In Sheep's Clothing

by Mary Monroe

  “My daddy’s old, too. Should we move him in with us, too?” I knew that that was a dumb question. Daddy would rather get a whupping than move out of his beloved house.

  “I wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

  “We need to give ourselves some time to think about what we are planning to do. Getting married, buying a house, raising kids. That’s a lot of responsibilities, James.”

  “We’ve been giving all this some thought for ten years. How much more time you think you’ll need?” he hollered, stomping his foot so hard on the floor the lamps rattled.

  “I don’t know, James. I just need a little more time to think things through again,” I told him, waving my hands and shaking my throbbing head. A massive headache had eased its way into the mix, making me feel even more agitated.

  “Trudy, don’t make me wait too long. I’ve been more than patient with you. Against my better judgment, I agreed to let you get a job and work for a while. Mama told me that was my first mistake.”

  CHAPTER 37

  “James, let’s get one thing straight right now: the year is 2005, not 1905. I am not your property so you didn’t let me do a damn thing.” I stabbed James in the chest with the tip of my finger as I spoke, making him flinch. I looked him straight in the eye and didn’t shift my eyes until I said everything I had to say. “You got that? My daddy’s name is Otto and his job of raising me is over. I don’t need permission from him to do what I want to do, and I damn sure don’t need it from you.” I said such a mouthful I almost lost my breath. I had to lean forward and rub my chest to keep from having an anxiety attack.

  With his jaw hanging open, James bowed his head and raked his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t mean for that to come out the way it did. I don’t like to see you like this.”

  “Well, if you don’t talk that kind of shit to me, you won’t see me like this,” I said evenly.

  I had reached a crossroad in my life and I didn’t know which way to turn. All I knew was, I wanted to enjoy my freedom a little longer.

  My plans were too complicated at the moment for me to focus on James. But I had to give some serious thought to the fact that if he irritated me now, what would it be like to spend the next forty or fifty years with him if we got married?

  There were things that I had to get out of my system first. I’d never been able to afford some of the things I had and did now. I had to take advantage of every opportunity I had. As soon as James took me home later that Saturday night, I called up Freddie.

  “Tell LoBo I’ll give him the pictures he asked for tomorrow,” I said, blurting out the words while she was still talking.

  “You better be sure now. Don’t you have my man going through all the trouble of hooking you up with all this shit, and then you back out,” Freddie warned.

  “I won’t back out,” I promised. “I’ll throw in another trip to Reno for you,” I added. It did a lot for my ego for me to be in a position where I could do nice things for my friends.

  “Well, I could sure use a trip to Reno,” Freddie squealed with delight. “I’ve had one hell of a week.”

  After I hung up the telephone, I slept like a baby. I couldn’t wait for Monday to arrive.

  When it did, I got to work an hour earlier than my usual time. A red-flagged e-mail from Mr. Rydell to the entire staff, that had been sent even earlier, informed us that Ann was going to be out of the office for the next week. She had left the night before to accompany a country club group on a cruise to the Mediterranean, a trip that Mr. Rydell had been scheduled to take himself.

  I found out the rest of the story from two of the reps later that morning. While I occupied a stall in the ladies’ room, Lupe and Joy entered, already involved in a juicy conversation. “What a shame. Marty’s wife should get herself a job for a change so she can stop telling Marty how to do his,” Lupe said, sucking on her teeth as she spoke. “Does this dress make my butt look too big?”

  Joy cackled first then spoke in a low, but very serious tone of voice. “Oh, Marty’s just a big pussy and he’s getting fucked inside out. Ann wanted that trip to Greece in the first place. I knew that when she invited Marty’s wife to dinner at her condo the other day, she was going to cook up more than a meal. She got that trip to Greece, and Marty has to stay here to fight with that behemoth he married. Tsk tsk.” I held my breath as the two women moved across the room with their high heels click-clacking across the tiled floor. “It’s the mirror that makes your butt look too big. Look at my nose; now look at it in the mirror. Big difference, huh?” Joy said, expelling a loud burp and excusing herself. “I had a burrito for breakfast,” she explained.

  I waited until I heard Lupe and Joy leave the restroom before I flushed the toilet. I didn’t realize I was humming until I made it back to my desk.

  “You sure are cheerful. Especially for somebody who looks so bloated today,” Pam said, straightening the brochure rack. Her last comment must have slipped out by mistake. With her own stomach looking like a melon, Pam rarely called attention to that part of a woman’s body. “Uh, are you glad that Ann’s going to be out of the office for a week?” she asked meekly, a pleading look on her face. One thing I tried my best not to do was to degrade another person to his or her face. There was a lot I could say about everybody I knew, especially my coworkers. But I chose not to. I felt better about myself knowing that there was at least one positive thing that set me apart from them.

  “You could say that,” I said with a grin. I stopped and helped Pam straighten brochures on the rack, something I’d never done before.

  Two days later LoBo supplied me with a brand new California driver’s license. Unlike the sour-faced picture on my real license, where I looked like I was posing for a mug shot, on my bogus license I had a grin on my face that reached from ear to ear.

  CHAPTER 38

  The following Friday, LoBo informed me at the last minute that he was going to accompany Freddie and me to Reno that weekend. I was not too pleased to hear this, but under the circumstances, there was little I could do to get out of it.

  “Lord knows I could use me a little R and R, and Reno is just as good a place to do it as anyplace,” he told me. “Besides, I need to keep a eye on my woman,” he said gruffly, winking at me as he slurped his fourth rum and Coke. “I got a lot invested in this girl.” He grinned and gently rubbed the side of Freddie’s head. Her face lit up like a streetlight. I sat across from them at a wobbly table in a sleazy bar that I didn’t want to be in in the first place, down the street from their apartment. Freddie and I had joined LoBo right after work. “Do I smell buffalo wings?” LoBo’s left eyebrow shot up as he tilted his head to look at me out of the corner of his eye.

  I shook my head. “I don’t smell anything,” I snapped. We had already racked up a long tab in my name. Well, actually, the tab was in Ann’s name.

  LoBo snapped his long ashy fingers. “Well, could I smell some buffalo wings?” LoBo grinned and squeezed Freddie’s shoulder. “I promised my honey she wouldn’t have to cook tonight.”

  “They do serve some screaming snacks up in here, girl.” Freddie nodded as she reached across the table and patted my hand.

  Before I could say another word, LoBo summoned our waiter and ordered another round of drinks. Freddie put in an order for almost every snack on the menu. With a whisper she said, “We may as well get in the mood for Reno.” I knew then that LoBo and Freddie had cooked up their own scheme for him to get a free trip to Reno on me, too.

  Freddie had a large poster tacked on a hallway wall in her apartment of her and me made up to look like Thelma and Louise. There was another poster facing it that depicted Freddie and LoBo as Bonnie and Clyde. Although the posters were a bit extreme, I couldn’t think of anything that represented us three “outlaws” better.

  I could not believe how potent greed was. It had me acting like a fool, and that was bad enough. But it seemed like no matter how much I gave LoBo, he always wanted more. Even though I had treated
him and Freddie to snacks at the bar, LoBo decided he was still hungry. I treated him and Freddie to a late dinner at an Italian restaurant across town later that same night. He had stuffed so much food into his mouth that he was in pain. But he still had the nerve to order food to go, too! We didn’t even discuss me gassing up his car. He just pulled up at a service station on the way home and turned to me with his palm open.

  I had paid LoBo five hundred dollars for the fake ID and birth certificate. His trip to Reno was a bonus he felt he deserved. His behavior annoyed me. It ruined what might have been a wonderful mini-vacation for Freddie and me, had she and I gone to Reno alone like we’d originally planned.

  What made it even worse was the fact that I couldn’t discuss LoBo’s behavior with Freddie. I knew I couldn’t cross certain lines with her. The last thing I wanted to do was put her in a position where she had to choose between her man and me. It took a lot of discipline, but I managed to keep LoBo happy. I didn’t like giving in to him. I did it because I wanted to stay on his good side in case I needed his services again. Besides, he had the resources and connections to get me any- and everything I needed to keep my scheme going well.

  So that everything would be consistent, I had chosen to go along with Ann’s real birthday. Which meant that under my new identity I was thirty-five.

  “I don’t like being that old,” I whined, admiring the new license as I slid it into the new sealskin wallet I’d purchased the same day we went to Reno. “Some people don’t even believe I’m twenty-eight. My real age.”

  “That should be the least of your worries. And I’m tellin’ you right now, if you get caught, you don’t know me,” LoBo warned with a threatening look and a finger in my face. “I done stayed out of the joint all these years, and I ain’t fin to go now on account of this bullshit you got me caught up in.”

  “Brother, you know I’d never rat you out,” I said, meaning every word.

  LoBo nodded, but there was a stone cold look on his face. “I’m just lettin’ you know the real deal now so you don’t get confused,” he told me. “Do you hear me?” There was an ominous tone in his voice and that frightened me, but just a little. I’d known LoBo for years and had never known him to do anything violent. He was just a crook, but he had better morals than a lot of honest people I knew. He loved his woman, his kids, and the rest of his family. LoBo even treated his dog, an aging basset hound named Lucille, as well as he treated his kids. As a matter of fact, he claimed Lucille as a dependent on his taxes, and even had a MasterCard in that long-eared dog’s name. I had to admire a man with that kind of devotion.

  It didn’t take long for me to regret that I’d recruited LoBo into my scam. I knew that I would have to work hard to keep things in order. There were times when those credit cards actually felt hot in my hand. In Reno every time I pulled one out to pay for something, my hand flinched. Even though I was having a good time I couldn’t wait to get back home where I could hide out in my bedroom and organize my next move.

  As soon as I made my way from my second floor suite to the casino on the first floor at Harrah’s to join Freddie and LoBo, I had to withdraw three hundred dollars from an ATM to give to LoBo. It was another bonus that LoBo decided he deserved. “Girl, that Ann Oliver heifer is one cow that we need to milk till she can’t be milked no more.” He laughed, dancing a jig and balancing a drink in one hand, the fifteen twenties from me in the other. I didn’t agree with his comment about Ann. Well, she was a heifer. I agreed with that part, but the money was not coming from Ann’s pocketbook so she wasn’t being milked. If anybody was, it was me and LoBo was the one squeezing my titties.

  I had given LoBo the money anyway because I wanted to keep the peace, and he’d already lost all of his own money playing blackjack.

  It was worth it to me because I couldn’t stand to see a grown man pout. At least that’s what I explained to Freddie when she told me I was spoiling her man.

  CHAPTER 39

  Reno was usually a nice place to visit. But it was always nice to return to California. Especially after losing a fortune in the slot machines the way Freddie and I did.

  “In less than two days I lost more gambling than I make in a month on my job,” Freddie complained, a worried look on her face. “Do me a big favor, girlfriend, don’t make it so easy for me to ‘borrow’ money from you in the future. Those cards you got in your purse are getting dangerous.”

  “I am beginning to think that same thing myself,” I replied. The fact that I’d gambled and lost and had nothing to show for it bothered me. “We’ll have to be more careful next time.”

  “Next time? Girl, how long do you plan to do this thing? This shit is truly crazy. Now you do know that, don’t you?”

  I gave Freddie a thoughtful look, dismissing her with a wave of my hand. “But I don’t plan on doing it too much longer, anyway. Let’s just have a little fun while we can. This might be the only chance we get to live like queens.”

  Freddie occupied the seat next to me on the plane back to California from Reno. LoBo was in a window seat behind us, sipping on his third glass of wine in the last half hour. He was disgusted because he had lost so much money. But he was not half as disgusted as I was. While he had thrown away money with both hands, playing the tables and ten dollar slot machines, Freddie and I had stuck to the nickel machines. First chance I got, I pretended to be asleep. I stayed like that all the rest of the way home.

  When I walked into the house that Sunday night, Daddy was in the kitchen scrubbing a scorched skillet with a Brillo pad. “Wipe your feet and get on in here and call that James back. He been callin’ here every hour on the hour,” Daddy said, glancing at me over his shoulder. His face was covered in grease and sweat. A soiled dish towel was draped around his shoulders like a stole. He paused long enough to swipe his face with the dish towel. “Did you hear what I just said, gal?”

  “Yes, Daddy. I’ll call James before I go to bed,” I moaned.

  I fled to my room, still wrapped up in the new nylon jacket that I had purchased for my trip to Reno. My mood was dark and I had to be alone so that I could sort out my feelings. I had to think about what I’d let happen in the last couple of days. It was enough to make my head spin. Not only had I lost a great deal of money in Reno, I had paid for three round-trip plane tickets, our meals, the hotel rooms, room-service charges for the four adult movies LoBo and Freddie watched in their room, LoBo’s airport parking, and the small fortune that I’d given to him and Freddie to gamble with. I plopped down on the side of my bed. It was only then that I noticed I had put my new pumps on the wrong feet before leaving Reno. I noticed something else that disturbed me: my hands were trembling. I balled my hands into fists, hoping to make them stop shaking. When that didn’t work, I grabbed a pillow and hugged it against my chest. My diagnosis was that I was having an anxiety attack. Just as I was getting really worried, the telephone on my nightstand rang. The caller ID identified Freddie’s telephone number so I grabbed it immediately.

  “Thank . . . thank God it’s you,” I said, my voice trembling as much as my hands.

  “You sound delirious. Are you all right? You seemed worried on the way home. LoBo noticed it, too. He told me to call and check up on you,” Freddie told me in a genuinely concerned voice.

  “I’m fine. I was just a little tired from all the running around we did.” I paused and let out a sharp, hollow laugh. “And I was ticked off because I lost so much money in those damn slot machines.”

  “Oh. Well, we had a good time and we wanted to thank you again. Me and LoBo don’t get to get out of town much since we had the kids. We appreciate everything you do for us.”

  “Thanks, Freddie.” An uncomfortably long moment of silence passed before we spoke again. I didn’t know what else was on Freddie’s mind, but I had a feeling it was something I didn’t want to hear. “Freddie, are you still there?” I asked dumbly.

  I could hear background noises and Freddie’s loud breathing. She followed that up
with what sounded like a symphony of gibberish. Before I could ask her to speak more clearly, she cleared her throat and spoke not only more clearly, but in a voice so loud I had to hold the telephone away from my ear for a moment. “Now don’t get mad,” she began in a stilted voice. “But I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  “What is it?” I braced myself.

  “How much does James know about . . . you know?”

  I sucked on my teeth. “Why would I get mad about you asking me something as lame as that?”

  “Well, with him being your man, I would think that you tell him certain things. Like I do with LoBo. How much have you told him?”

  “Nothing. And he never will know about . . . you know, the credit card thing. He would have my head on a platter if he knew I was doing something so, um, you know.”

  “You can’t even say it, can you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked in a voice so small I hardly recognized it as my own.

  “It’s called identity theft, Trudy.”

  “I know what it’s called,” I snapped.

  “It’s been in the news a lot lately. Associated Press, Time magazine. There are whole Web sites devoted to it. Millions, and I do mean millions of folks have been victims.”

  “Why are you telling me all this shit, Freddie? I read. I watch the six o’clock news. I already know what’s going on.”

  “Then I guess you know about all the folks doing time for stealing other peoples’ identities. One woman in D.C. stole her own daughter’s identity. A man right here in California fucked up all of his young kids’ credit by using their Social Security numbers and names. I just thought that you should know all that.”

  “I know all I need to know. Anyway, I don’t plan to do this too much longer. I’ll stop before it gets out of hand . . .”

  “Like I said, I appreciate all you’ve done for us,” Freddie said, sounding tired. “But if you do get caught, I want you to know I won’t turn my back on you the way some friends would.”