Cha ching, p.4
Cha-Ching!, page 4
“Yesterday, I won,” she said, “and when I win, then I wear the same thing again the next day. Because it’s lucky,” she said, waving her hand over her leotard.
When Theo was losing she didn’t want to talk to anyone. But she couldn’t resist the tale of the lucky leotard. The woman looked a little deeper into Theo’s eyes and told her that she wore a diaper to the casino, a friend told her about it, because that way she could drink as much coffee as she wanted and never get up from the slot machine to pee. Theo wanted to ask if she wore the same diaper, too. After that, two things happened. One, Theo felt much better about her gambling problem because she didn’t wear a diaper. And two, she became obsessed with staring at the other gamblers’ asses, trying to figure out which ones seemed unnecessarily puffy or crinkly.
About a month before she decided to leave San Francisco Theo had found herself chain-smoking and gambling for sometimes fourteen hours straight, her brain cracking from the barnyard sounds of slot machine animals. She went from roulette to blackjack to the slots. She stopped playing roulette because money went too fast, so she moved on to blackjack for better odds. She’d sit at someone’s blackjack table drinking free gin and tonics and playing cards. She’d drink and drink and almost never feel drunk, just heavy and depressed. She fell in love with the kind eyes of the dealers.
Once a dealer looked at her and said, “Are you going to be here my whole shift?”
Theo didn’t realize she’d already been playing cards for eight hours. She couldn’t leave, she was on such a winning streak that day. When the dealer’s shift was over Theo stayed, and with the new dealer she managed to lose everything.
•
On the way back to her room Theo scanned the carpet for money, a quarter even. She found she was religious in casinos: If God loved her he’d let her find a quarter on the carpet, and she would use that quarter to try just one more time, drop it into a slot machine and hit the jackpot. But, deep down she knew no one hit the jackpot on a quarter they found on the rug. Ever.
When she opened the door to the motel room, Cary Grant looked up from where she was sleeping in a tight circle at the end of the bed. Theo was relieved that the dog hadn’t had some kind of freak-out in her absence.
“Hi,” she said, sitting down next to her.
The dog watched her. Theo felt exhausted and lay down with the light on, fully dressed, her feet hanging off the edge of the bed. A flare of anger surged through her at her stupidity for losing two hundred and forty dollars. She got up and fished a bright yellow Café Bustelo can out of her bag. She took the lid off and removed the wad of perfectly organized bills, counting the money as Cary Grant watched. She had seven hundred and ten dollars. She counted out two hundred and forty dollars and put it in her pocket. All she would have to do is go back to the roulette wheel and put the entire sum on black or red. She had a fifty-fifty chance of winning her losses back with a single spin. Very gently, she laid her hand on the dog’s side.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Cary Grant.
When she rose the dog followed her to the door and stood beside her, tail wagging. Theo glanced at the nightstand clock. It was 4 am.
“Time for bed?” Theo asked.
And she turned off the light and got back in bed with Cary Grant.
The next morning Theo forced herself to get on the road and not entertain the idea of staying one more day at the casino motel. She drove straight to New York, stopping only when absolutely necessary to nap in a rest area. Cary Grant had officially bonded to her and started to lean against her or put her paw on Theo’s leg while she was driving. Theo attributed the progress to the small fortune she’d spent on hot dogs.
New York looked like she’d imagined it: gridlock, clusters of tall, brick apartment buildings and swatches of colorful bubbled graffiti on passing delivery trucks. She realized, sitting in traffic on the Tappan Zee Bridge, that she’d reached her destination and now she didn’t know where to go. This was the moment Olivia had been hounding her about. What would she do when she got to New York? Where would she live? She’d thought Olivia was being a downer or was jealous or hurt by her leaving. Theo had spent so many hours imagining her New York apartment that it had never occurred to her she still needed to find one.
She imagined the same modest apartment that characters in movies got when they moved to New York to start a new life: a few small rooms with gleaming hardwood floors and a claw-foot tub. A fire escape off the kitchen where she could start a small collection of red geraniums. A humble view of the Brooklyn Bridge. The first exit after the Tappan Zee Bridge she’d buy a Coke, and walk Cary Grant, and find a pay phone to call the one person she knew in New York, an Italian dyke with a dark mop of hair named Sammy.
The hairball of interlocking parkways and overpasses confused her, and Theo drove for twenty minutes, somehow looping back to where she started. The next time she went a different way, until the clusters of tall apartment buildings disappeared and she found herself driving along lush greenery where tiny bridges fed people off the expressway and into towns that looked stuck in the 1950s. The third time she looped another wrong way and found herself about to pay the toll again at the Tappan Zee Bridge.
She put her hazards on in the emergency lane and got out and lit a cigarette. If she got a ticket for stopping traffic at least maybe the cop could tell her what direction she needed to go. She lifted Cary Grant out and walked along the gravel shoulder to let her pee. The dog relieved herself then dipped her head to stretch.
“We’re lost,” she said, and Cary Grant wagged.
“Let’s find a place to live,” she said, loading the dog back in the truck.
The toll booth employee gave Theo directions to get out of the bad loop, and she followed the signs pointing toward the Bronx. Then she pulled over at the first convenience store she saw.
“Progress,” she said to Cary Grant, who now became excited each time the truck stopped.
The dog wagged when Theo opened the glove compartment to get out her address book. That’s where she’d stored the hot dogs on the drive across country, but there were no hot dogs left. She opened her phone book and found Sammy’s number under “S” with the words “Sammy Jail.”
Theo and Sammy had met at a rally protesting the acquittal of the cops who beat Rodney King. Sammy was visiting San Francisco from New York and hadn’t planned to go to the protest, had just been smoking pot in the park when she got swept up with the other protesters and arrested. During thirty hours of wrongful incarceration they’d become friends. When they were released Sammy had given Theo her number and said, “If you’re ever in New York. . . .”
Theo hadn’t known if Sammy was trying to flirt with her, but now Theo was in New York with nowhere to live and a pit bull that had been thrown off a roof. She dialed Sammy’s number, and someone answered on the second ring.
“Sammy?” Theo asked, trying to remember her voice.
“Who’s this?” a woman with a thick New York accent said.
“Theo.”
Theo heard children screaming at each other in the background.
“We met in jail when she was visiting San Francisco.”
As soon as the words came out of Theo’s mouth she regretted saying them.
“Oh yeah,” the woman said cheerily, “She told me about that. She’s working on a fishing boat right now.”
“Oh.”
Theo was at a loss.
“Do you want to leave your number?”
“I don’t have one yet. If you talk to her can you tell her I moved to New York?”
“Sure. Make sure to stay outta jail,” the woman said, cackling, before she hung up the phone.
Theo stared at the pay phone trying to come up with a plan to find a job and a place to live, now that the one person she knew was off working on a fishing boat. She left Cary Grant in the truck and went into the Kwik Stop to buy a Coke and cigarettes and hot dogs. Theo brought everything to the register and stared at the acne on the skinny cashier’s chin.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Theo replied.
She added a local newspaper to her pile of things.
“Can you tell me the name of this town?” she asked.
He looked surprised by her question.
“Yonkers.”
“I’m still in New York, right?”
“That depends on who you ask.”
three
Theo needed to get a job. She drove through Yonkers stopping at every business with a help wanted sign while Cary Grant watched out the window, anticipating each return. When she ran out of the will to walk into strange, sad Yonkers businesses and ask about a job, Theo took the dog to a park and perused the classified ads for apartments; most were too expensive and didn’t allow dogs.
The pay phone in the Kwik Stop parking lot became her office. She called a phone number for a $300 room in Yonkers, and when the answering machine picked up she realized she didn’t have a call-back number, so she left the pay phone number and said she’d be available after 5 pm.
Theo looked for jobs some more, and then returned at 5 pm. Placing Cary Grant’s bowls on the ground next to her truck, she waited for the phone to ring. The day already felt like a week. Having nowhere to live, or just to be, made the hours stretch on forever. Theo wasted two hours waiting for the pay phone to ring and then drove around to find a park to sleep for the night. She reclined her seat and placed her hand on Cary Grant’s rib cage, feeling it lift slightly each time the dog inhaled. She used it as a kind of meditation and drifted into a tense slumber as her psyche waited for cops to show up and tell her to move along, or for a psycopath to crawl out of the bushes and kill her.
When sleeping in her truck on the cross-country drive she hadn’t thought of herself as homeless, just economical. Now that she was no longer in transit, one day of washing her face and brushing her teeth at the train station had filled her with despair.
Over the next couple days, when not applying for jobs or housing or getting lost in the hairball of Westchester County highways, Theo casually wandered supermarket aisles, stuffing thirty-cent rolls in her mouth and chewing them as quickly as possible, afraid to spend any cash in case she needed it for a room deposit. The only groceries she bought were a can opener and four cans of baked beans, twenty-five cents each. She was trying to combat a constant headache, the result of hunger, or smoking too much, or a combination of the two.
Theo filled out job applications, sometimes ten a day, listing the pay phone as her home number with specific instructions to call only after 5 pm. After a particularly demoralizing rejection for a cashier position at a Friendly’s diner, she splurged and bought a grape soda and two hot dogs from a man who had a cart near the park. Cary Grant inhaled her hot dog and then gave Theo’s wrist a tiny lick to say thank you. Rejuvenated, she went back to her plan to Make It in New York.
That evening when she returned to the pay phone she saw a help wanted sign in the window of the convenience store. She practically ran inside, smiling at the acne-faced cashier who now knew her pretty well from coming in and out all day for coffee and cigarettes and classified ads.
“You’re hiring?”
He nodded. “My cousin just went back to school and quit with no notice, and no one else in my family wants to work here.”
“Oh.”
“It’s my uncle’s store. Have you ever cashiered before?” he asked shyly.
“Yes. I’ve cashiered a lot.”
“I’m Randy,” he said, extending his bony hand, but Theo already knew the thin boy’s name from his nametag. Randy, Manager.
“I just moved here from San Francisco.”
Randy’s eyes lit up.
“I’ve always wanted to go to California,” which Theo interpreted as, I’m young and gay and stuck in Yonkers, help!
He looked barely eighteen.
Theo started the application, leaving phone number and address blank.
“Do you think you could you start tomorrow morning,” Randy asked, “because I have a dentist appointment.”
“Really?” Theo said, relief flooding her body.
“Is that okay? Or do you have something to do?”
“That’s perfect.”
“It’s minimum wage but you can have as many hot dogs and sodas as you want. And coffee.”
“That sounds great.”
“We have to wear this uniform,” Randy said, sadly pulling at his turquoise smock.
“That’s okay.”
Randy looked at Theo and said, “Do you want the boy smock or the girl smock? The boy one is better,” he added quickly.
“The boy one then,” Theo said, relieved.
She watched him dart into a supply closet and emerge with two turquoise smocks enclosed in plastic wrap.
“So what time should I come in tomorrow?”
“Six.”
“Thanks, Randy.”
“I have a feeling you’re going to be great.”
Cary Grant’s ears perked up as she saw Theo approach. Theo opened the truck door and gave the dog a quick hug, whispering in her ear, “I got us a job that includes all the hot dogs we can eat!”
The dog thumped her tail hard into the seat as Theo kissed her ears. She was still cooing in the dog’s face when she heard the pay phone.
“Hello?”
“Is this Theo?” a gruff female voice asked.
“Yes.”
“This is Doralina. You called about the room.”
“Which one is this?”
“Three hundred dollars. Yonkers.”
“Oh yeah,” Theo said. “Is it possible to take a look at it?”
“You have a dog, right?”
“Yes.”
“Does it pee in the house?”
“No,” Theo paused. “It’s a special dog. She was thrown off a roof.”
“A roof?”
She started telling Doralina the dog’s story in an attempt to make her sympathetic, but then realized she sounded crazy. Only unstable people lived where dogs were thrown off roofs. Theo had to convince her. It was already September. What would happen when winter came and it was too cold for them to sleep in the truck?
“Is the room available now?” Theo asked.
“Yeah, it’s just sitting empty.”
“Could I come look at it?” Theo tried to not sound desperate.
“You got a job, right?”
“Totally,” Theo said.
“Where at?”
Theo read the sign aloud: “The Kwik Stop,” she said. “Right before you get on the expressway.”
“Oh. I’ve probably seen you. I live just down the street. You want to come over now?”
Theo drove to the address Doralina gave her and left Cary Grant in the truck. She rang the doorbell twice, and eventually a dykey white woman wearing giant gray sweatpants opened the door. She looked Theo up and down, obviously surprised to find queerness on her own front step.
Yonkers was a fucking time warp. Every place Theo had applied for a job she’d felt GAY, and had to ignore the gawker stares. When the eventual sirma’amsir documentary was made, Yonkers would be the new habitat where Theo finds herself uncamouflaged, waiting to be plucked and eaten by a hate-criming, carnivorous bird.
When she left San Francisco Theo had thought she didn’t care if she ever saw a gay pride flag again. Sometimes she’d even wanted to scream, “Put some goddamned pants on!” at the men who walked down the sidewalk in assless chaps. But the gay people in Yonkers seemed to lack not just gay pride, but gay ambition. A week removed from the gay mecca, and Theo was already fantasizing about founding a gay support group for pimple-faced Randy and dykey Doralina.
Doralina led Theo up two flights of stairs to a small attic room with a slanted roof that was just big enough to accommodate her futon. The floor was covered in bright red carpet the color of Ronald McDonald’s hair. A tiny airplane-size window hung like a painting where the slanted ceiling met the wall.
“I love it,” Theo said after standing in the room for ten seconds.
Doralina seemed surprised.
“Most people think it’s too small.”
“I don’t have that much stuff,” Theo said. “Do you want to meet my dog?”
“Okay.”
Theo wondered if Doralina was on heavy drugs. There was something very underwater about her.
They walked back downstairs, and Theo rolled down the window so Doralina could see Cary Grant.
“It’s a pit bull?” Doralina said.
“I think so.”
“They bite kids?”
Cary Grant watched Doralina.
“She’s never bitten a child,” Theo said, unsure if that was true.
“Does she bark?” Doralina asked.
In the week that Theo had had the dog the only noise she’d ever heard her make was the yelp when she was thrown onto the Taco Lady’s tarp.
“No, she’s a good dog.”
Doralina reached through the window to pet Cary Grant but the dog ducked away from her hand.
“She’s shy,” Theo offered.
“Just lock her up when my son comes over. I don’t need no hospital bills.”
Theo was surprised by the news of Dykey Doralina’s kid, and for a second she wondered if she was wrong about her being gay.
“When are you looking to move in?” Doralina asked.
Theo didn’t want to let on that she was homeless. She also didn’t want to spend another night sleeping in her truck.
“I could move in now,” Theo said, “as long as I’m here.”
“It’s six hundred dollars for rent and deposit,” Doralina said in a tough voice, almost like a challenge.
Theo reached under the driver’s seat for her coffee can. She counted six hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. The can was almost empty, and a wave of panic went through her. She’d count exactly how much was left later when she was alone. She’d gotten a job and a place to live, and while many would interpret a cashier position at a convenience store and a tiny room in a Yonkers apartment as fucking dismal, Theo knew in her bones that life was looking up.
