Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Married (29 page)

20

Wayward and Wanton

T
here are repercussions for my actions.

Many.

The next morning more big news hits. The Minnesota senate passed the Family Equity Act just in time to make Christopher's marriage legal.

“But wait!” Christopher says, panicking. “Do I really
want
to be married?”

“Ha-ha,” I say. “Welcome to being straight. It sucks.”

Experts speculate that the bill passed in large part because of Keller's endorsement. The majorities in both houses at the legislature make clear they could not ignore such a large conservative organization backing the clearly controversial bill. The senators were in session as Jeremy and Christopher sashayed down the escalator. An anonymous source says hundreds of cell phones suddenly lit up across the senate floor and that the session “perked up” right after news of Keller's “big gay wedding” got out.

The second indication of divine intervention is that Keller's stock begins to soar. Suddenly the stodgy old humdrum department store, which catered only to Republicans and AARP members, becomes the go-to shopping destination for all sorts of new demographics. Gay bees make it a point to shop there, which means everybody else follows. Even the drag queens began to buy their wigs at Keller's and have personal shoppers running around like mad in search of size 14 stilettos and industrial-strength undergarments that could conceal the Foshay Tower.

It's a miracle.

I'm actually happy for the Kellers. As I keep insisting to my friends and family, I never wanted to
destroy
them, I just wanted them to start being honest with the public and stop selling teddy bears stuffed with cancer. I got my wish, too. Mr. Cartwright at the Public Health Department announces that Keller's Department Store has discontinued all foreign imports from unregistered factories. I keep track of his findings online. A month later he says no further health infractions have been found at Keller's Department Store and no citations have been issued. Keller's has been given a clean bill of health. Six months later Mr. Cartwright is happy to report that Keller's status has not changed, but he continues to refuse all Keller dinner invitations.

Another unexpected turn of events occurs.

I'm thrown in jail.

Christopher's with me when it happens. As the squad car pulls away he shouts he'll come and get me . . . but he has no idea where they're taking me. Detective Wojek, the dick cop who picks me up, is clearly being paid by the Kellers to harass me, and he takes his sweet time booking me on purpose. Nobody can find you if you're not in the system. He leaves me in a locked interrogation room for what seems like eight hours but is probably more like forty-five minutes. I'm trying to keep calm but I feel a panic attack coming on. It's like a geyser of cold water that keeps trying to bubble up. Then all of a sudden I hear a familiar voice in the hallway. “Well, you damn well better hope she is! Do you hear me?”

I sit up, my heart lurching wildly. Could it be her?

“See this?” she shouts. “This is the mayor's home phone number. Do you have it on your cell phone? Want me to call it? I will wake R. T. Rybak up
right now
and tell him that you're the motherfucker who told me to! Now open this fucking door before I get the governor to come down here and fire you himself!” The interrogation room's metal door bursts open and the dick cop comes in, his head hung low. Behind him a coiffed blonde sails in, draped in silks and satins, cuffed with sparkle-chunk diamonds. It's Addi. I feel such a rush of relief when I see her that I burst into big blubbery tears. “How did you find me?”

“Christopher called. He said you were arrested because you threw a . . . gay wedding at Keller's?”

“No, the wedding was actually legal. They dragged me in on some trumped-up loitering charge.”

“I'm going to pretend that you invited me to your epic event–slash–scandal of the season and blame my absence on the fact I was in Paris.”

“Were you?”

“Of course. How else was I going to get over our fight? I bought shit! Anyway, Christopher called every precinct in town trying to find you, and when nobody had you in the system he panicked and called me. I found you in like . . . four minutes? Three?”

“Thank God.” I smile, wiping back a tear.

The dick cop pokes his head in and Addi glares at him. “What?” she says.

“Um . . . want coffee?” he asks hopefully.

“Seriously? I don't drink the brown anus water that you call coffee! Why don't you do something useful and tell me when we can leave.”

“Um . . . that. Right. It's a little tricky, I have to actually book her before she can go.”

“No!” Addi smacks her hand on the table.

“I'll do it as fast as I can.”

“You can't be serious. You're going to book her? All right.” She narrows her eyes. I've seen that look. You do not want to be on the delivery end of that look. “You know what? Now I'm actually pissed. I was going to let this whole thing blow over, call it a misunderstanding, but if you think I'm going to let you book my friend on some bogus charge just so you're not in hot water with the chief for unjustified harassment of a beautiful high-tax-bracket citizen . . . well then, prepare to meet the Fist!”

“Um . . . okay,” he says, and shuts the door.

Addi whips out her cell phone and punches #3 on the speed dial. She starts barking to someone in German. “Henckles, Luststerben and Grump?” I ask her.

“You know it, sister. Henckles, Luststerben and Grump!”

Twenty minutes later, three large women in matching charcoal-gray suits and black orthopedic shoes show up. They smell vaguely of cabbage and have severe faces like knuckles or gargoyles with dead shark eyes. They wear no makeup, and their short oily hair is bobby-pinned viciously into place. Their suits look as stiff, their arms like stuffed German sausages. They're aggressively ugly. Without their saying a word, it's clear they enjoy making people uncomfortable. Detective Wojek openly perspires when he sees them.

The smallest woman is the only one who speaks. “Detective Wojek, I'm Ursula Henckles. These are my associates, Elke Luststerben and Astrid Grump.” Ursula speaks in a strange hoarse whisper, which sends chills down your spine and invisible spiders running into your ear. “We are attorneys from the law offices of Henckles, Luststerben and Grump. The woman you are currently illegally detaining is our client. You have two options at this point. You may release her and we will be done here . . . or you may pursue whatever avenue you're quite mistakenly on and we will become entangled in a most pointed way. Since you've held our client illegally, we will be pressing charges against you, Detective Wojek.
You
—not the department—and if you think the chief will be eager to spend his precious legal defense funds on a rookie who's actually lost his squad car while on duty and who has two strikes against him already, not to mention a history of Vicodin abuse . . . think again. Think hard, Detective Wojek. This decision will determine how you spend the next year of your life. With us . . . or without us. Any questions?” Detective Wojek blinks. “Very good. You have seven minutes to make your decision. At that time we will proceed with our prescribed course of action. Good day.”

She spins on her heel and marches out. The other women follow.

I'm not sure . . . but I think I peed my pants.

Four minutes and thirty-two seconds later, I'm free. Outside in the delicious fresh air. We all pile into the oily black Henckles, Luststerben & Grump minivan and I start crying again, thanking them for saving me. Addi says if I don't shut up she'll slap me. Ursula urges me to leave town as soon as possible. “The Kellers hired a dumb cop that time,” she tells me. “Next time might be different. Your best strategy is to make sure there
is
no next time. Understand? I don't enjoy police stations. I'd rather not fetch you from one again.”

“Do what the Fist says.” Addi nods. “Let's hop on a plane somewhere.”

Ursula snorts. “Have I taught you
nothing
? They'll be looking for you too, Addi. They'll track your credit cards, your plane tickets, your passport stamps. The Kellers have nothing to gain by leaving Jennifer alone—and everything to lose.”

They won't stop harassing me. They'll continue to try to arrest me, dirty up my record, besmirch my character, toss me in jail for anything, not caring if the charges stick. They'll just want to build up a case that I'm an unsavory character whom they tried to help and who turned around and betrayed them.

Ursula says I should leave town and not use credit cards. They'll have someone watching my bank accounts. “Do you have someone you can stay with?” she asks. “Not your family or friends. A place they can't find you, a person they don't know about.”

Hmmm. I just might.

I call Nick from a pay phone. I tell him I'm looking for a temporary hideout, a sanctuary for wayward girls, and he says, “Look no further!” He invites me and Ace to come stay with him on the SS
Nevertheless
. On one condition: I have to promise to sleep in
my own
cabin and to keep my hands
to myself
and to
not
sexually harass him unless he
asks
me too. I tell him I don't think that will be a problem. “Maybe not for you,” he says. “But I'm down here on my own . . .
a devastatingly handsome man,
who's allowing a
wanton female
to come into his home.”

“Wayward,”
I say, correcting him.

“Wanton, wayward, whatever,” he says. “You're a woman who's gone wild.”

“True. Which is why I can't promise you anything. I'm not responsible for my actions.”

“Good enough for me!” he says. “Come on down.”

That night, I move into my cabin. There's a sign on my door that says
WANTON FEMALES ONLY.
A greyhound sleeps on my bed. “Hey, Toggle girl!” I say, kissing her forehead. “She looks so much better!” When Nick first took her to the vet, we found out she had severe meningitis, and they didn't know if she'd pull through. The disease is often fatal and it's expensive to treat, which is why her previous owners had “opted out” and given poor Toggle to the pound for “immediate extermination.” Luckily, of course, we found her and Nick took excellent care of her. Toggle pulled through.

Nick makes us dinner—baked potatoes and grilled pork chops on greasy paper plates—which we carry outside into the cricketing, croaking soft summer night. We sit on deck and eat our dinner, watching the sky darken overhead and the slowly twisting ribbon of chocolate-colored Mississippi slip past our feet. Ace, Tandy, and Toggle are on hand, all snoring away with full rounded bellies. They ate pork chops too.

Another sign that God might not be drunk at the wheel after all is that the good old boys from the Christian Lambs of God go down pretty hard and take large chunks of their churches with them. Cool Coy Jones gets a ten-year sentence and the IRS fleeces the coffers of Atlanta First Baptist. The megachurch is sold to developers and turned into a VA hospital. Pastor Joe gets five years at Joliet, where he plans to start his own prison ministry, and Deacon Davis flees the country. I imagine he's mining for diamonds in Bembezi, Zimbabwe.

Nick suggests we pull up anchor and throw off the lines. Take the SS
Nevertheless
on a trip downriver. That's when I get the idea. If we're going to travel . . . why not work on a travel assignment at the same time? I call Susan at Frontier Travel. The stories she offers us to cover are small and I'll make shit for money, but like Susan says . . . Today's column about pie festivals is tomorrow's exposé on sex trafficking. Admittedly with a few stories in between. I tell her it's all right, give me the little stories.

I'm in.

Nick is in too; he takes the photographs for my articles. We travel all over together working on them. Our itinerary is plotted by where the paying assignments send us and where we want to go. I'll be honest, we're not quite
National Geographic
material yet. Technically, we've only left the United States once. We drove up to Canada to write an article in Thunder Bay called “Do's and Don'ts for White People Attending a Powwow.”

Do negotiate prices on native art and craftwork.

Don't
ask if anything costs “big wampum.”

Next we sail the SS
Nevertheless
down the Mississippi to Saint Louis for the big Saint Louis Pirate Festival. Which is . . . weird. I've never seen so many yoga moms with peg legs or a gas station with a sign that says
THANK YOU FOR NOT TALKING LIKE A PIRATE
. Next we go to New Orleans for an article about the oddest events at Mardi Gras, which are the “sexiest steak” contest, a voodoo curse-a-thon, and the ever-controversial fat baby parade.

We mostly stick to the Mississippi and to destinations we can reach by water, because we love living on the SS
Nevertheless
. It comfortably houses us, plus all the dogs and Nick's hearse, which we drive around upon reaching our destinations. It went over very big at Mardi Gras. Not so much at the powwow.

Our latest destination is the most exotic so far, though it's still part of the United States: Saint John in the Caribbean. I'm back. This time I'm not staying at any awful all-inclusive Christian resort where the staff kills dogs. This time I'm there with my dogs and living in my lovely houseboat-barge with a person I love. Nick and I sail the barge out across the ocean and we're not even docked at port for a whole day when I sit up in bed, having just finished an afternoon romp with Nick and some DNA-rearranging sex. I gather the sheets around my naked body while the far less modest Nick gets up buck-naked and heads for the galley to make us an espresso—his standard after-sex drink, so he can gear up for more sex.