Cha-Ching! (4 page)

When she opened the door to the motel room, Cary Grant looked up from where she was sleeping in a tight circle at the end of the bed. Theo was relieved that the dog hadn't had some kind of freak-out in her absence.

“Hi,” she said, sitting down next to her.

The dog watched her. Theo felt exhausted and lay down with the light on, fully dressed, her feet hanging off the edge of the bed. A flare of anger surged through her at her stupidity for losing two hundred and forty dollars. She got up and fished a bright yellow Café Bustelo can out of her bag. She took the lid off and removed the wad of perfectly organized bills, counting the money as Cary Grant watched. She had seven hundred and ten dollars. She counted out two hundred and forty dollars and put it in her pocket. All she would have to do is go back to the roulette wheel and put the entire sum on black or red. She had a fifty-fifty chance of winning her losses back with a single spin. Very gently, she laid her hand on the dog's side.

“I'll be right back,” she told Cary Grant.

When she rose the dog followed her to the door and stood beside her, tail wagging. Theo glanced at the nightstand clock. It was 4
am
.

“Time for bed?” Theo asked.

And she turned off the light and got back in bed with Cary Grant.

The next morning Theo forced herself to get on the road and not entertain the idea of staying one more day at the casino motel. She drove straight to New York, stopping only when absolutely necessary to nap in a rest area. Cary Grant had officially bonded to her and started to lean against her or put her paw on Theo's leg while she was driving. Theo attributed the progress to the small fortune she'd spent on hot dogs.

New York looked like she'd imagined it: gridlock, clusters of tall, brick apartment buildings and swatches of colorful bubbled graffiti on passing delivery trucks. She realized, sitting in traffic on the Tappan Zee Bridge, that she'd reached her destination and now she didn't know where to go. This was the moment Olivia had been hounding her about. What would she do when she got to New York? Where would she live? She'd thought Olivia was being a downer or was jealous or hurt by her leaving. Theo had spent so many hours imagining her New York apartment that it had never occurred to her she still needed to find one.

She imagined the same modest apartment that characters in movies got when they moved to New York to start a new life: a few small rooms with gleaming hardwood floors and a claw-foot tub. A fire escape off the kitchen where she could start a small collection of red geraniums. A humble view of the Brooklyn Bridge. The first exit after the Tappan Zee Bridge she'd buy a Coke, and walk Cary Grant, and find a pay phone to call the one person she knew in New York, an Italian dyke with a dark mop of hair named Sammy.

The hairball of interlocking parkways and overpasses confused her, and Theo drove for twenty minutes, somehow looping back to where she started. The next time she went a different way, until the clusters of tall apartment buildings disappeared and she found herself driving along lush greenery where tiny bridges fed people off the expressway and into towns that looked stuck in the 1950s. The third time she looped another wrong way and found herself about to pay the toll again at the Tappan Zee Bridge.

She put her hazards on in the emergency lane and got out and lit a cigarette. If she got a ticket for stopping traffic at least maybe the cop could tell her what direction she needed to go. She lifted Cary Grant out and walked along the gravel shoulder to let her pee. The dog relieved herself then dipped her head to stretch.

“We're lost,” she said, and Cary Grant wagged.

“Let's find a place to live,” she said, loading the dog back in the truck.

The toll booth employee gave Theo directions to get out of the bad loop, and she followed the signs pointing toward the Bronx. Then she pulled over at the first convenience store she saw.

“Progress,” she said to Cary Grant, who now became excited each time the truck stopped.

The dog wagged when Theo opened the glove compartment to get out her address book. That's where she'd stored the hot dogs on the drive across country, but there were no hot dogs left. She opened her phone book and found Sammy's number under “S” with the words “Sammy Jail.”

Theo and Sammy had met at a rally protesting the acquittal of the cops who beat Rodney King. Sammy was visiting San Francisco from New York and hadn't planned to go to the protest, had just been smoking pot in the park when she got swept up with the other protesters and arrested. During thirty hours of wrongful incarceration they'd become friends. When they were released Sammy had given Theo her number and said, “If you're ever in New York. . . .”

Theo hadn't known if Sammy was trying to flirt with her, but now Theo was in New York with nowhere to live and a pit bull that had been thrown off a roof. She dialed Sammy's number, and someone answered on the second ring.

“Sammy?” Theo asked, trying to remember her voice.

“Who's this?” a woman with a thick New York accent said.

“Theo.”

Theo heard children screaming at each other in the background.

“We met in jail when she was visiting San Francisco.”

As soon as the words came out of Theo's mouth she regretted saying them.

“Oh yeah,” the woman said cheerily, “She told me about that. She's working on a fishing boat right now.”

“Oh.”

Theo was at a loss.

“Do you want to leave your number?”

“I don't have one yet. If you talk to her can you tell her I moved to New York?”

“Sure. Make sure to stay outta jail,” the woman said, cackling, before she hung up the phone.

Theo stared at the pay phone trying to come up with a plan to find a job and a place to live, now that the one person she knew was off working on a fishing boat. She left Cary Grant in the truck and went into the Kwik Stop to buy a Coke and cigarettes and hot dogs. Theo brought everything to the register and stared at the acne on the skinny cashier's chin.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Theo replied.

She added a local newspaper to her pile of things.

“Can you tell me the name of this town?” she asked.

He looked surprised by her question.

“Yonkers.”

“I'm still in New York, right?”

“That depends on who you ask.”

Theo needed to get a job. She drove through Yonkers stopping at every business with a
help wanted
sign while Cary Grant watched out the window, anticipating each return. When she ran out of the will to walk into strange, sad Yonkers businesses and ask about a job, Theo took the dog to a park and perused the classified ads for apartments; most were too expensive and didn't allow dogs.

The pay phone in the Kwik Stop parking lot became her office. She called a phone number for a $300 room in Yonkers, and when the answering machine picked up she realized she didn't have a call-back number, so she left the pay phone number and said she'd be available after 5
pm
.

Theo looked for jobs some more, and then returned at
5
pm
. Placing Cary Grant's bowls on the ground next to her truck, she waited for the phone to ring. The day already felt like a week. Having nowhere to live, or just to be, made the hours stretch on forever. Theo wasted two hours waiting for the pay phone to ring and then drove around to find a park to sleep for the night. She reclined her seat and placed her hand on Cary Grant's rib cage, feeling it lift slightly each time the dog inhaled. She used it as a kind of meditation and drifted into a tense slumber as her psyche waited for cops to show up and tell her to move along, or for a psycopath to crawl out of the bushes and kill her.

When sleeping in her truck on the cross-country drive she hadn't thought of herself as homeless, just economical. Now that she was no longer in transit, one day of washing her face and brushing her teeth at the train station had filled her with despair.

Over the next couple days, when not applying for jobs or housing or getting lost in the hairball of Westchester County highways, Theo casually wandered supermarket aisles, stuffing thirty-cent rolls in her mouth and chewing them as quickly as possible, afraid to spend any cash in case she needed it for a room deposit. The only groceries she bought were a can opener and four cans of baked beans, twenty-five cents each. She was trying to combat a constant headache, the result of hunger, or smoking too much, or a combination of the two.

Theo filled out job applications, sometimes ten a day, listing the pay phone as her home number with specific instructions to call only after 5
pm
. After a particularly demoralizing rejection for a cashier position at a Friendly's diner, she splurged and bought a grape soda and two hot dogs from a man who had a cart near the park. Cary Grant inhaled her hot dog and then gave Theo's wrist a tiny lick to say
thank
you
. Rejuvenated, she went back to her plan to Make It in New York.

That evening when she returned to the pay phone she saw a
help wanted
sign in the window of the convenience store. She practically ran inside, smiling at the acne-faced cashier who now knew her pretty well from coming in and out all day for coffee and cigarettes and classified ads.

“You're hiring?”

He nodded. “My cousin just went back to school and quit with no notice, and no one else in my family wants to work here.”

“Oh.”

“It's my uncle's store. Have you ever cashiered before?” he asked shyly.

“Yes. I've cashiered a lot.”

“I'm Randy,” he said, extending his bony hand, but Theo already knew the thin boy's name from his nametag.
Randy, Manager
.

“I just moved here from San Francisco.”

Randy's eyes lit up.

“I've always wanted to go to California,” which Theo interpreted as,
I'm young and gay and stuck in Yonkers, help!

He looked barely eighteen.

Theo started the application, leaving phone number and address blank.

“Do you think you could you start tomorrow morning,” Randy asked, “because I have a dentist appointment.”

“Really?” Theo said, relief flooding her body.

“Is that okay? Or do you have something to do?”

“That's perfect.”

“It's minimum wage but you can have as many hot dogs and sodas as you want. And coffee.”

“That sounds great.”

“We have to wear this uniform,” Randy said, sadly pulling at his turquoise smock.

“That's okay.”

Randy looked at Theo and said, “Do you want the boy smock or the girl smock? The boy one is better,” he added quickly.

“The boy one then,” Theo said, relieved.

She watched him dart into a supply closet and emerge with two turquoise smocks enclosed in plastic wrap.

“So what time should I come in tomorrow?”

“Six.”

“Thanks, Randy.”

“I have a feeling you're going to be great.”

Cary Grant's ears perked up as she saw Theo approach. Theo opened the truck door and gave the dog a quick hug, whispering in her ear, “I got us a job that includes all the hot dogs we can eat!”

The dog thumped her tail hard into the seat as Theo kissed her ears. She was still cooing in the dog's face when she heard the pay phone.

“Hello?”

“Is this Theo?” a gruff female voice asked.

“Yes.”

“This is Doralina. You called about the room.”

“Which one is this?”

“Three hundred dollars. Yonkers.”

“Oh yeah,” Theo said. “Is it possible to take a look at it?”

“You have a dog, right?”

“Yes.”

“Does it pee in the house?”

“No,” Theo paused. “It's a special dog. She was thrown off a roof.”

“A roof?”

She started telling Doralina the dog's story in an attempt to make her sympathetic, but then realized she sounded crazy. Only unstable people lived where dogs were thrown off roofs. Theo had to convince her. It was already September. What would happen when winter came and it was too cold for them to sleep in the truck?

“Is the room available now?” Theo asked.

“Yeah, it's just sitting empty.”

“Could I come look at it?” Theo tried to not sound desperate.

“You got a job, right?”

“Totally,” Theo said.

“Where at?”

Theo read the sign aloud: “The Kwik Stop,” she said. “Right before you get on the expressway.”

“Oh. I've probably seen you. I live just down the street. You want to come over now?”

Theo drove to the address Doralina gave her and left Cary Grant in the truck. She rang the doorbell twice, and eventually a dykey white woman wearing giant gray sweatpants opened the door. She looked Theo up and down, obviously surprised to find queerness on her own front step.

Yonkers was a fucking time warp. Every place Theo had applied for a job she'd felt
GAY
, and had to ignore the gawker stares. When the eventual sirma'amsir documentary was made, Yonkers would be the new habitat where Theo finds herself uncamouflaged, waiting to be plucked and eaten by a hate-criming, carnivorous bird.

When she left San Francisco Theo had thought she didn't care if she ever saw a gay pride flag again. Sometimes she'd even wanted to scream, “Put some goddamned pants on!” at the men who walked down the sidewalk in assless chaps. But the gay people in Yonkers seemed to lack not just gay pride, but gay ambition. A week removed from the gay mecca, and Theo was already fantasizing about founding a gay support group for pimple-faced Randy and dykey Doralina.

Doralina led Theo up two flights of stairs to a small attic room with a slanted roof that was just big enough to accommodate her futon. The floor was covered in bright red carpet the color of Ronald McDonald's hair. A tiny airplane-size window hung like a painting where the slanted ceiling met the wall.

“I love it,” Theo said after standing in the room for ten seconds.

Doralina seemed surprised.

“Most people think it's too small.”

“I don't have that much stuff,” Theo said. “Do you want to meet my dog?”

“Okay.”

Theo wondered if Doralina was on heavy drugs. There was something very underwater about her.

They walked back downstairs, and Theo rolled down the window so Doralina could see Cary Grant.

“It's a pit bull?” Doralina said.

“I think so.”

“They bite kids?”

Cary Grant watched Doralina.

“She's never bitten a child,” Theo said, unsure if that was true.

“Does she bark?” Doralina asked.

In the week that Theo had had the dog the only noise she'd ever heard her make was the yelp when she was thrown onto the Taco Lady's tarp.

“No, she's a good dog.”

Doralina reached through the window to pet Cary Grant but the dog ducked away from her hand.

“She's shy,” Theo offered.

“Just lock her up when my son comes over. I don't need no hospital bills.”

Theo was surprised by the news of Dykey Doralina's kid, and for a second she wondered if she was wrong about her being gay.

“When are you looking to move in?” Doralina asked.

Theo didn't want to let on that she was homeless. She also didn't want to spend another night sleeping in her truck.

“I could move in now,” Theo said, “as long as I'm here.”

“It's six hundred dollars for rent and deposit,” Doralina said in a tough voice, almost like a challenge.

Theo reached under the driver's seat for her coffee can. She counted six hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. The can was almost empty, and a wave of panic went through her. She'd count exactly how much was left later when she was alone. She'd gotten a job and a place to live, and while many would interpret a cashier position at a convenience store and a tiny room in a Yonkers apartment as fucking dismal, Theo knew in her bones that life was looking up.

Doralina helped Theo drag the futon and boxes up to her room. Within an hour her belongings were put away and she'd put sheets on her bed. Cary Grant lay on the bright red carpet in a tight circle watching Theo's every move. Theo couldn't wait to take a shower. She unpacked her duffel bag looking for clean underwear and saw the wig. It made her miss Olivia deeply. She hung it on the doorknob and went to the bathroom to fill Cary Grant's water dish. The dog thumped her tail into the wall excitedly when she returned with the blue bowl. She lapped at the water shyly, casting her nervous eyes at Theo.

Theo imagined her new room as Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting of his Arles bedroom; instead of a four-poster bed, she had a navy blue futon mattress, and instead of a wood-plank floor, Ronald McDonald–red carpet. Instead of a tiny mirror with thin, vertical, brushstrokes of color, Theo had a mirror-size window right below the attic eaves. If Van Gogh came back from the dead to paint Theo's new bedroom she bet he'd mute the carpet and use the light blue dog dishes as the focal point—all the energy swirling out of those two faded periwinkle bowls.

When Cary Grant fell asleep on the futon, Theo carefully removed the stitches on her side with a nail clipper. She woke feeling Theo pull the first stitch, but tolerated the medical assistance. Theo tiptoed to the bathroom so she wouldn't disturb the dog, and felt the luxury of grooming herself outside a train station restroom. She returned to her bedroom, set her tiny alarm clock for 5
am
and climbed into bed. When she was settled, the dog got up and repositioned herself, settling with her head against Theo's leg.

“You're my best friend,” Theo said to her.

Tomorrow while she was at work Cary Grant would have her own room to limp around in. She loved the dog's nervous brown eyes and planned to celebrate their new life together after work. She'd take some of those free hot dogs and go to the park where Cary Grant could walk slowly through the grass with her cast, sniffing at the wildflowers, and she could watch the sun set.

•

Theo arrived at the Kwik Stop at 6
am
. The turquoise smock felt heavy on her chest, like an x-ray vest. Randy told her to make herself a cup of coffee and then trained her on the cash register, selling lottery tickets, and lining up the new hot dogs on the rolling grill. She made a fresh pot of coffee in each flavor, and then after three hours Randy left her to get his cavity filled.

The store was busy, and Theo rang up rush-hour customers with their coffees and cigarettes and breakfast burritos and beef jerky. She couldn't believe how much beef jerky she sold—as if all of Yonkers was fueled by it. When it slowed down she browsed the classified ads and called about a few jobs. Now that she had a job, maybe she could find another one that paid more than minimum wage. Or maybe she could have two jobs and afford her own apartment. She dialed the number for an ad that read
data entry no experience necessary
and scheduled an interview for later that day.

When Randy returned with his numb mouth, he seemed astounded that Theo had actually done the things he'd asked.

He kept saying, “You remembered to put the hot dogs out? You remembered to make the coffee?”

“Yes,” Theo said, feeling sad that some people couldn't remember that much.

When her shift was over he packed her a bag with four hot dogs and a 64-ounce Coke.

“Same time tomorrow?” he said smiling.

Theo was the friend he'd been waiting forever to meet.

“Same time,” she confirmed.

Theo was so excited to see Cary Grant she practically bounded up the stairs when she got home. She was nervous to find out if the dog had had an accident or eaten a pillow, but the room was undisturbed and she found the dog sleeping in her trademark tiny circle.

“Let's go!” Theo said, changing out of her turquoise smock and putting the dog on a leash.

They went to the park and each ate two hot dogs. Theo sat on the bench drinking the entirety of her 64-ounce soda while Cary Grant sniffed around in the grass. Could a dog really moor a person? Ever since she'd taken Cary Grant on she'd felt she had an ally. The dog's health was in Theo's hands, and she loved how each day she noticed the small progress she made earning her trust.