Broke

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The accountant asked me: “Do you travel?”

“No.”

“Never?”

I was embarrassed. “I’m visiting my brother in L.A. next month.”

“Let’s say instead that you’re going to a writers’ gathering in May—and while you’re there, hey why not see your brother?”

A writer’s accountant, this. My first.

I showed him one receipt. It was a donation (this my first too) to a fledgling press.

He set the receipt aside.

“But I donated,” I said proudly. “Fifty dollars. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Not really.”

I stared at that receipt. I’d made a list of all the nonprofit presses I was going to donate to this year. Not that I have the money.

“You owe X dollars,” the accountant said toward the end of our meeting.

X = about $30 = much, much less than what I owed last year.

“And,” the accountant added, “you owe me one thousand.”

My friend, who’d referred him to me, said he charges her around $350.

I left the accountant’s office promising to pay him in installments, regretting that I hadn’t asked him to lower the fee, wondering if accountants ever lowered their fees, already drafting a note asking if he could lower his fee.

*

I dial the Asian American Arts Alliance. A man answers: “Hello, this is H.”

“Hi, my name is w. I’m—”

“Hello, w! You’re calling about the Urban Artist Initiative, right?”

“Yes, I—”

“You’re wondering where your check is, right?”

“Well yes—”

“We’re cutting them today or tomorrow. People have been asking about this. Thanks for checking in.”

“Thank you.”

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Filed under NYC, daily, proofreading, what a weirdo, writing

Tags: moratorium on shopping