Part I: I pretend to be rich.

Soon after I move from the East Coast to San Diego to start a new life, three things happen: a job interview falls through, my car breaks down, and I buy tickets for a Nick Cave show, in that order. The thing I do between getting my car fixed and going to the concert is drive across the long bridge to Coronado, where rich people live, and go to an empty cafe during the workday, and eat crepes alfresco with nary a thought about my bank balance.

Part II: I pretend to be poor.

My bank balance is less than a quarter, less than each literal quarter my boss gives me every few hours to go run and feed the meter where her BMW is parked. But I know a few ways to survive, such as collecting free toothpicked chicken-teriyaki samples from a food-court employee with a quota, and using my roommate’s cocaine-snorting dollar I found in our bathroom to go buy a 79-cent donut from 7-Eleven for supper. The other thing I can do is call my dad. •





Christie Chapman is a writer and mom in Springfield, VA. Her work has been published and is forthcoming in Electric Literature, LEON Literary Review, The Lascaux Review, Ghost Parachute, Flash the Court, Does It Have Pockets, and elsewhere, and was nominated for the Best Microfiction anthology.

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