Cha-Ching! (17 page)

She opened the video case, and a familiar smell wafted out that made her mouth water. She tried to put her finger on it. She'd smelled it at the library, like some kind of old metal typewriter. Each part of the video camera fit perfectly inside its matching indentation. Marisol loved compartments; sometimes she went to a south Indian restaurant just to get served on a metal tray that had tiny indentations for all its sauces. She pulled out the heavy camera with its black rectangular foam-covered microphone on top. She touched the foam, and was surprised by its coarseness. She ran her finger back and forth over it, like it was some kind of scab on her arm. She took the other attachments out of the case and placed them around her on the coffee table like an array of Christmas presents.

In the bottom of the case, hiding behind a battery pack, was a rolled up light blue dishtowel. She pulled on the edge of it, but it was stuck. She pulled harder, and as it unraveled she heard something fall to the floor with a thud.

“Oh shit,” she said, looking at the small handgun.

•

Marisol felt her heart beating under her armpit as she leaned over and picked up the gun. She was afraid to touch it, especially after swallowing Xanax all day. How did a person know if a gun like this was loaded? In the movies, some dude usually jerked the handle down a few times quickly. She tried, timidly, but the handle didn't budge. She'd never held a gun before, and it was lighter than she'd thought it would be. She gave the handle another fruitless jerk and then gave up. Why was she using bad cop movies as a reference? She was a fucking librarian. She would just get up, put the gun in her purse, go to the building where she'd just been laid off and ask her fellow librarians if they could help her find out if the gun she'd accidentally found when she'd picked up a case of porn equipment for a friend named “Candy” who was teaching her how to strip was loaded.

There was a tiny button that Marisol assumed was the safety. She pushed on it, holding her breath, but it didn't move. Her heart was pounding. The room was thick with the smell of metal, her tongue even tasted metallic. She needed to get to the library before it closed to get the right book on how to load a gun. Her father had known how to load a gun. She didn't understand how people knew the right ways to kill themselves. Where exactly to shoot themselves in the head, how to tie a noose. Her throat tightened and she felt herself on the verge of tears. Since her father had died she'd let most of her friends drift away. Now she wished she had someone to call. Why didn't Theo call? She wished there were instant friends like instant soups. Someone you could call when you discovered guns. They just came over and you exchanged looks and smoked cigarettes and somehow figured it all out. She had a terrible desire to lick the barrel. She brought the barrel toward her face and looked into it, sniffing for the source of the smell of metal that had overtaken the room. It was pitch black inside the barrel. Staring into it, she thought maybe she saw an ocean there, like putting a conch shell to your ear, but instead of hearing she was seeing an enormous Xanax wave coming at her. She watched its perfect curl and felt it crash over her.

•

When Marisol woke up she felt like her brain had been replaced by the blue wadded up dishtowel that had been wrapped around the gun. Right before she woke up she'd been dreaming that the phone was ringing and ringing and ringing under a pile of comforters, and she kept moving the comforters to the side until she found that the phone was actually a frozen waffle. She was just having the realization that she'd gone her whole life not knowing waffles were phones when she pulled her creased face from the drool-soaked gold cushion and saw that her actual phone was ringing. Theo, Marisol hoped. She looked out the window over the fire escape and saw that it was dark outside. The phone stopped ringing before she could answer it. “Shit,” she said and stumbled into the kitchen, a dehydration headache beginning to pound in her skull.

The refrigerator was filled with things that needed to be cooked. A chicken, some potatoes. A stick of butter. But nothing to drink. She shut the refrigerator door and the phone began to ring again.

“Hello,” she said, not recognizing her own voice.

“Chloe?”

She almost said, “No, it's Marisol,” but then she remembered the girls from The Looney Bin knew her as Chloe.

“Yeah?”

“It's Candy. You didn't come to work.”

Marisol struggled to understand what that meant.

“Are you there?” Candy asked.

“What time is it?”

“Three.”

Marisol tried to do some quick math. It had been about 3
pm
when she'd gotten home from the pizza place. Twelve hours had passed?

“You drunk?” Candy said.

“No,” Marisol said defensively. She caught herself and said, “I think I'm getting sick. I fell asleep.”

She pulled a coffee cup from the cupboard and filled it with tap water.

“Sean said he gave you the video camera.”

“Oh, shit. The video camera. Sorry.”

“Can I come upstairs and get it?”

“I'll put some clothes on and meet you downstairs.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I need to go out for milk anyway.”

Marisol hurried, trying to put the camera pieces into their respective indentations. She didn't know what to do about the gun. Suddenly she felt guilty, as if she'd created this problem. She shoved it under a couch cushion.

Outside it was cold. Marisol glanced at the metal gate pulled across the pizza shop. Candy was sitting in the passenger seat of her girlfriend's car, which sat idling at the curb. She rolled down the window, and Marisol awkwardly handed the video case through to her.

“Thanks,” Candy said. “You coming to work tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Good 'cause we got hella Christmas parties coming in.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Candy said something to her girlfriend and the car screeched off. Marisol walked two blocks to the 24-hour bodega. The man behind the counter woke up when she came in.

“Hi,” Marisol said, and he gave her a tired smile.

She picked up two packages of crumb donuts and a gallon jug of Hi-C.

“That it?” he asked.

“Yeah. Unless you have any empty boxes.”

He looked at her, not understanding. She almost said
for moving
but she stopped herself.

“I want to give some things to charity,” she heard herself say.

“You need strong boxes?”

“Yes. Strong boxes,” she repeated.

He nodded, putting his burning cigarette in the ashtray and wandering to a tiny door in the back of the bodega. Marisol heard him rustling around in the closet until he came back with a few folded-up pieces of cardboard.

“These are strong boxes,” he said.

“Thank you,” Marisol smiled.

She looked at the shelf behind the counter where rat traps, tampons, pencils and packing tape were displayed.

“I'll get some of that tape, too,” she said.

He reached for it twice before successfully grabbing it.

She wanted to tell the man her father had died, but she knew she shouldn't.

She paid him, and he handed her the change and said, “Every day I have lots of strong boxes.”

“Good to know,” Marisol said. “Goodnight.”

She walked home smiling, with the folded boxes under one arm and her bag of donuts and Hi-C in the other. Everything seemed surreal, the way things feel after falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon and waking up at night
hungover
. Her apartment felt like a sauna when she walked in, making her dizzy. She laid the boxes on the floor wondering what she should pack first and then turned on the television, flipping through the channels. She watched the news and twisted the plastic cap off the Hi-C, taking a big swig. It felt so good to drink something. Then she took another gulp and shoved a crumb donut into her mouth. It was stale but she didn't care. The whole reason she chose the crumb donuts was because the crumbs distracted from the staleness.

•

Marisol had two plans. Plan A was to pack up her apartment, put her stuff in storage, drive to the parking lot under the Verrazzano bridge and pull the trigger on the gun she'd found. Maybe it was God's will she should kill herself, otherwise she never would've found it. Plan B was, for now, anything but Plan A. Since she'd found the gun three days had passed, and she'd stalled: setting it beside her at the kitchen table while she drank her coffee, on the nightstand while she read a book, on the coffee table while she painted her nails. It was like a pet cat that she coaxed to follow her from room to room through the apartment. The good kind of cat that never shed and wasn't too needy, and wouldn't lie on top of her in the middle of a New York summer heat wave.

She didn't go back to The Looney Bin because she wanted to keep the gun with her and she didn't trust the other girls not to go through her purse. What if Candy saw it in there? Half those girls carried weapons, afraid of creeps or stalkers. Still, Marisol was afraid they'd see hers and know it was a friend, not protection.

On the fourth day she no longer enjoyed threatening herself with the gun and just found it pathetic that she hadn't had the guts to pull the trigger. People who want to kill themselves get the shit done. Like her father. The police had found a receipt on his kitchen table for some stationery he'd bought to write out his suicide notes. The time and date printed on it showed that he'd bought it just hours before he pulled the trigger.

On the fifth day, Marisol decided to bring the gun to the police station as part of their no questions asked, get guns off the street program. For each gun turned in, a person got $75. She walked up to the police officer drinking a cup of coffee behind the thick glass window.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello.”

“I found a gun that I want to turn in. I'm going to take it out of my purse, so don't shoot me.”

He chuckled and knocked on the window separating them. “Bullet proof,” he said.

Marisol put the gun into a little box the officer slid open for her, then pulled to his side of the window. He took a look at it and then at Marisol.

“You found this?”

“She nodded.”

“Where?”

“I thought this was no questions asked.”

“This isn't a real gun. It's a fake.”

“What?”

“Like a movie prop. I can't give you any money for this,” the police officer said. “But it's still great you brought it in, because stores get robbed all the time with these because they look so real.”

Marisol let out a deep sigh. She couldn't even find the words to say good-bye. She had been ready to kill herself with a fake gun. She walked out of the police station and back onto the cold street. On the way home she bought a bottle of red wine.

When she got back to her apartment she poured herself a glass of wine and sat down on the couch, toasting to her mother and her dead father. Her toothache had progressed over the past week and she swirled each sip of wine over her sore tooth, pretending it was anesthesia, until the bottle was gone.

With the exception of the cash she'd left behind in Brooklyn, Theo had lost all of her money while Sammy was asleep in the motel room. She counted and recounted in her head, realizing she'd lost over four thousand dollars. And her only current employment was as a janitor in the junk-mail factory, so that was like losing ten million dollars. On the ride home Sammy assured her that it was okay, but she wasn't really being honest about how much she'd lost.

When Sammy went to massage school the next day, Theo wrapped the Christmas presents she'd ordered before they left for Atlantic City. She'd bought two bones, a red plaid coat and a squeaky lobster for Cary Grant, and a travel massage table for Sammy. The massage table was delivered in a giant cardboard box, unassembled, and Theo dragged it across the shitty linoleum into the kitchen where she leaned it up against the bar. She put Cary Grant's presents on the bar under a miniature Christmas tree. Then she felt the terrible depression overtake her. She wanted to call Marisol, but it had been almost a week since their failed date. She pulled the scraps of paper out of her pocket with the phone numbers for the alcohol and depression studies and dialed the number for the alcohol study first. When the phone screener answered, it occurred to Theo that she didn't know if she was supposed to present herself as an alcoholic or a normal drinker.

“How many drinks do you consume in an average week?”

“Three,” Theo said.

“Do you ever use alcohol as a tool to alter your mood?”

“No. Not really.”

“Are you currently on any medication for depression?”

“No.”

Because it wasn't obvious from the questions what population the study was serving, Theo answered each of them in a tone she hoped made her sound like a peppy sorority girl; sorority girls seemed to get things in life. She imagined the alcohol being served in a sterile, fluorescent-lit room. If given a choice, Theo didn't want to drink whiskey, rum, vodka or rubbing alcohol. She would prefer gin and tonics, beer, red wine or even Campari. Maybe she would meet someone and have an affair with another participant. She knew that people hooked up during these studies. What if Marisol could be in the study too? Then they could have some concentrated time together. When she hung up she had a bad feeling she wasn't going to be picked, even though they hadn't given her a flat-out no.

The real cash cow was in donating eggs, but when Theo's eggs had been young enough for her to do this, she'd been afraid. Even for five thousand dollars, she didn't like the idea of her genetic child roaming the world without her help. She thought she'd want to be there if the child were ever mired in depression. Now that she was too old to sell her eggs, she'd do it in a second.

When she'd moved to San Francisco there was a whole population of lesbians who made their living doing research studies, or pawning their eggs off to infertile suburban couples. A few had even been surrogates. Most were crazy self-mutilating heroin addicts who bought “nice” thrift-store outfits in an attempt to convince the straight couples, but the couples were as desperate for a baby as the lesbians were for cash. They would coach each other through fake interviews while drinking tallboys.

When asked
Do you come from a long line of taxi drivers and hairdressers?
the answer is
no
. When asked
Are your parents and grandparents college graduates?
the answer is
yes
. And,
no, no, no
to whether anybody's gay or mentally ill. Wear long sleeves. Dye your hair a normal color. Wash those dark circles out from under your eyes, crack a tallboy and fantasize about how you'll spend the money. It was like a bad B movie, throngs of zombie lesbian egg donors, covered in tattoos and track marks and self-mutilation scars, pushing strollers full of empty beer bottles to the hospitals saying, “We'll produce great offspring. We promise.”

Theo took a deep breath and dialed Marisol's number. She would ask her if she wanted to go on a road trip to Atlantic City and she would win back the money she had lost. Marisol's phone rang and rang, never picking up with an answering machine. She dialed again, wondering if she had punched in the wrong numbers. When no one answered the second time, she gave up. She could see Cary Grant in the kitchen sniffing around the bar where the bone was.

“That's for later,” she called out to the dog.

She dialed the number for the depression study, confident that if she could make it into any study, this was the one. Her entire life had prepared her for the job title of Depressed, and she had the references to prove it. The phone was answered by a very young research assistant who squeakily asked Theo a series of questions about her depression. Unlike the alcohol study, where she wasn't sure how alcoholic they wanted their participants, Theo knew a depression study would want her to bring all her sad sacks to the table.

“Is your sleep ever affected by depression?”

“No, I sleep like a baby. Once I slept through a fire and I didn't even wake up when robbers sawed my upstairs neighbor's door in half with a chain saw.”

“How would you say depression affects your relationships?”

“It's nice because I'd never date someone who isn't depressed, too. It gives us something to talk about and allows us lots of time in bed.”

“Are you on any medication for depression?”

“Nope. Au naturel.”

“Okay. Are you currently employed?”

“Yes.”

“What is your current job?”

“I'm a professional gambler and sometimes work as a janitor in a junk-mail factory.”

“Okay. Thank you for your interest but unfortunately you're ineligible for our study.”

“What do you mean? I just told you I slept through a fire.”

“We're looking for people who can't maintain employment.”

“But that's not fair.”

“I'm sorry,” the screener said cheerfully.

“This is really fucked up,” Theo heard herself say. “You know more people commit suicide during the holidays than any other time of year and you're just going to tell people during the Christmas season they can't be in the depression study because they manage to go to work?”

She slammed the phone down, heartbroken, and Cary Grant darted into the other room.

“I can't be in the depression study because I come from a certain kind of working-class lineage that's made me always have a job. What if I was so depressed during all of my jobs that I showed up drunk or slipped away mid-shift to cut myself in the bathroom? What if I used all my sick days calling in because midway on my commute I felt the top of my head detach and float away in an anxiety attack? Do you need me on the couch reading Sylvia Plath or endlessly watching
The
Price
Is
Right
while eating one frozen dinner after the next?, well, I've done that too, just on my days off.”

“Should I shoot my fucking dog?” she wanted to call the woman back and scream into the phone. “Should I just get out a gun and shoot my dog in the head?”

Countless studies had been done about how living with a dog combats depression. The many tasks required to take care of a dog can help a depressed person remain active. At least three times a day a person has to walk a dog and therefore move their depressed body and get fresh air and take the chance of seeing a cherry tree in blossom or feel a sunbeam coming down onto their head, allowing themselves the window of hope.

Theo was sure all the slots in the depression study had been filled by cat people. Cat people can lie in bed all day if they want to, folding their depression close to their chests and then rolling over and keeping it locked inside the comforter. Cat people never have to put a leash on a cat and walk it. Only the truly insane walked cats on leashes. Cat people don't ever have to leave the house because of the greatest depression-enabling invention ever: the litter box. They can fill a kiddy pool with litter and plunk it down in the middle of their kitchen floor and a month can go by.

Maybe if she had a doggy door she could get away with her depression—just lie in bed urinating on herself as the dog ran in and out. Theo had never trusted people with doggy doors.

“I'm trying to get better,” she wanted to scream at the phone screener. “I'm trying to help myself!”

Theo started to cry. Why hadn't she asked to talk to the manager?

•

Theo wished someone had told her to beware of sliding-scale therapists that slide too low. Then she could've avoided that five-dollar-an-hour-ex-postal-worker-piece-of-shit-therapist in San Francisco.

“Why are you here today?” she asked when Theo came in.

“I'm depressed.”

The truth was that Theo had been depressed forever, but she'd become especially unraveled when she'd tried to quit drinking a few months ago.

The therapist blinked a few times slowly and said, “Depressed, huh?”

But she said it in this faraway voice, like it was she who was the most depressed person in the world. For the rest of the intake she made small talk as Theo sat awkwardly across from her like a stranger at a bus stop. When she left the office Theo had the same bad feeling she'd had when she'd left the offices of the thirty-three lousy sliding-scale therapists before her. Only desperation, poverty and ridiculous hope led her back to the office the next week.

“I saw this in the paper, and it made me think of you,” the therapist said, showing Theo a tiny rectangular newspaper clipping the size of a personal ad.

When Theo reached to take it she pulled it back, saying, “Let me read it to you out loud.”

Her taupe armchair faced Theo's taupe armchair, and Theo watched the therapist's frosted-and-tipped hair bobbing up and down as she read aloud.

“The Depression Van is coming to San Francisco! It will be parked in front of 700 Market Street from 5
pm
to 9
pm
every Wednesday in January to provide free screenings for depression. No appointment necessary.”

The therapist blinked a few times quickly and then handed Theo the clipping.

Theo took it.

“I think this is for people who don't know they're depressed,” she said.

The therapist sat silent, blinking.

Theo continued to break it down for her.“The Depression Van helps people find out if they're depressed. I already know I'm depressed,” she said, trying to hand back the clipping. It hung wilted between Theo's fingertips—a piece of trash neither wanted to touch.

“Well, you can keep that in case you ever need it,” the therapist said.

“If I needed it in the future that would mean I'd forgotten I was depressed, which in turn would mean I was cured,” Theo thought.

“Tell me a little bit about your depression,” the therapist said.

This was the first normal thing she'd said. Theo took a deep breath and started to relate her psychotherapy history. About three minutes in the therapist interrupted and began to read aloud from a self-help book she had in her lap. Each time Theo began to talk she interrupted, saying, “Oh, hang on a second. I read something in my book about that.”

She flipped through the pages looking for a passage while Theo sat, courteously enraged, watching the fog hovering over the hills through the small window behind her. It occurred to Theo that if she dove out the window and fell three stories to her death it would probably stop her from becoming a therapist, and that could be a help to others.

During Theo's third appointment the therapist said, “Tell me again, what do you do for work?”

Theo wanted to say, “I can't remember what you do either.” But instead she said, “I'm a cashier, but it's my dream to teach ESL.”

“ESL?”

“English as a Second Language.”

“Huh?” she blinked.

“You help immigrants learn English so they can get jobs and housing and—”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” she said, disgusted. “Those people always came into the post office. ‘Me no speak, English. Me no speak English.' But they always knew how to count the money.”

Theo wasn't sure how long she sat frozen in her taupe chair before she excused herself to go to the restroom. She walked down the hall past the bathrooms, into the elevator and out into the foggy day to begin the two-mile march home. So this was five-dollar therapy. She could've done better driving four hours to Reno and feeding a five-dollar bill into a psychotherapy-themed slot machine called
Bonkers!
Get three psychotherapist couches in a row and you win.
Freud, Freud, Freud! You're rich!

•

Theo tried Marisol's number again. This time she picked up.

“Hello?”

“It's Theo. Do you remember me?”

“Yes,” Marisol said.

“What are you doing for Christmas?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you want to make me dinner and then we'll go to Atlantic City?”

“Is Cary Grant coming?”

“Are you making a specific request?”

“I'm only going if Cary Grant is going.”

“Let me ask her. Hang on.” Theo turned to Cary Grant, “Do you want to go over to Marisol's for dinner and then go to Atlantic City?” The dog wagged.

“Well?” Marisol asked.

“She wagged.”

“That sounds like a yes.”

There was a silence on the phone between them and then Marisol said, “I was hoping you would call.”

Theo felt her heart soften. “I've been working a lot,” she said, referring to her all-night gambling bender in Atlantic City.

“What's Sammy doing tonight for Christmas Eve?”

“She's hanging out with her family the next couple days. She invited me but they're all allergic to dogs, and I don't want to spend Christmas without Cary Grant.”

“Come over whenever you want,” Marisol said.