Roz is a meticulous planner. With a glass of wine in one hand and a cell phone in the other she could conquer the world, do it on time, and make it look easy. In her hay day she was an underworld spy... or so she says.
"Can you believe Charlie Sheen is still alive?" Bev asks Roz as she drinks her wine from a red plastic cup, "I mean he's literally insane."
Roz shushes her, "Yeah yeah, he's an idiot. I'm trying to figure out what we should do tomorrow."
Bev mutes the TV and turns her attention to the plotting happening in their living room. "You know what we used to do that I really miss?"
"What?"
"Pranking."
"Yeah, but the last time we did anything like that we nearly killed ourselves."
"It was fun, though. You have to admit it was fun."
"I do have an enemy who needs smiting..." Roz bit her lip as she thought, "That's it! Tomorrow night, Bev... we're going vandalizing."
Dot dot dot
Bev's breath is labored as she mounts her scooter and Roz straps her oxygen tank to it. They hit the street with fervor and stealth. The scooter is like a phantom, quiet, sleek, quick. Roz is cat-like and has been her entire life. Both ladies are dressed entirely in black, but stylishly so as not to stick out. Roz wears a tailored pantsuit and smiles as older gentleman wink at her. Bev wears a knee length dress and she tells all the older gentleman that Roz is her lover and she doesn't go for men. They giggle when out of earshot.
They arrive at the cemetery just as the grounds keeper is closing the gait. Bev turns on the charm. She tells the young man a moving story of her late husband and their anniversary. "You know he was so sweet. Every year he would send me my favorite flowers and cook me my favorite meal. He didn't care about anything in this world as much as he cared for me." She started to cry to add to the effect. The grounds keeper leaned over to comfort her.
Roz sneaks out from behind a tree and discretely swipes the keys while he's busy comforting Bev. Bev continues, "Anyway, young man. I know the cemetery's closing and I'm too late to visit his grave... Besides my scooter has a hard time in the grass. I was just wondering if you'd like to drop off these flowers by his grave tomorrow." She hands him a bouquet of lilies. He agrees and walks away to his car leaving Bev to stare longingly through the gates towards what's assumed to be her late husband's grave.
When he leaves Roz re-appears dangling the keys. "I got them!" Bev giggles in delight and claps her hands. Within seconds they're inside the gate, flash lights out, deftly maneuvering to the grave they came to visit. Once there, Roz opens her over-sized purse and retrieves a can of spray paint. Bev lights a cigarette while she holds the flashlight and aims it at the gravestone. "What did this guy do to you again?"
"He smacked my ass when I was in my 30's." Roz shakes the paint can and takes a drag from Bev's cigarette.
Bev chuckles at Roz's reasoning, "Why didn't you just smack him back? Ya know... when it happened?"
"I did. The son of a bitch fired me."
"I see." Bev adored her friend, but she sure knew how to hold a grudge. "Was this when you were a spy?"
Roz gave the cigarette back to Bev and winked as she hunched over the tombstone and wrote obscenities in bright pink spray. When she was done she lit a cigarette and said, "Ta-Da!" Bev clapped.
Bev opened a thermos and poured wine into the cap. The two of them toasted to feminists outliving misogynists.
While having free reign of the graveyard they visited a few of their friends, toasting along the way. By the time Bev broke out the third thermos they were laughing loudly at old inside jokes while the ghosts of their friends chuckled along. It was well past midnight when Roz stumbled (Bev swerved) out of the cemetery, leaving the keys on the ground just out of reach inside the locked gate.
Laughing and drinking along the way, they were so caught up in each other and their fun, that they didn't notice the police officer on foot watching them. He yelled out to them, and they both froze. Roz said, "SHIT IT'S THE COPS!"
"Get on!" Bev yelled, and Roz hopped onto the scooter and Bev turned up the speed and they took off. The officer started running after them. They swerved around pedestrians and managed to gain some ground from him. They came to an intersection and Bev slowed it down. Roz told her not to. She said, "GO! IF we make it, it's an awesome story... if we don't, we'll go back to the party we just left." Bev laughed and sped her scooter into traffic.
The next day the grounds keeper got fired when he had to call his boss to open the gate and there were scooter tire marks all over the cemetery. To top things off one of the most prominent member of society's tombstone was spray painted with the words "I win" and a representation of a middle finger being held up.
It wasn't until he saw her picture in the obituary section a few days later that he stopped being angry at Bev for tricking him. He actually visited her grave and put lilies on it, though he didn't know that Bev really hated lilies. And just for that, she haunted him until she got bored.
Roz haunted her last act of vandalism; swinging branches at anybody who tried to clean it up.
No comments:
Post a Comment