Nova

 The first thing I went out to get with my first paycheck was a guinea pig. We had guinea pigs when I was younger and I always loved them. Chrissy and I went out to a local pet store and I had her choose which one I should buy. She picked out an older one that was rust orange with red eyes. She looked a little evil. We chose her and the girl in the store told us she had been there for a while as had us fill out the paperwork.

  We didn’t have a name for her right away. Initially, I wanted to name her Molly Ringwald. But Chrissy suggested we hold off on that choice. The first 24 hours or so, the guinea pig didn’t squeak. We started to fear that we had a mute guinea pig on our hands. That night we watched the original ‘Planet of the Apes’ that I had taped a few years earlier as we still had no cable TV.(which would be the next thing I ordered now that I had a paycheck) In the movie, Charlton Heston’s character meets a human female that does not speak. He named her Nova, and contrary to popular belief that I named her after my beloved old car, that is where she got her name.

 Now that I was working, schedule wise, we had to find a way to share my Jeep so we would both get to work. Chrissy hated her job at Motophoto and thought her boss was horrible. She wasn’t making a lot of money at the job and told me she was going to look for a second job so she could focus on paying me back. She had found a flyer posted at school looking for someone to work as an inker for a comic book, so after I went to pick her up from work one night she asked me to drive to some guys house for an interview. I thought that she should be going to a studio or something. I was hoping she’d go and find a real job and not one that seemed suspect. She said it was common for artists to have studios in their home. Reluctantly, I agreed and drove her.

  I sat in the Jeep and waited for what seemed like an hour for her to come out. When she did finally come out, she seemed really excited. She went on about the guy and his comic book.  Talking about the art and the prospects and the experience she’d get… Then I asked her how much she’d get paid.

  “Well, Zak won’t be able to pay me for the first 6 months” she explained. “He needs to be sure of the quality of my work before he’d be able to pay me.” I read that as free labor. I wasn’t going to be paid back anytime soon and I was annoyed. She believed what she wanted to believe. All I know was that this guy was planning on making it big by creating a comic book in his basement, correction: his mother’s basement, and just like that any belief I had that Chrissy really was going to spend the next three years focusing on nothing but school and paying me back every cent she owed me went down the drain. And that drain was in a basement.

  On a more personal note, I was making friends of my own at work. Jennifer lived right down the road from the bank and occasionally I would see her walking and give her a ride. Her and her husband shared the one car. I knew how that was. She was a big fan of ‘Beverly Hills 90210’. I teased that it was on a cable station now that I actually had cable. She was jealous, but because I am who I am. I started video taping every episode for her and then re-taping it after I got home to make it commercial free. Occasionally, we would go to lunch together and I would driver her to do errands that she couldn’t get done otherwise. Sometimes we’d go and watch the 90210 tapes and she’d make me lunch as a thank you.

Marijana was having a birthday party for her 3 year old and invited some people from work and I was one of them. I guess I made a good impression.  Although, I had previously met Jennifer’s husband, Bill,  that night I got to meet Eric’s wife, Lucinda, and their two sons. Although Marijana would move away months later, the rest of us became really good friends.

                              Bill, Jennifer, Eric, Joseph, Marijana, Me, & Lucinda

  Meanwhile, I got a letter from a friend back in New York. Michele was getting married in Las Vegas on Valentine’s Day to “English” Mike and wanted to know if I would be able to make it. I asked Jennifer if she would cover for me at work, which meant she would have to work late on her first Valentine’s Day married. She agreed so that means Chrissy and I were going to Vegas!