It was a doll, not just any doll, but one fashioned in the likeness of a man named MC Hammer, whom Margaret—though she’d never cared for popular music, preferring opera and classical—recalled as a rap musician she’d watched, despite herself, perform his clangorous so-called songs on many late-night talk shows in the nineties. The man, with his ridiculous circus pants and a swagger that intimated violence, had been inescapable. Margaret especially did not care for rap music or whatever nonsense name it was called by now. The doll was of compatible dimensions with the Barbies and Kens that Delores Kovacs sold in Hall Two, and manufactured by the same company. With horror she pictured it, in its distasteful sparkling outfit, cavorting with the clean-cut figures of her childhood: staring out of those still, white eyes and flashing that menacing grin as he reclined on the DreamHouse sofa, his arm around Barbie, stripped down to her black-and-white underthing, a nearby boom box quaking with the cacophonous beat of the bonus cassingle the box boasted was included inside, while poor Ken lay dead on the floor, shot up by the rapper himself.
Seymour must have noticed her looking, because he held the doll close to her face. “I know,” he said. “Isn’t it hysterical?”
Margaret pinched her lips and nodded. There was junk and there was—even in her thoughts she pardoned her French—shit. The Pac-Man beer stein was one thing, the My Secret Princess play set quite another, but this—this was just too much. Something would have to be done about it. She would see to it that something was done. She nodded a curt goodbye to Seymour, walked down Memory Lane, turned the corner at Good Deal Avenue, and stopped in the lounge/café area at the intersection of Good Deal and Fancy Street.
The mall was so immense—nearly two hundred thousand square feet, featured upon its opening in Martha Stewart Living magazine as the largest year-round antiques market in the state of Kansas—that, for the benefit of fatigued customers, rest areas such as this had been strategically placed around the building near the bathrooms. There sat a large TV on mute tuned to the listings channel, an old couch and a couple of recliners (not antique, not collectible, but flannel thrift store cast-offs), a couple of humming vending machines, an “old fashioned” popcorn cart, and—thank heavens—Heart of America co-owner Keith Stoller, hunched over the surface of a wobbly card table with the focus of a monk as he collated a mess of papers into neat stapled packets.
“Keith,” Margaret said as she took the seat across from him, “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Just getting some stuff ready for the meeting.” Keith, an astonishingly short man with a pale comb-over on an even paler scalp, whose clothes were forever haunted by stains of mysterious origin, and whom frankly Margaret could sometimes scarcely bear to look at, kept his eyes trained on the papers. “Lindy Bobo Action Plan,” the cover sheet read, referring to the local toddler, a beauty pageant champion already something of a regional celebrity, who had recently gone missing. Margaret felt for the little girl and her family, she truly did. The world could be so wicked. But the Heart of America was supposed to be a haven from the wicked outside world, offering respite from the stresses and calamities of modern life. Littering the rest area with such stark reminders of the brutality people came here to escape ruined the ambience, to say the least.
“We have a problem,” Margaret said to Keith’s bald spot. When he didn’t look up, when he continued to slap slap slap the stapler with machine-like efficiency, when it became clear he was ignoring her, she added, at a volume that surprised even her: “A big problem!” Keith recoiled and knocked some papers onto the floor. Margaret made no move to pick them up. Now that she had his attention, she continued. “As you may or may not know, you’ve got a pair of new vendors under your charge. They’ve taken over—completely—Patricia’s booth.”
“Her old booth, yes. Lee and Seymour. Nice guys.”
Of course, she didn’t have anything against gays in general. She enjoyed many reality television shows they hosted and appreciated their zest for life and eye for color. She especially liked decorating and remodeling programs and used to watch them together with Patricia as they talked on the phone, her TV across town tuned to the same channel, her laughter blowing through the receiver like a soft breeze in Margaret’s ear.
“Perfectly friendly gentlemen whom I have no personal feeling toward one way or the other. However”—Margaret’s eyes drifted to the television screen behind Keith, a commercial for a racy movie thriller that alternated images of bare flesh, guns, and explosions—“a doll they are selling and putting on prominent display in their booth is in violation of policy guidelines.”
“Do we have to do this right now? Maybe we should save this for the meeting. Veronica wants these booklets ready before—”
“I would love to talk about it at the meeting, Keith, but I think it’s crucial you get the whole story beforehand so you know I’m right. Now, as you and I and most dealers are aware, there are different policies for different areas of the building. What works for one hall may not work for—may in fact actively work against—the aims of another hall. Over in Hall One, the logical starting point for most customers and thus the hall with the heaviest foot traffic, we have a rule—a very generous rule, I think—that all items displayed must be made before the year 1989.”
“And you think this doll is from after that time.”
“I am almost certain.”
Keith shifted in his seat. He had thumbprint smudges on the oversized lenses of his glasses. Margaret sensed he was going to tell her something she didn’t want to hear. He was positively radiating meekness. He was the abstract concept of ineffectuality made concrete. “Look,” he said, “it’s just one doll. Let it go. I’ve got more important things to—”
“It’s not just one doll. There’s more. Computer game apparatuses, I think. A My Secret Princess play set that looked suspiciously contemporary.” She clenched her fists. She should have known not to bother with him. It was his wife, Stacey, who sported the figurative pants when it came to antiques—Keith didn’t know cameo from cloisonné—but she and Margaret, through no fault of Margaret’s own, had a somewhat strained relationship. “The doll’s name is McHammer,” she said.
“A McDonald’s thing?” Keith fiddled with the stapler. “Oh!” he said. “MC Hammer.”
“You of all people should be aware that this is no time to be upsetting the equilibrium of Hall One, what with Mark and Grant coming on Monday. Unless you want to look like some dirty old flea market on national TV.” The past couple of years had not been kind to the Heart of America, and stalwart Hall One, itself larger than many entire antique malls, was their only shot at making a good impression on the “Peddlin’ Pair” (as the promos called them). If Keith and Stacey knew what was good for them, they’d direct the camera crews to Hall One and Hall One only, as it was the only of the mall’s six sections at anything close to capacity; some of the others—Hall Five in particular—were frankly in shambles.
Keith pushed back his chair and stood. “If it matters so much to you, all right. We’ll look it up.”