“Bergatroyd, m’boy, do you know what the easiest thing in the world is?”
“No, sir. I don’t know anything that you haven’t told me.”
Lloyd Robertson smiled the happy smile of someone explaining something that their conversation partner already knew. “Yes, right, that’s in your contract. Thank you for elucidating as such. It’s money. Money’s dead simple. Bergatroyd, I have one hundred zillion dollars, and if I wish it I could extend my hand and the world would hand me two hundred zillion more. It’s pretty much a snap.”
“Wow, sir.”
“Look, I’ll prove it. Come with me.”
So they walked out of the greenhouse, through the wine fountains, past the marble zoo, through the under-hanger, down the acceleration tubing, and out the front door into the shameful squalor of the world, where Lloyd had Bergatroyd procure a small child.
“Lemme go ya palooka,” said the small child.
“Shut up, small child, and let me do you a favour,” said Lloyd kindly. “I see you have a little piece of straw in your hand. Would you mind trading me that?”
“Sure,” said the child, eyes narrowed with the glint of someone who’d been burned before. “One hundred zillion biggos.”
“Fifty,” said Lloyd.
“One hundred zillion biggos and all your assets.”
“Deal!” said Lloyd, happily. He snatched up the straw quickly before his dupe could change her mind. “Now Bergatroyd, watch how I can make back my fortune with just this piece of – hey, where are you going?”
“He works for me now, Bubba,” sneered the small child. “Now get the hell off my property.”
Lloyd got the hell off her property. A lesser man would’ve been perturbed, but not he! He had a piece of straw, and he knew how to get what he wanted. All he had to do was start small and think forwards.
There, in the park, amongst the stray winter-hardened dog turds and salt-eroded grass. There. There! Opportunity was lurking.
“Hello friend!” said Lloyd to opportunity, grabbing her shoulder and giving it a good friendly shake. “How’s tricks? Say, would you like a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to trade a piece of straw for that sandwich of yours?”
“Mmmfphlg,” said opportunity, through half her sandwich. “Mmmpplgh! Gllrf!”
“Ah, I see, I see. Good move! A wise investment. Here, if you’ll just take this I’ll get that out of your esophagus in a pinch, no worries.”
“HHHHRRRORK!”
“Hey, stop wriggling!”
“HRLP!”
Across the park, on a sunny bench, a policeman pricked up its ears. It stretched, yawned, turned around a few times, then lightly bounded to the pavement and casually strolled over to Lloyd, whereupon it separated him from opportunity by batting at his nose over and over.
“Now, what seems to be the problem here?” it purred, rolling over and over and showing its soft, furry tummy.
“A simple business transaction, we’re all friends here, no need to trouble yourself officer,” said Lloyd, tickling the policeman’s stomach.
The policeman grabbed Lloyd’s hand and rabbit-kicked his arm raw. “I wasn’t talking to you!” it hissed.
“He tried to take my sandwich and give me straw,” said opportunity. “I don’t like straw and the last quarter of my sandwich has his fat dirty fingerprints all over it.”
“I see!” said the policeman, rubbing its side against her leg. “Well, have no fear of that! We’re going to put this creep in the system.”
So the policeman created a criminal record for Lloyd and chased him out of the park with mock charges and a constant, terrifying moaning sound.
“Balls!” said Lloyd four blocks later, once he’d got his breath back. “I dropped my grass! It’s going to be a real pickle recouping my investment without it. I’d better harvest some recoupment stocks to refundate my assetitudinals. Well, that lawn looks good enough.”
It was very good enough. Lloyd decided it was so good enough that he could afford to be choosey, and had picked and discarded seven bushels (‘too short…too long…too coarse…too fine…too dry…too damp…too exuberant’) when the door opened and someone screamed at him for twenty minutes.
“Feel better?” asked Lloyd when they paused for breath.
“Yes,” said the homeowner. “Much. Geez. Thanks. I’ve been really stressed out lately. The mortgage, you know. Still, if you don’t buy now, you’ll be priced out. I’d have been a fool not to invest in a home.”
“Great!” said Lloyd. “I owned a house.”
“How’d that work for you?”
“I traded it to a small child as part of proving a point about how easy it is to make money with a single piece of straw,” said Lloyd. “Which is why I’m taking this straw from you, as soon as I find one I like.”
“How ‘bout that one?”
Lloyd looked. “It DOES look charming. Thank you.”
“Good luck too, seeing as it’s the last one on the lawn.”
“Yes, that was a little closer than I’d like.”
Sirens were roaring. A car pulled up next to the lawn and four or seven policemen fell out, lazily swatting at each other and never making contact.
“I called them before I came out,” said the homeowner. “Woopsy daisy.”
“No harm done,” said Lloyd, just as the policemen all grabbed a different part of his anatomy each and one of them broke his wrist.
“Stop resisting,” the policeman murmured softly into his ear as it put him in a sleeper hold with one arm and broke his wrist with the other.
“Ah!” said Lloyd. “My wrist broke!”
“Stop resisting,” said the policeman who had broken his wrist, who was still holding his broken wrist.
The policemen knocked Lloyd around until he got stuck under the back seat of the squad car. After a few moments spent trying to dig him out they seemed to lose interest and drove back to the station, where they sauntered in and ignored the commissioner making a big fuss over them.
Lloyd woke up the next morning to someone screaming at him again.
“H’lo?” he articulated.
“Oh, ICK, it’s still alive!” said the commissioner. “I can’t believe they left that in my shoe! Ugh. UGH UGH UGH UGH ugh.” He picked up Lloyd in a newspaper and threw him out of the station, back into the world.
“Am I being detained, or am I free to go?” asked Lloyd.
“Don’t come back!” shouted the commissioner, and slammed the door shut. The world was once against Lloyd’s oyster, and he was the sandy irritating grit in its guts.
But when Lloyd set foot on the street a free man once more, he was befuddled greatly. Every lawn was ablaze, the park was an inferno. Firemen were standing by with dry nozzles and empty hoses, expressions as flat and disinterested as Garfield strips.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
A firefighter turned to him. “New rules. No more straw within forty miles of city limits. It’s a very legitimate law that was purchased through legal means today, by a very rich small child who bought the entire city council a new pool.”
Lloyd never did find that straw he needed; Bergatroyd retired in three weeks; the small child nearly lost it all in the recession until they petitioned to receive more money from everyone else; the homeowner foreclosed; and the policemen lived happily until their kidneys failed due to poor diet, at which point the commissioner had them sent to a nice farm out in the country.