The Fixes (20 page)

202.

Jordan listens as Haley vents. Jordan calls Paige and E, and pretty soon they're all listening.

“I just want to fuck up my mom's swimsuit store sometimes,” Haley tells them. “I want to trash the place, all of it, every last bodysuit and bikini bottom and picture-perfect poster of my picture-perfect sister.

“I just want to burn that motherfucker to the ground,” Haley tells them. “Is that so wrong?”

The others swap looks. Jordan and E exchange a mysterious glance.

“I think we might be able to help you with that,” E says.

And then he tells Haley and Paige about the bomb.

203.

“Wait a second,” Paige says. “You built a
bomb
?”

Jordan's smiling his shit-eating smile. “I mean, I built a
crappy
bomb. E perfected it.”

Paige spins to look at E.
“You?”

E just shrugs. “Found instructions online.”

“Where is it?”

“My bedroom closet,” E says. “I hid it behind those Givenchy Tysons Haley swiped.” He pauses. “I mean, it's not very big.”

“But it
would
fuck up the Côte d'Azur,” Jordan says. “I can promise you that.”

Haley thinks about it. “You guys would do that . . . for me?”

She looks at E. “This is
your
Fix. Are you sure this is what you want to do with it?”

E feels relief flooding his veins like he just took a pill.

“Hell yes,” he says. “Let's blow the joint. Suicide Pack sticks together, right?”

“Damn right,” Jordan says.

Haley mulls it over. She's thinking about the poster that hangs in the window of her mom's obnoxious boutique. Tinsley in a bikini, photo-shoot style. Tinsley's stomach is better than flat. Her butt doesn't sag. Her blond hair is flowing in the breeze.

(No way in a million years will Haley look anywhere near that good.)

Haley imagines that poster blown up to shreds. The
whole fucking boutique in pieces.

(Houellebecq is writing about terrorist bombs and sex resorts. Haley kind of digs the nihilistic vibe.)

“Fuck it,” she tells the others. “Let's do it.”

204.

The next few days are unbearable.

“You have to go home,” Jordan tells Haley. “Make peace with your mom, succumb to her demands for a week or two. Be the perfect daughter for a while.”

(
Be Tinsley
, Haley thinks.)

“Then, when she thinks everything's perfect, we hit her,” Jordan says. “Kablamo.”

Kablamo.

205.

So Haley goes home. Walks through the front door and it's like her mom didn't even notice she was gone.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she says, a big plastic smile on her face. “What are you doing today?” Then she frowns, leans in closer. “Your face looks dry. Have you been moisturizing like I showed you?”

Haley sighs and puts down her bag. Remembers what Jordan said about being good. “I guess I haven't been doing it right,” she tells her mom. “Can you show me again?”

206.

Haley endures.

She endures her mom's beauty suggestions. Her mom's weight-loss tips. She tries hot yoga with her mom, and the StairMaster. She even tags along to the gym to see
Johan
, her mom's lecherous twentysomething 'roid-monkey personal trainer.

Johan spends the whole hour fondling Haley while pretending to show her how to “refine her technique.” Haley fends him off as best she can while maintaining a sunny disposition, for her mom's sake.

(“Don't smile too wide, sweetheart. You'll get laugh lines.”)

As the week progresses, Haley begins to gain a deeper understanding of her mom's life. She notices how desperately her mom clings to what remains of her beauty, how obsessively she works through her skincare routine morning and night, how she dresses to flatter, how she forces herself to smile small, avoid sunlight, eat smaller portions.

Haley also sees how her dad ignores her mom when she's talking. She sees how her mom tries to keep his attention, make him laugh, engage in conversation. How her dad barely looks up from his magazine, or his phone, when she's speaking.

Haley sees how her mom could feel, you know, marginalized. She's lived her whole life in a world where beauty is her only currency, and now her fortune is slipping away.

It's sad.

Pathetic, really.

And it explains why Haley's mom nags Haley so incessantly about her own looks. About her weight. About her appearance.

Haley realizes that her mom isn't a bad person. She means well. She's like E's dad, probably. She wants what's best for her children. She's just clearly incapable of imagining a world where beauty isn't the only quality that matters. But that's not her fault, is it?

Eventually, Haley begins to feel sorry for her mom. She begins—amazingly—to feel empathy.

She starts to feel like maybe . . . maybe she should think of a new Fix.

Haley's trying to figure out a way to inform the Pack she needs a little more time. Then her mom tells her she has a surprise.

207.

“No peeking!”

Haley covers her eyes in the passenger seat of her mom's Boxster. Resists the urge to sneak a look. She's been hiding her eyes ever since they drove over the bridge, trying to enjoy the moment, smiling despite herself—

(just not too wide).
       

(Haley hasn't spent this much time alone with her mom since, like,
ever
.)

So Haley sits in the passenger seat, a dumb grin on her face, feeling silly as she hides her eyes behind her hands, but feeling happily curious, too. Her mom hasn't given any hints, just came into Haley's room this morning with a huge smile on her face and announced they had a big day together. She'd practically dragged Haley out to the Boxster, the smile never wavering—

(so much for the laugh lines)
       

—and giggled like a little girl, all the way to the bridge. Now, Haley's pretty well given up trying to guess where they're going. She just sits there and listens to her mom sing along to the radio, feels the warmth of the sun on her skin and the wind in her hair and feels, you know, happy.

Her mom drives for fifteen or twenty minutes. Stopping and starting, turning left and right, until Haley's half convinced her mom's taking detours just to confuse her. But then she feels the Porsche slow and turn into a driveway. Her mom kills the engine.

“Okay, sweetheart,” she says. “You can open your eyes now.”

Haley lowers her hands. Blinks in the sudden sunlight. They're in a parking lot south of downtown, near the general hospital. They're at a private medical clinic, Haley sees. Her heart sinks.

DOCTOR RICCARDO MILANI,
the sign out front reads.
COSMETIC PLASTIC SURGERY.

208.

“She told me I could have whatever I wanted,” Haley tells the others. “A nose job. A boob job. Botox. Lip injections. Whatever I wanted, like I would
finally
be beautiful.”

The others make general sounds of disgust. “She's clearly insane,” Jordan says. “You're smoking hot.”

“You're just, like,
alternative
,” Paige says. “I don't see why that's a bad thing.”

“You definitely don't need plastic surgery,” E says, awkward as ever.

Haley stares out at her mom's boutique through Jordan's Tesla's windshield. It's dark, after midnight, and Main Street is deserted. “Whatever,” Haley sighs. “It's just the last fucking straw.”

209.

What Haley doesn't tell the others:

She was tempted.

And that's probably what pisses her off the most.

210.

“So that's the lengthy preamble.” Haley gestures out the window. The Côte d'Azur, abandoned for the night. “And now we're here.”

“Amen,” Jordan says. “So let's bomb some shit.”

211.

They're dressed in all black, as usual.

Black shoes.

Black pants.

Black shirts.

Black hats.

(Bank robber
chic
.)

Haley and Paige and Jordan and E sit low in the Tesla, three or four storefronts down from the Côte d'Azur. The bomb's in the trunk; Haley helped Jordan and E sneak it out of E's house.

(It looks like a cartoon bomb, just kitchenware and bare wires. It doesn't look dangerous at all. But Jordan swears it will
seriously
fuck up the store.)

Haley's heart is pounding. She's surprised she feels so nervous. She's pretty much over getting stressed out for Fixes. There's the adrenaline rush, sure, but there's never any fear anymore.

Trashing some shitty tabloid's office is a lot different than blowing up your mom's pride and joy, though. And even Allen Headley's gated driveway seems a lot easier to infiltrate than Main Street Capilano, even if the street is deserted.

Jordan catches her eye in the rearview mirror. “Yes or no,” he says. “Go or no-go. It's your call.”

Haley closes her eyes and sees Milani again. Sees the
light in her mom's eyes as she talked with the doctor.

(
Finally
beautiful.)

(
Finally
.)

“Let's just do this already,” she says, before she pussies out.

212.

Jordan stays behind. Aims his phone at the storefront.

“I'll keep the engine running,” he tells the others. “Pick up some B-roll. You deliver the package and get out of there quick.”

“Yeah,” Haley says. “We're not sticking around.”

She and Paige follow E out of the Tesla and around to the trunk. E picks up the bomb as Haley reaches for the tire iron Jordan stashed beside it.

“For the window,” she tells E, who is looking at her funny.

“Why couldn't you just steal a key?”

“Because the
police
,” Paige says. “They would know who could get their hands on a key, right?”

Haley nods. “Exactly.”

E carries the bomb. Haley and Paige walk beside him, three figures in black, one holding a tire iron, another carrying a GoPro, and the third a bulky backpack. Not suspicious at all.

The store is a couple doors down. Haley stops in front of the picture window. The store is shadows, but Haley can see the silhouettes of racks and displays, stripes and crazy patterns, halter tops and bikini bottoms, straps everywhere. Tiny swaths of fabric with ridiculous price tags. And Tinsley, everywhere, her model pout and perfect body plastered on the wall and the aisle ends, her poster propped in the window.

Haley studies her sister's face. Hefts the tire iron and
aims square at Tinsley's pretty button nose.

(
SMASH
.)

No alarm sounds. It could be a silent alarm, or it could be that Haley's mom just doesn't think bathing-suit-related crimes occur in Capilano. Either way, Haley doesn't plan to stick around to find out. She sweeps the tire iron across the remains of the window, clears the broken shards. Then she takes the GoPro from Paige and climbs into the store.

“Come on,” she tells the others. “We'll put it by the cash register.”

E follows Haley into the store. Paige stays outside, playing lookout. The glass crunches under E's feet. Haley leads him into the gloom, down the aisles to the cash register. She knows this place by heart, but it's still weird to be in here in darkness.

Haley steps aside so E can walk past her. He lays the bomb at the base of the sales counter. Haley surveys the store one last time. Films the stillness, the shadows.

Then she and E book it back outside to Paige and Jordan and the Tesla.

213.

E opens the passenger door as Haley and Paige slip into the back seats. The street is still dark and empty. No cars have passed. Nobody's out walking.

E slides into the passenger seat and closes the door with a
thud
. The sound seems to echo off the storefronts. Haley peers over his shoulder at the front of the Côte d'Azur.

(She can hardly tell the window's broken, from here. The store is dark. It looks like normal. It looks like they could just drive away and nothing would have changed.)

(It's all going to change, though. Very soon.)

Jordan glances at Haley in the rearview. Haley meets his eyes. “Let's do this.” Jordan nods and shifts the car into gear, pulls out halfway into the street. Hands his phone back to Haley.

“On my signal,” he says. “E, you're on camera duty.”

E points the GoPro at the Côte d'Azur as Jordan pulls out into the driving lane and stays there, the car aimed toward the boutique, a few storefronts down. Haley takes the phone, her heart pounding, aims it toward her mom's store like a remote.

“You don't have to point it like that—” E starts to tell her. But Jordan cuts him off.

“Go,” he tells Haley.

Haley presses the send button. There's a brief pause, while the signal transmits. Then the entire front of the Côte d'Azur disappears in a burst of light.

214.

The blast is LOUD.

The explosion breaks the window in the Côte d'Azur's door and the windows in the neighboring storefronts.

The Tesla
rocks
from the force of it. Car alarms go off immediately, a whole chorus. Smoke billows out through the empty picture window, and brightly colored bathing suits drift through the air and land on the pavement, strappy one-pieces and skimpy bikini tops, some of them torn ragged, but most of them whole, blown out of the boutique like shrapnel.

Haley searches the smoke as Jordan steps on the go pedal, but she can't see Tinsley's face anywhere.