We Need $400.
I made a reservation to take a short vacation with Gregg, as though that were something we could afford. Neither of us had a full-time job. Rather than see this as a hindrance, I considered it an opportunity.
“We need $400,” I told Gregg. “I need you to pay for this. Can you do that?”
“Of course,” Gregg said, kissing me. He often kissed me after lying; it sealed the deal for him. If I kissed him back, he knew he’d gotten away with another one.
“Seriously,” I said. “This is important. Four hundred dollars by next Friday, otherwise we can’t go.”
“Four hundred dollars,” Gregg said, “okay.” He kissed me again.
I asked him during the week if he had the money yet, and he assured me he was working on it. He never answered questions about how he would get the money, where it would come from, whether or not he’d be doing any work. He just kept telling me not to worry about it.
I assumed he was selling drugs or something else that I would happily condone if it meant we could go on vacation. I didn’t question Gregg’s methods.
On Thursday night, we packed and got ready to go. This consisted of putting toothbrushes in a plastic bag with some cigarettes.
“Do you have the money?” I asked before I could get any sleep.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
“Can I see it?” I was getting wise.
“I’ve got it!” Gregg said, offended that I would doubt him.
“Cool,” I said.
We went to sleep in my tiny efficiency apartment on the pullout sofa bed from my grandmother, waking many hours after sunrise for our trip.
I woke up gleeful, and went into the bathroom.
Gregg woke up less gleeful. When I walked out of the bathroom, he was in full-tilt panic mode.
“It’s gone!” he screamed. “The money is gone!”
I walked to where Gregg was standing next to a fold-out chair that I’d crammed in front of my interior door. Gregg had flipped the chair upside down and was standing in the space between the chair and sofabed.
“What are you talking about?”
“I put the money under this chair last night,” Gregg wailed, “and now it’s gone! Somebody must have come in here in the middle of the night and stolen it!”
“You put it under the chair?”
“Yes!” He was almost in tears. “It was right here! Someone must have broken in last night! It’s all gone!”
I looked around at my minuscule apartment. There was a 16-inch path at the foot of the bed that led to my back door, and no way in or out of the front door because of the chair. There wasn’t even room to walk.
“You’re saying that someone came into this room without waking us up….”
“Yes!”
“They came in and randomly looked under this chair …” I flipped the chair back for emphasis. “Then they found four hundred dollars and walked out without waking us up?”
“They must have!” Gregg wailed. “It’s all gone!”
It was as though Gregg believed this ridiculous story. In his mind, maybe it was completely true.
“You put all the money under the chair,” I sighed.
“I did!” Gregg screamed. “It was right here!”
“The money was not there,” I said. “It was never there.”
“I swear on my mother’s grave!” Gregg said. Briefly I wondered if his mother had actually died.
“Get out,” I said. “And don’t come back, ever.”
“I swear it was …”
“GO.” I said.
Gregg left, and stayed gone for a long, long time.