“Shame’s useless,” he said. “It doesn’t pay bills. It doesn’t build anything.”
Then he pointed at my phone sitting face-down on the table like it was sleeping.
“You’re gonna go back out there today,” he said. “And the world is gonna do what it does.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s gonna sell you comfort,” he said. “It’s gonna sell you ‘deserve.’ It’s gonna sell you ‘just this once.’”
He tapped the table with one knuckle.
“And you’re gonna find out if you’re a man or a mood.”
That line made my stomach flip, because it wasn’t just tough talk.
It was true.
I got in my car twenty minutes later, heading back toward the city, and the first billboard I saw was basically a love letter to debt.
Bright. Smiling faces. The promise of a better life if you clicked a button.
Everything in America is engineered to make you feel like the next purchase is a rescue mission.
My gas light blinked on.
Of course it did.
And I had this weird moment where I almost laughed, because if Frank had been in the passenger seat, he would’ve said something like, “Even your car’s begging.”
At a red light, I checked my bank account.
Not the one Frank showed me.
Mine.
$81.12.