Cash Money

On Saturday at our weekly breakfast gathering, which features eggs, corned beef hash, bacon, and making fun of the Manny in front of everyone, Tarik kindly paid for Manny's meal because he didn't have enough cash on him. On Sunday, Tarik, Manny, and I were planning to go to a restaurant by the apartment that we always pass by, but have never sat down and eaten at. Before we went to the restaurant, Manny walked into Tarik's room, and looked at him for about a minute. I was watching this from the hallway, and I was a little perplexed as the two of them stared at each other. Was Manny gonna punch him, try and kiss him, or just continue to stare at his face? I had no idea, but instead of doing one, or all three, of those things, Manny pulled $12 out of his pockets and handed the money to Tarik.

"Here's the money I owe you from yesterday..."

Manny turned to walk out of the room, but finished his sentence by saying

"...by the way, I don't have any money, so someone is going to spot me."

I could feel my insides cave in and I started giggling. Is Manny serious? I thought to myself. I was about to make a smart-ass comment when Tarik handed Manny the money back and explained as simply as possible...

"Manny, why don't you take this money and just pay me back some other time if you don't have any cash for the restaurant?"

...and I lost it. I started laughing uncontrollably. Tarik saw me laughing and then started laughing too. Manny looked at the both of us laughing, with his trademark look of defeat, and then threw the money on the ground.

"Fuck it, I'm not going." He stormed off to his room, angry at me, or Tarik, or both of us, or himself, or all of the above. Tarik and I went to the restaurant (which was excellent) and basically repeated the story (complete with our respective renditions of "the Manny voice") for the rest of the day.

Manny didn't stay angry for long, however. My friend Adan came over to watch the series finale of The Wire, and afterwards we all ended up talking about Manny's favorite subject, Star Wars, for about two hours and how George Lucas fucked up the prequels.

There are a lot of dumb things that Manny has done and that myself and Tarik have used to make fun of him, but I think this classic Manny story basically sums up what living in our apartment is like.