“Well, guess I better get going,” Jeremy said. The clown watched him depart, still smiling, and didn’t say a word. Jeremy didn’t trust him.
They had a small service at the Family Bible Christian Bookstore, decorated with artificial flowers from the Hallmark shop, officiated by a priest whose plastic vestments and hollow crucifix came from the costume aisle at the party store. It was a quiet affair, with a lot of silent reflection and hardly any guests, since Eight-ball had so few friends.
Melissa came, which was very nice of her, considering Eight-ball had such a low opinion of Jeremy and Melissa’s relationship. It made Jeremy love her all the more.
“I guess I should say a few things,” Jeremy said. “Eight-ball was my friend. What he really enjoyed was answering questions. Sometimes his answers were very clear, and sometimes they were kind of vague, but he always had an answer for you.” Jeremy’s throat clenched up. He felt like a horrible hypocrite, knowing he was the one who’d killed Eight-ball. He didn’t know how to handle his guilt and genuine sorrow over the loss of his friend, and of course he could no longer go to Eight-ball for advice.
Jeremy was also the pallbearer. He carried the Eight-ball to one of the fake ferns, lifted it up in its pot, and stuffed Eight-ball into the plastic peat underneath. Eight-ball was buried in the Crown Royal bag he loved so well.
Jeremy noticed an extra guest here at the burial. The clown was watching from McDonald’s, waving at Jeremy and giving a macabre smile. Jeremy was pretty sure Ronald knew something, but so far the clown was keeping mum about it.
Jeremy waited a few days to make sure nobody was talking about the murder. Then he proposed to Melissa at midnight at Yankee Candle, where he’d lit every piece of merchandise in the store to set a romantic scene. The shop smelled like rose, cinnamon, vanilla, jasmine, sandalwood, musk, licorice…Jeremy wanted to gag at the many mingled smells, but he figured women liked that kind of thing.
He dropped to one knee and presented her with the biggest diamond ring that had been on display at King’s Jewelers.
“Melissa, you make me happier than I ever thought I could be,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
She didn’t say no. He slipped the ring on her finger.
They were married by the fountain, under the skylights. The fountain pumps no longer functioned, and the water had gone stagnant, but Jeremy had covered the water with a layer of plastic flowers and floating candles.
Guests came from as far away as Sears. Melissa’s old friends wore leather bridesmaids’ dresses from Hot Topic. Gramps gave away the bride. Skipster was Jeremy’s best man. Jeremy didn’t even like Skipster that much, but he didn’t have many friends, and Skipster hadn’t expressed any problem with the idea when Jeremy asked him.
Jeremy wore a black coat with tails from Tuxedo Junction. The priest who had officiated the funeral conducted the service.
Melissa came down the aisle in a white cart festooned with white bunting and more plastic flowers. She was veiled inside her wedding dress, her long lacy train dragging the floor behind her.
When Jeremy finally lifted her veil and kissed her, he thought he heard Marla and Ivana crying in the audience.
They had their reception at T.G.I. Friday’s—not only had it been the site of their first date, it was the only place in the mall that served booze.
They honeymooned at the Sears swimwear department, where a photographic mural of a beautiful tropical beach covered the wall from floor to ceiling. Suntanned young people modeling assorted brands of beachwear played volleyball in front of it. To one side there was a tiki hut offering racks of sunglasses. Jeremy and his bride lay on a blanket that evening, watching the sunset through the glass outer doors of Sears.
On subsequent nights he took her to the Sears bedding department. Along the way they passed the menswear department, and Jeremy felt jealous when he noticed the men in their business suits blatantly ogling Melissa in her bikini.
Then the honeymoon was over, and they returned home to Macy’s.
“I love you Melissa,” he said as they lay together on their first night home. He was spooning her, with his face buried in her long blond hair. She didn’t answer him. She must have already been asleep.
For a number of days he felt like she was keeping her distance from him. He suspected there was something she wasn’t saying. An unspoken tension began to grow between them.
Then Jeremy figured it out: Melissa was pregnant, but she just didn’t know how to tell him.
Then they were happy again, shopping at Big Baby Junction for cribs and bottles. He couldn’t believe how quickly her pregnancy progressed. One day she appeared as she always had, ever since the first time he saw her in the window. The next day it looked like someone had shoved a basketball under her maternity dress, and possibly anchored it there with duct tape.
After much anticipation, the big day arrived. It was a difficult delivery—Jeremy had to break her basketball himself with a pen knife to get the air flowing out. In the end, though, it was a beautiful day. Jeremy wheeled their children in from the Gap Kids store. They’d had a boy and a girl, fraternal twins, both of them cute and smiley.
They named the twins Sammy and Suzy. Sammy got a race-car bed, while Suzy got a princess bed with a frilly canopy. They all lived happily at Macy’s.
Having children changed Melissa. She moved on from her spiked collars and leather pants to prim blouses and ankle-length skirts, just like Jeremy’s mother used to wear. She took the kids down the escalator to Sylvan Learning Center each morning. On Sundays Melissa made the whole family attend church at Family Bible, where they listened to preachers via audiobook. Jeremy’s mother would have liked that too, knowing her grandchildren were getting a good Christian education.
Jeremy sometimes took Sammy over to the sporting goods store and tried to show him how to shoot basketball, but Sammy was a shy, inactive kid. For that matter, Suzy was as much of a wallflower as her mother. Jeremy couldn’t believe that he had turned out to be the talkative, outgoing one in the family.
In the summer they packed their kids and their luggage into the family shopping cart and made the long trip to the Sears swimwear department for a beach vacation.
As they lay on their beach towels, Jeremy looked over his family. While he cared about them, he felt like he wasn’t really connecting with them anymore. They hardly spoke a word to him, and they never seemed to listen. More and more, they just stared right through him, blankly, whenever he tried to strike up a conversation.
He found himself looking at the tan girls playing volleyball in their bikinis. Melissa didn’t wear bikinis anymore, just a dark one-piece with a prim swimming skirt, and Jeremy could sense her disdain for the flirty young things at the beach.
Jeremy didn’t feel disdain, though. His eye kept wandering to one of the bikini girls, one with a very dark and exotic skin tone, her hair luxurious and brown. She wore a bikini with a sort of tie-dyed flower pattern.
Sometimes Jeremy could feel her watching the back of his head. Once or twice he was pretty sure he’d caught her looking at him. And maybe smiling, or just about to do so.
On the sixth day of their vacation, Jeremy found himself staring at the dark beauty again. He glanced over at his wife and kids, stretched out on their beach blankets. None of them were moving. They must have all dozed off.
This was his chance.
He stepped right into the middle of the volleyball game and approached the dark girl in her colorful bikini. Nobody said a word to stop him. He took her by the hand.