Cha-Ching! (10 page)

“I'll get some socks,” Theo said.

She looked at the variety on the counter, feeling the cushioning in the foot and heel, and settled on a three-pack of plain white ones. The old man wrote down the price of the socks and boots on a pad of paper, and got out a calculator to figure the tax. She paid him, imagining how good her feet would feel in those cushiony new socks.

“You want to keep these?” the old man said referring to Theo's old Converse.

Theo knew she should say no, but she would put them on the street for someone. She'd always been like that—one pair in, one pair out. The old man wrapped her old shoes carefully, as if they were new, folding the tissue around each one, then closing the box gently. He handed it to her with the package of socks on top.

“I think I'm going to put on my new socks right now,” Theo said. “It's cold outside.”

“Yes, it is,” the old man said. “Might snow tonight.”

Theo sat down on the bench and pulled off her new boots and her old thin socks. She slipped on a new pair of socks and laced up her new boots. When she stood up she couldn't believe how good her feet felt. For three dollars your feet can always feel this good, she told herself. She folded her old socks neatly and tucked them into her old shoes in the box.

“Thanks,” she said to the old man, smiling before she left the store.

“Thank you,” he said, waving good-bye.

Theo walked back down 4th Avenue toward home. She could tell it was going to snow by the dark sky and the drop in temperature. People rushed by with their faces covered in scarves. Theo passed a shop that said
butcher
in gold letters on the window. Inside, a bunch of young boys in blood-smeared aprons and perfect fade haircuts were hunched over, working. She went in; the door jingled as it closed behind her. Theo pulled a ticket from the red machine to wait her turn, #83. The glass case in front of her was piled high with beautiful red meat. She would buy three steaks. One each for her and Sammy and Cary Grant, and they would celebrate her good fortune at the OTB. While Theo waited she perused the shelves of imported Italian groceries: ladyfingers and anchovies and olives and cauliflower and peppers soaking in brine. She was filled with a manic euphoria—the kind she'd read about in books, what a poet or painter or musician might feel right before some big creative breakthrough.

“Eighty-three,” a boy behind the counter yelled, and when Theo looked up he said, “What can I get you, brother?”

Theo put a jar of green olives stuffed with garlic on the counter and ordered three T-bone steaks. He grabbed the steaks and wrapped them neatly in butcher paper.

“Anything else?”

“No thanks,” Theo said wondering if he'd figured out she wasn't “brother” yet.

“Happy holidays,” he said.

She started the short walk home, the steaks in one hand and her old shoes in the other. The snow had begun. Not like Theo had imagined, soft flakes fluttering across the sky and filling the eyelashes of pedestrians; instead it snowed a stinging hail. Theo was happier than she'd ever been, and she set the box with her old shoes and socks on top of a newspaper stand, hoping that someone who needed them would find them.

It's true that anyone could have pest problems in New York, since all the buildings are built right up against each other, but the woman who'd lived in Theo and Sammy's apartment before them had to have been a special kind of slob. Within a week of moving in their eyes had been trained to search for darting roaches and scurrying mice. They kept no trash in the house whatsoever—if they ate a banana they ran the peel immediately outside, and with the exception of the celebratory steaks, they'd stopped cooking in the house altogether. They ate slices of pizza standing against the chain-link fence at the end of the small driveway and bowls of cereal on the broken concrete in the backyard.

Theo heard mice moving through the apartment constantly. She'd catch them darting over to Cary Grant's bowl and retreating with a piece of kibble the size of their heads. Theo tried to imagine being able to eat something the size of her head, a head-size hamburger or donut. They decided to start feeding Cary Grant her meals outside.

Theo went to the library and perused the books on do-it-yourself pest control. She found one called
Little Critter Hunting
, written by a man who'd worked as a termite inspector in Manhattan for over thirty years. He posed on the cover holding a rubber rat and sporting a proud '70s moustache. Each of his hairy forearms was covered in faded blue tattoos. Under the picture it just said, “Bill.”

The book was a treasure trove of terrible facts. Bill explained pest reproduction rates as math equations. For every one roach you see, ten trillion more squirm inside your walls. The shoulders on a mouse collapse like a lawn chair in order to allow them to crawl through hairline cracks. There was a whole chapter devoted to which cracks mice prefer when entering your home, and how these cracks are often undetectable to the human eye.

Bill recommended glue traps as the most humane way to get rid of mice, explaining how regular snap traps can only take off a leg, and then you would have the bigger problem of a three-legged bleeding mouse running around your house. Other snap trap casualties included partially caught mice that gnawed their tail or foot off to get free. If a person used the glue trap, as Bill suggested, then they could “humanely” drown the mouse after it was caught, preventing it from suffering. Theo didn't understand how a person would be able to go on normally with their life after drowning a mouse.

With
Little
Critter
Hunting
in hand, Theo moved on to the library's pet training section. She wanted to teach Cary Grant some tricks and browsed the shelf until her eye caught a book with a picture of a parrot on a tricycle. The world would be a better place if the sidewalks were filled with birds riding tricycles, Theo thought. She pulled the book off the shelf along with a dog training book and headed to the desk. She was surprised to find the librarian was a stunning woman in her mid-thirties, with a light chocolate complexion and shiny dark hair.

“Hello,” Theo said, a little bit in shock at the discovery of the good-looking librarian.

“Can I have your card?” the librarian asked.

“I need to get one.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, getting a form from a drawer and handing it to Theo with a pen.

Theo bent down to fill out the form and could smell the librarian's hair. Or was it perfume? It reminded her of leather, like when she'd unwrapped her new shoes. Either way, it made her want to bury her face in the librarian's hair.

The librarian smiled slightly at Theo, and Theo forced herself to look directly into her eyes when she handed her the completed form.

“Theo,” the librarian said, reading her name off the form and peeling a bar code from a sheet of stickers. She affixed one to a new card.

Theo watched her scan
Little Critter Hunting
and then the dog and bird training books.

“Do you have a parrot?” she asked, looking at the picture of the bird on the tricycle.

“No,” Theo said, smiling.

She didn't tell the librarian that she wanted to see if it was possible to train a lovebird to ride a miniature tricycle. If a parrot was fucking cute, imagine an even smaller bird on a smaller tricycle. Instead she stood in awkward silence.

The librarian handed her
Little Critter Hunting
, and Theo held it up and said, “I have mice and roaches.”

She meant it as a joke, like those were her pets instead of parrots. But too much time had passed and the beautiful librarian didn't get it. Theo worried that now she seemed like some compulsive self-discloser.

“That book gets checked out a lot in this neighborhood. We are in Sunset Park, after all,” the librarian said.

Theo smiled, not knowing exactly what she meant. There was a young girl doing homework at a reading table, and a few homeless people sitting in other nooks reading books surrounded by all their possessions in plastic bags.

“If we can put a man on the moon, surely we can teach a lovebird to ride a tiny tin tricycle,” Theo said to the librarian.

“Oh, you have a lovebird?”

“No,” Theo said. “But I've always wanted one. If a parrot looks cute riding a tricycle, imagine how cute a lovebird would be.”

The librarian smiled and said, “I'd like to meet a lovebird that can ride a tricycle.”

“If we can put a man on the moon,” Theo repeated.

“Some people don't believe we've actually put a man on the moon.”

The librarian had said it in a teasing voice. Was she flirting?

“I love conspiracy theories but I don't know about the moon one,” Theo said.

“Conspiracy theorists say the shadows from the astronauts' boots are all going the wrong direction. We have a book
all about it
if you're interested.”

“What I never understood is why you'd go all the way to the moon just to hit a golf ball. There's something so disgusting about that.”

The librarian laughed. If by some terrible government oversight Theo got sent to the moon as an ambassador representing earthly sirma'amsirs she would do something better than hit a golf ball. Maybe eat a hot dog or scratch a lotto ticket or put the tiny blue lovebird on a tiny blue tricycle inside a tiny astronaut's space-proof bubble and set it pedaling across the cratered rock. She wanted to ask the librarian if she'd been allowed to do one thing on the moon what it would be. But she could feel the small of her back starting to sweat the way it did when she got nervous.

“Do you need a bag for the books?” the librarian asked.

“No, thanks.”

“I'm Marisol,” she reached her hand out towards Theo.

Theo shook her soft hand and was sure now she could feel energy between them.

“So did you just move here?” Marisol asked.

“From San Francisco.”

“Oh.”

Theo saw something cross Marisol's face but she wasn't sure exactly what it was.

“So do you know anyone here?”

“Not really,” Theo said.

“If you want you can meet me at this party Saturday,” Marisol said, writing down the address on a piece of paper. “I can introduce you to some people.”

“Is it a librarian party?” Theo asked, taking the paper and pushing it into her pocket.

Marisol smiled.

“It's a paella party. Have you ever eaten paella?”

Theo shook her head.

“Oh, then you have to come by.”

“Sounds good.”

Theo floated out of the library and headed home, her cheeks hot. She had the ability to change her own life, she just had to keep on the same psychic frequency she'd been on since she won the money at the OTB. Now she had new boots and a date! The only thing left to do was get rid of the mice and roaches. She stopped at the hardware store on the way home and bought three tubes of caulking to fill cracks undetectable to the human eye.

•

Sammy had been born and raised in Brooklyn, and every story seemed to be peppered with “this guy I know,” or “I know this guy.” One of these guys had gotten her a bartending job at a shitty strip bar called The Looney Bin and another guy had gotten Theo a job as a janitor at junk-mail factory in Staten Island. It didn't pay a lot, but it was under the table and Theo didn't want to eat up all the money she'd won on Buttermilk.

They were living well together. Sammy focused on teaching Cary Grant tricks when she wasn't taking her massage classes or working, and Theo took on the brunt of the pest control. The only thing in their refrigerator was Coke and a jar of peanut butter for the bait on the snap traps. Theo didn't buy the glue traps because she just couldn't imagine drowning the mouse once it was caught. Thankfully, the snap traps had been working out. When she left the house each day Theo set four around the kitchen safely away from Cary Grant's reach, and when she returned, without fail, all were full. Theo would sweep the mousetraps into a dustpan and run them to the garbage cans.

When Sammy wasn't working they would watch old movies and explore pizza shops in Brooklyn. At first Theo was surprised Sammy didn't have friends. When she told stories about her life she mentioned a variety of people, but these people were no longer around, and when Theo asked about them she was vague about their disappearance.

Theo was her friend now. Really they felt like family, doing everything together. If Theo wasn't cleaning the junk-mail factory Sammy begged her to come to The Looney Bin and hang out at the bar during her shift. It killed Theo to see everyone drinking when she was trying not to, but Sammy was adamant about wanting her there. She preyed on Theo's weaknesses, promising her she could chain-smoke and have as many plates of wings as she wanted from the all-you-can-eat buffet. So Theo would come and smoke cigarettes, drink non-alcoholic beer and try to read
Crime and Punishment
.

The Looney Bin was in a building that opened to the street through a glass door. To the left another glass door led into
The Looney Bin
and straight ahead was a staircase leading to some studio apartments on the next floor. Joey the bouncer stood in front checking IDs. He looked like a bouncer, with his shaved head and giant tattooed arms, and he dated one of the younger strippers at bar. Once Theo and Sammy walked Cary Grant there during the day to pick up some money and Joey was on so much cocaine he wouldn't stop petting the dog. Theo was afraid Cary Grant was going to bite him so she took the dog outside to wait.

The Looney Bin was so sad it didn't even have a stripper pole. There were two rooms, one with the bar and chicken wing buffet, and the other was where women between the ages of twenty and fifty danced on a low carpeted stage. The bar stretched the entire length of the room. It was dark inside, not like a bar ambiance but like the lights were broken. As a result, men sometimes stumbled into each other accidentally while trying to take their drinks to the next room where the carpeted stage awaited. There were no tables or chairs in the room with the stage, just a bathroom where a man could get a discount blowjob.

The Looney Bin wasn't the kind of strip club where women go with their boyfriends on some kind of date. It was a place for men who had no girlfriends. When Theo came to visit Sammy, Joey would hold the glass door open for her like it was Sunday dinner.

“Come on in,” he'd say. “Where's the doggy?”

Theo was glad for the darkness inside because she felt self-conscious about being a sirma'amsir in this very macho setting. Sometimes if the bar was crowded she went into the other room and watched the women. Was it possible some of these women were over fifty? They could be Theo's mother, and that made a lot of sense, because when Theo thought about her mother's mouth she thought of how her lips pursed in the same disgusted way. There were always three women dancing, separate from each other, shaking their asses where a few dollar bills hung from their G-strings like lint. One of them had an expression that looked like she'd just caught her kids smoking pot or was pissed that they
still
hadn't cleaned their rooms. Like she'd bitten her tongue for so long she now had a different mouth.

There were so many acquired postures in life. Theo had learned the posture of depression combined with endurance, and she moved through the world as if it was some kind of zoo, observing the postures of others. She recognized the posture of poverty—the boys on the corner from her old neighborhood—and the upright posture of lucky people who'd been born into such circumstance that they even walked with entitlement. Animals could take on these different postures too—cats who'd taught themselves to run sideways or flatten their bodies to the ground at the sight of a broom, because they'd been shooed or swiped at so many times.

Most of the The Looney Bin patrons were fresh-faced Latinos in bright white jeans who'd drenched themselves in cologne and gelled their hair back perfectly. They drank Coronas with lime segments pushed deep into the bottleneck, and when they were tipsy enough they wandered into the other half of the bar and watched the women dance for a while. Theo saw all these men as gaping wounds who just wanted some woman to touch their head or rub against them and make them feel like kings for a moment.

•

Theo asked Sammy to come with her to the paella party but she had to work that night
.
So she took the train to the Lower East Side alone, feeling a little bit guilty about leaving Cary Grant. The dog had taken to giving her sad looks whenever she left, climbing up on the bed and letting out a giant sigh. Theo didn't know what to bring to the party, so she picked up a six-dollar bottle of wine from the bodega near the intimidating towers of the apartment complexes on Avenue B.

When she found the address, the entrance to the building was through a large metal gate with an intercom. Theo rang the doorbell and waited to be buzzed in. A small walkway led from the first gate to the lobby door, and when the gate buzzed Theo hurried to make it through the second door before the buzzing ended. Her hand was pushing through the second door when she felt the nagging sense that someone was behind her, and when she turned around someone who looked like a junkie was pointing a knife at her stomach.