After The Riddler’s Revenge, we went to see Purity. Purity led us there, via Clarity’s phone. We had to go through some back gates and then Purity was running up to us, in full Wonder Woman gear, red boots, red and blue PVC hugging her hips and her boobs and her crotch, and her hair done all wavy and perfect and held in place by spray that I could still smell and was sure was doing something horrible to my lungs.
Purity ran up to us with outstretched arms.
“Hey you two! Have you been having fun?”
Clarity and I look at each other.
“We’ve been having a little,” I say.
“How do I look?”
“You look great,” Clarity says. “Did you get the part?”
Purity lodges a fingernail between her teeth.
“I don’t know yet. We’re about to take pictures. Come watch!”
So Purity leads us a little ways back to right in front of this warehouse, and inside the warehouse it’s just filled with cartoon character costumes on rack after rack—a warehouse as big as a hardware store. You couldn’t see the back—just row after row of lifeless superhero, witch, chipmunk, princess, all hanging there waiting for some perfect-bodied person like Purity to put it on and bring it to life in the park. A bunch of these kids, petite, tall—but all skinny—stood around inside the warehouse smoking in a semi-circle. I looked quick and looked away—I was definitely the trespasser here.
“This is Miss Cheryl,” Purity beams at us.
She introduces us as her sister and friend to a woman in tight jeans holding a Polaroid.
“Purity, I need you right there. Now do the pose with your right arm on your hip and your left arm in the air like you’re holding a tiny wisp of cloud..there!”
Cheryl snaps the Polaroid.
“You two can stand anywhere as long as you’re behind me.”
Clarity and I stand far apart from each other. Clarity actually finds a bench and sits and smokes and watches her sister get photographed. I lean up against the side of the warehouse.
I watch Purity.
I watch her body move under the PVC and I see that her starving herself for the last six months has paid off. Ashley has been telling me about this over the phone, how Purity eats a 600-calorie-a-day diet and Ashley doesn’t approve but Purity wants this job and she’s willing to do anything to get it. Anyway, she looks good, and I know, I know, I’m part of the problem—a man who approves of and responds to and likes a woman whose body was arrived at by anorexia. I want to fuck Purity as Wonder Woman—it’s true—I am part of the problem.
Exactly the problem Six Flags is trying to create: a superhero that kids want to take pictures with and dads want to fuck, so dads keep bringing their kids to the park year after year because all winter the kid has been staring at this picture of herself with Wonder Woman and wanting to be her when she grows up. That picture..sells next year’s tickets. That’s why this job exists.
“There are actually 12 Wonder Women,” Purity says when the photo shoot is over and Cheryl is on her cell phone and me and Clarity and Purity are all smoking Mistys about 20 feet away. “At any given time, two of us are working the park. Mostly you freeform—that means you take pictures with kids and collect tips and show people how to get to the bathroom.”
Clarity laughs.
“Then every hour on the half hour there’s a parade. And you have to be in five out of six parades on your shift or they dock you an hour’s pay.”
“What do you do in the parades?”
Purity stands straight up in her best Wonder Woman pose and turns her head from side to side like some animatronic and waves a Miss America wave and smiles a beauty pageant smile and her shiny lips and white teeth almost captivate me and I’m 27.
“You just wave and smile,” Purity says. She drops her pose and is Purity again, not some member of the Justice League.
“I think you’ve got the job,” I say.
“I think so, too,” says Purity, and she grabs my hands just the way her sister had after our first rollercoaster. “And you know what this means?”
“What?”
“It means me and Ashley are gonna move out here and the three of us can go out all the time and you and Ash can come to Six Flags any time you want ‘cause I get free tickets!”
“That’s awesome, Purity.”
“So what do you think of my sister?”
Clarity rolls her eyes.
“I like her,” I say.
“Good, ‘cause I would have to dump you as my friend if you didn’t like my baby sis!”
Purity drops my hands and takes Clarity’s neck under her arm.
“Gross! I can smell your deodorant!!”
“You should like it! It’s also called Misty!”
Clarity breaks free of her older sister’s grip.
Purity takes a drag off the thin cigarette.
“I don’t believe she has you smoking these. If I was a man I’d be embarrassed to be smoking Mistys.”
Purity goes on but I don’t listen to her. She’s like a gnat I have chosen not to kill and it buzzes on beside my ear.
“It’s fucking embarrassing!! A fucking grown man smoking Mistys? Did she promise you her nasty fucking cooch or give you a BJ on the people mover or something? I can hardly smoke these and I’m a girl, last I checked. If I was a man I wouldn’t be caught dead smoking a Misty.”
“Well I happen to like Mistys,” I say.
Clarity looks at me.
Purity looks at Clarity.
“Oh, I see,” says Purity. “Well I’ll leave you two to it.”
Cheryl yells over. “Purity. I’m gonna fax these pictures to my boss and then you’re done, ok?”
“I gotta go, guys.”
Purity hugs each of us in turn.
Cheryl looks at me and Clarity.
“Are they ok?”
“They’re fine.”
“Well, we better do another packet of film. I’m ready to hire you right now but Jimmy likes to see a certain set of poses. If we miss a pose, you’ll have to come back and get all dressed up again just to fill in a single pose and I know you’re like from Phoenix right?”
Purity waves us goodbye and goes back to her audition.
Me and Clarity can hear Cheryl barking orders at our sister and friend about where her hand is and how high her hip is and we both look at each other as we let ourselves out of the anonymous wooden fence that leads us back into the park. The look we give each other is fairly specific. If it was translated into words, it would say something like: How do they find 12 people who fit such strict guidelines for looking like Wonder Woman, even pulling from as far away as Phoenix? What would it be like to see another one of them? Would she look exactly like Purity? And then Clarity answers our telepathic conversation out loud:
“I bet if we saw all 12 of them together, you wouldn’t be able to pick Purity out of the lineup.”