The Blonde of the Joke (3 page)

“You don’t have any friends,” Francie said. She didn’t say it in a mean way, just offhand, like a boring fact, like there are fifty states in the Union. She had been paying more attention in Ms. Tinker’s class than I realized. “Don’t worry. Neither do I. It’s because I’m choosy. I don’t just pick up stray girls at the mall all the time, right? Like just walk up
and talk to people minding their own business? But there’s something about you. I can usually tell.”

“Something like what?”

“You’re different. You’ve got, like, that sneaky thing about you.”

“A sneaky thing?” No one had ever described me that way before. I was actually kind of flattered.

“Yeah, just sneaky,” she told me. “You look like you could get away with some serious shit. For one thing, you’re tiny. Like, how tall are you?”

“Five feet,” I said. I didn’t see where she was going.

“Exactly,” she said. “The type of person that people overlook. You’d be out the door before anyone noticed you. I bet you have a dark past, right?”

I shrugged. Francie shifted positions; now she was lying on her belly, chin propped up on her closed fists.

She pushed further: “Lots of secrets? Just admit it; I don’t care. Dark secrets—yes or no?”

I couldn’t decide whether or not to lie. I couldn’t quite decide on the truth, for that matter. This whole afternoon had felt like a test. “Maybe,” I finally said.

“Maybe means yes,” Francie said. “I knew it.”

I stubbed out the cigarette, which was giving me a gaping feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I guess I’ll try on the dress,” I said.

Outside the window it was dark. But Francie had scarves thrown over all the lampshades, and the room was warm and
pinkish and filling quickly with the smoke that spiraled out from between her fingers. New Order was still pushing through the speakers,
thump-thump-buzz
and every now and then a giant thrum that shook me in the gut. Without thinking, I pulled my sweatshirt over my head, and then the dress over my jeans. I shucked off the pants and let them fall around my ankles before stepping back into my shoes and tying the halter around my neck, standing there, in a new, stolen dress, in front of a girl I’d never spoken to before today.

The dress itched a little. I suddenly felt awkward. For one thing, it looked really stupid with sneakers. But more than that, I guess it was because of what I wanted: I wanted to be beautiful. I wanted to be like Francie, and I knew that I never, ever could. Standing there, in front of someone so different from me, in that ridiculous dress, I was revealing all of my stupidest ambitions.

But Francie was looking up at me from the bed with a dazzled smile.

“You should see yourself,” she said. “I mean, you should really see yourself. You look like a different person. You look amazing.”

And then I did see myself, like from far away, like from an airplane at night, and she was right. Somewhere in the glittering grid of the suburbs, I was there, in Francie’s bedroom, and I was glowing through it all. The brightest light. I was beautiful. Anyone could have seen it.

“
S
o you’re going to steal something today, right?”

Francie was asking. We were sitting on the J-12 bus, in the back row, on our way to the mall. “I mean, have you given it any more thought?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her. I looked down at my lap. I flexed my fingers, examining my raggedy nails. Francie’s nails were an inch long, bright red, with little foil rainbows glued on. I needed her to do mine next.

“We’ve been over this,” she said. I could hear her fighting to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

“Yeah,” I said. “But I’m still not sure.” I closed my eyes. “Can’t I just go along with you?”

I concentrated hard on the green blobs floating on the backs of my eyelids. I was trying to memorize the bus route,
just from the lurches and bounces, the stops and starts. Francie and I had taken the J-12 together exactly four times now, but somewhere between Monday and Thursday this route had become a familiar bass line in my rib cage. Taking slow, steady breaths, I covered my face, visualizing the landmarks outside as we passed each one. Here was the high school, the Burger King, the 7-Eleven where two girls had killed themselves. We were on the edge of the suburbs, on the seedy stretch of outlying highway where the sky was always the exact same shade of gray and fast-food restaurants were clustered drive-thru to drive-thru. We were almost at the mall.

“Listen, I’m not going to force you or anything,” Francie said. “All I’m saying is there’s nothing wrong with it, you know? It’s just shoplifting. It’s not like
abortion.”
She laughed wickedly.

I opened my eyes, startled. I had practically forgotten she was there. “It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with it,” I said. “And, like, I would care if there was?”

Francie gave me a
don’t bullshit me
kind of look. She put a hand on my knee. “Val. It’s just taking back what belongs to us already. I mean, it’s getting what we deserve. You have to remember that. It’s our right. Because don’t we deserve more than this?” She fluttered her hand in the air to indicate not just the bus we were sitting on, but every crappy thing in the world.

“Obviously,” I said.

The thing is, Francie had gotten it all twisted. She thought I had some kind of moral problem with shoplifting. Well, anyone except a lunatic like her can see that it’s technically wrong. But stealing some dumb ten-dollar earrings from Cinderella Club didn’t bother me very much. It wasn’t that.

“I’m just saying,” Francie said. She was working herself up as she talked, becoming more and more rapturous in her conviction. “It’s not just our right, okay? It’s, like, our duty. It’s, like, if we don’t do it, who else is going to? Someone has to change things. Take a stand and all that. Think Robin Hood.”

Francie was gripping my shoulders with each hand; she had a crazed glint in her eyes.

I nodded seriously, trying to convince her that I got the message. “I know,” I said. “You’re legitimately right.”

Francie looked like she was going to keep going, but the bus pulled to a stop and the hydraulic doors opened with a wheeze. We had arrived. We stood together and climbed down onto the sidewalk.

Standing there outside the mall in the predusk October light, Francie looked like someone out of a myth—probably something Norse, I’d say, because they’re the tallest and most imposing. Not to mention blond. She put a hand on my hip. She was glowing, rosy and optimistic in the end of the daylight.

She turned to me and said, “Okay, here’s the thing, Val. I’m going to put it a different way and then I’ll shut up, I promise. I believe the world is pretty fucking generous. It’s just putting all this stuff out there, all laid out in front of us, just free to take. Wouldn’t it be stupid not to grab it? It would be irresponsible. What’s that thing they say about a horse with a bow on it? Whatever. I’m just telling you what I believe. You don’t have to agree or anything. I’m just saying.”

Francie believed a lot of things, I was beginning to realize. Some of them seemed pretty retarded. But at least it was nice to be friends with someone who put so much thought into everything. Even when I’d had friends, it never seemed like they cared about much beyond which pages had been assigned in Algebra and who was invited to what birthday party.

Francie and I stood together, our hair twisting behind us in the wind, looking up at the mall. From the outside, it was a fortress, sitting on top of a giant hill off Georgia Avenue and protected by concrete moats of seemingly impenetrable parking garages. To get inside by car was no problem—you just drove on in—but on foot it felt sneaky from the start. You had to slip through fissures that weren’t meant for people. That day Francie and I climbed off the J-12 and looked up at Montgomery Shoppingtowne hovering above us, and I felt a funny combination of awe and dread. It was us against this. This sleeping, hungry thing.

Of course, Francie had a plan of attack.

“Over here,” she said. She led me from the sidewalk to a chain-link fence that bordered the steep, grassy hill leading up to the first garage. “This way’s quickest,” she said, and she pointed to a spot where the fence had buckled in on itself and was sagging into the dirt. Francie scrambled over the fence and bounded up the hill, those five-inch heels sinking into the soggy grass as she miraculously managed to keep her balance in them. “Come on,” she half shouted. “It’s not like it’s a crime or anything, but it’s probably better if no one sees you. It’s just the easiest way.”

“Can’t we just use the actual door?” I asked.

“You gotta start thinking different,” Francie said. “We strike silently. In and out. This way they’ll never see us coming.”

In Physics, Ms. Tinker had taught us that, in order for the equations to work, you first had to accept certain things. Things that were just for the sake of argument. Things like, for the purposes of this equation, there is no such thing as friction. Or if you drop a rubber ball to the ground a million times, and every time it falls and then bounces back into the air, there’s still no guarantee that the same thing will happen on the million-and-first time. For all anyone knew, the ball could turn into a canary and fly away. You had to learn to live with things like that, or there was no point even bothering with physics in the first place. Francie was the same. In order to understand her—I mean, really get what
she was saying—you had to first accept, as premise, things that made absolutely no sense.

So I followed her, and we made our way up the hill, hunched and practically crawling to keep from sliding all the way back down. At the top Francie hiked her skirt up, revealing floral biker shorts underneath, and climbed up onto a concrete overhang from which she leaped straight into the parking structure. She gave her hips a little shake, and I climbed right behind her. This is how we made our way into the mall.

And on that overhang I looked over my shoulder, down the hill to the highway, where I saw the bus that had dropped us off crawling into the distance. Just by standing there I was different, I knew. It was way too late to change my mind.

I had always been good. I had always done everything right—done it just how I was supposed to. I had always shown up on time, gone through the motions. My grades had always been decent, but not outstanding enough to be obnoxious. I had never, ever bothered anyone. Because it seems like what most people in the world want is for you to just make yourself as inconspicuous as possible. That was
good.

Standing there on the outside of the parking garage, though, I was starting to wonder if there wasn’t that much difference between being good and being scared.

Because that was just it, obviously: I was scared to steal.
Not scared of getting caught—not scared of going to jail, or hell, or anything like that. What scared me was the thought of that moment. The split second when it stopped belonging to someone else and belonged to me. When I stopped being good and started taking what Francie believed I deserved. What if it turned out I didn’t deserve it at all?

That day in the mall, Francie and I sat on the bench outside the Limited, on the ground floor. Francie reached into her purse and pulled out two carefully folded Bloomingdale’s bags. She handed one to me, and unfolded the other one as she talked. “There are three and only three tools for shoplifting,” Francie instructed me. “Number one: a shopping bag. From an expensive store is best. Ideally you fill it halfway with something like balled-up newspaper to make it look like you’ve actually been shopping. Number two: a rubber band. Keep it wrapped around your wrist and a few extras in your pocket.” She nodded at me as she spoke to make sure I was getting it all. “Number three is liquid eyeliner. Applied heavily and frequently. That’s all you need.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” Francie said. “Some people like to carry a can opener, or wear, like, one of those big puffy coats, but I’m not into that. The can opener’s overkill, and the puffy coat makes you look like an idiot.”

Why?
I could have asked.
Why a rubber band? What’s the reason?
But I didn’t bother. Maybe it had to do with
Francie’s eyes, which were green with rings of gold around the pupils, eyeliner stretching to curly points halfway up her temples. Francie’s eyes made it hard to concentrate. Or. Not the eyes, I guess, but the liner. Liquid. Applied heavily and frequently.

“Thanks for showing me all that,” I said. “It’s nice of you to let me in on your secrets.”

“Nice,”
Francie said scornfully, half laughing. “Nice. Ugh! Nice is the last thing I’m trying to be. What a bitchy thing to say!” She smiled to show she wasn’t quite serious, but it still stung.

“I wasn’t trying to be bitchy,” I said.

“Argh! That’s just it! Like there’s something wrong with being bitchy!” Francie pulled her fingers through the roots of her hair, clutching at her scalp. Now she was frustrated. “See, there’s your problem right there.”

“Um, sorry?” I said.

“Let me ask you a question,” Francie said. She looked at me sternly with eyes that appeared to hover a couple inches in front of the rest of her face. “Let me ask you a question: Every day I see you in Ms. Tinker’s class—”

“You never come to Ms. Tinker’s class,” I interjected.

“Well, when I do,” Francie said. “Whatever. You know what I mean. Every day you’re in your seat when the bell rings, with your pen out and your notebook open. And every day I see you hand your homework up, same as everyone else, and all perfect handwriting and everything. And
what I want to know is, why bother? Why do any of it? What’s the payoff here, Val? A college recommendation, like, someday? Do any of your teachers even remember you after the bell rings?”

“Ms. Tinker thinks my name is Vickie,” I admitted. “I never bothered correcting her, and now it’s too late to say anything. Also, she deducts five points if I don’t write in cursive, and another five if I forget to put the date on it, and one point for every doodle in the margin. Oh, and two if any of the binder holes are ripped.”

“Exactly,” said Francie. “What a complete asshole. Have you ever even once thought about just saying fuck it?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, why don’t you? Why don’t you just stop bothering once and for all?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Of course, I did know. I was scared. I was scared of lots of things—say, all of the above—but what I was most scared of was Francie. What I was most afraid of was that she would find out exactly what a pussy I really was. From the first time we’d met, I felt like she had the wrong idea about me. She’d said there was something about me, but I suspected she’d seriously misjudged.

I was not sneaky. All my dark secrets technically belonged to other people. And I had always been good. Why, I don’t know. Good was just something that came naturally. Maybe it all had to do with my brother, who had always, always
been the opposite. Now he was dying. Being good might not be very exciting, but at least you don’t die.

“Come on,” Francie said. “It’s all cool. Let’s go.” She stood, and snapped the bracelet of rubber bands against her wrist, wincing to herself.

I stood, too. “Next stop Nordstrom,” she said. “Watch what I do. You might learn something.”

We made our way through the mall to the department store. “I’m not going to let anything hurt you,” Francie told me as we walked. “You know that, right?”

She had surprised me. “What?” I asked.

“You have this thing about you. It would be a shame for anything bad to happen to you. I’m not trying to get you in any trouble. Trust me, as long as you’re with me, I’ll keep you safe. Swear to God.”

“Okay,” I said. Then, without thinking about it, I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. I just had to. No one had ever said something like that to me before.

That day, like every day, Nordstrom was echoing with the tinkling, clumsy strains of Pachelbel’s Canon on a grand piano, as played by an idiot in a tuxedo in an alcove by the escalator. Francie marched on, through Intimate Apparel to Cosmetics and straight to the Dior counter, where a prissy, overplucked guy in a skintight T-shirt was eyeing us suspiciously from behind the register.

“Hi, girls,” he said. “Can I help you with something?”

“I need some makeup,” Francie said. “I want the good stuff.”

“All our products are good,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Francie said. “This is a store, right? You sell things?”

The clerk gave a deep, pained sigh and started pulling stuff for her like it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.

Francie winked at me when he wasn’t looking and when he’d laid a smorgasbord of makeup in front of her, she began to deliberate, hemming and hawing over all of it, trying on everything he offered her and finding some petty problem with each item. “This black’s a little too black,” she said. “Do you have anything with a little more blue in it?” And the guy would sigh again and pull out something else.

I kept my eyes glued to her, like she’d told me. I knew exactly what she was doing, but as closely as I watched, I didn’t see her take anything. She was just that good.