The Blonde of the Joke (6 page)

“V
edela.” Ms. Tinker grabbed my arm as I was walking out of class. “I want to talk to you.”

“It’s Vickie,” I corrected her. My name wasn’t Vickie, either, but it was what she usually called me, and I had gotten used to it.

“Vendela, Vickie, Velma, Valentina—it’s all the same to me,” Ms. Tinker said. I think it’s possible that she winked when she got to my actual name, but it was hard to be sure, she was such a twitchy person to start with. “I must say that Vendela suits you better than Vickie these days,” she went on. “Forgive an old woman for getting mixed up.”

Ms. Tinker really wasn’t even that old, but she was always acting like she had one foot in the grave. “I’m going to be late to my next class,” I told her. I was sick of her
bullshit. I zipped my motorcycle jacket all the way to my chin and pulled away. She grabbed me again.

“Hasn’t seemed to bother you much lately.”

“Can I go?” I asked.

“I’m worried about you,” Ms. Tinker said. “Doodles all over your work. Talking back. And you know I don’t tolerate tardiness. You used to be one of my best students.”

“How could I have been one of your best students? You don’t even know my name,” I said. I jerked my elbow from her spindly, gnarled hand and pushed out through the door.

At the mall, Francie was making big plans. I sat next to her on the edge of the fountain, half listening as she mused on and on about impossible topics. It was a drone that I liked. The infiniteness of her ambition was reassuring. “We should steal the Holy Grail,” she was saying that day, dragging her cupped palm through the water and drawing small whirlpools as she stared into space. “Now that would be a score.”

“I doubt they have the Holy Grail at Montgomery Shoppingtowne,” I deadpanned. “I definitely haven’t spotted it at Wet Seal. Bebe maybe?”

Sarcasm was always lost on Francie. “You never know,” she said. “You never know. We haven’t even scratched the surface of this place. And if I had the Holy Grail, I’d hide it in an unlikely location. Wouldn’t you? I mean, no one’s found it yet after, what, two thousand years? It has to be someplace no one’s thought to look. What hiding place could
be more unlikely than this fake-o palace? Who would ever imagine you could find something real here?”

“There’s the Armani store,” I said. “That’s real Armani.”

“Armani Exchange,” Francie corrected me. Francie was the type of person who could tell you, in detail, the precise difference between Armani and Armani Exchange, right down to the pattern of the stitching. “A-fucking-X; black ribbed fifty-dollar T-shirt Eurotrash crap. It doesn’t count. Face it, Val. There’re two and a half real things in this whole entire place. You, me, and the Holy Grail—the Holy Grail only counts half because it’s just a suspicion that it’s here. And even myself I’m not so sure about all the time, when it comes to realness. Who’s to say I’m not a robot, or a hologram? That leaves you.”

“Ha!” I said.

“Don’t laugh, Val,” Francie said. “You are, like, so for real.”

If she had told me the same exact thing a few weeks before, I wouldn’t have believed her, or even really known what she meant. But sitting there with her, I could feel my blood pumping, pumping against skintight leather. I knew that she was right. “Thanks,” I said.

“Well, it’s true,” she said. “And we’re going to find the Holy Grail. I’m not sure why I think it’s here, but I do have a feeling.” Francie took out her eyeliner and carefully extended her curlicues in a silent show of determination. “My feelings are usually reliable.”

“What does the Holy Grail even do, anyway?” I asked. “It has something to do with Indiana Jones, right?”

“Indiana Jones and Jesus,” she said. “And it’s, like, totally valuable. But the main thing about it is that it lets you live forever. You take a drink from it and
boom,
instant immortality.”

“So it’s a cup or a mug or something?”

“Well, it’s actually technically a
chalice,
I guess, but supposedly it’s likely to be enchanted. So maybe it doesn’t look like a cup at all. I looked it up on Wikipedia yesterday. There are all kinds of theories. You’d be surprised how much thought people have put into it.”

“I bet,” I said. I wasn’t surprised, though.

“Do you think it’s, like, obvious that it’s something special?” I asked Francie on a different day. She and I were warming up at Claire’s Boutique, digging through wire bins of spray-painted gold junk. “The Holy Grail. Like, could it be disguised as a ball of lint or a piece of toilet paper? That seems like it would be unfair.” I palmed a five-dollar package of bangles as I spoke, slipped it in my pocket when I knew no one was looking. It’s better to put things in your pocket rather than your bag if you can, because they’re less likely to try to search your pockets. Everyone’s afraid of lawsuits these days.

“I think whatever it is, it’s beautiful,” said Francie. “The most beautiful thing. But beautiful in, like, a way that you
won’t be able to predict. Something you’d think would be nothing, and then you see it and you look carefully, and that’s when you’re, like, oh my God. I’m pretty sure that’s how we’ll know.”

So we were looking for the Most Beautiful Thing. That was the Holy Grail. The thing you would almost overlook and then, all of a sudden, OMG. I didn’t tell Francie why it was so important to me, but I was determined to find it.

Why we thought it was at the mall, I don’t know. Francie called it a
suspicion,
but I think it was just the kind of wishful thinking that comes out of shitty circumstance. The J-12 went to Montgomery Shoppingtowne. It didn’t go to the Louvre or Vatican City. You believe what you need to believe. So we searched.

And we stole. The two of us, side by side. Me flanking her every move, stealing right while she stole left. We stole Egyptian cotton bedsheets and bottles of perfume and cheap handbags and more costume jewelry than one person could wear in a lifetime. We stole bras and silver-plated pens and Christmas ornaments. With my hair cropped down to messy roots and my motorcycle jacket on, I floated with Francie, for the first time, as an equal.

The Holy Grail turned out to be elusive, though. Every day, after we were finished, we’d make our way to our handicap stall, where we’d take out all our stuff and examine it, just to see if we had found the Grail without realizing it. One time I stole a hundred-dollar pepper grinder that seemed
like it had promise. There was something about the way it had called to me in Williams-Sonoma, something about the way it glittered under the soft-focus lighting that made me wonder if it was more than it seemed. But upon examination, in the fluorescence of the bathroom, it was just a regular pepper grinder, and not special at all. It was beyond ordinary—definitely not beautiful.

If you had asked me what the Most Beautiful Thing was, I wouldn’t have said it aloud, but secretly I would have known my answer: Francie.

You should understand that she was not exactly a supermodel. I mean, she was beautiful, but she wasn’t. Yeah, she was tall and blond and booby with amazing legs, but there was something a little funny about her jawline—something square and sharp and almost masculine. Her shoulders were too broad; one eye was just the tiniest bit wonky; her nose had a slight hook; and if you looked closely you could see small blossoms of acne under the crust of her caked-on makeup. It didn’t matter. There was just something about her. If you thought too hard about it, she was almost ugly. But then you looked again, and your jaw would drop.

She was a more perfect body pieced together from spares and defectives. From day to day, her appearance was never quite the same. No picture resembled the last. And sometimes I wondered if she was replacing her own parts with things she had lifted, one by one. A rhinestone where her left eye should have been. A fist-size crystal paperweight for
a heart. It’s possible that she was a robot or a hologram. But aren’t those things real, too?

I loved Francie. I mean, I was
in
love with Francie. But not in a lesbo way. It wasn’t like that. I loved Francie because she had seen something in me that I had never suspected. Because she had unlocked it. She had taught me how to steal. I loved Francie because she was beautiful. Because she was tall. And most of all, because I could not imagine a question that she could not answer. If she didn’t know it off the top of her head, she would make something up and be right without even really meaning to be.

Christmas was coming fast. The mall was more jammed every day, and the carols on the sound system got more and more insistent. In the middle of December, it took twenty minutes to make it from Club Libby Lu to Build-a-Bear Workshop; there were just that many people crowding the way. Sitting on the fountain, staring up at the wannabe firmament of tiny white lights strung from skylight to skylight, we imagined ourselves as part of something larger than ourselves.

We were at the Gap ten days before Christmas break, and I had just dropped a lamb’s-wool sweater into my bag when I heard my name in a voice I didn’t recognize. Shit. I turned around slowly and saw an older, dark-haired girl—in her midtwenties, I figured—standing there, a hand on her hip, kind of smiling at me like we were old
friends. I had no idea who she was.

“Val?” she asked. “Is that you?”

“I just want to try it on,” I said. “I was just about to go to the dressing room.” But the girl gave me a blank look.

“It’s me, Liz,” she said. “Don’t you remember me?”

Then it came to me. It was Liz Jordan, my brother Jesse’s old girlfriend from years ago. I couldn’t believe that she had recognized me; I’d been just a little kid the last time I’d seen her.

“Hey,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to react. “What’s up?” I nodded in greeting.

“It
is
you!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe it! Last time I saw you you were, what, ten years old?”

“I guess so,” I said. “Or younger?”

Liz squealed and wrapped her arms around me. “It’s so awesome to see you! You’re all grown-up and everything. You look amazing. Your haircut’s awesome!” She pulled away and stood back, regarding me. “I just want to look at you,” she said. “Oh my God!” And she ran her fingers across my scalp, mussing what hair I still had.

Francie appeared from wherever she had been. Her earrings were glinting in a way that told me she was saddled down with plenty of loot. She looked from me to Liz and back again. “Hey,” she said.

“Francie, this is Liz,” I said. “Liz, this is Francie.”

Francie looked confused. “Hey,” she said. “So, like, how
do you guys know each other? Are you in high school?”

Liz blushed. “I used to date Val’s big brother before he turned into a giant homo,” Liz informed Francie, who raised an eyebrow. Liz didn’t notice, just turned back to me. “Even though, now that I think about it, that was the least of the problem. We’re supposedly best friends, but I haven’t seen him in, like, at least a year and a half. I mean, we talk on the phone sometimes, but you know how he can be.” She cocked her head and put her thumb to her ear, switching into an impersonation of my brother. “‘Uh-huh. Yep. Sure. Next week. Yep.’” Liz rolled her eyes. “Like, give me
something.
Just a fucking
word.
It’s like he would prefer for no one to care about him. Well, sorry, but I’m your fucking best friend, Jesse.”

“You sound like my mom,” I said. “Except that my mom doesn’t actually say any of that.”

“Ha. Well, maybe that’s why he doesn’t like talking to me. Whatever. He’s doing better these days, right?”

“It’s not like I would know. Last I heard, he was living in Harlem with some sixty-year-old dude.”

“Oh, that was ages ago, thank God,” Liz said. “Ambrose. That guy was a real creep. Anyway, I do think he’s doing better. Him coming home is, like, a good sign, I’m pretty sure. But really, you can’t try to speculate; you’ll be wrong every time. We won’t know for sure until he’s back for Christmas, I guess.”

I did a double take. “He’s coming home for Christmas?”

“Uh, duh!” Liz said. “Where have you been?” Then she jerked her head and looked around the overrun store, distracted. Clothes were strewn on the floor and jumbled in huge messy piles on top of the tables. There didn’t seem to be a single folded garment in the entire place. “God, this place is a dump,” she said. “Back to work, I guess.”

“You work here?” Francie asked.

Liz rolled her eyes. “I’m the assistant manager. Maybe you should just kill me now.” Then she walked off to fold some clothes and called over her shoulder to me. “I’m sure I’ll see you when he’s back in town. I missed you!”

“We need to get out of here, like,
now,”
Francie muttered. She shot a suspicious look at Liz Jordan’s back and took my hand, marching me out of the store, back into the mall, where we were swallowed up by the crowd. We stood alone in the center of the atrium while people streamed around us.

“What the fuck!” Francie said. “You didn’t tell me you have a brother! Do you seriously have a brother?”

“He’s not like a regular brother,” I said.

“Clearly.” Francie snorted. “I mean, really, for fuck’s sake! How do you have a brother and not even mention it? Anything else you’re not telling me?”

“He’s dying,” I said. “Like, any day now.”

Francie stared at me. “Seriously?”

I nodded.

“That’s so shitty,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s really shitty.”

“Well,” Francie decided, “if he’s coming home for Christmas, we need to get him presents.” Francie was always so practical like that.

My older brother was dying. No one had ever told me that he was dying; I’d been forced to figure it out on my own. I didn’t know exactly what his problem was except that it didn’t seem like a normal disease or anything like that. It seemed like something almost mystical. A problem that only the Holy Grail might be able to solve. Not that I believed in things like that.

I mean, I only believed in them a little. I wasn’t sure exactly what I believed in anymore. But I believed in Francie. I believed in my motorcycle jacket. And I believed that when it comes to things like the Holy Grail, people are usually willing to bend their beliefs.