The Blonde of the Joke by Bennett Madison Read Free Book Online Page B

I was just happy to be a player in her grand scheme—a scheme that I imagined to be part of an even grander one, and then another on top of that.
    But on that particular day, the agenda was as simple as it was practical. Francie would run distraction in the sale racks while I worked the bigger-ticket items near the entrance. I was going to hit big.
    Francie headed to the back, clearing her throat andrustling clothes as she walked, touching everything she passed, unfolding shirts and knocking them aside, drawing stares from every quarter. Her neckline plunged halfway down her chest, and she had her boobs pushed up around her shoulders, thanks to some mysterious undergarment. How could you not stare? No one was paying any attention to me at all, which really was the whole point.
    I wandered the front of the store aimlessly, my eyes swinging back and forth in search of the perfect thing to steal. They were blasting Shakira, but I could still hear Francie from the back of the store as if she was standing right next to me. “Excuse me? Excuse me, ma’am? This shirt has a hole in it. Right here. See? Right there next to the collar. How should I know how it got there? Do you think I could get a discount? I’ll give you four ninety-nine.”
    Francie was chattering away. She had a talent for spectacle. I didn’t look in her direction, but even without looking I could see her vamping and showboating, tossing her hair and batting her mascara-greased eyelashes until she had dark, scratchy lines etched above her cheekbones. When she wanted to, Francie had this absolute force of presence. I could have seen her with my eyes closed; I could have seen her with a blindfold on.
     
    Someone had put the jacket away wrong. I’d noticed a rack of black leather motorcycle jackets right by the entrance as soon as I’d stepped into the store, but I hadn’t paid muchattention, since they were all wired to a central alarm system that would go off if you tried to unplug any of them, and I had nowhere near the nerve for that. But then, passing a lonely column of fleece hoodies, I spied the hint of a leather sleeve peeking out from behind the plush, bright microfiber.
    I looked again. It was unmistakable. Peeling back the layers of hoodies, I saw it, there by itself, free for the taking. No sensor, no alarm, no ink tag. A black leather zip-front motorcycle jacket, sleek and slim with a Nehru collar. Someone had put it away wrong. And I can’t really tell you if I believe in fate or not, but the fact of the matter is that at that moment it seemed like the jacket had been waiting for me. I wanted it.
    I looked at the price tag: $300.50. I looked around. No one was paying attention to me. But I couldn’t do it. Just standing that close to it made me feel like I was attracting suspicion.
    Be the sun, Francie had said.
    It had seemed like good advice at the time, but when it came time to implement it, the total uselessness of it struck me. Too hot to look at, I said to myself, and I pictured myself on fire. I pictured myself as a spinning disco ball, throwing flash in every direction; as a bolt of lightning; as a shattering star, a flaming arrow shooting for a bull’s-eye. But I wasn’t any of those things. I was not the sun. I wasn’t even a blonde.
    I was myself. Even if I had fooled Francie into thinking I was someone important, it didn’t change the fact that I wasValentina Martinez. People like me didn’t steal things, and they definitely didn’t wear jackets like this one.
    I stared at it. It was gorgeous—more gorgeous on further inspection than it had even first appeared. I toyed with a sleeve, rubbed the cuff between my fingers, feeling the leather. It was soft—too soft. Almost like it was still alive. And when I ran the back of my hand against the jacket’s breast pocket, I could feel something like a rhythm beneath the surface of the material, beating back against my knuckles.
    Something happened. Off in what sounded like the