Money Matters by Brian Finney

Author:Brian Finney [Finney, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780999800300
Publisher: KDP
Published: 2019-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

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Right after Eduardo on my to-do list is my dad, and his plan to hijack my mother to Oklahoma. I call him and make a date to meet him for coffee at a hip spot on Ventura. I park easily for a change, probably because it’s early Sunday evening.

I find Dad sitting at an outdoor table under an orange awning, looking uncomfortable, surrounded by groups of kids less than a third his age peering at their phones and tablets. I greet him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek and ask him what he’d like to drink.

“A macchiato,” he says.

“How do you know what a macchiato is?” I say before I can stop myself.

“I may be old, Jenny. I’m not dead,” he answers.

“And a pastry?”

“No, thanks,” he replies, rubbing his hand over his protruding stomach by way of explanation.

I enter the café’s dark interior where customers’ shouted conversations and heavy metal music on the speakers ricochet between the bare bricked walls and exposed ceiling conduits, while the wall-mounted TV silently flickers light on several blackboards on which the large menu is handwritten in colored chalk. I order Dad’s coffee, a hot chai tea latte for myself, and one of their famous crepes filled with strawberries, Nutella, and cream. Dad, I know, will steal some of it.

I return to Dad, bearing napkins, tableware, and a table number in a tall chrome holder.

“See that motorbike cop?” Dad greets me. “He’s been writing tickets nonstop ever since I sat down here. The last one was for not wearing a seat belt.”

I take in the cop, the car, and its occupants.

“It only shows how desperate the city is for revenue,” I remark.

“I know. I know. But I wish he didn’t seem to enjoy his job so much.”

“You don’t know that, Dad.”

“I don’t understand where you and Tricia got your ideas from. Your mother and I always taught you to distrust authority of any kind. It’s just an instrument of state terror.”

“You’re right, Dad,” I humor him. “But demonstrations and political protests seem so pointless today.”

This only gets him fired up again. “That’s the trouble with your generation,” he sputters. “You leave it to corporations and politicians to decide things for you. The nearest you get to protesting anything is signing online petitions.” He pauses. “And your sister probably doesn’t even do that.”

“That’s not fair, Dad. Young people got Obama elected in 2008.”

“If McCain had won I think I would have emigrated to another country.”

“That reminds me. Mom tells me that you’re thinking of taking a job in Oklahoma, of all places.”

“True,” he concedes.

“Why on earth do you want to live in the Bible Belt? You know Oklahoma has voted Republican since 1964. McCain got two-thirds of the Oklahoma vote in 2008.”

“More reason to move there and start changing that.”

“And what about Mom? How’s she going to adapt to a strange new place? All her friends live here in the Valley.”

“You haven’t spent much time with your mother lately, have you?”

I’m about to get defensive, but Dad interrupts me: “I’m not complaining about that.

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