Pigs in Heaven

You won’t make as much as I’d have to pay for baby-sitting.”

Turtle glances up at Taylor, her dark eyes showing a rim of white below the pupils and her mouth tucked like a made bed.

“Oh, I can make money all right,” Barbie says. “And I don’t mean waitressing, either. All I need is some job in an office with a color Xerox machine.”

Taylor is afraid to ask for more details on this scheme, so she doesn’t. But after a minute Barbie rolls over on her back and half sits up, so that the muscles form ridges in her narrow abdomen. She shades her eyes and looks at Taylor peculiarly.

“You want to know why I left Bakersfield?”

“You said there weren’t enough career opportunities for Barbie look-alikes.”

“Well, I lied,” Barbie says flatly, her voice stripped of its usual friendly effort. “I was wanted for counterfeiting.”

“Counterfeiting money?”

“What else can you counterfeit? Duh.”

“How?”

“A color Xerox machine. It’s so easy. Just come into the office a little early, lay out some twenties on the glass, copy them front and back, and blammo, you’re ready to go shopping.”

Taylor stares. “Are you kidding me?”

“Listen, I don’t know why everybody in the world isn’t doing this. My boss only found out because I left some messed-up bills in the trash once.”

Taylor feels a little shaky. In these moments when Barbie’s surface cracks, the feelings inside seem powerful and terrify-ing. Taylor wonders what it must have taken to turn someone’s regular daughter into such a desperate, picture-perfect loner.

“Isn’t that a federal crime?” she asks.

Barbie examines the end of her ponytail. “Oh, probably. I don’t know.”

“Are we going to start seeing your picture in the Post Office?”

“No way.” She flips the ponytail behind her back and lies down again. “My boss won’t press charges. I’d tell his wife what he tried to pull on me one day in his office.”

Taylor glances down at Turtle, who unfortunately is taking everything in. “I don’t think it’s your boss you have to worry about. I think it’s the U.S. Treasury Department.”

“Well, don’t you think they’ve got criminals to catch? I mean, it’s not like I murdered somebody. I just stimulated the economy.”

Taylor is never sure when to argue with Barbie, who behaves like a tourist from another solar system who only read a toy catalog before arriving here. You can’t argue with someone like that about family values. But Taylor wishes Turtle weren’t hearing this. The casino robbery seemed adventurous, like piracy or Robin Hood, but photocopying money sounds like a simple crime of greed.

Barbie, with her eyes carefully closed, presumably to get an even tan on her eyelids, feels around for the plastic glass near her elbow and rattles the ice cubes into her mouth.

“So why did you leave Bakersfield?” Taylor asks.

“They started putting up these signs in all the shopping malls, like ‘Warning, warning!’ I guess they started noticing the bills in their cash registers. Maybe when they tried to turn them in to the bank. I don’t know. So I’m like, forget this! I have to leave town just to spend my money!”

Taylor doesn’t know what to say. She would try to argue with Barbie, but she is bone-tired from driving the Handi-Van all day, strapping down wheelchairs and engaging in powerfully depressing conversations and enduring the superiority of seeing-eye dogs. She feels oppressed now by the ugly concrete patio. It’s hardly big enough for a dog to turn around in, with a high brown fence separating it from the identical patios of the neighbors. She wonders if the color scheme of brown is some sort of international code for poverty. It would be more cheerful back here if she had a few plants, at least. A red geranium in a pot, or a tomato plant, something to use the free sunshine and give something back.

But it will be weeks before they have even three extra dollars to spend on something like that. In the meantime, she thinks, who knows? Maybe Barbie has the right idea. Use the free sunshine yourself. Use whatever comes your way.

On Saturday, Kevin and Taylor and Turtle buy ice-cream cones in Pioneer Square to celebrate Taylor’s first paycheck.

Taylor is not in a party mood: the check was much smaller than she expected, after what fell out for taxes and Social Security. She’s working full time, and has no idea how she’s going to cover both rent and food, unless Barbie helps. She’s not crazy about using Barbie’s money, either, considering the source.