“The dead … the …” Milton’s sense of reality winked on and off like the old, run-down television in Limbo’s cafeterium.
Lester kneeled close to Milton. His breath was hot, musty, and sharp with dental decay. “You don’t look so good, kid,” he murmured. “If you’re going to die again, can you not do it here? I have enough problems with the authorities as it is. It’s all an intricate government plot. Of course, you’ve heard of the Illuminati and how—with the Freemasons—they’ve established a New World Order that …”
The blinking UFO, the plastic alien, the moldy towers of paper, and Lester’s convoluted conspiracy theories crowded together in Milton’s consciousness until they formed a big clot, like some gross, hairy clump clogging a drain.
Then, with a few sudden jerks, the Etch A Sketch of Milton’s mind shook itself blank.
9 · STEALING THE SHOW
The Greedy Girl’s Guide to Getting Great Goods
By Marlo “Sticky Fingers” Fauster, Your Substitute Teacher
Shoplifting is an art. Not like those boring old paintings that slowly disappear here in Rapacia. But an art you can actually use. By following these five rules, you will totally rule the School of Sticky Fingers.
+ Rule One: Dress appropriately. Sure, a trench coat with pockets sewn on the inside might make for a righteous haul, but if it’s hot enough to fry an egg outside, the heat will be on you inside. Dress like your dorky little brother or like you have audio books on your iPod or have seen all of the Strawberry Shortcake videos fifty times each with your mom.
+ Rule Two: Carry a bag but never stash anything in it. If security gets suspicious, they’ll check your bag. If it’s empty, then they’ll probably just let you go—with whatever you took.
+ Rule Three: Carry a fake shopping list. Amateurs usually act on impulse. Not you, girl. Look at your list from time to time instead of looking over your shoulder. Look confident, dry, and secure—like you just coated your entire bodywith roll-on antiperspirant specially pH-balanced for the greedy girl you are.
+ Rule Four: Never pocket or conceal items near their shelf location. Major Duh, reporting for duty! Take your goods to an aisle full of crap like paper towels and toilet paper, stuff that’s too big and worthless for security to hang around and protect. No guard is looking for their next bounty by a stack of Bounty.
+ Rule Five: If you get caught, lie! Lie through your teeth! Lie like a rug! Lie as if your presidency depended on it! Don’t act tough or talk back. Cry. Beg. Whatever. Getting caught can ruin your life, even if you’re dead.
So c’mon, girls: let’s make some art, or at least make off with some cool stuff!
The girls read Marlo’s blotchy handout as they followed Poker Alice through a long, coiling corridor. The empty hallway sloped upward at such a steep incline that it gave Marlo shin splints.
Even though she had stayed up all night writing her shoplifting ground rules, Marlo was kind of buzzed. She had a dopey grin smeared across her face (along with some blue ink from her leaky pen) and her fingers ached. But despite her fatigue and discomfort, Marlo was oddly proud. She had, as the Grabbit had suggested in its creepy, rhymey way, taught what she knew.
The corridor’s gleaming floors reflected the fluorescent lights above so that it seemed like you were walking on the ceiling, which is exactly how Marlo felt.
Her gravity-defying mood irritated Poker Alice to no end. “Miss Fauster,” the weathered hag groaned. “Exactly what is this … paper?”
Marlo smiled with bleary energy. “It’s a list of ground rules,” she replied, “for our class field trip.”
Poker Alice shifted her cigar from one corner of her mouth to the other and grumbled.
Marlo’s bloodshot eyes sparkled. “You know, the field trip,” Marlo repeated, rotating the words slowly like a knife in her teacher’s abdomen. “The one that the Grabbit said I could lead, taking the class on a learning expedition, up to …”
The teacher’s eyes bulged out from behind their droopy folds. “I know what the Grabbit said!” the teacher barked, her cigar slipping out and falling onto the ground below. Poker Alice stared at the smoldering, now-broken cigar and trembled with rage. Slowly, the teacher raised her head, her neck creaking like that of a library gargoyle brought to sudden uncomfortable life, and locked eyes with Marlo. “What I would like to know is what the blazes shoplifting has to do with Consumer Math?” Poker Alice seethed.
“Well,” Marlo said nervously, noting that Poker Alice without a cigar was like a monstrous baby without its pacifier, “since we don’t have cash or credit down here, we’re forced to put up something else of value, in our case, risk of capture. So the very act of trying to steal something is, to us, like racking up debt. Think of it as …”
Marlo followed the lines and crinkles of her teacher’s face, hoping they would lead her to some conclusion that Poker Alice would, if not quite buy, at least rent for the day.
“… a gamble. An educational one.”
“What’s that?” Norm asked, pointing ahead.
The girls stopped. Before them, just around the final coil of the ascending corridor, was a collapsible steel gate, barring a pitch-black metal hatch, with a sign above reading DO NOT DARKEN DOOR. DOOR DARK ENOUGH ALREADY. Poker Alice yanked a wad of keys from a keychain attached to her belt, unfurling the line as she held a stubby bronze key to the dangling padlock. With a twist, she opened the lock and pulled open the rusted gates. She leaned on the hatch and plucked a cigar from the back of her petticoat. The teacher struck a match on the sole of her well-worn granny boot.
“Jess because the bunny says ye can all have a field trip,” Poker Alice said with a steely calm, “doesn’t mean you lot can spend the whole day makin mischief. A class lasts an hour … a long hour, granted, but an hour nonetheless. And takin’ into account the walk here and back, as I see it, that leaves ’bout fifteen minutes for yer little learnin’ expedition.”
“Fifteen minutes?!” the girls carped as one gape-mouthed school of fish.
“That’s barely enough time to get my credit card warm,” Lyon whined.
Marlo chewed her lower lip in contemplation. “What if we were to make this a little … wager?” she proposed to her teacher. “In exchange for a full hour, that is.”
The butt of Poker Alice’s stogie flared in contemplation.
“What kind of wager?” she replied suspiciously.
Marlo eyed the hatch with extreme longing.
“We … we could,” she faltered, before her dark eyes grew round with inspiration. “Divide the class into teams. Yes! Make it a shoplifting bee. Whoever’s team lifts the most, passes. The other fails.”
Poker Alice smirked despite herself.
“Interesting,” she rasped between puffs. “You certainly know your antes.”
“Actually I hardly knew them,” Marlo said. “They lived halfway across the country.”
Poker Alice hacked indelicately, coughing up a glob of something so thick and gross she had to chew it a few times before she could swallow it down.
“Fine, then,” the old woman rasped. “A half hour.”
“Deal!” chirped Marlo.
Poker Alice clutched the sides of the hatch’s rusty metal wheel, turned it with a squeak, then kicked it open with her boot as the girls cheered with unhinged glee. “Mallvana!! Mallvana!!”
YOU HAVE DIED AND GONE TO MALLVANA:
A LITTLE SLICE OF HEAVEN WHERE
YOU’RE NEVER MORE THAN A FEW
SANDAL FLOPS FROM THE OBJECT OF YOUR
ONCE-BEATING HEART’S DESIRE.
Poker Alice led Marlo’s class beneath the white marble sign inlaid with gleaming brass letters and through a long tunnel of multicolored neon scaffolding. The class emerged into Mallvana’s concourse level, bustling with herds of little old women, grinning and chattering with one another.
If Marlo had still possessed a lungful of breath, it would have been taken away the moment she entered Mallvana. It was like
wandering into the palace of an ancient god. Mallvana was a cathedral of consumerism with massive, intricately carved marble columns propping up lavish level after lavish level, capped off by the dazzling prism of colors that danced at its domed, stained-glass ceiling. At the center of the colossal mall were twin spiraling escalators that coiled like massive strands of DNA.
The air itself had an invigorating, citrus sweetness about it. Every breath lifted Marlo’s spirits higher, as if she were sucking in helium and her lungs were twin balloons soaring aloft.
Countless rows of stores edged with marble balustrades stretched out in great sweeps, girding the cavernous concourse. Each store radiated its own peculiar power, twinkling and dazzling like glittering lures, row after row meticulously designed to catch their own unique fish. Music spilled out over the crowd, a soothing wash of smooth jazz agitated by a constant throb gurgling beneath, the pulse slightly faster than a heartbeat, forcing one’s nervous system to frantically catch up.
Overstimulation didn’t even begin to explain what Marlo was feeling. It was as if she had grown several new senses to overwhelm, since five couldn’t possibly digest this much sensory information.
“Who are all these people?” Marlo asked her cigar-chomping teacher, who was also clearly under Mallvana’s spell.
“What?” Poker Alice asked with her mouth hanging open yet still somehow supporting her ever-present stogie.
Marlo waved away an especially noxious cloud of burning dung-scented smoke. “These people,” she repeated. “They don’t seem like tormented souls undergoing eternal punishment—unless the prices are ridiculously high, or there’s a lousy return policy.”
“Oh, them,” the teacher replied as she stared, entranced by the mesmerizing helix of escalators upholstered in black velvet. “Mallvana is one of the lesser heavens, strictly Cloud One material. That Grabbit’s got a lot of pull—”
“Heaven?!” Marlo stopped abruptly in her tracks. “You mean I’m in Heaven??!!”
Poker Alice laughed like a bagpipe full of soot. “Oh mercy, no! For graspin’ gals like us, this is still Heck.”
“That makes no sense at all.”
The teacher’s face wrinkled up into a bitter accordion of creases and folds. “Teenagers,” she muttered with disdain. “They read one page and think they know the whole book.”
The girls filed by an opulent, heart-shaped fountain of cascading champagne, dancing laser lights, and golden koi fish with little scuba tanks on their backs—probably filled with water, Marlo thought—so that they could breathe.
“Contextual surreal estate,” the teacher continued. “One place that serves as many. Punishment for some, reward for others. The difference is circumstance … and credit limit.”
Several grinning old women tottered by carrying spacious leather shopping bags. Marlo noticed that they had wings sprouting from their backs, not majestic like an angel’s but small and trembling like a parakeet’s. Jordie, keeping up the rear of Marlo’s class, leapt out of ranks and growled at the old women. The women clutched their chests, then flopped away in their sensible orthopedic sandals. Jordie laughed uproariously.
“Miss Fauster,” said Poker Alice, leaning into Marlo with a smirk. “Keep your class in line.”
Marlo looked back at Jordie and sighed. “Hey, Jordie,” she called back halfheartedly, “let’s try to be cool, okay?”
Jordie glared at her. “I’m. always cool,” she said in a low rumble. “Like a morgue on Christmas.”
Marlo gulped. “Right. Of course. Good job. Thanks.”
Lyon and Bordeaux laughed in derisive unison.
The girls neared a trio of long-legged women whose bodies managed to be curvaceous without an ounce of body fat. It was as if they had been designed by a college fraternity.
“Oh my gawd!” squealed Bordeaux. “It’s Faith, Hope, and Charity! Those three supermodels that died on that humanitarian aid mission to Africanastan!”
The three flawless creatures sprayed the girls with perfume as they stepped onto the escalator. Normally, Marlo would have doused them with pepper spray—as the staff of Scents and Sensibility back home knew all too well. But the particular fragrance that the three dead-yet-still-super supermodels spritzed upon her was … amazing … delicious … like an aromatic rainbow.
“Chanel Number Six!” Lyon gasped. “It’s, like, supposed to be made from a patented blend of supermodel pheromones and puppy breath!”
Giggling drunk from Mallvana’s intoxicating cologne, the girls stepped onto the escalator. Marlo gripped the plush, vibrating handrail. It felt cool and calming to the touch, like petting a sleek Persian kitten, and sent waves of relaxation throughout her body, until she could barely keep her eyes …
Marlo let go. She fought to stay focused amidst all the heady distractions. She concentrated on her surroundings, casing out this burglar’s buffet of retail riches.
The first floor of the main rotunda housed a Heaven on Ice rink and Seven Deadly Cinemas Complex. The second floor, from what she could make out, was home to an Om Depot, Epiphany’s Jewelers, and a store called Cleanliness, right next to another store called Godliness.
The girls alighted off the escalator and onto the gleaming, diamond-encrusted floor. To their left was a massive plasma-screen display—at least forty feet tall. On it was a gyrating, computer-generated teenage girl, dancing and singing into a sparkling headset.
“I’m so cool. I’m so hot.
I am everything you’re not!
I’m as fresh as raw sashimi.
All the girls, they wanna be me.”
The shimmering girl, her face lined with gold-glitter makeup, danced with an athleticism that mocked the laws of physics. Her voice hit notes so high that it probably sent dogs into seizures. Her silver spandex hot pants looked as if they had been applied with a spray can. Her poreless complexion was so fine that she not only reflected light but also exuded it.
“My body language never stutters,
moves as smooth as melted butter.
I’m as steamy as a sauna.
You know my name: Yojuanna!”
Marlo crossed her arms and scanned the screen, a display so large it hurt her neck to take it all in. Norm ambled next to Marlo and gaped at the pixilated pop-music tart on the screen.
“I wish I was that sure of myself,” Norm muttered. “At least I think I do.”
Takara skipped up to the two girls, clapping her hands.
“Yojuanna B. Covetta!” she yelped. “I can’t believe she here!”
“I’ve never heard of her,” Marlo said.
“That’s because she was made in Tokyo,” Takara replied. “She was just about to make the big time before the accident.”
Norm squinted at the display. Yojuanna now had a small keyboard strapped across her perfect abs, her fingers dancing across the keys like nectar-crazed hummingbirds.
“She doesn’t look Japanese,” Norm commented slowly. “She looks … everything-ese.”
Marlo turned to Takara.
“Made?” she asked. “Accident?”
Takara brushed pink bangs from her twinkling eyes.
“She was made in Tokyo laboratory” she replied.
“You mean like Frankenstein?” Norm asked.
Takara held her small hand to her mouth and giggled.
“No, not like a monster, like a video game. Digital. Perfect pop star that can be downloaded anywhere, always ready to sing and dance, never grow old, never have scandal—unless it’s a really cool scandal.”
“So what happened to her … it?” Marlo asked.
“She started taking up too much space on Sosumi computers,” Takara continued. “Too demanding. Difficult to contain. Bad influence on other computers. Made other programs lazy, so they only worked after noon. So scientists took a big magnet and erased her.”
“Then why is that bit o’ computerized crumpet here?” asked Jordie, who had been listening in from behind.
“I guess even fake greed
y people come here when they die,” Marlo declared as Yojuanna dove off the stage. “Isn’t that right, Lyon?”
Lyon glared at Marlo with a disgust one might reserve for a dissected frog in biology class. “You’re just bitter in the presence of things so cool that everybody likes them,” she sneered.
“Yeah,” added Bordeaux, her scrawny arm pressed into the place her hip should be. “And since no one likes you, you pretend that you don’t want to be liked!”
“Wow,” Marlo deadpanned. “You can read me like a book—which is weird, because you two peroxide morons couldn’t read the large-type edition of Pat the Bunny.”
“Snap!” said Norm with a shy smirk as Bordeaux shivered.
“Daddy’s scratchy beard,” Bordeaux murmured, disturbed.
Marlo smiled, though her eyes were frowning. Bordeaux was, definitely, a few MP3s short of a playlist, but even in her dumb-as-a-box-of-hair way, she had managed to strike a nerve.
For some reason, the face of the sullen boy that she’d seen checking her out in Rapacia popped into her thoughts like a sly, smirking jack-in-the-box. There was something about him, a kindred spirit who seemed completely familiar, even though he was a stranger.
And despite her fierce independence, the boy’s attention made Marlo feel better about herself somehow.
Poker Alice leaned her smoke-ravaged face into Marlo. It looked as though her bulbous nose had been sculpted hastily out of red clay.
“Now, remember, substitute,” Poker Alice seethed between stained clenched teeth. “THIRTY MINUTES or else I sic the guards on you, got me?”
“Fine,” Marlo said, squaring her jaw in defiance. “I can do a lot of damage in thirty minutes.”
Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck Page 6