A Fall from Grace (into a steaming vat of mortification)

by Emily Walls, as told by Angie Amos

Chance. Happenstance. Accident. Poppycock.

The story I'm about to tell you has informed, to my core, the way I perceive the world. The events I describe can only be attributed to Providence. No one else can claim credit for the bizarre circumstances of the incident, and no one else can account for the exact sequence in which the calamity developed. I laugh in the face of the so-called "force majeure," and I laugh in the face of Angela Amos, without whom this story would not exist. Also, I laugh at the word "poppycock."

On the morning of the unfortunate incident, my sister-in-law Angie was living the high life on the beaches of Destin, Florida. She and three of her friends were stopping for a quick visit to the Florida coast before embarking on a week-long cruise of the Caribbean. Twenty-something, gorgeous, and energetic, these ladies were rulers of the Destin shores. That is, they sat on the beach for an hour or two until a gushing storm drove them inland. Their day ruined by the rain, they sequestered themselves in the comfort of a familiar shelter, the great American outlet mall. It is important to note here that the ladies did not first go home to change out of their beach clothes. Remember that.

Once inside the mall, Angie and Elisabeth broke off from the rest of the group to make a quick stop in BCBG. Elisabeth wanted to browse the racks, and Providence, planning a delightful treat for the rest of us, chose Angie to keep Elisabeth company. This is where it all went down, and I mean literally it all went down. Elisabeth was searching through a rack of dresses, and Angie was standing on the other side of the rack—not browsing, just gabbing. As Elisabeth circled the rack to Angie's side, Angie moved out the way and flattened her back against a nearby wall. At least, she thought it was a wall.

In truth, Angie had chosen to lean against the questionable foundation of a floor-to-ceiling banner. Recognizing that her "wall" was not as solid as she had hoped, Angie responded by taking another step backward—onto the step of a window display. Now, Angie made her choice to step backward under the delusion that there was a wall somewhere close behind her, so when her foot failed to find a solid, immovable wall, but found a raised display floor instead, her brain failed to comprehend the foot's newly acquired information concerning the layout of the room. She did not adjust, so she fell. And she didn't just fall.

Up went her feet and down went the first victims of Angela's tumble—the rack of dresses. Angie was still wearing her flip-flops, wet from the rain, so when she lost her balance, her slippery feet flew in opposite directions. Her left foot caught the dress rack and knocked the entire frame down. Every dress and every metal hanger crashed to the floor in a cacophony of scrapings and whooshes, the soundtrack to her embarrassment, if you will. Meanwhile, Angie, still trying to catch her balance, shifted her weight to her right foot, which was just then sliding across the floor of the window display. Her errant appendage snagged the nearest mannequin (which, lifelike as it may have appeared, offered no help) and knocked it into a unit of carefully placed shoes. Pumps and sandals rained down on innocent shoppers as Angie continued her descent of the damned.

Have you been picturing, Reader, that Angie's arms were tightly clenched against her sides in this unfortunate fall? That while her legs thrashed wildly her arms were awaiting placidly the end of the event? It could not be so, Reader. Even at this stage, Angie was desperate to prevent a complete, butt-on-the-floor fall. Since her legs had escaped her control, she looked to her arms for guidance, which unfortunately, were looking to her legs. Whatever cataclysmic route Angie's legs took, her arms sought to outdo their rival limbs. Angie flailed and grasped for the nearest solid surface, which in this case was the floor-to-ceiling banner that had started all the trouble in the first place. Since her legs no longer supported her, Angie grabbed that banner with desperate fingers of steel.

For a millisecond of a moment, it seemed to have worked. Her legs were useless, but she was hanging by her arms, suspended halfway through the fall. She looked to Elisabeth, and Angie's eyes were, in Elisabeth's words, like saucers. That's when the banner broke free of its ceiling ties. Angie fell to the floor in a final, desperate plunge, the betrayal of the banner reflected in her stunned eyes. She landed on the heap of shoes, dresses, hangers and mannequin limbs on the floor of the window display—the same window that looked out to the main walkway in the mall. The banner, not quite finished with its elaborate bid for humiliation, plopped on her head with a thud and rolled down the length of her prostrate body. It had once declared rock-bottom prices; now, it advertised the depth of Angela's humiliation.

Up to this point, I have left out one crucial detail of this story. I told you earlier to remember that the girls had not gone home to change before heading to the mall. What I omitted in my narrative is this: Since they were wearing wet bathing suits and had not packed changes of clothes, the girls, fearing chaffing and discomfort, had decided to take off their bikinis for the trip to the mall. After all, they were wearing dresses and would rather go free than go sodden.

So when Angie hit the floor of the display in the window of BCBG off the main walkway of the mall, and when the racks and shoes and mannequins clattered to the floor with deafening clangs, and when a floor-to-ceiling banner—a banner that was designed specifically to draw attention—fluttered and folded to the ground, and when Angie's dress flew up over her head as she landed, she was not wearing underwear.

And people say there is no God.

Claptrap.