Chapter 11
WHEN SELMA WAS DONE, she asked: “Questions?”
Larry, Buster and Reuben leaned back in their chairs, crossed their arms and stared at the ceiling. Selma glanced up also to see if there were giant spiders descending from the rustic rafters or perhaps a trapeze artist had slipped in unbeknownst to her. But there were no Black Widows nor flying Russian acrobats to be seen. She deduced that this is what men do when they are thinking or perhaps just thinking about farting. Selma hoped it was the former.
Buster finally looked down, at her boobs of course, and broke the ice: “I have a question.”
“Yes, Buster?”
“Are those real?”
It was Selma’s turn to blush and her mouth opened but no words escaped.
“Don’t be an ass,” Larry said, cuffing Buster across the head and turning his cap right-side around.
“Oh, sorry,” Buster stammered. “But she asked and it’s been on my mind all night?”
“Aren’t you married?” Selma asked.
“Yes. What can I say? I’m a boob man.”
“You’re a boob alright,” Larry said.
“Okay then,” she recovered. “Are there any serious questions?”
Reuben raised a finger like he was checking the direction of the wind. “Do you have a market for these cycles?”
“I do.”
Larry then raised his hand, which Selma considered ironic for teachers to be doing. “What’s the split?”
“Pretty obvious,” she said. “Four cycles, four people, four ways.”
“Works for me,” Larry quickly added, which drew a scowl from Reuben.
“You have any more questions, Buster? She said to the sulking hulk.
“No. You don’t answer mine anyway.”
“100 percent real,” Selma smiled.
So did Buster.
“Well, that’s the plan,” she said. “Everybody seems on board. You have two months to figure it out.”
She stood, set her denim purse on the chair, pulled out three prepaid cell phones and slid one to each teach.
“My number and yours are already in the address book. The phones are untraceable, but don’t burn the minutes on personal calls or 900 numbers, Buster. Strictly for business and don’t call me unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
They pocketed them and didn’t bother getting up.
“Was nice meeting you. I’ll be in touch,” Selma said. “Good luck and let’s hope this is the beginning of a long and prosperous friendship.”
She reached over the table and shook a hand of each. The look in their eyes told her they weren’t totally sold, but close enough.
Chapter 12
IN SOUTH DAKOTA they seldom measure distance by miles. Since it’s such a large state with towns remotely located and cities peppered far apart, South Dakotans usually talk in hours. Occasionally, you’ll even hear somebody say something like “I live two hours from here” or “one and half hours as the crow flies.” But since South Dakotans are like other Americans who have yet to master the sophistication of travel via jet packs, the “crow flies” analogy is usually meaningless. That said, Selma had a six hour drive ahead of her from Deadwood to her home in Brookings. Toss in the fact that she was traveling west from the Mountain time zone to the Central time zone in the east and would lose another hour. Since she didn’t want to risk a speeding ticket to ever tie her to this discreet appointment (it was a parking ticket that helped finger David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz), she figured to be home by breakfast.
Now that she thought it, Selma regretted the reference to Berkowitz. It’s not like they were looking to kill anyone. In fact, the mere suggestion of that possibility would send her and the meek teachers fleeing from any criminal plan like bunnies from a circling hawk. Selma didn’t consider any of them to be criminals at heart. Their main vices were greed and boredom – a Molotov cocktail for crooked behavior. For Selma, you can throw in the added transgression of revenge.
Six hours out and six hours back gave her plenty of windshield time to self analyze, and as she passed the New Underwood exit an hour or so after leaving Deadwood Selma’s mind was on the target of her vengeance, her ex-husband and current Governor Arnie McCall.
Arnie had been among the meekest of men, but not meek as in wimpy. He was quiet, tender, loving, huggy-kissy, a hand-holder, a door-opener. That’s why it was such a shock when after fifteen years of marriage, Selma returned home earlier than expected one night from her position as assistant to the college president to find Arnie standing naked at the end of their couch in the living room. If that’s all he was doing, she would have found it odd but not particularly upsetting. The distressing part was that one of her freshman work-study students at the college, Julianne Boofley, was also naked and bent over the armrest of the sofa in front of him, his hands on her hips. Her “ooh”s and “aah”s turned to “uh oh” real quick.
Since Selma was a lifelong South Dakota woman, she carried a .38 handgun in her purse. It’s practically the law. So she could have shot them. In fact, it crossed her mind. But she didn’t. Selma stood stoically and watched and listened. Apologies were all the rage as they scrambled to pull on their clothes. Julianne was first out the door and transferred to USD the next day to be with more like-minded strumpets. Arnie was minutes behind her, but not enjoying it as much as he was earlier.
He never returned to their home and Selma didn’t speak with Arnie until eight months later when they passed in the hallway of the law office after signing the divorce documents. It was pretty much a one-sided conversation with most of her words beginning with the letter “f”, some with the prefix “ass” and others simply initials like “S.O.B.”
Selma now owns that $300,000 house but doesn’t live in it, preferring the University president’s residence. She also has two Cadillacs she never drives, a boat she never floats and an RV she never recreates in. But Selma does keep them parked in front of that home so Arnie can see them whenever he’s in town.
To say she’s a little bitter is to say a dead skunk is a little bit smelly. But he hadn’t seen anything yet. Unfortunately, in her mind, she had agreed in their divorce decree to never reveal any details of their marriage nor any of the sordid events that led to its devise. Selma knew though there was more than one way to skin a cat and she waited patiently for the time to exact even more revenge on that pussy. That day would come. She was confident of that.
Arnie served four more years in the state legislature before running for governor. His kind soft-spoken words and white-toothed smile snookered sixty-two percent of South Dakotans like he’d once snookered her.
Selma was named president of SDSU two months before he was elected governor; and though he had the power to force her out, he lacked the balls. So they co-exist as powerful state executives communicating entirely through assistants. And though Selma knew her resume was as slim as her hips, 25-year-old Julianne Boofley became his Director of Tourism. Selma liked to say Julianne bent over “forwards” for the job.
Now that his defenses were down and Selma was simply the annoying “ex” he must endure from time to time with smarmy glances across conference tables and wiggly waves of the fingers across hallways, Selma made it one of her life’s goals to cause him the most embarrassment, to showcase his ineptness, and enlighten South Dakotans as to what kind of dim-witted untrustworthy eunuch they elected.
Assuming her teachers are successful enablers, Selma might even run against him in two years. Wouldn’t Laurence “Larry” Olivier make a great Director of Tourism? Reuben, the Director of Economic Development? Buster, the Secretary of Agriculture? The mere thought might make them wet their pants. She’d tell them later.
Chapter 13
REUBEN SAT at his kitchen table the next morning drinking his coffee and making a list. He loved lists and his refrigerator was neatly organized with them in perfectly aligned checkerboard fashion. Belle Fourche Broncs school magnets firmly held them in place: the grocery list, phone number list, his to-do list, the list indicating the exact times of the sunrises and sunsets for the days of June, another with rainfall totals from each day recorded from his digital rain gauge, and other lists not nearly as noteworthy.
Dressed for the Saturday in the school colors, yellow and white checked slacks and a purple sweatshirt, he was working on the “list of things we need to do to steal motorcycles.” That one he would keep on his person and not post on the refrigerator.
Reuben’s wife, Rose, skittered about the kitchen paying scant attention to his doodling. A short plump woman with gray-specked black hair and round, pink face, she wore a dark green pantsuit and was tidying up the kitchen before leaving for her part-time secretarial duty at the Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce. It was almost summer tourist season so she worked six mornings a week at the front counter.
“What are you going to do on your summer vacation?” she asked.
“I have some reading to get caught up on the next few days. Then I have to get registered for that computer class in Rapid City,” he lied, setting up his alibi for future excursions from home.
“A good teacher never stops learning,” Rose said. She offered an endearing smile to her husband of thirty years.
Though Reuben had whiled away the previous couple summers as a law-abiding gardener tending to his rose bushes, he was confident she was clueless as to his activities for the ten or so summers before that when he masterminded lucrative heists and scams throughout western South Dakota, eastern Wyoming and even one adventure into Montana.
Rose, he thought, had been led to believe that her brilliant husband had perfected the art of online day trading and that he had milked that cash-cow dry or more likely just become bored with it.
Reuben first met Rose during new teacher orientation at Belle Fourche High School. She was in her second year as secretary to the principal and handing out ethics manuals to the new hires. Reuben was not particularly thrilled with his new job, even less so with the ethics manual, but was particularly fond of the way Rose’s black skirt hugged her tiny hips.
He sought her out during a smoke break that afternoon and invited her to a party at his apartment that night. She accepted and neither took nary an interested glance at a member of the opposite sex since.
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