I have no idea where this came from, but I'm glad it did.


BACK UP PLAN

Rae and Sami had been best friends since that first roll call in homeroom 104 at Rialto Junior High. Mr. Johnson had stood up at the front of the class room and called off names alphabetically. Glancing up to check for a raised hand and look at the face that went with it. Then he’d look down at his clipboard, say the name to himself and check it off.

When he got to her, Rae Corly raised her hand and said, “Here,” like everybody else.

But Mr. Johnson looked up and down and then up again and said, “Oh. You’re a girl,” and a wave of laughter rolled through the room. Rae covered her face in her hands to hide her blush and for the umpteenth time hated her name. Why couldn’t her mother have given her a real girl’s name, like Alice or Mary? When he called Sami Williams, the whole thing happened again but Sami didn’t hide her head or blush. She glared around the room until she locked eyes with Rae, and that was it. Funny how a small thing like a name can bind two people together.

Over the years they had spent an inordinate amount of time inventing occupations and lives to match their names. Sami might say, “Ray took auto shop in high school and he’s gonna work for his Uncle Tony at the old Texaco.”

And Rae would pick it up and embellish the story – “Yeah, well Tony’s got a chop shop out in the back and when he has a heart attack at fifty, Ray’s gonna take it over and upgrade from Chevys and Fords to Beamers and Jags and make a fortune.”

“That’d be about the time he finds out that his real last name is Corleone and the mob takes him in like a brother.” Sami added. They had watched Godfather 2 the night before.

“Good for business but not so hot for the wife and kiddies,” Rae said.

Sami smacked her on the shoulder, “What wife? He’s a playboy!”

“Says who?”

“Says me!”

“No! He has to be married, it’s what they do, you know that. Family is everything.” She growled it out in a fake Godfather voice and they both cracked up. They’d riff on Sami’s name for a while (they took turns), and then do their homework.

They kept this up all the way through college where Sami got engaged to a pre-med student and then married him in an ostentatious full-blown church wedding. Rae was disgusted and refused to have any part in it. She had discovered feminism with a vengeance, burned all her bras (which was really no big deal as she had tiny tits anyway), shaved her head in sisterhood and started spelling her name with a Y.

“How could you sell out to the bourgeois establishment?” Rae screamed at Sami over the phone. She'd thought they had a deal.

“It’s always been my plan to get married, you knew that. Please come to the wedding.” Sami begged.

“Not on your life! No way am I gonna watch you make a fool of yourself!”

“Asshole!”

“Shithead!”

They both slammed down their phones and didn’t speak for six years.

Rae gave up blatant subversion of the establishment for covert ops from within it. and graduated from college with a Masters in Business. She got a job as an intern on Market Street. She wore power suits and 3” heels and had her hair done twice a week, highlights once a month.

Sami got divorced from the doctor and moved to New Mexico with her fat monthly alimony checks. She’d called Rae to cry about the divorce and now they were talking again.

“What’s the plan now?” Rae asked her.

“I don’t know, I never thought I’d need a back up. Getting married was it.”

Rae was standing in her fancy office staring at the pink slip in her hand wishing she’d had any plan at all. “I just got fired.” She said.

“Oh Rae, what are you gonna do now?”

“Shit! I honestly don’t know.” She told her best friend. They just breathed at each other over the phone for a while.

And then Sami said in her old voice, “Well, what would Ray do? What would Sammy do?” Suddenly they were kids again and they both had to laugh.

“I think Ray would take a break from the city and drive out to see his old friend in New Mexico,” Rae said. “Then they’d go out for tacos and beers and catch up on old times.”

“I think Sammy’d like that, he’s got a spare room and he knows this great place to fish on the Rio Grande and a bar that’s got the hottest chicks in town. Maybe they’d both get lucky.”

“Maybe they would, you never can tell with those guys.”