“Look, guys,” I said, “I don’t want anyone feeling pressure over this.”
I wondered, though, if I was being completely honest. Jeffrey lived two blocks from San Francisco Bay. He had joined an Internet start-up at the beginning of the boom. When the company went public, it took him five beers over dinner to admit to us that his stake in the company was “hovering around thirty million dollars.” This was at another of our golf weekends, in Palm Springs, and I remember him trembling when he told us. He could have been confessing a crime. He had just turned twenty-five.
I’d been staggered. Playing the drums was earning me fifteen thousand dollars a year. The trip to Palm Springs was costing me close to a month’s pay.
There were a few follow-up questions, but soon enough conversation returned to the old standbys: stories from college, highlights from the day’s round. The fact of a twenty-foot putt was more real to us than thirty million dollars. After dinner we played low-stakes poker long into the night and finished off a case of beer. We were laughing again. A lightness to the evening had settled in. By morning, I’d done my best to put Jeffrey’s wealth out of my mind. I think everyone had. We never talked about it again.
I hadn’t planned to ask anyone other than Nolan for money this weekend. But now that the matter was on the table, I couldn’t help weighing Jeffrey’s enormous wealth against the relatively small investment Nolan was asking him to make. Okay, so Jeffrey was feeling a little gloomy lately. But still. If our situations had been reversed, I liked to think I would’ve opened my checkbook without any hesitation.
“But this is a solid plan.” Nolan dipped a corner of bread in a plate of olive oil and used it to point at Jeffrey while he talked. “It’s solid, and Will needs for this to happen. You’re not even going to help him get it off the ground?”
“The music business is risky,” Jeffrey said.
“So take a risk.” Nolan tilted his head, as if just noticing something. “You seem really down. Are you down?”
Jeffrey smiled. “Good work, detective.”
“Okay, so tell us what the fuck’s the matter.”
I had planned to share a golf cart tomorrow with Jeffrey, see if he felt like talking. Nolan was always a little more direct.
“Oh, a lot of things.” He took a sip of water. “I don’t mean to be mysterious. I just don’t feel like getting into it now.”
“You’re in a rut, aren’t you?” When Jeffrey didn’t respond right away, he said, “Of course you are. You just turned thirty, you’ve got a baby coming, and you’re looking at the rest of your long, boring life and freaking out. Am I right?”
“I guess it’s something like that,” Jeffrey said, though his face was uncharacteristically hard to read.
“Piece of cake,” Nolan said. “Know what you need to do?”
“I give up.”
“Do something unexpected. Surprise yourself. That’s why guys are always skydiving and swimming the English Channel and shit. You need a shock to the system, something to remind yourself that you’re alive.” He poured himself some more wine. “And for starters, you can become a record company executive.”
“Or,” I cut in, “we can table the whole discussion about making records until later.” The waiter was setting a vast tray of food on a stand beside our table. “How about we just eat until we can’t move. How does that sound?”
Jeffrey managed a smile. “I think I can do that.”
Nolan laughed suddenly.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s a girl over there”—he nodded somewhere behind me—“who looks just like that fifteen-year-old you asked out at the Quakerbridge Mall. You remember?”
“Fuck off,” I said, not bothering to glance over my shoulder. “She looked a lot older. And she said she went to Trenton State.”
“Yeah, and with her mother right there, overhearing the whole thing.”
Jeffrey glanced over at the girl. He shook his head, then refilled his wine as Nolan and I recounted this anecdote we all already knew, one of the many we told and retold over the years.
When we stopped speaking, Jeffrey took a sip of wine. “So, Will, have you thought of a name?”
I explained that Cynthia and I had decided ahead of time not to find out the sex of the baby. “So our list is getting pretty long.”
“No, I mean a name for the record company.”
“Oh.” I smiled, having decided this long ago. “Long-Shot Records.”
“Good name.” The combination of wine and shared memories seemed to relax him. His face warmed. It was good to see. His moods could be as erratic as his golf game. Some days he had the touch of a pro, and other days he’d psych himself out and miss every three-foot putt. You never knew exactly which Jeffrey you were going to get. “All right,” he said at last. “I surrender. Count me in for twenty grand.”
“Glad to hear it.” Nolan smiled, but then his smile faded away. “Seriously, though—do something bold. Surprise yourself. And for God’s sake, don’t buy a sports car.”