• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

But the thing about business is that, like anything else, it takes a while to figure out how you’re really doing. You’re like a pilot whose dashboard instruments don’t function until the plane has reached cruising altitude—you don’t know how fast you’re going, how high you are, or how close you are to stalling and dropping out of the sky. There just isn’t enough information, and what there is you don’t know how to interpret. Furthermore, beginner’s errors distort the picture. In our case, the cash register work has been so riddled with mistakes that on some days we essentially have no idea how much business we really did. And ballpark guesses often turn out to be rosy-picture guesses.

Yet no matter how mixed the evidence, to a fledgling entrepreneur the future always looks shiny and bright, doesn’t it? You’re in business, you have a store, and it has customers, which might seem like modest accomplishments, but it’s the beginning and it’s hard not to succumb to the delusion that things can only get better. For instance, just the other day we had one of our best shifts—a Saturday in which we made almost twenty-five hundred dollars—and afterward I couldn’t help predicting to Gab that by summer the store would be making double that.

That was a Saturday, though, and Saturdays are always going to be the best day of the week for a store that devotes almost a quarter of its space to beer. Sundays aren’t bad, either, because of people stocking up on groceries for the week, but Mondays are the worst and also when bills start to arrive, and this being the end of the month, invoices have been raining down like bombs all week—a thousand dollars for orange juice, two thousand for lottery tickets, three thousand for rent. Some of our suppliers, it’s becoming clear, have contributed to our misapprehension of financial well-being by giving us steep discounts on our first shipments of ice cream or whatever, and postponing their first bills. Now, however, it’s all coming due and adding up to a stupendous debt, on top of the debt we already have.

“We’re in a hole,” Gab says. “There’s no money in the bank, and based on my calculations, we owe our creditors more than I can see coming in. And we have things like tax coming up.”

“What do you mean tax? It’s only February.”

“Sales tax, stupid, not income tax. As a business, you have to pay sales tax every three months. Our assessment is coming in a few weeks, and if my calculations are correct, it will be another few thousand dollars.”

“A few thousand dollars?!” The lethargy has worn off. A new feeling has entered my body—not panic or despair, but something more like the shock of being diagnosed with a serious illness. How would we pay off Salim and our other debts if there wasn’t money coming in—not now and apparently not for quite a while? Our business is sick—isn’t that what Gab is saying? We’re in danger of becoming one of those stillborn, turn-your-head-away stores that close right after opening. We’d been counting on the deli to pay off our debts, but instead those debts have increased, and now, like any insolvent enterprise, we’ll shortly be shutting down.

For a moment I feel almost overwhelmed. Then it occurs to me that this is what I had been craving—namely, risk and consequences. The real. Vital contact. And despite the chill in the bar (all of New York seems to be frozen right now, as the commerce-killing cold spell goes on and on), I suddenly feel hot with shame. The folly of it all! The way I invested what should have been a dispassionate business decision with foolish emotions and ideals! But it soon passes, in part because I notice that Gab is staring at me with an oddly composed expression.

“Why aren’t you freaking out?” I ask her.

“Because I have a plan,” she says confidently.

I look at her in terror. A plan? But of course—I should have known. Gab and her plans. She proceeds to take out a hard copy of the spreadsheet she’s been working on all day and outline