School of Fortune

by Amanda Brown

  “He’s got such a cute butt,” one girl told the other.

  Pippa severely bit her tongue. Luckily her salesgirl and three assistants laden with boxes were approaching. Pippa led them out to the SUV and rocketed out of the Neiman’s lot. She did her grocery shopping at a Hispanic supermarket on the down side of Dallas. Everyone there presumed her jewelry was fake and/or she was a stray from a halfway house. She got back to Ginny’s place just in time for reruns of Another World. After consuming half a pint of Häagen-Dazs Rum Raisin, she listened to her phone messages. Sheldon had called six times, so she called him back. “Good news. Driving school starts tomorrow. It goes for a week.”

  “Then I’ll be a billionaire?”

  “If you pass the course, yes, I’m afraid so. You will enroll under what name?” Silence. “It’s almost five o’clock. If I don’t get you in today, you’ll have to wait another month.”

  Pippa watched the credits scroll by on television. Zoe, Patty, Vonda, Carly, Perdita . . .

  “Perdita,” she said. That had a nice ring to it. “Bacardi.”

  “Where did you find that name?”

  “On the credits for Another World.”

  “You can’t possibly do that. The real Perdita Bacardi will sue you for the entire billion. Give me another last name. Quickly.”

  Pippa looked around the room. Ginny had left a stack of Central America travel books on the dining table. Panama. Honduras. Nicaragua. Costa ... “Rica.”

  “Perdita Rica? Are you serious?”

  “Do it, Sheldon! It’s just a name.”

  “I’ll get back to you in a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Pippa unfolded the Dallas Morning News, which Ginny had forgotten to put on hold when she left town. Her calm vaporized as she saw an article on the front page. LOVERS’ LAWSUITS LIKELY. Apparently Rosimund was seeking full restitution from Thayne for the cost of the Henderson Ball, a mere ten million dollars. That figure would double if Rosimund compensated her guests, as any respectable Houston woman would, for plane fare, meals, clothing, and mental suffering. Never one to pass up a good catfight, Thayne was countersuing Lance for twenty millions dollars for sexual harassment plus the cost of her guests’ plane fares, meals, clothing, mental suffering, and liquor. Neither Lance nor Pippa was available for comment. In fact they had both disappeared, giving rise to rumors that the couple had eloped, playing a practical joke on two overbearing matriarchs.

  Spinoff articles jammed the Living section of the paper. Gossip columnists had a ball with the several dozen men who had come forward claiming to be Pippa’s secret paramour. After reading every last word, Pippa sleepwalked to the freezer. She opened the remaining half carton of Haagen-Dazs, filled it to the brim with rum, shook vigorously, and began to drink. Instead of abating, this story was spreading like an Ebola virus.

  Sheldon called back. “You’re to be in school tomorrow at nine sharp. If you pass, you’ll be forgiven the moving violation and two points. You will inherit a fortune. Pippa, are you there?”

  “Pippa is not here. Perdita is here. Pippa is dead.”

  “Are you speaking with food in your mouth?”

  “I’ve been reading the newspapers.”

  “That is something I can’t prevent, but would advise you to stop doing at once.”

  “Mama’s being sued.”

  “If you pass driving school, you will be able to reimburse both Thayne and Rosimund all by yourself. I hope that gives you some sense of purpose, if not poetic justice.”

  Pippa cringed at the reminder that Thayne’s current difficulty was all her fault. “I’ll make it up to her, Sheldon. In one week this will be all over.”

  “I certainly hope so.” He explained that Pippa must take care not to let anyone know her true identity. It hadn’t been easy convincing the police that an alias was in everyone’s best interest because, every so often, they liked to make an example of a rich and famous scofflaw. “Don’t socialize with anyone in class. Try to obliterate any traces of Pippa Walker.”

  “But I just bought a new wardrobe at Neiman Marcus.”

  “I hope it’s very unassuming.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re going to blend into the linoleum. Perdita Rica should be a waitress or someone of that ilk.”

  Pippa went to the bedroom. The pile of clothing on the bed included a red ruffly dress, a purple leather jacket, some hot-pink tops, a tight white skirt, and a black V-neck sheath, all very clingy and obviously designer. That wouldn’t do, so Pippa changed back into camping gear. She grabbed the Lexus keys, then paused: last thing she needed was a DUI citation. She called a cab. When it appeared out front, she donned the safari hat and sunglasses. “Take me to Wal-Mart,” she told the driver.

  As they slogged to a less privileged section of town, Pippa studied young female pedestrians, hoping to gain a few wardrobe tips for her Perdita Rica persona. Apparently rule number one was Less Is More, particularly when covering the gluteus maximus. Rule number two was No Pastels, Earth Tones, or Small Prints. Rule number three was Tight. As she observed the flesh bursting from every available gap, Pippa realized that if she really wanted to blend into the linoleum, she should put on fifty pounds and wear short shorts, a rayon halter top, and five-inch platforms to driving school. Rule number four was Dark Hair.

  “Wait for me here,” Pippa said when the cab reached Wal-Mart.

  She had never been inside such a store before. The place smelled like fake food. She didn’t see one carpet on the floor. People pushed their carts around as if they were in a demolition derby.

  “Hi,” greeted a guy in a wheelchair. “Looking for something in particular?”

  “Do you have a designer clothing section?”

  “Like Fruit of the Loom? Sure. Over there.”

  Pippa grabbed a shopping cart and zigzagged forward until she found a sea of tank tops. She tossed a handful of those and two skirts into her cart. Taking a cue from teenage girls at the next rack, she acquired a pair of flip-flops with thick rubber soles. She was at the jewelry counter buying a watch when the woman next to her said, “Excuse me, but are you that bride? Pip something?”

  Stay calm, Pippa commanded herself. “I’m afraid not. My name is Perdita.” She raised her voice a few decibels. “Perdita Rica.”

  “Perdita! That means little lost girl’ in Spanish. And rica means ‘rich.’ So I guess you’re a poor little lost rich girl! Just like that old movie with Betty Hutton.”

  Pippa forced herself to smile. “Yes, people have been kidding me about that my whole life.”

  “You really look like that girl, you know. You could make money impersonating her at parties.”

  “Now that’s a thought.” In a panic, Pippa hit the drugstore for black hair color. What had given her away? Only her mouth and a few inches of cheekbone were showing. The saturation coverage must have made her instantly recognizable, like the Hulk. She picked up a tattoo kit and some truly offensive nail polish before joining the checkout line. Her shoulders ached from trying to make her neck disappear. Fortunately those next to her in line were either reading the magazines, attending to screaming infants, or filching malted milk balls from two-pound bags. As she inched forward, Pippa read the Clairol instruction booklet. Dyeing one’s own hair seemed more complicated than open heart surgery; no wonder professionals like Brent charged six hundred dollars to do it in a salon.

  Pippa was about to drop out of line and look for the wig department when the woman ahead of her stuffed the National Enquirer back in the rack. Pippa was stupefied to see a picture of herself, in her wedding gown, on the front page. In fact she was on the cover of Us, People, the Examiner, Globe, and Sun. MURDER PLOT UNCOVERED. TEXAS FIZZLE. WHAT WENT WRONG? QUARTERBACK SNEAK. I DON’T! Beneath the headlines were shots of her dancing with Lance at the Henderson Ball, high school yearbook pictures of them both, football shots, pictures of her grandfather, even a blurry photo purporting to be Thayne and Rosimund slugging it ou
t in a mud pit. There was a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for finding her.

  “That slut should be strung up,” the woman commented, noticing Pippa staring at the rack.

  “It was all arranged by the mother.” The beanpole at the register spoke with the accumulated wisdom of fifty years in front of a television set. “So she could get Rosimund’s money.”

  “That poor boy,” the first woman clucked, departing with four floor fans. “Have a blessed day.”

  The beanpole began whipping Pippa’s tank tops past the bar code reader. “You buying that box or just reading it, hon?”

  Keeping her chin down, Pippa handed over the Clairol kit. “Sorry.”

  “That comes to seventy-eight fifty.”

  Something was seriously out of whack. Pippa’s cheapest skirt at Neiman’s had cost three times as much as the entire cartload here. She might be a fugitive, but she wasn’t a thief. “Are you sure?”

  The woman checked. “Dang! That code didn’t read right.” Now everything came to seventy-one fifty. “Out of one hundred cash.”

  Pippa hardly dared breathe as the woman studied the bill from many angles, making sure it wasn’t counterfeit. She accepted her change and ran into the withering heat of the parking lot. Her cab was idling in a handicap space. “Get me home,” she cried, diving into the back seat.

  Each time the cab passed a newsstand, drugstore, or supermarket, half of her wanted to leap out and buy every tabloid in sight. The other half of her wanted to join a monastery in Tibet. When the driver finally stopped at Ginny’s place, Pippa gave him a hundred dollars and rushed inside like a vampire singed by the light. She triple-locked the door and pulled every drape shut. She sat in the dark, numbly waiting for someone to turn the lights on and tell her this was all a bad dream.

  Ten

  Driving school met in the function room of Happy Hour Motel on Harry Hines Boulevard. Situated next to train tracks, it got poor online reviews for noise and fumigation. Local hookers were the motel’s biggest clients; the Texas Department of Public Safety ran a close second. State officials thought of it as a de facto penal institution and hoped, correctly, that after a week in a classroom reeking of roach bomb and fried eggs, miscreant drivers would do anything never to go back.

  Officer Vernon Pierce glanced up from the lectern as his final student rushed through the door at one minute before nine. “Perfect timing,” he said as she slid into a front row chair and flipped down the writing table. Nice legs! The rest was pretty atrocious, though. He had never seen such a bad hair dye job. She may as well have stuck her head in a bucket of tar. Tattoos disfigured her arms and the bluish-gray nail polish looked straight out of the morgue. She was wearing two halter tops, each covering a couple of inches that the other one missed. The white skirt with little cherries on it, stiff as cardboard, was obviously brand-new. Wal-Mart special. The girl’s footwear looked like a wedge of Dunlop tire. The heavy gold ankle bracelet didn’t fit with anything at all. “And you are?”

  “Perdita Rica.”

  Strange, she didn’t look Hispanic. In fact her eyebrows were blond.

  “Good morning, everyone. My name is Officer Pierce. We’re going to be best friends for the next five days, so let’s get started by telling each other why we’re here.” He pointed to a gangly teenager in overalls in the front row. “Billy. You first.”

  “I didn’t commit no offense. I’m innocent.”

  “Then tell us what offense you were unjustly accused of.”

  “Driving my tractor.”

  Officer Pierce studied his printout. “Billy is correct. He was driving his tractor. What he neglects to mention is that he was driving it in downtown Dallas although his father’s peanut farm is in Abilene. The laws of Texas forbid operating a tractor over one hundred and fifty miles from one’s farm.”

  “My pickup broke and I had to get to a prom.”

  “Your date must have loved that.” Pierce passed on to the next student. “How about you, Tom?”

  A paunchy man who looked shortchanged by life said, “It’s really unfair that I should lose my driver’s license when I wasn’t even driving and causing any danger.”

  “My heart bleeds for you.” Pierce consulted his printout. “Unfortunately you dropped two empty Whopper cartons, two supersized Cokes, a bag of Reese’s Pieces, a package of Pringles, and half an ice cream cone out the window of your car although you were in a rest area not thirty feet from a trash bin.”

  “That is disgusting, man.” Billy twisted around in his seat. “You ate all that?”

  “No sermons, please,” Pierce interrupted. “If one chooses to litter in the beautiful state of Texas, one will lose one’s driver’s license and incur a fine. How about you, Gordon?”

  A thirtysomething redneck muttered, “I was in my boat, minding my own business.”

  “Perhaps so, but you had a blood alcohol level of point one seven. According to the laws of Texas, those who choose to go boating while intoxicated will lose their driver’s license.”

  “Everyone drinks a few beers while they’re fishing,” Gordon protested. “Otherwise it’s not fair to the fish.”

  Pierce addressed an elderly black woman in the rear row. “Hattie! Tell us why you’re here.”

  “I don’t know, Officer. I’ve been driving for seventy-five years and never so much as hit a jackrabbit. Then the other day this officer came up out of the blue and pulled me over.”

  “Let me explain, then. You were going twenty-five miles per hour on an interstate highway where the maximum speed limit is seventy and the minimum speed limit is forty. You were therefore driving fifteen miles per hour under the minimum.”

  “You mean I’m being punished for going too slow?”

  “Correct. Let’s hear from you, Seymour.”

  A skinny black teenager wearing pants that would have been voluminous on Humpty Dumpty said, “I’m an urban artist, man. That’s all I’m gonna say here.”

  “Artist? The police report states you were defacing private property. According to the laws of Texas, if you choose to cover other people’s walls with graffiti, you will lose your driver’s license.”

  “That’s so white,” Seymour fumed.

  “And you, Carrie-Jo?”

  Scrawny trailer trash answered, “I was just talking on my phone.”

  Pierce perused a few sentences in his printout. “If we gave a prize for understatement, you’d win. In the state of Texas it is illegal to follow a fire truck at a distance of less than five hundred feet. It is also illegal to cause a crash while talking on a cell phone. Carrie-Jo managed to crash into the rear of a fire truck while talking on her cell phone.”

  “It was an important call,” she pouted.

  “How about you, Lola?”

  A bodacious young woman minimally dressed as Santa Claus replied, “I’m a professional valet.”

  “You were going thirty miles an hour in reverse and T-boned a Jaguar. According to the laws of Texas, reckless driving will cost your license.”

  “Give me a break! He should have had his lights on.” Shaking his head, Pierce focused on his last student. Cute little face, if you could get past the hair. “Perdita. What brings you here?” “I was speeding.”

  The class erupted in cheers. “You go, girl! Glad to know we got one legit criminal here!”

  “Quiet! You were also driving without your license and you ignored the flashing blue lights behind you for twenty miles.”

  “I’m sorry. I was singing along with Josh Groban.”

  Pierce passed a hand over his eyes. This class made skid row look like Princeton. “As I listen to your stories, I detect a common thread. NOT MY FAULT! I DIDN’T DO NUTTIN’! Let me set the record straight. You are not victims. You broke the law. That’s why you’re here. Rule number one: driving is a privilege, not a right. Any questions?”

  He waited a full ten seconds for an answer. Finally Perdita finished scribbling in a spiral notebook. “No, sir.”

  “I
n order to pass this course you’re going to show up on time every day. You’re going to do your homework. You’re going to score seventy percent or better on a rules test, a signs test, a vision test, and a driving test. That’s four tests! Do you think you can handle that?”

  Eight coconuts would have responded with more animation. Officer Pierce finally detected movement in the front row, in the form of a teardrop rolling down Perdita’s cheek. “What’s the problem, Perdita? Surely you’ve taken tests before.”

  “I’m sorry, Officer Pierce. It’s just that you look like my ex-fiance.” She removed a lace handkerchief from her purse.

  Carrie-Jo ceased chomping her bubble gum. “Sweetie! Did he dump you?” Women never cried if they did the dumping.

  “Quiet! In this room you open your mouth if I ask you a question. Otherwise you keep it shut tighter than the trunk of a Cadillac.” Pierce walked up and down the rows, dropping a little booklet on everyone’s desk. “Here is your own personal Texas Drivers’ Handbook. Consider it your Bible for the next five days.”

  “For shame, sir,” Hattie gasped.

  “I was speaking figuratively.” As he dropped a manual on Perdita’s desk, Officer Pierce noticed her perfume: heavy but intriguing. “Open to chapter one. ‘Your License to Drive. Who May Operate a Motor Vehicle in Texas. One: residents who have a valid Texas driver license.’“

  Gordon, the beery fisherman, raised his hand. “Are we going to sit here and read to each other all week? I can read the book at home and come back for the test.”

  Excellent suggestion, but this course wasn’t about making life easy. “Since you claim to be literate, Gordon, why don’t you read the manual for us right now. Start on page one.”

  Gordon began reading a soporific text describing the nine types of driver who could legally operate a motor vehicle in Texas. Officer Pierce observed the class as Gordon droned on. He already knew who would pass and who would fail. Old Hattie would pass, if she got through the vision test. So would Perdita, who was underlining nearly every sentence in the manual with her yellow highlighter. The guys would mostly fail because they all thought they knew this stuff and could wing it on test day. Carrie-Jo’s passing depended on her ability to cheat. Lola wouldn’t finish the course.