Cha-Ching! (5 page)

The data entry interview was in a strip of factories and business offices. When Theo finally found the right building she parked, leaving Cary Grant in the car. She began to feel depressed just walking toward the building. There was nothing like a cluster of beige business offices to make a person's soul die. Inside, a tall man with thick dark hair and a T-shirt with a cartoon frog that said
boricua
introduced himself to her as Joseph. He led Theo into his office and moved a bunch of catalogs off a chair so she could sit down.

“We sell semiconductors,” he barked.

Theo nodded in a meaningful way pretending to know what that meant.

“So let's cut the shit and get to the questions. How fast can you type?”

“Pretty fast,” Theo lied.

“You show up to work on time?”

“Always.”

“Can you start tomorrow?”

Theo nodded again.

“It's Monday through Friday nine to five. Eight dollars an hour. Don't even think about asking for more because I won't give it to you. Work here for a while and then we'll talk about a raise.”

She was only getting $6.50 working at the Kwik Stop.

“You're not pregnant are you?” Joseph asked.

“What?”

“Last girl quit because she was pregnant. And we'd just finally gotten her trained.”

“I'm not pregnant.”

“Are you sure?” Joseph asked. Then he laughed. “Just kidding. Don't sue me for saying that. And even if you tried I could afford a better lawyer. Okay, you're hired.”

He led Theo through the office, introducing her to a few people.

“This will be your office,” he said, flipping on a light switch.

It was a windowless room that held only a metal desk and a large gray computer monitor where a green cursor flashed despondently.

“That's my office in there,” Joseph said, pointing through a square hole in the wall.

He explained that he'd drop faxes filled with numerical codes for semiconductors and their prices through the hole. Theo's job would be to pick them up off the carpet and enter them into the giant computer.

“A monkey could do this job,” Joseph said. “You'll love it.”

Next to the stack of faxes on the desk was a large pink ashtray shaped like a pair of lungs. She was thrilled at the thought of smoking at work. Everyone at the office was smoking.

Joseph pointed at the pile of messy faxes, thick as a phone book.

“That's like half a day's faxes. You gotta type fast.”

“Okay,” Theo said. “Can I bring my dog with me to work?”

“I don't give a fuck, as long as you can type.”

“Thank you,” Theo said, shaking Joseph's hand and walking out of the office feeling terrified of her new boss.

“Cary Grant, I got another job,” she told the dog, who was licking the bloodstains on Theo's old T-shirt.

Theo drove by the Kwik Stop on the way home and told Randy she'd found another job. She wondered if a lot of people only worked there one day.

“But you were so good with the hot dogs,” he whined.

“I'm so sorry. This other job pays more.”

Randy pulled the
help wanted
sign out from under the register and walked over to the window to put it up again.

“Will you come visit me sometimes and tell me stories about California?” he asked.

“Sure.”

She realized she wanted to save Randy, but dreaded being his only friend.

“Here,” he said giving her two ice-cream sandwiches. “It's an early Christmas bonus.”

“I'll see you soon,” Theo said.

She took the chocolate off one ice-cream sandwich and gave Cary Grant the vanilla middle while she ate the other.

“Tomorrow, it's bring your dog-daughter to work day,” she said to the dog, touching the thick scar on its head with her fingertips.

•

Theo's optimism dissolved after a few weeks of living her new life in Yonkers. She spent her work days listening to
Joseph
call everyone and everything, “You. Fucking. Faggot.” The faggot could be his brother, a pen, or the price a vendor quoted him. Theo filled a pad with tiny hash marks every time she heard him say, “You. Fucking. Faggot.” Besides being able to chain-smoke, the only good things about her job were the ceramic lung ashtray, Cary Grant sleeping all day on a blanket next to her desk, and a sales rep who brought a pink box of donuts with him when he visited once a week. On those glorious days Theo would sneak into the break room, hunch over the pink box, and cram as many donuts as possible into her mouth.

Everyone at work was insane. There was Mimi, the bookkeeper, who only wore nylon sweat suits. When she walked through the office Theo heard the swooshing sound of two plastic bags rubbing together. On Fridays Mimi's husband picked her up wearing the men's version of her sweat suit.

Theo wanted to say to Mimi, “I see you're in a same-sweat-suit relationship. Please let me know if you ever need to talk about it.”

Both sweat suits had perfect creases down the front of each leg, and Theo wondered if they'd been ironed. She had never understood “twinning” in relationships, and before she met Mimi she'd thought only lesbians dressed alike after years of being together. When Theo was twenty she'd gone to the March on Washington for Gay Rights, and the thing that left the biggest impression on her was seeing two retired gym teachers, both wearing perfect, right-out-of-the-box, matching Marlboro black-and-red track suits. Theo knew the Marlboro catalog they'd gotten them from; she'd looked through it herself. Each empty pack of cigarettes counted for five miles. A person could save the Marlboro miles and buy things like radios or track suits or pool tables—all emblazoned with the Marlboro logo. Everyone wanted the pool table, but the millions of “miles” it took pretty much insured early emphysemic death.

Mimi split her time between paying the company's bills late and writing fraudulent complaint letters to a company that sold the squeaky toys she bought for her white Yorkie with the omnipresent eye boogers. She confided in Theo that every few years she wrote the company demanding compensation for her dog almost choking to death on one of their faulty toys. Like clockwork, a few weeks later she'd receive an enormous box of complimentary dog toys.

Mimi was adamant that none of the company's bills should get paid before the due date. She threw out all the pre-printed envelopes that came enclosed with each bill and instead placed the check in a plain envelope with a handwritten address. When Theo asked her why she did this, Mimi explained that the pre-printed barcodes allowed the post office to deliver the payments speedily, but she didn't want anyone to get their money until the last possible second.

Much of the time at work Theo pretended to be a political prisoner penning groundbreaking poems such as “How Data Entry Can Make You an Alcoholic.” So far, she'd managed to not drink or gamble since she'd been in New York, but a craving for alcohol had crawled back, and each time she went into the Kwik Stop to buy cigarettes and say hi to Randy, she found herself hovering longer and longer in front of the sliding glass doors where the six-packs of beer lived.

Her fear of consequences kept her from buying the beer. There had been many consequences over the years: arrests, lost girlfriends, a mental hospital stay, but the thing that scared Theo more than anything was a suicidal streak that popped up unexpectedly when she was drunk. It could sneak out of nowhere. She'd be at parties laughing with friends when the next thing she knew she found herself crawling onto roofs or rifling through strangers' medicine cabinets. It was unfortunate to do these things at sixteen, but at nearly thirty—forget it.

Theo was starting to realize why her room cost only three hundred dollars. Doralina had converted a pantry off the kitchen into a tiny bedroom and hung a curtain for a door, and she'd stay in her cave smoking menthol cigarettes and watching sports all day on TV. Theo quickly figured out that not only did Doralina pay no rent by subletting the rooms, she'd increased the number of them so she was making a profit. When Theo went into the kitchen to make one of her bowls of oatmeal she'd hear Doralina cheering for or against some team through the curtain. She tried to avoid Doralina, because she always wanted a ride somewhere or for Theo to lend her money.

Doralina's best friend, Megan, lived across the hall from Theo, where she kept what seemed like ten million rabbits in cages. In letters to Olivia, Theo referred to Megan as “the rabbit hoarder.” The rabbit hoarder worked at a bank and dated a bunch of noncommittal men who all had the same shellacked hair. One rainy day Megan's car broke down and she devised a plan to go to a Saturn Dealership with Doralina and purposely slip in the parking lot, hoping to get a free car. When she had no other choice, Theo made small talk with Megan and Doralina, but mostly she hid in her room with Cary Grant.

Two paydays after she started her data entry job she could finally afford a vet visit to get Cary Grant's cast removed. The dog's skinny leg look naked without its pink cast, and Theo bought a package of hamburger meat to celebrate its removal. Theo had lost weight since she'd moved to New York, the result of a combination of not drinking alcohol and being broke. Between doing data entry five days a week and sometimes helping Randy on the weekends at the Kwik Stop, she couldn't understand how she was still having a hard time making ends meet. It was just expensive to be alive; at least that's what Theo had told her customers when she worked at the Party Store and they were surprised by how much things cost.

Each day after work, while the dog wandered around the dog park, Theo read a few pages of
Lust for Life: The Biography of Vincent Van Gogh
. It inspired her to buy a small sketchbook and a box of charcoals. Sometimes she'd sit on the bench and try to capture the variety of poses the dogs made while playing. She loved how filthy the charcoal made her hands and the sound of it moving across the paper, how the smooth page ate up the marks. Eventually the park would fill up with people and someone would make small talk with Theo, especially a carpenter named Danny. He was a stocky white guy with blond hair and a steel-gray pit bull named Baby. A few weeks after seeing each other every day at the park he asked Theo out to dinner. She was shocked. She didn't know if he had a dyke fetish or if the dating pool in Yonkers was slim pickings. Theo coveted his expensive work boots, endured boring dinner conversation, and watched him get drunk on margaritas while she devoured baskets of chips and salsa at the local travesty of a Mexican restaurant. Even Theo, who was no food connoisseur, knew there was no such thing as a good burrito in Yonkers. When she went on these “dates” with Danny she ate her burrito quickly, letting it slide down her throat the way a snake eats a rat.

Around Thanksgiving, when Theo had lived in Yonkers almost three months, she remembered she'd never called Sammy back. Surely she was done working on a fishing boat by now. Theo dialed her number.

“Sammy?” Theo said.

“Yes?”

“It's Theo, from jail.”

“Oh my God! My aunt told me you called,” Sammy said excitedly, “but you didn't leave a number. Is it true you're in New York?”

“Sort of. I'm in Yonkers,” Theo joked.

“Yonkers?”

“It's a long story.”

“When are you coming to Brooklyn next?”

In fact, Theo had never left Yonkers since she'd arrived, simply accepting her self-imposed prison.

“My aunt is going to be gone this weekend. Do you want to come down and stay with me?”

“You live with your aunt?”

“For now.”

“I could come down after work Friday. Is it okay if I bring my dog?”

“Sure,” Sammy said.

When Friday came, she packed a small duffel bag and loaded Cary Grant into the truck, following Sammy's directions carefully. The closer she got to Brooklyn the more alive Theo felt. How was it she'd moved to New York three months ago and never ventured beyond Yonkers? She'd been like a person lost in a snowstorm who tries to survive by burning car tires. When there are no more tires they hike out for help, but they're found shirtless in the snow, dead from hypothermia. The whole time, had they just turned left instead of right, they would've found the ranger station. Theo saw the outline of the Brooklyn Bridge and thought,
My
help
was
here
all
along
. She felt suddenly invigorated.

Sammy's aunt lived between Bensonhurst and Coney Island on the fourteenth floor in one of a cluster of low-
income
brick apartment towers. Theo found the right building and led Cary Grant into an elevator that smelled like burning plastic. When the elevator moved, the dog leaned its nervous body against Theo's leg.

“It's okay,” she said.

Theo located Sammy's apartment number and rang the doorbell, suddenly nervous.

“Hey girl,” Sammy said opening the door.

“Hi, girl,” Theo answered, even though they both looked like men.

Sammy had a fast metabolism that left her with a skeletal frame. Theo hugged her slight body.

“Who's this?” Sammy said, leaning down to pet the dog.

“Cary Grant.”

“No way!”

“See her little part?” Theo pointed to the scar.

“
North by Northwest
is one of my favorite movies.”

“I've never seen it,” Theo said.

“That's insane. I own it. We can watch it today.”

Cary Grant investigated the apartment while Sammy returned to her bowl of Cocoa Puffs.

“Want a bowl?” Sammy asked holding up her cereal.

“No, I'm good.”

Theo looked at the family portraits on the living room wall. One showed a young Sammy sitting at the same kitchen table eating cereal.

“Look, you're eating cereal here too,” Theo said.

Sammy laughed. “I haven't done much with my life.”

“Did you grow up in this apartment?”

“Pretty much. My aunt and I have shared it since my mom died. But next month I have to find a place because her fiancé is moving in with his kids.”

“Where will you go?”

“Somewhere in Brooklyn. That's why I worked on the fishing boat, because I knew I would need a deposit. You should move to Brooklyn.”

“That would be so amazing.”

“Whatever happens, you can't stay in Yonkers. There aren't even gay people there.”

Theo didn't want to end up like Randy or Doralina. She remembered how happy she'd been when she saw the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Have you had any good Brooklyn pizza yet?” Sammy asked.

“This is the first time I've even been to Brooklyn.”

“What?! There's this great place: L&B Pizzeria—we could get some squares, they have a spumoni garden. We could watch
North by Northwest
.”

Sammy walked over to Cary Grant curled up on the couch.

“It's your biggest film, right?” she said to the dog.

Sammy was traditionally good-looking in that Italian kind of way. She had thick dark hair and brown eyes with a Mediterranean complexion. She was rail thin, all ribs and clavicles. If she cleaned up she could play the role of a dashing butch in the one Hollywood film per decade that featured lesbians.

Theo sat down on the couch. She felt happy, looking out the windows that led to Sammy's balcony, with a view of Brooklyn. Sammy petted the dog slowly and then sat up and started rolling a joint.

“Do you smoke?” she asked Theo.

“Only cigarettes,” Theo said, afraid to tell Sammy she was sober.

“That's cool,” Sammy said, lighting the joint.

Theo watched Sammy as she lay back on the couch with her joint. She envied Sammy's coal-dark eyes and felt confused about whether she wanted to be her or have sex with her. They sat on the couch for a while petting the dog, and when Sammy was properly stoned they headed out for pizza. Theo drove, Cary Grant sat squished in the middle and Sammy pointed out a variety of personal Brooklyn landmarks, including where she'd gone to high school, a deli she worked at where someone was killed in a robbery, and her first boyfriend's house.

Theo loved Brooklyn. She loved the cars driving by with shiny rims and pumping music, she loved the Coney Island silhouettes of roller coasters against the night sky, and when they arrived at L&B Pizzeria and Spumoni Gardens she loved the man in the marinara-soaked apron who expertly slid two corner squares of pizza out of the pan with a spatula and tipped them onto their plates.

Sammy insisted on paying, pulling a wad of “fishing boat money” out of her pocket. They found a free table on the patio where Cary Grant wouldn't be tormented by foot traffic, and Theo raised a grape soda in a toast.

“To Brooklyn,” she said.

“And fishing boat money,” Sammy said, raising her can of beer.

The pizza was delicious, thick and cheesy, and Theo inhaled her piece, saving a bit of crust for Cary Grant.

“The problem with Yonkers—” Theo started.

“Is everything?” Sammy asked.

They laughed.

“Sort of. It has no life force—everyone seems depressed.”

Theo told Sammy about Doralina, and everyone at her awful data entry job, and sweet Randy from the Kwik Stop. Sammy laughed in horror. For the first time since she moved to New York Theo felt like she was talking to a real person instead of trying to hide her freakishness. Sammy told Theo how she'd been so seasick working on the fishing boat at first, how people made illegal hooch and everyone had affairs with each other. She'd never do it again, she said; the work was too grueling even if at the end she had gotten a giant Ed
McMahon
Sweepstakes–size check.

“I thought the easy money would be a little easier if you know what I mean.”

Afterwards, they got ice cream. Theo ordered pistachio and Sammy got two vanilla cones, one for her and one for Cary Grant. Sammy got back in line for the third time and ordered a bag of garlic knots and zeppoles to take home.

“Movie snacks,” she said to Theo, holding up the bag.

“I love zeppoles.”

When they got back to Sammy's apartment, Cary Grant, who seemed to trust Sammy instinctively, curled up between them to watch
North by Northwest.

“We're honored to be sitting next to you,” Sammy said as the opening credits came up. And then each time the real Cary Grant came on screen she smoothed the top of the dog's head gently and said, “Oh, you look so dapper, Cary.”

After the movie, Sammy gave Theo a pillow and blanket for the couch and then went off to sleep herself.

The next day they lazed about eating Cocoa Puffs, and in the late morning they drove to Prospect Park. The street lamps were decorated with Christmas garland. It was sunny but chilly as they walked over the stiff grass, Cary Grant sniffing the trees. Sammy went into a deli at the edge of the park and got two roast beef and provolone sandwiches, potato salad, and more grape soda while Theo waited outside with the dog. They ate in the truck with the heat on, Cary Grant strategically in front of the heater, warming her fur.

Being in Brooklyn and having a friend was making Theo even more depressed about Yonkers.

“I never want to go back,” she told Sammy.

“You want me to ask my aunt if you can crash with us for a little while?” Sammy asked. “The only thing is you'd have to sleep on the floor. Because we just have the couch and her bedroom.”

“But I don't have a job here,” Theo said. “Or any money.”

“We should find an apartment together. If we shared a one-bedroom we could afford it. You could get out of Yonkers. I could help you take care of Cary Grant.”

“Really?” Theo asked. “Will a one-bedroom be big enough?”

“We could get a pull-out couch for the living room and trade off the bedroom every few months. When I'm not at massage school I'll probably be at work anyway.”

The prospect of having someone to help her pay the rent and take care of the dog was exciting.

“Let's get some beer and the classifieds and look for some apartments right now,” Sammy said.

“Okay.”

She didn't want to tell Sammy she was trying to be sober, because the idea of a beer sounded amazing. Theo had many sobriety dates: August 1st, March 18th, September 3rd, September 18th, New Year's Day (Theo's birthday January 1st), every old girlfriend's birthday, her mother's birthday, and after she fell in love with Vincent Van Gogh, March 30th, his birthday. The great thing about quitting drinking so many times, she told herself, was it gave her a kind of expertise to know how to stop again if she relapsed. Her alcoholism was like a person who finds themselves running down a too-steep hill; inevitably their body moves faster than their legs and they plummet face-first into the gravel. No, she wasn't going to tell Sammy she was sober, just in case she decided to drink.

Theo drove them through Brooklyn back to Sammy's, riding a manic high at the prospect of drinking again. Her body turned jumpy the way it did when she flirted with unavailable girls or considered stealing; she was tiptoeing on the edge of danger. The mania made all of Brooklyn brighter—the butcher shops and corner stores and clusters of old men sitting on park benches reading the
New York Post
.

Back at Sammy's apartment, Sammy rolled a joint.

“Oh, I forgot to get the beer,” Sammy said taking a hit off her joint.

“It's no big deal,” Theo said, trying to seem nonchalant.

Theo read the apartment ads out loud to Sammy one at a time, circling every one that was less than $800. Then Sammy and Theo alternated calling. Each time someone answered, the apartment had already been rented.

“But the paper only came out today. I don't understand—how is everything already rented?” Theo said.

“We'll find a place,” Sammy reassured her. “It's only the first day.”

In the late afternoon they went to Coney Island, and even though the boardwalk was closed for the winter they managed to buy some Nathan's cheese fries. They walked the perimeter of the locked-up rides, looking at the tall weeds growing through the concrete at the foot of the Cyclone Rollercoaster.

“Have you ever been on that?” Theo asked Sammy.

Sammy nodded.

“We can come here in the summer when it's open. You feel like you're going to die. It's so fun.”

“Has anyone ever died on it?”

“Yeah. A couple.”

Sammy pointed to the roller coaster's wooden planks. “Don't they look like they could snap in half any minute?”

On the drive home, Sammy pointed out more Brooklyn landmarks as night fell. Finally, when it was time for Theo to go home, her stomach filled with dread. Sammy promised to continue looking for apartments on their behalf and gave Cary Grant a big hug good-bye. The dog looked out the window at Sammy as they pulled away. As Theo drove up the FDR she watched the Brooklyn Bridge get smaller in her rearview mirror. She vowed to find a job in Brooklyn as soon as possible so she could leave that shit hole, Yonkers.