Synesthesia: Chapter Twenty-Five
serial fiction
The “mall” turned out to be an enormous open-air outlet mall. I parked in the nearest available space, which was at least a hundred yards away from the building itself, and we all got out of the car.
“Let’s take a couple of these stacks,” Amber suggested, reaching into the plastic grocery bag that held a modest fortune stolen from Gas Stove.
I reached my hand out but stopped right before I touched hers.
“Wait,” I said, trying to be diplomatic. “It isn’t gonna look good to walk around with that amount of cash. Let me just put a few bills in my wallet, okay? And then you can have whatever you need from that.”
Amber narrowed her eyes at me skeptically. “I’m gonna need more than that,” she said, watching me pull four hundreds out of a stack held together with a dirty rubber band and slide them into my wallet. “Like, a lot more.”
She had smelled like cinnamon since we’d pulled into the parking lot, but now the smell was getting really strong.
“Look,” I said, trying to hide my frustration, “if we walk around spending huge amounts of cash, we’re gonna look really suspicious. You want some store owner to call the cops on us?”
The cinnamon mixed with gasoline.
“Oh, you’re worried about the cops, Zodiac?” Amber taunted, pulling out six more hundreds and stuffing them into her waistband. “That’s hilarious. Have you done anything illegal?”
She broke into a cackle. I rubbed my face with my hands, let out a sigh, and stuffed the bag with the rest of the money in it under the front seat so it wouldn’t be visible to anyone walking past the car.
Hoka guy and I followed as Amber walked through the outlet mall like a woman on a mission, Jacob’s little legs moving as fast as they could to keep up with her. The first store she stepped into was a place that appeared to sell nothing but women’s underwear.
Amber and Jacob sailed into the store, but Hoka guy and I stopped dead at the entrance as if we’d both hit an invisible wall.
The two of us exchanged uncomfortable glances.
“Hey, Amber?” I called into the store. I could just see the back of Amber’s head past a rack of bras. “We’re gonna wait out here, okay?”
A garbled response came back to us, which I chose to interpret as Amber hearing and understanding. Hoka guy and I left her to her racks of bras and panties and headed to a nearby shoe store.
I’ve never been very interested in shopping, but the black work boots I’d been wearing for the past ten years were not exactly suited to the Arizona climate. And I could see that Hoka guy had his eye on some even more hideous running shoes on display in the store window.
We walked in, and Hokas went straight for the running shoes. I wondered if that guy had a thing for ugly shoes like I did for the scent of fear. Maybe ugly shoes smelled good to him?
I wandered over to a display of sandals, wondering which ones might be a good option for me. I picked up a brown Birkenstock, squinting at it as I turned it over and around in my hands.
I found a box of the same model in my size, took off my boots, and tried the sandals on, scrutinizing how they looked on my feet in the mirror next to me.
Suddenly I heard loud, obnoxious laughter behind me.
“Hey man, you look like an idiot with those black socks on! Socks and sandals, ha!”
I turned around. It was Hoka guy, of course, looking like an idiot himself in a pair of highlighter-yellow shoes with red stripes across them, balanced atop a giant foam platform that must have been at least three or four inches thick.
“What in the hell are those?” I asked, pointing at his feet. “What’s the platform for?”
Hoka guy scoffed. “These are performance shoes,” he explained, “engineered with a carbon plate and ultra-light foam for maximum speed and minimal injuries.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Okay,” I said, “but you still look like an idiot.”
I sat down and took off the Birkenstocks, then placed them neatly back in the box and put the box back where I’d found it. Standing there in my socks, I looked around for a different model.
“Can I help you find anything?”
To my left, a woman with long blond hair and a fake smile stood smelling like wood smoke and gesturing at the sandals in front of me.
“Uh, no, thank you,” I said, suddenly feeling self-conscious standing there in my socks.
“Okay, well, just let me know if you need and help,” the woman said before turning and walking away.
I glanced toward the mirror again. My face was red, though it hadn’t been a moment earlier.
I scowled, annoyed and angry at having been disturbed.
I reached for a pair of black sandals with thick straps coming off the soles in all directions.
After sticking them to my feet with several different velcro closures, I stood up and looked in the mirror again.
Yes, I thought; these are the ones.
“Hey man,” Hoka guy whispered to me as I was boxing the black sandals back up, “you think I can borrow two-hundred and seventy-five dollars?”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you fucking crazy? No!”
Hoka guy looked crestfallen. I wondered for a second if he was going to cry.
“Look, man, come back after we drop you off in Phoenix and buy them with your own money,” I whispered.
“But you have enough!” he said, his voice slipping into a whine.
I checked the price tag on my sandals: $50.
Regretting my decision already, I took the box of ugly yellow and red shoes from him and walked up to the checkout counter with both shoeboxes.
Five minutes later, Hoka guy was all smiles and smelled like shit as we stood outside the underwear store, each of us clutching our new shoes.
Amber was just finishing up at the register, and she walked out with a giant paper shopping bag and a wide-eyed but silent Jacob.
“I got about a hundred dollars left,” Amber announced, far more loudly than I would have preferred. “How about we go eat?”