I pop a chocolate into my mouth, letting it settle on my tongue, allowing the sugar to melt slowly, not usually something I have much patience for. I feel just a little bit better and I guess that's kind of the point of guilty pleasures like this. It takes your mind away, off of everything I should be thinking about or maybe have thought about too much.
I glance over at myself in the mirror, just a little bit of eyeliner and brow liner to make my over-plucked eyebrows not look so haggard. My hair has been seriously starting to get curly and frizzy over the last couple of years and now I have to rely on the flat iron more than I want to just look decent.
Why does this kind of stuff keep happening? Everything was so good for so long. Why did that have to change?
Later today, I meet up with Allison, completely distraught. I insist that she see me for lunch, even though she has a meeting right at 1:00. She manages to squeeze me in, and that's why we've been friends for so long.
I tell her what's going on, and she puts her hand around me and sits down on my side of the booth. The waitress comes over with our drink order.
"I don't think I want to eat anything," I announce.
The waitress looks mildly annoyed.
"We'll both have the salmon and the salads." Allison takes charge.
"I'm just not sure how this is going to work out," I say. “I don't know what I can do, but I can't lose her."
"You're not going to," she insists, but we both know that she's lying, or rather, maybe just wishfully thinking for something to be true that can't possibly be true.
"How will this even work out? How can I come up with the money?"
"I have no idea," Allison says, playing with her fork.
"Do you know anyone? Do you know anyone that I can borrow this from? Do you know anything?"
She shakes her head no.
"What about your boss?"
"I can't ask my boss."
"I know, but I was thinking maybe, with you working in marketing, I can set up a GoFundMe page and raise some money that way if you do a story on her. I mean, she was an elementary school teacher and now she has a chance to get this treatment and she can't afford it."
"I can ask around, but those kinds of stories usually are kept for little kids with cancer. You know that."
I nod. Yeah, and they're usually situations that are a lot more dire. It just feels like you need this perfect story in order to have anyone pay attention, and by perfect I mean perfectly tragic.
"That's pretty much true.” She nods. "Otherwise, no one's going to care. If you set up a GoFundMe, you'll probably be able to raise some money."
"I doubt that it'd be more than $10,000," I say. "I mean, it's something, but it's not a solution. I sent back the materials today and they..."
"What do you mean, you sent back the materials?" she asks.
"That's exactly what I mean. I told them that I had the money. I told them to go ahead and we'll be there at the end of the month or whenever they give us a date. She'll be on the first flight out."
"And how are you going to pay for it? I mean, don't they expect the money to be deposited?"
"Yeah, for $75,000. They want it there before they start anything."
"And how are you going to do that? How are you going to get the money?"
"That's what I'm here for. I need to talk to you about any ideas that you could possibly have.”
"Well, I don't have any."
"What if I were to set up a webcam and do that OnlyFans thing?” I ask.
She shakes her head no.
"Come on, I mean, there’re a lot of webcam girls and they show their booty, their assets. They get paid."
"They don't get paid as much as you'd think, mainly because there are so many women willing to flash and show what they have on camera."
"Really?" I ask.
She nods. "They used to get paid a lot more back when doing pornography was kind of taboo, but now anyone with a cell phone and a boyfriend pretty much can shoot whatever they want, so it's all about content, developing your brand, just like pretty much any other business, and you won't be able to do it in a couple of weeks. That's not to say that you won't make some money, but it's not going to solve your problem."
I exhale loudly. I put my head down on the table. Our food arrives, and she's back on the other side of the booth.
"I really wish that there were something I could do," Allison says, "but, really, I have no idea. You know that I don't really come from a wealthy family, and, I mean, I don't know how wealthy you have to be to have that kind of money laying around."
"Yeah, I agree," I say, lifting my head up and taking a bite of my food.
As we sit there, I chew loudly, and that's all I hear inside my head. I wish that the headache would go away and the pounding would disappear, but it doesn't.
It just gets louder.
The walls start to feel like they're closing in on me. I take a few deep breaths, exhaling extra slowly in order to calm myself down. The anxiety is building, starting to feel like a panic attack.
I'm never good enough, nothing's ever going to work out, and my mom is just going to show up there and get turned away from the one thing that she's ever asked the of world.
No, that's not going to happen. Not after I lost Michael. Too much bad stuff has already happened. Now I'm going to stand up for what's right, no matter what I have to do.
We talk the rest of lunch. We talk about her job and her boyfriend and nothing in particular, and she pays the bill and wishes me good luck.
She tells me not to worry and that something will work out, but we both know that's not true. I'm not sure how anything could work out without me putting actual effort into it, but effort into what exactly?
12
Jacqueline
I'm completely at a loss. If I get a job, the salary won't be anywhere near enough. I mean, who the hell is going to pay me $75,000 up front?
My thoughts meander to other options. There was of course the famous show, Breaking Bad, where the guy was diagnosed with lung cancer and couldn't pay for the treatment or to support his family, so he started making and selling methamphetamines.
That would be good, except I'm not very good at chemistry and I have no idea how to even begin to do something like that.
But still, my thoughts continue to wander. My father was a gambler. He played blackjack and poker and he made us lose numerous apartments and cars, but there were other times when he won.
I remember how fun it was being with him when we celebrated. The most he ever won was $50,000 in one night. It was the most money I’d ever seen. When he came home, he was beaming from ear to ear, and it felt like Christmas morning.
He bought my mom a big diamond ring, and he got Michael some sort of Star Wars battleship and a big dollhouse for me.
Would this wok for me?
Could I take the little bit of money that I do have and bring it to the casino and try to win my mom's life?
I bite the inside of my cheek as I consider that option. My mom hates gambling. She always has. She blames it for the demise of their relationship and for my father's disappearance.