The Adjustment League

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Authors: Mike Barnes
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    â€œDifferent situation. But yes, about the same costs.”
    â€œAnd you feel yourself to be of sound mind?” Ken getting it out quickly, not comfortable even after all these years with asking such a thing, though the question is my own and I wouldn’t give him my business unless he agreed to it.
    â€œI do.”
    â€œAnd it’s something you’ve considered carefully. Reviewed over a period of time.”
    A short time. “I have.”
    â€œAll right, then.”
    I now pronounce you manic and funds.
    The money will be in my bank tomorrow, Wednesday morning at the latest. Same account my regular remit goes into—$800, two days before the end of each month. Half for rent, the Owner’s top-up, and half for food, gas and other sundries. A maintenance dose. Money methadone, to keep the cells this side of screaming. And coverable, on average, from a conservative investment portfolio, not touching the principal. Leaving aside a little extra for the unforeseen . Ken double-checking on his calculator that first meeting, but doing most of it in his head.
    â€œKeep well,” he says before hanging up.
    â€œSorry, that suite’s taken. Hanging in might still be available.”
    No dry chuckle this time. “Stay safe, my friend.”
    Stay safe, my friend . Making another coffee in the French press snagged at Goodwill, I consider it. Banker’s bonhomie in another mouth, but not in Ken’s I don’t think. Not just that. Though we meet barely once a year, neither of us could forget our first encounter. Lifting the lid on my life to let him peep at the roiling. I needed to scare him to gain his full attention. Let him know exactly what he was dealing with. His eyes widened, the MBA part of his soul wanted to run. But the concern he added, then and now, seemed his own. Seems genuine.
    Two months after discharge, still lying about the half-empty apartment. Mind blank as sand, hours passing without event, as I moved from chair to bed to chair again. Spring happening unnoticed beyond the windows. Bringing myself slowly off the haze of ward drugs, halving the dosages, quartering them a few days later. Jordan’s cheque still uncashed. Anxious messages from him, mutterings of “expiry dates,” the danger of funds “in limbo.” Even an icy reminder from Lois, Jordan looming inaudibly behind her. But I needed to know. Or needed to be sure of what I already knew. I wouldn’t work again. The hodgepodge of half-jobs and charity placements that had sustained me for two decades was done. At a stroke on a December evening, real winter had begun, and I was no longer work material. That was beyond question. The only question was how to live the time that remained on Jordan’s payout.
    Stretching a sum that was huge if life was a day, a week, a month. Modest if it was years. But if the life dragged on for decades—as even impossible lives were known to do? Live on two hundred grand a year—hey! Live off it forty years—oh oh. The only alternative would be declaring—or trying unsuccessfully to hide—my atrocity windfall, Social Services suspending my disability pension (with clawbacks for the assets hidden), then burning through the whole amount, leaving me, one fine day, a broke mental patient in his mid- to late-forties. No job, no income, no hope—a perfect zero.
    Psychosis doesn’t come with a pension plan. And death’s the only mandatory retirement.
    â€œYou need to know everything to be of use to me. I’m a pretty strange case,” I said, that first day in Ken’s office.
    â€œEvery person’s situation is unique,” he replied. I let that go. Ken was better than that. He’d better be. What I’d told him so far simply wasn’t dire enough. An edited version that would sober him without frightening him off. An ex paid by wealthy in-laws to vanish couldn’t shock a banker. Megan might, but

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