“Mom.”
“I figured, you working in a restaurant, there’d be lots of opportunities to meet some young man.”
“Please, Mom.” Why does she always come around to this? Why the hell does her Mom think she left Dayton in the first place? To get away from questions like this, that’s why.
“You can’t blame me for hoping my little girl will find a guy who’ll make her happy. Your father and I were very happy, you know. We had a good life together. You’re thirty-one, you know. You’re not getting any younger.”
She needed to throw her mother a bone. “I have met someone,” Allison said. It helped that it was actually true. It’s always easier to spin out a story when there’s a grain of truth in it, especially when it’s a story for her mother. She has met someone, and they’ve spent some time together. Some pretty hot times. The whole thing started with a single glance.
Sometimes two people looked at each other and they just knew.
Allison sensed her mother brightening on the other end of the line. “Who?” she asked excitedly. “Tell me all about him.”
“It’s too early,” Allison said. “I’m just going to see how it plays out. If this is the one, I’ll let you know. Okay? No third degree. Right now, I’ve got more serious things to worry about.” Setting the hook.
“Like what?”
“Well, the customers, they’re just not tipping the way they used to. And business is down. People are eating and drinking at home. And there was the whole thing with the chipped tooth.”
“Chipped tooth? What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t I tell you about that?” Of course she hadn’t. She’d only just thought of it now. There was no chipped tooth.
“You never said a word. When did you chip your tooth? How’d that happen?”
“Okay, so, there’s this girl I work with, her name is Elaine? And she’s a total idiot. She’s coming through the crowd with a full tray of drinks, right? And she’s weaving in between these banker shitheads who—”
“Ally.”
“Sorry. These banker numbnuts, and she raises her tray up just as I’m coming from the other direction, and the edge of it smacks right into my mouth and the drinks go all over the place and when I go into the ladies room to look in the mirror I’ve got this little chip in my front tooth.”
“Oh my God,” Allison’s mother said. “That’s just awful.”
“It wasn’t huge, but every time I ran my tongue over it, it was like this sharp point, you know? So, anyway, I went to this dentist up on Madison and he fixed it and I swear, if you looked at it with a magnifying glass you’d never be able to tell.”
Of that, Allison was certain.
“That must have cost you a fortune,” her mother said.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like the waitstaff have a dental plan,” she said, and laughed. “But don’t worry about it, I’ll manage somehow. Courtney’ll understand, you know, if she has to wait a while for my share.”
“Oh, honey, you can’t do that to your roommate. That’s just not fair. I’m getting out my checkbook right now.”
She put a thousand dollars in the mail that day.
When the check arrived Allison immediately deposited it in her checking, bringing the balance to $1,421.87. Not enough to pay Courtney back everything Allison owed her, but at least she could make a start at it. But the longer Allison looked at the balance on her ATM slip, the less certain she was that she wanted to give any of that money to Courtney.
That “someone” she had mentioned to her mother was going to the Bahamas in two weeks, and had invited Allison to come along. Nothing had been said about paying her way, however, so Allison had said sorry, can’t afford it.
All that had changed with the money to fix her chipped tooth.
So she booked a week in the Bahamas.
That’s when the shit really hit the fan.
Courtney said, when she saw Allison packing her bags before grabbing a cab to JFK, “Are you kidding me? Tell me you’re fucking kidding me. You’re into me for more than two grand and somehow you’ve got enough for a vacation? You want to explain that to me?”
“It’s not my money,” Allison said. “My mom gave me the money for it.”
Courtney said, “Excuse me?”
“I haven’t saved up enough money from my job to pay you back yet. That’s what I’m going to pay you with. This money, from my mom, for my vacation, is totally separate.” It made perfect sense to Allison. Courtney could be so thick sometimes. Hard to believe she worked in the financial industry. You’d think she could get her head around it.
“I don’t believe you,” Courtney said. “I don’t fucking believe you.”
“Look, I really need this trip,” Allison said. “How many places you been to in the last three years? Huh? Munich, for one. And then you went on that trip to Mexico. And what about London? You were there like five months ago. In all that time, where have I been?”