Sparky didn’t see how turn indicator abuse coincided with philandering, but she’d take Vibro’s word for it and she’d make damn sure to use her turn indicator.
Jennifer pulled into a Quik Trip, once again not using her turn indicator. Sparky pulled up to a gas pump and they sat watching the storefront.
“Won’t someone wonder why we’re not getting gas?” Vibro asked.
“No, they’ll just think we’re in the store going to the restroom or buying a snack.”
Vibro sipped her coffee. “I’m glad your uncle has these dark windows—they’re a big plus.”
“With all the black commando gear you have on, no one could see you anyway once it gets dark.”
“I know, right. Do I look okay in them? You don’t think they’re too masculine? I got this V-shaped cut T-shirt to accentuate my collarbones, which adds a feminine touch. That’s another thing that pisses me off about Jennifer. How come she gets to be the girl? I always have to be the hersband. I’m just as girlie.”
“You do look nice in your black outfit.”
“Thank you. That’s another thing. She never says anything complimentary to me, but I have to tell her how pretty she is all the time or she gets all pouty. It’s ridiculous, really.”
Jennifer came out of the Quik Trip. She unwrapped a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
“What!” Vibro said. “She’s smoking. When did that start? We don’t smoke.” Vibro went to open the door.
“Vibro, wait.”
“I can’t allow this. It’s an affront against nature.”
Sparky grabbed her arm. “We’re doing surveillance.”
This seemed to bring her back to her senses. “Oh, right.”
She sat back in her seat and eyed the box of doughnuts. “Is that a jelly-filled powdered doughnut?”
“Yes, it is,” Sparky said, watching as Jennifer’s Camry backed out of its parking space and almost got hit by a passing car.
“Does she always drive like that?” Sparky asked.
“Yes, it’s another example of her selfish nature that she doesn’t give a flying fuck for other people’s health and welfare.”
“I hope she has a lot of insurance,” Sparky replied, pulling out behind her as they headed toward downtown. She let two cars get in front of her.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Vibro said, fiddling around with the movie camera. She turned it on and pointed it at herself.
“My name is Vibro Squirm and I’m making a mockumentary of my girlfriend’s indiscretions. My partner,” she panned over to Sparky, “Sparky McAlester is doing a fabulous job of tailing my girlfriend. Although Jennifer is so oblivious to her surroundings that we could be sitting on her trunk and she wouldn’t know it. That is the beauty of stupidity.”
“Is that a good idea?” Sparky asked, pointing at the movie camera.
“It keeps my mind off my anger. Doing funny things is supposed to lower your blood pressure, according to Lexus.”
They continued on to Westlake where Jennifer pulled up in front of the Rollin Street Flats condominium complex. “Holy shit, this is quite the place,” Sparky said, staring up at the glass and steel front.
“At least she’s not cheating on me with some trailer trash bitch. If she’s trading up that makes me feel a little better.”
“Why?” Sparky asked, parking the Lincoln Navigator as close to the corner as she could get without being in a no parking zone. She wanted to be able to see the front of the condos but not elicit notice from the doorman, who appeared to also be operating as the security guard.
“I don’t know. It makes me feel like I got dumped for something better. Like I wasn’t all bad.”
Sparky touched her arm. “You’re not bad. You’re wonderful. Jennifer just can’t see it anymore.”
“I don’t know if she ever did.”
“She must have. You been together long enough for it to be more than a dalliance.”
“I think I’ve just been her meal ticket.” Vibro stared out the window morosely. “God damn her.”
“I’ve been Wesson’s punching bag, if that’s any consolation.”
“I don’t mean to be a pussy about this, but my feelings are hurt. I’m not a bad girlfriend. I was still fucking her up to a few weeks ago. I bought her a new phone. I paid the rent last month because she came up short—only later did I discover it was because she went in for a spa treatment and got a mud bath, a manicure and a pedicure. The whole thing cost three hundred and fifty dollars. Imagine that.”
“She told you that?”
“No, I was doing laundry and found her debit card receipt. I took her credit cards away from her a long time ago. She kept racking up the charges and couldn’t even pay the minimum balances sometimes. I put her half of the rent toward that, paid them off and took them away.”
“It’s a good thing you two had separate bank accounts.”
“You didn’t?” Vibro said.
“We had a joint checking account up to a month ago. I went in and removed my name. Then I got a separate account. I even changed banks just in case. We never did have joint credit card accounts.”
Jennifer came out of the building with another woman. Vibro pulled the telescope from the backseat and was going to stick it out the window.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. It might tip her off.”
“I want to see who it is,” Vibro said, now trying to point the telescope at the front window and look through it. She almost whacked Sparky in the head as she climbed in the backseat in an attempt to get the long view. By the time she got it set up, Jennifer and her “date” had driven off. “Did you know there’s a built-in DVD player back here?”
“You need to put your seat belt on, and, yes, I did know,” Sparky said, pulling out slowly behind them.
“Did you get a good look at her? Would she fit in those panties?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen the panties.”
Vibro climbed back in the front seat and dug them out of the duffel bag. She held them up for inspection.
“Are they clean?” Sparky said.
“I’m thinking not, that’s why they’re in the bag.” Vibro smoothed them out on the dash.
Sparky grimaced and made a right turn on Yale Street. “What size do you think they are?”
“Well, I’d say they are a size ‘tiny’ with a crotch width that cannot be seen without a microscope. They wouldn’t fit two apricots in the butt section and she probably has to order them from a circus catalog for the freakishly thin. Either that or they were edible panties and Jennifer ate most of them and what I have here is what she left over for a snack later. Olive Oyl might be missing a pair of her panties and I need to place an ad in the Lost and Found section of the funny papers. I’ve seen underpants for shih tzus bigger than that. They’re too small for a toddler. They’re an anorexic’s dream. A supermodel might find them inadequate. I think I’ll write a poem titled ‘Ode to the Misplaced and Overly Thin Underpants’ using iambic pentameter.”
Vibro probably would have continued in the same vein for some time to come had Sparky not said, “So I take it they’re small.”
“You could say that,” Vibro said, waving the panties in front of Sparky, who had to look around them in order to drive.
“The woman getting in the car looked kind of tall and thin,” Sparky said.
“Good. Well, kinda good. Initially, I thought Jennifer was cheating on me with that PR woman from work. But that woman is thick-waisted and butch. When I found the panties I had to reevaluate my suspicions,” Vibro said. She clicked on her seat belt.
“Jennifer has been awfully busy. It looks like they’re headed back toward the pier,” Sparky said, taking Westlake toward Broadway.
“Oh, I think I know where they’re going,” Vibro said.
“Where?”
“It’s a new lesbian bar that I read about in The Stranger,” Vibro said.
“I missed reading that when Wesson and I
lived in the boonies. I never knew what was going on in the city,” Sparky said, slowing to make a left turn. The Camry slowed up ahead and Sparky quickly pulled into a parking spot to avoid detection. She waited. Jennifer pulled into a strip mall that had a bowling alley and a thrift store. “What’s this place?” Sparky said.
Vibro harrumphed. “She would be all over it. Les Femmes is the new upscale—as in a drink costs like ten bucks and a snooty bartender deigns to take your money—women’s gay bar.”
“In this part of town? I don’t get it.”
“There’s a bunch of hype about gentrification. Les Femmes is getting in on the ground floor according to the article in The Stranger.”
“She better hope Olive Oyl is gonna buy all the drinks,” Sparky said. “Or you won’t be getting any help on the rent this month.”
“Ya think? One thing I won’t miss is having a girlfriend with champagne tastes on a beer budget.”
“We still have to get some proof though. Going to a gay bar with a gal pal isn’t exactly a confirmation of cheating.” Sparky didn’t want to ruin Vibro’s good spirits, but she knew enough from Wesson’s machinations that you had to push these errant girlfriends right to the edge to get them to admit to anything. Wesson hadn’t thought her anger was a problem until Sparky left. Was that some kind of universal truth? We won’t admit to having a problem until it slaps us in the face like a fishmonger’s wife taking a swing at you with a twelve-pound salmon. With fish on your face there seems no other way but to acknowledge the problem.
“I know. It’s not like I can walk in there and photograph them necking on the dance floor. And what if this woman isn’t her sexual liaison? There could be more than one Olive Oyl.”
“Vibro, maybe you could just tell her that you two are over. I mean, do you still love her?”
Vibro sat quiet for a minute.
Sparky’s heart beat fast. She knew she had it bad for Vibro. What if Vibro still loved Jennifer? Could she carry on a friendship with Vibro in a state of unrequited love?
“Of course I don’t love her. I actually think I hate her. I know that’s a strong word, but I really can’t stand her—she’s like everything I despise in a person and I can’t believe I share a bed with her. I mean, what was I thinking? I don’t like shallow, narcissistic, financially irresponsible, lazy, stupid people, and I’m living with one. What does that make me? But how am I going to get rid of her? I need proof so I can force her out of my life. For the sake of my own self-respect I can’t keep letting her walk all over me. I need something so irrefutable that she can’t wheedle her way out of it. I can’t keep thinking that I’m stuck with her because I said ‘I do’ in some ceremony that the government doesn’t even recognize. Cheating on the ceremonial ‘I do’ is the worst thing a person can do. It breaks all sense of trust, and if I can prove it I’m free.”
“Okay, then we need to get in the bar without her knowing we’re there,” Sparky said. She shoved a chocolate éclair in her mouth. Chocolate and cream seemed to always have a beneficial effect on her brain cells.
Vibro had the telescope out again and was trying to peek in the bar windows. “They’re tinted.”
“Of course, it’s bad enough the bar is in a strip mall. The proprietors don’t want to fish bowl the whole thing, having every Tina, Deidra and Hilda peeking in the windows,” Sparky said, finishing off her coffee.
“Hilda? I don’t get it.”
“As in Tom, Dick and Harry, but in the feminine. I’m winging it here.”
“Oh.”
“What we need is a disguise.” Sparky watched as a woman carried two overstuffed bags out of the Our Lady of Interminable Suffering Thrift Store. There was a sign in the window advertising a five dollars-a-bag sale and the store being open late on Fridays. “That’s it. We’ll get different clothes and buy hats. We’ll blend into the crowd and then you can use the movie camera. That thing is small enough to fit in your palm and if you’re discreet no one will notice.”
It dawned on Sparky that Vibro might have difficulty being discreet. “Maybe I should do the videotaping. I have bigger hands.” She made that part of up, but she hoped Vibro wouldn’t notice. “I have prior experience too. I did some taping of my cousin’s wedding.”
“That’s probably a good idea. You might need to keep me in check.” She glanced over at Sparky. “I wouldn’t want to blow our cover. That would be embarrassing and somehow she’d turn the whole thing on me. I can see it now—her whining that I didn’t trust her and all our problems are my fault. You know how women can be—they’re master manipulators.”
Sparky didn’t bother mentioning that they were women as well. Wesson had pulled the same thing on her—telling Sparky that she was a button pusher and that was what brought on the violence. But there were times when Sparky never saw it coming. They’d be arguing and next thing she knew Wesson had her fingers around Sparky’s throat and was shaking her.
“I won’t let you blow our cover. Now, let’s go shopping.”
“Can we let the air out of Jennifer’s tires on the way?”
“No, it might tip her off,” Sparky said, getting out of the Navigator.
“Can we watch a movie on the DVD player when we’re done? I’ve never seen one in a car before.”
“Only if you behave yourself. Maybe the thrift store has an old movie section. The only movie Uncle Milton has in the glove box is Les Cage aux Folles.”
“You know, I’ve never seen that movie.”
“Oh, my God, it’s hysterical. Okay, we’ll watch that. Laughter is supposed to make a person feel better right? And…” Sparky stopped.
Vibro finished it, “And I might be feeling a little low after I see Jennifer doing the bump and grind with another woman.”
“Well, yeah.”
“I’ll be all right. I feel better knowing you’re with me.”
When Vibro said that, Sparky knew she was done for. Wesson, despite all her purported improvements, didn’t stand a chance against her feelings for Vibro. She wouldn’t go for coffee with her. It would be too sad. They’d just have to let it go; in the long run it would be better for both of them. Sparky would tell Wesson they were over now and forever. They’d make a deal about the house and be done with it.
They entered the Our Lady of Interminable Suffering Thrift Store and were accosted by the overwhelming scent of spiced apple potpourri and a nun dressed in a full habit. “Good evening, ladies. Did you all want to take advantage of our five-dollar-bag special? Anything that fits in the bag goes.”
“We’d love to,” Vibro said, handing the nun a ten. “For my friend too.”
“Vibro, you don’t have to do that,” Sparky said.
Vibro rolled her eyes and said, “Please.”
Sparky did suppose it was rather silly. “I hope in the future you won’t think I’m a cheap date,” she said, opening up her bag.
“You already are. You couldn’t get Jennifer in a thrift store if the world was on fire and it was the only refuge. Now let’s find something cute.”
“And discreet so we’ll blend in,” Sparky said.
“I think I’ll go for bad ties like I’m a lesbian stuck in time. That’s always a turnoff. And I think you should go in a dress.”
“A dress?” Sparky was mortified. “I look horrid in dresses.”
“That’s exactly what I want. The les-cruisers won’t give you a second glance, so no worries,” Vibro said.
“Les-cruisers? Did you make that up?”
“No, it’s in the lesbo-dictionary, which defines it as ‘a lesbian who sits in a bar watching as other women enter the bar to see if they stand a rat’s ass in hell of getting laid.’ That’s not verbatim, but you get the picture.”
“You are full of shit,” Sparky said, pawing her way through a rack of trouser suits.
“But I think I’d look pretty hot in this one-piece polyester jumpsuit.” She held it up. It looked like one of the skins Elvis had cast off, complete with oversized collar
and rhinestone belt.
“No, don’t do it. I’m fairly certain that the les-cruisers will take a good hard look at your ass in an outfit like that and really like it,” Sparky replied, pulling out a burgundy crushed velvet pantsuit. This was the very thing. Sixties retro and Austin Powers combined.
“I don’t know about that, but I would stand out. They’d probably think I was a drag queen. How about these HASH jeans and this sparkly shirt? Now that takes me back.” Vibro held up the jeans. “There is an enormous amount of material here. Half of the underpaid and abused garment workers of many Third World countries were involved in the making of these pants. I forgot how big the legs were and how thick the denim is. They weigh like ten pounds.”
“It’s your civic duty to give them a good home.”
Vibro checked the size. “These should fit.”
“There’s a changing room,” Sparky said, pointing. “Let’s try this stuff on.” She draped the crushed velvet pantsuit over her shoulder.
If the phrase could be used outside a nineteenth century novel, Vibro looked “aghast” as she stared at the crushed velvet pantsuit. “You’re not serious.”
“Yes, I am. I’ve always wanted one and now the universe has presented me with it and I am not one to spit in the face of providence.”
“Oh, I get it. People will stare. If they’re staring at you they most certainly aren’t looking at me. You’re the diversion.” Vibro narrowed her eyes and studied Sparky.
“Exactly.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to be a wallflower in my life. Let’s go.”
They changed into their outfits. Vibro laughed so hard her face turned purple when she saw Sparky in the burgundy crushed velvet pant suit.
When she finally stopped laughing, she said, “I can’t believe you’re willing to do this for me. I don’t think anyone has ever done anything this sweet for me.”
“It’s my pleasure. Now, we need to find me a hat. My hair is a dead giveaway.”
“I suppose asking for an Afro wig would be asking too much,” Vibro said.
Love Over Moon Street Page 16
