The Norma Gene

by M. E. Roufa

  As she maneuvered the convertible roof up, Norma heard rather than saw the Land Cruiser approaching. Her car, standing out like a flamingo in the arctic in the near-empty parking lot, probably made her a target to begin with. But as the giant roaring luxury truck bore down on her, Norma couldn’t pretend it wasn’t personal.

  The coal-colored SUV coasted into the slot directly behind hers in the sea of empty spaces, the sound of its door opening only just preceding the hush of its engine shutting down. There was no mistaking—or escaping—the classic opening move in the mating dance of twenty-first century suburbia. Norma gathered her jacket and purse and slowly got out of her car, the door locking behind her automatically with an irritatingly perky chirp. She walked quickly, but the light clicks of her sabrina heels were no match for the decidedly unladylike clomping of the boots behind her. Eyes focused straight ahead of her at the gleaming chrome and glass doors of her destination, Norma steeled herself against the inevitable Hey lady.

  “Hey, lady!” The voice was deep, amiable, a bit butch. Shosha closed in on her, nudging her hip gently, then slid a bitch-black manicured hand (Chanel, of course) around Norma’s shoulder. Norma smiled diplomatically. Shosha ran the cosmetics floor at Lord’s, and as a lowly perfume artist, Norma was required to look up to her. Which, at 5 foot 5 to Shosha’s 5 foot 1 in boots, was rather difficult.

  Norma’s relationship with her boss was reasonable, if occasionally more uncomfortable than she wanted to admit. But after almost two years in the department, Norma had yet to find they had anything in common. Dressed in an ever-changing succession of expensive bondage wear in black leather and platinum, even despite her lack of height Shosha would have been an incredibly menacing figure if she were even the least bit unself-conscious. Standing still behind a counter or posed against a wall, not speaking, Shosha was regal, poised, hard. She had the look down. But statuesque silence wasn’t Shosha’s strong suit, and the second she opened her mouth, or moved her body more than an inch or two, the whole femme fatale façade fell apart. There was something like a puppy about Shosha. Too eager to please, too unsure of her body, too prone to overexcitement. There was no escaping it: underneath the almost perfect hardass bitch-goddess exterior, Shosha was a nerd. Clothing that looked fresh off a Milan runway on a store mannequin would magically transform on her body into something from the latest Klingon convention. She also seemed to have an acute crush on Norma.

  “Hey, lady,” Shosha repeated, now so on top of Norma that some sort acknowledgement could no longer be avoided. “Hey, Shosh,” Norma responded, their eyes presumably meeting through each other’s UV-protected lenses (Norma’s, vintage cats-eyes with rhinestones; Shosha’s, severe black rectangles with the exact width of side supports required by fashion that particular season). “Place is a wasteland today.”

  “Yeah,” Shosha nodded, practically bouncing with joy at the interchange. “Yeah, I think it’s because of the cold snap. Only supposed to be 65 today. I bet Maxine will be selling a lot of cashmere, don’t you think?”

  Norma shrugged politely. The funny thing was, Shosha was probably right. No matter how long she lived in Florida, Norma would never get used to her neighbors’ tendency to label two days in a row cooler than 75 degrees a “cold snap.”

  Seeing that talking about the weather hadn’t turned into the conversational springboard she’d hoped, Shosha pushed on. “Say, Norma, I really like your dress. You look seriously fine, girlfriend. Where’d you get it?” Norma cringed at Shosha’s foray into slang, then at the question, finding herself suddenly in a real dilemma. The dress had been her mother’s. Admitting this meant a guaranteed lengthy conversation, but lying could just as easily lead to the same result—and might require serious brainwork on top of the ordinary discomfort. Thinking fast, Norma gave the best answer she could come up with, one that she knew had only the tiniest chance of success: “Oh my God—What’s that over there?”

  “What?” Shosha swirled around, following Norma’s gaze. There was nothing actually over there. But amazingly enough, the ruse worked. While Shosha paused to scan the empty horizon for signs of whatever it was she was supposed to be shocked and/or awed by, Norma quickly made her escape through the shining store doors. That Bugs Bunny was a genius.

  4

  Stepping into the empty store first thing in the morning was always the best part of the day for Norma. The small amount of warm sunlight that was allowed through the glass doors and past security made the chrome and glass counters sparkle like freshly cut diamonds. It was no wonder the store layout required customers to pass through Jewelry before any other department. But first thing in the morning, before anyone arrived, every countertop and display case had that irresistible polished gleam.

  It was those initial moments that were always the most dangerous for Norma. Everything shining, everything desirable, and no one around to see. Just to slip something, anything into her purse. A compact, a scarf, a pair of earrings—even just one earring—and she would be steady to face the day. As always, she suppressed the urge. Everything was electronically tagged, traceable not just through the security gates but all the way to your home should you get that far, and no earring in the world was worth that disgrace and humiliation. Though once there was that pair of snakeskin Louboutin slingbacks…

  Norma wasn’t a smoker, had never been into drugs, and didn’t even drink all that much except at parties where, let’s face it, social lubrication was practically the law. But the itch to take things was constantly present. Working as a sales clerk in a department store had to be the absolutely worst occupation for a kleptomaniac, second only to (possibly) pearl diving. But despite all the temptations, so far she had mostly been good. If only because she knew that once she allowed herself to take even the smallest thing, she wouldn’t be able to quit. Ever. And the image of a future of being beaten up in a prison cell for surreptitiously pocketing another prisoner’s shiny lucky shiv was just too horrifying to fathom.

  Fortunately, Norma’s job didn’t require her to spend any time being tempted behind the vitrines. All she had to do was stand in front of the perfume counters, smile invitingly, and spray the living daylights out of anyone who dared to pause nearby. On busy days, it was a lot of fun. When things were slower, and people lingered longer over things they had no intention of buying, it became much harder not to misbehave. And when things were really really slow, she secretly used the mannequins for target practice.

  “Would you like to try Illusions?” Norma cooed, for what had to be the millionth time. Brandishing the perfume bottle as if it were a work of art, as if it were a diamond tiara, as if it were a staplegun. All depending on her mood, and on the facial expressions of the passing customers. But always with the same seductive smile. To spritz or not to spritz. So much for her Liberal Arts degree. Still, it was steady work, not too demanding, and it paid well enough to satisfy her food and footwear needs. My God, she shuddered in response to the thought. Steady work? Not demanding? Paid reasonably well? The self-justifying clichés had slid through her mind so easily. Ah, the rallying cry of the horizontally mobile. File clerks and desk clerks and shop clerks, unite! We have nothing to lose but our ambition! Could it possibly be that bad? Yes. Yes, it was that bad. It wasn’t that she lacked ambition. She owned the same dog-eared copy of What Color is Your Parachute? as the next twentysomething occupational drifter. But while she was very good at choosing colors, picking which way to leap proved too daunting. She was good with people and she liked to shop. What had begun as a stopgap job while she tried to find herself had become a reasonably lucrative location where she could be found. At least it wasn’t show business.

  “Would you like to try Illusions?” When she had first started, she thought the fragrance was lovely. Now it was the noxious aroma of hell. Toilet Water had become more than a product category; it was a reasonable description. Every day she would subconsciously hope that the scent would change into something more bearable. Gasoline. Sauerkraut. Fresh dog vomit.
Anything but this cloying sweetness. And its mitigating factors were minor. At least the bottle was beautiful and fit sensuously into her hand. And the name could be said many ways, in various inflections, depending on her mood. She pitied the poor souls promoting Penetration.

  At least Shosha had (so far) defended her from the parent company’s latest promotional proposal. What better way to sell Illusions than to have the sales representatives look like the famous icons of the past? All the one-name glamour girls had been listed, with costume and make-up suggestions, to fool the customer into believing they had stepped into a world of illusions themselves: Garbo, Dietrich, Hepburn (both Kate and Audrey varieties), and of course, the magnificent Ms. Monroe. Norma knew it was only a matter of time before the marketing goons laid down the law. Maybe if worst came to worst they’d let her pose as Cher. But she doubted it. There was only one name likely to show up on their very short list when they looked at her employee photo. And no matter how many stars she wished on, that name wouldn’t be Beyonce’s.

  Would you like to try Delusion?

  5

  Abe slid behind the wheel and started the engine. His car was practically ancient at this point, without fingerprint ignition or computerized autopilot, let alone a reasonably uniform paint job, making it an easy target for parking lot pranksters. He had found it toilet-papered, wallpapered, and vanished altogether—having been pushed by the more industrious students to the farthest-away student lot, to a nearby street’s fire hydrant (125 dollar ticket, thank you very much), and on one particularly memorable occasion to the 30-yard line of the football field. At least the shaving cream caricature rubbed off without a trace. From the car, anyhow.

  It was a beautiful, sunny, cliché-worthy Florida day. The sun beat down charmingly on the giant gym shoe poised precariously over the Largest Foot Locker In The World, casting its strikingly athletic shadow over the neighboring fast food restaurants and tourist-friendly mini-malls. A pair of impossibly long laces hovered unenthusiastically in the heat, as if knowing they were fighting a losing battle. Though Abe had driven past it for most of his life, it still gave him an unsettled feeling. Why a giant sneaker? Or at least, why a giant sneaker so high up in the air that people couldn’t be photographed next to it? It was the only tourist attraction in town that he could think of that wasn’t there to be posed in front of, next to, or inside. As if no one had ever told the owner that if an object—however extraordinary—couldn’t be captured by visitors to prove its existence back wherever they came from, it might as well not have existed at all. Unlike almost any other city in America, Orlando only truly existed in photographs and shared videos. A place that could only be experienced from someplace else.

  That was the problem with teaching history in this town. As far as his students saw it, there was no history. And technically, they were sort of right. Orlando simply had no past. No historical one, at any rate. Built whole out of unlivable swampland, everything from the faux-plantations and colonial-style developments down to the very grass and trees was transplanted or man-made. Even the bodies of water that dotted the scenery had been carefully fabricated, painstakingly recreated to mimic what developers considered to be the ideal Southern scenery. Or the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Or the veldt. There was even an Eiffel tower. Other than the handfuls of people who actually lived there, only the crocodiles and flying insects (the mosquito had long been considered the state bird) truly belonged. There were some actual birds that were indigenous to the area, herons and cranes and wild turkeys, but they were so fantastical in shape and behavior as to seem animatronic themselves.

  So how do you teach about the founding fathers when there is a Hall of Presidents right around the corner with every last one of them sitting in historically correct robotic poses? Where westward expansion and the Gold Rush are not only locally evident phenomena but outright encouraged activities on an ongoing everyday basis? How can you treat history as a living document when everything around you is fake? Sometimes it felt like the only lesson his students wanted to learn about history was how profitably they could be doomed to repeat it.

  And frankly, thanks to the marvels of the exact same worship of physical replication, when it came right down to it he himself was as fake as they came. His factual history negated his biological history negated his personal history negated any possible sense of self. There was nothing he could do that can’t be done. Nothing he could say that can’t be sung. All the rest is commentary.

  Still, today hadn’t been that bad. He’d ended the discussion by mentioning the upcoming traveling Smithsonian exhibit, which would bring the original draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to town, among other important historical documents and artifacts. It took a long time to convince the students that there was anything to be gained by—as they put it—looking at a dirty piece of paper in a glass box. Even though Abe was sure that box would somehow manage to be surrounded by dancing robots in powdered wigs and bass-heavy electronic music. But by the end of the discussion he felt like one or two might find their way over to the Mouse Museum after all. If there was nothing on Netflix. Okay, so it was a long shot. But a real piece of history didn’t make its way to Orlando every day, and he believed it was his task as a History teacher to try to persuade them. He would go to the opening ceremony tonight, he would come back with some heartrending or stimulating stories about his own impressions, and maybe someone would get excited enough to show up. That is, if he could come up with a heartrending or stimulating impression from a dirty piece of paper in a glass box (which would in all likelihood actually be acrylic). Or at least from one of the peruked robots.

  Following the curve of the road into the sunlight, Abe spotted a billboard for the upcoming exhibition. He made a mental note of the sign’s location to tell his students tomorrow. Once an event could claim a billboard, it graduated from being a mere happening to an Attraction, and became noteworthy, promising fun and excitement. While the enlarged copy of the Proclamation itself seemed every bit as un-attractiony as he could possibly dare to hope, it had been jazzed up with a burst of fireworks behind it, and what looked like a waterslide-shaped American flag. Abe prayed it wasn’t there because of any actual American flag-shaped waterslide. Every time you thought this town had reached its maximum capacity for silliness, Abe thought, you found your concept of “maximum” was impossibly shortsighted. As he drove past another billboard, this one for the Cured Meat Dancing Troupe (with Upside-Down Coasters! Brought to you by Hormel!), a stream of sunlight passed through two of the painted Meat Dancers and hit Abe squarely in the face with such unexpected brightness it caused his eyes to water. Without thinking, Abe wiped his eyes with his sleeve and immediately felt a blinding pain as residual globs of shaving cream oozed into his eyes. The slimy sting was excruciating, thousands of white-hot slugs crawling over his corneas. Instinctively, he reached up to wipe the pain away with his other sleeve, only to be hit with the same pain again, made worse by the humiliating sense of his own stupidity. He flailed his arms wildly, completely losing control of the wheel and any remaining common sense. At the last possible moment he remembered the brakes. As his foot hit the floor, he heard the two sounds you never want to hear in conjunction: a blaring car horn followed by squealing tires and the crunch of metal.

  The first thing he saw when he was able to force his still-tearing eyelids open was a red strapless evening gown pressed against his windshield. This was odd. Odder still, though comforting, was the fact that the dress was empty. Abe panicked. He had hit the Invisible Woman.

  6

  Norma peeled out of the dry cleaners with a complaining squeal of tires. She was going to be late. Again. Her ten-minute break had stretched to twenty already, and she was still miles away from the mall. Late meant another dressing-down by Shosha, which meant another guilty half-apology from Shosha for being “Too hard on her,” which meant fending off Shosha’s inevitable invitation to an expiatory round of drinks “someplace quiet.” But at least she had the dres
s back. Or rather, the Dress. A long straight column of silk, bias cut and dangerously naked of details, it was in that shade of red for which lipstick manufacturers are still flagellating themselves trying to come up with the right name. To say Norma looked amazing in the Dress would be like saying people need oxygen to live. To say she really could not afford the Dress would be like saying people need to not be trampled by wildebeests to live. Some facts are more relevant than others.

  The dress was a designer piece, one of a kind, as close to haute couture as Norma would ever see in her life. It had been sent to the store with a shipment of ready-to-wear as a retail experiment, or perhaps by mistake. It cost $18,000, more than half a year’s pay for Norma. When the word spread throughout the store of its arrival, Norma was one of the many breathless store clerks who sneaked it off the rack to try it on, pretending to act like it wasn’t such a big deal, while secretly practicing lines like “I’d like to thank the Academy, my publicist, and of course God…” As soon as the silk insinuated itself around the curves of Norma’s body, she knew she belonged to it. And she knew what she had to do. She stuffed it in her bag and made a run for it.

  Later that night, after the Dress forced her to drink a bottle of chardonnay and pose in front of the mirror in every conceivable position short of Downward Facing Dog, Norma suddenly remembered the word Stealing. Also the word Wrong, and the word Prison. When the next mental leap brought her to the words Jumpsuit and Orange, the Dress suddenly weakened its silken grip. It had suddenly become permanently overaccessorized with visions of shiny silver handcuffs and fat home-monitoring anklets. She had to take it back. And would have had it back on its rack just seconds after the store reopened if it weren’t for the tiny snag of fabric staring at her from the neckline. Somehow that malicious dress had mutilated itself just to prove its domination over her life. She couldn’t return it that way. She would be caught; she would be fired; she would be Sent Down. An appropriate term, exactly how her throat felt at the thought of it: sent down to the bottom of her stomach. Just as her dinner was suddenly motivated to feel Sent Up. “This is all your fault!” she yelled at the Dress. “I am yelling at a dress!” she yelled back at herself. “I am going to bed!” She would sort it out in the morning. She knew there was a good tailor at her dry cleaners, who did rush work for only a tiny extra charge; she would take it there.