Chapter 15: The Douchebag Dividend
The douchebag jar had accumulated impressive mass.
I'd been watching it grow since moving in—Schmidt's violations ranging from obvious ("I'm too good-looking for this conversation") to obscure ("invoking 'chutney' in a non-food context"). The system operated on consensus: any roommate could call a violation, Schmidt would protest, and then deposit money with theatrical reluctance.
The jar itself sat on the kitchen counter, a visible monument to Schmidt's personality. And on day thirty-three, it became the topic of genuine discussion.
"Four hundred and twenty-three dollars," Winston announced, having counted the contents with the methodical focus he usually reserved for puzzles. "That's actual money."
"It's douche tax," Nick corrected. "Different category."
"Still spendable."
The debate that followed was predictable in its chaos. Nick wanted pizza—practical, immediate, requiring minimal planning. Winston proposed donating to charity, which triggered a twenty-minute argument about which charity deserved douchebag proceeds. Jess suggested art supplies for her classroom, an idea so specifically self-serving that even she couldn't defend it without laughing.
Schmidt, notably, stayed quiet through most of it. His eyes kept drifting to the jar with an expression I recognized from the show: opportunity being calculated.
"We could invest it," he said finally.
The table's reaction was unanimous dismissal.
"Invest four hundred dollars?" Nick snorted. "In what? A very small house?"
"Investments don't require large capital. The principle matters, not the amount."
"Schmidt, this is douche money. It exists to punish you for being terrible. Using it to make more money defeats the purpose."
"The purpose is behavioral modification. The destination of the funds is secondary."
I was working on my laptop at the kitchen counter—temp agency communications that required actual attention for once. But the conversation pulled at something in my memory.
Instagram.
The show had never specified exactly when Instagram became significant to the characters, but I knew from my previous life that the company was founded in 2010 and acquired by Facebook in 2012 for roughly a billion dollars. In October 2011, it was still a relatively new app—popular among tech-forward early adopters but not yet the cultural force it would become.
Schmidt, with his marketing background and trend-awareness, was exactly the kind of person who might notice Instagram early. And the douchebag jar—sitting there with four hundred dollars of accumulated penalties—represented exactly the kind of small stake that could become meaningful if applied correctly.
The seed was obvious. The question was how to plant it without drawing attention.
"Wouldn't it be hilarious," I said, keeping my eyes on my laptop, voice deliberately casual, "if the douche penalties actually made you rich? Like, invested in one of those app things. What's that photo one everyone's talking about—InstaPhoto?"
"Instagram," Schmidt corrected automatically. Then paused. "Wait. You think—"
"I don't think anything. I just think it would be funny. Douche money funding douche success." I shrugged without looking up. "Pizza's probably smarter."
The table moved on. Nick reasserted the pizza position. Winston defended charity with renewed vigor. Jess proposed a compromise involving both pizza AND art supplies, which satisfied no one.
But Schmidt's expression had shifted. The calculator behind his eyes was running numbers on something I'd pretended not to care about.
---
[Later that evening — 10:47 PM]
Schmidt found me in the kitchen, where I was attempting to refine my egg technique. The scrambled eggs remained stubbornly imperfect—the Photographic Reflex had copied the motion, but the instinct for timing eluded me.
"InstaPhoto," Schmidt said without preamble.
"Instagram."
"You mentioned it deliberately."
I'd expected this conversation. Schmidt's intelligence often hid behind his vanity, but the vanity was a choice, not a limitation. When something piqued his interest, he pursued it with genuine analytical rigor.
"I mentioned it as a joke," I said. "The whole point was the irony."
"What do you know about it?"
"Almost nothing. Photo filters. Social sharing. The kind of thing tech people get excited about before it disappears."
Technically true. I didn't know the specific financial trajectory—just that Instagram would become important enough to make billion-dollar headlines. The rest was extrapolation.
Schmidt studied me with the assessment I'd seen him use in professional contexts. Weighing credibility, calculating angles.
"Why mention it at all?"
"Because it was funny. Schmidt's Douchebag Dividend. You could put it on a business card."
His lips twitched. The joke landed, as I'd intended it to. Humor was cover—a reason to have spoken that didn't require deeper explanation.
"I looked it up," he said. "The app. It's growing quickly. Photography-focused, millennial demographic, strong user engagement metrics."
"Schmidt, it was a joke."
"The best jokes contain truth."
He walked away before I could respond, disappearing toward his room. Through the cracked door, I glimpsed him opening his laptop, pulling up something I couldn't see from my angle.
The seed was planted. What grew from it would be Schmidt's choice entirely.
---
Nick passed through the kitchen a few minutes later, grabbing a beer from the fridge. He paused at the counter, looking at the douchebag jar with an expression I couldn't read.
"You counting it?" I asked.
"Thinking about it." He lifted the jar, feeling its weight. "Four hundred bucks. That's real money."
"Winston already counted it."
"I know. But some things need hands-on confirmation." He set the jar down, then counted anyway—bills sorted by denomination, coins stacked in neat towers. The original Chase Reed's data entry instincts surfaced: I could have calculated the total in seconds. I let Nick take his time.
"Four twenty-three," he announced. "Winston was right."
"Usually is, with numbers."
Nick put the money back in the jar without organizing it. The chaos was part of the point, apparently.
"Schmidt's going to do something stupid with this," he predicted. "He gets that look. Like he's planning."
"Investment stupid or party stupid?"
"Both, probably. He'll invest it in something and throw a party to celebrate investing it." Nick shook his head. "The guy can't do anything simply."
Human moment: watching Nick count money by hand when calculation was available. Some rituals mattered more than efficiency. Some processes contained meaning beyond their outcomes.
"Whatever happens," I said, "at least the money came from somewhere entertaining."
"That's one way to look at it." Nick took his beer and retreated toward his room. "Night, Chase."
"Night."
The jar sat on the counter, containing four hundred twenty-three dollars and the potential for significant change. Instagram would either make that money meaningful or irrelevant, depending on whether Schmidt acted and how quickly.
I'd planted the seed. The cultivation was out of my hands.
---
[Day 35 — 2:14 AM]
I couldn't sleep.
The loft was quiet—that particular late-night silence where five people breathing in separate rooms created a kind of white noise. Through my thin walls, I could hear Schmidt typing. Still working on something.
The jar investment was a calculated intervention. Not as direct as the Coach situation, but similar in structure: providing information, then stepping back to let choices happen naturally. If Schmidt invested and the investment paid off, it would feel like his decision—because it was his decision. I'd just provided a nudge.
But nudges accumulated. The Ferguson slip. The pose copy. The contract help for Cece. The investment hint. Each one was small individually. Together, they painted a picture of someone who knew things they shouldn't know, noticed patterns others missed, provided value that exceeded reasonable explanation.
Jess was documenting. Nick was watching. Schmidt was analyzing. The suspicion threads were multiplying while I kept adding reasons for suspicion to exist.
The Memory Palace organized the concerns without resolving them. Pattern recognition without judgment. Data without wisdom.
Through the wall, Schmidt's typing stopped. Then resumed. Then stopped again.
He was deciding something. The jar money, probably. Whether to take a joke seriously. Whether to trust an instinct sparked by a roommate he barely knew.
The show's timeline flickered in my memory—Schmidt's canonical trajectory, the investments and failures and eventual successes. Instagram wasn't part of that narrative. I was writing something new.
A notification chimed on my phone. Schmidt's name, inexplicably, at two in the morning.
What's the actual company name? Not the app. The company.
I stared at the message. He was doing research. Taking the joke seriously.
Instagram, Inc. Founded 2010. Based in San Francisco.
The response came immediately: Thanks.
No follow-up. No explanation. Just Schmidt, at two in the morning, gathering information on something I'd pretended not to care about.
The seed didn't need water. It needed Schmidt's ambition.
Whatever happened next—investment or dismissal, profit or loss—I'd set something in motion that couldn't be unset. The douchebag jar might fund something larger than pizza. Or it might fund exactly pizza, and this entire exercise would become a footnote.
Either way, the timeline continued bending.
Schmidt's typing resumed through the wall. Decision in progress. Future uncertain.
I lay in the dark, listening to the sound of choices being made.
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