Rachel checked her watch, and they had been gone for only twelve minutes. The Datsun sped back to the fire hall. Rachel knew that Laverna would return to the Shame after the ball was over, hosting her usual after-party. There was no way Laverna would connect the destruction to her daughter. Rachel had been spotted on the dance floor, and the twelve-minute disappearance would go unnoticed. Rachel waved at Ginger as she locked the bathroom door and counted the money. $1,975.08, and she struggled with her math as she divided it in half. After solemnly promising to avoid pink lipstick for the rest of her life, Krystal was given another fifty dollars. Rachel removed every trace of Neon Orchid on Krystal’s lips. This had been the most lucrative night of Rachel’s life.
The lesbians greeted them warmly, and the entire group invaded the dance floor. Inside the circle of miners, Krystal and Rachel danced for hours. It was easy to be conspicuous. When the toughest miner grabbed Rachel’s face and kissed her directly on the lips, she surrendered. Rachel could hear the commotion, despite her heart beating in her ears, full of cocaine and the calisthenics of dancing. She had no doubt that Laverna and Red Mabel were watching; she could feel it on her skin. Rachel had no fear of flamethrowers or the judge or the future. She spun around the cement floor until her hometown was a blur. If she remained in motion, and did not look back, her hometown would disappear entirely. Rachel Flood would leave this all behind.
The Flood Girls versus New Poland At-Home Sales
The second game was actually their fourth. It was the first weekend of May, and the Flood Girls had a victory, without even taking the field.
As promised, Laverna carefully organized a sting, set the Ellis High School girls up in an underage drinking bust. Winsome brought a free keg from the Dirty Shame like a Trojan horse, flirted with the curvaceous seventeen--year-old captain of the Ellis High School girls in the parking lot of the Town Pump. He offered up the keg as a gift, in exchange for an invitation to their weekend party in the woods, where he promised to make out with her around their bonfire. Laverna knew that high school girls would do anything for the attentions of an older man—Rachel taught her that much. Laverna didn’t pay Winsome a dime. He loved the subterfuge, the chance to get revenge on the thieving, indistinguishable girls from Ellis. The cops were greedy, however, and Laverna slipped a fifty-dollar bill into an envelope for the Ellis chief of police. Thus, the Flood Girls won game number three by default. Laverna was comfortable going into the fourth game of the season with a one-and-one record, and one rescheduled due to a blizzard.
On the day of their fourth game, Laverna woke up smiling, and she believed that her luck was changing. The Flood Girls won a game, even if it was a forfeit. In addition, the word around town buzzed—the Clinkenbeard kid got kicked out of juvie, shipped off to a facility in Arizona, where Laverna hoped he would die from sunburn or a scorpion bite.
Today, they played the ladies from New Poland At-Home Sales. It was an away game, and the Flood Girls carpooled the forty-seven miles. The team from New Poland was a conglomeration, an affiliation of housewives who also happened to do at-home sales in their free time. Laverna especially hated them, because they believed they were real businesswomen.
This team wore nonmatching uniforms, T-shirts advertising their brands, always selling. These bitches had phone numbers on their T-shirts, as if somebody would write down a phone number in the middle of a ball game. They came to games bearing receipt booklets.
In the dugout, Laverna declared that she would murder any Flood Girl who was distracted at bat by a conversation about a new set of self--sharpening knives, which the catcher from New Poland had the market on.
In addition to the knife lady, there were several representatives from Mary Kay, an Avon saleswoman, twin sisters who sold Hoover products, and their rival from Electrolux. The entire outfield was Amway, and Laverna hated them the most. Once, in a show of league spirit, Laverna and Red Mabel let themselves be dragged to one of their parties. Of course, Red Mabel had been coarse, and completely drunk, and burned the hostess’s couch with a cigarette on purpose. Laverna bought a punch bowl just to make up for it. That was five years ago. They still called Laverna every three months and sent her catalogs.