Cha-Ching! (21 page)

Marisol's hand in her own and her presence in the waiting room melted away the post-drug despair.

“Everyone needs someone to walk through this despicable world with,” Theo said to Marisol in the elevator, like a wedding proposal.

Holding Marisol's hand steadied her. It made her feel moored and solid, like new boots. When they reached the street, Theo was surprised to see it was still sunny.

“We should take a cab,” Marisol said, hailing one.

Theo sat down on a fire hydrant and put her arms around Marisol's middle.

Theo wanted to say, “I need you,” but instead said, “I think I had a nervous breakdown in there.”

Marisol looked concerned as a cab screeched over to the sidewalk.

“We're going to Brooklyn,” Marisol said.

“I told my frog joke.”

“What frog joke?” Marisol asked.

“I'll tell you sometime,” Theo said. “After you tell me how you got your scar.”

“Did you get more Xanax?” Theo asked.

“No.” Marisol made a face.

Theo was relieved but also sad.

“I think we should go on the wagon.”

Marisol remained silent and then said, “I made a dentist appointment while I was waiting for you.”

“You did?”

Marisol nodded.

“Maybe we can still have a double date at the Bellevue Dental Clinic?” Theo said.

They were stalled in traffic, the cabbie's head lost under a cloud of smoke. He honked a few times at a fish truck double-parked in front of them. Theo felt a wave of nausea from the cigarette smoke and air freshener, and she rolled down the window to hang her head over the side. Marisol put her hand on the back of Theo's neck as she puked up a few rounds of nothing.

“Pull over here,” Marisol told the cabbie, who was watching Theo in the rearview mirror, disgusted.

Marisol paid him and followed Theo out onto the sidewalk, where she rested on a fire hydrant.

“I hate that guy,” she told Theo.“He thinks we're junkies.”

“We kind of are.”

“Wait here and I'll get you a ginger ale.”

Theo lit a cigarette right before Marisol returned with a dusty box of saltine crackers and two ginger ales.

“You're smoking?” she asked Theo incredulously.

“It's actually disgusting,” Theo said dropping the cigarette into the gutter.

“Let's go sit in the park and get some fresh air. ”

Marisol led them to a bench outside a small, fenced dog park. She took the soda and crackers out of the plastic bag and put them beside Theo. A tall woman with long red hair held her hand up in the air and said, “Touch.”

Her dog looked like a miniature golden retriever and leapt high in the air touching her hand with its nose.

“It's like a circus dog,” Theo said to Marisol.

Marisol looked up. She took a swig of her ginger ale, watching the dog.

Theo held her ginger ale under her nose and let the fizzing tickle her nostrils.

“Flip,” the woman said, making a twirling motion with her hand, and the dog did three backflips in a row.

“Wow,” Theo and Marisol said at the same time.

Marisol put two saltine crackers on top of each other.

“Here. I made you dinner,” she said, handing the crackers to Theo.

Theo took the crackers and said, “Let's teach Cary Grant to do tricks.”

The little dog was now weaving expertly in and out of the owner's legs while she walked.

“I've wasted a lot of my life,” Theo said angrily.

Marisol looked at her blankly.

“Do you know after Atlantic City I called to hire you a skywriter?” Theo blurted out.

“What?” Marisol said.

“It doesn't matter. I lost all my money.”

Theo lit a new cigarette and said, “I have to quit smoking.”

The dog was now jumping through a purple hula hoop.

“Quit smoking if you want to quit smoking,” Marisol said, a touch annoyed.

“The skywriter said each letter is the size of the Empire State Building. Do you know that when you see those letters they are ten thousand feet in the air?”

“You're crazy,” Marisol said.

“At least I don't have crumbs on my tits.”

Marisol looked down and brushed off the cracker crumbs.

“Why you looking at my tits?”

“Because they're perfect.”

“Do you know the one night I worked at
The Looney Bin
Candy grabbed them to see if they were real?”

“What?” Theo said laughing. “Are they?” she asked, reaching for them.

“Come on, Jack,” the owner said, leashing up the little dog and leading him out of the park.

“How much does a skywriter cost?” Marisol asked.

“Twelve hundred dollars.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I don't even care about the money,” Theo said. “ There are a ton of other factors. Like you would have to be somewhere to see it at the exact right time.”

She put her head on Marisol's shoulder and pointed to the sky.

“Like this. And then I would have to have you look up at the right time and the sky would have to be the right blue and the skywriter would have to not be drunk and have good penmanship.”

The sky above them was a perfect violet.

“If you could have them write anything, what would have them write?” Marisol asked.

“You have crumbs on your tits.”

Marisol punched Theo in the arm.

“No really. It could be right there,” Theo said. “Wouldn't you want someone to tell you if you had crumbs on your tits?”

Marisol slid her hand between Theo's thigh and the bench. It was cold out.

“Do you know tomorrow is my birthday?” Theo told Marisol.

“Are you serious?”

Theo nodded.

“How old will you be?”

“Thirty.”

“That's a nice age. I'm three years older than you,” Marisol said.

Theo traced her finger down a tendon in Marisol's neck.

“Are you hungry?” Theo said.

“Not really, but we should go home and feed Cary Grant.”

“Cary Grant,” Theo said happily.

But they sat on the bench a little longer, looking at the place in the sky where the skywriter would've been.

about the author

Ali Liebegott is the author of the award-winning books
The Beautifully Worthless
and
The IHOP Papers
. In 2010 she took a train trip across America interviewing female poets for a project titled,
The Heart Has Many Doors
— excerpts from these interviews are posted monthly on
The Believer Logger
. In addition, she is the founding editor at Writers Among Artists whose first publication,
Faggot Dinosaur
, was released in 2012. A new edition of
The Beautifully Worthless
was published under the City Lights/Sister Spit imprint in 2013.