Ruby's Misadventures With Reality

by Samantha Bohrman

  Only too glad to give up her estate planning goals for the day, Ruby did a quick Google search on Pastor Rick before heading out to question the man in person. Meeting Pastor Rick meant a trip to the Chapel Mall, the Biomall’s biggest satellite shopping center, and location of the Glass Chapel. The Chapel took up one of the anchor store spots for the Chapel Mall as if it was Macy’s or something.

  For whatever reason, deep religiosity or contrition, Oswald Rancka signed over a twenty-year lease on some of Emerald’s prime retail space to the Chapel for a pittance. Or, maybe he was just smart. It had produced the most profitable symbiotic relationship in retail history: Sunday had turned into Emerald’s biggest shopping day, while church attendance skyrocketed. Teenagers who long ago told God to piss off began attending church in throngs because church meant a ride to the mall, no questions asked. The people who did make it to the service often purchased outfits modeled by Pastor Rick or the choir, both of whom always wore something provided by one of the neighboring stores. Sometime during service, he would find a moment to say, “And, thank you, Enzo’s, for providing me with these fine khaki trousers, which are on special today for $49.99.” Last month, some kids had sneaked into the chapel and taken Jesus off the cross. Before they hung him back up, they dressed him in a leather jacket and a bunch of clothes from the Gap. Strangely enough, Rick completely missed the implied criticism and said, “My, my, doesn’t Jesus looks fine in those aviators?”

  Everyone loved it. Trips to the Chapel had become a right-of-passage for fundamentalist Christians (of a certain type) the world over. The waiting list for weddings was purportedly seven years long. Emerald’s fertility doctors were flourishing as most brides were on the downslide of their fertile years by the time they managed a Glass Chapel wedding.

  Lucky for Ruby, she could walk to the Chapel Mall from her office. She grabbed her purse and hit the road. Within five minutes she was inhaling the scent of Enzo’s, her favorite department store. It was named for Debbie and Charmaine’s sire, Enzo, the prototypical OzDog. She sprayed on a few new fragrances and walked to Chapel Coffee in a cloud of perfumed air.

  Feeling the spirit fill her, she decided to stop for a coffee. “Could I have the vanilla latte with angel foam please?” she asked a perky blonde barista whose nametag read, “Juniper.”

  “Sure. Did you notice that you get a discount if you can answer the trivia question?”

  “No.” Ruby looked at the chalkboard behind the barista. The question was: “Which saint is Pastor Rick named for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Saint Richard,” answered Juniper in a Valley Girl accent. “He was a vegetarian.” She punctuated the statement with a hair toss.

  “Oh. That’s cool,” said Ruby. “I tried to be a vegetarian once. My mom wouldn’t make two meals, though, and my dad hates vegetables.” Ruby’s vegetarian effort had been pretty weak. She’d only tried briefly after reading an article about Alicia Silverstone’s diet in Self.

  “Oh,” said Juniper dramatically, completely simpatico with Ruby’s vegetarian strife. “I couldn’t make it work either after I found out there is meat in burritos.” She handed Ruby her vanilla latte with angel foam, “Hope you enjoy your coffee. This is Pastor Rick’s favorite.”

  “Thanks!” said Ruby and she set off for the Chapel.

  Ruby stepped into the octagonal glass elevator behind a group of tourists and rode it to the top, all the way to heaven, it seemed. To hammer the heavenly effect home with blunt force, the Mall had dangled glittering angels from I-beams, creating a vortex of flying cherubs. Ruby alighted in a lobby overflowing with bouquets of roses and a gleaming marble floor. A large marble statue of Pastor Rick looking skyward greeted her. As she looked around, understanding dawned with the brilliance of a prairie sunrise. Between the vanilla latte, the scent of Chanel No. Five, and the penthouse view, she felt like she was communing with God.

  Then she heard the sound of cowboy boots (Italian leather) on marble tile. It was Rick. He strode in with his fingers through his belt loops. His crisp white shirt accented his perfect tan, spray-on.

  “Ah. Jermaine’s friend.” He nodded his head in greeting. “So glad to see you’ve found your way to the Chapel. We love to welcome new families to the Glass Chapel,” he stressed the word family while nodding to Ruby’s belly.

  “Thanks. I’m actually here about something else, though.”

  “Our line of devotional jewelry?” he guessed. “It’s for sale in the case outside of the elevator bank.”

  This man had her number. “Now that you mention it, yes. There’s something else, too, though.”

  “Really. What might that be?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” she confided as if this would be a shock to him. Ruby had trouble owning her profession the way Oprah recommended, but she was trying, so she handed him one of her Client Advisors business cards.

  He raised his eyebrows quizzically and said, “Oh, I see,” as if the business card answered all his questions. When he looked up at her again, something had shifted, as if he’d decided to turn off the charm. Ruby couldn’t help but wonder if he knew about her connection to Estelle.

  Ruby continued, “One of my clients named you as a beneficiary in her will. She left you her house. Her name was Estelle Harris.”

  “No, Unfortunately I don’t remember her.”

  “But I met you at her funeral,” Ruby protested. “You must have known her.”

  “I attend a lot of funerals. They blur together.” He paused and explained, “Many of my flock never attend services, especially elderly members. She probably watched the services on TV at home. We’ve inspired quite a few older folks with our message and many of them make note of that in their wills. I wish I was able to meet them all personally.” At this point he was simply giving her canned answers from the FAQ list.

  “Is there some sort of promotion, though? Didn’t I hear about a promotion where the person gets something in return for leaving you an estate?” Ruby was just thinking on the fly now. She thought she remembered hearing something in a TV commercial, probably at Estelle’s house.

  “Yes. We provide a voucher for a free funeral in the Glass Chapel. There is nothing like a funeral in the chapel. The journey to Heaven is only a short flight for an angel. We have beautiful funerals here.”

  “Estelle’s funeral wasn’t here, though.” Ruby took a deep breath. The man was starting to frustrate her. She knew he was popular, but could he really remember as little as he claimed?

  “Perhaps she made another arrangement. You could check with my secretary if you’d like. What did you say your name was?”

  “O’Deare, Ruby O’Deare.”

  “That’s right. I would love to keep talking,” he said smoothly “but, I have several other things to do to this afternoon. If you would like to continue our conversation, please call and make an appointment. I would love to welcome you and yours to the Glass Chapel.” Pastor Rick had definitely turned off the charm in favor of the canned voice he broke out for busloads of Japanese tourists, a group he had publicly derided for trivializing the Lord’s work, mainly because they sandwiched the Glass Chapel tour between Silver Dollar City and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. How Ruby went from honored visitor to Japanese, she wasn’t exactly sure, but he certainly didn’t like her business cards. At any rate, she was no longer going to earn a Glass Chapel baby shower.

  “Well, thanks for your time,” said Ruby.

  “Thank you, too. I would love to see you at one of our services. There is also a regular three o’clock tour every day for visitors.”

  “Thanks,” said Ruby. She watched Pastor Rick walk into the church offices. As she watched him go, she thought about waiting for a tour, but on impulse, she opened up the doors to Chapel and walked in alone. What she found frightened her. Instead of shafts of light striking through the clouds directly onto her anointed head, she found herself standing alone in the middle of a dark gray cloud with an undulating belly. Lit
tle shivers of freezing rain began to pelt the glass roof. It looked to her like the Glass Chapel had front row seats to a truly frightening sky, a sky that didn’t look anything like the heaven it promised. She felt better about Estelle losing out on her free funeral. The place just wasn’t really her style. Ruby turned on her heel, all thoughts of the tour gone.

  She didn’t forget the jewelry, though.

  Just like Rick said, there was a glass jewelry case. All jewelry was celebrity designed and 10 percent of the profits went to tricking out the worship center.

  She asked the person working the counter, “Can I see that pink rhinestone cross with the rhinestone? It’s fabulous.”

  “Good choice.”

  As the girl handed her the necklace, someone called out, “Hey, hot stuff. You up here finding God or just blinging out?” Eric stared intently at the pink rhinestone cross. It plunged into her cleavage in a way that could only be described as sacrilegious. He made a cat growling noise and said, “Praise be, baby.”

  “Eric? What are you doing here?” She hadn’t seen him since he’d driven Todd to the police station.

  “Reporting for duty. I’m doing security for His Highness.”

  “Oh.” Ruby furrowed her brows. In all of the time she’d spent at the mall, which was considerable, she’d never seen Eric. “What kind of jobs does he have you do?”

  “This and that.”

  Eric sauntered into the Chapel office. “Gotta get to work. Later, babe.”

  She stared after him. Mall security had never been sexier or so poorly miscast.

  The Chapel sales woman interrupted Ruby’s reverie. “Are you gonna buy that thing or what?”

  Oh, yeah. Ruby handed over her Biomall credit card.

  A second later, the lady said, “I’m sorry, but your card was declined.”

  “What? But I have top smart shopper rankings.”

  “The smart shopper rankings only help you earn rewards. They don’t save you from having to pay your bill,” the girl explained. The Biomall credit system ranked shoppers in categories like Green Buyer, Fair Trade Shopper, and Trend Spotter. Eight hundred points was the top score in each category. Just like the SATs. Top scores earned prizes like valet parking and monogrammed bathrobes. This year, the top green shoppers were going to earn bamboo fabric pajamas. Ruby had totally bought into the Biomall’s propaganda—“The dollar is your greatest vote in a democracy! Buy green! Buy fair! Buy Biomall!”

  Standing at the counter offering her worthless card, Ruby felt like an idiot. She had officially gone broke buying fair-trade soy candles. The complimentary valet parking and trend spotter score were nothing but the emperor’s new clothes. She might as well have been standing there naked. Looking at her cowboy boots, she realized that she’d probably never pay them off.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Convo with Jermaine about Backhoe Driving

  After dressing in head-to-toe Juicy Couture velour, which she had found to be the perfect pregnancy uniform, and drinking a ginormous coffee at Em’s, Ruby hopped in her Mustang with Debbie and Charmaine and pointed it toward the Big House, which was about forty minutes outside of Emerald. Jermaine had finally pled out to some lesser charges and was serving a short sentence in the State Pen. The dogs moved around the front seat like eels in a bucket, crawling over each other and circling, each angling for the coveted spot on Ruby’s lap. Ruby ignored them and sang along to a bubble-gum pop song.

  After checking in at the prison, Ruby made her way to a large cafeteria-like room. Jermaine was waiting for her at a table by himself wearing the standard orange jumpsuit and a studied look of boredom. She said, “Nice to see you again, Mr. Harris.”

  “Like hell it is. You trash-talked me to my grandmother. Tried to turn her against me.”

  “Um, no. I was your grandmother’s attorney. I was just doing my best to keep her out of trouble.”

  “Like hell you were.”

  “Well, would you answer a couple of questions since I came all the way down here?”

  “Ask away.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms in front of his chest like a bouncer.

  “I saw a photo of you working in Elysian Fields. I’m wondering who hired you and what you were doing.”

  “The big PR hooked me up with that gig.”

  “Pastor Rick?”

  “Yep. He’s hires lots of ex-cons. Dude’s big into second chances.”

  “So you were working for Pastor Rick?”

  “Rick hooked us up with the gig. He didn’t pay us, though.”

  “Did you have any prior experience cleaning up contaminated soils?”

  “What would I need that for?”

  “Well, it’s a dump. It’s filled with refuse. Some of the old appliances actually contain federally-regulated, toxic chemicals that probably leaked into the soil.” Ruby remembered this from the newspaper article.

  “It’s not like we were making sandwiches out of it.”

  “Did anyone supervise your work?”

  “No. What for?”

  “What did you do with the soil? Did you dig up the soil and move it off site?”

  “No, we kind of moved some of the appliances around and covered ’em in dirt. Driving a backhoe is fucking awesome. Hell, I do business from that site all the time anyway, so I was really just getting paid extra waiting for customers to show up.”

  Ruby was putting it all together. Rick sent a bunch of ex-cons Destinee’s way. She paid them to drive backhoes aimlessly for a couple of days. Then, she must have collected the money from the epa for cleaning up the place. Classy. She bet Food Hollow would love to know that it was being built on top of a bunch of old air conditioners, not to mention anyone who planned to put in a garden. Ozcorp was guilty of defrauding the U.S. government. She couldn’t wait to tell Noel about this. There’s no way he’d stand for a sham clean-up.

  “It was awesome. I’d do it for free.”

  “One more question, Jermaine. Did your grandma know that you didn’t really clean anything up over there?”

  “Yeah, she watched us spinning cookies on those things all day long. Then, she made us lemonade and sandwiches for lunch.”

  “Did Destinee or Pastor Rick know your grandma was watching?”

  “Everyone did. Rick and Dee had lunch with us all the time. My grandma kept asking him what the digging was about.” Ruby filed this info away. Estelle could have cost Ozcorp $250,000 if she’d reported the shoddy work, not to mention fines and possible criminal penalties. That could be motive.

  “One more thing Jermaine. Are you and Trudi getting married soon?”

  He laughed. “That’s what she tells me.”

  “Where’s the wedding?”

  “What do you care? Trying to pick out your outfit? I can save you the trouble now because you ain’t invited.” He laughed at his humor.

  “I was just wondering.”

  “Well, you asking the wrong person, woman. She’ll tell me where to show up and who the check goes to.”

  “Thanks, Jermaine. That was a real help. If you don’t mind, tell Trudi I’m going to give her a call next time you talk to her.”

  “That’s fine. If you talk to her, tell her to keep the fucking wedding costs down. I just got a bill for a fucking $1,000 tiara. Who the hell does she think she’s marrying, P Diddy? How the hell am I supposed to pay for that shit from jail anyway? What the hell kind of fool sells a woman a diamond crown and then mails the bill to prison?” He paused for effect. “I tell you who—a fucking moron. I’m not paying for a bunch of diamonds, especially from some idiot who takes the time to address the envelope in some fancy-ass cursive writing to the Kansas State Pen. I would have gotten fucking raped if anyone saw that shit.”

  Ruby laughed as if it were a really cute story, something her mom might share at a lady’s luncheon. “Will do. Cut her some slack on the tiara, though. That’s really not a negotiable part of the wedding ensemble and $1,000 is really reasonable.”

&n
bsp; He didn’t yell, “Where the fuck you come from lady?” but the look on his face clearly said it.

  Ruby smiled back and said, “It was nice to chat with you. I’ve heard so much about you from your grandma. She just loved you.”

  Like a sulky teen, he said, “I know. Too bad she wouldn’t go to bat for me in the courtroom.”

  Ruby was flabbergasted. “Your grandma could have gone to jail for that.”

  “You’re shittin’ me. They’d never put an old lady in here.”

  Ruby had to leave. She had nothing more to say to that jerk. What an ungrateful ass. “I’ve gotta go, Jermaine. Thanks for your help.”

  Ruby was pretty sure that hiring Marcus and Jermaine to deal dope from a backhoe didn’t qualify as soil rehabilitation. If Ozcorp got caught, someone would be in trouble for fraud and it’d be criminal considering the amount of money. The development might go belly-up after the scandal.

  …

  “Hey, Ming,” Ruby called on the way through LA Tits. Ming had the place looking amazing, all the more evident after her day at the Kansas Pen. It was sultry boudoir times ten, deep pink velvet paneled walls so soft and sumptuous she wanted to rub against them naked, sort of the point, she guessed. Ornate full-length mirrors that definitely made you look five pounds slimmer. The back wall was an oversized black-and-white mural of Betty Grable posing in relief against a sci-fi backdrop and wearing a shiny metallic bra. Ming sat on a barstool at a raised desk in a skirt that barely covered her ass. She was flipping through a magazine and listening intently to an NPR report on Prada choosing to list on the Hong Kong Stock exchange rather than New York or London. More to herself than Ruby, Ming murmured, “New York is so twentieth century.”

  “What’s with the glasses, Ming?”

  “I think people can relate to me better with them.”