Material Girls (14 page)

“Ivy, you're not ordering anything!” Noticing her ignored Tabula, Madison spoke into her ear. “Are you honestly not into these flapper dresses? They're so cute!”

Ivy looked down at her Tabula and randomly pressed one of the
buy
!
buttons. A new garment replaced the photo of the dress she'd purchased. Her stomach again mewled in pain. She pressed another button and watched a boa get swallowed up and disappear. She hit the tab below a bolero jacket and bought it in black, navy, and brown. She got two headbands with feathers, one twelve inches high and the other fifteen. Soon she was no longer looking at the runway but tapping her Tabula screen as fast as she could, as if it were a video game. It
was
a game, this shopping by touchscreen. When no prices were visible, she didn't have to think about the waste, didn't have to think about Millbrook or Constantine or Clayton or Lyric, or the pain in her body. Tap it away. Buy! Buy! Buy!

The trends kept coming—punk, safari, mermaid—and Ivy made each piece vanish as soon as it popped on the screen. She sensed Madison looking at her but couldn't take her eyes off the garments, couldn't risk letting the peasant blouse get away before she purchased it in white, blush, ocher,
and
buttercup.

On her other side, Hilarie touched her arm. Aiko leaned across Hilarie with a worried expression.
Are you okay?
she mouthed over the music.

“Just shopping. Like Madison said I should!” Ivy heard the words leave her mouth at a manic pitch. She shook her chains loudly. “If I'm not trendy, I'm dead, right?”

Her nymphs looked at each other.

“Do you need me to call Jarvis?” asked Hilarie, reaching for her Unum.

“No.” Ivy grabbed her arm. “I'll be fine.” She took a breath. “The show's almost over, isn't it? Get me out of here as soon as it ends.”

Hilarie and Aiko nodded.

The new images on her Tabula screen stayed Ivy's hand. She looked up at the catwalk. The torture trend was the show's grand finale. Spiked collars, locked breastplates and corsets, ankle and wrist restraints, whips and weapons, and a rainbow of gags in different colors paraded down the runway. One unfortunate model skidded on her stilettos but waved her restrained arms to regain her balance.

Ivy examined the models' faces. Their eyes betrayed no pain, no dismay at what they had on. They looked the same as always—haughty and vacant.

Carmen Michelle was fifth or sixth down the catwalk, and she showcased the same corset and collar Ivy was wearing. Instead of a skirt, she wore a bikini bottom made out of hair. Ivy itched just looking at it. She also wore metal garters, with chains wrapped around her legs and attached at the bottom to ankle cuffs. Her hands were tied together behind her back. And she marched in the shoes, those horrible shoes, though the spikes were metallic silver, not red. Instead of a gag, a bridle secured her jaw, its leather straps attaching behind her head. A stiff bit stuck through her mouth horizontally. Ivy imagined how hard Carmen must be biting down on that piece of metal to ignore the lancing stabs of each step.

She scanned the crowd. No one was appalled. No one cried out that this trend was completely unwearable, was, in fact,
actually
torturous. She looked down the row. The attendees were hunched over their Tabulas, attacking the screens with their fingers. Across the catwalk, one of the judges crossed her arms and smiled. She looked smugger than ever.

Ivy heard a voice in her ear: “They should name this trend after you, Miss Wilde.” She turned, and her stomach convulsed. Some middle-aged woman, probably a fashion-magazine editor, was leaning forward from the second row. “I bet you're going to wear these clothes on your tour, aren't you?” The woman smiled. “My daughter idolizes you. She's a singer too. I'm ordering the line for her right now.” Ivy opened her mouth. “If anything will help her get tapped onto
The Henny Funpeck Show,
this will.”

Slowly, Ivy turned forward, a dull roar like an underwater motor in her ears. The torture-trend models were still coming, one after another, like endless figurines from the mouth of a demented clock. She watched them for a moment—then turned over the Tabula and smashed it against the metal garter on her right thigh. Its screen shattered into pieces, three or four of them slicing her bare leg. She shivered in delight. The cuts siphoned the pain from the rest of her body and focused it in a few controlled spots. She watched the blood begin to drip with satisfaction. Laughing, she realized that she'd just improved her outfit.

Movement over her right shoulder caught her eye. A figure was awkwardly making its way through the row behind her, coming in her direction. It was a girl, hunched over like a fossil, annoying everyone she stepped in front of in her tight path to the aisle.

“Let's go,” ordered Madison, pinching Ivy's elbow tightly with her fingers.

Ivy looked at her. “Now?” she asked. She realized that her three other nymphs were on their feet. They all looked funny. Naia's face was sober; Aiko's eyes were wide with alarm. Hilarie was mouthing something into her Unum while kicking the broken glass under her chair.

“All right, fine,” Ivy said. With Madison's help, she struggled to her feet. Though her stomach relaxed, the relief lasted less than a second, as she balanced again on the spikes. If possible, they hurt even more this time, piercing the already sore spots on her soles. “Hold my elbows,” she said to Madison and Aiko.

The person squeezing through the second row was in front of the editor woman now. Ivy turned to look and saw that the girl was around her own age, with flat-ironed hair the color of sand. The woman cried, “Hey!” as the girl bent over and grabbed something off the side of Ivy's seat. As she straightened up, she turned and looked at Ivy. She was holding a pile of little plastic things. They looked familiar—though Ivy couldn't place them. The girl's gaze shot over Ivy's shoulder to the catwalk. Quickly, Ivy turned her head. The finale was beginning—the encore procession of all the new trends in a long row. Around her everyone rose to their feet and started to cheer and clap thunderously.

In the roar of the applause, the girl looked at her with sad eyes. She mouthed,
I'm sorry.
Before she could speak, Ivy heard a popping sound and squeezed her eyes shut as something exploded all over her.

They'd handcuffed me.
To the leg of a long U-shaped table in a dressing room at the runway show. “Bolted to the floor,” the Corporate Security and Surveillance agents told me. “And we're right outside the door. You're not going anywhere.” With my free hand, I tried to wipe green ink out of my eyes.

It had been so easy to smuggle the security tags into the Torro-LeBlanc runway show. Vivienne had stuck the tags and balls of adhesive putty in the bottom of her handbag. She'd flashed her pass and walked boldly through the front doors of the show with the rest of us. In her fatigue jacket and pants, no one glanced at her twice. She, Felix, Dido, and I shouldered our way through the mingling crowd in the lobby. I remembered what it had been like to work the room when I'd been a judge. Now, no one glanced at me. The three drafters followed me into the auditorium. It was still early and mostly empty. I pointed out the nine seats on the right side of the catwalk.

“Is this really where the Superior Court sits?” asked Dido, skipping down the stairs and plopping down in one of the first-row seats. I could tell she wasn't faking her excitement. She was wearing one of my feather-embroidered T-shirts with a black miniskirt and boots—the outfit she had chosen after trying on
everything
in my closet. “I just want to sit here for a few minutes and pretend,” she said. “Tell me what it was like to serve. You were
so
lucky, Marla.” She really was such a sweet girl.

Dido and I tried to chat casually and keep a lookout while Vivienne and Felix took seats in the second row. Vivienne took the putty and rigged cartridges from her bag and handed them to Felix.

Before coming, I had shown everyone how to snap each security tag open and, using pliers, delicately pull out the pin that separated the blue and yellow ink cartridges.

“Secret Agent Klein,” Felix had said, grinning. “I like watching you work.”

I had almost dropped the cartridge I was holding. “Thanks. I'm trying to concentrate,” I said, attempting to keep my voice even. “I don't want this to go off.”

“Didn't mean to be a distraction.”

As I drew the pin out of the cartridge, I looked up and permitted myself a serene smile. “Nothing I can't handle.”

Now, using the putty, Felix gently secured the tags to the sides of the nine plush chair backs in the front row, just above the armrests. They were visible, but only if you looked hard. I was counting on the adrenaline rush to distract the judges. The tags needed to be somewhat concealed but also placed high enough to have maximum impact when they exploded.

In a shorter time than I had anticipated, Felix and Vivienne were finished. The whole operation had taken no more than five or six minutes. We bundled ourselves up the stairs and back into the lobby.

Later, just before showtime, we'd taken our seats in the second to last row—thanks a lot, Sabrina—and realized that the Superior Court was sitting on the opposite side of the catwalk. It was a devastating moment. Felix pounded his fist on his armrest and swore. We held a whispered conference.

Vivienne ended the discussion. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “We stick to the plan. As soon as the tags go off, we run down and follow Henry.”

Dido and I looked at each other. “But all those people—” I protested.

“Let it be,” said Vivienne, leaning across Dido and giving me a severe look. “It's done.”

Karizma's ballads hadn't generated enough reverb to explode the cartridges, however. I kept watching the show, kept waiting for the explosion that didn't come. I soon realized it wouldn't come until the finale. I peered at the inhabitants of the booby-trapped chairs.

“That's
Ivy Wilde
in the front row,” I whispered to Felix.

“What?” Felix sat up and peered into the darkness. As he recognized the pop star, his mood seemed to shift. “Good,” he said, crossing his arms. “Let the tags explode all over her.”

I had frowned. And waited. And thought about how it wasn't fair to Ivy Wilde and to everyone else around her. I didn't love her new album, but she was still one of my favorite performers. I thought about how, if we used the gimmick this once, there wouldn't be another chance at a future runway show. Security would be alerted. The judges would escape untouched. Olivia wouldn't be humiliated.

“I can get them before they go off,” I said, climbing over Felix. He'd grabbed my wrist and looked into my eyes. His frown softened.

“I'll help,” he whispered.

“No,” I told him. “Two people will just draw attention. I'm going to move through the row like I have to go to the bathroom.”

He'd squeezed my wrist, just a little. “Good luck.”

I'd almost made it. I'd palmed seven of the nine tags before the finale, before the thunderous applause set them off. I'd had time only to mumble a feeble apology at poor Ivy Wilde before the tags spattered over us both. Like locusts, CSS agents descended on me. And here I was.

The dressing room door opened. Ivy Wilde, her nymphs, and an older man with gray hair barreled in. Ivy and the nymphs looked as if they'd toweled off. In the vanity lighting, I could see that the ink had stained their faces and arms, though it no longer glistened. I looked at Ivy. I thought the singer would be furious with me—but while the nymphs and the fossil scowled, Ivy casually sat down on a chair next to me and began undoing the straps on her shoes. When she bent over, I noticed that her corset was unlaced. A two-inch strip of skin showed between the seams. I could see the outline of her hunched vertebrae.

A moment later, my old boss Julia arrived, followed by Godfrey, my current boss who oversaw the drafters. I had said no more than a few words to him since I'd begun working in the basement. He looked as he always did, vague and distracted in his long-expired suit, chewing away on what could only be a placidophilus pill. Still, he came over to me and patted a dye-free spot on my shoulder. “This is the end, sweetheart,” he whispered. Panic enveloped me like a cold wind. What did that mean? Was I going to jail?

“Marla Klein, you're through,” Julia said, flicking a glance over at me with no more care than if she were checking the time. Still not raising her silky voice, she addressed the older man. “Jarvis, is it? Sir, is there anything we at Torro-LeBlanc can do to rectify this regrettable situation?”

“Yes. You can pay Warwick Records,” said the man, looking up from his Unum. “We're suing.”

My mind whirred as I tried to figure out what to say. I needed to stay calm and defend myself. “Julia, please listen to me. I was trying to fix things,” I said, steadying my voice as best I could.

The adults glanced over, but Julia continued as if I'd not spoken at all. “I'm sure there's no need for legal recourse,” she said to the man. “Certainly we can come to some kind of agreement. After all, Miss Wilde is our torture-trend spokesmodel now. We at Torro-LeBlanc have her best interests in mind.”

I thought I saw a shiver ripple up Ivy's spine. The singer finally succeeded in removing her shoes. She crossed one leg and rubbed the sole of her foot with both hands. I noticed red welts where the spikes had poked the flesh. The shoes looked even worse in real life than they had in Vivienne's sketch.

Before the man could reply, the door burst open again. Felix, Vivienne, and Dido were hustled in by two CSS agents—followed by a petite figure I was relieved to see.

“Winnie!” I exclaimed. “Tell them to listen to me. You know I love working for Torro. I was trying to get
rid
of the tags. This is outrageous!” I rattled my handcuff against the table leg.