Cha-Ching! (8 page)

The kitchen floor was covered with drop cloths and paint pans. In the sink were plastic bags filled with hardware store purchases: roach spray, mousetraps, tubes of synthetic caulking. On the far wall was an indentation that looked like it had once been a small window, but was now boarded up and painted over. Whoever had cleaned the apartment had forgotten the mustard-yellow hood over the stove, which had a pelt of gray grease covered in dust bunnies. Theo stopped trying to gauge Sammy's expression and walked into a bedroom off the kitchen that was covered in the same linoleum as the living room. It was big enough for a bed and a dresser and had a barred window the size of a pizza box, set abnormally high up on the wall. Through the pizza-box window, Theo could see the gray limbs of a leafless tree reaching toward the sky.

Theo and Sammy followed Abraham into the long, narrow, bathroom where next to an ancient radiator was a toilet whose base was held together with foam caulking. A bathtub the exact same color as the grease-covered range hood sat across from the sink and ancient medicine cabinet. At the end of the bathroom was a steel fire door with a long metal latch that Abraham said led to the backyard. He slid the latch to open the door, making a horrible screech of metal on metal.

The backyard was a long, narrow plot of dirt bordered on one side by the brick wall of the car alarm store and on the other by a falling-down chain-link fence. In the middle of the yard was the tree Theo had seen from the bedroom window. She didn't know trees, but if she were on a game show she'd guess
cherry tree
. Against its gray trunk rested discarded metal fencing, scrap metal and chunks of broken cement. Abraham stood on a cracked concrete patio, complete with crumbling cement barbecue, right off the bathroom door. He looked like someone being interviewed on the news in a war-torn or earthquake-ruined country. Theo took in the pieces of rusting metal, children's shoes and empty dishwashing liquid bottles around the base of the barbeque.

“We're still fixing it up.” Abraham said, “The old tenant just moved out and she'd lived here for quite a while. But you get the picture.”

They did get the picture. The picture was like a dream in which someone tries to convince you that the things you're seeing really are those things that you want to see. This is the thing called “a backyard” that you want to have so you can give your dog the thing called “happiness,” and the whole time in the dream you walk around saying, “but this doesn't seem like a backyard” and “this doesn't seem like happiness.”

Sammy and Theo exchanged skeptical glances.

“Are you still working on the backyard, too?” Theo asked Abraham, who didn't seem to see the backyard as a garbage dump.

He didn't say anything, so Theo continued, “Like, is all this garbage still going to be here?”

“Well, I can ask my handyman to clean this up a bit.”

The way he answered made Theo feel as if she was wrong for asking. Sammy's face reflected what Theo felt: Of course she didn't want this shit hole but they would be forced to take it because this is where people like them could afford to live. Abraham fiddled with his enormous ring of jangling keys.

“What do you think, girl?” Theo asked. “Do you want to take it?”

“Whatever you want,” Sammy said.

Theo thought of Yonkers and Doralina and Megan's stolen underwear and said, “Okay, we'll take it.”

Abraham said he only needed a check for the first month's rent and deposit and it was a deal.

“I don't really have any money on me,” Theo said, fingering the four dollars she had left after buying the lottery tickets.

“You can pay me back,” Sammy said, pulling out her wad of fishing boat cash. She counted out $1,400 in hundred-
dollar bills and asked Abraham for a receipt, which he wrote out bent over the hood of his car.

“You can come back Friday when the work's done and I'll give you the keys then,” he said. They watched his gray sedan screech off.

“Girl?” Sammy said.

“That fucking backyard,” Theo said.

“There are children buried back there, for sure,” Sammy said. “But we can fix it up—get a picnic table and some lawn chairs.”

The farther they got away from the apartment the better they felt.

“We'll make it nice,” Sammy said. “We'll drive over the Verazzano Bridge and go to IKEA.”

•

Theo was determined to pay Sammy back as soon as possible; she wasn't used to letting anyone pay her way. She couldn't believe Sammy was going to be her roommate. They only knew each other from that short time in jail, but Sammy already felt like a long-lost sibling. They were both going to start new life chapters—Sammy in massage school and Theo in
real
New York.

The next day Theo went to the Kwik Stop before work to get a cup of coffee.

“Did you see me on TV?” Randy asked. He was putting up Christmas decorations in the windows.

“Oh,” Theo said. “I forgot to watch.”

He looked disappointed.

“The person with the winning ticket still hasn't come forward,” Randy said.

“Really?”

Theo's stomach dropped. She imagined the winner somewhere working as a fast-food employee, covered in fry grease, oblivious to the fact that they were a millionaire.

“Maybe they lost it,” Randy said, setting down his decorations on a milk crate.

“That's so depressing,” Theo said, pausing. And then, “Guess what? I'm moving to Brooklyn.”

She tried to keep her voice from sounding too excited. During the three months she'd been in Yonkers she'd made a point to visit him while he was working. The backbone of their friendship was that they were both miserable in Yonkers.

“Really?”

His eyes looked disappointed. For a split second, Theo thought about saying, “You can come too,” but she stopped herself.

“You'll have to come down and spend the night some time,” she said, but she didn't know how Randy would fit into her new life.

“But I work every day,” he whined.

Theo could see she'd hurt him.

“Well, on your next day off.” She wanted to change the subject. “Do you have any empty boxes I could use to pack my room?”

He nodded. “They're next to the dumpster out back.”

She was anxious to get away from his sad-sack energy.

“When do you move into your new place?” Randy asked.

“Friday.”

“Will you come see me before you go?”

“Of course,” Theo said, “but let me hug you now just in case.”

She leaned forward to hug Randy's thin body and as she did, she knew this would be their good-bye, because she couldn't bear to see his disappointed face again.

It was cold outside as she scooped up the flattened boxes and put them in the back of her truck. Theo still hadn't bought herself a winter coat or warm shoes, though she'd bought a gray-and-lavender argyle turtleneck dog sweater that made Cary Grant look even more dapper, if that was possible.

When Theo got home from work Doralina and Megan were lying on Megan's bed playing with one of the rabbits. Theo stopped in the doorway with the cardboard boxes folded under her arm.

“I found a place to live in Brooklyn,” she burst out, eyeing the rabbit.

Doralina looked stunned.

“When?”

“Friday.”

“Well, I need thirty days' notice.”

Theo hadn't signed a lease, and now that she had a new plan for life she didn't care what Doralina thought.

“So let's count from now,” she said. “Today is day one.”

Theo went into her room with the boxes and could hear them whispering for a long time. She had no plan to pay rent for the next thirty days, so she figured she could kiss her deposit good-bye.

•

Theo got up early Friday morning to shuttle all her possessions into her truck. She wanted to drive directly to the new apartment after work.

She arrived earlier than normal to the data entry office and went straight to the lounge to start a pot of coffee; her stomach was a mix of nervousness and excitement. Her whole life she'd been afraid when it was time to quit a job—even those she hated.

“You don't have to do that,” Mimi said, seeing Theo fill the coffeepot with water. She leaned down and gave Cary Grant a scritch.

“Oh, this sweater is too much!” Mimi said, fiddling with the dog's turtleneck collar.

“I'm quitting today,” Theo blurted out, not wanting to hold onto a secret.

“What?” Mimi's face tightened and she looked like she was about to get mean.

With all of Theo's fuck-ups, she'd still always given two weeks' notice. But Yonkers felt like some kind of infection that she had to get rid of.

“I don't really want to get into it, but I have a family emergency,” Theo lied. “I'm moving to Brooklyn today after work.”

“I didn't know you had family in Brooklyn.”

Theo nodded, giving the “exasperated family look” and then changed the subject.

“When should I tell Joseph? At the beginning or end of the day?”

“Either way he's going to be pissed. I mean we just finally got you trained,” Mimi said, walking away.

Theo felt a sense of shame wash over her, like she'd disappointed her family.
Am I fucking up my life
by quitting this job before I have another one?
Her head was muddled. When the coffee was done she went into her office to pretend to work. The tiny window that connected her office to Joseph's was dim. He wasn't in yet. She collected some faxes, arranged them on her desk neatly, lit a cigarette and dialed Sammy's number from her desk phone. No one answered. Theo began to type up the faxes, waiting for her favorite vendor to come by with donuts. When she looked down again she realized she'd drained her cup of coffee and finished her cigarette. She crushed it out, disgusted by the smell of its burning filter.

At noon, when Joseph still hadn't arrived, Mimi came and stood in the doorway to Theo's office.

“You're off the hook,” she said. “He's sick.”

“Well, how should I tell him I'm quitting? Should I leave him a note?”

“I told him over the phone.”

“You did? Was he mad?”

“Not at all, actually. He told me to wish you luck with your family situation and to make sure to use us as a reference.”

“Really?” Theo asked. She felt guilty. Maybe her luck was changing.

“Deep down he's a softie. Well, I'm going to miss you guys,” Mimi said. She was staring at Cary Grant, who was lying next to Theo's desk, dreaming of running. Her paws flipped back and forth on the blanket, making Mimi smile. “If you want to work a half day, I won't tell. I can write you your last check now,” she said.

“That would be really helpful,” Theo said, alluding to her fake family emergency. Sometimes it scared Theo how easily she could lie.

When Mimi left, she dialed Sammy, “I'm leaving work early.”

“Perfect, because Abraham said to meet us at the apartment in an hour for keys and a walk-through.”

Theo gathered Cary Grant's things, retrieved her last check and gave Mimi an awkward hug good-bye. Outside it was cold, the sky a light gray, as if the sun was a faraway frozen marble. She sat in the truck with the engine idling while she waited for the heater to stop blowing cold air and draped a sweatshirt over Cary Grant, who was already wearing the sweater.

Sammy was inside with Abraham when Theo arrived. In the few days since they'd first seen the apartment Theo had improved it in her mind. Now that she saw it was still a piece of shit, her heart sank a little. She stared at the brown linoleum rolling across the living room floor in waves.

“Aren't you going to tack this down?” Sammy asked Abraham, who pretended nothing was wrong with the floor.

“Do you see how it's wavy? And bumpy?”

Sammy grabbed a corner of the linoleum and peeled back half the living room floor. Underneath were piles of crayons and coffee-stained napkins. Sammy refused to move until Abraham made eye contact with one of the piles of broken crayons. When he did, they filed into the large kitchen whose baseboards were lined with roach strips and mousetraps. Sammy put her foot into the space between the oven and the wall and sent skidding across the floor an old trap complete with dead mouse. Theo looked away, afraid to see Abraham's expression, and found herself looking straight at the filthy range hood, dust bunnies trapped in the grease; it looked like some kind of avant-garde taxidermy.

Abraham hadn't said a word, fiddling with his beeper. Theo didn't want to live in a shit hole but was scared Abraham would take the apartment back if Sammy kept asserting herself.

In the bedroom, Sammy tried to flip on the light switch to no avail.

“So we have the linoleum, the bedroom light switch, the dead mouse,” Sammy said, keeping the list for Abraham, who'd stuffed his hands inside his pockets and wasn't writing anything down. Then they all walked to the backyard through the bathroom with the sullen posture of a family holding onto a terrible secret.

When Theo had first seen the backyard, it had struck her as the kind of place that ends up on the news. She imagined being interviewed by the police: “I was just raking some of the leaves when I saw what looked like a femur. I guess I always thought the yard was a little creepy.”

“I thought this garbage was going to be hauled out,” Sammy said, pointing to the pile of empty soap bottles and childrens' shoes.

“Let me call my handyman, and you can talk to him about it,” Abraham said, as though the problem were between Theo and Sammy and the handyman.

“Girl!” Sammy said, when Abraham walked to the corner pay phone to call the handyman.

“Girl,” Theo said back. “What the fuck?”

Abraham returned twenty minutes later with Andy the handyman. Andy's emaciated drug-addict physique was accentuated by the belt that wrapped around his tiny waist and was clipped full of pagers.