Bulletproof Mascara: A Novel (8 page)

“They seem to be doing well,” Rachel said. There was something slightly refrigerated in her demeanor toward Val that Nikki couldn’t quite put her finger on. “If you’re going to smoke, will you go outside, please?” Valerie chucked her butt out the window, but showed no inclination to leave.

“So, they’re doing well? That sounds unlikely.” Valerie pushed herself away from the window and began to walk between the tables, examining the students and their papers. She walked with deceptive casualness over to Dina and peered at her paper.

“Dina Kirk,” purred Val. “You’re a team leader, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes,” Dina said, pulling herself up straight.

“Going to lead your team to victory, are you?”

“Assuming my team follows directions adequately,” answered Dina stiffly.

“Well, yes, you are only as good as your team, it’s true.”

Nervously, Nikki put down the pepper spray deodorant she was examining and went to the next station. There was a gleam in Valerie’s eye that she didn’t trust. Dina seemed oblivious and beamed as if Val had complimented her. Val wandered some more, ignoring Nikki entirely.

“All right, class,” said Rachel, checking her watch. “That’s all for today. Please stack your papers on the desk and remember to check the website for your homework.”

As the class began to file out, Val walked toward the front of the classroom.

“Oops, sorry,” she said, bumping into Nikki and knocking her notebook and pens across the floor. “Let me help you with that.”
Val quickly gathered up Nikki’s scattered items and put them into her hands, but at the bottom of the pile Nikki could feel a strange metallic object—it felt like one of Rachel’s specialty items. Nikki frowned in puzzlement, and with a wink, Val glanced in Dina’s direction. Nikki shook her head, but Val nodded and shoved everything into Nikki’s arms.

“See you all tomorrow,” she said, and waved at the trainees.

Nikki walked out last, looking at Valerie Robinson over her shoulder. What had Val given her?

CALIFORNIA VII

You Make Me Sick

“Breath spray?” Nikki muttered, holding up the object Val had given her. Turning the slender tube upside down, she checked the label. “ILL-zero-zero-one,” she read. “What weapon is I-L-L?”

“Ill,” translated Jenny without looking up from her notes. “It’s for making people sick.”

“Oh,” Nikki said, and nervously stashed the breath spray in her pocket. “What’s on the agenda for tonight?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Fight night!” exclaimed Jenny, squashing her notes together and ramming them into her bag.

“Facials,” Ellen said.

“Facials and XFC,” Jenny said happily. “Tito’s team is gonna whup ass!”

“Oh,” said Nikki doubtfully. “The girl’s are really going to go for that?”

“I know it’s a little odd,” Ellen said, “but once you know a little something about fighting, you do kind of get into it.”

Nikki nodded but found it hard to believe that the entire group of women was really going to be happy about tuning in for the
Extreme Fighting Challenge
. But after dinner, the common room was packed, and the smell of popcorn and mint pedicure lotion filled the air, along with the sound of a dozen conversations. Nikki was having a hard time concentrating.

“You know, it’s that sound?” asked Jenny. “When you get hit really hard? Sort of a squeak and a ting at the same time, only silent?”

Nikki stared blankly at Jenny, who was sitting on the couch across from her eating popcorn. She hadn’t really been paying attention—she’d been thinking about how to offer Dina ILL001 and not seem suspicious.

“Don’t bother,” Sarah said. She leaped over the back of the couch and landed with a jarring impact on the cushions next to Jenny, bouncing the bowl and throwing popcorn into the air. Jenny threw Sarah a dirty look and grabbed the bowl before it upended entirely. It was hard to take Jenny seriously when she was wearing a Strawberry Shortcake T-shirt, two ponytails, and a face covered in green goo.

“She has a hard head,” Sarah continued. “She’s probably never heard the sound.”

“What sound? You guys are making this up,” said Nikki irritably.

“No, it’s when you get hit so hard that your senses sort of separate. You hear, but you can’t see,” Jenny assured her, her blond hair bouncing.

“That makes no sense,” Nikki said.

“Told you,” Sarah said. “She has a hard head. I hit her so hard in sparring the other day I thought I was going to cause some sort of permanent damage, but she just walked through it.”

“It wasn’t that hard,” protested Nikki, remembering Sarah’s reaction rather than the actual punch. “Well, I mean, I’m sure you punched hard, but it didn’t connect hard. I kind of ducked a little. It probably looked worse than it was.”

“No, I’m pretty sure you just have a hard head,” Sarah said, grabbing a handful of Jenny’s popcorn.

“Shhh,” commanded Carmella from across the room. “The fight’s starting.”

“I’ve got more face mask!” Ellen said, coming out of the kitchen with a blender full of green stuff. “Or possibly veggie dip.” She dipped a finger in and sucked off the liquid.

Something about Carrie Mae training still seemed unbelievable. The other women walked through days filled with classes and physical training and never seemed to notice, but Nikki was still experiencing profound moments of incredulity.

She glanced down at the pile of flash cards she was supposed to be studying during the commercial breaks. The chemical compounds in Specialty Items were way beyond the basic chemistry she had taken, and she didn’t want to fall behind. She idly flipped through the cards, with one eye on the blender full of face mask as it was passed around. She didn’t want to miss this batch.

Ellen had taken over the seat next to Jenny’s, and Nikki looked at the pair curiously. They were her friends now, but sometimes Nikki wondered if it was real friendship or the kind that only existed because everyone had to be friends with someone. Nikki scrutinized the two. Ellen had the clean accent of a newscaster and occasionally used the fragmented and overwrought language of someone “encultured” in higher education—a holdover from her days as a professor’s wife. Her darling Dale, an astronomy professor, had passed away two years ago of a heart attack. Jenny, Southern and proud, but still class-conscious, yin-yanged from
sweet to crass in a matter of moments, her linguistic choices clearly displaying her own uncertainty about where she belonged.

Nikki felt a similar doubt and tried to watch her own language for signifiers. The trick was to be consistent and not to deviate from the average language choices too much.

She wondered if anyone else felt as if they were only here through some strange coincidence of fate, in no way connected to actual ability or merit. She definitely wasn’t here on merit. She remembered a face full of lipstick and shuddered.

Nikki’s hand jerked, trying to push the memory away, and scattered her flash cards on the floor, drawing strange looks from the others. She smiled in embarrassment and knelt to pick up the cards. She was not thinking about that particular evening. She was not thinking about handcuffs or anything related to that night.

The program cut to a commercial for a dental hygienist program at a local community college.

“I was going to do that,” Carmella said, pointing to the TV. “If I hadn’t come here, that’s what I was going to do.”

“I was on the waiting list for the nursing program,” said Sarah.

“I just graduated from college. I was supposed to go work with my dad,” Heidi said gloomily. “He was kind of pissed that I came here instead.”

“I’d be twenty pounds heavier,” volunteered Ellen, “and I’d be up to date on
Days of Our Lives
.”

“I’d probably have gotten engaged to Ben Mitchell,” Jenny said. “He was a lawyer. Mama really liked that I’d never have to work again. My family didn’t really understand why I wanted to leave.”

“Mine, neither,” agreed Heidi. “And I couldn’t say it was because I wanted something better, because Dad doesn’t think there’s anything better than his business.”

“I was in the army for a while,” Sarah said. “Good benefits and everything, but my mom kept freaking out that I was going to go die while I was in Iraq. She doesn’t understand why I’m wasting a slot in the nursing program to come here.”

“How about you, Nikki? Where’d you be, if you weren’t here?” asked Jenny.

“Jail,” said Nikki, unintentionally answering honestly. Everyone stared. “Joke.” she said, hastily gathering the last flash card and resuming her seat. The girls exchanged glances, and Ellen shook her head.

“I don’t think so,” said Cheryl.

“There was a slight incident when I tried to sell makeup,” Nikki said. Jenny and Ellen exchanged glances.

“I see,” Carmella said.

“And did this incident involve some sort of police action?” asked Heidi, leaning forward with a grin.

Nikki shifted uncomfortably; she did not want to talk about this.

“Fight’s back on!” Ellen said, rescuing Nikki.

“We’re coming back to this,” threatened Sarah.

“Later,” said Jenny, around a mouthful of popcorn. “During the commercials.”

But commercials came and Jenny immediately launched into a story about throwing up during a beauty pageant. By the time the contestants were diving for the tiara, the fight was back on.

“Thanks,” Nikki whispered, as they walked upstairs to their rooms.

“I could see you didn’t want to talk about it,” Jenny whispered back.

“But you realize that now you have to tell us,” put in Ellen.

“It’s embarrassing,” Nikki protested.

“More embarrassing than throwing up in front of the entire judging panel and my high-school crush?” Jenny demanded, and Nikki paused, trying to balance out the relative weights of their shame.

“Good point,” she said, opening the door to their room.

“Hold on,” Ellen said, digging through one of her dresser drawers. “I want to hear more about the boy from Canada. You never finished your story about him.”

“What brought that up?” asked Nikki, amazed by Ellen’s elephantine memory.

“I’m not getting my daily soap opera, so I’ve got to fill it in with something, and you girls are it. Besides, I’ve been thinking about that guy; he doesn’t sound very trustworthy. I want to know what happened.”

“She’s right,” said Jenny, laughing. “That is kind of sketchy behavior, but I want to hear about getting arrested first.”

“So, what happened?” pursued Ellen.

“I told you. We went to lunch. And besides, he’s not at all related to the getting arrested thing.” Or was he? Canada and Carrie Mae were all sort of bundled together in her memory, and it was hard to say that they weren’t related.

“Right,” said Jenny. “And there is no way that lunch is going to be more interesting than getting arrested. So I want to hear about that. You can finish up the Canada story after the ‘getting arrested’ story.”

“I think I bought some Girl Scout cookies last time we went to the store,” Ellen muttered, still rummaging. “OK, jail it is then. Like sand through the hourglass, these are the days of Nikki’s life.” She pulled out the box and offered the opened end to the other two girls. Nikki accepted her cookie and thought about where to start her story.

CANADA (WELL, WA)

The Lipstick Incident

Nikki looked at her hands. The handcuffs were very shiny, just like the remains of her nail polish. She regarded her three torn nails with sorrow—now she would have to clip all the nails to make them even. She looked up and caught sight of herself in the presumably two-way mirror. Her hair was in complete disarray and had grass and a twig sticking out of it. She reached up and removed the twig and grass with her left hand; the handcuffs dragged her right hand across her face in a tangled display of uncoordination. She laid the grass and twig neatly on the table in front of her. She made an ineffectual pat at her hair, but gave up in indifference. She sighed and studied the blade of grass. It was green with a slight vein down the middle. The police detective came back into the room, and Nikki straightened up in her chair.

“So, Miss Lanier,” he said, pronouncing it like
LANE
-e-er.

“Lanier,” she corrected automatically, and then regretted it instantly.

“What?” he said.

“Lan-yay,” she said miserably. “It’s pronounced Lan-yay.”

“It would be,” he responded enigmatically. Nikki tried a smile, but knew it was a miserable attempt. “I don’t suppose you would care to explain this whole affair?” He flipped open a manila file folder and looked over the contents.

“Temporary insanity?” Nikki suggested with another half-smile.

“Well, yes, that does seem likely,” said the detective, clearly examining her disheveled appearance. “But I assume you didn’t go to that house intending to assault anyone.”

“Well, no,” said Nikki hesitantly. “I think maybe I . . . I just sort of snapped.”

The house had been all red brick and white paint. Four structurally useless “Grecian” pillars had adorned the front porch and lent an impressive air to the semicircular drive that took up most of the front lawn. Nikki had a sinking feeling when she had seen that house, but Toni, her mother’s friend, had exclaimed in admiration, “Isn’t that cute?” Toni thought a lot of things were cute. Toni sold candles and knickknacks that Nikki wouldn’t have kept in her closet. Nikki had sighed and agreed. Toni was being nice. Toni was doing Nikki—well, really Nikki’s mother—a favor by bringing her along.

“Now, remember, Nikki, just let them try everything and agree with whatever they say and you’ll sell a bundle. These women like personal treatment.”

“I went to sell Carrie Mae with Toni,” Nikki told the detective. The words were not coming readily to her tongue. “My mother won a starter kit,” she explained. She didn’t want the detective to think she sold Carrie Mae for
real
. “And I haven’t been able to find a job, and my mother kept saying I could make money with it, and
her friend Toni said she’d take me along on one of her trips. She said it would be easy.”

“I see,” said the detective in a bored tone. “So you went to the house to sell makeup with Toni?”