Rachel Chapman
DirtyPineapple83
Billy called me. Asked to borrow money. Thirty-five dollars to fill his truck up enough to get to work. I gave him the loan even though he gave me HPV when we were sixteen and if I ever die from cervical cancer it will be his fault.
“I’m not an ATM,” I told him. Then transferred the money into his account. As if thirty-five dollars mattered to me. His Venmo name was DirtyPineapple83.
After we hung up, I went outside. It was California cold. Sixty-two degrees and sunny. I sat cross-legged in my backyard and tried to meditate. My Corporate Coach, who smelled like an expensive vaginal douche, believed in starting mornings with meditation. It wasn’t about enlightenment. Mindfulness was good for the company.
My organic seaweed loving Corporate Coach taught me to hum “ohm” at our business retreat in Santa Barbara. Her perfectly highlighted honey blonde hair was pulled into a high ponytail “Think about your breath. Then nothing,” she whispered.
I thought about new embezzlement strategies, how to lower your blood pressure if ever hooked to a lie detector, and the name of my favorite lawyer. Steve Horowitz, Steve Horowitz, Steve Horowitz, I meditated.
Now in the backyard, my lungs expanded and retracted just as she showed me. But even with my eyelids shut tightly, the sun radiated too brightly to see a true shade of black. When I opened them again, a cloud in the sky shaped like a dick hung over my head.
Billy would be turning forty in a couple weeks. Cigarettes had deepened the sound of his voice. It had been eight years since we last spoke. He was the love of my life.
I called my assistant and said, “Put me on the next flight to St. Louis. If I’m not in first class, I’ll throw a stapler at your head.” Then I started packing.
On the three hour and thirty-five minute flight back home, I drank three mini vodkas with a splash of diet cranberry juice. The woman across the aisle from me comforted her screeching toddler as we landed. I’ve made many terrible choices in my life. Fortunately motherhood wasn’t one of them.
The Wifi finally reconnected on the tarmac. There were eighty-three new emails in my inbox. I called my assistant and hissed, “What part of “taking a SICK DAY” is so challenging for you to communicate?” Then hung up.
It was almost dark in Missouri and cold, real cold, the kind that makes your butthole pucker. I ordered an Uber Black Car to the trailer park where Billy and I grew up. I wanted to arrive in a Mercedes-Benz.
The door mat outside Billy’s double-wide said, Welcome (If You Brought Alcohol). I knocked hard, but not cops-hard.
Billy answered wearing jeans and a Wrangler work shirt. He was still thin, but a new layer of thickness had formed above his belt line which made for a snug fit. His thick black hair had only the slightest slivers of silver. But his facial stubble was more salt than pepper.
“Oh my shit,” he said, sucking hard on his teeth. “You are officially the craziest bitch I’ve ever known.”
“Where’s your wife?” I asked him. If Michelle was going to take a swing at me, I wanted to be prepared.
“Visiting her mom in Lebanon,” he said, meaning the small town in Missouri and not the country near Syria, obviously.
I was exactly six weeks older than Billy. The only person at my fortieth birthday dinner was my assistant. I told her I was turning thirty-four and she pretended to believe me even though she’d filled out my birth date out on countless pages of paperwork.
We ate lobster and drank two bottles of Dom Perignon. She had a shellfish allergy but was too afraid to tell me. Her lips bloated like a silicone sex doll. In the Crustacean parking lot, I stabbed her with an EPI pen.
When people imagine turning forty, they only think about what it will look like. A waste of brain space when there are plenty of tools to keep yourself from looking like an expired jack o’lantern. Thanks to Botox, filler, face yoga, regular yoga, hydrafacials, Vitamin C serum, and Retinol, I looked hotter now than in my twenties. Which is saying something because I was wildly hot in my twenties. It’s the internal shift that will get you.
For the first time, I could feel my choices calcifying in my bones. My mortality sloshed around my uterus. The indignity that no matter how clever, I too will die, just like every other idiot on this planet.
Outside Billy’s trailer, an owl hooted. “Let’s get drunk,” I said.
His breath hung handsomely in the air between us. He smelled like the Malboro Man. Billy grabbed my hand and pulled me inside. His truck keys were hanging from a wooden hanger with the word, Home, stenciled on it. Clearly, Michelle’s horrible taste. “You’re paying,” he said, slinging on his jacket.
In the vast multiverse of possibilities, there is a version of me who married Billy at eighteen. We live in the same double-wide, he lives in now. Poverty has curdled our love, but we still have lots of sour sex, his lips puckered around my nipple like sucking on a lemon.
Outside the Archway Manor Mobile Home Park, I climbed into Billy’s Ford Maverick XL. We drove down St. Charles Rock Road past the funeral home and the children’s psychiatric hospital. He kept his eyes ahead on the white pavement markings, but when he finally glanced at me, it was with a look that set my crotch on fire.
“Would have asked for money a long time ago if I knew it would get me a personal visit from the debt collector,” said Billy. He was chewing on a toothpick. I took it out of his mouth and put it into mine.
The truck was speeding parallel to the Mississippi River now. The water looked dirty even in the dark, like a turd taken with the lights off. A dingy street lamp resembled the light in a prison cell. We pulled into the River City Casino’s parking lot.
The casino was on a huge boat designed to look like an old fashioned river steamer. A massive paddlewheel paid tribute to the river’s bygone era. I guess they wanted the little blue haired ladies gambling their social security checks away to feel nostalgic for the days of Huck Finn.
Inside, we settled into swivel chairs at the bar. It was decorated like a Wild West saloon. A pair of bull horns hung above the whiskey bottles. The overhead light was an unnatural shade of purple. The pock mark on Billy’s cheek glowed like a psychedelic moon crater under its neon glow.
The bartender called me “ma’am” which annoyed me. Especially in front of Billy. I made a mental note to lower her tip as I ordered a vodka martini. Billy got tequila and Mountain Dew. With his jacket off, I could see the bottom of the pineapple tattoo he got on his pec peeking out from the bottom of his t-shirt sleeve. The ink was old but it still looked sweet and bright.
We didn’t speak while drinking the first round. Instead we looked at each other, like children in a staring contest, only sexy. I fed him an olive from my martini glass. He bit it off my fingers even though it must have tasted terrible paired with the Mountain Dew.
If we fucked that night, which seemed likely, I would pity Michelle. It wasn’t her fault she married the man who’d always belonged to me.
“How long you staying?” Billy’s nose was pointed as a stray dog’s, but his eyes were warm as a house cat.
“Not long,” I said.
“Pastor Mike would love to see you. I’m turning forty soon. Be nice to start the decade with a clean slate,” said Billy.
“Since when do you talk to Pastor Mike?” I asked. My cheeks flushed with vodka or regret. Slot machines beeped. Horns a-whistling, bells a-jingling. Winner, winner. Whah-whah.
“Been going to the Methodist on Sundays,” said Billy.
“Jesus, you found Jesus?” I said.
“Naw, just working up to apologizing,” he said.
Pastor Mike had been our youth counselor. He was also a pervert. A fact we’d taken advantage of when we robbed the church in high school. Pastor Mike was probably twenty-five, old enough to be balding, but he had a soft spot for teenage girls. He used to hang around Archway Manor Mobile Home Park blasting Christian rock on a boom box. He promised us “local youths'' that Jesus wasn’t corny and could save even our redneck souls. Most kids went for the free chicken dinners and pancake breakfasts. That’s why Billy and I started going there, until we noticed the collection portion of service.
The night we robbed the Methodist, I wore a low cut bubble gum pink top that I’d swiped from my mom’s closet while she was passed out on the couch. It was too low for the church’s annual chicken BBQ, but the perfect cut for peaking Pastor Mike’s interest. Church ladies in calico dresses whispered about me while I gnawed on a chicken thigh.
Billy and I had been planning the heist all summer. While everyone else was in line for baked beans, Billy grabbed the safe keys from Pastor Mike’s top desk drawer, then hid in a bathroom stall, cross legged on a toilet, until after the dinner was over.
My role was decoy. As the good folks headed home with their bellies full of coleslaw, I hung back. Pastor Mike noticed. Eventually, we were the only ones left in the church’s rec room. I told him that I wanted to be good, but it was hard without role models. There was a BBQ stain on Pastor Mike’s shirt. I felt his body move towards mine. He put his hand on my thigh, massaged it with his thumb, and told me Jesus loved me.
Billy would have had plenty of time to empty the safe by then. He was probably long gone. If I screamed there was no one left in the church to hear me. An unsettling feeling prickled in soft skin at the back of my neck. Pastor Mike’s fingernails had sauce caught under the nail bed, they squeezed into my flesh. Panicking, I cupped my hands together and dry heaved into them. The chicken wasn’t agreeing with me, I explained to Pastor Mike, standing suddenly. Then I ran and didn’t stop until I was outside Billy’s trailer. The money was more than we expected, more than we’d ever seen. That night Billy fingered me on top of a pile of fives.
A maniacal mechanical orchestra of fake coin noises erupted. Someone hit the jackpot. “I sleep fine at night,” I told Billy, which was true, although Ambien helped.
“Pastor Mike lost his foot,” said Billy, shaking his head regretfully. “Diabetes.”
My assistant texted me, “Sorry to disturb but finance is confused about the Gladwell account. Crazy unauthorized payments. They say it’s urgent they speak with you. They keep calling.”
“Tell them my feces is liquid, my temperature is 106, my tonsils have pus pockets, I want to get WELL so I can get back to making the company money, I want us all to PROFIT, but to do that I need REST,” I texted back.
A man in a cowboy hat was yelling at the baccarat dealer. I thought about the number of zeros in my offshore bank account. The time to run had arrived. I took a large bitter sip from my martini. Billy was looking at me as if we’d spoken every day for the last eight years. One side of his mouth raised in a comfortable half smile.
“I’m thinking about going away for a while,” I said. “Mexico, maybe. You should come.”
When Billy cut me off eight years ago to make an honest go with that bleached barfly Michelle, he was upset when I didn't show more emotion. He wanted me to beg for him, reconsider my stance on marriage for him, hang my head and cry. Letting him go was god awful. I felt like my mother must have felt every time she went on the wagon. She named me Svedka after the only thing she ever really loved, which was cheap vodka. This fact alone should absolve me from all my crimes.
Billy tipped his head backwards slightly, closed his eyes, and took what my Corporate Coach would describe as a “private breath.” I knew him well enough to know he was weighing the decision; what he ought to do with what he wanted to do. Microwave Maire Callender dinners with Michelle “till death do us part” or go deuces wild with me.
I’d been in the corporate world long enough to know that the best way to get someone to say yes to your pitch is to parrot their own words back to them. I swiveled the bar stool so my nipples were parallel to his and said, “Clean slate.”
Billy’s eyes softened. His kiss was a homemade bomb of aspartame, nicotine, and dopamine. Now that it was decided, there was so much to do. He needed to pack. We needed fake passports. I needed to tell him why we needed fake passports.
On the drive back, Billy took a detour on Gratiot. Then stopped in front of a depressing little house with a broken washer in the lawn. The light was on inside. He started honking over and over.
“Where are we?” I asked him, the honking hurt my head. The hangover was already starting.
The silhouette of a man on crutches illuminated in the doorway. Pastor Mike’s eczema showed red as Rudolph’s nose in the dark.
“A clean slate,” said Billy. His mouth dropped in a thin line like a heart rate monitor flatlining.
“Oh my heavens. Is that who I think it is?” said Pastor Mike, only ten feet away in his lawn now, squinting at us.
Billy rolled down the truck window and hollered, “Come to apologize.” I grabbed his balls forcefully and squeezed.
“Sorry about your leg,” I said. “Terrible luck.”
“No such thing as luck. God’s will” said Pastor Mike. He waved his arms enthusiastically like a car dealership balloon. “Well, c’mon inside.”
Billy turned off the truck. I thought about leaving him in Missouri, for good this time, but then he weaved his calloused fingers through mine.
Los Angeles men are softer than me. I once slept with a guy who identified himself as a multi hyphenate entertainer but whom I’d met when he waited on my table. The sex was like swimming with a dolphin, slippery, sleek, something you only do on vacation. I need a man with rough spots.
Inside the house, Pastor Mike poured Chex Mix into a yellow bowl, and gestured for Billy and me to sit down. It had been a long time since I was poor and his sofa repulsed me. A khaki-colored synthetic loveseat.
There was a wood framed painting of the Last Supper. The disciples gathered around Jesus. I looked at the wine in their glasses and wished I had some.
Pastor Mike settled into a hellish Lazy-boy. The leg with the foot still attached sprawled across the foot rest. “Well golly, look at you, pretty lady,” he said. The compliment was delivered cooly without the slightest trace of sexual heat. I had stopped being his type the minute I turned eighteen.
Billy grabbed a fistfull of Chex Mix, pulled the pretzels out, and handed them to me. They used to be my favorite part. I took a salty bite even though I never ate carbs anymore. The crunching of the pretzels in my mouth was the only sound. Pastor Mike watched me chew. Billy nodded encouragingly.
I wanted to say to Pastor Mike, “You are a small time pervert who uses god as a line to hit on teenage girls and I’m glad we robbed you.” Instead I said, “How have you been?”
“Getting into missionary work. Opening a school in Moldova. Did you know there are such beautiful people there? Blonde, lanky. Magdalene’s School for Wayward Girls,” said Pastor Mike, smiling like a dog who ate a plateful of steak when no one was looking.
What a sick fuck. Who had even said the word “wayward” outside of the 19th century? There was no way I was apologizing to him.
“Mary Magdalene has always been such a beautiful example for young women. Proof that through Jesus even a whore can find salvation,” he said, looking directly at me. This creep was founding an all girl’s missionary school in fucking Maldova. It was disgusting. Diabolical. It was one of the few countries without extradition.
“I’d like to help in whatever way I can,” I said.
“Oh my blessings,” said Pastor Mike, covering his heart with his hand.
“I’ve been a sinner all my life but I want to change.” I looked him dead in the eye as I spoke. “I’m assuming you need grants, funders. I can help with your giving strategy.” I continued, bolder with each word. “My first step would be seeing the school in person, so I could truly capture the good work you’re doing and learn how to package it for investors.”
Pastor Mike pulled the Lazy-Boy’s handle, shooting himself abruptly upright. He was on the edge of his recliner.
“And I’d be happy to make the first donation,” I said, knowing already that I’d cinched the deal. A Christian girls’ school. What better place to launder money?
“Svedka,” Billy said. “You’ve changed so much.”
“This is the answer to all my prayers. When would you like to meet the girls?” Pastor Mike was smiling so hard his silver fillings showed. But in his eyes, I could see the same judgment he’d watched me with as a teenager. It didn’t matter now.
“Tomorrow. I can buy our tickets tonight.” I took hold of Billy’s hand, smiled at him. “I’m ready for our clean slate.” Billy squeezed my hand and kissed me chastely on the cheek.
It almost made me believe in fate. I was freshly forty, had millions waiting in a secret account, and tomorrow I’d fly with the only man I’d ever loved to Moldova. I buzzed with vodka and excitement at how quickly my problems dissolved. Clearly, God still loved me.
Rachel Chapman is a writer with work published or forthcoming in The New York Times and The Pinch. She’s currently working on a novel about growing up in St. Louis.