A. Homes - Safety of Objects - Stories

He checked his watch. He was supposed to be buying tires. He was supposed to meet his wife at the Twistie Freeze at the other end of the mall in twenty minutes.

“Oh my God, turn around, walk the other way,” Nails said.

“Why?” Tina asked.

“Get with the program. It’s Adam.”

“So?”

“Is your bulb, like, only sixty watts?

“Oh, Adam,” Nails screamed down the mall. A boy standing in front of the record store — which, Frank noticed, didn’t sell records anymore, only tapes and CDs — tensed. “Adam, look who’s here.” Nails pointed her finger like a gun at Julie’s ear. “It’s Julie.”

Julie slapped Nails’s hand down. Nails dropped her shopping bag and slapped Julie back.

“Bitch, I was trying to help you!” she said.

In the middle of the mall Nails and Julie clawed at each other with fingernails like switchblades.

“Come here,” Nails said to Adam.

As he moved to come toward them, he stepped on his shoelaces — intentionally untied, as was the style — and fell forward, catching himself in a position similar to the peak of a push-up.

Frank felt the fall in his stomach, the horrible sensation of failure, the tripping of mankind.

Adam lay facedown on the floor as though his embarrassment was enough to kill him.

The girls laughed and walked away, their claws magically retracted by the punch line of Adam’s fall.

In McDonald’s, Frank stood in line next to the girls, and when he and Julie accidently made eye contact, he blushed the same shade of red she did.

“Hi,” he said.

“Yeah.” She immediately looked down at the floor.

Frank looked at her and wondered about what she did alone in his house, with his children, on Saturday nights. He came up with nothing specific but in general the thought frightened him.

Sitting in a molded plastic booth that reminded him of his daughter’s play furniture, he tried to spy on the girls. A tropical plant blocked his view. He ate a few fries and sipped the Coke. The girls were silent. Frank started to think he smelled something burning. He lifted one of the french fries to his nose and sniffed it. He extended his neck and inhaled, testing the air around him… plastic burning.

The three girls were kleptomaniacs, pyromaniacs, probably nymphomaniacs as well. He closed his eyes, conjuring an image of himself with a fifteen-year-old girl in a scenario that involved giggling, posing, uncoordinated and inappropriate body movements, and frustration that ultimately resulted in a spanking that was definitely pleasurable, at least for him.

A second wave of the odor overcame him. They were probably flicking their Bics against the Styrofoam containers their burgers and nuggets came in, melting them into cute little animal shapes or costume jewelry, like an arts-and-crafts project. They were burning everything. Next they’d try out the tropical plant. Is it real, Julie? I don’t know, light it. Real things don’t burn. He imagined McDonald’s on fire, melting. He saw himself trying to escape, stuck in a hot pool of liquid plastic like a mouse in a glue trap. He smelled matches but no cigarettes. He smelled plastic burning and thought of toxic fumes filling the mall, working like nerve gas, killing thousands of people who would never know what hit them, the credit cards in their wallets forever fusing with their flesh.

Frank jumped up, jutting his tray out in front of him, brandishing it like a weapon. The girls were way ahead, on their way out. He glanced at their table; they’d left their trash. He went toward it; the Styrofoam containers were singed, but only slightly. There were at least twenty-five burnt matches dunked in a pool of ketchup. He sifted through the garbage — picked up a half-eaten burger and took two bites before he realized what he was doing and put it down. Under everything he found “Adam and Julie 2 Gather 4 Ever” burned into the Formica tabletop. It was still warm.

“You spelled it wrong,” Frank started to shout. The word You came out in a loud passionate voice before he realized it was pointless. Spelling meant nothing to the girls. Frank went toward the exit, tray still very much in hand. A McDonald’s security guard stopped him.

“Sorry, sir, you’ll have to consume that in here.”

Frank tried to peak around the guard. He shifted to one side and poked his head out. The guard shifted with him and blocked his view.

“Your fries are getting cold,” the guard said.

Frank dumped his tray into a trash can and raced into the center of the mall. Walking briskly, almost running, he went down the center of what felt like a nightmare; a brightly lit fluorescent tube filled with seating groups and planters set up like obstacles. He went after the girls asking himself, What am I chasing? What am I doing?

He went through the mall, weaving in and out of people, strollers, breathing hard, looking for Julie, Nails, and Tina, their big hair, their miniskirts, their overloaded shopping bags. Instead of seeing them or seeing nothing at all, he saw hundreds of girls just like them, identical twins. Like in a mirror ball, a million reflections spun across the mall. High hair, skinny legs, faces caked with makeup like in a science-fiction movie. They were everywhere, as though it were a dream. A strange and disturbing element came upon him like a hidden danger, causing him to panic. Boys. Suddenly, he was aware of an almost equal number of boys in dark T-shirts with bloody daggers decaled onto the front, roaming freely. They were thick in the neck, arm, and thigh and walked slightly off balance, an overbred species. Male and female, hanging out as if this were some private party in someone’s living room. The mating game. They pressed into corners, leaned back against pay phones, and exchanged phone numbers and deep kisses. They lay on the floor in front of their favorite stores, stretched out, heads propped on elbows, watching the people go by like they were watching something on MTV.

A security guard, who could have passed for a twelve-year-old dressed up for Halloween, walked by Frank. He smiled at the girls and rested his hands on the heavy leather equipment belt around his waist. The girls blushed. Frank imagined the boys took turns playing cop. When they got to the mall they flipped for it and then the winner (or was it the loser?) changed into the uniform. Frank noticed the guard had a gun, a real gun, and wondered why a twelve-year-old in a Halloween costume was carrying a real gun.

His watch beeped. He had set the alarm for the time he was supposed to meet his wife in front of the Twistie Freeze. Visually, he made another quick sweep of the area and then walked toward a clump of what looked like airport lounge chairs near the Twistie Freeze.

He sat there for a minute before he was overcome by self-consciousness and had to get up again. He went into the Twistie Freeze, bought a vanilla-and-chocolate-twist cone, and stood licking it near the door.

Across the mall, a baseball team was having a party in the Cheezy Dog. When Frank was a kid they always had barbecues after their games. They’d stay in the park playing catch and stuffing their faces until one kid threw up, and then they’d all climb into someone’s father’s station wagon and be dropped off one by one in the sadness of dark.

Frank looked in the Cheezy Dog and saw some kid take his hot dog out of the roll, hold it in front of his crotch, and wag it at the waitress. He quickly looked away.

At the far end of the mall, a shiny jeep was parked in the middle of things. At first Frank thought it made no sense, but as he thought about it more he became convinced it was the perfect idea; he couldn’t believe someone hadn’t thought of it before. A car dealership in a mall. Perfecto! It was the one way to get men to come back again and again, to spend hours, lingering.