Something wicked

As soon as we started comparing notes, it dawned on me that our pet misanthrope most emphatically is the oily grifter I’d thought he only pretended to be. Grifting to the tune of hundreds from your faithful correspondent, thousands from another, and from the network at large free storage, free transportation, free accommodations, and under-the-table income opportunities. Not to mention four-figure bail. I was on the verge of buying him a used car before a guardian angel dope-slapped me out of the idea.

Traditional wisdom has it that a gift isn’t a gift if you give it expecting something, anything at all, in return, and I do believe this, but when you teach a man to fish, buy him a pole, bait his hook, and rent him a boat, it’s at least disappointing to find him later that same day in the seafood aisle buying frozen salmon with the money you loaned him for tackle. And not the least bit charming that he invites you to let him cook the salmon, tea for two, in your kitchen. Or that he then lets you do the honors yourself, you being so talented that way. And then lets you wash the dishes.

It was exactly two years ago that I came within a hair’s breadth of being taken in by another grifter whose nom de grift was Kevin, and here’s how I debriefed myself then:

New rule: If the person asking for money is clean, intelligent, articulate, apparently healthy, and appropriately embarrassed, walk away. It will seem rude, but walk away. Because he’s a grifter.

One forgets.

I’d winced inwardly at the misanthrope’s habit of trash-talking his other benefactors, but it had what I now believe was the intended effect of stroking my ego. I was Svengali’s peer, not one of his marks. And there but for the grace of God, after all.

But the house of cards did fall, and as it fell, as notes were compared and histories reaching far back were brought forward, so fell the presumption of innocence regarding actual charges filed in a court of law. An intuitive acquaintance – by which I mean an acquaintance who’s an actual intuitive – said recently she’s “more than relieved” the jig is up. She’s known him since he was a boy, and has liked and admired him at various stages of his development, but somewhere along the line, a recessive gene maybe, something wicked this way came out of him, and suddenly it’s difficult to imagine a line he wouldn’t have or couldn’t have crossed. Or wouldn’t again.