She turns to face me. “You sure?”
I feel my head tilt at an angle like a cocker spaniel. “Yes? Pretty sure?”
Her pale brown, drawn-in eyebrows go up a little bit. “You’re sure you don’t want to buy, like, thirty-six tubes or something?”
“Oh, Tabby. No.”
“Yep.”
She heaves a sigh and swivels her barstool back toward the bar, dropping her chin on the heel of her hand. I make the same motion, staring at her in the mirror about eight feet away. I talk to her reflection.
“Why don’t they ever tell you up front?”
“That’s what I want to know!” she exclaims. “Like, I really thought it was a real job! I really did!”
“Maybe you should stop responding to jobs that say they will give you a thousand dollars a week guaranteed. Maybe that is, oh, I don’t know, aclue.”
She pouts. I have to admit the salmon looks really good on her.
“They should just saymultilevel marketing scheme, sucker,in the ad and save everybody a lot of time. And energy.”
“Yeah. They should,” I agree.
We sit there for a while in silence, drinking our carb-free vodka drinks in silence. This is the fourth time that Tabby has taken a job like this. The reason she says yes is because of me. Because she feels guilty about sleeping on my couch for the last year and a half. I don’t feel guilty. I like having here there. And I like it way better than that roach trap she got tricked into when we first got to Miami anyway. I would much rather know that she is safe and not waking up with roaches in her mouth, that’s for damn sure.
It is really hard to find a job. Tabby has a degree in art history. She has forty thousand dollars in student loan debt. She’s been banned from McDonald’s, which is kind of a long story, and believes that all of the fast food places are conspiring against her.
They probably aren’t? But I don’t know. It seems likesomething, maybe just fate, is keeping her from getting the one chance she needs to show everybody how she can really shine. It will happen. I believe it.
“You’re so lucky,” she sighs, so quiet I practically don’t hear it at first.
I think she startles herself too, because she looks up at me with wide eyes.
“That was in my head,” she explains sheepishly.
“No, you said it out loud.”
“Yeah. Whoops.”
I catch my reflection in the mirror. Lucky? Maybe lucky that this dress hasn’t completely fallen apart from overuse. Lucky we have a place downtown to go to, even if it is some hole-in-the-wall tucked out of sight.
“I don’t think I feel lucky,” I admit.
She looks shocked in the mirror. “Seriously? You’re like… living the dream, Opal. For real.”
“Ha!” I bark, even though I don’t mean to. I practically snort vodka soda right up my nose. It’s very painful. I don’t recommend it.
“No, I’m serious!” she objects. “Look at you. You are beautiful. You have a place to live. You have no college debt. You got a one-in-a-million scholarship. You make your rent every single month. You have an amazing job…”
Mentally I calculate the difference between what she’s describing and what she probably thinks of her own life.
“Yeah. You have a point,” I admit.
“You have a gorgeous boss…”
“Yeah… That part is definitely true.”
She rolls her eyes and smiles mischievously.