The Blue Suit and Josh Resnek have become good friends and confidantes over the past few years. They have shared everything about themselves with each other – their secrets, their fears, their hopes, their triumphs and their failures. Again and again, I, Josh Resnek, editor of the Leader Herald, want our readers to know how intimate the relationship is between me and the favorite Blue Suit of the most powerful man in the city of Everett.
There are those who claim the Blue Suit is a figment of my imagination – and he is, always has been, and always will be. Then there is the Blue Suit himself, arguing with me, and with others, that he has all the attributes of a living, breathing, snorting, eating, sweating, human being even though he is an off the rack, machine made, blue cloth suit. That’s hard to take for some people, and I am told that many others believe the Blue Suit is as real as say, President Biden or former President Donald Trump, and that he speaks with authority, and that he knows public policy, and that he could probably run for office in Everett as a write-in and win.
So in one respect the Blue Suit is a fiction, made up and all about unreality.
On the other hand, he is as real as you and me and he has a certain lifelike appeal to many of our readers.
How many people read the Blue Suit?
This is impossible to know.
There are questions about the Blue Suit that I have been asked about which I do not know.
For instance, one of his admirers asked me recently where the Blue Suit banks.
“I really don’t know. I’ll ask him,” I told that person, a woman reader of the Leader Herald who claims she enjoys the Blue Suit’s personality.
So I asked him: “Where do you bank your money? And also, how much money do you have? And how do you keep your money?”
The Blue Suit replied: “I have a private account with Morgan Stanley. I have a money market account with the Everett Bank and the Eagle Bank, and I have a retirement account at the Rockland Trust on the Parkway,” the Blue Suit told me while we ate lunch outside at Oliveira’s earlier this week.
He ate from what I’d estimate was a five pound plate of rare sirloin, grilled chicken, lamb and sausage, heavy on the sausage. On another plate he piled lettuce, eggs, chick peas, French fried potatoes, Brazilian rolls, olives, and a heaping mound of mashed potatoes.
I, on the other hand, had a single plate half-empty with rare sirloin and mashed potatoes, and just a bit of salad.
With food spilling out of his mouth and falling all over his sleeves and onto his pants, the Blue Suit blurted out: “I’m worth about $1.7 million dollars. I have about $300,000 in cash which I keep in US Treasury Bills. I have another $200,000 in Bitcoin. The remainder of my money is all tied up,” he said with a hearty laugh.
“In bundles,” he added.
“in fact,” he said while chewing and nearly choking on his food, “I have so much cash hidden away that I don’t have the time to count it. I weigh it!”
He laughed again, snorting and struggling to suck in some air through his mouth which was stuffed with mashed potatoes and sirloin.
“I make a lot of money, Josh,” he said to me.
“I know what I’m doing with money,” he added.
He said he had learned a few tricks about money when he was growing up with parents who always had trouble with money.
“What was their trouble?” I asked him.
“My parents spent everything they had all the time. They overspent. They were always looking for more money. I hated that. I mean I loved my father, or so it seemed, but when it came to money, to my money, that’s where the love ended. When it came to money or to my parents, I chose the money. After all, it’s my money. I love my money. I’ll do what I want with my money,” the Blue Suit told me with a great deal of emotion.
“I told my father once that if he was sick and in need of help that he’d pay to have someone in the house with him.”
“That’s pretty nice,” I said to him.
“What did your father think of that?”
“He stopped talking to me,” the Blue Suit told me.
“So you didn’t want to give your father any money unless he was sick or infirm? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Right,” he answered,
“My money is far too important to give any of it to my father to make his life easier. I really don’t care if he struggles. He should stand on his own. After all, I stand on my own,” the Blue Suit said to me.
“Don’t you think putting your father in second place to your money is a bit harsh?” I asked him.
“Of course not. It’s my money, not his. Besides, he treated me badly when I was growing up. And besides that, if I give him money, he’ll just spend it. So what good would it be giving it to him?” he said.
I thought about this. I believe it was a bit of at all tale.
“Didn’t you love your father?” I asked him. “Don’t you feel bad that he’s gone?”
“I’m happy I don’t have to give him any more money. That’s better than having him around and thinking he might ask me for something,” he added.
“Boy, I’m glad I’m not your father!” I exclaimed with a great deal of gusto.
He looked at me with a twisted face and said he was glad he wasn’t my son.
“I wouldn’t give you anything, Josh. You’d just waste it. What good is it to give money to a loved one if they’re just going to waste it?” he added.
Then I understood what it must have been like to grow up poor like the Blue Suit, what it must have been like to have a father who failed him, who treated him like dirt, who did nothing for him.
“My money is my money and no one is getting it,” he added to me.
“Who will you give your money to one day?” I asked him.
He seemed thoughtful for a moment.
“I’ll take it with me, if I can,” he said.
“How will you do that?” I asked.
“I’ll figure out a way. Don’t you worry about that, Josh.”