Mad Skills

by Greatshell, Walter

  “I will. Bye.”

  “Bye-bye.” He pushed through the door and was gone.

  Maddy had a moment of panic, during which she very nearly ran after Rudy and begged not to be left alone. Something had to be terribly wrong—her parents would never have agreed to this! Then something throttled down in her head, the panic subsided, and all was still.

  The desk clerk gave her a key and pointed her toward the elevator. As if in a dream, Maddy rode it up to the second floor. Her room number was 207, about halfway down at the narrow hall, on the right. Like the lobby, the corridor was all very cold and impersonal, smelling of fresh paint and without so much as a picture on the wall to break up the monotony. How many of those rooms contained people like her? She would be interested to know.

  Opening her door, Maddy wasn’t sure what to expect. A barren cell? A crowded dormitory? But she was gratified to see it was nothing too severe. Just a small, private kitchenette apartment with basic amenities, overlooking the rear parking lot. No phone or TV. With a sense of trepidation, she plugged in the modem’s power adapter and closed her eyes, waiting to see if anything would happen …

  Nothing—nothing at all. There was no way to tell if it was even working, no lights or sounds. She would have to ask downstairs about that.

  But not yet. First, she plopped down on her hard single bed and wallowed in the weird sensation of freedom. It was spooky. For the first time in her life, there was no one telling her what to do. And it wasn’t just for a day or a week, but for six months. All the time in the world. You could live a whole life in six months—get a job, fall in love, get married and divorced …

  Then and there, Maddy decided she was not only going to make the most of that time, but that she desperately needed it. Maybe those doctors knew what they were doing putting her there, far away from the pressure of family and friends. How else could she escape from the stale role of Maddy Grant … and find out who she really was?

  About time, she thought, tears streaming into her ears. About frickin’ time.

  NINETEEN

  SIGNS

  AFTER resting awhile, Maddy got bored and ventured back downstairs. It was still morning; she had a whole day ahead of her. She wondered if she had to check in with the lobby every time she went in or out, but when she got there, the window was dark and locked shut. She went outside.

  The street was just as empty, but the haze had thinned, and she could see that some of the stores were open. Down the block was a generic-looking chain restaurant with a huge sign: STRUWELPETER’S. Next door on the right was a dry cleaner’s and a Laundromat. On the left was a convenience store and a Middle-Eastern joint—the marquee read, KASHMIR KABOB—ALL-U-CAN-EAT FALAFEL $7.99. Directly across the street were a women’s clothing boutique, a gift shop, and a shoe outlet.

  Well, if she was going to look for a job, she would definitely need a new outfit. She had nothing to wear but the clothes on her back—the same things she had worn to school three days ago—and the few things packed in the small overnight bag her parents had brought.

  Then again, she was loaded.

  Counting her twenties, Maddy realized she had exactly three hundred dollars in cash. That should be plenty.

  First, she went into the convenience store seeking a few basic amenities like dish soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and tampons. She intended to stick to the bare necessities, but more and more items kept jumping out at her until suddenly her basket was full. The checker was a swarthy, mustached man who rang her purchases up with undisguised relish.

  “Ah! Lemon Brite—good choice! This AquaDent is very good, too, a most beautiful color! Do you by any chance have a RiteDrug Card?”

  “Oh, uh, no.”

  “No matter! You will fill this out and I will discount your purchases—very simple! Ah, yes—Tampad! The leading brand! Will that do it for you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Then your purchase comes to fifty-five dollars and twenty-six cents, please.”

  Maddy was taken aback—almost sixty bucks! What was she thinking? Deodorizer? Moisturizer? Conditioner? Hairbrushes? She barely had any hair! Oh well, she rationalized, at least she’d be set for a while. She took her stuff and went outside.

  From there she went to the clothing store. The woman salesclerk was very attentive, and also very exotic-looking, with kohl-rimmed eyes and Muslim-style head scarf. She stood back at a polite distance, humming and staring off into space, but the second Maddy had a question about anything, she was there in a flash, grinning blissfully as she rattled off prices, sizes, colors, styles, whatever. And as quickly as she appeared, vanished back under her hood again, cooing softly to herself.

  Working up her nerve, Maddy asked, “Excuse me, but would you know of anyplace where they’re taking applications? I’m kind of looking for a job.”

  The woman froze in midleap as if flustered by the question. “Job?”

  “Yeah. Any kind of job. Preferably part-time.”

  The woman gave it some thought. “Have you tried the employment agency?”

  “No.”

  “It’s right around the corner—you can’t miss it. Able Staffing.”

  “Oh—thanks.”

  “You’re most welcome. If I can help you with anything else, please tell me.” The woman gratefully ducked back into her trance.

  Browsing the sale racks, Maddy noticed a sign on the wall. It was a police sketch of an egg-shaped face above the words HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? She realized that the same sign had been posted on the window of the convenience store. There was something generic and yet creepy about that face—it was one of those pictures where the eyes seem to follow you. A white, middle-aged male of average height and build, it read. Well, that narrowed it down! It also said the man was being sought in connection with the disappearance of several young girls, and that anyone recognizing him should contact the sheriff’s department immediately.

  Averting her eyes from the poster, Maddy tried on a few outfits, settling on what she felt was the most professional-looking yet inexpensive combo, something that was laundry-safe: a soot gray pantsuit, with a yellow and black polka-dot blouse. It was hard to choose, because there were so many dazzling items she would have preferred, but it was important to demonstrate a little restraint. God—this was worse than having her mother looking over her shoulder.

  The designer purses and shoes especially seemed to beckon: gleaming, elegant toys that Maddy could barely resist fondling, pressing their wonderful smoothness against her face and breathing deep of their new-car smell. Weird—she never realized how incredible this stuff was. Stephanie was right. The designer names swirled in her brain like holy mantras, ripe with joyous power, and the corporate logos shone like sacred symbols. She yearned for them.

  Near tears, she made herself leave the store with only four hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise. It’s all right, it’s all right, she thought frantically. I’ll make it up when I get a job. She had used up her cash, but it occurred to her that she didn’t even know if the card had a limit—maybe she could spend a little more!

  But not there, no—too expensive. There were other things she needed more … like food. Food, yes—no one could call that an extravagance. Across the plaza she could see a small supermarket. FOOD-O-RAMA, the sign said.

  Heading for it, Maddy noticed several more flyers posted on walls and utility poles. That face was really starting to bug her. Everywhere she went, she saw that bothersome police sketch, and in her efforts to avoid looking at it, she tried turning her attention to other things, such as the big, colorful VOTE signs that were also all over town. Apparently, there was a local election going on, and the two candidates had plastered the streets with their campaign posters.

  One was a very charming, sensitive, and purposeful-looking man who reminded Maddy of her ninth-grade science teacher, Mr. Bekins. She had adored Mr. Bekins. This man’s name was Strode, and his signs were simple and bold, merely a picture of his handsome face over the words VOTE
STRODE.

  The other candidate’s signs were more rankly manipulative, with the slogan BELIEVE and a photo of the guy reverently holding his hand over his heart. His name was Vellon. Vellon’s fat face annoyed her, and it wasn’t until she saw it for the umpteenth time that she realized why: He resembled the man in the police sketch! It wasn’t an exact resemblance, but there were definite areas of similarity, particularly the pointy bald head. Of course, it couldn’t be the same man—that would be ridiculous—but the mere thought of it was enough to turn her off. She could barely stand to look at the guy, much less vote for him. Go Strode!

  There was another Vellon sign on the door of the market, and she pushed past without looking at it. Getting a cart, she took a centering breath and headed down the produce aisle. She had always found supermarkets to be restful places—the gentle music, the smells of bread and brown paper evoking lazy Sunday outings with Mom.

  Small as it was, this place was no exception, and for the few minutes she perused the vegetables, Maddy achieved a leafy green nirvana—blissful nothingness. She took only what she needed and nothing more. It was when she reached the end of the produce section that things got complicated.

  Scanning the labels, looking at the sale signs, she suddenly began to hear commercial jingles echoing in space. It was not unpleasant—in fact, she found herself humming along with the familiar tunes, her whole body suffused with unexpected pleasure. Most rewarding of all was the feeling of putting something in the cart, a giddy tingle of pure joy that made her laugh out loud.

  I never realized how much fun this is, she thought. I really need to shop more often.

  Though she didn’t question the sensations, there was something distinctly odd about how some items lit her up and others didn’t. The major labels really seemed to smile back at her, almost to recognize her. At first she thought it was her simple familiarity with the products: the memory of TV commercials she had seen all her life combined with the excitement of being on her own for the first time. That would naturally make everything more intense.

  But that could not be all there was to it because as she went on, there were a number of new products she had never used before, nor even seen advertised—yet they sang their siren calls just as loudly. Then again, after all that had happened, how far could she even trust her memory? Perhaps this itself was a sign of recovery, all these things acting as triggers for her subconscious, her lost self. In any case, the experience was delightful as long as it lasted, like being the star of her own musical.

  But as she lugged the stuff back to the motel, tired and thirsty and another hundred dollars in the hole, the pleasure faded, and she began to feel sick about it, deeply confused by the lapse. She actually had to set her bags down and dry heave in the bushes.

  What happened? she thought. She who had so recently laughed at the Pavlovian manipulation and self-deceptions of consumerism. I’m smarter than this. I’m not one of those shopaholics on TV. Stephanie’s the binge spender, not me.

  Could that be it? Could this be some kind of psychological compensation for a lifetime of moderation? Of settling for less and letting others hog the glory? The rich girls, the beautiful girls, the Golden Ones. Silly clothes-horses like her mother and her best friend and all the Marina Sweets of the world. Watching them preen as she herself blended like a moth into the tree bark—had that finally caused her to crack?

  Considering these things as she entered the motel lobby, Maddy’s eyes were drawn to a familiar flyer on the wall—that awful face again. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? She couldn’t remember the sketch being there before … or maybe she just hadn’t noticed. All she knew was that she couldn’t look at that every time she came and went.

  With a burst of fury, she whipped the poster off the wall and twisted it into a mangled knot. Then, as she waited for the elevator, she ripped it to tiny shreds while imagining it was the man himself she was punishing, venting all her anger and frustration on a piece of paper and snarling through her clenched teeth as she did it. It felt really good.

  TWENTY

  BROKEN MIRROR

  AFTER her shopping trip, Maddy was reluctant to leave her room, not sure if she could trust herself. The habits she had formed while laid up in the hospital made it easy to hang around in bed the rest of the afternoon, but she knew sooner or later she would have to start looking for a job. She didn’t want Dr. Stevens and the rest of Braintree coming after her.

  That night Maddy had a bad dream.

  She dreamed she awoke. There was something very important she needed to do. She got out of bed and put on her clothes, then gathered some things from the medicine cabinet and left the room. It was too bright in the hall; she closed her eyes and found that she remembered the layout of the building perfectly well. Hurrying down the fire stairs, she came out in an alley. It was dark out, but she could see there was a car waiting, a black limousine. The uniformed driver frisked her, said, She’s clean, then opened the door and let her in. There was no one else in the car.

  They drove out of town and got on the highway, heading north. In the way of dreams, there was a disconnect, so that suddenly Maddy realized she wasn’t in a car but in the crawl space under her house. The dirt was cool and damp. She had hidden a plastic bag full of her baby brother’s belongings down there before her folks could donate them all away, and sometimes she came down to remember him. Nobody else seemed to. There was nothing of his left in the house; her mother got hysterical at the slightest reminder.

  When she opened the bag, what she found was not Lukie’s hat and jacket and stuffed animals, but a cache of random junk: a bottle of diet soda, a roll of duct tape, a fat ballpoint pen, a roll of effervescent mints, and some sharp pieces from a broken mirror. Somehow, those things fit together, and Maddy understood that in order to get what she wanted, she would first have to solve the puzzle.

  She opened the cola, drank some, and gently pushed the unopened roll of candy inside. Then she took apart the pen and stuck its hollow shaft into the bottle, joining them with a gasket of duct tape. Into the end of the pen she loaded small mirror fragments, jamming the largest one in the opening so its point stuck out like a sharp blade. Then she taped the bottle to her right forearm so it was concealed within her sleeve.

  Just as she was finishing, she became aware of a presence in the dark crawl space. Someone was in there with her.

  Well, hello, what’s your name? a man’s voice asked.

  The dream shifted again, and Maddy abruptly found herself back in the limo. The car was parked, and she was face-to-face with the man from the poster, his dead-eyed stare drinking her in. Vellon. Believe. He was wearing a tuxedo with the collar loosened, and he smelled of alcohol. The driver was gone; they were alone.

  Maddy, she replied.

  Well, Maddy, why don’t you come sit on my lap so we can get to know each other better? I promise I won’t bite.

  As if in a trance, she moved across to him, ducking in the low space.

  You’re a very pretty girl, he said, cradling her against his belly.

  Thank you, she murmured.

  Are you new at this?

  Yes.

  I thought so. There’s nothing to be nervous about—all you have to do is relax. Let me do all the work.

  As his plump, manicured fingers moved up her leg, she could sense the man’s excitement, the quickening of his pulse and respiration. Placing her hand on his neck, she leaned in as if to kiss him, feeling the huge, throbbing vein against her palm. At the last second, she turned her mouth aside, his lips smooshing against her cheek. Before he could react, she jammed the razor-tipped pen into his jugular and squeezed the soda bottle as hard as she could. The pressure ruptured the soggy candy wrapper, exposing the bicarbonate in the mints and causing an explosive release of carbon dioxide, which spurted like a geyser up the plastic tube and into the man’s bloodstream—shooting the mirror fragments straight to his heart.

  The man screamed, turning purple. His limbs flailed violently, his ba
ck arching up off the seat so that Maddy was thrown to the floor. Escaping was not as easy as she’d expected. She scrambled away, cowering against the seats opposite as he continued to thrash and make horrible noises. His head looked like a balloon about to explode. Then, like a deflating balloon, he collapsed, wheezing out his last breath at her feet. The soda bottle was full of blood.

  Maddy awoke in the dark, heart racing. I killed him! Oh my God, I killed him!

  Gradually, as full consciousness returned, she realized it was just a dream—thank God, only a dream. But it wasn’t the nightmare itself that had awakened her; she still had the vivid sense of having been jarred out of a deep sleep by something else. A loud noise? She sat up and scanned the room, searching the shadows for anything that could explain it. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong or out of place. Without turning on the lights, she clutched her pillow to her breast and got up to go to the bathroom. Nothing.

  Just a dream, then. Okay. The tiled floor in there was freezing; she hurried back to bed and burrowed under the blankets. Soon she was asleep.

  The next morning, she dragged herself out of bed to pee. Brrr—somebody turn the heat up! Half-awake, she barely caught herself before stepping into the bathroom. She almost shrieked.

  The floor was covered with broken glass. Shards of mirror and fractured glass shelving lay everywhere, a thousand foot traps for her poor bare soles.

  It was the medicine cabinet. Sometime in the night, it must have fallen off the wall, perhaps weighed down by all the crap she had bought. That was what had awakened her … and yet somehow she had missed it. Walked right through it in the dark without so much as a cut.

  Lucky, she thought, shaky with amazement.

  “It’s not luck, you know,” said a scratchy, high-pitched voice.

  Maddy spun around. There was no one in the room.

  “Down here,” said the voice.

  Maddy peered behind the shower curtain and shrieked at what she saw.