Page 92 of A Storybook Wedding

“Just the puddle-jumper express, bro,” Jared informs me. “New England Airlines. Only flies to Westerly, Rhode Island, but you can grab an Amtrak from there.”

“And that won’t leave until tomorrow?” I clarify.

“That is correct, good sir,” Jared says. He’s driving particularly slowly, and his right eye is bloodshot, like a toddler with a drippy case of conjunctivitis, but only on the right side. There’s an excellent chance he’s high. “Of course, a guy like you has some sick green, right?”

“Weed? No, man, I’m sorry. I’m not your guy for that.”

“I mean cash, not kush, bro.”

“Oh,” I say. Of course you do.

But to be fair, he is right. I sometimes forget that I have money. So I let Jared arrange a ride for me on an eight-passenger charter plane with a pilot who seems like he makes a fortune shuttling poor souls like me around—or I suppose I should say rich souls with poor circumstances—and is more than happy to capitalize on our grievous situations.

Two thousand dollars. That’s how much it costs. “Supply and demand, baby,” Jared explains.

Fabulous. Just what I need, I think. When I envisioned my final moments here, I absolutely hoped they’d include an economics lesson from the drug lord of Block Island, a Gen-Z stoner clearly on a quest to find himself by way of crashing in the guest house of his insanely wealthy parents’ summer home.

It doesn’t matter. Jared introduces me to his cousin, a twentysomething with a very intentional mullet who he calls Frank the Stank. Frank is an employee of New England Airlines who side-gigs as a charter pilot. He, thankfully, does not appear intoxicated in any way, so I say a silent prayer, take a seat in his tiny aircraft, fasten my seat belt, put my phone on airplane mode, and politely ask him to take me to JFK in Queens.

Because no way am I going to Venmo two grand out of my checking account to go to Westerly and still have to endure a 4-hour-trek home from there.

In case you’re wondering what the ride is like, I’ll sum it up by offering you the mental image of a short bus careening down an endless unpaved dirt road. Fifty-seven minutes of white-knuckle-clutching my hands to my armrests as Frank the Stank weaves his way through the frozen clouds. It is a time, to say the least.

I keep my eyes closed, simply out of fear, and spend those minutes in a memory. The very first time I got a royalty statement, I had no idea what to expect. Sure, I could have asked my agent, since it was coming from her office, but because Work was a debut, I was a neophyte and still had a day job. I didn’t even know when a royalty statement would make an appearance in my mailbox.

I was still living in my apartment in East Harlem. My roommates were both gone, having relocated out of our concrete jungle in exchange for greener pastures (assuming one considers Dumbo to be greener than uptown Manhattan). It was COVID times, my rent was frozen, playgrounds were closed indefinitely, and I barely went anywhere, but when I did, I wore a mask: first paper, then cloth, then KN95. I even wore a mask to go downstairs and get my mail, because you never knew who you’d run into in the lobby of the building or who had been breathing the recycled oxygen before you got there.

I opened my gunmetal-gray mailbox with my tiny mail key and shuffled through its contents. Electric bill, internet bill, a postcard advertising grocery delivery, and a plea for donations to St. Vincent de Paul Society. And then, an envelope from Table of Contents Literary Agency. I opened that one first and was shocked to find a check enclosed. According to my contract, I was earning $1.06 per physical book sold and $0.88 per ebook sold. The audio rights and foreign rights in a dozen countries had just been sold, so this was the only royalty statement I would ever receive where one could look at my advance vs. only the physical and e-copies of my book and see how I was doing. My advance was $50,000. This royalty statement arrived ten months later.

The check was for $75,659.64.

Evidently, it covered my first six months of sales, during which time period I’d sold 73,226 physical copies and 54,591 e-copies. Subtract the advance, and this was my first authorly paycheck, so to speak.

It was more money in one check than I’d ever seen in my entire life. I called my dad, the accountant, to ask if he would look it over and help me make heads or tails of the numbers. He did and then offered some investment advice. “The most important shot in golf is the next one, kid,” he told me.

I waited six more months until my next royalty statement came (which included foreign sales and was more than five times the amount of my first one) before I decided to make any real moves. The easiest move was the physical one, from my rental in East Harlem to my current digs on the Upper West Side, which I was able to purchase outright. I opened a savings account and deposited the rest in there for the time being.

When the money came in for my film option, I relied on my dad to help me choose some solid pandemic-proof investments to put it in, and after another year of royalty statements, I was comfortably living in millionaire status.

But you know, I still put my pants on one leg at a time. I still take the subway to get around. (I didn’t at that time, because nobody took the subway during COVID, but I do now.) I still like a good bacon cheeseburger more than a plate of caviar or whatever it is that rich people eat at one in the morning after a night out with friends at the bar. (Not that I would know. I haven’t been out like that in years.)

My point is I don’t go around thinking, I’m a rich guy. Let me buy rich-guy clothes and go on rich-guy vacations and take a private charter plane to get to JFK when public transportation isn’t available.

Because sometimes I forget that I can do things like that.

But with my eyes shut tightly on the bumpiest plane ride in the history of airline flights, I realize, You know what? I am rich. And well connected. So if I need to make something happen, I can probably find a way to finagle it.

Still, I remind myself, there are certain things we all know money can’t buy. I can’t change Dillon Norway’s mind and make him allow CJ back into Matthias. I wish I could, but I know that’s not realistic. I can’t buy creativity; the fact that this girl is my muse and that the perfect recipe of her beautiful face with those blue-rimmed glasses against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean during a snowstorm will never be a thing I experience again is not fixable with a fat check. If it was, life would be a whole lot easier.

But money and fame can get you something priceless.

Access.

The eyes-wide-shut insight germinates an idea inside my brain. I jot it down in the Notes app on my phone so that I don’t forget it later on. It’s the kind of idea that can only be borne from a high-stress situation, such as the flight from hell crossed with a wife who asked you to please leave her alone after you single-handedly destroyed her pursuits in higher education under the guise of trying to help. The kind of scenario where you just can’t bear to look out the window or at the snake tattoo wrapped around the fingers on the right hand of Frank the Stank or even at your own lap, because reality will come crashing down. Or your plane will. Potato, potahto.

Somehow, we manage to land safely. I don’t know how he does it in that flying tin can, but if I were a more religious person, I would probably kiss the ground once I set my feet back on it. You know that fun little icebreaker: If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Let me tell you, mine would not be flying.

I hop inside one of the long line of yellow cabs at the airport. I give the driver my address and lean back into the black vinyl seat, allowing him to take me home even though I hate the way taxi drivers weave in and out of traffic like they’re invincible. I just don’t have it in me to navigate the AirTrain through Jamaica and the subway from there with all this luggage. I’ve had enough stress for one day, thank you very much.

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