Primitive People by Francine Prose

herself and lean on the arms of the crowd, she hated it when crowds picked up and moved without anyone seeming to will it.
    Rosemary had definitely caught the spirit. Tonight as they’d left the house, she’d taken a long swig from a vodka bottle in the freezer. She’d said, “All I need is the silver coke spoon to make my costume complete. Georgie, where’s that cheap electric guitar we bought and you never played?”
    Now from the back seat George said, “There was this drunk driver on TV? He wiped out this mom and kids, they were on bikes? And they took away his license and he went to jail for life?”
    “Relax, George,” said Rosemary. “One swig of vodka does not a DWI make. What gives me the willies,” she told Simone, “is that in six years they’ll be driving.”
    “Six years for me,” said George. “Ten years for her.”
    Rosemary was looping wide circles around the mall parking lot. She said, “Geoffrey had that male fetish about parking right by the entrance. I myself never had any desire to compete in that arena.” They parked a mile from any other cars and hiked out into the rain.
    Simone tottered behind the others on her ice-pick heels. George waited for her to catch up and then said, “Did you tell my mom about the Eskimo tape?”
    “No,” replied Simone. “I did not. But I had to do something. Your mother was planning to dress you as a lion or a tiger.” Once more telling the truth had involved going too far. It was wrong to make these children feel any more misunderstood by their parents—wrong of Simone to incriminate Rosemary in order to clear herself. But the force of the truth seemed to work on George, who believed and appeared to forgive her. The brisk walk through the cold drizzly lot made their talk heartfelt and intense.
    George said, “Simone, if you tell anyone I’ll never speak to you again.”
    Simone knew that George meant it. She said, “Don’t worry. I won’t.” There was no point asking him why he needed this secret kept. The tape was not about hunting or blood but about George’s secret religion. The igloo was a refuge to him, a haven where things were simple, uncomplicated by sarcasm or ambiguous adult nuance. Well, why shouldn’t people have ceremonies that gave them some courage or hope, just so long as it didn’t involve killing something for the occasion? Sometimes Simone envied believers their spirits and loas, whose tricks and whims and grudges so neatly explained the world. If your lover left you it might be consoling to think that someone had prayed to Erzulie and turned the goddess of love against you. Joseph said that voodoo was an instrument of ignorance and repression which should be rooted out of the people even if nothing took root in its place. Yet he was surprisingly tolerant of Inez’s flirtation with voodoo and amused by her stories about the jewelry and perfumes her rich friends put on Erzulie’s altar to secure her help with an affair, a seduction, or a revenge. It had taken Simone this long to hear how it must have sounded to Joseph—Inez prattling on about women who would do anything for love.
    The white atomic light of the mall made Simone’s eyeballs ache. It took all her bravery and resolve to put one foot in front of the other, and she couldn’t have done it had she let herself think how they looked—an Indian, an Eskimo, and two black rock-and-rollers. Her mini-skirt rode up on her thighs as she swayed on the needle heels.
    Rosemary said, “I love it! Look at us! I love going as the Third World contingent! Isn’t it like Carnival in Haiti?”
    But except for the fact that people wore costumes, it was the opposite of Carnival. Glaring and white instead of dark and hot, indoors instead of out, everyone in discreet little groups instead of jammed tight in one mass, and instead of a throbbing drone of music, drums, and voices, a watery stillness broken by bursts of mothers and children yelling. Though the mall was overheated its