The cop stole a glance at her, where she lay on the pavement,
and wandered back to the crowd. His eyes
had peered from the shade beneath his cap (god, the glare from the television
cameras was unbearable), and his mouth curled on one side for an instant before
straightening again. Mindy knew that
look meant, “I know who you are. You’re
the Glam Lady.” It filled her with
terror, and shame.
Some folks say their memories are
like fragmented video clips, sometimes shuffled out of order. It wasn’t like that for Mindy. She had one long, smooth spool of film. She wound it backward, to the time she’d been
a lady with a mop on television, and her husband couldn’t stop her from
cleaning. She polished the whole house,
and then invited the kids to run through it with their shoes on. Then she began again. She loved her cleaner, Floor Glam. It had been an obtuse little advertisement
that played during shitty little daytime soaps.
But then teenagers gave it life by posting her half-senseless character on
the Internet. The Glam Lady was born. Getting into the groove, Mindy filmed new
adds for fake products. Dale Cassidy of Peak Exploding Oven Cleaner. Homeless Sam of Tourist Killer Roach
Spray. Men, boys, old women and
animals. No one knew they were all Mindy.
She asked herself; why had she been
on her way to a talk show?
She rolled the film back to its
ragged end, the present. She examined
her prostrate body; she was dressed in spiky shoes and a low dress. White lines cross the pavement beneath her. She’d fallen in a crosswalk, wrapped in her
best party gear, surrounded by cops, news hawks and spectators. A car and its broken headlight idled ten feet
from her. Strands of her dark hair
coiled around the glass shards. Medics
were coming with the gurney now.
Mindy spun the reel backward again,
stopping it with an imaginary finger.
She’d been watching her date focus on his plate. His taste in restaurants was unmatched. But when he picked up the fork, it was just
him and the food. Mindy could understand
why he had trouble securing second dates, but she loved his company. He was a new character to figure out. He’d put his fork down and caressed her hair,
which she’d cut to disguise her youth.
He’d been around fifty, and good looking – but not so much that he
wouldn’t look sideways at a spring chicken taking an interest in him. He was fun, until Mindy was ready to move on. There was always a new identity around the
corner.
He did this to her. Her memory zipped to when she’d stepped from
the cab, onto the crosswalk’s edge. He’d
come around the corner, not looking so refined.
He came at her with – god, who knows - it looked heavy. Shit, Mindy thought, he lives just upstairs –
and she dashed into the street.
The
medics strapped her in and they noticed her shaking hands. One medic said they’d better check for
narcotics. That was useless. Mindy knew why her hands were shaking. She’d gotten greedy. She’d known she had talent. She’d pushed and pushed it, even while her
mind was telling her to stop, and she’d landed a job on a television sit
com. Everyone knew who Mindy was now,
and they’d know about her addiction before long.
As they
rolled her into the ambulance, a giant monitor above the square snapped from a
cola add to a live feed from the television studio. International stock quotes scrolled beneath it. The host was talking about her. No one had told the studio about her accident. Right now, an army of interns was running
around the back halls and phoning her agent.
But the show went on, in the hope that she would arrive. Her hands trembled as the host was saying,
“And
tonight, in her first ever television interview, we’ll get to know a little bit
of the real Mindy Posey.”
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