Free 150 Pounds by Kate Rockland Page B

fur was around his face and ears, like an old man. He had an unexplainable missing left eye, which was grown over with luminescent, pale pink skin like the inside of a shell, and a tongue that didn’t set right in his jaw and therefore stuck absurdly out the side through his teeth. Shoshana suspected he’d been abused at one point, given his injuries.
    “Why’s his eye like that?” a child in the park with chocolate on his face once asked her, as she was out walking.
    “He’s a pirate,” Shoshana answered, smiling when the kid’s jaw dropped open.
    Sinatra was the love of her life and she didn’t go anywhere without him in one of her large, unfashionable bags made from recycled material, his face sticking out, his crooked tongue flapping against his cheek as the wind swept his face and whipped his fur back, making him look like a bat.
    “I’m actually glad you woke me up,” Shoshana said. She took off the pink eye cover that she wore to sleep and placed it on her white Shabby Chic for Target bedside table.
    She’d been having the strangest dream, that Victoria Beckham, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton were all holding hands and dancing in the moonlight on her mother’s back deck in Summit, and it seemed only natural that their little bit of skin left would slip right off and their skeletons would gleam, their jawbones creaking into eerie, see-through grins, as they joined hands and danced, bones clacking, wind whistling through their rib cages.
    Andrea had started bouncing on the bed.
    “I really do hope I throw up on you,” Shoshana said, throwing a pink, lace-trimmed pillow at her friend, which bounced off her head. She had a pillow problem. Something about them just filled her with happiness. Her favorites were crocheted ones with silly sayings, like STRESSED SPELLED BACKWARDS IS DESSERTS, or CONSERVE WATER, DRINK MARGARITAS.
    “I wish you would, girl,” Andrea said. “It would make my case for calling in sick a little more believable.” She worked as a cocktail waitress at the W Hotel in Hoboken down by the water and hated it.
    “You’re not seriously calling in sick again , are you? Andrea, you are going to totally get fired and you need this job! We’ve got the rent bill coming up in six days.” Shoshana had always been the most responsible of her group of girlfriends; maybe it had something to do with being the firstborn. She was the mama bear. Friends flocked to her for advice, to borrow five bucks, or to help them learn how to knit. She was never judgmental in any way.
    Andrea stopped jumping and threw her arms around Shoshana. “I know, I know!” she said, sighing. “But I seriously can’t go to work tonight. For one, it’s snowing. And two, I have a date.” Sinatra had a momentary freak-out, barking like crazy and jumping in little leaps around Andrea, who still hadn’t forgiven him for taking a poop inside her favorite fake Chanel purse last month.
    “Yo, your dog is a spaz,” Andrea said, watching him warily.
    Shoshana sat up. She was wearing a gray Yankees T-shirt, size extra-large. Her breasts felt heavy on her chest. Her long auburn hair stuck out in all directions from her face. “I’m not going to do you any favors if you insult my furry son.” She walked over to the window, raised her pink shade with a frilly white tassel, and blinked. “It’s snowing?”
    “Yup! Since early this morning, lazy bones.” They stood shoulder to shoulder and surveyed the street. The snow covered everything: telephone poles, cars, sidewalk.
    “Okay, forget I asked. I’m going to need my sunglasses just to get out of this bed.” She groaned. Then, noticing the big grin on Andrea’s face, she asked, “So you have, like, a date date? With whom?”
    “Shosh, you are the only person I know who says ‘whom’ correctly in a sentence.”
    “Grammar is rad, what can I say?”
    They both sat back down into the bed.
    Andrea excitedly got into a cross-legged position. Shoshana did the same,