Читать книгу Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb - George Rabasa - Страница 12

At this point I hadn’t yet decided we were going anywhere. It was enough to be moving around the circular driveway, steering the van as big as a truck, while Pia hooted with delight. When we passed the front door, Happy Harley and the Haggards were standing in our way waving for us to stop. Obediently I stretched for the brake pedal but pushed the accelerator instead, lurching forward and causing the three to scramble to safety. I jerked my foot back, and the van slowed down. Just as we were about to hit a tree, I stomped on the brake pedal and the van slid to a stop. When I saw Happy Harley in the rearview mirror, running toward us, I nudged the van forward, waited for him to come closer, then hit the gas, and so on. It had started to snow big, fat flakes. After three cycles of this routine, Harley retreated to the front door. Not funny, he mouthed as we passed by one more time. Sorry, I mouthed back with an abashed shrug, as if to communicate that this thing was sliding and twisting on the slippery pavement beyond my control. Big fun.

“Watch out for the circle jerk!” cried Pia.

I gained confidence and sped up. By the tenth circle I was swerving and fishtailing on the loose gravel. I loved peeling out and then slamming on the brakes and skidding to a stop. There was a smell of burning rubber and gasoline. I turned on the headlights, and the high beams swept ahead, lighting up the road, the fountain, the front door, and the three jumpy adults waving at us to stop.

I tuned the radio to KPNK and turned the volume way up. Slipknot screeched from speakers all around us. Pia and I bounced on our seats. I liked the domestic picture we made, a nice couple out to view the neighborhood’s Christmas lights, glowing since before Thanksgiving. Happy kept running after us as if he expected to catch up. I eased the van out the gate and onto the street. We were free.

Time to get serious, I decided as I concentrated on staying on the right side of the street and easing to a stop at the first intersection. I looked right and left and broke loose from the pull of the big house behind us. Pia’s earlier rowdy mood was replaced by a pensive quiet. She pulled the seatbelt across her chest and clasped it securely, as if preparing for a long ride. “Take a right at the next corner,” she instructed. “We’ll get on Snelling and then it’s a straight shot all the way to Rosedale. We’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes. We can park in one of the mall lots, and nobody will find us for days. I always go to the mall when I want to be alone. I like the trees and planters, the fountains, the food court, and the Sticks and Wicks store. The mall is my favorite place for solitude and reflection.”

I didn’t admit that I’d never driven on a street before. On that snowy night, I felt squeezed in by trucks and buses bearing down on me with their blinding headlights.

“The police will come after us,” I said.

Pia shut off the CB. “No radio signal for them to track,” she said, and I was again impressed by her sophistication. “We’ll be safe once we get to the parking lot,” she insisted. “It’s going to be packed for the biggest shopping weekend of the year. People camp out to get their first crack at the bargains. Some stores are opening at midnight. It’s a great time for shoplifting.”

“You are evil.” I couldn’t contain my admiration.

“Let me know what you’d like for Christmas.”

I could tell she was starting to like me. “You’ll get me a present?”

“Better, I’ll show you how to steal it. If you can carry it, wear it, or swallow it, you can own it.”

I realized I was in love for the first time in my life, if you didn’t count Cousin Iris, whom I loved only theoretically because she was unreachable. With Pia, my lust might be satisfied one day. I wondered what it would be like to taste her tongue, feel her budding chest, wear her clothes. I was looking at her with adoration when a chorus of honks and beeps alerted me to the van swerving and sliding away from me.

“What we don’t want to do right now,” Pia said coolly, once I’d regained my place in the middle lane, “is to get noticed because of your stupid driving.”

“I got distracted.”

“I’ll let you know when you may gaze upon my bosom,” she said. “For now, keep your mind on the road as if our lives depended on it.”

“What made you think I was looking at your tits?” My attempted sneer turned into a stupid grin.

“That’s a very disrespectful term. You are to refer to them as ‘breasts,’ or you can believe you’ll never get to see them.”

“Yes, breasts!” I nodded but didn’t dare look away from the road. The entrance to Rosedale Mall was right ahead. And so far no sign of cops.

“Look for the Alligator signs,” she said as we circled the parking area. The lots are marked with cute animals to help people remember where they left their car. Zebra lot, Lion lot, Hippo lot.

“Why Alligator?”

“It’s near Marshall Field’s. Easier to be invisible if we’re jammed in by cars.”

I found a space between two fuck-you-vees, proud that I did not scrape their sides. Pia covered our license plates with handfuls of snow, then climbed back inside the warm van. I think she had done this sort of thing before. Fortunately, Loiseaux had avoided putting any identification on the sides of the van to protect the passengers’ privacy on their way to the madhouse. Very thoughtful. A Megan Alert APB for missing children likely had patrol cars cruising the freeways, our names flashing on LED screens. Help find the joyriding children in their stolen van, which looks just like a million other vans on the road. Soon our pictures would be out there on TV screens and milk cartons. But for now we had happily vanished into the frenzy of the big shopping night.

As we burrowed in the backseat, scrunching down below the window line, laughter poured out of us, a cascading mix of triumph and relief. To be in love and driving at the same time is a giant leap, a rite of passage rivaling the second birth of the Christian, the satori of the Buddhist, the transformation of the alchemist. Eureka! I drive, I love. I was way ahead of myself, becoming the prodigy I knew I was.

“When do you think they’ll find us?” said Pia, suddenly rational.

“Never, I hope.”

“I’d say three days. One day to give up on the highways. Another day to check out hospitals and shelters and friends’ houses.”

“Lots of luck.” I smirked. “I don’t have any friends.”

“Me, neither.”

Pia was so cool, so beautiful, I didn’t see how she could be friendless. We were now each other’s best buddy.

“Three days,” she repeated. “And they’ll say, ‘The mall! How come we didn’t think of it sooner? Kids love the mall.’ They will have a dozen malls to check out.”

Three days sounded like forever to me. “We’re going to need money.” I pulled out the envelope Mother had pinned to my shirt, and sure enough, there was a ten tucked into the folds of her sad letter to Loiseaux.

Pia dug out some crumpled bills and change from a beaded coin purse she carried around her neck. We were rich. I counted $16.83. “That’s about five bucks a day—for popcorn, french fries, Mountain Dew, frozen yogurt, Cinnabons, pizza slices, Gummi Bears,” I said.

“Plus what we can serve ourselves from trash-can foraging.” Pia was way ahead of me in the food department.

I must’ve looked skeptical. “You wait until closing time because they get weird about people eating trash. I once made a whole meal out of pizza crusts. When I bragged to my parents, the thought of their child eating garbage appalled them. Right there in the same class as my tattoo.”

“You have ink?” I didn’t know any kids who had real tattoos. “I thought you needed a parent’s permission to get one.”

“Theoretically.” She pulled down her blouse to the top of her breast to show me a black rose dripping red blood. I hardly got a glimpse before she covered up.

“We could live off the mall for a long time,” she went on. “Hunting and gathering. Begging works, too. Only you have to phrase it so it sounds like an emergency. Clutch a bunch of coins in your hand and ask for fifty cents to complete bus fare. It helps to be in the right place. Stand by the pay phones and ask for a quarter to call Mom. Once, outside the women’s restroom, I got some ogling old dude to give me a whole dollar to buy my poopy baby a diaper. He couldn’t wait to get away from me, the scruffy teen mom.”

Cool as she was, my Marxist righteousness raised its uncompromising head. “It is stealing. Right?”

“Actually, they end up feeling good about themselves. People usually give to a beggar out of guilt. ‘Here’s a dollar, now please go away.’ I let them help a child who could be their own.”

From inside the car, I gazed at the falling snow glistening under the lights on the cute animal posts. I was suffused with well-being, sheltered inside the warm car, invisible behind the fogged windows. There was a sense of inevitability to our adventure so that however things turned out, these moments were a gift.

“Pia,” I sighed happily as my hand inched across the seat to press, very slightly, my pinkie against hers. That first touch, a signal event in the history of the communion of our skins, quickened my breath. “You’re a deep thinker.”

She took her hand back. “We can fool around later. Right now we need monster coats. It’s going to be a cold night. And more snow will make the white van even more invisible.”

The hint at future intimacies strengthened my resolve to follow Pia in the ways of survival. She wanted a beggar? I’d beg. She wanted to flee to California? I’d drive. She wanted me to dive into the trash? Watch me go headfirst. Right then she wanted me to steal.

Pia had shoplifting down to an art. “Inside the store turn down your energy so security won’t notice you. Hold your breath as you pass close to somebody. And don’t touch stuff; it betrays your lust. Look lost, as if you were searching for your parents. People will stay out of your way. If you have a problem, they don’t want to end up with it.” She paused to check if I was absorbing her lesson.

“Ready?”

I nodded uncertainly.

“Do what I tell you.”

“Okay!” I nodded more decisively this time.

“We’ll leave the van separately and go into the mall through different doors. We’ll end up at the coat department at Penney’s. We won’t talk to each other. I’ll stand around looking suspicious to draw attention. You will pick out a coat from the clearance rack. Nobody, but nobody, bothers to shoplift from Penney’s clearance rack. Just stroll to it and grab anything that looks big and warm. Don’t worry about color or style; just pull it off the hanger confidently, as if you were going to take it to a cashier, but instead, saunter out the door with it. Don’t worry about the beeping you’ll set off. Nobody ever thinks there’s an actual theft going on.”

Pia jumped down from the backseat and jogged ahead, weaving her way between the rows of cars to the nearest mall entrance. I knew I should follow suit and head around the building to another entrance, but, once alone, the full weight of what I was doing landed on me. I was filled with courage and self-confidence only when Pia was near.

I realized I didn’t have much aptitude for even the most trivial delinquency. I had to force myself to leave the van and trudge diagonally, dodging the cars circling about looking for a parking space, across the Alligator to the Crocodile lot and on toward the north entrance. My resolve not to let Pia down thrust me onward.