Authors: Ali Liebegott
Cha-Ching! (20 page)
Theo sat down on the bed and petted Cary Grant, who made a groaning noise as she lay down. Theo could barely remember the night before. Just that she'd taken a few of the pills and was playing the slot machines. She patted the envelope in her pocket and everything was gone but two hundred dollars. She pulled the prescription bottle out of her pocket, but it was empty. Then she rolled over, smothering her face in the pillow.
“Merry fucking Christmas,” she told Cary Grant.
They were a pack of two, understanding each other's movements the same way a schizophrenic might interpret a personal message hidden inside the subtle movement of a cloud.
“I'll never let you down again,” Theo told the dog, before passing out in the room that smelled like shit.
When Theo woke, Cary Grant was pawing at the motel door to go out, and she leapt up, trying to avoid another accident in the room. The dog got sick in the bushes again and Theo was surprised to see that the sky was dark. She had a throbbing dehydration headache and it felt like she'd been abducted by aliens or was in some weird sleep study, every twelve hours in a new reality.
She returned to the room and filled the last clean plastic cup with tap water, refilling it three times and each time drinking it all down. She didn't begin to know how she would clean the rug. And then she remembered she'd lost another eight hundred dollars. She took one of the hundred-dollar bills out of the envelope and put it on the nightstand for the housekeeper. Then she turned Marisol's note over and wrote,
To
whoever
has
to
clean
this
room,
I'm
so
sorry.
She dialed their apartment but the phone just rang. Then she dialed The Looney Bin but there was no answer there either. She didn't want Sammy to worry about her. Then she remembered Sammy was at her family's.
“I'll be right back,” she promised Cary Grant, leaving the motel room.
She needed to eat. She'd hit the buffet then head back to Brooklyn on a full stomach and drive straight to Marisol's. But once she was in the casino she didn't even attempt to walk to the buffet. She went right back to the slot machines she'd been at the night before.
“Cocktails,” she heard behind her, and when she looked it was the same fag she'd given a hundred dollars to the night before.
“Oh, hi,” he said. “Seltzer?”
Theo nodded and gave him a small smile. She felt ashamed for still being in the casino.
She thought about the night she and Big Vic turned their luck around in Atlantic City. She had to think positively. She fed her last hundred-dollar bill into the bill feeder at the front of the slot machine.
“Scared money don't win,” she whispered.
She read the fine print on the slot machine. A Royal Flush was 4,000 quarters with the maximum credits played. She tried to figure out how much 4,000 quarters was. Theo pushed the
bet max
button and then hit
deal
. The electronic cards flipped toward her. She had a whole lot of nothing. She hit the button again computing 4,000 quarters was a thousand dollars. So she would have to win the jackpot five times to win the money she'd lost in the last week.
The fag returned with her seltzer and Theo had nothing in her pocket to give him. He hovered for a second until Theo said, “Thanks.”
She looked back at her screen she saw all King, Queen, Jack, ten, nine of hearts. The game suggested she keep the straight flush. She held them all.
“Double Down?” the computer screen blinked.
She'd won 1,000 quarters already but if she doubled down she'd have the chance to win 2,000 quarters. She'd be dealt a single card and if that card was higher than the dealer's card she'd win. Theo hit the double down button. The dealer's card flipped over and revealed a ten of spades. The screen blinked and waited for Theo to push the
deal
button to reveal her card. She felt defeated. She'd only win if she got a jack or higher and wanted to prolong the agony that she'd just forfeited 1,000 quarters.
“Scared money don't win,” she whispered to the slot machine and pushed the
deal
button with her other hand. Her card flipped and revealed a Queen of clubs.
“Yes!” Theo cried. She took a triumphant sip of her seltzer. She just had to get back in the groove. She'd won five hundred dollars.
“Congratulations! Double Down?” the screen said.
If she doubled down she would have 4,000 quarters or 1,000 dollars. That was the same as the jackpot. It's a sign, Theo thought, fueled with optimism. She closed her eyes and tapped the Double Down button on the screen. The house turned over a three of hearts. She couldn't believe her luck. There was only one card in the deck that stood between her and a thousand dollars. She touched her
deal
card and watched her own card turn over. King of diamonds.
She'd won a thousand dollars.
“Congratulations! Double Down again?” Theo's screen said.
She was hooked on the double down feature. It was like a slot machine inside a slot machine. A kind of exclusive country club game that Theo could only play if she'd already won.
“Last time, God,” she said hitting the double down button again.
Her card was an eight of clubs. She paused a second to light a cigarette and take a sip of her seltzer. She would either win two thousand dollars or lose one thousand dollars with a push of the button.
“Scared money don't win,” she said, but she was already scared.
She pushed the deal button and the house turned over a nine of clubs. Theo sat there for a second and then cashed out her remaining credits. She was the pack leader. She had to get the pack home safely and she just wanted to be in Marisol's apartment eating fried plantains. She had forty dollars to her name and she went back to the motel room afraid that she'd been gone too long again.
Cary Grant came and pressed her body into Theo's legs.
“Hi,” Theo said. “Should we get the fuck out of here?”
She left the motel key in the room and shut the door, loading Cary Grant into the truck. It wasn't until she was crossing the Verazzano Bridge that she remembered she'd left a hundred dollars on the nightstand.
â¢
When Sammy came home Theo told her the story of her Atlantic City trip.
“It's just money, girl,” Sammy said, but no one believed it anymore when Sammy said this. “At least the good thing about having no money to your name is it makes it easier to get an appointment at Bellevue to get your teeth pulled. When are you going?”
“Tomorrow,” Theo said.
“I'd go with you but I have school.”
“I asked Marisol.”
“Can she do it?”
“I don't know. I left a message. She still hasn't called me back.”
“She's probably just embarrassed,” Sammy said. “That sounds like it was kind of an intense date.”
“You mean when I fisted her on the floor of a motel room while she was in a Xanax blackout and then left her alone for twelve hours while I lost eight hundred dollars?”
“Exactamundo. Give her a few days.”
“It's been a few days.”
“Give her a few more.”
“Should I send her flowers? I know it's crazy but I really like her.”
“You might need more than flowers at this point. You might need a skywriter.”
Theo found the phone book and looked up
skywriters
in the Yellow Pages.
Theo walked into Bellevue and followed a series of signs, hallways and elevators until she got to the dental clinic. She signed her name on a clipboard and looked for an open chair in the waiting room filled with sad-looking people sitting in bright orange chairs. The receptionist was behind a thick plastic window with a cartoon mousehole opening at the bottom where patients grabbed a blue pen tied to a long string. If Theo had been a Martian sent to Earth asked to report back about her findings of New York City, she would say it was a place where employed people sit behind clear bulletproof plastic to avoid being shot by impatient people.
She took an open seat behind an older white woman with blonde curly hair and a rose tattooed on her wrist. She was probably in her forties but looked sixty and reminded Theo of someone in a crystal meth ad campaign. She once had seen a billboard with two thirty-year-old women side by side, one middle class and one homeless, the homeless woman looking a million years old. In addition to being an addict the woman also looked like a hooker. The street-corner kind. A streetwalker. What an ugly phrase.
When Theo sat down the hooker turned around and gave her a jovial smile. Theo acknowledged her, nodding. She didn't feel like talking to anyone and pulled
Crime and
Punishment
out of her coat pocket. She caught a whiff of Marisol's perfume when she opened it. Then for the one-millionth time she opened it to page one.
On an
exceptionally hot evening early in July . . .
Marisol had been a stripper for a single night, which made her a sex worker. Sex worker had become such a liberal arts college phrase. If Theo could do a billboard series she'd photograph two women side by side holding
Crime
and
Punishment
. One woman would be the Bellevue streetwalker and the other, a recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College with perfect teeth who'd done phone sex for a summer in order to write her thesis. Underneath would be text that said,
Which
of
These
Women
Married
an
Investment
Banker?
Even with her head bent down, Theo could feel the woman in front of her craning her neck and making obvious gestures to see what she was reading, so finally she gave up and held the book cover up so the streetwalker could see it. She wanted to stop thinking streetwalker in case the woman had ESP. She didn't want to hurt her feelings.
The woman smiled wide and read the title slowly, like a child: “Crime. And. Pun. Ish. Ment. That sounds about right.”
Theo gave her a smileâthe same kind she was sure many people had given her before moving past.
“Is that a book about this place?” the woman asked and then laughed wildly. “Because I've been waiting two hours for a root canal, so this sure feels like crime and punishment!”
She raised her pilled-out voice to say
two hours
as if by doing so she could aim it through the mousehole opening in the receptionist's window. Just then a police officer walked in and handcuffed a prisoner to an empty chair in the front of the room while he spoke to the receptionist. Everyone stared.
“Now, that's some crime and punishment,” the hooker whispered to Theo, slapping the front of Theo's book like it was her knee. A few people stared. Theo was beginning to like the woman.
“This is where they take you if they can't fix your teeth at Rikers,” the hooker whispered.
Theo watched one of the prisoner's pinky fingers twitch after being cuffed.
“I'm Daisy,” she said, extending her hand.
“Theo,” Theo said, shaking her hand.
The receptionist called Theo's name and she was buzzed through a heavy door. The clinic felt like a juvenile detention center, each door requiring a person to be buzzed in, and every piece of glass, unbreakable. A short Asian woman in a white smock led her down a hallway filled with rushing dental students in scrubs and into a room where Theo was instructed to sit down in a chair. The nurse reclined it until she was mostly lying down, and it reminded her of when she was sleeping in her truck after just arriving in Yonkers.
“I'm going to start your IV line now. You might want to look away,” the nurse said. She slapped Theo's arm until a vein bulged, and Theo watched as she pushed the needle into her vein.
“I've never heard of pulling four wisdom teeth while a person's awake,” Theo said.
“Oh, we do it all the time,” the nurse said. “You won't feel a thing.”
Theo gave her a skeptical smirk.
“You might
hear
some things,” the nurse started.
Theo raised her eyebrows.
“Sometimes you can hear ripping or crunching if the tooth gets caught in the pliers or they have a hard time getting it out,” the nurse continued. “Do you have any questions?”
Theo shook her head.
“Okay, we'll get this started in a few minutes.”
“I look forward to hearing my teeth ripped out of my skull,” Theo mumbled.
The nurse flipped a few switches, adjusted Theo's IV and left the room.
She waited in the cold room, wishing Marisol had been next to her when the nurse told her about the crushing sounds so they could exchange horrified looks. She was falling in love with Marisol, whether it was a good idea or not. She felt a pang of sadness that she wasn't there with her. She wanted to tell her the frog joke. The nurse came back into the room. Theo decided to tell the nurse the frog joke instead.
“How are you feeling?” she asked Theo.
“Kinda weird,” Theo said.
“Oh that's good. That means the drugs are kicking in.”
“Drugs?”
“We have some muscle relaxants running through your IV to get you ready for the surgery.”
She thought it was crazy no one had told her they were putting drugs through her IV. That she was slightly sad and wanted to tell her frog joke made sense. She enjoyed the free drugs coursing through her veins. It felt like justice.
“Want to hear a joke?” she asked the nurse.
“Sure,” the nurse said fiddling with Theo's IV.
Another nurse walked into the room and smiled at Theo before putting dental tools on a platter.
“Do you want to hear a joke?” Theo said to the new nurse, who was chubby and had a mushroom haircut that reminded Theo of one of her high school English teachers.
“I love jokes,” the new nurse said.
“Well,” Theo started, “this frog walks into a bank and goes up to the teller and the teller has a nameplate that says, âPatty Black.' And the frog says to the teller I'd like to take out a loan, I'd like to buy a new lily pad, but all I have for collateral is this pink porcelain unicorn.”
The door opened again and a tall, black man with a shaved head, wearing aqua scrubs, walked over to Theo.
“Hello. I'm Dr. Jones,” he said extending his hand to Theo. “I'm going to be taking care of you today.”
Theo shook his hand.
“She was just in the middle of a joke,” the older nurse said.
“You look like a model,” Theo told Dr. Jones. “Your face is perfect.”
He seemed surprised and then said, “The trick is a good moisturizer.”
All the nurses laughed.
Oh my God, Theo thought, did I luck out and get a gay dentist?
When she smiled her chest felt tight, but she felt perfectly high from the muscle relaxants. She loved her new dental family. The only thing that could make it better was if she could have her teeth pulled with naked Marisol straddling her stomach.
“Let's finish that joke and the we'll get those teeth out,” Dr. Jones said, smiling good-naturedly.
“You're a good person,” she told him.
He smiled.
“You are,” she insisted. “Because you work at the poor person's hospital. And because you have good person eyes.”
“The frog was trying to get a loan,” the nurses prompted Theo.
“Oh, right. Well, the frog gave Patty Black a pink porcelain unicorn and said âI'd like to take out a loan for a lily pad but this is all I have for collateral. So Patty Black takes the unicorn and says to the frog, âI need to ask my manager,' and goes back to her manager's office and whispers, âHey, there's this frog out here right now that wants to take out a loan for a new lily pad, but all he has for collateral is this pink, porcelain unicorn, what should I do?' and the manager says, âIt's a knick-knack Patty Black, give the frog a loan!'”
Everyone laughed and after a few minutes Dr. Jones lowered the mask over his face but Theo could see his eyes still smiling.
He leaned over Theo and said, “Ready to get started.”
Theo watched him pick up the giant needle on the tray to numb her mouth.
“You're just going to feel a little pinch,” Dr. Jones said.
She opened her mouth and felt him fiddle with her teeth, pressing on them with the latex fingers. When he leaned over she could smell his cologneâit was faint, like leather or a saddle. Then she felt the needle go into her gum.
“A couple more spots,” Dr. Jones said, shooting the novacaine in.
Theo wanted to tell him how nice his cologne smelled. She tried to push her words past his prodding fingers.
“You smell good,” she tried to say, but his fingers were still in her mouth.
“What's that?” Dr. Jones said removing his hand.
Theo paused a second trying to redistribute the saliva in her mouth.
“Your cologne smells good. Like leather. Or a saddle or something. I'm not hitting on you,” Theo blurted. “I'm gay. As if you didn't already know that.”
Everyone in the room became frozen. She watched Dr. Jones flick his good person eyes at the nurse who looked like Theo's high school English teacher and she walked out of the room. She waited for Dr. Jones to say, “I'm gay too!”
“We're gonna give you another couple minutes to let the drugs work and then I'll be back and we'll get those teeth out,” he said.
“Okay,” Theo said, ashamed.
The other nurse followed the doctor out of the room and Theo found herself alone and unbearably sad.
“Don't leave, please,” she wanted to say.
Everyone was already gone and she was left in a room that smelled like dental fumes. Theo heard someone scream
FUCK YOU
so loud it penetrated the series of locked doors from here to the waiting room, and then she realized it was the streetwalker. She tried to stop the first tears from coming but she couldn't and then she began to sob into the thin paper covering her chair.
When Dr. Jones returned to a crying Theo, he nodded to the nurses and they flipped off all the machines.
He said to Theo, “We're going to do this a different day when we can put you all the way under.”
“Please,” Theo pleaded. “You have to pull them today.”
The nurse looked at her sympathetically, but had removed Theo's IV and was now pressing a square of gauze where it had just been.
“I'm not crazy,” Theo said, “I'm just in love.”
The words fell out of her mouth pathetically. The nurse lifted Theo's fingers and pressed them into the gauze.
She didn't want them to think she was crazy and wheel her over to the other part of Bellevue that was a mental hospital. She wasn't crazy. The world was crazy. Who'd ever heard of handcuffing prisoners to dental office waiting room chairs?
â¢
A few hours later Theo woke up in a different room with nice Dr. Jones leaning over her. She was cold and her head felt hollow, like a scooped out gourd.
“It's the joker,” Dr. Jones teased.
Theo looked into his good person eyes and felt her tears start welling up again.
“Sometimes I cry if I'm on drugs,” she told him in a low voice.
“We gave you a lot of drugs,” he said. “We thought you were going to calm down but you just kept telling more jokes. It's a knick-knack, Patty Black,” the doctor chuckled.
She remembered telling the frog joke and cringed at what else she might've said. He sat down on a little black stool and rolled over to Theo's bedside.
“So we're going to send you home. And I'll give you this phone number here that is a direct line, so you're not on hold forever and tomorrow you can call and make an appointment. We'll put you all the way under with anesthesia and get those teeth out.”
Theo nodded taking the card with the secret phone number on it.
“Do you have any questions?”
“No,” Theo said.
“I'll see you real soon,” Dr. Jones said, giving Theo's arm a little squeeze. “And next time you come in I want to hear another joke.”
“Thank you for being a good person,” Theo said.
Theo was alone in the room. She walked over to a small, square mirror on the wall. She stared at her tiny pupils and then walked over to the sink to splash water on her face and smooth her hair. She wished one of Van Gogh's tiny brushstrokes of color were on this mirror and she could touch it. The first time she'd ever noticed the tiny brushstrokes, they had made her cry. Something about their smallness. She returned to the waiting room surprised to see the clinic was closed and no one was left. Marisol was sitting in same chair the prisoner had been handcuffed to. How long had Theo been passed out in the back room?
“Hi,” Marisol said.
“Hi.” Theo was in disbelief.
“I got your message.”
“Sorry,” Theo said. “I hope that wasn't presumptuous.”
Marisol made a face. “The receptionist told me you had a bad reaction to the drugs.”
“Did they say I was crazy?” Theo whispered.
Marisol smiled, shaking her head. They walked out of the clinic.
“This place, this place,” Theo started.
Marisol took Theo's hand.
“You can't believe what I've seen today. It's like an apocalyptic novel. Prisoners handcuffed to seats.”