Cha-Ching! by Liebegott Ali

Author:Liebegott, Ali
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 2013-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

eight

Theo looked at Marisol’s phone number all day but could not muster the courage to call her. What if she called and Marisol had lost interest? Then her good luck streak would be over. She told Sammy she was going to take her out to dinner to celebrate getting her first A on a Reiki test. She was happy for Sammy, but it filled her with panic when it seemed like other people had embarked on a plan for life while she had none. When Sammy said, “I love massage school,” Theo heard, “Theo, you don’t have a plan for life.”

The closest Theo had come to a dream was to be an artist, but she had no talent. She tried to learn to draw, practicing collages or charcoal outlines of Styrofoam cones alone and in classes at the community college. Anyone can learn to draw. Learning to draw is just learning to see. That’s what every teacher said. But for Theo it wasn’t true. No matter how hard she tried, she was unable to transfer the pictures she saw in her head onto paper, and her teachers didn’t encourage her.

Still, Henry Darger and Vincent Van Gogh were her heroes. Darger had been a janitor for sixty-seven years, and Van Gogh unable to earn money in his lifetime, or to do anything else than just paint and live with coal miners and see prostitutes and lick turpentine from his brushes. In the end, Darger would’ve been just a creepy janitor, and Van Gogh, a redhead who enjoyed a prostitute, if no one had canonized their work. Theo loved the swirling brushstrokes of Van Gogh’s skies, bedposts and floorboards. She wanted to eat the canvases, they were so thick with paint. She wanted to live in his bedrooms, sleep in his four-poster beds, wear his little black boots. But Darger and Van Gogh were famous men, and Theo, a timid sirma’amsir who had spent her life at jobs in party stores, parking lots, hospital cafeterias, night hotel desks, and any other place that would afford her time alone to read about these men she could never be.

Theo swept up four dead mice and reset the traps, and she and Sammy headed out to Bay Ridge where a restaurant was having a lobster night. A banner hung outside announcing, Monday Night! One-pound lobsters for $5.99! Theo and Sammy entered through giant French doors. Votive candles flickered on all the tables. They sat down at a small table by the wall, and Sammy looked at the extensive tap beer menu.

A waiter came over to take their drink order, and it took Theo a moment to recognize him.

“Big Vic!” she said. “Do you remember me?”

“What’s up?” he smiled, shaking her hand.

“This is the guy who I met at the OTB,” Theo told Sammy.

“Victor,” Big Vic said, extending his hand to Sammy.

“Sammy.”

“I’m actually going to Atlantic City tonight,” Big Vic said.

“Really?” Theo asked.

“After work. I’m gonna take the bus,” Big Vic said. “You guys should come.”

“Maybe,” Theo heard herself say.

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