Ruby's Misadventures With Reality

by Samantha Bohrman

  This morning, though, she needed to figure out her own business. She looked over her bank statement with despair.

  Starbucks…$4.56, Starbucks…$4.56, Starbucks…$7.87, Zappos…$189.87, Auntie Em’s…$10.55, Starbucks…$4.56, Starbucks…$4.56, Starbucks…$7.87, Zappos…$59.99, Auntie Em’s…$10.55, Starbucks…$9.00, Starbucks…$4.56, Auntie Em’s…$7.87, Etsy…$77.99, Auntie Em’s…$10.55, Auntie Em’s…$4.56, Pump&Munch …$59.18, Starbucks…$4.56, Starbucks…$7.96, Starbucks…$7.87, TJ Maxx…$56.88, Auntie Em’s…$10.55, Auntie Em’s…$4.56,

  Here was the hard evidence: she had spent her entire income on peep-toe shoes and vanilla lattes, tragically ironic since she no longer wore peep toes and tossed half of the lattes in the trash.

  She walked up to the counter and ordered a double vanilla latte. Yeah, she was out of money, but she needed a seven-dollar drink today. When she ordered, Em grimaced in horror and refused to make it. After Ruby insisted, Em relented, but made Ruby add her own shots of syrup so she could “understand the amount of sugar she was ingesting and be accountable for her own health.”

  Ruby responded, “Em, I’m so accountable it hurts,” which barely made sense to Ruby, but made Em tear up because the sentiment actually resonated with her. Em raised and butchered her own hogs to satisfy her personal code of ethics.

  Ruby looked at her bank statement again, but she was looking for something that wasn’t there: money. In a desperate call for help, she dialed her dad and asked him to meet her at the office. Her mom had already called about twenty times since the sex tape broke, so she might as well kill two birds with one stone: 1. Provide an explanation for her deviance, and 2. Get help with her finances.

  Fifteen minutes later Ray O’Deare called from the street. “Ruby, where’s the door for your office? I can’t find it.”

  “Oh, you have to walk through Ming’s store. There’s a stairway to my office at the back.” She just couldn’t call it LA Tits when speaking with her dad.

  “The underwear store?” he asked, also declining to use the word “tits.”

  “Yep. That’s the one. My door is right behind the rack of clearance bras.” Somehow saying this sounded so much worse after a sex scandal.

  Ray O’Deare walked into the office looking very uncomfortable. Entering Ming’s shop violated his lifelong boycott of lingerie shops. Maurine made a damn fine macaroni casserole and bought her own underwear.

  Today, like every day, Ray wore a pair of work pants and an old flannel shirt, probably from 1987. He only spent money at the John Deere store. Like a small boy, he still loved any machine with a shovel attached and gladly smashed the piggy bank for the chance to park a shiny yellow machine with lots of levers and extendable parts.

  He sat down across from Ruby. “Hi, Rubik’s Cube. How are you doing?” Ray was also the king of awkward nicknames. They came into being as a lame attempt to bond with his teenage daughter and never went away. In that way, they were kind of cute.

  “Good, Dad, but I’m stuck on some of these business things, like all of them. Want me to order some lunch and look it over?”

  “How ’bout some Philly cheese steaks?”

  “Okay.” Ruby actually didn’t eat those, but she feigned enthusiasm for her dad’s sake. Her mom had put him on a diet last month. Maurine switched the dog to Canine Weight Loss dry food and Ray to salads.

  Ruby moved the stack of financial documents to his side of the desk and ordered the food. “I got you extra onions and cheese,” she said.

  He murmured his approval and began to sort through the bills methodically and, incredibly, without judgment. “Your mom made me promise to talk to you about this…uh… tape…” He trailed off, obviously not wanting to say any details out loud.

  “I’m sorry about that one. I didn’t know anything about it until I saw it on the news. I wasn’t in my right state of mind.” She paused trying to think of something else to say, but what do you say to your dad about a sex tape? “You’re going to love Noel, the guy, you know, the one in the tape with me.”

  Her dad cringed and sucked air through his teeth.

  “He’s a zoning commissioner,” Ruby said, as if that made the sex tape classier.

  Railroad tracks formed between her dad’s eyebrows. He shook his head. “I don’t know, honey.”

  “No, really. You’ll love him. You already met him once. I really, really like this one.”

  Her dad raised his hands in a dismissive gesture. “Just let me know if you need any sort of help.”

  “Just with finances, I think.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “I can do that.” After looking at her bank statements he said, “First of all, I’m wondering what you eat? Do you buy food at the coffee shop?”

  “I guess I eat Ming’s groceries. I contribute to the household expenses in other ways.” She looked at the statement for some evidence of that, but decided to let the point drop.

  “Okay,” he nodded. “Well, you have no money, but I like what you’ve started here,” he said gesturing to her business. “I think you need a good business plan, though.”

  Ruby steeled herself for the news that she had run the well dry and needed to sell the farm, move into her car, and live off food samples at Costco.

  Instead, he said, “First things first, you have a trust fund.”

  “For real? I knew you and mom were doing okay, but I had no idea!” She remembered that moment a few months ago standing in front of the fountain and wishing for a trust fund. Someone had heard!

  “You’re right. Your mom and I are only doing okay. We have enough, but most of our money is tied up in the house and the business. The trust is from—this is going to come as a surprise—your trust is from Oz.”

  Ruby stared back with confusion. “Why?” She had never met Oz, couldn’t pick him out of line-up, and didn’t even know the guy hightailed it to France, or wherever, after he got busted for running a deadly amusement park.

  “Sit down for a second, honey. It’s sort of a long story.”

  Ruby sat.

  “You remember before the Biomall and before Emerald turned into…well, what it is now?”

  She nodded.

  “Your mom was going through this naturalist phase and she spent tons of time bird watching.”

  Ruby couldn’t imagine her mom going through a naturalist phase, but she said, “And?”

  “When Oswald proposed building the mall, your mom and I attended all the local meetings, mainly because the mall was going in right across the road from us, right smack in the middle of the wetland where all the birds lived. We figured the Biomall would kill all those birds. Your mom just loved the bluebirds, the western speckled ones. Not only that, the place is right in a migratory bird path so a lot of the birds would fly smack into the mall and die. We had just watched some Nightline specials on that, you know. Your mom and I were real worried about bird kill so we sued the bastard. We got your Uncle Frank to draft the complaint one night.” He smiled fondly. “We were drunk.”

  She tried not to laugh.

  “Your mom doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s still a sore spot. The day they filled in the wetland and plowed through all those bird nests, well, it was like something died inside her. She didn’t really have any interests for a while after that, until she got you into pageants.”

  “Well, the lawsuit with Uncle Frank sounds like it was fun,” said Ruby, imagining her aunt and uncle and parents huddled around the kitchen table with a six-pack of beer in the old double-wide. Big dreams always seem that much more impressive in a little trailer over a card table, fueled by hunger and drive. In her sheltered, diamante-studded existence, she could yell out her dreams at the top of her lungs, but no matter how gusty her yell, the sound didn’t reverberate and nothing was left but a tiny voice in the overwhelming space of the mall atrium. She felt jealous of her parents in that little trailer. “Did Oz take you seriously? Bird-kill suits generally don’t get much traction.” Every now and then she
shocked herself by remembering something like this. Bird-kill suits—who knew she had that tid-bit filed away!

  “Yeah, it doesn’t sound like much, but the Kansas Supreme Court had just placed an injunction on a radio tower near Topeka, which was also proposed in a wetland in a migratory path. And, we hit a real nerve for Oz. You see, he knew he was building on a nesting site of an endangered bird. We didn’t know, didn’t even think to look it up, but Oswald knew that if the suit made it to court, the epa would get wind of it and there’d be a big to-do about endangered species. It probably would have stopped the mall completely.”

  Ruby nodded. “Why didn’t you win, then? What did he give you?”

  “He came over late one night with a pizza, all friendly, and sat down at the kitchen table with us. Your mom was real pregnant with you at the time and really happy about the pizza. We should have called Uncle Frank, but we didn’t think to. Oz is a charming bastard and he made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. He promised me exclusive rights to all the parking lot contracts in Emerald. Then he offered you a trust fund to be funded by 5 percent of the profits from the food court. Then, your mom got creative and insisted that she get to name the parking lots after her favorite birds. That’s why the parking lots have all those fruity bird names.”

  “What happened to the birds?” she asked, suddenly sad about the Biomall’s ugly side. Up until last week she had considered it an unassailable parent.

  “They died. Haven’t seen a one since they dug up that wetland.”

  Now, the question—should she feel guilty about the fact that her trust was paid for with a metric crap-ton of dead bluebirds? Best to know how much she was dealing with before making that call. She asked, “How much do I have?”

  “Millions. Mostly from Pretzel King and Fritter Queen.”

  “That makes me a…” Ruby trailed off without saying the word “princess” but it hung in the air like a cloud of heady perfume. Practically giddy with relief and delight, she felt all of her concerns evaporate. No more worrying about paying the bills, finding clients, covering daycare costs. No more worries! She suddenly felt flushed and excited, too excited to sit still. Shot full of adrenaline, she wanted to stand up and move, go for a run even. Noticing her dad’s serious stare, she tried not to act like a lottery winner and said, “That is really nice to hear.”

  With a little too much satisfaction for Ruby’s tastes, he said, “There’s a catch, though. You don’t have access until you’re thirty.”

  “What? That’s two years from now. I don’t think the business can make it that long.”

  “You’ll be fine. I can lend you a few thousand for business expenses, but you’ll have to get serious about budgeting. I’ll help you work it out. Should have taught you about money a long time ago. I guess now is as good a time as any. We’ll need to get those credit cards paid off. You can’t use them anymore.”

  “That’s all I have, Dad.”

  “I can help. I wish you could get a business loan, but you’re not going to qualify. I think we should start with a business credit card. In fact, let’s just do that today. I’ll co-sign.” He put in an application for a Visa for Client Advisors. With emphasis he said, “I’m tying myself to the fate of Client Advisors. We’re gonna sink or swim together, honey bun.”

  With that, it became apparent where Ruby’s business sense came from—it was genetic.

  While he was at it, he decided to shore up Ruby’s housing situation as well. Ray asked, “Also, have you decided where you are going to live after the baby comes?”

  With a sigh, she said, “I’m not sure yet.” Hopefully, she’d be living with Noel.

  Hopefully.

  “If you need to, your mom and I would be happy to have you come back home.”

  Ruby said, “Thanks, Dad,” but she didn’t think it would come to that. She couldn’t imagine anything more depressing than moving back into her old room. Imagining putting a bassinet next to her old pink canopy bed and boy band posters—she would rather move into the office.

  When her dad left, Ruby thanked him, then fell into a reflective silence. Being a trust funder might have been her dream, but waiting two years to become a trust funder had suddenly become Ruby’s nightmare. On a purely cerebral level she knew it was silly, but she wasn’t sure that she could make it. Not to mention, she’d never imagined that the road to fortune would be paved with dead bluebirds.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Peanuts

  The next morning, Ruby sat at her desk with her feet kicked up and the Magic 8 Ball resting on The Bump. Food court royalty or not, she still found herself squinting at the thing, wondering what to do for the day. The viewing window was a mess of foamy blue liquid. Underneath the churning froth, she could only see the edge of the rubber thing with the answers on it. Even though she knew it would make more froth, she shook it again. If she was three months more pregnant, she might have thrown it.

  Before she could resort to such dire actions, Ming came up the stairs, all stilettos on hardwood. She said, “Ruby, put the 8 Ball down and back away slowly. I’ve got plans for you today.”

  More than ready to take direction, Ruby set the ball down.

  “We are going to the Glass Chapel. Destinee is going to be there all day, so you could serve her with those papers. It’s some sort of Ozcorp PR thing she’s obligated to be at, a million prayers to raise money for epilepsy or some shtick like that.” Ming’s career as a cancer researcher had less to do with a desire to cure cancer and more to do with her observation that the National Institute of Health had a lot of grant money available for cancer research. Unfortunately for cancer, there was even more money in underwear sales.

  Ruby gave a blank look.

  Ming said it again slower. “You need to serve Ozcorp with those papers, right?” She treated Ruby like a rusted-out Buick that needed a few kicks to get started.

  “Yeah. I guess so. I just wasn’t thinking about that.” Mostly, she had been thinking about meeting Noel for lunch. She imagined them on the patio at Em’s. She’d put her feet up. He’d loosen his tie. Or maybe they could meet in her office, lock the door, and pull the shade on that frosted window. So many options!

  Ming rolled her eyes. “Seriously, Ruby. You have to serve someone, so you might as well serve Destinee. And, I need to do some recon at Gemima’s Closet. They’re launching a new line of bras I need to check out.”

  The prospect of shopping got her moving, and she put on her cowboy boots. As she stood, the boots pinched. Seemingly overnight, her feet had ballooned out to fill up all the space in the foot box. Hoping it was a passing phenomenon, she tried a few steps, but she could only move her legs enough to manage a stiff, hospital-corridor-shuffling-behind-your-walker gait, so she sat back down. “My shoes don’t fit. Do you think they shrank?”

  Impatient to leave, Ming cut to the chase. “It’s pregnancy. I heard that some women go up two shoe sizes. Do you have anything else to wear?”

  “No. That can’t be. That would make me like a size ten. That’s like WNBA big.” With more frustration than despair, she scanned the room for something else to wear. She settled on the red sequined slippers she’d taken from Estelle’s house. She had no money to buy new shoes, so they would have to do the job.

  Ming scoffed at the red slippers. “All right, Dorothy, let’s go to the mall and serve Oz.”

  Ruby picked up her envelope, shoved it in her handbag, and followed Ming out the door.

  At the mall, Ruby and Ming each ordered a vanilla latte with angel foam because Ruby insisted. “My treat. Pastor Rick loves them.”

  While they were waiting, Ruby wandered over to the glass elevator. Next to the elevator she noticed a dispenser with a vacuum tube system attached, the same type you see at bank drive-throughs. The vacuum tube went from the box all the way up into the belly of the glass chapel, running parallel to the glass elevator. The sign on the box advertised it as the Glass Chapel donation box and said, “Beam your money to Heaven!
All donations accepted.”

  Ruby pressed the red button and pulled out one of the “donation canisters.” She didn’t have any cash, but she did have lip gloss, a couple of business cards, and a hazelnut Ritter Sport candy bar. On impulse, she stuffed the Ritter Sport bar into the tube and shot it up to the church. Watching it shoot up the tube turned out to be a highly satisfying experience. A bag of airline peanuts and a Client Advisors card made the second trip. At this point she ran out of things she was willing to part with.

  Shooting random objects up the donation tube ran par for the course at the Chapel Mall. Since old people and tourists actually donated money via the tubes, the Chapel accepted the prank donations without comment, except for the warning, “Please do not load liquids or live animals into the donation canisters.” This reminded Ruby of a story she’d heard about someone shooting a goldfish up the tube. It was probably just an urban legend, but she couldn’t help but wonder. Ming handed her a latte and said, “Let’s go.”

  When the elevator doors opened to the Chapel, Ruby sashayed into the lobby in her tube dress, fur shrug, and red house slippers. Destinee, Pastor Rick, and a hot chick in tight zebra-striped pants were congregated around what Ruby assumed was the donation canisters receptacle. They appeared to be examining the most recent donations, which Ruby assumed must be her own.

  They strode up to the men. Ruby said, “Hi, nice to see you again Pastor, Destinee.” Then she looked at the woman, who was an Italian bombshell in the tradition of Sophia Lauren and guessed, “Fabrizia?”