The Blonde of the Joke (12 page)

“Why would she do that?” I asked.

Dan laughed.

“I told you,” Francie said. “Bonkers! Now let’s see…” She began to read off the list of hotel names.

“Let’s start with the Embassy Suites,” Dan said. “I think it’s closest.”

“Why don’t we just call?” I said.

“I’m sure she used a fake name,” Francie said, handing
my notebook back along with her phone. “But it’s worth a try. Try ‘Darcy Farcy.’ It’s one of her favorites.”

I started dialing while Dan sighed and cruised down Wisconsin, into the city. There was no Sandra Knight—and no Darcy Farcy—checked in anywhere.

“Ask for ‘Dolores Pizza,’” Francie hissed, listening in. “She uses that one sometimes, too.” But it was no good.

We got to the hotel and double-parked outside. Dan went to the counter to try to explain the situation while Francie and I checked out the bar. She wasn’t there. We went from there to the Sheraton, the Hilton, and the Marriott, all of which she’d made charges at in the last three hours, according to the Visa lady. Still no Sandy. Francie tried to order a martini at the Hilton bar, and the bartender actually laughed in her face.

As the night wore on, Francie’s spirits seemed to waver again. We were on the right track, but the possibilities, however narrowed down, still seemed endless. Sometimes you could judge Francie’s mood from her hair, and the carefully teased mane she’d started the night with was sinking like a ruined soufflé. “We have to find her,” Francie said. “You have no idea what she might do.”

“I guess I don’t,” I said.

But we did find her, eventually. When we finally found Sandy, she was sandwiched between two men at the
Doubletree bar, laughing her head off. She looked up with surprise when she spotted Francie, then beckoned her over. “Francie! What are you doing here? And you too, Val! Do you girls want a drink? Val, I think Greg here might be just your type.” She elbowed the chubby, bald old man on her left and winked saucily, making kissy noises. The guy leered at me.

Francie pulled him out of his seat and tossed him aside. “I’ll take a Long Island Iced Tea.” She plopped down in the newly vacated stool next to her mother and shooed Greg away when he tried to hover. Dan looked disapproving of the drinking, but we didn’t leave until Francie had swallowed the last drop.

“Your card’s been denied,” the bartender said when Sandy went for the tab.

There was a cop car parked outside my house upon our arrival. The sun was almost coming up.

“Shit,” I said.

Dan looked at me like I was crazy. “Didn’t you tell your parents where you were going?”

I shrugged.

“Why do I do this?” Dan wondered aloud. “I can’t believe I’m still doing this crap. Do you want me to come in and explain?”

“No,” I said. “I think that might just freak her out even more.”

“Valentina’s mom loves strange older dudes with tattoos,” Francie said.

“Maybe I should talk to her,” Sandy said. “I’m reputable, after all!” She winked at me in a just-between-us-girls kind of way and giggled and tossed her hair.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, and I hopped out of the truck and scrambled up the lawn.

I was grounded, but it didn’t matter anyway, because Francie was gone again. At least this time she told me she was leaving for a while.
Off 2 Bahamas again! B back soon!
she’d texted me.
Not funny,
I texted her back.

I spent my time in lockdown in my room listening to music I knew my mom hated and catching up on my homework. I was getting an F in French, having done practically nothing in the class, but my teacher had told me I could still make up the work and maybe pull out a C.
“Etre, être, être,”
I wrote. “To be (infinitive).
Je suis, je suis, je suis. Nous sommes, nous sommes, nous sommes. Tu es, tu es, tu es….”
And like that. After a while it started to feel good, just the repetition of it.

It took me a couple of days to finish every last assignment. At first I was at a loss for what to do next, but then I decided to play dress-up. I laid out all my clothes on the floor of my bedroom and surveyed them. I retrieved all the makeup I’d stolen, almost none of which was even opened, from its hiding spot under the bed. “What would Francie wear?” I asked myself.

But that wasn’t really the right question to ask. I had been imitating Francie’s style since I first met her. And that time in her bedroom, she had given me that makeover and turned me into a bizarre version of herself. It hadn’t worked.

“What would Francie
not
wear?” I asked myself instead. I picked out my old baggy mom-jeans and an ugly cable-knit turtleneck sweater from the back of the closet. I put them on and looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was chin-length now, and greasy and lifeless. I looked like I was wearing a costume. It wasn’t right. It was not who I was. I’m not sure if it was who I had ever been.

And then I asked myself: What would
I
wear? And I put on my black jeans and my black knee-high boots. I zipped my motorcycle jacket up over bare skin, just high enough so you couldn’t see my nipples. I greased my hair back into a slick pompadour.

“What are you wearing?” my mother asked when I went downstairs for a glass of milk.

“It’s my new look,” I told her. “Do you like it?” It was the same thing I had been wearing since at least December, except usually I wore a shirt under the jacket. I guess she just hadn’t noticed before. Or maybe it somehow looked different on me now.

“You look like a witch,” my mother said. I made my witchiest face, and she actually laughed.

My mother had been making an effort to be nicer to me since my grounding. I don’t know if she felt guilty about it
or what. But she had actually been acting like a real person. It was weird.

“When you say this is your new look,” she asked, “does this mean you’re going to be dressing like this all the time?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Hmm,” she said, and she nodded impassively.

When I turned around to leave, she added, “I don’t care what you wear. I really don’t. But don’t do that to me again. Having to worry about your brother constantly is about as much as I can possibly handle. I rely on you to be good.”

“The good times are over,” I said.

Francie returned a week later. My mother had wanted me to be grounded longer, but she didn’t have the energy to keep me all locked up and everything. For the first time ever, Francie wasn’t in the mood for the mall, so we went for a walk instead. It was a little awkward being around her again; I honestly had no idea what to say. It seemed like she didn’t, either. I sort of thought she was actually embarrassed.

We went to the park and strolled together for what seemed like forever, down the winding asphalt bike path, across University Boulevard, farther out than I had ever walked before.

“Well,” Francie said, “I guess you figured out I never went to the Bahamas. We never went anywhere at all. I mean, we did, just not the Bahamas. I’ve never even been to the Bahamas. We did go to Hawaii once when I was little.”

“So where were you over Christmas, then?” I asked.

“At my grandma’s,” Francie said. “My mom went to the hospital. Same as this time. It happens sometimes. She loses it and checks in for a couple of days until the insurance people tell her she has to leave. Of course, she’s never totally better; give her three months and it’ll be the same old story. This time was actually no big deal, really. Over Christmas she tried to kill me!”

“What?”

Francie nodded furiously with a triumphant grin. “She thought I was the devil!” Francie chirped. “So she came at me with a potato peeler!”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Oh,” I said. “She really tried to kill you?”

“Well, no, but she did wave a potato peeler at me, like an inch from my face. It was so ridic.”

“Isn’t your grandma concerned about this insane situation?”

“Ha! My grandma is a total bitch. She would make you want to puke. I mean, there’s really no question about how my mom turned out so fucked-up in the first place.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her. “Why did you lie? You could have at least told me you were going away. It was so weird.”

“A person can have secrets,” Francie replied. “It’s nothing personal. You have secrets. All those secrets about your brother. And I’ve barely even
met
your mom.”

“You know basically as much about my brother as I do. I hardly know my brother at all. And anyway, it’s different,” I said.

“How?”

“I don’t expect secrets from you because you act like you have none.”

Francie and I had traveled out to the edge of the park, and we’d taken our shoes off and had sat down on the rocky bank of the creek, where we dragged our bare toes through dirt and pebbles. I tried to skip some rocks across the surface, but I couldn’t quite master the flip of the wrist. They kept sinking.

“What I
act
like has almost nothing to do with the person I actually am,” Francie said.

“Pardon me if I say that comes as a surprise,” I told her.

All of a sudden, it was spring, and I glanced over at Francie, who was standing and dusting off her ass, and there she was at her most shining. She was untroubled and epic; bigger than her own body. Francie’s hair was blonder and longer and wilder than ever, just the way it sometimes looked in my dreams. In fact, she was exactly how I had always imagined her.

But then a cloud passed in front of the sun, and the sky darkened—only a fraction, but still darkened—and spring was gone. Francie was not how I imagined her but how I knew other people saw her. I was only starting to understand that it might be how she saw herself, too.

It made me sad.

“I’m sorry,” Francie said. “Things are complicated sometimes. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Francie stood and stripped down to the lacy frillery we’d stolen together, months ago, from Victoria’s Secret, and waded into the dirty, slimy, and probably toxic creek until she was in up to her hips. Her teeth started chattering. Despite the warmth in the air, it was still only barely spring. But she fell backward into the water and was totally submerged save for the tangle of hair floating on the surface like a wayward bird’s nest.

She stayed under until I thought she might be dead. When she finally emerged from the water, her underwear was see-through and dripping and her hair had turned green. I half expected her to have transformed herself into a sea monster, or a yellow bird that could take off now for another life. But she had not. She just moved toward me, rising with every step.

“Did you hear about the blonde who…” she started.

“Yes,” I cut her off. “I already heard about her.”

F
rancie wanted me to come over, but I wasn’t in the mood. I walked her back to her place and then headed to the mall by myself.

It had been forever since I’d ridden the J-12 without her. Sitting on the bus alone that day, I felt outside of myself. I was floating; I was looking down over the suburbs with a clear eye.
Here is Sandra Dee Senior High School. Here is my house. Here is the hospital, and the mall, and the creek that touches everything. Like the creek and the mall, I am part of all of this.

I was perversely angry that Francie wasn’t with me. She was a part of everything, too. Even though I’d basically ditched her, I wanted her with me anyway. And when I climbed down onto the sidewalk and looked up at the
fortress of the mall, I was filled with—I don’t know—like, this infinite longing.

The mall had been good to me. It had brought me Francie. I had thought that would be enough, and for a while it had been. Now I was asking it for something more, but exactly what I wanted, I couldn’t start to say. I scrambled over the break in the chain-link fence and climbed the grassy hill into the parking garage, like I’d done so many times before.

The mall had thrown up a wall of fog; I could barely find my way from entrance to atrium. I tried to retrace old paths only to find myself back in the place where I’d started. I was worried that without Francie I wouldn’t be able to steal anymore, but when I finally I made it to Bath & Body Works, my gifts were still with me. I took some bath beads, some soap, and some body lotion. It was easy. But it wasn’t very satisfying.

Then I was at the edge of the fountain, and Max was there, unexpectedly, waiting for me. Max was one of those people whose only reliable trait was his unreliability. He had only showed because I hadn’t been expecting him. He looked hot as ever, in a pair of mangled, loose-fitting jeans and a blue pullover hoodie, his hair messy and kind of greasy, but in a good way. He gave me that odd, winning smile.

“Where’s your friend?” he asked.

“She couldn’t make it,” I told him. Did anyone ever think about anything other than Francie?

“That girl confuses me,” he said.

“You confuse her, too,” I told him. “She mentioned it the other day.”

“She thinks she knows everything.”

“I know.”

“She’s not as smart as she thinks, you realize.”

“You’d be surprised.”

Max had this way of talking in asides, like nothing he was saying had anything to do with what the conversation was actually about, even if it did. “Why do you like her?” he asked me.

“Francie? What, you don’t like her?”

“Of course I like her. I’m just curious why you do.”

“I guess it’s like…” I considered it for a second. “I guess it’s that I’ve never met anyone like her before. Someone who just doesn’t care. It’s like she was sent here from an alien planet, or the future. A strange visitor. It’s like she’s here to teach us something.”

“What’s she supposed to teach us?” Max asked.

“Something important,” I said. “Something besides shoplifting. That’s all I know. With these strange visitors, it’s not supposed to be too obvious. If it was that simple, they would just tell you outright or send it in a postcard or something.”

“I guess you’re right about that.”

“She’s my best friend,” I said. “She really is. Actually, she’s my only friend.”

“I’m your friend,” Max said. He dipped his hand into
the fountain and splashed some water on my leg. “I’ve never seen you without her. You look beautiful without her.”

“That’s a weird thing to say,” I said. Max was nothing if not a flatterer. I’d seen him doing it to Francie, too; the difference was that she fell for it. I stood. “Want me to show you how to shoplift?”

“Not really,” he said. “Want me to teach you how to skateboard?”

“No.”

“Let’s just go for a walk, then,” Max said.

So we went for a walk. We walked the length of the mall, and then the width, and then the entire perimeter of the wraparound balcony that was the second floor. We talked about a lot of stuff, most of it unmemorable. But even though the stuff we were talking about wasn’t important at all, I was happy to be talking to someone other than Francie. I had practically forgotten what it was like to have a conversation with someone else. Francie was all bright eyes and brass tacks, and every time you had a conversation with her, you got the feeling that she was trying a case, that every nonsensical thing she said was all a piece of a mystifying, aggregate thesis. It was kind of exhausting. Max, by contrast, barely seemed to know what was coming out of his mouth as he said it.

“I’ve got this dog,” Max said. He was mumbling like he was embarrassed to hear his own voice, but he just had to say it anyway because it was important.

“A dog. Cool,” I said.

“His name’s Noodle. Stupid name, I know, but it wasn’t my idea, and he’s an awesome dog. He’s a golden retriever. The best dogs ever.”

“I hear they’re very loyal.”

Max considered his words. “I think it’s so shitty when people talk about how dogs are, like, bred to love people, because that makes it seem so much stupider than it is. If something’s programmed to love you, or if it just loves you because it doesn’t know any better, well, what’s the point of that? It’s meaningless.”

“I’ve always been kind of afraid of dogs,” I said.

“You wouldn’t be afraid of my dog,” he said. “He’s the best. But what I’m saying is, like, if dogs just loved you because that’s what dogs do, it would be so empty. It would be like having a robot. Or one of those weird life-size sex dolls that cost five thousand dollars.”

“Gross,” I said. “Anyway, I thought dogs loved whoever fed them.”

“I mean,
true,
but that’s missing the point. It’s not like dogs love
you,
or
me,
or anyone. It’s more like—like they’re the living embodiment of everything that is good. Or like they’re vessels for it,” Max said. “Like when I take Noodle to the park. He’s out running in the field, he’s chasing whatever, and all you see is this blur of yellow, and then he’ll, like, disappear for a minute or two, and then suddenly he’ll be right there at my feet, panting, and when he looks up at me, I’ll look at him, and it’s not that I can see that he
loves me. I know he does love me, and I love him, too, but that’s not what I see. What I can see is, like, all the love in the entire world. Right there, those black eyes, tongue all wagging. It’s practically bursting out of him. This boundless, cosmic
affection.”

“Are you stoned?” I asked.

“Come on,” Max said, wounded. “I’m talking about serious shit here.”

“No, really. Are you stoned?”

“Only a little bit.” He shrugged. “So I smoked a bowl like an hour and a half ago. That doesn’t mean I’m not being totally serious.”

“The funny thing is that I know what you mean,” I told him. “Even though you’re stoned and I don’t like dogs.”

We were facing each other. I looked at him, with his scruffy not-quite-beard, his blondish hair. His eyes were watery and bloodshot, which had the strange effect of making them all the bluer. He had run out of things to say.

“You know, you kind of look like a golden retriever,” I told him. “You really do.”

“People always say I look like Noodle,” he said.

“That’s such a stupid name.”

“I know,” he admitted.

“I’m going to steal something for you,” I told him.

He cocked his head at me like he was going to say no, and then he laughed and shrugged, and we walked into Steve & Barry’s, where I made an ugly camo hat disappear into my bag.

“This camo shit is so finished,” he said when we were outside and I placed the hat on his head. But he looked pleased that I’d actually stolen it for him, and he flipped the brim a little, giving him a boyish aspect, like Dennis the Menace or someone who would play stickball.

“My brother actually is dying,” I said. “I wasn’t joking the other day.”

“I kind of figured,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s just one of those things.”

“It’s still got to suck.”

“It does suck,” I said. “I thought we were helping him get better, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Here, I’ll walk you to the bus. Maybe you can meet Noodle sometime.”

On Monday, after school, Francie and I were back at the mall together as if nothing had happened. I guess Francie didn’t know anything had happened at all. We rode the bus and made our way up the grassy hill together like always. We stood in front of the glowing map of the mall, running our fingers across the geometric, chalky-colored legends, debating our first hit of the afternoon.

“It’s been a while since Bebe has seen these faces,” Francie said. “Shall we remind them who’s boss?”

“I don’t care if I never see another Bebe dress as long as I live,” I said. “All those feathers and sequins. Ugh.”

“Well, where do you want to go?” she asked.

I closed my eyes and pointed. When I opened them, Francie was checking my selection against the directory. “B-thirteen. Great, Val. Mrs. Bigger’s. Awesome choice.”

“It’s a change of pace, at least. And you never know—maybe we’ll be fat someday and a fat-dress will come in handy.”

I didn’t tell her I had seen Max without her. It’s not like I had done anything wrong. I mean, I hadn’t, had I? Just a few weeks before, she had made it clear that she wasn’t trying to get down with him herself. And neither was I, for that matter. All I had done was have a conversation. But I still felt—in some small, nagging way—like I had betrayed Francie. Maybe just because she was supposed to be all that I needed. We were supposed to have a world of our own, with no use for anyone outside the two of us. By hanging alone with Max, I was letting someone else in, and without Francie’s permission or knowledge. I was lapsing in my service to Francie’s ultimate goal:

We’re going to do it, Val. The two of us. You start small and expand the operation. A piece at a time, a piece at a time. Start with a charm bracelet. Move on to the Great Pyramids. It will take both of us. I am asking for your undivided loyalty. But someday it’s all going to be ours. Every single thing.

She had asked me for my allegiance. That was all that Francie had ever required of me. She had put her ass on the line for me. I wondered if I had let her down.

I wondered if I had done it on purpose.