The Blonde of the Joke (18 page)

F
rancie and I woke just before noon and got dressed together. We huddled at the bathroom mirror deep in concentration as we both did our eyeliner. I teased my hair into a giant tangled tower and set it in place with a can of Aqua Net. Skintight black jeans tucked into knee-high stiletto Nine West boots, lipstick overripe plum.

When I zipped my motorcycle jacket all the way up to my chin, Francie looked at me and whistled. “Just…wow,” she said. “Did I tell you yet how good you look as a blonde?”

Francie was wearing the same outfit she’d had on yesterday. The hat, the sunglasses, the ancient cocktail dress. It was Francie, for sure. We hopped on the bus and took the trip one final time. When we arrived at the mall, we climbed onto the sidewalk, and Francie put her hand on my shoulder,
and there was a breeze. We stood together, our hair shellacked in place a foot above each of our heads, both staring up at the structure above us.

I had changed. Francie had changed. Almost everything had changed, in one way or another. In the end, you are always older. But the mall had not changed. The mall would never change. The mall was all things at all times. It was a secret and a hope and a suspicion. It was a graveyard and a ghost town. Above all, it was a persistence. All that time Francie and I had thought we were stealing from it, when really it was taking what it wanted from us. My brother was gone.

The mall had already succeeded in pushing itself into the future; now it had set its sights on moving outward, and beyond.

We went to the Gap first. I wanted to say good-bye to Liz. In fact, I was worried that she had already heeded the call of the koalas.

She hadn’t. She was standing behind the counter, drumming her fingers and breathing down the neck of the clerk at the cash register. The bright halogen light bounced from the clean, shiny cedar floors and columns, lending everything a harsh white glare. Liz had her hair in a businesslike French braid and wore a prissy silk scarf tied around her neck. You know the type of scarf I mean. The type an English teacher would pair with a jeweled ladybug pin on the breast pocket of her red blazer.

“Hey, Liz,” I said. “You look fancy.”

“Hi, Valentina,” Liz said. “Hi, Francie.” She smiled, but
it wasn’t her usual smile. Her lips were cherry red, matte, and lined in maroon. She had lipstick on her teeth.

“I just came to say good-bye. You said there wouldn’t be time, but I thought I’d, you know, try or whatever.”

“Thanks,” Liz said. “That’s so nice of you. It really is nice.” She hadn’t made a move. She seemed distracted by the girl at the register. “Crystal,” she said to the girl, “you have to press CANCEL before you enter your register number again.”

“So,” I said. Francie was swiveling her head back and forth between me and Liz with a funny, perplexed expression. “So when are you leaving?” I asked.

Liz took a deep breath. The whole time we had been talking, she had not stopped drumming her nails. Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. Crystal was growing increasingly frustrated at her task, jamming the same button over and over only to be met with a long, annoying beep. “Here’s the thing, Valentina,” Liz said. She reached over and turned the key on the register to shut it off. “Go fold some shirts, Crystal,” she said, and the girl stalked off, all disgruntled. Liz turned back to us. “Here’s the thing. I’m not leaving. They offered me general manager. This morning. My own store. An offer I can’t, like, refuse. This whole place is mine now.” She drew her hand over her head in a rainbow like she expected me to be impressed. And I almost was.

Francie wasn’t having it. It was almost disturbing how my brother’s death seemed to have resurrected the old Francie. “It was always yours,” she said. “I thought that’s
what we were always saying all along.”

Liz pretended she hadn’t even heard her. “Listen,” Liz said. “I’m going to have to ask you guys not to come back here. We can still be friends and all, but it’s not, like, fun and games anymore. The bottom line’s my business now. I can’t have all the…” She trailed off. “You know. The thing is, I think maybe it’s time for all of us to grow up. Better to do it before it’s too late.”

“Come on,” Francie said. I followed her as she stalked out of the store. I tried to wave good-bye to Liz, but she had already turned her attention elsewhere.

“I cannot fucking believe her,” Francie said when we were clear. “The hypocrisy!”

“I can’t blame her,” I said. “Everyone has their own crap to deal with. You can’t judge a person for the way she handles it.”

Francie stole a lot of shit that day. It was indisputable that she had gotten her magic back. I didn’t even know she was taking anything, and then we’d leave the store and she would have something new in her bag. She stole bras and bras and bras from Intimates at Bloomingdale’s, and a huge stack of DVDs from FYE. She stole flip-flops and a bathing suit from PacSun, and Satsuma scented soap from the Body Shop, and three pairs of sunglasses from the rack at Anthropologie. She stole a handful of thongs with Hostess cupcakes on the crotch from Hot Topic, and sweatpants that
said
DADDY’S L’IL GIRL
across the butt from Fashion Dump. And on and on and on and on, and only warming up.

I didn’t bother taking anything. There was nothing I wanted.

We went to Abercrombie & Fitch, to the underwear wall. “For my future husband, Morrissey,” Francie said. “Do you think he likes boxer-briefs, or brief-briefs?”

“I can’t see Morrissey in boxer-briefs,” I said.

“Brief-briefs, then. Regular or low-rise?”

“I don’t know?”

“I’m going to go with low-rise. I like when you can see just a hint of pube.”

She was working her charms on rows of undies, but I just looked at the pictures. I looked at the packages in front of me. The posters on the wall. These headless men with their smoothly etched muscles and tiny, flinty nipples. Hairless and big-chested enough to be women, except that they weren’t. Maybe they were from a different universe, I thought. A more hearty universe where there was no such thing as a man or a woman, just these freaks in their underpants who were kind of both and kind of neither. And no need for the mess or the hassle or disease. They could just be in love with themselves. They reminded me of Francie.

My brother was gone. After every other thing had fallen away, I’d still held out hope that I could keep him, and I had failed.

Francie had somehow regained herself that day, and I felt
like I was waning in her presence. I mean, I guess I deserved it, but still.

“Let’s go to Claire’s,” Francie suggested.

At Claire’s, Francie occupied herself with the new stuff on the racks while I perused the bins of half-priced trinkets out of boredom, and that was when I found it, without even really looking. When I say
it
, I think you know what I mean.

I was digging through spray-paint-gilded bangles when it caught my eye from the next bin over. It was a sparkle that cut through the dull shimmer of junky baubles and glittery plastic crap. It jumped out at me, shot its spark right to the periphery of my vision, and I didn’t even have to turn my head to know. There it was.

It was the Most Beautiful Thing. It was what we had been looking for all along. The Holy Grail.

I held my breath, terrified that something would go wrong. But it was right there. No one could stop me, and I reached out and took it. It almost burned my hand, but I took it and clutched it in my fist and shoved my fist in my jacket pocket. I played with the thing as we left the store, rolled it over in my fingers, feeling its heat, its heft, the way it seemed to change shape as I twisted it. I squeezed it so hard that I was afraid I might draw blood.

“Well, that was a bust,” Francie said when we were out. “I feel like I already have ten of everything at Claire’s.”

Francie had always believed in unbelievable things. She had opened up a door that had led me to this dream-mall, a place
where everything—every single thing—was just sitting there, waiting to be stolen. Francie had been right all along. The Holy Grail had been under our noses this whole time. But I had found it too late. What good was it going to do me now?

I toyed with it, thinking how stupid it all was. I thought about the many ways I had failed everyone.

Then we were caught.

Francie was the one who was blindsided, not me. With the Most Beautiful Thing in my hand I had a kind of second sight, and I saw mall security before they even rounded the corner, aiming for us in sharky strides. I caught my breath and looked over at her, and she seemed, in that glance, so unimpressive. Even with two bags full of loot, even in her enormous hat.

Francie had chosen me for a reason. In Ms. Tinker’s Physics class, where foolishness went explicitly against policy, Francie had foolishly thought that I could protect her. It turned out it hadn’t been so foolish after all, though, because she was right. I could.

Security was heading for us, and I floated outside myself, looking down from above, able to see clearly in every direction and every dimension. There it all was, in chalky, glowing pastel, laid right out in simple geometric shapes. The map of the mall. The map of the world.

Francie had been right all along. I could protect her. I could see it. There were several ways I could have saved her. I saw it unfold exactly as it could happen.

I could have dragged her straight back into Bloomingdale’s—only a few feet away—where it would have been easy for us to hide in Furnishings, chest to chest inside an armoire until the coast was clear and we could go about our business.

I could have held her hand in mine and made a dash for it, straight for the narrow, hidden hallway that only we knew about, the one that led to the Q section of the garage. We would have made it easily.

I could have told her to give me her bags, the way she’d done for me long ago at Sephora. Could have stayed there, bags in hand, and told her to get the hell out of there, that I would meet her at the J-12 in twenty-five minutes. She wouldn’t have done it, but I could’ve offered, and it still would have changed certain things.

Or. I could have taken her by the elbow and hustled her into the Gap, where Liz would have sighed and sputtered and rolled her eyes in disapproval, and quickly, without further argument, would have pushed us into the stockroom, where the emergency exit would have taken us right out into the parking lot and safety and back to Francie’s house, where we would lie in her bed laughing about our near capture. Smoking cigarettes, her hand on my hip, my brother all but forgotten.

I did not do any of those things. Any one of them would have been a solution in its own way. But I still remembered what she had whispered in my ear, in my bed the night
before, when she’d thought I was asleep.
I will never let you go again.

So I chose to distract her. “You got a shitload of stuff,” I said. “It’s gotta be your best haul ever, huh?”

I could feel the guards getting closer. I knew that if I didn’t keep her off her game she would be able to feel them coming, too. At that moment, she was as good as she had ever been.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “We’ve had some damn good days in the past, you know?”

“True,” I said, searching for something else to say. “Did you get any dishes? My mom told me she needs some dishes.”

Francie didn’t have time to answer. They were on us. She never saw it coming.

And I was not scared. I could hardly remember what being scared felt like. I knew the thing in my pocket would protect me as long as I kept it in my fist. I was cool and unflappable when we were collared by the guards, a fat old man with a cartoonish comb-over and a rail-thin black woman who towered over even Francie in her heels. “Come this way,” the woman ordered in a bored monotone.

Francie’s head snapped in my direction as they swept us up. Her mascara’d lashes were stunned and spidery; her lips were petrified in a half kiss. She knew exactly what I had done. It was all there in that look. Her hand began to flutter toward her face, and I thought for a second she was going to make the Sign, to call for help. But her fingers never made it
to her earlobe. She knew that help was not coming; she knew that in order for something like that to work, you have to first believe in it. Francie didn’t believe in anything. I wanted her to make a break for it, for her to just drop her bags and let her stilettos carry her away, but I knew that it was too late. She was already broken.

I had no regrets.

Security led us past the Gap, where I could sense Liz’s eyes following us, and down the escalator past the fountain, through the food court, and down a narrow hallway behind the childcare room, to a big metal door marked PRIVATE. The whole time, Francie did not say a word. When I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she was destroyed. She was breathing heavy, cheeks flushed, spine hunched, and face crumpled.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I did it. My answer is complicated. There are so many reasons, after all. Reasons that don’t make sense, that argue with each other, that don’t add up. But I guess the simplest way of putting it is that I wanted her to understand how she had failed me and Jesse. How she had failed herself. By being ordinary. She was just a regular girl—one who, if you want the whole entire truth, looked completely ridiculous in all that makeup, the miniskirts, the heels, the hair. All she’d ever had was one pointless gift, that illusory, white-hot dazzle. She had never accomplished much with it, and now, when it could have been useful, it would not come to her. Of course it wouldn’t come to her.

We were taken to a back office, where the guards left us to
a hulking, dark-haired guy in a threadbare Men’s Warehouse suit. I sat, calm, at the conference table, next to Francie, and the guy, whose name tag read MR. GROSSMAN, dumped all her stuff out and glowered at us. “Look what we have here,” Mr. Grossman said. “Did you girls pay for any of this?”

“This has nothing to do with me,” I said.

“What about you?” Mr. Grossman asked Francie.

“Yes,” Francie mumbled. “It’s mine. I paid for it.”

“What would you say if I told you we had it all on tape?” he asked.