“Am I?”
“What?”
“Untrustworthy.”
“Maybe.”
“I mean, we met less than an hour ago. Doesn’t seem like something a misanthrope would do—sit here and eat with a stranger.”
“I’m a rebel, I guess.”
“So, I’m cool?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know you yet,” I said. “What usually happens is I get to know someone and then I realize they’re not really as cool as they seemed. Or something.”
“That’s a high bar.”
“Nothing wrong with a high bar, right? Why else are you smiling at people all day in the mall?”
“True. But you can’t hold everyone up to your expectations.”
“Who says?”
“You don’t have any friends, right? So, that should be enough proof that it’s not working out.”
“I don’t want any friends,” I said. “What about that?”
“You’re different,” he said. He was smiling, so this was a compliment. Yet I wasn’t sure what to say to him. “If you can do that interview, I think you’re someone who needs to comment on this for my thesis.”
“I thought we were already doing the interview,” I said. We both laughed. “So I guess we should talk about music again before it’s time for us both to get back to whatever we were supposed to be doing.”
“I don’t know. I still want to know why you don’t want any friends,” he said.
I thought about it. “I just don’t need them.”
“Do you have a close family?”
“Sorta.”
“Brothers and sisters?”
“Just me.”
“So your parents must be cool, then.”
“Yeah. They are.”
“So the high bar started at home, eh?”
I laughed. “Yeah. You could say that.”
“You’re interesting.”
“You think?”
“See what I mean?”
“I’ve never fit in, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “Not sure if I want to.”
“Heh,” he grunted. Then he took our empty plates to the trash can. I stood up and when he saw me standing, he looked a little disappointed, as if he wanted to talk more.
“I have to get going,” I said.
“Cool. It was nice meeting you,” he said. He handed me a card. “So, you’re serious? You’ll do an interview?”
“Sure. No problem.”
“My number is on there. Call me and we’ll set it up.”
“Okay,” I said, only glancing at the card before I put it in my pocket.
“See you soon, then,” he said. We shook hands. His handshake was firm. Mine was also firm. We both had high bars.
Transmission from handsome Peter: His father never liked him and always told him to cut his hair. One time, he told Peter he looked like a faggot.
I smiled at people on my way to the fountain outside Sears. Peter was right. No one smiled back. If anything, the response was the opposite. Smiling at people made them uncomfortable.
I got a few transmissions from passersby and I took notes for The History of the Future but I found myself preoccupied by thoughts. Mostly Peter, sometimes the USS Pledge guy, but as lunchtime grew nearer, Ellie.
I didn’t know what I’d say to her to finally get her out of my life. She lived across the road, so unless I planned on staying in the darkroom or moving away, it was going to be awkward.
I walked around the usual senior citizen haunts and looked for the USS Pledge guy. I even walked around the mall outside—where some people did their daily walk dressed in fashionable workout gear. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t inside, either.
On my way back into the mall, I passed a flea market–type stand—baseball cards, old vinyl records and other bizarre retro stuff. A pair of sunglasses caught my eye. They were shaped like a bat. The lenses were red. They had little bats that hung on chains as earpieces. I bought them for ten bucks and put them on.
The red glow was part darkroom flashback and part metaphor. I was Glory O’Brien, bat, seeing red. Mad at the world. I was the petrified bat—dead on the inside and fooling you. I was dead to every expectation. Dead to nail polish. Dead to fashion. Dead to celebrity gossip. Dead to what you thought of me. I was free because you would never know me.
Maybe the red lenses made me a little nuts, but that’s what I thought.
I am no one special and I am free.
People stared at me in the glasses and I started to feel self-conscious, so I took them off and kept looking for my USS Pledge guy.
On my fourth trip around the center of the mall, I started to feel stupid. Maybe the USS Pledge guy wasn’t even from here. Maybe he’d been visiting a friend or had come to the mall with his daughter or something. It was almost lunchtime. I figured my best chance was the food court. Even though it had only been two hours since I ate the taco with Peter, I was starving.
Cancer enchiladas
On my way to the food court, I looked for Peter, to see if he was still as good-looking as he’d been that morning. Or to see if he was sitting on a bench somewhere asking another girl if he could interview her. The thought had crossed my mind. From the right angle his interview/thesis line could have been something he said to every girl he met at the mall. What did I know?
I didn’t find him, but I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I was sure he had something to do. I was sure he’d show up somewhere… and he did.
“Who’s that?” Ellie asked me while we waited in line for calzones. He’d waved and sat down at the area with the most traffic—presumably to smile at people coming to eat their lunch.
I said, “Peter.”
“Where did he come from?”
“I met him this morning,” I said. She made a face as if to say she didn’t like me meeting anyone.
Ellie and I ate lunch and talked about our transmissions. Ellie periodically looked over at Peter and eye-flirted.
“So? Did you see anything new today?” I asked Ellie.
“I now know that some guy I never met before likes to smell people’s shoes when they’re not looking. And I know about some woman’s grandfather who used to be a tap dancer and I know about some little kid and how her daughter is going to live in the trees.”
“Exile,” I said. “She’s going to live in exile.”
“Did you find your wheelchair guy?” Ellie asked.
“I’m hoping he comes to lunch,” I answered, then looked around. No wheelchair guy.
Ellie was trying to eat a Styrofoam plate full of hot, radiated enchiladas with a plastic knife and fork. Everything was cancerous. I took a picture of it. Cancer Enchilada.
Ellie kept looking at Peter, trying to get his attention. I watched her and realized that I’d thought Ellie was the only person I’d ever have in my life. But in one short morning I’d met a real person who wasn’t interested in where I could drive him or what I could buy him at the drugstore. He was just interested in whether I smiled or not. And in what music I liked.
“What’s happening to us?” I asked.
“We drank God,” Ellie said. “Now we can see everything… including shoe smellers, apparently.”
She laughed but I hadn’t meant it that way. I meant it in the way she didn’t know yet. I meant it to say: Why are we even pretending anymore? I said, “Everything is changing.”
Ellie looked at Peter again and then looked at me. She said, “His parents live in an over-fifty-five place in Florida and his dad likes to ride his bike a lot. It’s green. His mom hates wearing a bathing cap when she uses the community’s pool. They have a cat.”
Peter looked at me then.
Transmission from Peter: When his grandmother moved into a nursing home, she was bullied by other residents and combated it by playing jazz piano before break fast every morning. Peter will do the same thing as an old man during the Second Civil War. He will play harmonica every chance he can to remind fellow rebels that there is
good in the world.
“Holy shit,” Ellie said. “He’s coming over.”
He stopped and said hello. I introduced him to Ellie. Ellie put that pout on her face. I bet if she’d had time, she’d have unbuttoned an extra button on her new blouse.
I asked Peter, “Did she pass your test?”
“Nope,” he said.
“What test?” Ellie asked.
“How many checkmarks?”
“Eleven. Finally hit double digits,” he said as he waved and walked away.
Ellie looked annoyed that we didn’t answer her question. “You should have asked for his number,” she said.
I got up to throw my trash away. “I already have it,” I said.
I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t hope that the future I saw for Peter was also my future. I was hoping that, of all the people he was meeting at the mall during his experiment, I was the one who turned out to be his soul mate in June 2014.
File under: Dumb but true.
File under: I was sick of not living my life.
As Ellie and I made our way down the escalator, she said, “You’re still pissed about the other day, aren’t you?”
“Not really.”
“You are,” she said. “You won’t even look at me.”
“I’m on a fucking escalator, Ellie.”
“Well,” she said. “Even before now.”
I waited until we were down the escalator and out the doors. If we were finally going to have a huge fight, then I wanted enough oxygen to yell as loud as I could.
And I did. “What’s your problem?” I asked this in loud, enunciating syllables. Three smoker guys circled around an ashtray/trash can looked over at me.
“What’s your problem?” she asked back.
I didn’t have the energy to go all the way down to her level. The bar was too low.
“All I did was ask if you’re still pissed about the other day. You obviously are.”
“And I said no. But what I say doesn’t seem to matter because you already have all the answers. So why should I even talk to you about it?”
“You are, though,” she said. “Right?”
“No.”
“So what’s with you today?”
I thought about it. “I have shit on my mind, okay? And you’ve made it very clear that I can’t share it with you.”
“Like you ever shared anything with me in your life,” she said.
“I shared something with you yesterday. And look what happened. Seriously. Why would anyone share shit with someone who’s so self-centered?”
She was about to yell something, but then she stopped. “Self-centered?”
“Self-centered.”
I started walking to the car. She followed.
“I never really noticed that before,” she said. “Being self-centered, you’d think I would have, eh?”
“I guess. I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you want to go back in? See Peter more? I don’t want to make you leave early if you don’t want to.”
“It’s fine. The old guy wasn’t there. I’ll try another day.”
She got in the passenger’s-side door when I unlocked it.
“I was kinda hoping to stay out all day,” she said. “My mom will just put me to work if I go back.” [Insert laugh track laughter.]
I was about to start the car, but I stopped. I looked at her and she frowned. I said, “We can go back in if you want.”
“How about somewhere else?” [Insert laugh track laughter.] “Main Street?” Ellie said.
Main Street was the only living street left near our local poverty-eaten city. It was made possible by people who got a revitalization grant. It was a cute, real street where there were stores that didn’t have a corporate logo and didn’t import everything from China.
So I drove us to Main Street.
And on Main Street, Ellie and I went our separate ways. We agreed to meet back at the car at four. I sat on a fancy-looking bench and smiled at people. Nobody smiled back. I took a small notepad from my purse and started keeping track. An X for no smile-backs, a checkmark for smile-backs. I got some transmissions, too.
Transmission from X #4: A distant descendant will open a coffee shop on Jupiter’s first space orbiter. He will serve the best chai lattes in the galaxy.
Transmission from X #8: His father forgot to turn the coffee-maker off this morning and melted the countertop in his condo.
Transmission from X #14: His grandson will rob a bank in Mt. Pitts, Pennsylvania, and will spend nine years in prison for it. His other grandson will attempt to abduct a seven-year-old girl and will go to the same prison for three months before he is released. That grandson will euthanize his grandfather so he can have his car, a 1997 Dodge Neon with no air-conditioning and low mileage.
Transmission from X #19: His ancient ancestor fought in the Mongol invasion of Iraq in the thirteenth century. He fired arrows from a crossbow and killed seven people with his bare hands.
Transmission from X #24: Her great-granddaughter will be exiled after the Fathers Count Law is passed. She will join the rest of the exiles—all single mothers—and form a community that lives deep in the forests east of their suburb.
Transmission from my only checkmark, a woman in her twenties with a really cool tattoo on her clavicle: She will join the revolution and take food to the forests. She will lead many to safety. She will lose both of her daughters to the machine. She will eventually become my best friend.
I smiled back at her smile. She slowed as we looked at each other. I already liked her. I already wanted to hang out with her more than I wanted to hang out with Ellie.
She made me see the possibilities.
Fact: There are so many people in the world.
Why was I hanging out with one I didn’t really like?
Was everyone stuck with geographical friends like this? Longitude-and-latitude friends?
I sat on the nearest bench and looked at my paper. Thirty-four Xs and one checkmark. My cheeks hurt from smiling so much. Or maybe they were fatigued because so few smiled back.
Peter must have been exhausted. I took a phone picture of my tally and sent it to him on his cell phone number, which I found on his card. I didn’t want to get too familiar. I just thought he might want to know that he inspired me. Maybe smiling at people would be my new revenge on the bullshit world.
Maybe smiling at people would be my cure for mother-in-the-oven.
Would we care more?
Smiling at people put me in zone, like, 9. It was true what they said about it having a psychological effect on a person. I was happier because I smiled… not the other way around.
Ellie found me on my bench and sat down.
“I’ve stopped caring,” she said.
“About what?”
“About the transmissions.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I just want it to go away now.”
“Yeah. It will. Don’t worry.”
“Why do you sound so sure?”
“I don’t know.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry I’m self-centered,” she said.
“I’m sorry you are, too.”
“I thought about it and I guess I make a pretty bad friend.”
I didn’t want her to feel bad. We had enough going on. So I lied. “You’re not that bad,” I said.
“Let’s just go home.”
I agreed and we walked to the car.
“My mom is throwing another star party tomorrow night,” she said.
“That’s quick,” I said. “Two in one week?”
“Something about the planets,” she said, pretending to be disinterested in the planets.
I thought about what Jasmine’s parties might have been like back when Darla and Dad were probably doing psychedelic mushrooms and knew pornographers and stuff.
Not to say I cared what other people did with their time or their bodies. I couldn’t have cared less if Jasmine liked
to swing naked by her hair from a tree while every one of the commune dwellers tossed live rodents at her.
What I did care about was how young Rick must have been when he started impregnating women on the commune. It made me wonder, if Rick was a girl, would we care more? Would there be a court-approved name for what women on the commune were doing with him? Would we shame him for teenage pregnancy? Could we? In a world that screamed Be Sexy or Just Die Now, could we really blame him?
“Did you hear me?” Ellie said.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I was thinking about something else.”
“That Peter guy, right?”
“Ew. No.”
“Um, do you have eyes?”
“I didn’t mean he’s not hot. He’s hot. But he’s too old for me, you know?”
“I guess,” she said.
“So the party. I can’t make it tonight,” I said.
“It’s tomorrow night.”
Shit. “Oh.”
“Markus Glenn is coming. He’s going to pretend like he’s my boyfriend so Rick gets jealous,” she said.
“Markus Glenn the porn kid? How did you even see him?”
“He was running. Up our road. Saw me and we talked. That’s all.”
“You’d make a cute couple,” I said.
“Stop. That’s not why he’s coming. I told you.” She sighed. “I wish I could go back to last Saturday and not drink the bat,” she said. I found it strange that she chose to blame the bat. Sleeping with Rick was long before the bat.
“I thought you thought it was cool. I mean, a little, at least. Right? Clan of the petrified bat and all that?”
“Meh. I don’t want to even look at my parents anymore, you know?”
“I saw my dad’s ancestors eating a big fucking deer. It was weird.”
“Yeah. My mom mustn’t have been married to my dad yet. She was naked. I don’t want to talk about it.”
So we’d both seen Jasmine Blue naked. And neither of us wanted to talk about it. I reached for my door handle to get out and she said, “Glory?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you sure we’re gonna be okay?”
“Sure.”
“I mean you and me?”
Fact: I was sure we were not going to be friends a year from now. But I lied. “I think so. I don’t know.”