Without warning, the foyer in front of her teemed with security guards. They chewed the lips off their Styrofoam coffee cups with agitation, scanning the aisles for trouble. My bad, Marlo thought. Perhaps exposing the undercover cop and gloating in his lameness hadn’t been the smartest play. Well, live and learn … and since Marlo wasn’t alive, she’d go easy on herself. What she needed now more than anything was an alternate escape route.
Unfortunately, she could barely move—partly because her path back to the mall concourse was now blocked, but also because of the silk mourning gown, wool chintz wrapper, black button-up bodice, embroidered cream-colored shirtwaist, and several petticoats she was wearing underneath her horrid Rapacia sweat suit. Marlo turned and waddled away toward the emergency exit at the back of the store. She wobbled like a Victorian penguin with an underactive thyroid up the Pimentos, Pine-Scented Cleansers, and Pom-Poms aisle, the bright GREEN EMERGENCY EXIT sign in sight.
“They’re at it again,” said a bored shopgirl buffing her nails a few yards away, peering through the large stained-glass window inset in the emergency exit door.
Another girl, wearing a white laboratory coat and a great deal of makeup, joined her. “They are so gross,” the girl said, wrinkling her orange, artificially tanned nose. “They’re like roaches with shopping carts.”
The shopgirls turned toward Marlo.
“May I help you?” they said as one, their request to serve coming off more as an offer to “help” Marlo right out of their immediate future.
“Um, no thanks,” Marlo managed through her suffocating heat prostration. “I was just … wondering if there was something wrong, like … an emergency.”
The shopgirls locked eyes briefly before glancing out the window.
“Oh, that,” said the one with the nail file. “It’s just the PODs again, going through the Dumpsters down in the alley. I’m sure security will shoo them away soon enough, once they get around to it.”
“PODs?” asked Marlo.
The girls glared at Marlo as she swayed slightly from side to side in her personal, one-girl oven.
“I’m new to … Cloud One,” she added hastily. “My wings haven’t even broken through.”
The girl in the lab coat smiled weakly. “Yeah.” She nodded. “That can hurt like … well, like you know what.”
“Well, speaking of you know what, that’s where those PODs should go,” the other girl said while examining her manicure. “The Phantoms of the Dispossessed. They come and raid the bins every so often, taking whatever they can before wandering off to the next realm. Thank goodness they can’t get in here.”
Marlo peeked through the stained-glass window, getting a warped view of an alley through the clear, crystal wings of an angel. The alley was several flights below, at the end of a gleaming fire escalator. In the alley were beautiful titanium Dumpsters loaded with all the excess that Mallvana produced regularly. Milling about the crowded bins were dozens of haggard spirits pushing shopping carts overflowing with castaway trinkets. They worked diligently in silence, performing specific roles like a kind of roaming insect colony. A tattooed man with long, stringy black hair pored through castaway containers with the intensity of a prospector panning for gold. A bearded man with a grubby Elysian Fields cap flattened cans with his work boot, kicking them toward an old woman who nimbly crammed as many in her cart as possible.
“Where do they come from?” Marlo asked dimly.
“Who knows?” Lab-coat girl shrugged. “Who cares? They just wander from place to place. They never stay anywhere, because they don’t belong anywhere.”
“Gratuitous displays of mercy at two o’clock,” the other shopgirl said, pressed against Marlo by the window. Faith, Hope, and Charity wriggled their way down the alley to the PODs in their fashionably impractical shoes and dresses.
Marlo could see a POD with a thick, Civil War-era mustache holding up an intricate, handblown decanter containing a few drops of a strange, silver liquid that glittered coldly like a melted mirror. He tried pouring the drops into an old two-liter jug half-full of the liquid, but Charity fell into the man while trying to crush cans in her high heels.
He bellowed angrily as he spilled some of the liquid. Once free of the bottle, the liquid hit the ground and darted away into the shadows.
Suddenly, a blast of walkie-talkie static detonated behind Marlo. She looked back with a start. The group of security guards had abandoned the foyer and were now storming down the aisle straight toward Marlo. She swallowed, which was difficult considering how many vintage lace and velvet collars clutched her throat.
“Finally,” the shopgirl next to Marlo muttered sarcastically between gum smacks. “Security guards to the rescue. My heroes.”
Grim and purposeful, the guards marched closer.
This is it, Marlo thought. At least I’ll be forced into shoplifting retirement at the top of my game.
The security guards reached Marlo, shooting her suspicious sideways glances, then proceeded to file past her through the emergency exit and down the fire escalator. Soon the alley was filled with guards strutting about like ruffled, uniformed roosters, squawking into walkie-talkies.
The phantoms—in a flurry of precision activity—fell into a long, snaking line and wheeled their squeaky carts toward the horizon.
“Are you okay?” the lab-coat girl asked, staring at Marlo. “You’re sweating … which is weird, because it’s always seventy-two degrees here. Always.”
“Yes, I’m … fine,” Marlo replied with sluggish relief. “I’m … on an herbal cleanse. I ate some devil’s food cake before I died, and it didn’t agree with me. Excuse me, but I think my ginger colonic is calling, if you know what I mean.”
Marlo turned on her heel and rustled away. As she searched for an alternate alternate escape route, she passed the Marshmallow Peeps, Mason Jars, and Maternity Wear aisle. Stuffed behind piles of large bright-orange dresses with GESTATING, NOT JUST EATING written across them were stacks of clown plates, creepy hobo figurines, and pewter Noah’s ark gravy boats. Norm’s nest. Marlo stared, mesmerized by the figurines’ ugliness, and contemplated escape: from the store, from Poker Alice, from Rapacia. There was no reason she had to return to her class, waiting outside. She could be a free agent, living off her wits (she could almost hear Milton snicker at that thought). But something made her feet heavy, besides the multiple pairs of vintage hose.
The Grabbit. Marlo absentmindedly clutched her throat as if she were wearing an electric eel for a collar. She couldn’t let … it … down. Marlo wanted to prove that she had what it took to take … anything. Everything.
She sighed and wiped a salty trickle of sweat from her stinging eyes. She knew what she had to do.
She peered around the corner of the aisle at the foyer. It was wonderfully guard-free. Finally, the path was clear.
Marlo casually glanced over her shoulder, then stuffed clown plates in her pants, tucked gravy boats underneath her sweat-stained sweatshirt, and slid a porcelain hobo in each sock. She wouldn’t let the Grabbit down.
Having a conscience sucks, she moaned to herself as she rattled down the aisle and out of the store.
13 · CAUGHT SHORT
“MARLO!” NORM CRIED as she saw her friend emerge from Halo/Good Buy. Marlo smiled weakly as she shuffled closer with muffled clatters before collapsing in a heap.
Takara and Norm helped Marlo to a bench where the girls were assessing their collection of amassed booty.
“Thanks,” Marlo replied feverishly. “Uh-oh … I think one of my Bungling Brothers Circus plates cracked,” she added as she shifted uncomfortably on the bench.
“Wow-wee,” Takara said as she took off Marlo’s sopping-wet sweatshirt, “you swiped out. You like walking garage sale. How you make off with all this with no getting caught?”
“The guards must’ve had bigger fish to fry,” Marlo replied groggily “probably all the phantoms …”
Lyon stepped up to Marlo and folded her arms
in judgment. She was so padded with concealed stolen underwear that she almost resembled a regularly shaped girl. Her smug face was like smelling salts to Marlo, clearing the fog from her head.
“Okay then,” Marlo said, straightening up. “Put your price tags where your collagen is.”
Lyon, Jordie, and Takara ripped and peeled off price tags and set them down on the bench.
“Takara,” Lyon ordered. “Add them up.”
“Why me?” Takara replied.
“Well,” Lyon said, “you’re Japanese, right? Good with numbers?”
Jordie sighed and scooped up the price tags. “Yeh racist toffee-nosed git,” she snarled. “Let me add ’em up. I’m smashing at maths.”
Jordie pushed aside her stack of pilfered British hip-hop CDs, screwed up her eyes, and within a minute (she was indeed smashing at math), she added the dozen or so price tags in her head.
“Two thousand, one hundred forty dollars,” she said. “One thousand, five hundred fifty-three euros, or one thousand fifty-five British pounds, depending on today’s currency rates.”
Bordeaux rolled her protuberant orbs. “Who cares how much they weigh?” she said.
“Okay, Blue Tag Special,” Lyon said, settling her own negligible weight on one hip, “show us what you’ve got.”
“Here,” Marlo said, handing Jordie a fistful of yanked tags.
Jordie thumbed through the stack quickly yet thoughtfully. She crinkled her nose briefly in thought, before announcing the sum.
“Eighteen hundred dollars,” she said. “One thousand, three hundred seven euros, or eight hundred eighty-seven British …”
“What?!” Marlo yelped, bolting up. “That can’t be right.”
Jordie stiffened, becoming larger and more intimidating. “Are yeh saying I miscounted?” she asked in a smooth rumble that matched the flat darkness of her pupils. “Or that I’m on the fiddle?”
“No,” Marlo replied. “Of course not. It’s just …”
“Would you like me to wrap your latest humiliating experience?” Lyon said in her most annoying, please-hit-me-smack-dab-in-the-nose-job voice possible. “And don’t forget your receipt.”
Receipt, thought Marlo. Of course!
“How much time do we have left?” Marlo asked.
Takara looked at one of three different watches she had dangling off her wrists. “Four minutes left,” she replied.
“I’ll be right back,” Marlo said, peeling off her sweatshirt and stepping out of her sweltering silk mourning gown.
“Are you kidding me?!” Lyon snorted. “There’s no way …”
Marlo fished into the pocket of her sweatpants and reeled in the receipt she had gotten from the garbage can earlier.
One Yellow Canoe: $349
Marlo smiled slyly. This was going to be good.
“Okay then, Blandie,” she said. “How about this: I come out of that store in four minutes with a canoe, making me the queen of thieves. If I don’t, you are the personal, undisputed ruler of me for all eternity. I’ll even draft an official document saying as much.”
Lyon’s eyes narrowed. After a moment’s scrutiny, she shrugged her shoulders and smirked. “Whatever,” Lyon said, eyeing her gold Rolex. “You’ve got about two hundred seconds until Poker Alice supersizes your humiliation, anyhow. Go for it.”
Marlo skipped back into Halo/Good Buy, straight toward the Sponges, Spoons, and Sporting Goods aisle.
One hundred and ninety seconds later, a series of alarms went off throughout the mall. The girls looked around the now-even-noisier mall with apprehension.
“Look!” said Norm, pointing at the Halo/Good Buy entrance.
The automatic doors slid open with a pneumatic whoosh. Out shuffled Marlo. Trailing behind her were two burly security guards, with a large red canoe perched atop their shoulders.
“Uh-oh,” muttered Jordie. “Looks like the bird was nicked by the plod.”
Lyon glowered at Jordie. “Does anything you say ever make sense?”
Marlo walked cautiously to the marble bench, with the guards in close pursuit. “I think my grandfather will be much happier with red,” she said sweetly.
The guards put the canoe down and glared at Marlo.
“Will that be all?” asked one guard, chewing gum in military time.
“Yes, thank you,” Marlo replied with a girlish titter. “You’ve both been absolute angels!”
The guards shared the briefest of sideways glances before leaving with a sharp, synchronized bow.
“Thank you for shopping at Halo/Good Buy,” they said in unison before making an abrupt about-face and marching back into the store. Tiny white parakeet wings poked through their starched khaki uniforms.
The girls stared at Marlo with a blend of shock and reverence. Even Lyon’s admiration grudgingly shone through, like a zit through concealer.
Norm rushed up to Marlo and grabbed her hands, beaming. “How did you do it?!”
Marlo grinned back. “Trade secret.”
Marlo peered over her shoulder at Lyon, her grin becoming something just short of a sneer.
Anxious shoppers filed by the girls toward the atrium. Marlo unclasped hands with Norm and took in the commotion around them.
“What’s with all the alarms?” she asked.
“We thought it was because of you,” Takara said with a dainty shrug.
Then, on another giant plasma screen in the commons, Yojuanna appeared. The computer-generated creation appeared to be munching a digital carrot. She tossed the carrot top over her shoulder and sang into her gleaming headset.
“To the Sky Deck, on the double.
An old lady, she’s in trouble.
She went down, all Humpty Dumpty,
so be careful: she’s way grumpy ”
A group of security guards trotted by, their ears pressed against their squawking walkie-talkies.
Marlo grabbed one of the guards by the sleeve. “Hey, what’s going on?” she asked. The security guard glared at Marlo. “I mean, is there some kind of emergency?” she added. “Something that could result in a lawsuit if me and my friends were to be hurt in any way?”
The security guard gulped. “Um, no, uh … ma’am,” he replied. “Just some crazy old woman up on the SkyBridge, chomping on an Adam’s Rib; apparently she saw her reflection below and went crazy jumping off, trying to get the ‘other rib.’”
“Is she okay?” Norm asked.
“Well, she busted more than just her rib, I hear. But it could’ve been worse, if she hadn’t had all those aces stuffed in her blouse. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
The guard trotted away. Marlo and Norm traded looks of excitement.
“Poker Alice!” they squealed together before high-fiving.
Marlo hopped up and down like a terrier after slurping up an espresso.
“Girls,” Marlo said with her hands on her hips, “any moment, some nasty dead teacher or demon guard is going to come and round us up, so let’s make the most of our day out. The clock is tickin’, and there’s stuff to be pickin’.”
Yojuanna smirked, her slightly bucked teeth grazing her bubblegum lips. She rapped in her trade-marked (literally) helium voice to the accompaniment of what sounded like kettledrums and dueling band saws:
“Bad at good, so good at bad,
those girls could be the best we’ve had.
Perfect for the plan we’ve hatched,
to make sure everything is snatched.”
After brushing back dazzling strands of translucent hair away from her face, Yojuanna scratched her diamond-studded ear—an ear that seemed longer and pointier than it had been only moments before. With a shrill giggle like the backfire of a clown car full of laughing gas, the digital diva kicked her feet into the air and resumed her manic hopping.
“C’mon!” Marlo said, beaming, feeling as if she were doing the backstroke in an Olympic-sized bowl of Lucky Charms. For the moment, she was a prisoner in a pretty awesome cage. Perhaps the only diffe
rence between incarceration and vacation is perspective, Marlo thought as she skipped down the mall, certain that she was soon to become the preferred “pet” of a ginormous jack rabbot with a highly electric personality.
14 · ENERGY CRiSiS
“I THOPE THITH workth,” Milton said to himself as he held the poultry thermometer underneath his tongue.
After his parents had gone to sleep, Milton had snuck into the garage to conduct his late-night experiments with subtle energy.
Lester Lobe had given him a printout listing the “secret” experiments of Sir Edward Tylor and his Subtle Energies Commission.
Sir Edward’s experiments with complex patterns of electric shock had led him to believe that there was indeed an after-realm, as he put it, a “spirit world crowded with countless detached essences removed from their respective material bodies. These insubstantial images, vapors, films, and shadows are, I believe, the very cause of life and thought, independently possessing the personal consciousness and volition of their corporeal owner.”
Easy for him to say, thought Milton as he bit down on the thermometer and straightened the jumper cables leading from his mouth to the industrial-strength bug zapper (the Insecticide 3000) suspended from the basketball hoop outside. Sir Edward made the “after-realm” seem like a noble place full of freedom and possibility, unlike the vexing bureaucratic freak show Milton had encountered.
Lester Lobe had written some notes—cribbed from various electricians’ manuals, alongside Sir Edward Tylor’s observations—that detailed how to make an etheric energy “trap.” Of course, due to practical considerations such as “where would an eleven-year-old possibly get a two-thousand-volt transformer,” Milton had to make some compromises, the biggest being that under no circumstances was he going to drill a hole to the center of his brain in order to hot-wire his pineal gland.
Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck Page 8
