seat,” says Thurber.
“Yes yes, the baby seat, though honestly they can just fly with her in their laps.”
“And the sushi chef,” says Thurber.
“It will have a full crew complement, yes yes.”
“Is that how we get the tuna?”
“No. I mean, sure, yes, I guess a sushi chef has his own tuna, but that’s not the tuna. Remember? Everybody’s gonna see we bought a fifty bajillion dollar airplane from France and they’ll yell at us and I’ll go on TV and I’ll purr and if they’re all like fifty bajillion dollars! From France! I’ll say like I don’t really see why I have to answer your questions if you’re gonna be meanies and then you go on TV and you look like that all remorseful and then we sell the French plane on eBay.”
“I don’t think we can get fifty bajillion dollars on eBay,” says Thurber.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t think bajillion is a number.”
“Doesn’t matter! We could sell it to distraught solicitors from Nigeria with estate tax issues and it wouldn’t matter. We just need to make sure we get enough money for twenty pounds of tuna.”
“And that’s the tuna?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have to sell that tuna to buy more tuna or maybe salmon that we shift upstream so we can buy some tuna?”
“No. That’s the tuna.”
Thurber sighs. “I don’t get it.”
“Honestly, we’ve been over this five times now, Thurber.”
“Yeah, but we lose money.”
“It’s not our money.”
“It’s not?”
“Where are we gonna get fifty bajillion dollars? It’s government money, remember? Because we bought all those condos and that office building downtown and we lent all that money to the guy on the Segway to build more condos only nobody wants to buy condos anymore and also there’s that restaurant on the river where nobody wants to eat because of the peanuts, so we go to the government and we purr and you rub up against their leg like that and we say help us, please buy all this stuff from us because nobody else wants to, and the government says gosh, that’s a lot of stuff, maybe you’d better tell us how much it’s worth and we tell them fifty bajillion dollars and they give it to us and pat us on the head and say now don’t get in trouble again and we go and we buy the plane from France.”
“When did we buy all those condos?” says Thurber.
“We haven’t yet! We have to buy some houses and flip them, first.”
“We have to turn houses upside down?”
“They’re worth more that way. Keeps ’em dry when it floods and they go underwater.”
“Wow,” says Thurber. “Real estate is complicated.”
“You know, I bet we could get money for more than just twenty pounds of tuna. I bet we could get a million bucks even, so poppa could redecorate his office.”
“That would be nice,” says Thurber.
“So could you just help me go through this laundry? They’ve got to have left some money in some pockets somewhere.”
“I don’t know,” says Thurber. “When’s the tuna getting here?”
“Come on! Get down here and start rooting! This is too big to fail!”
