I usually don’t do this, but I was so impressed with myself for predicting (okay, hinting at … ok, mentioning) the subprime mortgage crisis in 2006 (when I wrote this), that I was moved by arrogance and vanity to post. Subprime motivators, but I’ll take what I can get. On with the excerpt.

“It’s all percentages of percentages, it’s fucking crazy. The whole thing is based on that. Everyone’s cut of someone else’s cut.”

“Where’s the money coming from?”

He shrugged. “These poor bastards who are signing their fucking lives away on interest-only sixty-year loans for drywall boxes four exits from the mall.” He paused and stirred his coffee, looked out along the interstate at the SUVs flowing past like dark, gas hungry photons in waves and clumps. “You know the etymology of mortgage? It means ‘death pledge.’” He shrugged again, and laughed. “Word was in the English language before there really was an English language and it still makes perfect fucking sense.”

Sam pushed his hamburger around his plate with a fork and knife. Tim drained his beer and looked around for their waiter, moving back to his coffee in the interim. “How’s your food?”

Sam shrugged. “You remember hamburgers from school?”

“Hamburger Thursday.”

“Fuck yeah. Tater tots and chocolate milk.”

“And those boiled horsemeat hamburgers.”

“About like that.”

They laughed. Sam watched the highway. “I still don’t understand where the money’s coming from.”

Tim put his coffee down and sighed, nodding. “I don’t know if anyone does. Like this coupon thing I’m working on. There are 300 billion dollars in coupons out there, supposedly. One percent of that will get redeemed, something like that. So three billion dollars in shitty coupons, right? Fifty cents at a time, a box of frozen factory fish with fake grill marks and French cut green beans per transaction, right? Something like that. Three billion dollars of lonely dinners and cat food.”

Sam nodded. “Right … but three billion dollars? Christ.”

Tim nodded back, eyes wide. “Right? Three billion. I can’t think that high.”

“And these companies pay for … what?”

“Data, mostly. Like Coke will say, ‘Ok, everyone who buys a bag of potato chips over Labor Day Weekend with a Discover card, spit out a coupon for a twelve pack of Coke. Everyone who buys Black Cherry Pepsi, spit out a coupon for a two-liter bottle of Cherry Coke.’ They pay to be able to dictate the exact circumstances different combinations of offers will be made.”

“So there are people somewhere who—”

“Atlanta.”

“What?”

“Atlanta, all Coke’s shit is in Atlanta. Mostly.”

“Ok, so people in Atlanta somewhere, in some shitty little office, working out promotions for different combinations of coupons. Someone buys three pounds of steak and a bag of frozen broccoli, give that man a coupon for some Diet Coke.”

“Give that man fifty cents towards the purchase of some Diet Coke.”

“Good point. What’s Diet Coke now, like two something?”

“Something, yeah. Two-fifty? Depends, I guess. Gas keeps going up, it’ll be more. But it’s still cheaper than gas.”

“Good thing we don’t drink gas.”

They both watched the interstate for a minute, and laughed when they caught each other doing it.

“Ok, so … fifty cents towards Diet Coke. And there’s a one percent chance Mr. Steak and Broccoli will cash it.”

“Right.”

“Three billion dollars of one percent chances of possible promotions.”

“It’s fucking crazy.”

“It gets so abstract so fast.”

“And that’s just this one fucking client, dude. Last month it was something else, some direct marketing DVD thing. The month before that it was a corporation that runs hospitals.”

“Next month it will be morgues.”

“Yeah, funeral homes, right? Seriously, Dave’s working on a client that’s trying to set up ‘memorial stone’ franchises all over the South and Mid-Atlantic.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. And it’s all percentages, the shit I’m concerned with. One percent of fifty cents off of someone’s five-dollar meal. Three percent of everyone who watches last year’s Academy Award winner. Two-and-a-half percent of everyone who needs to take some kind of medication to stimulate red blood cell production.”

“And if they red cell production thing doesn’t work out so well …”

“Percentage of their survivors buying marble over … fuck, I don’t know, quartz? Whatever cheap head stones are made out of.”

“And our economy runs on this shit.”

“Dude, my life runs on this shit. I’m one guy in one weird little industry which exists like some kind of … helper beetle, showing people how to move different pieces of data around different pieces of data and somehow this knocks off little pieces of money and they sort of cascade down like sawdust and people are buying million dollar homes with this … shit. And I’m one guy. And I’m making OK money.”

“TV dinners, hospitals, headstones. Got all the bases covered.”

They each sat, arms over the back of their booths, comfortable and serene on the edge of the interstate. Sam sighed.

“Weren’t we talking about finding some kind of greater meaning?”