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Issue 7: December 2006.
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Home > Issue 7: December 2006 > Fiction

Five Things I Could’ve Done with Five Dollars
by TJ Dietderich

I keep the five-dollar bill, worn and damp, in my shoe at all times. It’s getting soft like an old T-shirt. You can’t see Lincoln’s whole face anymore because of the permanent creases running through his oval. The serial number is nearly unreadable. Sometimes when it pops out onto the floor after I take off my shoe, I try to make out the signature of the Secretary of Treasury, remembering how, as a child, I thought he had to sign each one individually. And that’s what he’d do all day, sit at his desk with a tiny pen and sign every bill that came off the conveyor belt.

The habit of squirreling money away in tennis shoes, that was picked up from my mother. You never know, she said, when an emergency will come up. Emergencies, I suppose, can always be solved with five bucks.

My family hasn’t been in a lot of emergencies.

I was walking down the street in New York, which sounds very impressive if you’re from my hometown. And it sounded impressive when I moved here three years ago. I impressed myself every time I went down the street for a goddamned soda. Then, a few months into it, I realized there was nothing special about me, or the old guy who sits on the curb all day, or all the celebrities that may be walking down the street as well. We were all just walking down the street, and that’s all.

The point is I was walking down the street in New York on September 10, 2001. Probably one of the most insignificant days in history, if only because it paled in comparison to its sister, born the next day. The date happens to be a coincidence; I’m just pointing that out.

So start the scene again: just walking down the street, and it’s no big deal, because everybody does it. Even the day before The Day, people were doing it. On The Day people did it. The Day After, people were doing it all over again. And just like every day since my mom gave me my first allowance, and I took her insurance advice, I had that worn five-dollar bill in my left Puma. Left shoe, always where I put it because it’s easier to balance on my right foot, in case I need it while standing.

And I’m not thinking about any of this as I was walking down the street. I was pissed off at my roommate or something; I can’t even remember now. She had this thing about leaving her shit all over the bathroom counter, and I leave one tiny gob of toothpaste in the sink, and she blows up at me? It might have been something like that. It might have been anything that a million people were thinking along the same line. And as we’re all thinking along the same line, we’re all taking the same subway line cross-town.

We’re all thinking: Why is there always some guy sleeping in the seat closest to the door?

Thinking: Is that chick the one that smells so bad? Or was it someone who’s already ducked out?

Thinking: When will I meet someone so I don’t feel so alone?

And the car’s emptying out and soon there’s only a few shadows of people left hunkered down in seats, re-reading the ads on the walls. I’m being told I need to go to school to learn to speak English. Or maybe I need contact lenses. I would stop reading the ads, but I don't want to stare at anyone else.

But suddenly, a guy takes out a switchblade sort of knife and comes toward me. He's demanding my purse, which I don't have, or a wallet, which I also don't have. And there’s no one left but me and the guy sleeping next to the door, and I’m frozen and thinking what an idiot I am because I live in New York and I’ve never seen a mugging and I wasn’t ever expecting to and I don’t know what to do.

“You gotta have something, something, something. Something!” The guy with the knife isn’t acting like muggers on TV. He’s nervous and unsure and Caucasian.

His knife falters near my chest and I stand on my right foot and grab for my left shoe because, goddamn, this is an emergency if I ever saw one and I have to give this guy something. And the guy next to the door is still sleeping, so no help there.

“Here!” I yell, shoving the entire shoe in his face. And he looks shocked for an instant, then peeks in the shoe. The shock becomes anger and I belatedly realize that, sometime this morning before I caught the subway, my biggest emergency was getting a bag of Cheetos and a gigantic Dr. Pepper from the stand on the corner. That's where my five dollars went. The only day I could really use it, and the only thing that's left of it is the neon orange paste stuck under my nails.

Lucky for me, my mugger is bad at what he does, and we're at the next station before he can act on my empty shoe. I ratchet my arm back and hit him in the neck with the shoe. I had aimed for his face, and I was only an arm’s length away, but I guess I got nervous. But I duck out of the car like a pro. I’m standing on the platform, watching through the window like I’m watching TV, watching the mugger try to catch his breath after the being hit in the windpipe. Then the train pulls away, like someone’s changed the channel on me.

Shaking, I look down at my one remaining shoe and my socked foot, thinking what a great story this will make at work tomorrow, which of course, it doesn’t. Because tomorrow is September 11th, and no story will make it out of my mouth before it's too late for stories.

I've never been to New York. I was conjugating verbs in Spanish class during September 11th. I hadn't even graduated high school.

In high school my car was a real clunker. I'm not trying to be cute; everyone's got a first-car story that's designed to titillate the listener into giggling. But the Citation was a real piece of shit. The power windows and locks were broken, but the car alarm was intact, so that if someone opened the perpetually unlocked door, the alarm would sound. There was no way to turn it off, since the keypad had broken. Plus it couldn't reverse, the seatbelts didn't work, the A/C was blown, and the rear view mirror had been bent off its post. I called the car Marla.

Marla ate my money with an unrivaled appetite. She was a piece of shit, not because I didn't take care of her, but because I sank so much money into keeping her slightly mobile that the other luxuries fell by the wayside. That April of my senior year, I was broke. She'd just gotten her transmission fixed and some blown fuses replaced. But something else was wrong, and her engine kept making a clunka-clunka-clunk noise every time I drove past second gear.

Let's act the scene from the auto shop out in groups of two, shall we?

Car Guy Rick: It's a leaky hose, lucky for you. Quick fix.

Me: Lucky for me? This monster was supposed to be all fixed up when I picked her up yesterday. Now you're telling me it's got a leaky hose, too?

Rick: Yeah, that's what I'm telling you. This hose was in shreds, it was so old. You should've replaced it a long time ago.

Me: No, you should've replaced it. Yesterday. I ain't paying for another repair.

Rick: Man, it's like, five bucks. No big deal.

Me: I ain't got five bucks. I ain't got nothing. I used my last (shuffle around in pocket to dig out receipt) two hundred and sixty-two dollars and ninety-eight cents (slam receipt on counter) to fix Marla yesterday.

Rick: Well, if you're too much of a tight ass to spare five dollars for a hose, it's your own neck, not mine.

Me: What's it going to do? Explode?

End scene.

You can see where this is going. Marla didn't actually explode so much as she died in the middle of the road and rolled headlong into a tree. Lucky for me, the idiot with no seatbelt, I wasn't going more than thirty because the clunking noise had bothered me and I didn't want to get out of second gear. Marla was dead, at last. I escaped with a bruised sternum where the steering wheel hit me in the chest. So that's my cute first-car story. Everyone's allowed to giggle now.

I've never had a car named Marla, and I'm not a tight ass. What I really am is nervous. I’m taking this girl out, except I’m a girl too, and I’ve never had to clarify a sentence like that. But I’m out with this girl on the first date I’ve had in years. Not because I’m unattractive or anything. I’ve just been unavailable.

“Do you need help?” she asks me, watching me flip through my wallet. I’m not sure what kind of help she means, but I say no anyway.

Politely.

I carry my wallet in my left back pocket, like a man. But nowadays, lots of women do it too, so I hope she doesn’t think it looks too manly.

Side note: wallets are traditionally kept in the left back pocket so that men could fight off attackers, presumably with a sword in the right hand, while covering their backside with the left. I haven’t remembered that little tidbit of information for a long time, since I was at The House, and I consider turning to her and telling her about it. But I catch her eye and see she’s anxious for me to finish paying the bill. Perhaps a queue is forming behind us. I dare not look back.

We’re at a little burrito joint, the kind that vegans sometimes go to. She’s not a vegan, thank Jesus, but I chose this place just in case she was. And when she ordered that big, sloppy chicken and shredded beef burrito, dripping in salsa and melted cheese, I thought I might just be able to love her. So I offered to pay the bill.

Which was dumb, because I’m five dollars short. And I’m narrating this in real time, so you can imagine how awkward it’s getting. And yes, I sneak a glance behind her shoulder and it looks like six angry 95 lb. vegans are glaring at me. I curse my job at the movie theatre shuffling around popcorn, which pays poorly.

I think maybe I’ll wait until the next date to tell her why I haven’t dated anyone in years. This is not the moment to mention the House for Girls, otherwise known as the House for Dykes, otherwise known as…

A lot of things, but mostly a nuthouse, a dumping ground for all sorts of bad daughters of well-insured parents. It was a place where I developed a lot more bad habits than I was supposed to in exchange for becoming a lady, which never happened anyway. Now I'm not only unladylike, but a drinker and a smoker, an occasional gambler, and a fulltime Lesbian with a capital L. I also know shit like why wallets are carried in left pockets.

On the other hand, I came out of it mostly intact, and there are some funny stories associated with my time there. She might like hearing about it. But I catch her anxious eye again, and I have to concentrate on my wallet, damn it, or we’ll never be able to sit down and eat these congealing burritos. Credit cards. Does this place even take credit cards? Even if they did, I’m heavily in debt, and I may be declined. I would rather die than be declined at Jose’s Burrito Bar in front of the girl who, if she can finish that whole burrito, I might just fall in love with.

“Why don’t I pay this one?” she asks, digging through her cigar box purse. Damn, even her purse is cute.

I have one last chance, and that’s the tiny little corner of my wallet where dimes sometimes slip. I think small, trying to scrape the end of my pinky finger into that corner, feeling for the sharp edge of a crisp bill. But I don't have this one, and I tell her so.

She smiles tensely and shoves a twenty across the counter, dumping the loose change the cashier gives her into one of those jars for cancer research. Damn, damn, damn. I let her choose a table by the soda fountain, though I would have chosen the one by the window. She plunks down on the bench seat and eyes her massive burrito.

“Maybe when you’re done with yours,” she says lightly, “you can help me with mine. No way can I eat all of this. I don’t know why I got so much.”

And I automatically know I’ll never love her, so I smile tightly and assure her I’ll help.

I'm not a lesbian, I don't think. And at any rate, I've never needed a date. What I do need is to get to the post office in eight minutes or else 1) my card won't make the last pick-up, 2) Grandma won't get it by Sunday, 3) I'll have missed sending her a Grandparent's Day card on Grandparent's Day, and 4) I'll be the worst grandchild of all time. So I'm standing in the tiny card section at the CVS, flipping open one card after another and trying to imagine Grandma opening it.

This one has violets on the front. Doesn't she hate the smell of violets? Or is it jasmine? Roses? I can't remember; I reject all flowered cards. This one has shiny fabric attached to it, others, vellum. I think back to her Depression Era upbringing. She doesn't talk about it much, but I can infer things. I was cleaning out her kitchen once, after she'd decided to move out. We were putting her into a home, and her kitchen needed to be packed away. I found a false bottom in one of her kitchen drawers. She had stashed away hundreds of twist ties, the kind that come on bags of bread. There were scraps of tin foil, wax paper, the little plastic tabs that seal bags of bagels.

That was my Grandma. She wouldn't want any vellum. Would she even want a card? I had five minutes left.

Yes, she would want a card. Once, only once, did I forget to say “Happy Mother's Day” to her on Mother's Day. Cold shoulder for a week. Didn't even breathe around me. She likes acknowledgement, damn it.

Three minutes.

I grabbed a flower-less, vellum-less card at random and read the inside while standing in the cashier line:

I wish for you
In a special way
To have a great, grand
Grandparent's Day!

Total bullshit, but whatever. I finally make it to the front of the line and dig my money out of my pocket. The cashier looks at my wadded up bills disdainfully, shifting through them before looking up at me. I glance at the glowing green digital numbers of my total and gasp. $7.95? Was the thing made out of solid gold? Or in Grandma's case, twist ties? I only had three and some change.

There was that slow, horrible, un-American feeling of holding up the line, trying to buy something you couldn't afford. No bartering, no begging, just a surly CVS red vest snapping his gum and a family of six behind me, tapping their collective feet.

“Are you sure?” I ask, wondering where my wallet is. I think I left it at home, though it could be in my locker at work. Sometimes I leave it by accident. I could have sworn I had a ten-dollar bill when I stopped at Wendy’s. Did the cashier there cheat me on my change? She must have; I only ordered a medium fry.

“Yes, it’s correct,” says the guy in the red vest. But I know he meant to say, “She’s your grandmother, you cheap bastard. Cough up five more bucks.”

He meant to say, “She’s getting older, you know. This may be her last Grandparent’s Day on earth, and you won’t even get her anything.”

And although the CVS guy couldn’t know it, he would be right. It is Grandma’s last Grandparent’s Day, because she will die in three weeks after falling down the staircase in the nursing home.

But I don’t have five bucks, and I have no way of knowing about the staircase, so I buy a pack of gum instead so I’ll have something. I suppose I’ll send a card tomorrow, and only be the worst grandchild ever for a day or so.

My grandmother actually passed away years ago, and she never liked cards. This is the last story, and this is the truth.

I’m coming out of the dollar store pleased with myself, because I feel like I’ve cheated the capitalist system. But there’s a homeless man waiting outside, so the feeling is short-lived.

Before he opens his mouth, I'm back in London, trying to show my mom around with nothing but £2.56 left in my pocket. It's going pretty well, until we're almost to the Tower Bridge (“Are you sure it's not the London Bridge, honey?”) when a homeless man asks us for money.

His exact words were, “Can you help me?” He was sitting on a cardboard box and had three wool blankets wrapped around him. It was over 90 degrees outside.

I was about to politely decline (How were we supposed to pay for dinner? I was in charge of the money, and I had to keep an eye on it.) but my mom elbowed me in the ribs and fished a coin from my front pocket. Not the big golden coin, I wanted to tell her. Why not a little one? A thin silver one, perhaps?

She tossed the coin into his cup and glared at me.

"He asked for help." She stalked down the Tower Bridge sidewalk, trying to hold back her motherly sobs. "When people ask for help, you have to give it to them."

Who am I, Clark Kent? Long story short, we split a prawn something-or-other bag of chips and drank from the water fountain at the Square. And it was okay because mom was pleased with herself.

But London is gone, and now chips don't taste like prawns, and before this guy at the dollar store even speaks, I know he's going to use the H word and I'll be powerless.

"Can you help a guy out?" he asks, and not with any finesse. At least in London, they had a romantic edge to them, with the blankets and all.

"Sure," I say, pulling my change out of my pocket. One dollar, that's what I'll do. One pound is like, $1.96, so one measly dollar isn't all that bad. But I pull my pocket inside out and all I have is a five.

Shit.

Can you ask a homeless man to make change? Is that in poor taste? Five whole dollars. I need this. I have to eat tonight. And I was planning on drinking, too. But I can't just shove the money back in my jeans and walk away. I promised.

"Here," I said, holding out the beautiful, crisp little bill. It was like watching a nightmare in slow motion. Five. Whole. Dollars. Was I insane?

Looking back, I had a lot of options. Buy the guy some food. Make change inside the store. Tell him I'd be back later with something. Handing over five dollars? Criminal.

"God bless you," he whispered. Yeah. God, money. Just something on paper. Not like it would kill me. And that was the truth.