A. Homes - Safety of Objects - Stories

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.

Julie’s mother had her shoes off, her knee-high stockings rolled down to her ankles. The ankles, purple and puffy, bulged out over the hose. She kept shifting her weight from side to side, foot to foot. She seemed more like a feral raccoon than most feral raccoons ever did. Her skin was pasty, her eyes had sunk deep into her head. The black around her eyes was heavy like someone had drawn it there with a charcoal briquet.

Enough! Frank wanted to yell. Stop. Give her the car, she’s earned it.

Between twenty and thirty people stood in a circle around Julie’s mom and the guy, looking at them as though they were objects on view, specimens from Night of the Living Dead , perfect examples of the devastating side effects of spending too much time indoors.

The scene was going sour for Frank. There was a definite spin to it, a dangerous whirling that could suck a person down, like a garbage disposal. There was too much to hear, and see, and eat. Frank decided that’s why the kids were lying on the floor like cancerous lumps.

It couldn’t last much longer. There was no way.

Frank looked at the last two contestants and then had to look away. They were pathetic, doughy, offering themselves up for human consumption like some ritualistic sacrifice. When looking away was not enough he had to walk away. He turned around and was going home when he heard a thick popping sound, like one a plunger makes when it comes up. He turned back toward the car. The thick sucking sound was Julie’s mother’s hands coming up off the hood. Her hands were rising up into the air, lifting over her head, but she was still shifting her weight from foot to foot and looking down at the car as though her hands were there.

“Mom, your hands, your hands!” Julie screamed.

The other contestant froze, his hands pressed so hard on the hood they made a dent.

When the judges got to Julie’s mom, they reached up and pulled her hands down to her sides. Her arms fell like levers whose springs had snapped.

She looked up and said, “What?”

Julie ran over and started shaking her. “Mom, you idiot, you lost the contest. You lost when we were so close to winning.

Frank hated Julie. She was unbelievable. A hateful child.

On the other side of the car, the guy with the T-shirt was being pounded on the back in a manner that was vaguely resuscitative, like CPR or the Heimlich maneuver.

A guy next to Frank had a radio tuned to Z-100.

“We have a winner at the Pyramid Mall,” the D.J. said. “Let’s go there live.”

Over the radio, Frank heard the guy thanking his parents and his girlfriend. The weird thing was that Frank was looking right at the guy, and the guy wasn’t talking at all. He was just standing there staring. There were no microphones anywhere. Over the radio Frank heard all kinds of yelling and screaming and a round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” by “all John’s friends. But at the mall, with the exception of Julie yelling at her mother, it was quiet.

One of the judges handed Julie’s mom an envelope.

Frank asked someone who appeared to be in charge what it was.

“Second place. Two hundred and fifty dollars,” he said.

“Two hundred and fifty dollars. That’s all she gets?” Frank said. “He gets a car and all she gets is a lousy two hundred and fifty bucks. Unbelievable. You guys are unbelievable. She stood on her fucking feet for sixty-seven hours and forty-eight minutes and all you’re giving her is nothing.”

People stared at the ground while he talked.

He felt sick. He was sick. Vomit and rage and junk food rose in him. He looked at the girl from the radio station. She shrugged. With her shoulders up near her neck, shrugging, she looked certifiably retarded. In order to keep from hitting her, from holding her personally responsible, Frank ran. He ran down the length of the mall and back again. He did it three times before he ended up at the sporting goods store.

Frank ran into the sporting goods store, grabbed the glove he’d hidden, put it on his hand, raised his arm above his head, and screamed: “It’s mine. It’s mine. I’m taking it. It belongs to me.”

When he got no response, he ran through the store, waving his arm and the glove, still screaming. He ran through the store, out the door, and down the middle of the mall. At some point he was aware someone was chasing him, but it meant nothing. He slammed through a set of fire doors, triggered an alarm, and ended up on the edge of the parking lot, at twilight. The earth and the sky were the same deep shade of blue.

“Stop,” the kid dressed as a guard yelled, his voice cracking. “Please stop where you are. Stop. Freeze.”

Each time the guard shouted, he was more insistent. Each time, Frank became more frenzied. He zigzagged unsteadily. He heard a shot ring through the air behind him.