Growing bigger and stronger

At three in the afternoon, after making it through the lunch rush, they had exhausted all their stock, and neither Lin Rui nor Linda felt like doing any more business.

The two said a word to Toby, then drove back to the house in the Bronx.

They parked the food truck outside the Joneses' yard. Lin Rui opened the cash register, stuffed every last bill inside into a bag, and carried it into the house.

Toby hurried after him and asked, "How much did you make today? A thousand dollars?"

Linda collapsed onto the living room sofa in exhaustion and said lazily, "You're seriously underestimating us. We were approaching a thousand dollars in sales before lunch even started.

"During the lunch rush, the register rang once a minute.

"Tourists rarely come alone. They usually travel in groups of two or three, so each order was basically ten to fifteen dollars. That went on for three hours. Work out how much that is."

Toby instinctively raised both hands and counted on his ten fingers. After frowning over it for a moment, he decisively gave up. "Just tell me how much."

Lin Rui tipped the bag of money onto the living room table, and hundreds of bills fluttered down like snowflakes.

Mr. Jones had been sitting on the sofa watching television. At the sight, he couldn't help swearing, "What the fuck! How much did you make?"

"According to the register, it should be over eighteen hundred dollars." Lin Rui slumped onto the sofa too and murmured:

"I gave Toby a hundred dollars to get more stock partway through, and I took ten dollars to buy food when we closed. Everything else is here."

"So you made seventeen hundred dollars in half a day?" Mr. Jones couldn't close his mouth. "That's about what an ordinary person earns working full-time for half a month."

In 2005, the dollar still went a long way. Even in New York, the median individual monthly income was only three thousand dollars.

They stared at the tabletop in a daze for a long while.

A thousand-odd dollars was no more than the price of a meal to the wealthy, but to Lin Rui and the Jones family in their current circumstances, it was nothing short of rain arriving just in time.

Lin Rui wanted his first pot of gold.

For instance, he could buy ten thousand shares of Apple stock. In twenty years, they would rise roughly 270-fold, reaching a value of 150 million dollars.

That would be enough for him to splurge and retire on.

But buying ten thousand shares of Apple in 2005 required an initial investment of 650,000 dollars. That was a lot of money too, and it wasn't going to blow in on the wind.

"I negotiated with the church. We don't have to hand over any business proceeds for the first two months. So however much we make, we split it among ourselves.

"Today's the weekend, so sales are higher, but there won't be any shortage of white-collar customers on weekdays either.

"If we can make use of the afternoons and nights too, and raise prices a little, our daily earnings might break three thousand dollars. We could make a hundred thousand a month."

A hundred thousand dollars, almost all pure profit. It was impossible not to covet it.

Lin Rui remembered that in his previous life, he hadn't saved up a hundred thousand dollars until twenty years later. He hadn't expected to have a chance to make it in a single month now.

Toby asked blankly, "Can we split the money now?"

"We can, yes." Lin Rui gathered up the scattered bills, but only pulled out fifty dollars and handed it to Toby. "You did well today. This is your pay.

"We'll divide the rest into four shares. One for me, one for Linda, one for your family, and one set aside for miscellaneous expenses."

As he spoke, Lin Rui counted out another five hundred dollars and handed it to Linda. "We couldn't have made this much without the food truck you got us. You earned this."

Linda had previously said she could go without pay and only wanted to participate and document things. But when she actually saw the five hundred dollars Lin Rui held out, she couldn't bring herself to refuse.

"Thank you, Leon." Linda took the money, stepped forward to hug Lin Rui, and kissed him on the cheek. "I never imagined this business could be so profitable. I really underestimated it.

"I need to pay rent, and I have student loans to repay.

"If I could make five hundred dollars a day, that would be fifteen thousand a month... God, I'm starting to wonder whether I should keep trying to become an investigative journalist.

"Selling burgers and sandwiches on the street would be a pretty good choice too."

Linda hid her embarrassment behind a smile and accepted the money without further protest.

But Lin Rui shook his head. "No, don't celebrate too soon. We got the permit for this stand through the church. Not many people know about this yet, but given enough time, someone is bound to get jealous.

"After two months, we'll have to give most of the profits to the church. The Jones family should still receive charitable assistance, but we'll become unpaid volunteers, and our earnings will drop sharply."

Mr. Jones scoffed at that. "Leon, it looks like you don't know much about the church yet.

"At most, a tenth of the profits you hand over will go to charity. The church insiders will definitely pocket the lion's share.

"If I get five hundred dollars a month, that'll mean those bloodsuckers are feeling charitable."

"So...?" Thinking of her tens of thousands of dollars in student loans and the long twenty or thirty years of repayments ahead, Linda couldn't help feeling immense hatred toward anyone who stood in the way of her making money.

Mr. Jones and Toby were anxious too. They absolutely couldn't let this chance to rake in money slip away.

"So we need to use all twenty-four hours of the day. New York is a thriving international metropolis, and Manhattan is relatively safe at night too.

"The food truck should go to Central Park during the day, then places like Broadway's nightclubs at night to make money. We need shifts. The people can rest, but the truck can't. We need to put everything we have into making money.

"A tax-exempt food truck permit is a money tree. We have to use it efficiently."

Lin Rui's words were practically a call to arms, firing up everyone present. He specifically drew up a simple set of rules establishing who would work and who would receive earnings, to avoid internal disputes.

"Mrs. Jones can quit her second job. Hospital shifts are exhausting, hard work, and don't pay much. Samantha works as a cashier at a mall, so she can come work the food truck's night shift too."

"I need to call Mrs. Jones. We'll take all of Whole Foods' discounted nighttime prepared food. Have her secure that supply for us so we don't end up with nothing to sell tomorrow."

"We also need to contact Pastor Borg. The other stores providing relief food must have potential sources of stock we can tap further.

"Imperfect fruit, wine, milk, and other drinks nearing their expiration dates-we should take all of it. Even if we have to pay something, it'll be worth it.

"One vehicle isn't enough. We may need two. We should be able to borrow Pastor Borg's pickup specifically to haul stock."

"Oh, right, Andrea works on Broadway. She should know when the shows at those theaters finish and take their curtain calls.

"We should draw up a schedule of where to drive the truck and when, to maximize profits."

Lin Rui took out a pen, clicked out its tip, found a sheet of paper, and listed the important things that came to mind one by one.

Then he took out his phone and started making calls, looking for supplies and staff for nighttime sales-the others in the living room stared at him as though he were a monster.

Mr. Jones quietly asked Linda, "Are all young people from Country Z this capable? Leon seems particularly good at making money."

Linda was momentarily speechless too. "I feel the same way. Those master's students studying economics at my university can talk theory so convincingly, but when it comes to putting it into practice, they're definitely no match for Leon."

Half an hour later, Mrs. Jones abandoned her work immediately after receiving the call and came charging home in her car. Her three daughters, Andrea, Samantha, and Cynthia, also found ways to get home.

Once they learned how profitable Lin Rui's "charity sale" was, none of them could remain calm.

"Leon, are you saying one food truck can make us a hundred thousand dollars a month?" Mrs. Jones, laden with fat, nearly pounced on Lin Rui to plant a few smacking kisses on him in her excitement.

Frightened, Lin Rui ducked toward Linda and hurriedly explained, "The biggest reason we're profitable is that we have no costs. All the food is snatched from homeless people's 'mouths' in the name of relief.

"Also, this is a charity project promoted by the church, so it's tax-exempt. Otherwise, ingredients and taxes would swallow at least sixty percent of the profits."

"To hell with those homeless people," Mrs. Jones said bluntly. "We'll use the profit-sharing arrangement you designed.

"You, Linda, and our family will count as the original shareholders and take sixty percent of the earnings. The remaining forty percent will go to the people doing the work, with pay calculated by the hour."

With money to be made, everyone was brimming with drive.

Before dark, Mrs. Jones returned to Whole Foods and gave several prepared-food department employees fifty dollars each, telling them to use the supermarket's ingredients to hurry up and make several hundred portions of ready-to-eat "relief" food.

Why did they need so much "relief" food? Don't ask, just take the money-in an era when the minimum hourly wage was six dollars, fifty dollars was no small sum. Naturally, there were people willing to do the work.

As for the ingredients used, those would naturally count as "routine losses"-supermarkets suffered losses every day. Transportation, production, sales-something could go wrong at every stage.

What did a little extra loss matter?

When there was wool to be fleeced from the company, fleece it.

When Lin Rui drove the pickup over to collect the stock, Mrs. Jones brought him six large tubs of milkshake base and fifteen food-storage boxes filled to the brim on a cart.

"Since you'll be selling at night, I didn't put ice in the boxes. Just take the food out and warm it a little in the microwave. It'll taste better."

"As for tomorrow's relief delivery to the church, I had them make a special batch with fewer ingredients. As long as those homeless people don't starve to death, that's enough. There's no need for them to stuff themselves with food high in fat, salt, and sugar."

"Oh, and I told Toby he's not allowed to grab food from the relief stations tomorrow. Doing that too often could bring trouble. People will wonder why he's grabbing it."

Fat though Mrs. Jones was, she was fairly cautious in her thinking and made every arrangement as watertight as possible. Lin Rui returned with the milkshake base and food boxes and loaded them all onto the food truck.

"Leon, do you need my help tonight?" Mr. Jones limped over to the food truck. "I've been sitting at home for months. My injury hasn't healed, but I can still get around well enough.

"At least I can help you clean up the trash so the neighborhood police don't give you trouble. Besides, some blocks around Broadway aren't safe either. Having another man along will make things safer."

Mr. Jones deliberately lifted the hem of his shirt, revealing the holster beneath his ribs and the handgun tucked inside it.

"You have a concealed carry permit?" Lin Rui was surprised.

"I do." Mr. Jones smiled. "I work at the docks. Sometimes I run into trouble that's hard to handle. Carrying a gun is for my own protection."

"All right." Lin Rui agreed. He actually understood what Mr. Jones really meant: he wanted to earn some extra hours of pay.

Linda wouldn't be coming along that night. She said she had something to do. Samantha, who worked as a cashier at the mall, took her place.

Cynthia and Toby also wanted to come along to see just how wildly popular the food truck business Lin Rui had set up really was.

As for Andrea, she was a Broadway dancer. "Leon, the Gershwin Theatre is putting on Wicked tonight.

"There are nearly a hundred cast and crew backstage who need a late-night meal, at about seven dollars a portion. Do you want to grab that business?"