Champagne Life

by Nicole Bradshaw

  “Lemme see it,” I said.

  DeShaun jumped up from the carpet floor and dashed off to the bedroom. I heard him fumbling through the dresser drawers. Minutes later, he returned with a lit joint dangling between his lips. “Man, this stuff is good. Try it.”

  He handed it to me. Slowly, I raised the joint to my lips. I took a deep breath and immediately, the smoke filled my lungs. I started coughing furiously.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “This ain’t the cheap shit. This is quality weed here.”

  I lifted the joint and took a long, slow drag. I held the smoke in my mouth, but when I tried to inhale, I started choking again.

  “I forgot you don’t know how to smoke,” he said.

  “No, not really.”

  “Here, let me show you.” He took the joint from my hands and took a puff. “Do it slow and easy, like this.” He took another puff, held the smoke in his mouth and slowly inhaled. “Take your time.” He handed it back to me.

  I mimicked exactly what I thought he did. This time, I inhaled much slower. Almost immediately, I began feeling lightheaded, but not in a bad way, more like a loose limp piece-of-pasta way. I raised my head and looked over at DeShaun. He took a deep puff. I watched him inhale, thinking, When did he take the joint from my hand?

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” He took another puff, sat back and rested his head against the couch cushion. “Why don’t they make oxygen air like weed smoke?”

  “I don’t believe you make oxygen air, do you?” I asked.

  “Seriously, think about it. Can you imagine how happy everyone would be if we walked around high all day?”

  “Wouldn’t that be a crackhead?”

  He lifted his head and looked at me with a serious expression. Without warning, he burst out laughing so hard, tears rolled down his cheeks.

  When I looked at him, I completely understood what he was laughing about. I started howling with him. He didn’t have to say a word. I got it.

  “We wouldn’t have to worry about not having a job,” he said. “And money? Screw money. Who needs it?”

  “Yeah,” I joined in. “We also wouldn’t have to deal with people who were disappointed in us all the time. What were they called again….oh, yeah, parents.”

  This made him laugh even harder. “Yes! Your mother hates my guts, especially after she called me a loser on the phone yesterday.”

  “She doesn’t hate you,” I said. “She doesn’t care for you very much. Now, there’s a difference.” Even before the full sentence escaped my lips, we started laughing. “And she doesn’t think you’re a loser, not really. She called all my boyfriends that.”

  “I’m not your boyfriend. I’m your husband and she does think I’m a loser. When she said it on the phone, you didn’t even defend me.”

  “That’s only because I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. You know how she is, which reminds me, she declined us the loan.”

  DeShaun took another drag. “Another rejection, huh? That one can get in line with the rest.”

  I grabbed the joint from his hand. “Oh, what did you want to tell me when you called yesterday?”

  “Nothing. I had an idea but it wouldn’t work, especially now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it involved your mother, you know, the woman who thinks I’m not good enough for her little darling because I can’t keep her in the lifestyle she’s accustomed to.”

  “No, no, you have to say it like this.” I hoisted my nose in the air, lowered my pitch an octave and raised my hand above my head.

  “Don’t forget to stick out your teeny pinky.” He choked back a laugh.

  “Oh, yeah.” I stuck out my pinky finger and in my best British accent, I said, “Son, you are not good enough for my daughter; you are a lowdown, dirty dog.” I wagged my finger at him for added effect.

  “Your mother’s British?”

  We laughed so hard, we rolled on the floor for a good five minutes. Still on the floor, he reached over and took the joint from my hand. He took another puff. “Seriously, babe, something has got to give.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You have got to give me that joint again.”

  He tried hard not to laugh. “I’m serious, Mimi. There has got to be something we can do to control the situation, instead of letting it control us like some damn puppets. What’s that dude’s name?” He hopped up from the floor. “Want another beer?”

  “Sure, and what dude?”

  “That little guy with the big nose?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know who I’m talking about,” he said, heading for the kitchen, while I took another puff. “Pinocchio!” He snapped his fingers. “That’s his name! Anyway, we really need to come up with something to get out of this slump.”

  I heard what he was saying, but it wasn’t registering. I was too busy watching the circle of smoke I was attempting to make, like I was some sort of weed smoking connoisseur. “How do you make rings?” I called in to the kitchen.

  DeShaun came out of the kitchen with two Kaliks in hand. “It’s like we’re always on the defensive. We need to be on the offense and kick life’s butt.” With both beers in his hand, he crouched down into a football position. “We should be charging, instead of running in the other direction. Hike one! Hike two.” He shot up, charging the air. The beers spilled down his white T-shirt. “Shit!”

  I took another toke. “What do you think we should do about it?”

  “Hey, take it easy with that.” He handed me a beer and plopped back onto his spot on the carpet.

  “I don’t know what we should do.”

  “We could sell stuff on eBay,” I offered.

  “We don’t have anything to sell. What about stripping?” he asked. “I bet you’d be real good at that, huh?”

  “I would never strip again.” As soon the words left my lips, I looked to DeShaun to see if he realized what I said. He didn’t. “How about—” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. I was out of ideas already. “Wait! I could sell my body,” I joked.

  He pulled at the hem of my khaki skirt. “That would bring us a buck fifty.”

  “Hey!”

  “You know I’m only kidding. I would pay a million bucks for that ass.” He got on all fours and crawled over to me. He playfully nuzzled his head in my lap and started whimpering like a puppy dog.

  I patted his head. “Good boy.”

  He raised his head so that our faces were inches from each other. Slowly, he began softly kissing my neck. His lips worked down to my collarbone. He reached up and began fumbling with the buttons on my blouse. He got to the third button before getting impatient and ripping my shirt open. Buttons flew everywhere, but I didn’t care. He reached around to the back of my skirt and unfastened the latch. His kisses were urgent and wet. I couldn’t wait any longer. I hopped up and pulled off my blouse while he pulled his shirt over his head. I hiked up my skirt and went to pull down my panties before I realized I wasn’t wearing any. He grabbed my waist and pulled me down to the carpet.

  I threw back my head and enjoyed the ride.

  DeShaun and Naomi

  The next morning, I awoke before DeShaun. I felt like I had a big puff of ganja smoke, wafting around inside my head from last night. My body ached, as if I had run two marathons and completed a decathlon after that. I glanced over at DeShaun. He looked so peaceful when he slept. Looking at him right now, you couldn’t tell we were three days from having our lights turned off, two days from having our car repossessed and one day from being evicted from our home.

  I gently ran my fingertips up and down his arm. He stirred a bit but commenced snoring.

  I loved him—I really did—but our financial situation seemed to keep overriding that love, causing us to neglect each other and focus all of our attention on the crisis at hand.

  “Hey,” he said, when he saw me looking at him. He sat up, rubbed his eyes and looked around the room, taking a mental survey of the situation.
“What happened in here? Did a hurricane hit?”

  “Yeah, Hurricane DeShaun. From what I remember, we were all over the place.”

  The bedroom looked like someone had broken in and junked the place, leaving articles of clothing everywhere.

  I slightly recalled our frantic hunt for a condom. I had stopped taking the pill last month, until I got my prescription renewed, but now, with no insurance, we would have to continue relying on our old standby—Magnums, extra large.

  Last night, DeShaun had pulled open the first drawer but couldn’t find one. He yanked out the second and third drawers and eventually found a lone condom sitting at the bottom of the nightstand drawer.

  I made a note to scrape together a few bucks and purchase some tomorrow.

  I mentally calculated how much money was left in our joint account. After the last month’s bills, we were left with a little over six hundred, but we still hadn’t paid the water bill and one of the credit cards. The credit card we could skip, but the water bill was going in the mail this week. I wasn’t supposed to get my last check from the bank until next week, but that money was already spent, going toward the mortgage we were already late on. DeShaun’s checks hadn’t been great, but the tips, which were often times more than his paycheck, went toward groceries. With that gone, I didn’t know how we were going to eat this week.

  I surveyed the bedroom, checking out the destruction of Hurricane DeShaun. In clichéd fashion, clothes were strewn all over the place. One of my bras was even dangling from the light fixture above the bed. What the hell?

  “Last night was good.” DeShaun kissed me on the cheek and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Nothing passionate, just a quick and what felt like an obligatory morning kiss.

  He reached under the bed, pulled out his slippers and stepped into them. “Thanks to the joint, that was the first night in a long time that I didn’t feel any pressure, thinking about money, the job or anything else for that matter.”

  I rolled over to his side of the bed. The covers slipped, exposing my bare upper body. “Do you think we’d be happy if we hit the lottery?”

  He looked down at my bare breasts. “I already did. A few times last night.”

  “No, seriously,” I said. “We have our health and we have each other. Is money really the only factor that’s making us miserable?”

  He shrugged. “Money doesn’t make people miserable. It’s not having money that keeps people strung out.” He scooted over next to me on the bed. “Mimi, I’ve been thinking. What if we stopped working for people and did something on our own? It would be great. We could maybe own a business and make money for ourselves.”

  “DeShaun, we are in no position to even think about that right now. We can’t even keep our bills current; how are we supposed to shell out thousands of dollars for a business?”

  I waited for him to go the parents’ route again. He didn’t. He simply said, “Yeah, you’re right,” and dropped the subject.

  “What do you suppose the Herjavecs are doing right now?” I asked.

  He thought a moment. “I can tell you what they’re not doing. They’re not sitting here, stressing about money and talking about us.”

  “Yeah, but remember, the grass is always greener,” I told him. “They probably have other issues. I watch Snapped.”

  “I can tell you one issue Mrs. Herjavec has,” DeShaun said. “Her old man isn’t putting it down like he used to on her. Every time I see her, she’s complaining about not getting any. The sad thing is, it’s really more than that. He never spends any time with her. He’s always working. Oh, and did I tell you he’s into young black guys?”

  “Get out of here! Has he ever hit on you?”

  “Hell no! I would kick his ass from here to Zimbabwe in a heartbeat. According to Mrs. Herjavec, I’m not young enough anyway. He likes ’em barely legal. She told me he gets them gifts in exchange for favors, if you know what I mean.”

  “As disgusting as that sounds, that is an idea,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “To get a little something here and there in exchange for companionship.”

  “Let him hit it for some cash? Are you crazy? There ain’t enough cash on the face of this earth to let that happen.”

  “Not him, you weirdo. I mean her. You say all she is really looking for is some companionship. You said so yourself, with her it’s not all about sex. Hang out with her for a little bit, and I’d bet she’d be more than happy to pay a couple of these bills up in here.”

  “I’ll ask you again.” He reached over and playfully knocked the side of my head. “Are you crazy? You must still be high from last night. Didn’t I tell you that was the good stuff?”

  “Seriously.” The question had started out as a hypothetical situation, but the more I formulated the entire scenario in my head, the more I could see it happening. “Take control of the situation, instead of letting the situation take control of you, right?” I said, scooting up alongside him and wrapping my arms around his neck. I softly pecked his cheek, a gesture he enjoyed. “Think about it, baby. It wouldn’t be that bad. Take her to dinner, and, you know, hang out with her every once in awhile.”

  “Wouldn’t that make me a male prostitute?”

  “It doesn’t have to be all about cash. You said so yourself. She’s generous with gifts. She will be so grateful to have someone around to talk to; she’ll lavish you with a few little trinkets here and there. We’ll sell ’em and pay off a few bills.”

  He shook his head. “I am not doing that.”

  I released my embrace and flopped back down onto the bed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It was a stupid idea.”

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized how idiotic the idea was. I tried to rationalize the idea by believing that we’d be doing that poor little old lady, Mrs. Herjavec, a favor by providing someone for her to hang out with. DeShaun was right, it would never work.

  DeShaun hopped out of bed and grabbed his boxers from the bed post. “Do you want some breakfast?” He stepped into his shorts. “You need some food in your body to fuel that brain of yours. You’re talking crazy this morning.”

  “Nah, I’m not really hungry.”

  “Suit yourself, but I’m going to make me some grits and bacon.”

  “You hate grits.”

  “Not really.”

  “And you don’t eat bacon like that either,” I told him. “You think you are so slick.”

  He grinned. “I wanted you to eat something. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve been looking kind of beat down lately.”

  “Gee, how can I not take that wrong?”

  He sat down next to me on the bed. “Are you feeling okay?” He reached over and placed the back of his hand on my forehead, like my mother used to do when I was a child, sick in bed.

  “I’m fine,” I reassured. “I’m a little tired. If I get hungry later, I’ll grab something.”

  “Okay. You stay home and relax. I’m heading out to see if I can hook up a job someplace. I should only be a few hours. If you need anything, call.”

  “On what?” I asked.

  “My phone’s working, remember?”

  “Yeah, but the house phone ain’t.”

  “Shit! I forgot. I’ll be back in a few hours. You should be good, right?”

  “I guess I’ll have to be.”

  We both laughed.

  He reached for his jeans, hanging on the handle bars of the exercise bike neither of us used, and stepped into them. “Got anything planned for today?”

  “I’m going to try to get in contact with McIntyre, Roth and Associates to find out if I got the job. I haven’t heard from them yet.”

  “Good luck, baby. You need my phone?”

  “Nah. I’ll get my lazy butt up and call from around the corner again. Besides, they probably won’t be in the office until nine, at the earliest.”

  He leaned down and kissed me. His lips lingered on my cheek for a few seconds and t
hen, he looked at me with such intensity, I thought he was going to give me more bad news. Instead, the corners of his mouth turned slightly upward as he said, “I promise you, everything is going to be all right.”

  “I know.”

  He stood up and left, gently closing the door behind him.

  I rolled over in bed, releasing a sigh of relief. It was a strange way to feel right now, but, through all of this, I was glad of one thing—we still had each other’s backs. If being broke and a day short of homeless didn’t break that, nothing could.

  DeShaun

  The clock on the dash read 11:27. The sun was high in the sky as he headed home. When he spotted the turn-off for his old restaurant, he thought about Stiles and how he would be there, unloading boxes of stock before the lunchtime rush.

  During his job hunt this morning, the thought about asking Stiles for his job back crossed his mind at least a dozen times, but as soon as he considered it, he kicked the thought right out of his head. Stiles had fired him without a second thought. DeShaun hadn’t even bothered explaining that the wine was paid for. At that time, he really didn’t care. If he had not been fired, DeShaun probably would have ended up quitting that crap job eventually—but that wasn’t the point. He should have left on his terms, not Stiles’.

  It sucked even more because even with all of DeShaun’s experience in the restaurant business, the reality was, he couldn’t find a job.

  So this was what it had come to? Him driving around, looking for decent restaurants to apply to? And it didn’t matter whether or not there was a hiring sign in the window. He needed a job. This morning, he lied to Naomi, telling her that he had a few prospects in the works. She had looked so worn out and defeated, he wanted to give her some hope, false or not.

  Then, when she started talking about the Herjavecs again, he realized that he had to get out of there early, before her hypothetical situation turned into reality. He needed to give her time to see how ridiculous of an idea that was.

  Of course, when you thought about it, he was already taking a little extra from Mrs. Herjavec, who handed him an additional hundred or two on several occasions. But that was different. That was for his party services. What Naomi was speaking of was a whole other situation.