by Mary Monroe
CHAPTER 65
I couldn’t figure out how real criminals maintained their sanity. The ones who weren’t already crazy. Not that I considered myself a criminal on any level, but what I was doing was more like a job that I had to work in all three shifts. Even when I wasn’t off on a shopping siege, I had to keep myself in check when I was alone in the house with Daddy or lying around with James. I got so used to signing Ann’s name that when I prepared one of my checks to pay my utility bill I signed Ann’s name! Thank God I caught my mistake in time. Then there was the time that Daddy had to call me several times before I answered because it took me a while to realize that I was Trudy and not Ann. “You talking to me?” I had asked dumbly, shaking my head to get out of my daze. It felt like I had rocks rolling around in my brain.
As long as I live, I will never forget the way Daddy looked at me, because it was a way he had never looked at me before. First, he rubbed his eyes and blinked hard. Then his face morphed into a frown so sour it made me flinch.
“Do you see anybody else settin’ at this kitchen table but me and your crazy self, girl?” Daddy paused just long enough to suck his teeth and massage the side of his head. I felt and acted like a mute. I breathed just enough to remain conscious, but I couldn’t even blink my eyes. “I don’t know what’s got into you these last few months. Seem like to me all y’all young people done gone stone crazy.” Daddy gave me a grave look, giving me more to worry about. “Sadie found some funny white powder in her grandson’s sock drawer last night.” He lowered his head and rolled his eyes up to look at me, like I had something significant to add to his comment.
“Now that’s a damn shame,” I commented.
“Uh, you ain’t crazy enough to be snootin’ none of that powder mess up your nose, I hope,” Daddy said with a stern look, his head turned just enough to the side where I could see the bloody veins on the outer sides of his fishy eyes.
“You know I’d never do cocaine, Daddy. That’s not what’s wrong with me. I just got a lot of things on my mind, that’s all,” I muttered, sniffing hard to hold back the mucus threatening to ooze out of my nose. When I rubbed my nose, Daddy’s eyebrows shot up. “I have never done that stuff, and I never will.” I needed to sniff again, but decided not to since Daddy was already suspicious about what I did with my nose.
“If you ever do, you better make damn sure I never hear about it. You won’t live to tell about it,” Daddy threatened. “I know I didn’t raise no fool.”
One thing I was certain of was that my daddy would never hurt me no matter what I did. But his empty threats had had a huge impact on me. I knew where to draw the line where my daddy was concerned so I’d never done drugs because I was no fool. Unfortunately, I was way beyond that. It took more than being a fool to do what I had done. I didn’t want to think about the things I might have done had Daddy not been in my life.
By the time Ann had been gone a month I had so many irons in the fire I could barely keep track of my activities. I couldn’t remember which credit cards I’d made payments on, and which ones I had not. My record keeping was a mess. I couldn’t pay “Ann’s” bills with my personal checks, and thank God I wasn’t bold enough to get a checking account in Ann’s name, too. Freddie had told me that even as dumb as some bank employees were, every now and then they did something smart. Like keeping microfiche copies of checks they’d cashed, comparing signatures, and other busybody antics.
Trying to lead the lives of two very different women kept me in a state of confusion. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I had promised myself that I would end it all soon. I had to. The excitement had run its course. I had already taken too many risks. For instance: more than once I’d almost signed my real name to credit card paperwork when it came time to pay for something. I often misplaced receipts from the money orders that I paid bills with. It was just a matter of time before some meddlesome busybody stumbled across one of those misplaced money order receipts in Ann’s name, dated after Ann’s departure, and trace it back to me. There were times when the only way I could tell who I’d paid or who I hadn’t paid was when a stern message for Ann from a bill collector turned up on the answering machine at the studio apartment I secretly rented.
I dodged James and his mama more than ever. To keep Daddy occupied, I encouraged him to visit Miss Sadie more often. “That grandson of hers could use a strong father figure like you in his life. Maybe it’ll help keep him from joining his brothers in jail,” I told Daddy.
“You might have somethin’ there,” he agreed. “But like I said, there is somethin’ about that boy, Kenny, that makes me nervous. I like the boy, and I’ll coach him when I go out there. I don’t want to put a notion in his head for him to want to start hangin’ around here. I don’t want him to be gettin’ under your foot,” Daddy added, giving me a playful slap. “You done got to be right busy, gal.”
I even encouraged Daddy to spend even more time with Spider so that I could have more time to do the things that had become so important to me. Even if it meant that a mob of Spider’s brother Hell’s Angels accompanied him to our house. The empty beer bottles, long stringy hairs shed here and there, and the musty masculine odor that bikers left wherever they went greeted me every time I left the house and came back. I didn’t like it but since I was at least partially responsible, I didn’t feel I had the right to say anything about it. Besides, getting all that attention from Spider and his friends kept Daddy off my back.
Bon Voyage seemed like a totally different place without Ann Oliver strutting around like an ostrich. Mr. Rydell replaced her with a quiet, moon-faced Japanese woman who tiptoed around the office like a geisha. Akira Tanaka was so tiny and perfectly groomed she reminded me of a doll.
I was concerned about attempting to enter certain foreign countries using my new passport. As much as I wanted to see the Caribbean and Europe, for free, for the time being I had to settle for an occasional jaunt to Mexico where I hoped to run into the sexy airline pilot again or at least another one as good as he was.
After just one weekend in Mexico with LoBo and Freddie in tow, I decided to restrict my excursions with them to Vegas and Reno. The whole three days that the three of us had spent in Cabo San Lucas, which was the Labor Day weekend, Freddie and LoBo spent most of their time running back and forth to the toilet, throwing up from both ends.
“Girl, you must have a cast-iron stomach if you can drink all this fucked-up water down here and not feel it,” LoBo moaned after he’d run to my hotel suite to use my bathroom because Freddie was using the one in their room.
If the diarrhea wasn’t bad enough, a few hours later an iguana entered Freddie and LoBo’s room and crawled up LoBo’s leg while he was in the bathroom prostrate with shame, throwing up so violently he’d turned blue. “Girl, I know it’s time to get back to the States when lizards start crawlin’ all over me,” he complained, running into my room with a wet towel wrapped around his head. And that was another thing. Something had caused a nasty, itchy, disgusting rash on his bald head.
The only way I could calm Freddie and LoBo down was to get them out of Mexico as soon as possible. That meant we had to leave on an earlier flight, which I had to charge on one of the cards twice as much as our original nonrefundable, nontransferable tickets had cost.
I threw parties at the secret apartment, sometimes twice in the same week. I didn’t like bringing the strange men that I’d met in bars to the apartment too often. It was too risky. A person didn’t have to be a professor to know that millions, maybe even billions, of the people on the planet couldn’t be trusted no matter how nice they acted or how innocent they looked. Just last month an eighty-two-year-old great-grandmother was arrested trying to cross the border from Mexico into Arizona with a hot water bottle full of cocaine strapped to the bottom of her wheelchair. I knew I didn’t look or act like the kind of person who would do what I’d been doing.
In the long run, even knowing all the possible dangers involved, men seemed
like a new toy that I wanted to play with as often and as long as I could. Sometimes it was just drinks and conversation. I’d strolled along Stinson Beach in the moonlight with a young dentist. If I really liked a particular man and was feeling frisky, then drinks, conversation, and a walk on the beach didn’t satisfy me. I had to have more. But it had to be somebody I really liked for me to share my bed with them. The few that I’d shared my bed with, so far, had not done anything worth my inviting them back a second time.
I became a regular at some of the bars Freddie went to. A few times I went by myself, but it was more fun when I went with Freddie. I didn’t realize how much I’d been missing by tying myself down to James for ten years. Ten long, dull years. Men had taken on a whole new meaning for me. I liked the attention I received when I wore provocative outfits in public. As unpredictable and frivolous as I’d become, I still had enough sense not to act or look too extreme when I was around Daddy or James. I chose to keep my most provocative outfits at the second apartment. There was no way I could explain what I was doing with a see-through blouse or a bustier to a man like Daddy.
CHAPTER 66
Six months after my transformation had begun, Freddie accompanied me to the apartment so we could get ready to go out to a club in San Jose that neither of us had ever been to. Normally, LoBo would tag along behind us making it hard for Freddie to really let her hair down. But with Christmas only three months away LoBo had a lot of orders to fill. It seemed like everybody who knew him needed a new computer or a new DVD player. Or something nice and expensive that they wanted to obtain the fast and easy way—not to mention, the cheap way.
In all the years I’d known Freddie Malone, I had never seen her naked until tonight. I gasped when I looked up at her standing in the doorway that led from the kitchen into the living/bedroom area of the tiny studio apartment I rented.
“That’s some nice bubble bath you got in your bathroom,” she said, sliding her hand across a belly that resembled a fish net.
“What the hell happened to your stomach?” I asked, my face screwed up like a can opener.
Freddie sighed and looked at the mess on the front of her body like it was the most normal thing in the world. “I hope you don’t expect to look the way you do now after you have kids,” she said tiredly. “You ought to see my ass. Worm city.” She giggled and turned around and shook her naked, stretch-marked butt at me. I didn’t bother to comment on the blue veins zigzagging up and down her thin, slightly bowed legs. I had another concern. Something I could not identify was distracting me. “What’s the matter, Trudy? You look worried.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I have this real funny feeling.”
“About what?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. I just feel like something is not right.”
Freddie excused herself and went to check her makeup. Not a minute later the telephone rang. The only people who had the number to the apartment were Freddie, LoBo, and the credit card companies that I’d received new cards from. Since it was a Friday night, and Freddie was already with me, naturally I assumed it was LoBo calling.
“Blood of Jesus,” I said, mimicking James’s mother Mavis and the way she sometimes answered her telephone.
“Is this 555-1028?” a cool, crisp female voice asked.
“Yes . . . it is,” I said.
“And is this the residence of Ms. Ann Oliver?”
Right after I heard Ann’s name, I held my breath and squeezed my legs together. My heart started banging against the wall of my chest so hard I had to breathe through my mouth. “Uh . . . huh,” I muttered. “This . . . this is Ann Oliver.”
“This is Angelina Loggia with the fraud division at Sunshine State Bank.”
“Oh?” I said meekly, looking toward the bathroom door. Even though Freddie knew most of my business I didn’t want her to see me in such a state of panic. “What’s the problem?” I bleated.
“Hopefully, there isn’t one. We noticed a lot of activity on your Visa card and we just wanted to verify some information.”
“Uh . . . yeah. I just recently got the card.” I didn’t know where the investigator was going, so I knew it was in my best interest not to volunteer any information I didn’t have to.
“Can you tell me the last time you used the card and the amount of your purchase?”
“Uh, I don’t exactly remember the last time I used it. I’ve used it a lot lately. I . . . uh . . . took some friends to Mexico and I used it a lot there. I still have all of the receipts. You want me to fax them to you?”
The investigator laughed. “That won’t be necessary. I just need to verify one other piece of information.”
I felt like I was going to crack open and self-destruct. One thing I had learned from shady people like LoBo was that if you ever felt like you’d been backed into a corner, pull out the big gun: get defensive, get ugly, get ghetto. Say whatever you have to say to get out of that corner. “Look, lady, if there is a problem with me having this card, I’ll cancel it right now! I have several other cards, and no fraud investigators from those banks ever call me up on a Friday night when I am trying to get ready to go to my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding-anniversary party.”
“Miss Oliver, we don’t want to lose you as a customer. But we want to make sure that we protect your interests, as well as ours.”
“Well, you are making me feel like a crook,” I said, biting my bottom lip. “And I don’t appreciate that. I don’t want your credit card that bad!”
“Miss Oliver, I apologize for upsetting you. For our records, I just need to verify one critical piece of information.”
“What else do you need to know?” I snapped. “I am Ann Oliver and I did use the card a lot. In Mexico.”
“Could you please tell me the state your Social Security card was issued in?”
“Huh? What do you mean? I live in California.”
“Yes, but where were you living when your Social Security card was issued to you?”
“Why do you need to know that?”
“I just need to make sure you are who you say you are.”
The silence that followed was unbelievable. So was the flip-flop my heart did with each second that passed.
“What state, ma’am?”
“California?” I practically whispered.
“What other states have you lived in, ma’am?”
I recalled a conversation I’d had with Freddie several years ago. Apparently, Social Security numbers were coded by state. A Social Security number that started with the number five, like Freddie’s and mine (my real one), more than likely meant that the person had applied for and received a Social Security card in the state of California. Ann’s family was from North Carolina, but I didn’t know if she had been born in that state, or applied for her Social Security card there! I had to assume she did. “North Carolina,” I said stiffly.
“Thank you, ma’am. You have a nice evening.”
I was still standing in the same spot holding the telephone when Freddie came back from the bathroom. “Trudy, I—what’s the matter? You look like you saw Tupac’s ghost.”
“Nothing. I just can’t shake this weird feeling,” I admitted that much, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell Freddie about the telephone call I had just received.
“Who was that on the telephone?” Freddie nodded toward the phone still in my hand.
“Wrong number,” I said quickly, dropping the telephone before I returned it to its cradle.
“You are really making me nervous now, girl. Do you want to forget about going to the club? We can go to the movies instead.”
I shook my head. “No, I think I really would like to go out. I might meet somebody who’ll perk me up.” Ann’s departure was one thing, but I took the telephone call from the fraud investigator as a sign: I had to straighten out the mess I’d made, and I had to do it quickly. Like tonight.
CHAPTER 67
Sarah and Lisa from the beauty shop had wanted to accom
pany Freddie and me to the club, but Freddie had decided that it should just be the two of us. The Smart Set was a club that none of us had been to before. “Four women walking into a club together will scare off the men quicker than anything. From what I’ve heard about this place, it’s not the type of place where you’d see men traveling in groups of three and four,” Freddie told me, still walking around my apartment naked.
“You’re right,” I agreed, secretly wishing that Sarah and Lisa were coming with us. The disturbing telephone call I had just received had seriously frightened me. Having Sarah and Lisa along would have made me feel more secure. I was still nervous even though I seemed to have appeased the fraud investigator. But like I said earlier, leading a double life was a hard and full time job.
By the time we got to the club, after being lost for over an hour, weaving back and forth on Interstate 880, first south, then north, I was already tired. Not only that, James had left six urgent messages on my cell phone voice mail. I called home to make sure nothing had happened to Daddy and almost got cussed out for bothering him while he was getting dressed to go visit Miss Sadie. “I thought you was at a dinner party for your boss!” he snarled.
“I am. I just wanted to check to make sure you were all right. It’ll be late when I get home. If I get home at all. I might spend the night with one of the girls from the office.” Daddy was silent but he let out an exasperated sigh. “Daddy, I’ll see you when I get home. If James calls, tell him what I just told you.”
I knew we’d made a mistake going to the Smart Set club as soon as we walked in the door. A puny, ashylipped man in a cheap-looking blue suit came out of nowhere. He followed us to a booth near the back of the club’s main room. “I sure likes what I see up in here tonight,” he said, sucking his teeth and rubbing his hairy paws together. I sat down, ignoring the intruder.