Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs [3]
How soon before the aging (thirty-eightish) hostess with a possible superfluous hair condition was replaced by the much younger, more beautiful, and fully waxed Trish Mission? There was a prized-racehorse quality about Trish that unsettled Peggy Jean. Tall, blond, and ambitious, Trish seemed to be growing more and more successful out of sheer entitlement.
Makeup was, thankfully, empty. Peggy Jean walked directly over to the small round mirror that sat on one of the dressing tables. She pressed a button on the side that caused the bulbs to flicker momentarily, then illuminate. She peered at her reflection, moving her ear as close to the mirror as possible, using the gleaming Frosted Cappuccino–painted nail of her index finger to move the lobe into the light. There they were: tiny hairs, faint and almost unnoticeable unless one were actively looking for them in an illuminated magnifying mirror, as she was doing at that moment.
Amanda, having noticed the light, paused and stood in the doorway, watching Peggy Jean examine her ear. “Peggy Jean?” she asked, concerned. “Is something the matter with your ear?”
H
eading west on I-92, Max drove mostly in the passing lane, averaging a speed of seventy miles per hour. His favorite CD—the original cast recording of Rent—sat unplayed in his five-CD changer. “Stupid, stupid, fuck, fuck,” was the mantra he repeated aloud to himself as he headed toward the Woodlands Mall to see if he could obtain a certain Beanie Baby named Peanuts for his almost-seven-year-old niece. As much as the Woodlands Mall was the exact last place Max wanted to be (Jake’s Joint, a bar, being the first), he simply had no choice. His niece’s birthday was the day after tomorrow and he had been unsuccessful locating the elusive plush toy on the Internet. Now he was forced to shop the old-fashioned way: in person.
Don, the Good Morning Show host and father of a fourteen-year-old girl, had told Max that the Toys R Us at the Woodlands Mall had a very extensive Beanie Baby selection. “That,” he had said to Max, “would be your best bet—and I’m saying this as the father of a girl who wouldn’t speak to me for a full week after I gave her Snort the Bull with that little red tag cut off.” After wishing Max good luck in his search, Don had warned “Oh, and whatever you do—don’t cut that stupid little tag off. It’s all about the tag.”
WOODLANDS MALL, NEXT EXIT, read the sign. “To think, unemployed . . . me?” Max said to the windshield. As he crossed over into the far-right lane, he resisted the temptation to aim the steering wheel into the cement guardrail, causing his top-heavy Ford Explorer to careen over the embankment, explode into flames, and kill him instantly. Instead, he decelerated down the exit ramp and wondered, What if I’m reduced to doing traffic reports? On radio?
At four in the afternoon on a Wednesday, the Toys R Us was thankfully empty. Cold, electronic renditions of children’s songs played over the store’s speakers: “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” even, oddly, “Kumbayah.” Every few minutes, the Muzak was replaced with a loud chorus of children singing the haunting Toys R Us advertising jingle, “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us Kid . . .” The store, as vast as a warehouse, was piled to the ceilings with urinating dolls, bikes, puzzles, Lego sets, action figures, colorful balls, teddy bears implanted with microchips that enabled them to shake hands, Just Like Mommy cell phones, board games, plastic machine guns, two-pound bags of M&Ms, and inflatable pool creatures. Max stalked the aisles, looking for the Beanie Babies, never more thankful for his homosexuality and the child-free life that went along with it.
At the rear of the store, Max saw a huge display of Beanie Babies. Hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe millions of Beanie Babies to chose from. And all Max had to go on was