Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (9 page)

11 · NERVES OF STEAL

MARLO STEPPED THROUGH
the automatic doors and onto the sensible, off-white vinyl floor of Halo/Good Buy.

“Ah,” she said to Norm as they surveyed the unspectacular labyrinth of cut-rate merchandise, “looks like we’re flying coach.”

Norm shrugged.
“I
don’t know,” she said in her slow, vague way. “It’s kind of comforting. Reminds me of shopping with my mom. I used to hate her dragging me to these places—all quantity, no quality, ya know? She’d always force me to try on things that just made it screamingly obvious what a dumpy lump I was. But I’d give anything to be complaining to her right now.”

Norm sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

Marlo patted her on the back. “I know what you mean,” she said with a faraway voice. “All the stuff that seemed so awful doesn’t seem so bad anymore. It’s
probably just another way for them to torture us, from the inside, with memories.”

Bordeaux rolled her eyes as she joined the two girls. “Oh,
boo hoo,”
she said mockingly before scanning the store. “Ugh. This place is, like,
so
gross. I had to go to one of these once with our cleaning lady the first time my father was indicted. It was so depressing … there wasn’t even a concierge!”

Marlo rolled her eyes at Norm and walked up to a small trash receptacle and stuck her arm in.
“Ah,”
she said after a moment’s fishing. “Here we go.” Marlo exhumed a receipt. “That’s the ticket,” she said. “Always nice to have a little security in case of—”

Marlo scanned the store and stopped at a middle-aged man with aviator glasses who was pretending to be interested in skeins of multicolored yarn and a selection of knitting needles.

“—security. Five-oh at five o’clock.”

Norm scratched her head, which was exposed in patches thanks to her really bad haircut.

“That guy,” Marlo continued.
“Totally
a security guard. He’s got ‘the look,’ like some dork who couldn’t make the police academy and settled as a department store rent-a-cop. But, despite Guardilocks over there, it’s nice to be back in ‘the maze.’ C’mon … let’s get our unfair share.”

Bordeaux pointed to a large red and white sign on a
nearby wall:
ALL SHOPLIFTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW … AND THEN SOME
.

“Don’t get your Underoos in a knot,” Marlo replied. “That’s just to put off amateurs.”

Bordeaux shrugged, and the three girls walked down the Beauty, Bedpans, and Bermuda Shorts aisle. After browsing through an assortment of lip liners and glosses, Bordeaux found a tube of Kiss Off! lip glaze in bright Tickled Pink.

“Ooh!” she said enthusiastically. “This is the stuff that has actual bee venom in it so your lips, like, get totally swollen!”

She found a wall-mounted mirror at the end of the aisle, unscrewed the tube of lipstick, and smeared it on her already collagen-enhanced lips.

“Filching fun fact,” Marlo chimed in. “Normal mirrors are sheets of glass with silver stuff on the back. Two-way mirrors—the kind that let security sit back and snoop on you—have the silver reflector stuff on the front, so they can see you but not vice versa.”

Marlo took a mascara wand (Suburban Dismay’s “Lash Out”) and held it to the mirror.

“See?” she commented. “There’s no gap between the tip and its reflection. That means it’s time to smile your prettiest smile and do your dirty work elsewhere.”

The girls walked down the next aisle, which featured
bins of discounted polyester jogging suits in odd sizes.

“So, are they on to us?” Norm whispered. “I mean, with the mirrors?”

Marlo smiled knowingly. She hadn’t been this happy since she was alive. “Yes,” she said through the side of her mouth. “But we have the upper hand since we
know
they’re watching us. Get it?”

Norm nodded, though she was far from
getting it
.

“Hey, Frosted Flake,” Marlo called to Bordeaux, “it’s time to make yourself useful.”

Bordeaux strutted over. “Well, there’s certainly nothing worth buying here,” she replied, still not fully understanding that none of the girls could indeed buy anything. “What do you want me to do?”

“You’ve been ID’d already,” Marlo said, “so walk around the store acting suspicious, so the lame-o guard follows you while Norm and I make like bandits.”

“Great,” Bordeaux replied, “then I won’t have to hang out with you freaks and get your dork stink all over me.”

Bordeaux skipped away, singing to herself.

The security guard touched his finger to a receiver in his ear, dropped a handful of crochet hooks, and
followed Bordeaux down the Polydent, Pooper Scoopers, and Porcelain Figurines aisle.

Marlo tugged the sleeve of Norm’s sweatshirt. “Okay, we’re going to use the buddy system,” she whispered. “Your job is to build the nest.”

Norm stared at Marlo with a look of utter incomprehension.

“The nest,”
Marlo repeated louder and slower, the way some people do when they try talking to people who speak a foreign language. “You take some stuff to a low-traffic spot, like the maternity section. I mean, we’re all dead, so who’s going to be pumping out little bundles of joy?
Anyway
, you store it for Magpie Number Two, yours truly, whose job is to pocket the goods and flutter out the door with
our
little bundle of joy. Got it?”

Norm smiled. This time she got it perfectly. “Birds of a feather steal together,” the large, shapeless girl said as she set out, with a spring in her step and a sparkle in her eyes, toward the Plastic Wrap, Plates, and Plumbing aisle.

Marlo brushed away the blue bangs from her face and walked confidently toward the Ziplocs, Zithers, and Zucchini aisle. But there was something—
someone
—in the corner of her eye. A dark blob matching her gait footfall for footfall. A shadow, only this “shadow” was obviously, by his feigned interest in a tube of Gee, Your Hands Smell Terrific! lotion, a security guard.

“Excuse me,” she called out to the barrel-chested man with the mirrored sunglasses
(please)
. The man jumped and tried desperately to will himself invisible by reading the ingredients on the back of a jar of Papaya Smear face mask. “Sir?” Marlo persisted, skipping up next to him. “You obviously work here … could you direct me to the feminine hygiene section?”

The man’s face flushed deep fuchsia. His mustache wilted over his thin lips. “Um, n-no, I …,” he stammered before sighing with resignation. “Aisle seventeen. Hobbies, Horseradish, and Hygiene.”

Marlo grinned. “Thank you, sir!” She giggled as she skipped away, stopping at the end of the aisle and calling back over her shoulder. “Oh, and by the way, I’ll be at Macaroons, Megaphones, and Moist Towelettes, if you need me. See ya there!”

Marlo could practically hear him deflate, like a weather balloon over a javelin throw. Yet just as she was about to make her final approach toward Norm’s nest, an announcement squawked over the store’s public-address system.

“Attention Halo/Good Buy shoppers,” croaked an ancient, tremulous voice over the speakers. “For those of you
mature
enough to remember the Victorian era firsthand, you’re in for a treat! In Fan Belts, Fanny Packs, and Fashion, we have a sale on antique skirts and petticoats, vintage corsets, and assorted mourning
wear. Take a walk or wheelchair ride down memory lane!”

Marlo stopped dead—or
more
dead—in her tracks.
Well
, she thought,
maybe I could afford a
brief
little detour. I mean, how often does one get to try on authentic Victorian clothes with authentic Victorians?

12 ·
SPREE DE CORPSE

SURE
, MARLO REFLECTED
as she shuffled toward the Halo/Good Buy foyer,
I got a little greedy … okay, a
lot
greedy, but it’s what this place does to you
.

Marlo’s prelift anxiety had been off the charts. Usually a few outfits were enough to calm her down, but she was still so famished for fashion that she had actual
hanger
pangs. Just when she thought she might have actually taken enough to sate her greed, she’d think of the Grabbit. She’d feel a slow constriction, like a snake tightening itself around her—until she felt empty again. Hollow. And wanting to prove herself to the source of her torment, that maddening metal hare, more than anything.

Without warning, the foyer in front of her teemed with security guards. They chewed the lips off their Styrofoam coffee cups with agitation, scanning the
aisles for trouble.
My bad
, Marlo thought. Perhaps exposing the undercover cop and gloating in his lameness hadn’t been the smartest play. Well, live and learn … and since Marlo wasn’t alive, she’d go easy on herself. What she needed now more than anything was an alternate escape route.

Unfortunately, she could barely move—partly because her path back to the mall concourse was now blocked, but also because of the silk mourning gown, wool chintz wrapper, black button-up bodice, embroidered cream-colored shirtwaist, and several petticoats she was wearing underneath her horrid Rapacia sweat suit. Marlo turned and waddled away toward the emergency exit at the back of the store. She wobbled like a Victorian penguin with an underactive thyroid up the Pimentos, Pine-Scented Cleansers, and Pom-Poms aisle, the bright
GREEN EMERGENCY EXIT
sign in sight.

“They’re at it again,” said a bored shopgirl buffing her nails a few yards away, peering through the large stained-glass window inset in the emergency exit door.

Another girl, wearing a white laboratory coat and a great deal of makeup, joined her. “They are so gross,” the girl said, wrinkling her orange, artificially tanned nose. “They’re like roaches with shopping carts.”

The shopgirls turned toward Marlo.

“May I help you?” they said as one, their request to serve coming off more as an offer to “help” Marlo right out of their immediate future.

“Um, no thanks,” Marlo managed through her suffocating heat prostration. “I was just … wondering if there was something wrong, like … an emergency.”

The shopgirls locked eyes briefly before glancing out the window.

“Oh,
that,”
said the one with the nail file. “It’s just the PODs again, going through the Dumpsters down in the alley. I’m sure security will shoo them away soon enough, once they get around to it.”

“PODs?” asked Marlo.

The girls glared at Marlo as she swayed slightly from side to side in her personal, one-girl oven.

“I’m new to … Cloud One,” she added hastily. “My wings haven’t even broken through.”

The girl in the lab coat smiled weakly. “Yeah.” She nodded. “That can hurt like … well, like
you know what.”

“Well, speaking of
you know what
, that’s where those PODs should go,” the other girl said while examining her manicure. “The
Phantoms of the Dispossessed
. They come and raid the bins every so often, taking whatever they can before wandering off to the next realm. Thank goodness they can’t get in here.”

Marlo peeked through the stained-glass window, getting a warped view of an alley through the clear, crystal wings of an angel. The alley was several flights below, at the end of a gleaming fire escalator. In the alley were beautiful titanium Dumpsters loaded with
all the excess that Mallvana produced regularly. Milling about the crowded bins were dozens of haggard spirits pushing shopping carts overflowing with castaway trinkets. They worked diligently in silence, performing specific roles like a kind of roaming insect colony. A tattooed man with long, stringy black hair pored through castaway containers with the intensity of a prospector panning for gold. A bearded man with a grubby Elysian Fields cap flattened cans with his work boot, kicking them toward an old woman who nimbly crammed as many in her cart as possible.

“Where do they come from?” Marlo asked dimly.

“Who knows?” Lab-coat girl shrugged. “Who cares? They just wander from place to place. They never stay anywhere, because they don’t
belong
anywhere.”

“Gratuitous displays of mercy at two o’clock,” the other shopgirl said, pressed against Marlo by the window. Faith, Hope, and Charity wriggled their way down the alley to the PODs in their fashionably impractical shoes and dresses.

Marlo could see a POD with a thick, Civil War-era mustache holding up an intricate, handblown decanter containing a few drops of a strange, silver liquid that glittered coldly like a melted mirror. He tried pouring the drops into an old two-liter jug half-full of the liquid, but Charity fell into the man while trying to crush cans in her high heels.

He bellowed angrily as he spilled some of the liquid.
Once free of the bottle, the liquid hit the ground and darted away into the shadows.

Suddenly, a blast of walkie-talkie static detonated behind Marlo. She looked back with a start. The group of security guards had abandoned the foyer and were now storming down the aisle
straight toward Marlo
. She swallowed, which was difficult considering how many vintage lace and velvet collars clutched her throat.

“Finally,” the shopgirl next to Marlo muttered sarcastically between gum smacks. “Security guards to the rescue.
My heroes.”

Grim and purposeful, the guards marched closer.

This is it
, Marlo thought.
At least I’ll be forced into shoplifting retirement at the top of my game
.

The security guards reached Marlo, shooting her suspicious sideways glances, then proceeded to file past her through the emergency exit and down the fire escalator. Soon the alley was filled with guards strutting about like ruffled, uniformed roosters, squawking into walkie-talkies.

The phantoms—in a flurry of precision activity—fell into a long, snaking line and wheeled their squeaky carts toward the horizon.

“Are you okay?” the lab-coat girl asked, staring at Marlo. “You’re sweating … which is weird, because it’s always seventy-two degrees here.
Always.”

“Yes, I’m … fine,” Marlo replied with sluggish relief. “I’m … on an herbal cleanse. I ate some devil’s
food cake before I died, and it didn’t agree with me. Excuse me, but I think my ginger colonic is calling, if you know what I mean.”

Marlo turned on her heel and rustled away. As she searched for an
alternate
alternate escape route, she passed the Marshmallow Peeps, Mason Jars, and Maternity Wear aisle. Stuffed behind piles of large bright-orange dresses with
GESTATING, NOT JUST EATING
written across them were stacks of clown plates, creepy hobo figurines, and pewter Noah’s ark gravy boats.
Norm’s nest
. Marlo stared, mesmerized by the figurines’ ugliness, and contemplated escape: from the store, from Poker Alice, from Rapacia. There was no reason she
had
to return to her class, waiting outside. She could be a free agent, living off her wits (she could almost hear Milton snicker at that thought). But something made her feet heavy, besides the multiple pairs of vintage hose.

The Grabbit
. Marlo absentmindedly clutched her throat as if she were wearing an electric eel for a collar. She couldn’t let …
it …
down. Marlo wanted to prove that she had what it took to take … anything.
Everything
.

She sighed and wiped a salty trickle of sweat from her stinging eyes. She knew what she had to do.

She peered around the corner of the aisle at the foyer. It was wonderfully guard-free.
Finally
, the path was clear.

Marlo casually glanced over her shoulder, then stuffed clown plates in her pants, tucked gravy boats underneath her sweat-stained sweatshirt, and slid a porcelain hobo in each sock. She wouldn’t let the Grabbit down.

Having a conscience sucks
, she moaned to herself as she rattled down the aisle and out of the store.