The Safety of Objects: Stories (9 page)

The contestants and Frank nodded.

“Put your paws on the car.”

The contestants seemed to surge forward as the contest began, rocking the jeep slightly, perhaps raising it off the ground a halfinch or so before they settled into the poses they would have to hold for the next fifty-five minutes.

Within five minutes most of the crowd dissipated. As far as they were concerned there was nothing to look at.

By the time Mary showed up at the Twistie Freeze forty-five minutes late, Frank was morbidly depressed, filled with a second ice-cream cone and a complete hatred for the American way.

“All done?” Mary asked.

“I didn’t get to the tires yet,” he said.

“Another time.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Frank said.

She handed him her packages to carry and they walked back towards where they had originally come from.

They passed Julie’s friends, standing outside the record store smoking. Mary stopped. “You shouldn’t be smoking,” she said.

Frank stood behind her feeling incredibly bloated: part of a large Coke, half an order of fries, a couple of bites of one of the girls’ burger, and two ice-cream cones. He stood in back of Mary, his stomach jutting out in front of him, not believing that he’d let himself get to this point.

Behind Mary’s back, he lifted a finger to his ear and spun it in circles. Nails and Tina didn’t respond. He did the bit where he took a make-believe grenade out of his pocket, pulled the pin, threw it, plugged his ears, and ducked his head to escape the explosion. Still nothing.

The two girls stood there staring, listening to Mary as though they were used to listening but never taking anything in.

Frank didn’t resist when Mary reached behind her, took his hand, and led him away.

“I’ll have to come back tomorrow,” he told Mary, twisting his head around to see if they were laughing at him.

“I have a meeting. I won’t be able to come with you,” she said as though there were some rule about Frank going to the mall alone.

“So?”

“Sew buttons,” she said.

It was what she always said when there was nothing left to say.

*  *  *

The next evening he waited until Mary left for her meeting, then said good-bye to the kids and took off for the mall. He drove fast, imagining that if he didn’t get there soon, he would begin to shrivel like a helium balloon, slowly dropping down, sinking lower and lower, until he hovered six inches above the floor. By morning he’d be airless, dead, on the bucket seats.

The Pyramid Mall floated in a sea of parking spaces, laid out thirty deep so that on any given day or evening, with the exception of Saturdays, a person could find a place within ten spaces of the end and enter the mall feeling somehow lucky. The only thing pyramid-like about the place were pyramid-shaped planters filled with half-dead geraniums.

He pulled into a good space near Sears feeling what he called the guilt of necessary purpose. He had come here for a real reason. Tires. Before he could do anything, he had to go directly into Sears. He had to accomplish something so that later he could tell Mary how wonderful he was.

There were no salespeople in the tire department, and Frank was too distracted to hunt one down. Frank had a certain pale nonexistence to him, like Casper the Friendly Ghost. He could fight it if he wanted to. He could summon his energy and make himself a kind of lifelike pinkish purple that could get a fair amount of attention, but he couldn’t sustain it. In Sears, he couldn’t even bring himself up to a kind of light flesh tone. He just didn’t have it in him. He took heart in knowing it was highly unlikely he’d ever be taken hostage in a bank robbery or hijacking.

He left Sears promising himself he’d deal with the tires later; if necessary he’d go directly to a tire store where salesmen waited day and night for guys like Frank to walk in. He went into the mall charged by the prospect of a new project—an unexpected surprise, like a bonus—finding something to buy, to bring home to Mary like show-and-tell.

Just outside Sears, two women from the local Red Cross sat at a folding table with a blood pressure cuff between them waiting for a victim. The atmosphere was festive. Diet experts in workout clothing mingled freely.
Stop Smoking Now.
Lungs like giant latex condoms expanded and collapsed.
Mental Illness: The Hidden Symptoms.
He reviewed the list without intending to. Bad news. According to Frank’s own evaluation he had all the signs of Chronic Untreated Disturbance. According to the description he was a time bomb that could go at any minute. No warning. Health Fair ’go ended in front of Woolworth’s. Two candy-striped cardboard poles marked the beginning and the end.

Frank spotted Adam—the kid who tripped over his laces the day before—in the record store. He went directly to him and slapped his hand down on the counter, stinging his palm.

“Hey, Adam,” Frank said.

Adam was startled. He looked down at his shirt to see if he was wearing a name tag. He wasn’t.

“Adam, talk to me.”

“What?”

“Tell me about CDs—are there different kinds? Different sizes? Do they all play on the same machine?”

For the past two years, everything Frank saw or read nagged him about CDs.

Adam looked at Frank like Frank was an extraterrestrial, an undercover cop, or some new brand of idiot. He didn’t say anything. The silence made Frank uncomfortable. He wanted to be friends.

“I’m serious, Adam. I’m very serious.”

Adam kept staring, checking out Frank. He wanted to be sure he didn’t end up on the wrong end of a joke.

“They’re all the same,” Adam finally said, tentatively. “You get a player and plug it into your stereo, or you can get a portable.”

“What do you have?”

“Portable. I plug it into my car stereo. That’s really cool.”

“I bet.”

Adam looked at Frank like he was still waiting for something to happen. Maybe Frank was someone’s father coming to tell Adam he didn’t want his daughter riding around in Adam’s car with Adam blasting her eardrums anymore.

“What do you listen to?”

“I dunno,” Adam said, suddenly shy.

“Well, what do your friends listen to?”

“All kinds of stuff.”

“If I wanted to buy something, what would you recommend?”

“New Poizon Boiz just came in,” Adam said happily.

“I’ll take one. Do you sell the players here?” he asked, handing Adam his American Express card.

“You get them at Wire Wizard, upstairs, just across from King Pin.”

As Adam was ringing Frank up, a big-haired girl, identical to Julie, Tina, and Nails, came up to Adam, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pushed her tongue down Adam’s throat.

Every organ in Frank’s body jumped. His insides rose up. He signed the charge slip, turned around, and went straight to the Wire Wizard.

“I need a CD player,” he said desperately to the salesman.

“What kind?”

“A good one. A very good one. I have to be able to plug it into my stereo or my car.” He felt flushed and out of breath. He thought of the freshness of a fifteen-year-old body.

“We have a few like that.”

“I want the best. I have to have the best,” Frank said, excitedly.

“The best is not necessarily the most expensive.”

“I know that,” Frank said.

What kind of guy did this kid take him for? He tapped his fingers on the counter.

“Give me what you’ve got,” Frank said to the guy.

He felt like he had to hurry. He had to finish this soon. He had to go back and see what Adam was doing.

“This is a very good model,” the guy said, taking something out of the case.

“Great,” Frank said, without looking at the player. He laid his charge card on the counter, sure that this was how people did it. Credit was free, easy, there was always someone giving it away, asking you to take more.

“Do you want to hear it?”

“I trust you. I really do,” Frank said, looking the guy in the eye for half a second.

When Frank got out of the Wire Wizard, Adam was gone. Lunch break, his manager said, winking.

On the down escalator Frank pulled the receipt out of the Wire Wizard bag. A hundred and eighty-nine dollars. He couldn’t believe it. He’d figured it would cost fifty or sixty bucks, seventy-five at most. What had he done? What would Mary say? He quickly shifted his attitude to a more adaptive one. I’m allowed. I am absolutely allowed. I deserve it. He wouldn’t tell Mary. He would find something else to bring home, something smaller, perhaps something specifically for her, like a present.

From the escalator he saw the crowd around the jeep. He counted the number of contestants left. Since yesterday eleven had walked away. According to the woman on the escalator in front of Frank, they’d thrown up their hands and asked to be let out. One had to be taken by ambulance when, for no apparent reason, she started vomiting.

“How’re you doing?” he asked Julie’s mother.

She smiled and nodded her head.

“It’s nothing yet,” Julie’s mother said. “Tomorrow it’ll start getting good.”

“I’ll be here,” Frank said.

“So will I.”

Frank felt his presence did something to the contest. He had the idea that the way he looked at the contestants either gave them what they needed to go on or broke them right there on the spot. He felt powerful and necessary.

They were down to nine. They all looked willing to call it a day. An incredible assortment of junk food was scattered half-eaten among the lounge chairs and coolers; fast food from every carry-out in the mall had been supplemented by special-request items like Ding Dongs and cream soda. It surprised Frank that no one thought of the nutrition edge. No one seemed to think eating right during the five-minute breaks might make all the difference. There were no Tiger’s Milk bars, no bowls of pasta salad, not even any goddamn Gatorade. Who were these people? Frank wanted to know. He really wanted to know. He imagined interviewing them during their breaks, like Geraldo Rivera, asking what it felt like to touch the car, why they chose to spend their break standing, talking on a pay phone, instead of lying down? He wanted to know why no one was wearing support stockings or using heating pads on long extension cords.

As he stood trying to figure out how he could become an official consultant, a girl right in front of him was disqualified. Her knee buckled and her hip banged against the car.

“You’re out,” the judge called like an umpire in a baseball game.

With a completely bewildered look on her face she stepped away from the car. Frank saw the sweaty prints her hands left on the hood. Instead of looking at the girl he looked at the other contestants. They were taking inventory, checking each other out, placing unspoken bets on the order in which they would fall.

Frank stayed until the mall closed. Store lights blinked on and off, warning customers that the end was coming soon. Assistant managers started pulling metal security gates down and fiddling with their keys. Frank thought of people left overnight, locked in. He started walking back in the direction of Sears and then turned around and took a last look at the contestants. He imagined them all changing into their pajamas during the eleven o’clock break. Frank silently said good night to the remaining eight players and barely made it through Sears before they locked the doors. He had nothing for Mary.

On the way home he stopped at the all-night Super Pharmacy and bought Mary a DustBuster. As he pulled into the driveway, he stuffed the bags from the Wire Wizard and the record store under the car seat.

That night, waiting to fall asleep, Frank thought of contests he’d seen on the evening news. National coverage for three people out there somewhere, sitting on a billboard scaffold. His heart swelled. The Pyramid Mall was his own; he’d been there from the start. No matter who eventually drove away with the car, part of it belonged to Frank.

The next day, he fought the urge to call the mall from his office, a cubbyhole in an overdeveloped industrial park, and ask for an update. After work, when all the accounts were reconciled, he hurried home and found his neighbor, Julie’s father, sitting at his dining room table, waiting for dinner.

“My whole damn family’s living out there at the mall,” he said between chicken legs.

Frank didn’t answer. He waited until Julie’s father went home and then told Mary he was leaving.

“I have to go see about those tires,” he said to Mary.

“I thought you did that last night?”

“Didn’t get what I needed. I have to go back and get it over with.”

On his way to the contest, he stopped by the sporting goods store. He slipped a baseball glove on and pounded his fist into the mitt a couple of times. It could heal him, he thought. It could be just the thing. With the exception of what he’d seen two days ago at the Cheezy Dog, the mitt reminded him of the better things in life. He used to have a mitt until his son had taken it to school one day and lost it.

With his free hand Frank started pulling bats out of the rack, turning them over and over, awkwardly tossing them slightly into the air, spinning and catching them, bending and flexing the glove on his left hand.

The glove was fifty-six dollars. He couldn’t do it. He’d already done it last night. There was no way. He took it off and put it tenderly down on the pile, hiding it near the back, leaving room for his dreams.

In the middle of the mall, in the center of what he had come to think of as the runway, he saw Nails and Tina. Frank kept his shoulders pulled back and reminded himself that he was a grown-up and they were children. Tina stood in front of him, licking her ice-cream cone in an intentionally obscene way.

“Oh, hi,” she said, pretending to all of a sudden see him.

He almost died. There were men his age who had heart attacks and called it a day over less.

“Well, gotta go,” Tina finally said, her cone completely gone, a ring of chocolate outlining her lips like liner.

Sixty-seven hours into the contest. Frank promised himself that when this was over everything would be better. It already was better, he told himself.

Julie’s mom and a guy ten years younger were the only contestants left. The guy wore a T-shirt his girlfriend had made for him that said
GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY CAR.