BB Grey–musings

---

from Brown and Black Days

Well, it’s tax day. Sort of. Everyone knows tax day as April 15, but if you’re a live-by-the-edge, self-employed, always-worried-because-maybe-you-did-something-wrong kind of filer, then October 15 is the day you know you have for your extensions to be filed. But even that anxiety is relative. One day taxes are in your top three worries, then they slide to ten, then twenty. What taxes are there to file if you don’t have any work? Or if some client sues you over nothing? Add in your own health going sideways, healthcare costs that could bankrupt you, the retirement you’re not saving for—suddenly the IRS becomes just another voice in the choir of dread. If those other factors are good, then sure, the IRS comes roaring back. But as a business owner, getting there and trying to stay there is like a dog chasing its own tail. You never quite catch it, but you can’t stop running either.

Wednesday morning started with its usual hump-day mentality—a blip on the Richter scale, no big shakes. The night before, the neighbor’s dog had performed its nightly concert. Bubba the beagle, separated from Freddy’s bedroom by nothing but a thin shared wall—courtesy of the housing shortage and the government’s big fix: ADUs, Additional Dwelling Units, little backyard boxes that were supposed to solve the American Dream but mostly just solved the problem of how to pack more people into less space. Freddy had nothing against affordable housing in theory, but in practice it meant Bubba role-playing wolf at 12:50 a.m., and Freddy staring at his ceiling wondering if this was what the Soviets had in mind with their communal living experiments.

But it was Wednesday. By lunchtime the week would be half over, and every movement from that point was closer to the finish line than the starting blocks. It was a philosophy Freddy found himself using more and more—not just for weeks, but for projects, for relationships, for entire years of his life. It was what got him across so many finish lines, even when he couldn’t remember why he’d started running in the first place.

Freddy put on his jeans, one leg at a time, then the boots. Here was his first fashion decision of the day, and likely his last. Whether it would be a brown or black accent day. He hated wearing the same thing day after day. Early in his career as a union carpenter, even the shirts were identical—company issue, logo on the breast pocket, the same dull blue five days a week. His rebellion had been small but deliberate: alternating what he called accessories. Belt, boots, watch band. Brown one day, black the next. It was only a 50% change, but it was his 50%, a small variable in an otherwise fixed equation. Today he’d go with black.

He picked up his keys, filled his Yeti cup with what must have been three or four cups of coffee already—he’d lost count after the second pot—and grabbed his brown Carhartt backpack. The backpack was his version of a doomsday-at-work scenario, a mini-overnight bag for a life that sometimes required him to disappear on short notice. Could he fly out from wherever he was if he needed to? That was the test. He’d gotten the idea from some article in The New Yorker about Sam Altman and his blue nuclear backpack, the one he supposedly never left home without, packed with end-of-the-world supplies. Freddy’s was more practical, less apocalyptic: laptop charger, contact lens case and solution, comb, gel, deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, eye drops, Pepcid, sleeping pills, Aleve, Motrin, a clean T-shirt, underwear, and a nylon hoodie he always joked could double as a tent if things went really sideways. It wasn’t paranoia. It was preparedness. Or maybe it was the same thing.

He shoveled himself into the cab of his truck, tossed the backpack onto the passenger seat, and put the truck in reverse. He glanced over his shoulder out of habit more than attention—his mind was already at the job site, running through the day’s checklist—and then, bam!

The truck lurched. Something solid. Something that shouldn’t have been there.

Freddy’s heart kicked. He looked over both shoulders, checked the rearview, scanned the side mirrors. Nothing. No dog, no kid’s bike, no garbage can. He threw the truck into park, pushed the door open, and scrambled out, the coffee sloshing in his cup, his boots hitting the driveway with a dull thud.