Goldilocks (standard:other, 5201 words)
Author: kupecz99	Added: Sep 14 2000	Views/Reads: 4250/2485	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A young man who got caught doing insider trading as a stock salesman now is a garbageman, and things turn a little strange. Is he just a lucky guy?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

Saturday and Sunday on paperwork in a little fake paneling room made 
from a pantry and a broom closet - was not appealing to Dickie. 

The prospect of listening to his father, Richard Cooper, complain about
how lousy, lazy, or outright dishonest some of the other insurance 
agents were for the rest of his life was also not very appealing; in 
fact, it gave him the chills. All this was not Dickie Cooper's idea of 
the good life. 

"This is a good life, Dickie..." that was how his father's speech began.
Dickie heard it many times as he was growing up. He wondered what 
"inspirational" tape the old man had learned it from, "...This can be a 
very good business, a very good life if you do it right. You don't have 
to be ashamed to look at yourself in the mirror when you shave in the 
morning. You're helping people, you're protecting them, easing their 
minds. After a while you make pretty good money, you have something 
solid built up for yourself, and you get some respect in the 
community." 

But then the old man, reluctantly, had decided to get into trading
stocks for his very few clients who had, by accident probably, 
accumulated a couple of bucks more than they wanted to put into their 
life insurance. The market was so high, it was hard to ignore. So 
Dickie, who had been trying to get started selling Buicks at a 
dealership, agreed to study for the tests and apply for the licenses 
(all of them, insurance too, that was part of the deal), and try it out 
for a while, as The Cooper Agency Securities Man. 

And he did well, too; he liked talking with businessmen, property
owners, CEOs, and was surprised that they seemed to like talking with 
him, too. He brought new people to the agency. He was even offered 
jobs. Not believing the offers were serious, he always said he loved 
the job he was already doing, that he wanted to be their investment 
counselor. He could get people excited about the possibilities. Had a 
honey of an idea to get into investment quality diamonds there, very 
appealing, they had to be imbedded in plastic and that gave them a kind 
of exotic legitimacy. But then he never got the chance to get started 
on that. 

"My God, son," his father had said when Dickie got caught,  "you always
had everything you wanted. You were a good boy. He was a golden child, 
Missy. 

"What happened? Did you really think the rules didn't apply to you?  Do
you think you're a special case?  God knows, your mother and I didn't 
bring you up that way.  Didn't I always teach you to be honest? Didn't 
I try to set an example? Never, ever, did you see me cheat. How did you 
get to be so greedy?  And stupid. You must really think you're 
something special. 

"I thank God, I really do, I thank God your mother didn't live to see
this." 

"Jesus, Dad, how could I pass it up?  How often do you think the
president of a company tells a twenty-five year old guy his stock is 
going to triple?" 

"I guess once is enough, wasn't it. If you're going to cheat, at least
learn the business so you know how. But not from me." 

That's why, Dickie thought, You never got anywhere. 

*	*      * 

Dickie's wife, Ellen, called him "Richard," which he always felt was
rightfully his father's name; she thought "Dickie" was undignified. 
Once when they were a little smashed at home after a party she said, 
"Now this is a dickie."  Then he got mad at her because he thought it 
made it sound little and she said, "See what I mean?"  And she kept on 
calling him "Richard."  He got to like it after a while. They were not 
usually so free and easy talking as on that night. 

He almost always called her "Missy" as most people did, and neither of
them minded that, she being a pale pretty and delicate thing. 

Missy, having some artistic talents, but being a sensible girl (in
everything but her choice of men, Dickie's father said) got her degree 
and had a very nice drafting and light designing position with a 
prosperous little high-tech manufacturer, and she liked it quite well. 

Consequently, working every day till four-thirty as she was, Missy was
never home until long after Dickie had returned, showered, and rested 
for a couple of hours. She only saw him going out in the mornings 
fresh, in a clean uniform, quite different from his three piece suits 
or Harris tweed jacket, or his blue wool blazer with the light gray 
pants that she thought was his nicest outfit. She could live with it. 
Ah, she thought, it's only temporary, and it 'is honest work that has 
to be done. 

The Saturday following the Fourth of July, Dickie had to work to make up
for having the holiday off. Missy was shocked as much at the exhaustion 
on his face as at the filth on him and the rotten stink, Ah, she 
thought, my poor, sweet, kind Richard, and while he had his shower she 
walked out the little kitchen door into the garage and cried. 

She had not been ashamed for him this way when they lost the house and
he had to turn in his Porsche for a Dodge Charger. She was only angry 
at the injustice of that, and she knew they would one day have a nicer 
house and another good car. After all, he was not even thirty yet. But 
that day in July after she finished crying she ran out to the store and 
bought the ingredients for a French dish which took all afternoon to 
cook and certainly turned out nicely. 

Richard had noticed that being out in the sun so much was putting
lighter streaks in his hair. He was proud that he was finally putting 
on a few extra pounds and his body was getting broad-shouldered and 
trim. Besides cooking the nice dinner, Missy also tried to be extra 
affectionate to him in bed that night. "My big, strong, handsome, 
blonde man," she said. 

*       *       * 

Now it was already mid-September, in spite of the unseasonably hot
weather, and a Tuesday night, which meant that Dickie was not in such a 
bad mood as he lay in bed, because he liked the Wednesday route. It was 
clean and fast, comparatively, with mostly lots of old people who 
wrapped their garbage up in newspaper packages with scotch tape. And 
pleasant shady streets. 

But that night he still couldn't help stewing. He still was mad at his
father for not loaning him the money to repay the bad money and the 
fines for his stock deal. Goddamn it he thought, We'd still have the 
house instead of paying rent for this joint.  (Of course the car would 
have had to go anyway, that would have been really too much to expect,) 
which is a goddamn shame. But a cool breeze blew through the bedroom 
and he finally fell asleep with the fast clean Wednesday ahead. 

It turned out the day was even better than he had hoped. The weather
turned suddenly cool, never went above 70, and they were finished 
before it got that warm. They could really move fast in the fresh 
breeze, there weren't even any bags of fallen leaves yet and the rubber 
apron Dickie had recently purchased to help keep clean was not at all 
stifling for the first time. And something special happened, too. 

"You'll have to check..."  Missy said to him, unsnapping it from his
wrist to look at it more closely,  "see if they meant to throw it out." 


"Jeez, I don't even know what house it came from."  Of course he did, it
was a small white stuccoed apartment building. He went back of it and 
lifted the lid off of one of the cans and here, on top of the newspaper 
wrapped garbage, was a small, neat, heavy package in tissue paper, tied 
with a blood red string. 

The deal was, that whatever either of them found was his to keep. There
was often good stuff thrown out, TVs that worked, car batteries good 
for a few dollars from the scrap yard, and the odd antique or 
semi-antique, but if someone handed one of them a tip, $5, $10, 
whatever, which was once or twice a week, they would share it. So this, 
whatever it was, was really Dickie's to keep. Nevertheless he stuck it 
in his pocket and didn't say anything about it to his partner, or even 
open it up till he was done and in his own car. 

Christ, I ought to get something for busting my ass, he thought,
probably some old guy died and the wife didn't want to be reminded of 
him. Or she's getting feeble minded. Or she doesn't know what it's 
worth, which amounts to the same thing. Jesus, this is a great watch 
for work, though, shockproof, waterproof... 

"You have to ask around," Missy said, "and see if somebody
accidentally... Oh my God, look at this."  She held the back of the 
Rolex watch up for him to see. It was engraved in small script letters 
around one side, "To R, in Appreciation"  "Richard, that's spooky. It's 
almost like they put it out as a gift for you. Still, it looks brand 
new, you have to ask around and see if it was a mistake, Dickie. 
Someone could be heartbroken." 

He told her he would. Instead, after his shower the next day, he ran out
to a jewelry store and checked the price. He was very impressed. 

The next Wednesday Dickie voluntarily took the same side of that street
again, not really expecting anything. He didn't mention it, but just 
went ahead. 

Dickie looked around when he came to that same building. There were no
signs of a man's wardrobe and all being thrown out, no boxes of books 
and photo albums, worn out tools or beat up furniture at the curb that 
would say someone had died. He nearly jumped out of his skin after he 
hustled up the drive and turned the back corner -- a little man in an 
old-country black suit and hat was just turning away from the cans to 
go down the cellar steps. Dickie stopped cold and let him go. He 
thought the man was a ghost, he thought he was going to ask for his 
watch back. Then he found another even smaller neat tissue-paper 
package on top of one of the can lids. 

When Dickie unwrapped the box, he found a heavy gold signet ring,
stamped "twenty four carat," with braided design, a hefty chunk of 
diamond, and a big "R" on it. This was really too much of a 
coincidence. He washed up as well as he could and stopped at a 
different jewelry store on his way home. "That's twenty four karat gold 
for sure," the man said, "very unusual, too expensive for most. And at 
this purity the gold is rather soft to be practical. Just about a full 
karat diamond, too, I'd say. Very attractive design, Italian 
workmanship. Very nice. Where did you say you got it?" 

Back home, he buried it in the back of his desk drawer behind some
insurance policies and old receipts. He didn't want to tell Missy about 
it right away. Secretly he thought this had come to him because he had 
kept up his positive mental attitude, which had not been easy in these 
tough times. 

The next Wednesday his partner insisted on doing that side of the
street. The one with the apartment buildings that he always tried to 
avoid. "What you findin' over there, sucker?  Must be somethin' or you 
wouldn't wanna work that side every week."  Dickie watched when the man 
came back from behind the little stuccoed apartment house -- nothing, 
no sign that he had found anything, though he had been back there for 
quite a while. It was certain the man would have shown some sign if he 
had found anything unusual there, a shifty eyed look, a smirk. 

Well, Dickie thought, that's that. 

*       *       * 

Missy said, more than once during this time "Richard, why don't you take
some courses while you're doing this?  You might enjoy it. After all, 
this isn't tiring your mind." 

Actually it was some kind of a mental strain trying not to feel
humiliated by the job and humiliated and scared to death at the same 
time by his  maniac of a partner. Dickie was brought up in a nice 
suburb, not out on the streets. Besides, he had had all the courses he 
wanted. 

Dickie never did very well in high school, just enough to get by. He was
never popular, really. He never liked reading or studying. He was 
rather skinny and not athletic. He always had some sort of job on the 
side and bought a car for himself when he was sixteen. After he got the 
car there were always a couple of guys who would like to ride out and 
hang around, though sometimes the other guys wandered off together and 
Dickie had to drive home alone. 

After high school his father insisted he try out the local Junior
College. It turned out he really didn't mind taking the business 
courses, in fact, he thought they were pretty interesting, and worked 
hard at them, but he had to take English and science too, and though he 
got low B's in the business classes, the others dragged him down so 
that he was a little below average when he graduated. That set him 
against any more school. 

He had studied hard for the first time in his life and gotten so little
back for it. Later he had passed all the licensing tests in his dad's 
business -- for all that got him. This. And he would have to go through 
the Real Estate classes, too. They told him to wait until they could 
take him on. It would be like a vacation, they said. 

"No," he said to Missy, "this job makes me too tired, and I'll have to
study up hard next year. Just lemme take it easy."  Besides, he was 
starting to feel lucky again. 

Some of their "old friends" had dropped them right away when he got
caught in his stock deal. When he became a garbage man he didn't want 
to see any of the others. So now he had just been watching TV in the 
evenings, and they visited their folks once in a while. 

*       *       * 

Now another Wednesday came around. When Dickey got to the place the
watch and the ring came from, he was distracted, because he had just 
had a fierce run-in with his partner, who said, as he did once or twice 
a week, that Dickie wasn't working fast enough or hard enough. Dickie 
ran from him, enraged and afraid he might start something serious. He 
just whipped around the back corner of the building, the cart flying 
behind him and threw the first garbage can he could grab into his big 
green barrel, without even looking at it. Then he leaned against the 
wall, panting. 

He knew that if he didn't hurry the big black man would have the truck
pulled all the way to the end of the street by the time Dickie was 
halfway down it, and he'd have to drag his barrel all that way back and 
forth by hand for the rest of the day. 

"Fuck it." he said out loud, "I'm no slave to that son of a bitch." 

Then he heard a tapping sound, and realized it had already been going on
for a couple of seconds. It was coming from a kitchen window just above 
his shoulder. A stout little old lady was leaning on the sill and 
looking out at him with a kindly smile. She waggled her finger at him, 
shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders. It made him smile too. 
Then the lady walked away from the window. 

Why should I let that poor ignorant fuck get to me? When I'm back in my
own house driving my Porsche again, he'll still be a "gawbige man."  He 
never had anything and never will. 

He took the lid from the next can. There on top of the neat packages of
garbage was another one in tissue paper, tied with the same red string 
as before. Small, there was a more or less cylindrical object inside, 
the size of a big thumb, but heavy. He stuffed it into his front pants 
pocket and was cheerful for the next hour, despite the taunts from his 
partner. 

When he got home he found the package contained sixteen Krugeraands, a
solid pound of pure gold, something like fifty two hundred dollars, 
fifty two fifty, he figured. 

He still had almost ten thousand dollars to pay back, six or seven
months of work. Just about everything he earned was going out in triple 
payments on his debt; they were living off of Missy's salary, and -- 
even when he could start up with the real estate, and even though it 
was a great deal, still, he'd only have a few bucks a week allowance 
for another two or three months -- they wouldn't have a nickel to play 
with till he made his first few sales. Jesus,  he thought, this is the 
kind of insurance I like; this'll get us off to a good start and...  
Then he didn't want to think about it anymore, though he liked the idea 
of the Krugeraands -- they were smooth and cool in his hand -- they 
went into the back of the drawer with the signet ring. 

Even if he had all the cash in hand right now, he still had to wait
before the Real Estate Agency would take him on. They said they wanted 
everyone to forget about the newspaper articles and then they would 
"take care of him." 

Now this is half of what I owe, he thought, If they keep this up pretty
soon I'll be able to quit this Goddamn job and we can take a vacation. 

He went back to the drawer several times that afternoon and counted the
coins over and held them in his hand, but, perhaps because he could not 
get to sleep for his nap and he had gotten up at five AM as usual, he 
felt rather anxious and depressed. 

He took Missy out to dinner that night. "Richard, do you think we can
really afford it?" 

"Dammit, Missy, you have to do something sometime. We're not slaves." 
It was an expensive dinner; he got drunk and went after her in the car. 


"Rich, we don't want to get pregnant yet." 

"Don't worry about it."  He said. 

The following week again he went for his "lucky" side of the street.
"What you want on that side, boy?  Nothin' but heavy gawbige there."  
The black man watched him carefully and that made him even slower than 
Dickie, though he wasn't doing half as much work. And again Dickie 
found his package. 

This time, he didn't see anyone around the house at all, still, he was
fastidious, made sure nothing fell on the ground, put the can lids back 
on nice and tight. 

This time, the same as the previous week, he found sixteen bright
Krugeraands, no, there were only fifteen, not quite a full pound. He 
took the others out and spread them out on the bed. Over ten thousand 
dollars! 

Dickie wrapped them all up in one roll and closed it with Scotch tape
from downstairs, then he put them back in the back of the drawer with 
the old receipts and papers and the signet ring. (He was wearing the 
watch every day. The jeweler had told him it was just about 
indestructible.) 

Though the leaves were turning bright colors and the weather was now
cool, he found himself sweating when he lay down to nap. 

The next morning he had a fever and had to take a sick day. 

He tossed and turned in bed all day, pulling the covers on and throwing
them off again, still sweating. Late in the afternoon, when he couldn't 
stand staying in the house anymore, he went out and sold two of the 
coins just for some spending money, then stopped by his father's office 
and checked the street directory. Listed at the address were 
"Campbell," "Castellano," "Jones," and "Broderick." No Remington or 
Raleigh, no Robert, no Richard, no Roy. "Castellano, Benjamin," he 
repeated. 

The next day after that was Friday, and though he felt alright, he
thought he might as well take another sick day. 

He just sat around the house. He tried to watch TV, but couldn't get
interested. He felt like running around the block or doing a lot of 
push-ups. Don't I get enough of that at work, he thought, and had a 
shower and looked at himself in the mirror instead. He thought he 
looked pretty good these days. 

When Missy got home he took another shower with her; she didn't object,
though she was tired and fell asleep for a little while as soon as he 
was finished. He went downstairs and paced back and forth in the living 
room. 

That Saturday they had dinner at Dickie's father's house. Since his wife
had died four years ago, Richard Cooper, Sr. enjoyed cooking a nice 
meal for them occasionally, and he always enjoyed seeing Missy. 

Naturally Dickie and his father got into it a couple of times. His
father wished he would take some other kind of job to tide them over. 
"You tell me something else I can do for thirty-two thousand dollars a 
year, and I'll go and do it. Do you know I'm paying twenty one percent 
interest on this money I had to borrow?"  The implication was obvious: 
his father should have loaned him the money, and after he said he only 
hoped Dickie was taking care of himself and wasn't going to hurt 
himself, and Dickie said "It's a little late to be thinking about that, 
isn't it?"  Dickie's father pretty much confined himself to talking to 
Missy for the rest of the evening. 

Then on Monday Dickie's partner was in a foul mood, because he had had
to work two days with a partner who didn't know the routes and that 
took longer. "I know what you did. You was eatin' gawbige on you 
favorite street and you got a bad piece ditn' you?  Made you sick up, 
ditn' it?  You keep it up skinny boy. Anyway, you back. I'm gonna work 
you double hard this whole week."  And he did whatever he could to 
irritate Dickie for the rest of the day. 

When Wednesday came around again in the dark morning before going to
work, Dickie put his hand back into the drawer of his desk. He could 
feel the long roll of coins there, cool and heavy. He was not at his 
best, he felt slightly feverish. Nothing was going to keep him from 
going to work on that day. 

Finally they came to his "lucky" street. And his lucky house. When he
went around the back corner of the house he saw the kitchen curtain 
fall and the back of the stout old lady walking quickly away from it. 
When he lifted the lid of the first garbage can, there, on top of the 
parcels of garbage was a box, wrapped nicely in fresh tissue paper, and 
tied with blood red string, as the others had been. This package, 
however, was somewhat bigger, about the size and shape of small hat 
box, and as heavy as if it had a small cantaloupe in it, definitely too 
large to stuff in his pants. Dickie emptied out the other cans and 
perched his box on top of the green barrel on a clean sheet of 
newspaper. He made it back to the street and was hiding the box on the 
underside of the truck when his partner came back with his own loaded 
barrel. 

"Hey what that?"  he said, "You been holdin' out on me." 

"Never mind what that is."  Dickie said. 

The big man reached for it. Dickie caught his arm and held it in a tight
grip, he felt like he could break it in half with a little more 
squeeze. 

"You keep your fuckin' hands off my things, asshole." Dickie said. 

The man reached his other hand out to swat Dickie on the side of the
head. Dickie reached up and caught the wrist as it came towards him. He 
caught it and held it stone still, holding the man off balance and, by 
shifting his weight, brought him to his knees. 

"You don't hit," Dickie said, "or we both lose our jobs, and one of us
goes to the hospital." 

The man looked up at him with a grin, both his wrists still locked in
Dickie's grip. "I thought we was friends," he said. 

"No, we're not friends," Dickie said before he let him go, "We just work
together." 

"I'll remember that."  the man said, walking back toward his barrel to
dump it out. 

Dickie didn't open the package until he had pulled into his own garage
and brought the door down. He had been pumped up with victory and 
anticipation, now he suddenly felt very tired. He sat down on the 
wooden steps leading up to the kitchen and untied the string, undid the 
Scotch tape holding the tissue paper, and after removing it, folded it 
neatly into a flat square. It was a hatbox, an old fashioned round one, 
but small, perhaps from the forties when little women's hats were hot, 
from a very nice store which was still the best in town, at least as 
far as Dickie knew. 

When he took the lid off he found more tissue paper crumpled inside and
he pulled it back. At first he didn't understand what it was in the 
box, except that it was gold. A mass of golden curls. And the head 
beneath it was that of a beautiful child. Beautiful. The glowing golden 
hair. The open eyes, large, a brilliant, almost turquoise blue. The 
skin seemingly flushed with health, the lips, rosy and slightly parted 
in a smile -- no sign of fear or pain on that face. How could that be? 

Dickie wanted to scream. He almost dropped the box. He couldn't stand to
look at it. But he froze, sitting there on the steps. Looking at 
itfeeling so very tired from his very hard day's work. He felt numb, 
unreal. 

"Ah well," the head says, in a musical voice, so lovely that Dickie
wants to cry, "what are you going to do now, Dickie?" 

*** JK *** 


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