“That’s all?”

“One other birthday card, ‘to Linda from Uncle Pete.’ Twenty bucks.” He looked up at Olive and added, “Uncle Pete’s probably a pedophile, and Linda’s probably his neighbor’s ten-year-old. Hollywood’s full of freaks. Someday I’m getting outta here.”

“I better check on the money,” Olive said.

“Yeah, don’t cook it to death,” Farley said, thinking that the saltine was making him sick. Maybe he should try some vegetable soup if there was a can left.

The money was in the tub that Farley had placed on the screened back porch. Eighteen five-dollar bills were soaking in Easy-Off, almost bleached clean. Olive used a wooden spoon to poke a few of them or flip them over to look at the other side. She hoped this would work better than the last time they tried passing bogus money.

That time Olive almost got arrested, and it scared her to even think about that day two months ago when Farley told her to buy a certain light green bonded paper at Office Depot. And then they took it to Sam, the guy who rented them his car from time to time, and Sam worked for two days cutting the paper and printing twenty-dollar bills on his very expensive laser printer. After Sam was satisfied, he told Olive to spray the stack of bogus twenties with laundry starch and let them dry thoroughly. Olive did it, and when she and Farley checked the bills, he thought they were perfect.

They stayed away from the stores like the mini-market chains that have the pen they run over large bills. Farley wasn’t sure if they’d bother with twenties, but he was afraid to take a chance. A mini-market clerk had told Farley that if the clerk sees brown under the pen, it’s good; black or no color is bad. Or something like that. So they’d gone to a Target store on that day two months ago to try out the bogus money.

In front of the store was a buff young guy with a mullet passing out gay pride leaflets for a parade that was being organized the following weekend. The guy wore a tight yellow T-shirt with purple letters across the front that said “Queer Pervert.”

He’d offered a handbill to Farley, who pointed at the words on the T-shirt and said to Olive, “That’s redundant.”

The guy flexed his deltoids and pecs, saying to Farley, “And it could say ‘Kick Boxer’ too. Want a demonstration?”

“Don’t come near me!” Farley cried. “Olive, you’re a witness!”

“What’s redundant, Farley?” Olive asked, but he said, “Just get the fuck inside the store.”

Olive could see that Farley was in a bad mood then, and when they were entering, they were partially blocked by six women and girls completely covered in chadors and burkas, two of them talking on cells and two others raising their veils to drink from large Starbucks cups.

Farley brushed past them, saying, “Why don’t you take those Halloween rags back to Western Costume.” Then to Olive, “Wannabe sand niggers. Or maybe Gypsies boosting merchandise under those fucking muumuus.”

One of the women said something angrily in Arabic, and Farley muttered, “Hasta lasagna to you too. Bitch.”

There were lots of things that Olive had wanted to buy, but Farley said they were going to maintain control until they tested the money once or twice with small purchases. Farley kept looking at a CD player for $69.50 that he said he could sell in five minutes at Ruby’s Donuts on Santa Monica Boulevard, where a lot of tranny streetwalkers hung out.

Olive had always been tenderhearted and she felt sorry for all those transsexuals trapped between two genders. Some of those she’d talked to had had partial gender-changing operations, and a couple of them had endured the complete change, Adam’s apple surgery and all. But Olive could still tell they hadn’t been born as women. They seemed sad to Olive and they were always nice to her long before she’d met Farley, when she was panhandling and selling ecstasy for a guy named Willard, who was way mean. Many times a tranny who’d just turned a good trick would give Olive five or ten dollars and tell her to go get something to eat.

“You look nervous,” Farley said to Olive as they wandered around the Target store.

“I’m only a little nervous,” Olive said.

“Well, stop it. You gotta look like a normal person, if that’s possible.” Farley eyed a very nice twenty-one-inch TV set but shook his head, saying, “We gotta start small.”

“Can we just do it now, Farley?” Olive said. “I just wanna get it over with.”

Farley left the store and Olive took the CD player to the checkout counter, the most crowded one so that she’d encounter a clerk who was too busy to be looking for bogus money. Except that just as the shopper ahead of her was paying for a purchase of blankets and sheets, a manager stepped over and offered to relieve the harried young checkout clerk. He glanced at Olive when he was taking care of the other customer, and Olive had a bad feeling.

She had a real bad feeling when it was her turn and he said suspiciously, “Will you be paying by check?”

“No, cash,” Olive said innocently, just as a roving store employee walked up to the manager and nodded toward Olive.

The roving guy said, “Where’s your friend?”

“Friend?” Olive said.

“Yes, the man who insulted the Muslim ladies,” he said. “They complained and wanted me to throw him out of the store.”

Olive was so shaken, she didn’t notice that she’d dropped the three twenties on the counter until the manager picked them up and held them up to the light and ran them through his fingers. And Olive panicked. She bolted and ran past shoppers with loaded carts, through the doors to the parking lot, and didn’t stop until she was on the sidewalk in front.

When Farley found her walking on the sidewalk and picked her up, she didn’t tell him about the guy and the complaint from the Muslim women. She knew it would just make him madder and get him in a terrible mood, so she said that the checkout clerk felt the money and said, “This paper is wrong.” And that’s why Farley went back to Sam, who told him to try to get good paper by bleaching real money with Easy-Off.

So today they were trying it again but with real money. She wore her cleanest cotton sweater and some low-rise jeans that were too big, even though Farley had shoplifted them from the juniors section at Nordstrom. And she wore tennis shoes for running, in case things went bad again.

“This time it won’t go bad,” Farley promised Olive while he parked in front of RadioShack, seemingly determined to buy a CD player.

When they were out and standing beside the car, he said, “This time you got real paper from real money, so don’t sweat it. And it wasn’t easy to get hold of all those five-dollar bills, so don’t blow this.”

“I don’t know if they look quite right,” Olive said doubtfully.

“Stop worrying,” Farley said. “You remember what Sam told you about the strip and the watermark?”

“Sort of,” Olive said.

“The strip on the left side of a five says five, right? But it’s small, very hard to see. The president’s image on the right-side watermark is bigger but also hard to see. So if they hold the bill up to the light and their eyes start looking left to right or right to left, whadda you do?”

“I run to you.”

“No, you don’t run to me, goddamnit!” He yelled it, then looked around, but none of the passing shoppers were paying any attention to them. He continued with as much patience as he could muster. “These dumb shits won’t even notice that the strip ain’t for a twenty-dollar bill and that the watermark has a picture of Lincoln instead of Jackson. They just go through the motions and look, but they don’t see. So don’t panic.”

“Until I’m sure he’s onto me. Then I run out to you.”

Farley looked at the low, smog-laden sky and thought, Maintain. Just fucking maintain. This woman is dumb as a clump of dog hair. Slowly he said, “You do not run to me. You never run to me. You do not know me. I am a fucking stranger. You just walk fast out of the store and head for the street. I’ll pick you up there after I make sure nobody’s coming after you.”