Kiki had been spending most of her nights under a glowing sign that
read "REDEMPTION" but not finding any.
    It was, to be fair, the best slot in the job rotation at the arcade
she worked for. Whoever sat behind the counter, exchanging cheap toys for
skee-ball tickets, had leave to just sit and read when things weren't
busy, as long as no book's title troubled a manager.
    The week her sister stopped talking to her, she read about relation-
ships, about healing and forgiving, and other things the lot of which she
was starting to think didn't exist outside of mall bookstores. But for the
reciprocal employee discounts she got, she might have given up earlier, or
at least moved on to the library.
    But no, instead she kept the same dozen wrinkled five-dollar bills
bouncing between her pocket and those of the younger booksellers, who
liked Street Fighter, and from both places to the always-washed never-clean
uniforms the food court kids wore. A closed system: efficient insofar as
the wear on their sneakers was offset by slipping one another a little
extra extra beyond that prescribed by bosses, and easy insofar as they
could avoid actually speaking to one another.
    Kiki found people difficult, another transaction that usually became
reciprocal.

    Her bus ride home passed quickly as she watched the shadow of her own
head on the pavement magically keep pace with the buslight that case it.
Kiki's head surfed smoothly up onto curbs and back down. With uncommon
whimsy she wished she had a treat she could flick to her head, a reward
for its skillful performance in shadow form. Then she imagined taking her
head home to stay with her, and coming to resent it as much as she did her
sister. No good, no good, no good.
    The apartment was empty when she got there, which was nearly all she
desired just then.
    Desire, also difficult. Kiki had wondered whether the innovation of
her dating someone had somehow made it easier for her to sharpen the
verbal knives she pointed at her sister, and whether the recent breakup--
another innovation-- had made it easier to throw those knives. The latter
made sense, anyway.
    She territorially slept on the couch. By 4am this act of aggression
had redounded upon her and she slunk into bed, barking her shins twice on
what should have been empty air.

    Early for her shift the next day, Kiki walked nowhere up and down the
corridors of the mall. Solutions flickered at her from behind shop
windows: clothes, jewelry, a massage? She had little idea what her sister
liked, but surely knowing someone's weak spots so well should make it
possible to figure out. The image came to her of vicious string looped
around her fingers, ready to be pulled into a cat's cradle that would make
them generous or kind. Her mind's eye showed her knots and restricted
blood flow.
    The wrong gift would ring hollow, she was sure. If she had ever
cleaned much, she could at least guess based on her possessions. But she
hadn't, and picking among gemstones was a pastime for friends. Good luck
bluffing your way through that.
    At the bookstore, Kiki swapped a dessicated fiver for a novel with no
redeeming qualities whatsoever. On the way to the arcade, she cradled it
gently in her hands and read the first pages, index fingers extended to
avoid breaking the spine-- never that.

written for Lisa Lassner in the upstairs room 11/8/08

I have a bad habit of not giving people names unless forced to, which led to the baffling repetition of "she" in the last section. I also decided that I didn't want to commit to a gender for Kiki's first relationship even though it muddled some more sentences.

On the other hand, I spent a while trying to figure out what Kiki had done to offend her sister before realizing that I didn't care.

I suppose this takes place in the early 90s, if people were into Street Fighter and books cost only a little more than $5. Ticket-dispensing games are in fact called "redemption games" in the industry, which is an awesome fact deployed poorly here.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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