The Glamorous Life (10 page)

Bambi woke Ruby and asked, “Ruby, do you have a driver’s license?”

“Yup.”

“Okay. Well, drive home and come and get me at eight o’clock.”

She gave Ruby a spare key and a hundred dollars and walked her to the door. Before the door was shut Smooth had called her again.

CHAPTER 9

What Goes Around,
Comes Around …

B
ambi and Smooth talked all night long. Well, he mostly talked and sold her dreams. She listened and made him think she was buying them when Ruby knocked on the door. Bambi looked at her clock: 7:54 it read. Ruby was on time.

This is exactly what I am talking about, and they say good work is hard to find.

She ended the conversation with Smooth, promising to meet him later for dinner. She hung up the phone and opened the door. Ruby stood there with her hair in dire need of a perm. Her hair was styled in a semimushroom, her baby hair laid down with grease on the side of her face and some big yellow sunglasses covering her eyes. Ruby had on her Chic jeans with the cardboard crease, and you couldn’t tell her nothing. The only part of her outfit that wasn’t straight out of the early eighties was the pair of black Princess Reeboks she wore on her feet. Seeing Ruby standing there so confident in her eighties outfit made her smile.

“Hey, girl, come on in.”

“You was still asleep?”

“Girl, I’ve been on the phone all night with this clown I met yesterday.”

Ruby was getting ready to say something when Bambi’s cell phone rang.

“Bambi, can we talk?” Reggie begged.

“Hell no! And what did I tell you ’bout calling my number from a blocked number.”

“That’s the only way you’ll answer. Please don’t hang up! Please!” Reggie whined like a little girl.

“All of a sudden I can hear the bitch pitch in your voice.” Bambi was still hurt, but it made her feel better when she assassinated Reggie with her mouth.

As soon as she hung up, the phone rang again. When she reached for the phone on her table, she knocked her pocketbook off of it, and everything fell all over the floor. After she answered the phone, she began picking up all the items inside the pocketbook.

“Hi, can I speak to the lady that owns the red Corvette?”

“Who’s speaking?”

“This is Paul, the mechanic from the other day. Are you the lady that owns the Corvette?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because I was wondering what you plan to do with your car. I am prepared to take it off of your hands. I know being a woman and a single woman at that—I mean I don’t know your business, but I didn’t see any wedding band on your finger so I figured that you were not married …”

As she listened to the bull that the mechanic tried to lay on her, Ruby handed Bambi some of the items she had picked up off the floor for her. As soon as she took her personal belongings
out of Ruby’s hand, a bright idea hit her slam dead in the face. She cut him off. “So, how much you want to give me for the car?”

“Ummm, I’ll give you six G’s.”

“Six G’s? You mean to tell me all you can give me is six G’s for my forty-thousand-dollar car. Are you crazy? Baby, you better come a little better than that.”

This man must think I am crazy for real or either stuck on stupid. One or the other. But the joke is on him.

“Okay, I’ll give you seventy-five hundred ’cause I may be able to get a used motor or rebuild the one you have up in there, but I got a lot to do to that car. I gotta get the parts, and Corvette parts are not cheap.”

“Look, we can make this happen, but I need to at least get the payoff amount on the car,” she stressed to him, although there was no loan to pay off. Reggie had paid the car off before she found out the truth about him. She continued, “The payoff amount is a little over eight grand, and then I need at least a G for a down payment on a new car.”

Paul the Grease Monkey jumped right on it. “Okay, the best I can do is give you nine grand, and I am losing money doing that, but I see you a sister struggling trying to make it.”

“Okay, you got a deal.”

“When can I get the car?”

“When can I get the money?”

“I’ll have your money for you this evening.”

“Cash now, because I don’t take checks.”

“That’s cool,” he said.

Bambi thought of one thing that Reggie used to always say to her: “Fair exchange ain’t never been robbery.” Then she laughed under her breath.

“Ummm, so exactly what time are you going to have everything in order?” Bambi asked.

“Can you come by like around five, so I can still have time to run to the DMV and get some tags for the car? Because I am going out of town later, and I need it taken care of tonight.”

“Ummm, I’ll be at work, but I’m going to call my aunt and see if she can come through and handle that for me. So let me call you right back.”

Paul hesitated for a minute, not wanting to let her off the phone, but he agreed, saying, “Now, don’t make me go and get this money for nothing now.”

“I won’t. Give me a few minutes to get in touch with my aunt.”

She hung up the phone, and Ruby was sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee.

“Rue, you trying to get this money with me or not?”

“You know I am. Just tell me whatever you need me to do.”

“I need you to go sell my car for me. You gotta act like I’m at work, but I’m going to be around the street in your uncle’s truck waiting for you. He’ll let you borrow it, right?”

“Bambi, I already told you yesterday that I got you. Whatever you need me to do, I got you.”

“Okay, give him a call and see if we can use his truck.”

Before Bambi could run down everything, Paul had called back two times. The second time Bambi told him, “Look, my aunt’s going to ride out there with the title. Besides, the title is in her name anyway.”

The title was still in the name of the person the junkyard had bought the car from. Since Bambi had come in the second day after the salvaged Corvette arrived at the junkyard, the owner had never had a chance to get the title transferred.

Paul agreed. Bambi and Ruby went over everything and agreed to meet back later.

Bambi went outside and cleaned out everything she had in the car. While she waited on Ruby, she ran to the 7-11 and purchased a prepaid cell phone. By that time Ruby had come back in her uncle’s raggedy twenty-year-old pickup truck.

“Ruby, you drive my car.”

They switched cars and headed to Ashland. Bambi purposely meant to be late, arriving at the shop at 5:40 instead of 5:00, knowing the DMV closed at 6:00 and was a good thirty-minute drive away. The shop was across the street from a grocery store, and Bambi parked across the street so she could blend in with the other folks as well as be able to see Ruby.

Ruby pulled into the shop’s parking lot. Before she could touch the door, Paul the Grease Monkey walked out and said, “You must be the lady I been waiting for.”

Ruby nodded.

“Can I take it for a test drive?”

Ruby looked into his eyes and asked, “Do you think that would be good with the motor in such bad condition?”

“You’re right.”

“I mean I took a chance driving it up here, and I don’t want to be stranded on no country road.”

He nodded and popped the hood. He looked up under the hood and said, “Tell Becky, Barbara, whatever her name is I’m going to give her eight flat for it. I can’t see paying nine for this with this bad motor.”

Ruby went into her pocket and pulled out the prepaid cell phone, “Look, this man is talking some lame shit, that he ain’t giving up nothing but eight grand.”

“What?”

“Yup. Here, you talk to him.”

“Paul, I thought we had everything straight now. So why now when I get my aunt all the way up there, you switch up?”

“Look, I know what’s up. I know my way around cars, and that’s the best I can do.”

This damn chump thinks he got all the sense, but little do he know the joke’s on him.

“Look, just make sure you take my tags off and give them to her. Now, put my aunt on the phone, please.”

He passed the phone to Ruby.

“Rue, just make sure you count the money twice before you come off the title, and make sure you get the tags off of there.”

While Ruby counted the money twice, Paul was taking the tags off of the car. Once he gave her the tags, she signed off on the title and handed it to him. He smiled and exhaled. He was so excited that he stuttered when he asked Ruby, “H-h-h-how you g-g-gettin’ home?”

“I’m fine. My friend is meeting me across the street at the grocery store.”

Ruby strolled across the street with the bag of money in her hand. Once she got to the truck, she handed Bambi the bag of money. Bambi reached in the bag and handed Ruby a grand. Then she kissed Ruby on the cheek, and said, “Thanks, Rue.”

“It was nothing. I would have done it for free,” she said as she slid the money in her pocket.

They sat in the parking lot, and Ruby asked, “What’s next?

” “Sit tight for a minute, because my work is not done here. Let’s go get something to eat.”

They sat inside the Ponderosa eating their hearts out, while Ruby went on and on about her prison stories. Night fell, and enough time passed so they could finish what they had started. The shop closed up, and Bambi looked from the window as Paul flew past in his truck. That was her cue to get to work.
Bambi ran over across to the shop, put her tags on the car, pulled out her extra set of keys, and sped off.

Ruby called once they got down the road. “I know you didn’t just do what I think you did. Bambi, you wild as I don’t know what.”

“All I did is get my car from over there. There isn’t any law against that, is it?”

“Hell nah, girl, but you gave him the title to your car.”

“No, I didn’t give him anything. You did, and that wasn’t the title to my car. He don’t have any ground to stand on. All he have is just that—a title, to what I don’t know.”

“Look, pull into that McDonald’s parking lot right quick,” Ruby said.

“Oh, okay, I know you still ain’t hungry. We just ate.”

“Hell nah, girl, I need to take a daggone dump.”

“Oh, okay.”

Ruby went in and came right back out with almost a whole stack of napkins. She held up one finger, motioning to Bambi to wait up a minute as she ran toward the woods.
What in the hell is that psycho Ruby up to?

She was in the woods for every bit of five minutes. As soon as Bambi got out of the car and walked over to the woods, Ruby appeared. Bambi frowned a little.

“I was worried about you. What you go back there for?” she asked.

“What I tell you we stopped for,” she said with no shame at all. “To take a shit.”

Bambi could not believe her ears.

“What you mean?” Bambi asked. “I know good and well you didn’t take no daggone dump in no woods.”

“Why I didn’t? Believe what I am telling you—that was one of the most best and peaceful shits I ever took,” Ruby said.

Bambi didn’t know if she should laugh or shake her head as Ruby kept talking. “Girl, don’t you know I have shitted in stranger places than that? For ten years I had to squat and use the toilet in front of a thousand people, so I know you are going to let me take a shit in the woods.”

“All I want to know is why in the woods? Why not in here?” she asked Ruby. Bambi opened up the door to McDonald’s so she could go back into the bathroom to wash her hands.

“It smelled like death was on her period and threw up in there. I would’ve suffocated in there and died my damn self. Hold these,” she said, passing another stack of napkins to Bambi. “Now watch the door while I go in here to wash my hands.”

Ruby went into the men’s restroom to wash her hands thoroughly.

When she came out, she grabbed another stack of napkins and headed for the door.

“Girl, what’s the deal with the three stacks of napkins?” Bambi demanded to know.

“Shoot, napkins is a necessity in my world. Shoot, I am going to always need them, and I know damn well I ain’t going to pay for no napkins when I can get these for free,” she said.

Bambi smiled. At that moment she realized that Ruby was a thoroughbred. Never in her life had she met anyone who kept it so real with her, and although Ruby was common as all outdoors, it was
a must
for Ruby to be a part of Bambi’s team. But without a doubt first some changes had to be made.

Over the next two days, Bambi put Ruby under total reconstruction from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. When Bambi was done, Ruby looked like a whole different person. Her hair was cut into layers, and after the Hawaiian Silky perm was washed out of her hair, her hair was halfway
down her back. Bambi didn’t cut any corners when it came to Ruby. She even took Ruby to the eye doctor to get rid of her state-issued glasses and had her fitted for some contacts.

“Girl, I’m not going to be touching and poking my eyeballs. You know I am good and old-school. Can I just get me some glasses?”

“Here, what about these?” Bambi picked out some cute DKNY frames.

“Yeah.” Ruby nodded. “They are cute.”

As Bambi continued to bring her up to speed, she threw Ruby’s 1980s clothes away and brought her into the present with her new clothes and shoes. She then realized that Ruby had been hiding her cute figure under her clothes. Bambi had no choice but to take her out and buy a bunch of cute under-clothes, because she was embarrassed for Ruby when she opened up the dressing room door and saw Ruby had on holey bloomers left over from when she was in prison. Ruby practically danced with gratitude.