by Laura Ruby
With those orders given, Jules buzzed around, pulling items off the racks, while Bea pushed Gurl towards the staircase at the back of the store. Intent on their tasks, none of the staff responded to Gurl’s feeble protests. Paulo, the head stylist for Harvey’s salon, fainted at the sight of Gurl’s hair and had to be revived with smelling salts while Gurl was being shampooed with beer and honey. An Asian woman who smelled of lilies daubed at Gurl’s face with cucumber lotion, scowling at the eyeshadow that came away on the cloth.
After two bracing cups of green tea, Paulo was ready to work. He hovered like a hummingbird about Gurl’s head, scissors snapping so fast and furiously that they were a silvery blur. When he was through with the cut, Gurl’s hair was gelled, blow-dried, sprayed, fluffed and gelled again. The Asian woman—“Call me Miss Coco,” she said—brushed blusher on Gurl’s cheeks and gloss on her lips. Another woman came and filed her nails with a “natural sea stone”. Then Jules returned to take her back downstairs.
“You. Look. Gorgeous,” said Jules, pushing her into the changing room. “Don’t you think you look gorgeous?”
Gurl felt as if she had just been on a very fast merry-go-round. “I…I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” cried Jules.
Gurl peered into the mirror. She had never spent much time looking at herself and no one ever seemed to notice her anyway. While she wasn’t exactly gorgeous, she did look better than before. Sort of. Her wild, silvery hair now poured softly over her shoulders like a waterfall and she didn’t have to push her fringe from her eyes to see. Her normally pale, dull skin and bloodless lips were fresh and rosy. “I don’t recognise me.” Jules clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth and smiled. “I guess I wouldn’t either. Anyway, start trying on these clothes and let us know if you need any help.”
Gurl nodded and Jules shut the door. Gingerly touching her new hair, and then the rack of expensive jeans, dresses and skirts, Gurl swallowed back tears. She hadn’t had this much attention since, well, never. No one had ever told her she looked gorgeous (even if she didn’t); no one had ever picked out clothes especially for her. For a minute she could imagine what it might be like to live someone else’s life—a rich person’s life, a happy person’s life—and instead of making her feel better, like her daydreams always did, it made her feel terribly alone. But she didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself. It was true: she was an orphan, she was hungry, she had been chased by a babbling rat man with an umbrella. She was not a rich person and she was not a happy person. She also was not alone. She had Noodle, didn’t she?
At least, she would have Noodle if she got Mrs Terwiliger those scarves and shoes. But how would she do that now that the salespeople knew she was here? She couldn’t just hide in another changing room; they would look for her. She would have to make herself fade or blend in or become invisible, or whatever it was that she’d been doing inadvertently for days. But this time she’d have to figure out a way to it on purpose and that’s all there was to it.
Someone rapped on the door and Gurl jumped higher than any of Ruckus’s practice leaps. “How are you doing in there?” said Jules. “Is everything fabulous?”
“Yeah,” said Gurl. “I’ll be out in a second to show you.”
“I can’t wait,” Jules rasped with his odd, deep voice, sounding as if he really couldn’t wait. Gurl felt a stab of guilt at the thought of tricking them, of stealing even more than she already had. But she couldn’t worry about that now.
She stared at herself in the mirror, trying to concentrate, but the lime-green jacket glowed under the fluorescent lights, distracting her. She shrugged it off and tried again, but this time the yellow dress diverted her attention.
“Excuse me!” said Bea. “I don’t hear any hideous clothes being kicked to the floor!”
Gurl unzipped the dress—it really was ugly—and tossed it over the changing room door. Bea cheered. “I’m going to fly over to the staffroom to burn this on the stove,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
Gurl turned to the rack, grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt and quickly pulled them on. Staring at her own unrecognisable face, she took a deep shuddering breath. OK, OK, she thought. Now. Blend in.
She concentrated as hard as she could, watching her face for any signs of change. Then she remembered how it was Noodle who had seemed to cause her to become invisible, so she closed her eyes and thought of the cat. The way her fur felt. The way she purred. How, when Gurl petted her, time seemed to stop and strange riddles filled her head.
But that didn’t do it either. Bea and Jules would be back at any moment and Gurl was becoming desperate. Why couldn’t she do this? Why, why, why? She needed to do this; she had to do it. At this moment it was the most important thing in the world. And yet, here was her face in the mirror, her dumb face, all dressed up like it was someone else’s. She was supposed to blend in, be like the walls and the clothes and the rug. Be like the mirror. Be like everything but herself.
And that’s when she saw it, the way the skin on her face began to take on a slightly bluish cast like the dress hanging behind her. Was that it? “I am the wall,” she whispered and her skin got even bluer, and she could see stitching marching across her forehead. I am the wall and the ground and the air. The mantra echoed in her mind. Her skin tingled and she could feel the change in her whole body. Soon she couldn’t see herself in the mirror; she could only see the vague outline of herself, her skin the colour of the wall and the clothes that hung behind her.
“It’s official; I burned the dress!” said Bea. “It gave off the most foul odour. Synthetic fabric, you know.”
Quickly, Gurl sat in the corner of the changing room and pulled her legs in close.
“Gurl!” said Bea. “How are you doing on those outfits?”
“Tasty, aren’t they?” added Jules. “I’ll bet your favourite is the foil T-shirt. What do you think?”
“Gurl?” said Bea.
Gurl’s heart pounded as Bea and Jules started rapping on the door.
“I think she’s locked herself in there,” murmured Bea. “Do you think we came down on her too hard?”
“Too hard!” said Jules. “That outfit was a crime!”
“Shhh!”
“Gurl, are you all right?” Bea said. “I’m unlocking the door.”
Gurl heard the key in the lock and willed herself to think, I am the wall and the ground and the air, I am the wall and the ground and the air. The door swung open.
“What is going on here?” said Bea.
For a minute Gurl thought she had failed until Jules said, “Where did she go?”
“I swear,” said Bea, “she was just in here a minute ago. She gave me that yellow dress to burn.”
Jules looked at Bea. “Did she actually tell you that you could burn it?”
“Come to think of it, no.”
“Well, what if she gets in trouble if she comes home without the dress?” said Jules, using his index fingers to jam his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“I didn’t think of that,” said Bea. “I was just trying to get her to loosen up a bit. She was a little sad sack, wasn’t she? It was like she’d never been in a store before.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jules. “She wasn’t Miss Cheery Cheerleader, but those people make me want to fling myself out of a window. She was a serious person. I happen to like serious people. I myself am often very serious.”
“Paulo’s going to get serious himself when he finds out that he gave a free haircut and style,” said Bea.
But Jules looked at her scornfully. “It was obvious the girl didn’t have the money. He’s an artist. He did it for art’s sake.”
“Which means that you’re going to pay the bill, aren’t you?”
“Never mind about that,” said Jules. He leafed through the clothes left on the rack. “Looks like she took some jeans and a shirt with her. I guess I’ll put those on the tab as well.”
“We can
use our discounts,” said Bea. “I feel better that there’s one less badly dressed, badly coiffed girl in the world, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” said Jules. “We should be on television, you know. Giving makeovers to sad people.”
Bea rose up to the ceiling, doing a balletic kick through the air. “That is a marvellous idea!”
“Come down and help me get these clothes back on the racks,” said Jules. “We’ve had a long, exciting day.”
Gurl held her breath as the two salespeople gathered the discarded clothes around her. Bea swept out of the changing room with armloads of outfits, while Jules picked up the stray hangers from the floor. Just as he was about to close the door behind him, he looked straight at Gurl.
And winked.
Chapter 8
Sweetcheeks: A History
IN A CITY WITH ITS fair share of swindlers and con men, gangsters and thieves, Sylvester “Sweetcheeks” Grabowski was perhaps the most famous (and absolutely the best looking, or so he liked to think). And yet, despite the city’s rich criminal history, and despite his own pedigree—Sweetcheeks was the son of Tommy “The Trigger” Grabowski and Lurlene “Lightfinger” Looney—Sweetcheeks had always been a disappointment to his father.
“Where’s the pretty boy off to today?” Tommy would grumble as Lurlene brushed the golden hair from her young son’s brow.
“A modelling shoot for Luvvie’s No-Pee Pull-Up Pants.”
“Gangsters don’t pose for diaper ads.”
“There will be plenty of time for crime when he’s older,” Lurlene would reply.
“How’s my hair, Mama?” the wee Sweetcheeks would ask. He didn’t much care for his father, who reeked of warm beer and stale cheese curls.
“See!” said Tommy, shouting. “You’re turning my son into a pansy!”
“A pansy who makes a thousand dollars a day.”
“There’s no talking to you, woman. I’m gonna go out and shoot something.”
Tommy’s wife shrugged. “If it will make you feel better.”
Lurlene was right, however, in saying that there was plenty of time for crime. Her son’s modelling career was cut short by the fact that Sweetcheeks himself came up short—only five feet eight inches in a world that favoured six footers. But that didn’t bother Sweetcheeks. By the time he was fifteen, he knew that someday he’d be much bigger than his dad, a criminal mastermind of epic proportions.
That is, if he lived long enough.
Day after day and night after night, he was forced to sit at his father’s side, practically dying of boredom while Tommy The Trigger entertained his own rather scruffy gang with stories of his exploits (which, in Sweetcheeks’s opinion, were decidedly less than epic). They usually involved stealing Social Security checks from little old ladies, convenience store robberies and a little backroom poker.
Even worse was when Tommy The Trigger babbled on about “the olden days” when gangs ruled the entire downtown area. Gangs like The Daybreak Boyz, schoolkids who robbed drunken sailors lost in the twisting maze of streets. The Mashed Potato Men, known to stomp their victims into stupors. The Plug Uglies—huge, monstrous souls who wore bowler hats like tiny toilets and clubbed anyone who dared to laugh. And let’s not forget The Dead Rabbits, The Cranky Babies, The Whyos, The Whosits, The Weepy Pinkies, The Meat Grinders, The Slug Salters, The Sewer Rats of Satan, yadda yadda yadda.
The most fearsome of these downtown gangsters, Tommy claimed, was Sweetcheeks’s own great-great-great-great-grandfather, Mose The Giant. Mose was eight-and-a-half-feet tall and had fists the size of Thanksgiving turkeys hanging past his knees. Mose barrelled through the throng of bodies that poured from the downtown bars, bashing heads and picking pockets as he went. He stole steaming yellow ears from hot corn-on-the-cob girls and robbed all their pennies while he was at it. Mose was so big and so fierce he could rip up a lamp-post and whip up a good brawl whenever he wanted. Mose punched this, Mose stomped that, Mose Mose Mose. As far as Sweetcheeks was concerned, it was all a bunch of hooey.
On a snowy winter day in 1845—as if anyone cared what happened more than 150 years ago—Mose was beating up a Sewer Rat in an alley when a lone little man stumbled down Mulberry Street. The little man didn’t look that rich, but his wool coat was thick, his umbrella straight and his spectacles unbroken. Carrying a notebook in one hand, he read as he walked, while a tiny brown monkey perching on his shoulder picked snowflakes from the man’s hair. Most of the eyes peeking from the windows and alleys saw the coat and the spectacles and decided he looked rich enough. A few others noticed the monkey and wondered what sort of loony bin he had escaped from. But, Tommy said, only Mose saw what went unseen: footprints in the thin layer of new snow behind the little man. Not the prints made by the little man himself, but a second set made by no one, as if a ghost followed on the little man’s heels.
The little man stopped walking and removed a silver pen from his coat—perhaps to make a note in his book. But that shining silver pen was all the encouragement the gangs needed. Billy Goat Barbie, leader of The Dead Rabbits, did what she did best; she ran out into the street, head-butted the little man in the gut, and grabbed the first thing she laid her hands on: the monkey. A dozen Sewer Rats of Satan swarmed from their underground tunnels to rip the umbrella from the man’s hand and the coat from the man’s back. Dandy Bill, a notorious Cranky Baby, swiped the silver pen and the notebook before anyone else could think to take it.
But that wasn’t the end of the story, Tommy said. For Mose The Giant strode from an alley where he’d been waiting, instantly scattering The Sewer Rats of Satan. Ignoring the little man, Mose crouched as low to the ground as his huge frame would allow, staring at the trampled snow. Suddenly, he lunged, snatching at something only he could see. And then, just as suddenly, Mose The Giant—all turkey-fisted, hobnail booted, eight-and-a-half feet of him—vanished. “Just like that,” Tommy said. “Can you believe it?”
No, Sweetcheeks didn’t, thank you very much.
Every night that Tommy The Trigger gathered his men around him for the evening, Sweetcheeks had to endure these sentimental ramblings. And when Tommy “The Trigger” Grabowski wasn’t waxing poetic about Mose The Giant, he was waxing poetic about the failings of his own son. On that particular topic, Tommy The Trigger was a master of association. His son was not only a pansy, he was a wimp. A wimp and a coward. A coward and a spineless jellyfish. A jellyfish and a sticky lump of tapioca. A sticky lump of tapioca and a great big bogey. A bogey head. A bogey face. A bogey butt. A bogey brain. He had the brains of a sheep and the guts of a rabbit. He had the speed of a snail and the strength of a tissue (bargain brand). He was a blood-sucking, money-grubbing, opera-loving, quiche-eating, greedy little snot-nosed pretty boy, and he wouldn’t ever amount to anything but a sweet-cheeked diaper model.
And then Tommy would laugh. Laugh so hard that his cheeks would turn red. So hard that he would cry. Soon the rest of the scruffy, moth-eaten gang would be laughing too, and Sweetcheeks would have to sit there, biting his tongue and biding his time.
Until one day, when he was twenty-three, when he couldn’t stand it any more. His father was doubled over, laughing so hard that he’d shot beer right out of his nose (which made him laugh harder because that was just the sort of thing that he found amusing). Sweetcheeks stood up and swept the cards and poker chips off the table. He ran his hand through his golden hair, tossed his head and, in a low, ominous voice, said, “That’s enough.”
Tommy The Trigger stopped laughing. “What did you say?”
“I said, that’s enough.”
Tommy The Trigger’s trigger finger itched, just as it always did when someone challenged him. “Sit down, Sweetcheeks.”
Sweetcheeks’s cheeks burned. “You sit down.”
“What are you talking about, you dumb bunny? I am sitting.”
“Yeah, well, shut up.”
“What did you say to me?” Tommy The Trigger growled, standing to tower over his son.
Sweetcheeks poked his father in the chest. “I said shut up. You big moron.”
“Big…?” sputtered Tommy The Trigger, the veins on his forehead standing out like cables.
“Moron,” said Sweetcheeks.
Tommy The Trigger shook his head, as if he couldn’t understand what was happening. But then he seemed to relax. He sat, a slow smile spreading across his face. “So,” he said. “I’m a moron.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re the big man now, am I right?”
Sweetcheeks drew himself to his not-all-that-tall-but-tall-enough height. “Yes.”
“What do you say, boys, is he the big man now or what?”
“Or what!” one of boys said, sniggering.
“Yeah, you’re the big man. So what are you going to do now, big man?”
“Do?” said Sweetcheeks. Well, he hadn’t thought of that yet.
Tommy The Trigger began to laugh again. “Get a load of you. You’re not going to do nothing, Sweetcheeks,” he spat. “You’re just a stupid kid. You’re a zero. You’re less than a zero. You’re just less, how about that?”
Sweetcheeks lifted his chin. “I’ll show you,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah, sure you will. Get outta here.”
Sweetcheeks Grabowski turned on his heel, walked out of his father’s dusty apartment and kept walking. He walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into the heart of the island city and did not stop walking until he reached Chinatown. With the money from his childhood modelling jobs (and a few quickie but rather skilled burglaries), he bought his own place and started up his own gang. A classy gang. No backroom poker for Sweetcheeks and his men. No two-bit muggings or cheesy swindles. No, they only took on big jobs: jewellery and bank robberies, money laundering and high-stakes gambling. He got himself a wife—Donatella Arribiata Conchetta Schiavoni, daughter of one of the city’s premier crime bosses—and a kid. He was ruthless, but refined. Elegant, but understated. Blood-thirsty, but tasteful.