Gia graced me with the first genuine smile since last night, and I felt like I’d seen the sun after a month of gray skies. It made me realize how deep I really was in with this girl. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to make her happy.
I kissed her lips. “I’m gonna head out to let you do your thing. How about if we stay at my house tonight so we have privacy? I’ll pick you up after you finish writing.”
“Okay. That sounds good.”
I reluctantly lifted Gia off my lap and set her back down before going to grab my car keys and wallet from where I’d left them in the bedroom.
“Type your heart out,” I said before kissing her goodbye on the lips one last time. “Because we don’t like it when you’re stressed.” I bent and kissed her belly. “Right, little guy? We like Mommy calm and smiling.”That afternoon, I still had a few hours to kill before it was time to pick Gia up. I found myself wandering around the center of town, wanting to buy her a gift that might cheer her up. The problem was I just didn’t know what to get her.
The craving for a cigarette was enormous. I sucked on a toothpick to try to curb my urges, but it wasn’t helping. Tossing the toothpick in a trash bin, I cursed under my breath, so disappointed in my weakness.
My two vices were smoking and sex, and I was finding out how difficult it was to give up one without the other. I had neither smoked nor fucked in the past twenty-four hours, and it was really screwing with me. I walked around feeling completely unbalanced, on the verge of getting the shakes.
But I needed to focus my attention off of my little problem and onto Gia. Her mood from last night and this morning was definitely peculiar. I would’ve done just about anything to make her feel better.
Walking by a local thrift shop, I happened to notice something in the window that stopped me in my tracks.
Wow.
Bingo.
I might have just found exactly what I needed. This was it; she was gonna love it.
A bell on the door rang as I entered the store that smelled musty, like old clothes and shoes. A feeling of nostalgia hit me, because being in here reminded me of trips to the Salvation Army store with my mother growing up. We used to buy a lot of my clothes there. I remember getting all excited to go. At the time, all the stuff was new to me, so in my eyes there was no difference between going there or to a department store. Mom would always let me pick out a toy. It was just “the store” to me. And they always carried stuff you couldn’t find anywhere else, things that weren’t even made anymore. So in some ways it was even cooler than a real store. I never questioned why the bags they gave us to hold our stuff had no name on them. And you know what? Getting my Salvation Army toy, in retrospect, had been more exciting than having the means to buy anything I wanted now, because I had appreciated it so much more.
I put down a set of old trading cards I’d been holding when the attendant entered the room. Fuck, she smelled like cigarettes, and my craving came back in full force.
“Excuse me?” I said to her. “How much is that doll in the window?”
“Are you kidding? I’ll pay you to take it away. That thing scares the living daylights out of me. It’s why I have it facing out toward the street and away from me. It’s more like a Halloween decoration at this point.”
I chuckled. “I’d like to give it a good home. I know someone who will really appreciate it. But I don’t feel right not paying for it. Can I give you something?”
“A dollar is fine.”
I took a ten out of my wallet. “Here. Ten?”
“Thank you. That’s more than generous for that thing.”
She went over to fetch it from the window then blew some dust off of it. The particles hit me in the face as she handed the doll to me.
When it came to Gia’s collection, the uglier the better. The funny thing was, my mother had purchased another kind of doll for her, but I hadn’t given it to Gia yet. There was no doubt she was going to like this one more. It had long, black hair that was knotted and messy, almost like it had been electrocuted. Its head was huge compared to the body, and the eyes were unusually big like saucers with eyelids that opened and closed when you moved her head. The only thing she was wearing was a stained white shirt with no pants. It almost looked like a straitjacket. Where are your pants? This thing was a gem.