The Mall (25 page)

I enter the rest of the code and click out and suddenly I’m hearing these voices shouting in my head again. They’re confusing me. I should get some victuals but I’m not sure
what this week’s tokens are for. Should I get a
Daniel! Fuck’s sake! You’re running out of time. Find Rhoda!

I rub at my penetration wound. This is new. My fingers come back bloody. What the fuck is this on my neck? Where am I? Where’s Rhoda?

I’m trying to orient myself in the shop when jags of searing pain brand the back of my neck. I swing around.

‘Rhoda?’ She’s wearing a ridiculous green mini and leather jacket; her overdone make-up amplifies the burn scar on her face. She looks like she should be selling herself on
Oxford Road. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Her legs are thin and very long, and the mini very short. What a lovely Shopper, and I have had my neck scratched by her. My new
colleagues are going to be so—

Whack
. Her slap brings me to myself again. ‘Christ, Rhoda,’ I manage to mumble, ‘what have they done to you?’ We’re standing in the greeting card section.
‘Congratulations on your illness’, reads one in lavender script lettering. ‘You put the amp in amputation’, says another.

‘Speak for yourself. What the hell have you…’ She stops midrant. It’s unsettling to hear the voice of the Rhoda I know coming out of this disturbingly dressed woman.
‘There’s no time. We have to get out of here.’

‘Out?’ I ask. She draws her arm back again but I raise my hands in defence. ‘No. No. I’m me. I’m here. Promise. I mean did you find a way out?’ I eye her up
and down. ‘And why are you still here?’

‘You can’t trust anyone in this place. You can’t trust yourself. There are three options and they’re all a trap. We have to find the fourth.’

‘I don’t understand. What three options? Where have you been?’ There are too many questions. I feel myself ebbing and flowing, at one moment I’m me, and the next,
I’m me. Colt was right. She said it would take a while to get used to clicking in and out.

Rhoda pulls me out of the bookshop, babbling away in my ear. It takes all of my concentration to make sense of what she’s saying. Something about rat people under a cinema, shopping,
depreci-something, and a person called Napumla. ‘So it’s vital we find Napumla and ask her how she got the fuck out of here.’

I check my gelphone. ‘I’ve got to get back soon.’ This flat-out rushing and loud-talking is anti-productive. A Primo Shopper with double-bone head implants passes us, shaking
his head. The commotion Rhoda’s causing is creating a jarring environment for the Shoppers. It strikes me as disregard. ‘I’ve only got twenty-five moments left of my
break.’

‘Minutes, arsehole, not moments. Remember where you’re… What will happen if you miss your shift? If you just don’t go back?’

‘Jesus, Rhoda,’ I whisper, as if Management can’t hear me. ‘Don’t ask me questions like that. I don’t want to find out, okay?’ I don’t want to
lose my job. It’s going well; I have a real aptitude for retail. And I owe Colt my regard.’

I try to pull my arm from Rhoda’s grip. I almost free myself, but she shoots me a look that stops me dead. Not of anger, not of threat. It’s a look of desperation.

‘Okay. I’ll skip my victuals. And my pee. Where do we find her? This Napumla?’

Rhoda shakes her head. ‘How would I know?’

Her eyes stray to the other side of the aisle. A Shopper with a huge chin and a bare chest is rushing towards the escalators.

‘Wait here,’ she says to me. ‘Do
not
go back to the bookshop.’

I watch as she totters towards the Shopper in her ridiculous boots. He pauses and smiles and then they’re gabbing away like two housewives at the school fête. My fingers find my
gelphone again. I could just slip back now, while Rhoda is busy. She looks so much… like she belongs. It would be the easiest thing in the—

‘Dan!’ she yells, racing back towards me, heels sliding over the tiles. ‘That Shopper says Kinky Corsets is having a Squeeze Sale for one hour only! Napumla
must
be
there, she’d be crazy to miss it. He says everything’s on sale. Can you believe it? I mean
everything
. Vollers, Westwood, Lulu and Lush, Nyla, Diva, the whole toot. I swear, you
could just—’

‘Rhoda!’ I bark.

‘Right,’ she says, shaking her head clear again. I know how she feels. The wound below my ear is itching badly now. I stick my finger under the bandage and dart it into the hole.
There’s slick blood, a thicker ooze, and at the end of my finger a plug of some sort of gel. I scratch it, pressing deeper because that’s where the itch lies and the corridor melts into
a shower of sparks.
Holy fuck. What’s that? That is so fucking awesome
. I dig around a bit more to see what will happen.

‘Dan, please,’ begs Rhoda from a small, quiet corner of the fire works display. ‘Don’t do that. Let’s go.’ She must have grabbed my hand because the moment my
finger comes out of the hole the walls and floors become solid again. I pat the grubby bandage back over the wound and get my bearings. She steers me onto the escalators, and I can make out Kinky
Corsets’ garish pink signage on the floor below us. Rhoda manoeuvres off the escalator then teeters to a comical stop on her stiletto boots, almost breaking her ankle. She immediately starts
ogling the medieval wares in the window. Now it’s my turn to remind her to keep focused, and I nudge her in the ribs. We’re acting like Laurel and Hardy. On acid.

I expected hordes of elbowing and shoving freaks rifling through bargain bins, but the shop is all but empty. A discreet sign in the window spells out: ‘Squeeze Sale Now On. Shoppers
Only’. A little ideogram of an Abnormal woman being thrown out of the shop door illustrates the sign.

A dozen or so absurdly and expensively dressed people saunter around the shop. They’re either emaciated, scarred, amputated or huge and dripping with metal and jewels. There are no
Abnormals. These Shoppers look like they’d easily feature in a glossy magazine advert. Just like Rhoda. I hesitate at the door. I don’t want to go in. I’m ashamed of my body. The
sales assistant and some of the customers glance admiringly at Rhoda, their expressions changing instantly when they catch sight of me.
What is that – creature – doing with that
lovely Shopper
? their curled lips sneer.

‘You go in,’ I say to Rhoda. ‘I’ll just, uh…’

Rhoda opens her mouth to argue, but she also hasn’t missed the disgusted looks I’ve been getting. ‘Okay.’ She puts her hand on my arm. ‘I’ll see if Napumla is
inside and we can talk to her outside.’ I take shelter next to the shop where nobody will notice me. Rhoda flicks a switch in her brain and sashays into the shop. I watch her bum moving as
she goes.

I peer through the very edge of the window and watch Rhoda working the room. She feels up some whalebone stays, remembers herself and looks back at me guiltily. She totters on, scan ning the
other shoppers. She sighs in frustration.

‘Napumla!’ she calls. I can’t believe she just did that. Security’s going to… But I remember that Rhoda is a Shopper now. She can behave anyway she pleases. A
couple of impressively fattened Shoppers look at her curiously, but no one else reacts.

‘Napumla! Are you here?’ Rhoda shouts again.

The curtain of the changing room twitches.

‘Yes?’

A woman emerges. She has to be Napumla. She’s starved and bleached and blue-veined to hell, but under it all, she is recognisably brown. If her face could move, it would show alarm as
Rhoda approaches, but it’s botoxed to Anchorage and back. She tries to dart away, but her six-inch stilettos are not made for darting. Rhoda speaks to her intensely for a moment then hustles
her outside and tries to drag her into the nearest service corridor.

‘Kark, darling,’ Napumla shrills, ‘not in there, please. You of all people should know how dangerous it is in there. That’s the Guardian’s terrain.’ She
gestures towards the back corridors; she only has three fingers on her left hand.

‘Well, let’s make it quick and we won’t need to hang around,’ Rhoda says, but we stop on the mall side of the service door.

‘You’re new, aren’t you? I see you’ve made your choices. You’ll make a good Shopper,’ she tells Rhoda. ‘You’re beautiful.’ She lifts her
hand and strokes it over Rhoda’s jawline and cheekbones, smooth side and scar side. To my surprise, Rhoda doesn’t break her fucking arm. She just stands there, looking like a pampered
cat.

‘The best you could do,’ Napumla turns to me without concealing her distaste, ‘is Customer Care. But you know they’ll want you to fatten. When I was Customer Care they
wanted me to fatten. Can you believe it? Me? I had so much more potential as an S & A. My God, to think that—’

‘Shut up!’ I snap. ‘We know you left. How? We need to know how.’

‘That’s not really the right question, now is it?’ She speaks to Rhoda, as if I’m too low to address. ‘The question is
why
.’

Rhoda stands motionless, staring at her amputations, Napumla’s ears and nose pinned and stretched and moulded, her lips pouting, the whole thing like a rubber mask. There’s
something in Rhoda’s eyes; fear, excitement, I can’t tell. Is she looking into the void, or at an object of lust?

‘How much longer do you think you’re going to last?’ she asks Napumla.

‘How dare you?’

‘I’m not insulting you, Napumla. I need to know. We’re the same.’

‘My girl,’ Napumla says wearily, ‘we are not the same. You’re new here. You’ll go out with the latest trend. I have been here longer than you can imagine;
I’ve lasted seasons upon seasons.’

My gelphone buzzes briefly. A time reminder. Fifteen moments. I feel an urgent need to get back to work. ‘Listen, Rhoda, I’ve got to get back. I’m hungry and I need to pee
before my shift starts.’

Napumla takes my interruption as a signal to head out of the service corridor and back to the shop.

‘Wait!’ Rhoda calls. ‘Wait… Please. We need to know how you got out.’

Napumla glances into the shadowy reaches of the corridor. ‘Why?’

‘We want to go home.’

‘Home? Where do you think that is, my girl?’

‘Please, just tell us.’

Napumla sighs, looks at her watch. ‘Whatever. You go to the exit. You signal Management to let you out. If they ask you a question, answer honestly. That’s all.’

‘The exit? What exit?’ I ask.

‘There are no exits!’ Rhoda says at the same time. ‘Ben and Palesa said that—’

‘They’re wrong,’ Napumla interrupts. ‘There is one, if you know where to look.’

Rhoda sighs and swears under her breath. ‘And do you know where to look?’

Napumla allows herself a look of superiority. ‘Door seventytwo. Lower basement.’

‘How do you know this?’ I ask.

‘I’d hate to stay and chat, darlings, but this corridor is giving me an itch in my crotch and the Squeeze Sale ends in a few moments.’

‘Okay,’ says Rhoda. ‘Thanks.’

‘Wait…’ I call after her. ‘This isn’t good enough. You just walk out the door?
You just walk out the fucking door?
Then what? We need directions. We need to
know what’s waiting on the other side of the door.’

‘I told you the how, but you’ll find the why is more important,’ Napumla says over her shoulder as she staggers away. Her twig-legs look like they’re about to break.
‘Why do you think I came back?’

‘She’s bullshitting us, Rhoda.’

‘I don’t know. Who knows?’ she says. She’s in some sort of daze. I feel limp too. All I want to do is get a snack and go back to work. I don’t want to run. I
don’t want to open doors. I don’t want to disregard. I don’t want to be late for my shift.

‘What’s your girlfriend’s name?’ Rhoda says, snapping me out of it.

‘Huh?’

‘Your girlfriend. The chick at the phone shop.’

‘She’s not… Colt. Why?’

‘We have to ask her how to get to door seventy-two.’

‘What? Now?’ I need to get back onto my shift. I’m hungry and I need to pee. ‘We can do it later. Tomorrow.’

‘If we don’t do it now, we’ll never do it.’ Her voice is calm, no trace of emotion on her face, but it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever heard her say.

‘Okay.’

We hurry to the phone shop. Colt’s behind the counter. I rush inside, leaving Rhoda gazing at the shoe shop across the walk. ‘Colt, we need to talk.’

‘Good day, sir.’

‘Colt, it’s me. Daniel.’ What am I going to say? That we’re going to leave? That, as my sponsor, she’s going to have to deal with the consequences? ‘I need
your help to find a… place.’

‘How can I help you, sir?’ She flashes me her public smile. She’s inside there somewhere, but I can’t find her.
Fuck
. I try something different.

‘What would happen if you were late for your shift?’

‘Why, sir, I am loyal to the Last Call team. I would never disregard their ethos.’

‘But, say… something came up. An emergency. An accident.’

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Is this Colt speaking now?

‘What if you didn’t report to work?’ My gelphone buzzes again like the school bell at the end of break. Five moments.

‘Why, sir? What else would you do?’

‘What would they do to you? Management.’

‘Do? Nothing, sir. I’m not a brown – no offence – I don’t have to work. But I need to consume. Without work, I can’t consume. Really, sir, what else would I
do?’ Are her eyes trying to reach me? Is she asking me to throw her a lifeline? To give her another option?

‘Colt. Thank you for everything. I just want to say… Thanks.’

‘A pleasure to be of assistance, sir. Call again!’

I don’t want to leave it like that. Again, I have a powerful urge to go back to work. I can meet up with Colt for victuals. Nothing will happen to her. But I look across at Rhoda standing
in front of some sort of poster board, and remember her words, the tiny spark in her dull eyes when she said them.

If we don’t do it now, we’ll never do it
.

I leave the phone shop and join Rhoda.

‘It’s no good. She’s clicked in and can’t help us.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says with a laugh in her voice, the first natural Rhodaness I’ve heard from her since she found me. She’s pointing at the poster, but it
isn’t actually a poster at all – it’s a store directory and map. ‘Here it is.’ Written in cheerful blue script are the words ‘Door 72, lower basement’, and
an arrow helpfully points towards a narrow alcove squeezed between two shops. It can’t be that easy, can it?
It’s not the how, it’s the why
. There are still too many voices
in my head.