The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [39]
“I need you,” she whispers.
Superstition
Ursula dunks a currant-speckled scone, sending brown rivulets over the lip of her cup and down the bare chests of the discus throwers on its side. Next to her Javier slides down the bench like a trail of jelly until he can rest the back of his head against it. He gropes in his omnipresent trenchcoat, extracts a pair of wraparound burnt-orange sunglasses, and pushes them up his long nose into place.
“Out partying last night?” Ursula asks.
“Working. Work work work.”
“Where at?”
“A rave. Sponsored by Camel. Free cigarettes, T-shirts, sushi, sesame noodles, portable ashtrays—little velvet pouches lined with asbestos or something. Free cocktails.”
“How’d they stop half the city from showing up?”
“Same way as the noncorporate raves. You’ve got to be in the circuit, in the know, you know?”
“So how did Camel get in the circuit?”
“Hiring people like us. Once they’re in, it’s a great opportunity for market research. They photocopy driver’s licenses at the door and pack the place with plants.”
“I assume you don’t mean ficuses.”
“Undercover agents. One of them struck up a conversation with me. She was good. It took us a while to realize we were both market researchers, pumping each other for information.”
“Wow,” Ursula says.
“Wow what? What wow?”
“That sounds really, really creepy.”
“Creepy? Why creepy? Creepy how?”
“ ‘Creepy how?’ Luring those kids in there under false pretenses, that’s creepy how. It’s satanic.”
“Satanic?”
“If surfaces are all people have, like Chas says, then isn’t it a little bit satanic? Stealing their poor, broken souls? I mean, doesn’t that bother you sometimes?”
Javier sits up. He thinks for a moment. She wishes he weren’t wearing sunglasses. This is her chance to figure him out, to determine what he really thinks. Beneath his superhuman optimism there’s a vulnerability, a secret sadness, and Ursula feels a need—whether out of bitterness or tenderness she isn’t really sure—to lure that sadness out into the open.
“Stealing their souls,” he says. “That’s an ugly way of thinking of it.”
The adjective strikes her like a fist to the solar plexus. Her mind knows he’s not calling her ugly. But her heart aches nonetheless.
“Sometimes the truth isn’t pretty,” she says.
He runs a hand through his hopelessly bed-headed hair. “Sometimes ugliness is totally unnecessary; sometimes it’s just a bunch of self-flagellation.”
“You think that’s what having a conscience is? Self-flagellation?”
“Can I have a sip of your coffee?”
“Careful, it’s hot,” she says, too late. He howls and grips his throat in a chokehold.
“Listen,” he rasps, “you’ve got to take those things Chas says with a grain of salt.”
“Well, at least I didn’t cry when he told me surfaces were all people had.”
Javier reddens and touches his forehead, smiling a little.
“Chas words things darkly sometimes,” he says. “But if you think about it, what he’s really saying is that products are . . . are magical things in our lives, you know? This world forces us to be so damn logical all the time, forces us to think like robots. But when it comes to products, we can let loose just a bit, you know? We can buy a car that makes us feel both impulsive and safe. We can go to an amusement park and feel both terrified and reassured. Products . . .” He ponders, then smiles, finding the image he’s looking for. “Products are the fruit of the human imagination! The supersweet, magical fruit! And we need that magic. Don’t you think, Ursula? Don’t you need a little magic now and then?”
He smiles at her. In the lenses of his shades she sees only her own reflection.
“ ‘Don’t you need a little magic now and then,’ ” she repeats. “So what pop song did you cull that fascinating bit of pop philosophy from?”
Javier turns away, and Ursula wonders for the millionth time why she has to be so negative.
“I’m sorry I’m not deep enough for you,” Javier says, folding his arms.
“I’m sorry, Javier. You are deep. I’m the shallow one.