Real Estate broker whose dyed black hair had matched her imitation Chanel Purse. (Chinel! The label had exclaimed, like it was excited to meet you.)
As soon as Audrey eked past the credit test, Chinel! took her to the East Village: “I’ve got some efficiencies on Avenue A. Ya’ll LOVE it there!”
Chinel!’s three-inch heels had gone crack!-crack!-crack! like kids’ cap toys, while beside her, Audrey had tried not to crane her neck and gawk at the finely crafted stone peaks of the old tenements on East 3rd Street. They saw three places, all of which Chinel! had promised cost less than $800 but magically turned out to be at least $2,100. A month!
“You can’t get no cheappa than two grand,” Chinel! had exclaimed with exasperation at apartment number four, like Audrey was insulting her hospitality. The place was a fifth-floor walk-up that smelled like mice.
“You don’t understand. I can’t afford this,” Audrey had answered with tears in her eyes. Her whole life, she’d scraped. As a kid, she’d stolen Coffee Mate creamer out of motels, like “milk solids” was a food group. In college, she’d ladled slop at both cafeterias, just so she could afford the textbooks. To keep the grad-school application checks from bouncing, she’d skipped the sweet air for a month. Never once had anything come easy. Never once had a rich uncle died, so baby could wear a pair of new shoes.
“So take out anotha school loan! That’s what all the kids do. Me, I live farther out. But you can’t commute that fah. This is the best deal you’ll get.”
The tough, callused pads of Audrey’s feet had rubbed against cheap linoleum because the soles of her special-occasion-only loafers had been worn to a thin layer of rubber. She hadn’t changed her fancy corduroy jumper since the bus transfer in Pittsburgh, and as they’d entered each small, stuffy studio, she’d learned the hard way that the concentrated sweat dried to her underarms smelled a lot like piss.
Audrey sighed. She’d been in the city less than six hours, and already, she wanted to take the next bus back to Omaha. But by now her old job at IHOP was filled, and someone else had rented her tiny, black-painted studio apartment. She was alone, and home was gone.
Chinel! clapped her hands together like she thought they were going to make a deal, and Audrey had wondered: Why did I think I could pull this off?
She didn’t know how to buy a Metrocard, or read a subway map, or fix a blown fuse, or apply for a job other than at IHOP. She was weird Audrey Lucas, who hadn’t learned to balm her lips in high school, so in the winter, they’d bled. Not to mention the maxi pads. It was too humiliating to even think about the maxi pads. She hadn’t known about table manners, either. When she got to the new-student banquet at the University of Nebraska, she’d rolled her flat chicken cutlet like baloney and eaten it with her hands. Even the shit-booted farm kids had hooted their amusement. Weird Audrey Lucas: she raised herself, only she didn’t do a very good job.
Chinel!’s cell phone had jingled to the tune of Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” She’d looked at its lit-up screen, then at Audrey, like she was trying to figure out which was worth her time. She grudgingly picked Audrey and dropped the phone back into her purse.
Maybe it was something in this New York air. Dirty, but dignified, like tarnished copper. Maybe it was Audrey’s semiretarded busboy at IHOP who’d forgiven her two-hundred-dollar hash debt, and pressed five fatties into her palm for the road. “Shit on a stick: Columbia University! Forget about that stuff with your mom. You’re going someplace. Write me sometime, even if I don’t write back. I’m proud to know you, Audrey Lucas,” Billy Epps had told her. She’d looked down at her black Reeboks before thanking him, because the kindness had been so unexpected.
If a nice guy like Billy Epps could think she was worth something, why was she letting tacky Chinel! get her down? Who was this woman to con her out of an education, a new life, just so she could make a quick buck on the signing fee?
Audrey made her decision. She wanted this new life so much she could fucking taste it. Sure, she might not be special or smart or tough enough. But not this way. She wasn’t going to let this fake-pursed phony be the bitch