School of Fortune

by Amanda Brown

  His sarcasm was not lost on Pippa. “I know it’s not exactly what my grandfather had in mind, Sheldon, but it’s a means toward an end. I could do a lot of good with a billion dollars.”

  If Sheldon had a dime for every oil heir who had told him that, he could buy Conoco. “We’ll revisit that concept once you graduate.”

  Pippa dressed in her second Wal-Mart outfit, a white pique shift with large purple flowers. The color scheme looked putrid with her inky hair. Before leaving she studied herself in the full-length mirror. She was not a convincing Latino: the proportion of boob to butt was the inverse of the ethnic ideal. Another serious problem caught her eye: her tattoos had washed off in the shower.

  Heart racing, Pippa looked at her watch. She’d never have time to restencil herself before class and she couldn’t be late again, so she grabbed a couple of Magic Markers and the first sweater she found in Ginny’s drawer. Rush-hour traffic was awful. The SUV tore into the Happy Hour Motel lot at two minutes before nine. Pippa sprinted past the exterminators fumigating the first floor. She slid into her front-row seat as Officer Pierce was opening the windows. “Sorry, class. AC’s on the fritz today.”

  “You don’t expect us to take a test in this heat,” Gordon the fisherman protested as Pierce passed out the quiz.

  “I not only expect you to take it, I expect you to pass it.” Few people ever did; Pierce had made the quiz extra difficult in order to scare everyone into studying harder for the final. Perdita seemed to be much more with it today, except for the mohair sweater. It was heavy enough to suffocate a llama. “Those of you wearing ties or jackets may feel free to remove them.” She didn’t budge. “Perdita?”

  “No thank you.” She smiled as sweat teemed down her legs, forehead, and stomach.

  He hoped she wasn’t trying to hide needle marks on her arms. That sexy perfume of hers was billowing off her like heat from a radiator. Officer Pierce forced himself to keep moving. After ten minutes he collected the quizzes. “You may visit the water fountain while I mark these.”

  Pippa rushed into the hallway and peeled off her sweater. “Seymour,” she called the moment he emerged from class. “Could I ask a huge favor?”

  “You name it, cream puff.”

  Pippa gave him a Magic Marker. “Would you mind drawing a couple of tattoos on my arms? Whatever inspires you.”

  They went to the lobby. As a few hookers watched, Seymour expertly covered Pippa’s arms with black lines and squiggles. “There you go. That ain’t comin’ off for a while.”

  Pierce did a double take as she returned to her seat, arms bared. They seemed to be covered with artistic renderings of male and female genitalia. Perdita seemed either totally unaware that everyone in class was snickering at her body art or she was taunting them with some twisted personal agenda.

  “All but one of you failed,” he said, dropping her quiz on her desk. She had scored a ninety-eight. Maybe she was an idiot savant. “That’s phenomenal, negatively speaking. Explain yourselves.”

  “The NBA finals were on last night.”

  “There were too many signs.”

  “Morning is not my best time.”

  “Those are excuses, not explanations. Perdita, you may sit by the pool while we review road signs.” Before she left Pierce handed her a thick envelope couriered to “Perdita Rica, Driving School, Happy Hour Motel.” No return address.

  From his desk Pierce observed Perdita at the swimming pool ripping open the envelope. It seemed to contain an enormous amount of cash. She tucked that into her purse then stared at the overchlorinated water for a spell. Then she made a call on her cell phone. Soon an Asian woman in a white lab coat arrived; Pierce watched in fascination as she gave Perdita a manicure, pedicure, and foot massage. He could barely take his eyes off Perdita’s disturbingly long legs as the woman applied layer after layer of polish to her toenails. Perdita dozed for a while; the sight of her lying innocently on her back made Pierce very itchy to go outside and lie somewhere on his stomach.

  Around eleven-thirty he saw a Lincoln roll into the lot. A uniformed chauffeur removed a picnic hamper from the trunk and snapped a tablecloth over the plastic table next to Perdita’s lounge chair. The fellow’s white-gloved hands removed china plates and a bouquet of roses from the hamper. As Perdita ate the first of three courses, the chauffeur retired to an imaginary sideboard, staring at the dilapidated train tracks beyond the chain-link fence as he waited to clear the table. The whole scene looked like a clone of The Great Gatsby but with major chromosomal damage.

  Pierce gave his class a second signs test. This time four students managed to answer seventy percent of the questions correctly, so he dismissed them for lunch. Perdita was just paying the butler as Pierce sauntered to the pool. He read the insignia on the man’s uniform. “Hotel Adolphus? That’s a step up from McDonald’s.”

  Perdita quickly said, “My grandfather works in the kitchen.”

  “I thought he just died.”

  She blushed a rich red. “That was my other grandfather.”

  Yeah, right. Pierce went to his official Texas state car. He had to pick up a video for this afternoon’s class. He turned the keys in the ignition but nothing happened. “Son of a bitch!”

  As he was bending over the hood, Perdita pulled up in her SUV. Its front grille looked like an automotive version of Hannibal Lecter’s restraint mask. “Need a ride? I was just going to drop off some laundry.”

  “Heading anywhere near the motor vehicle agency?”

  “It’s right on my way.”

  Pierce sank into the passenger seat. The SUV had every bell and whistle imaginable, yet Perdita dressed like a pauper. He pondered this inconsistency as she waited for a break in oncoming traffic.

  Ten breaks came and went. “Sorry,” Pippa said. “You make me a little nervous.”

  “Take your time.” He could stare at those legs all afternoon.

  At last Pippa pulled onto the highway. She didn’t dare talk lest Officer Pierce think she wasn’t paying attention to driving safety. The SUV plodded forward, never getting within three car lengths of the vehicle ahead of it. “Relax,” he said finally. “You’re doing fine.”

  Her perfume was burning a hole in his nose. Last night he had searched for it online: no one on the planet made a scent called Thane or Thain. Google kept trying to wing him over to some society lunatic. “Left at the next light.” He smiled as her blinker immediately went on; the next light was a half mile away. “You seem to be feeling better today, Perdita.”

  “Yes, thanks. I’m learning a lot. You’re a good teacher. Stern but fair.” Stem? Where’d she get that idea? He said nothing until she made the turn. “New tattoos?”

  “They’re very big at my restaurant. I’m a waitress.”

  “Heard you the first time.” Pierce didn’t want to ask what sort of cave Perdita worked in. He had her drive in circles downtown as he etched the silhouette of her calves in his memory.

  They passed the courthouse three times. Pippa didn’t dare tell him he was lost. On the fourth pass he said, “There. Pull over to the curb. I’ll just be a second.”

  “Officer Pierce, are you asking me to wait in a No Parking Anytime Tow Zone?”

  “If anyone gives you grief, tell them you’re with me.” On second thought, with those tattoos, “Or maybe just circle the block.”

  Pippa watched him run up the crowded courthouse steps easily as a cat. Within seconds a meter maid rapped on the window. “See that sign? Move it.”

  She drove around the block. When she returned to her starting point, the meter maid was still waiting in ambush so Pippa cruised by the courthouse, searching for Officer Pierce. A space cleared on the busy steps and she glimpsed a flash of red. Pippa stared into the lunch time crowd, not believing her eyes but yes, that was a tall, horsy woman wearing a crimson suit: Rosimund, flanked by two men with major briefcases. Photographers buzzed in their wake.

  Lawyers! Paparazzi! Of course! Rosimund had just filed h
er lawsuit against Thayne!

  The sudden blare of a horn snapped Pippa’s attention back to the street. She stomped on the brakes as a Vespa zipped in front of her. The Mexican driving the overloaded pickup behind her did the same. With a great squeal of rubber, his vehicle stopped inches from Pippa’s taillights; unfortunately the forty crates of chickens he was hauling to market kept going. Chatting on her cell phone, the woman in the Escort behind the pickup never even moved her foot from gas to brake. She was rear-ended in turn by a teenager who had been changing a CD in his mother’s Volvo.

  Videotape in hand, Officer Pierce emerged from the motor vehicle agency just as the Vespa cut in front of Perdita’s Lexus. He heard the Mexican skid to a halt and he saw the chicken crates topple over the busy street. Boff! Boff! He witnessed the next two collisions. As he was hurrying down the steps, a tall woman in a red suit pointed at Perdita’s car and shouted, “That’s one of her nymphomaniac bridesmaids! I’m sure of it!” Pierce was almost trampled by a herd of photographers rushing past him toward the Lexus. He bolted after them.

  Paparazzi were swarming the SUV by the time Pierce got to it. All telephoto lenses pointed at Perdita, who had had the presence of mind to cover her face with a lacy thong she was taking to the dry cleaners. Pierce collared the guy who was trying to yank open the driver’s door and tossed him at a squawking chicken. “It’s me, Perdita! Open up!”

  By some miracle she heard his voice above the fray. She unlocked the door and slithered to the floor, keeping the thong over her face. Pierce hopped inside. “Can you get us out of here?” she whimpered. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I saw.” Pierce rolled down his window. “You have three seconds to get lost,” he told the photographer plastered to the windshield. “One. Two. Three.”

  Pierce floored the accelerator. The guy on the hood nearly broke his nose on his own Nikon before sliding over the fender. Pierce looked in the rearview mirror. The street behind him was a blizzard of angry chickens and drivers. “You can get up now,” he told the thong.

  Pippa crawled to her seat. “Are we leaving the scene of an accident?”

  “You didn’t cause an accident, the guy tailgating behind you did. Rear-end collisions are one hundred percent the fault of the driver in the rear.”

  She looked out the back window. “Oh no! They’re still there!”

  Pierce confirmed in the rearview mirror that a green VW Bug and a white Mini Cooper were bearing down on them. They probably weren’t the meter maids. “Seat belt fastened?”

  Yes. Pippa sat rigid as a mannequin as Pierce zigzagged through Dallas, never overtly breaking traffic laws but not exactly observing them, either. He blasted through a series of yellow lights; the VW and Mini shot through them red. “Persistent,” he said, squealing onto McBride Boulevard. “Are you married to the mob?”

  “No! Please leave marriage out of this!”

  “The woman in the red suit said you were a nymphomaniac bridesmaid.”

  “She’s a drunk.”

  “Your ex-fiancé is sending a posse to bring you back,” Pierce guessed.

  “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

  Pierce gunned the Lexus past four cars in a row, narrowly missing an oncoming Airstream. As they approached Route 208, Perdita’s voice became wild. “They’re getting closer! I’ll kill myself if they catch me!”

  “They won’t catch you.” Maybe she was a streetwalker and her pimp was trying to kidnap her back into prostitution. Pierce sped down the highway while allowing the VW to pull up alongside on the right. He waved at the short, bald driver, then slammed on the brakes. When the VW shot a car length ahead, Pierce tapped its left rear end with his right bumper, throwing it into a spin. “One down,” he said as it spiraled into the trees.

  The Mini was still on his tail. When he saw a break in oncoming traffic, Pierce ripped on the hand brake. His locked rear wheels spun in a semicircle around the front wheels, pointing the Lexus in the opposite direction. In one smooth motion Pierce released the hand brake, hit the gas, and wrestled the SUV from the shoulder back onto the pavement. In seconds the Lexus blazed past the Mini going the other way. Whistling, Pierce exited the highway onto a residential street. “Not even close. He said, grinning.

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “I was a stunt driver.” Pierce hadn’t had such fun since. “Why were those men chasing you?”

  “They thought I was someone else. I do slightly resemble the person they’re looking for.”

  Pierce drove a while before saying, “I learned a couple of things as a stunt man, Perdita. One is I can spot a phony a mile off.”

  “I am not a phony,” she protested. “I’m just having a small identity crisis.”

  “You’re a really bad liar.”

  Pippa brightened. “That’s a relief.”

  Officer Pierce revised his theory for the tenth time: maybe she was a sadistic state auditor. Any minute now she’d whip out her badge and fire him for a multitude of infractions. “Whatever you are,” he sighed, pulling into the motel lot, “I’m sure it’s unique.”

  “Could you please teach me that reverse stunt? In case they find me again?”

  “It’s called a J-turn. I’ll think about it.” How could he say no to those big green eyes? Pierce parked behind the motel in case an all-points bulletin had gone out on a white Lexus SUV. He inspected the front of Ginny’s car. Its fender had survived without a scratch. “Class starts in three minutes.” He walked inside.

  Pippa needed a moment to pull herself together. That was a really close call. When she returned to class, Pierce was calmly pulling down the blinds. One would think he had spent his lunch break practicing yoga instead of bashing cars off the road. “Since some of you have expressed boredom with reading the manual, we’re going to watch a video on safe driving techniques,” he announced.

  Carrie-Jo raised her hand. “This roach bomb is giving me a headache. May I go home?”

  “Yeah! My throat hurts,” Seymour whined.

  Class relocated to the patio for a recitation of chapters six through nine. After an hour even Officer Pierce was having difficulty staying awake in the heat. When landscapers began uprooting the chain-link fence around the swimming pool, he called it a day. “Quiz first thing tomorrow,” were his parting words.

  Everyone but Perdita fled. “Do you need a jump start, Officer Pierce?”

  Yes. Several. After resuscitating his junker Pierce drove Pippa to a vacant strip mall west of Dallas. En route he told stories about his days as a stunt driver. Pierce’s career had ended not on the set but in a farmer’s market. He had been buying Black Jack figs when a geezer in a Miata plowed into him. He was in the hospital for nearly a year. Then his fiancee ran away with his doctor.

  Pippa was horrified. “How did you recover from that?”

  “I took up ballroom dancing. Very therapeutic. Okay, let’s try a few J-turns.”

  The old parking lot was barely long enough to ramp up to speed, but after a few attempts Pippa got the hang of one-eighties. “You drive a stick?” Pierce asked.

  “My ex-fiance had a Maserati.”

  A police car, blue lights flashing, zoomed into the lot. The officer jumped out. “Show me your license and registration,” he ordered.

  Pierce showed him a badge instead. “I was just giving this woman a driving exam.”

  “We had reports of fishtailing behind the doughnut shop.”

  “Someone’s pulling your leg, Officer. No one goes over twenty-five miles an hour on a driving exam in the state of Texas.”

  Peering inside, the policeman saw a pretty young woman disfigured by tattoos and hair dye. Instructor and student were strapped in tight as ticks. Something about the scenario didn’t look kosher but it was a state vehicle and Pierce had a badge. “I didn’t know the MVA gave exams here.”

  “We’re testing the site. Thanks for stopping by. Dallas police are really on top of things.”

  “We have to be. The crazie
s were out today.”

  Easing onto the boulevard, Pierce realized he had broken enough traffic regulations in the last six hours to get jail time. Perdita must be emanating some kind of subliminal impulses that were jamming his law-abiding radar. He noticed that, at the sight of the policeman, she had plastered herself against the passenger door. “You’re not a felon, are you?”

  “No, sir. Never.”

  “Is this car stolen?”

  “It belongs to my friend. She’s in Costa Rica.” A few hundred witnesses had seen the license plate. “There could be some people asking questions at her place.”

  Perdita turned white. “You mean it’s not safe to go there?”

  “I wouldn’t risk it.” Heavy seconds passed. “You could stay with me.

  “I wouldn’t dream of imposing like that! Maybe there’s a room at the Adolphus.”

  Sure, in the larder, where her other grandfather worked. “There’s a Days Inn up the road. You could even walk to class in the morning.”

  Pippa hesitated; Thayne had always said she would rather sleep in an open sewer than a Days Inn. “I guess that would work.”

  She insisted on paying cash for the room. Pierce estimated she had five thousand bucks stuffed into her little purse. He then deduced that the jewels on her finger must be real and that, given the afternoon’s wild chase, Perdita was attached to someone rich, annoyed, and violent. “Sure you’re going to be all right here?”

  “I’ll be fine. Thanks for saving me today, Officer Pierce.”

  “Happy to help.” He would have asked her to rhumba class tonight but the tattoos and flip-flops were highly inappropriate. “Study that manual now.”

  Pippa went to her room and obediently pored over the manual for an hour before realizing that she’d have to wear her purple-flowered shift to class again tomorrow. When coeds did that at SMU, it was a dead giveaway they had slept with the professor the night before. She called the desk. “Is there a boutique on the premises?”