Panorama City by Antoine Wilson

my face, he pointed at the cash and said that’s why I don’t walk around with a smile on my face all day, he said that’s why I don’t work too hard, he said that’s why I just pile up as many hours as I can, who gives a rat’s ass whether the trays are getting clean or the burgers are warm, his words, I’m not the one getting rich. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, Juan-George, I had thought that the better job I did, the more I would be rewarded, I hadn’t heard Francis’s philosophy until that moment, it got me thinking, I didn’t subscribe to it, I should mention, I didn’t think I could actually go in there and do a bad job and let the hours pile up, as Francis seemed to be pushing, but I did have to wonder how I was going to become a man of the world with so little money in my pocket. Later, much later, after Aunt Liz discovered that I’d been cashing my checks at the check-cashing place, she went haywire and told me that their fees were outrageous, that there was no reason I should be giving those people part of my paycheck, that they were leeches, and so on, and then she signed me up at her bank, where I also had to pay fees. After my next session with Dr. Rosenkleig, after a session during which we talked about, as usual, whatever I felt like talking about, which that day was weather, bicycles, and knots your grandfather had taught me, Aunt Liz asked me what we’d covered, and when I told her, she said she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe Dr. Rosenkleig and I had not talked about my feelings, or my father’s death, or how I was adjusting to life in Panorama City, she wondered aloud what she was paying him for. Having become more curious about such matters recently, I asked Aunt Liz how much she paid Dr. Rosenkleig, I asked her how he got paid. She told me he was paid by the hour, same as me, and for a moment I felt, I don’t know how to put it, a twinge of camaraderie, maybe, that Dr. Rosenkleig and I were both in the same boat, that is we were both wage slaves. Just out of curiosity, I asked Aunt Liz what his hourly rate was, she was reluctant to tell me, then she said what’s the harm and came out with it. His hourly rate was substantial. In fact, I thought she had gotten the number wrong, she assured me she hadn’t. I am good with numbers, I have always been good with numbers, even if words and letters elude me sometimes, so I was able to see, instantly, or nearly instantly, in my mind, that one session, fifty minutes, that is, with Dr. Rosenkleig was equivalent, financially speaking, to my entire first week’s work at the fast-food place, once the fees and taxes and uniform had been taken out. I wondered why Aunt Liz had set me up with a job working at the fast-food place, I wondered why she hadn’t set me up with a job as a therapist. I have always been an amateur at talking and listening, but how hard could it be to turn professional, there wasn’t any equipment involved.
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    That night, while sleeping on my inflatable bed, my head combined and shuffled all of the words that had gone into it that day, and while brushing my teeth the next morning I put two and two together, so to speak. No matter what we achieved or did not achieve in our therapy sessions, Dr. Rosenkleig got paid the same, he got paid by the hour, he got paid for his time no matter what he did with it, which explained his long pauses, which explained why he stopped so often to consider everything. The slower he thought, the more he got paid for each individual idea.
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    And then a knock at the door changed everything, or a knock at the door would have changed everything if Aunt Liz hadn’t answered. I’d been in my quarters all afternoon, considering the different ways I could modify the bed so it might conform to my body type, ways that Aunt Liz would not object to, I was trying to solve that thorny riddle when I heard