Kelly Easton
Shapeshifters

 

 

WHEN CECIL STEPPED OUT of the parking structure, he was momentarily blinded. Although it was May, a blizzard had arrived. The mosquitoes that attacked him on his way into work were now corpses on ice. Insect popsicles, he joked, although no one was there to laugh. The city workers were on strike again. The road was unplowed. Not that it mattered. At sixteen dollars a gallon, he couldn’t afford to drive. His car was a carcass outside his apartment building, littered with parking tickets, devoured by petty thieves who stripped the tires and looted the glove compartment.

The only thing that kept him from turning back into the garage was the thought of Nadja. She’d be waiting for him at home, along with his buddy Walter, who she hated.

Cecil had found Nadja at Stein’s Kosher Deli. How Stein’s Deli managed to escape being swallowed by the conglomerate digestive system was a small miracle. Cecil had stopped for a loaf of rye bread and seen Nadja, her eye black and purple, crying over a cup of tea. Cecil figured that Stein had given her the tea gratis; he had a good heart. No one would go hungry around Stein. “Promise me, no mayonnaise on that bread, Mr. Cosby,” Stein said. “That’s the only way I’ll sell to a goy.”

“I promise.”

And even though he liked mayonnaise, put it on his French fries, his eggs, even his peanut butter sandwiches, he never went back on his word. He liked the idea of being an honorary Jew, admired the Jewish way of suffering. Agony, but with a sense of humor.

Cecil was to the door when he heard Nadja sob. It was meant for him, he knew. He also knew that if he turned around he was a dead man, because he was a dead man for anything: stray cats, his high-school buddy Walter, the landlady’s endless stories about her past lovers. He was easily distracted. It was why his life had come to nothing.

He walked over. Nadja’s eyes peered up like an old fashioned movie star, although a bad one: Jane Wyman or Martha Ray. His muscular thighs pressed against the table. The thighs weren’t an achievement of his. They just came that way.

“The world . . . coming to an end.” Her accent was heavy. He guessed she was one of the refugees who had flooded the country illegally. The continental shuffle, had created new borders. He no longer knew his geography, could not keep up with the nations that erupted overnight, the governments shifting alliances like unfaithful lovers. Even their state had been renamed three years ago, by a senator obsessed that terrorists all came from countries that started with vowels. So congress passed an act that added consonants to the beginnings: Gohoio; Biowa, Cutah, Ridaho. Only Alaska balked. A prominent blogger proposed they secede from the union, along with Texas. Still Cecil still wears his college t-shirt—Ohio State, Iowa City, Idaho—which in innocent days seemed an amusing joke on those who didn’t know the difference, Californians mostly.

“It’s just the satellites down again,” he finally said, but she was probably right. World peace had been achieved, and people got bored with it. Revolutions shot up like brush fires, were shown on TV with frequent commercial interruptions.

“I can see the future.” She stood up. There was victory in her face, but he deluded himself into thinking of it as his, a tiny misogyny of the old order, like from a musical. He could use her a bit, in her time of weakness: Damsel in distress. There is nothing like a dame. He realized that were she employed, say, and well dressed, say, she would not give him the proverbial time of day. He walked out of Stein’s. She followed him along the empty streets. “I want bread.”

He tucked the bread closer to his body, held it like a baby, tickled its chin. “Where’d you get that shiner?”

“What is . . . shiner?”

“Black eye.” Cecil could tell she was already thinking of dumping him.

She pulled him toward her and took the bread. She tore a piece off and began to eat his baby. She didn’t offer him any.

 

Four months ago, that had been. She was still with him. She sulked on the couch, fought with his buddy Walter, watched the chaos on TV. But never, not once, had they had sex. It would start with kissing, what he and Walter called in high school “heavy petting” but then she would freeze up. “Keep going,” she’d say. “Have sex with you want.”

“If you want,” he corrected. “How can I, with you lying there like a corpse?”

“What difference it make?”

Four months, and nothing. Another mouth to feed.

A wind sliced through his thin jacket. He moved on the icy streets like an old lady afraid of breaking a hip. He passed the hospital, the brightly lit emergency room that had expanded to a chai bar with wireless. It was the ultimate reality TV. People could come in while their family got sewn up from attacks with chainsaws or accidents with eating utensils. Who could forget the boy with the forked head?

He entered his building, then walked the ten flights. He slammed the door meaningfully when he came in. Walter and Nadja were glued to the TV on their separate sides of the couch, their own small countries in a shrunken world. Neither looked up.

Cecil went to the TV. A missile moved across the snowy screen like a weak straggler bird. “The news sucks today,” Walter said.

Nadja turned to him. “There is war. We under attack.”

“We need cable, Cecil,” Walter said. “We’re down to one channel. You can’t even get a football game on this fucking screen.”

“Feel free to purchase cable,” Cecil said.

“Before this, story of woman giving birth to twelve babies.” Nadja looked enraptured.
“It was a hoax,” Walter snapped. “Turns out the babies were actually lollipops in disguise. Polish slut!”

In high school, Walter had been wiry but mellow. Now, he was heavy, but electrical inside. He’d been fired from three jobs in a row: for smashing a vending machine to get a bag of Cheetos that wouldn’t drop; for wrecking a car; for threatening to strangle the boss’s chihuahua. “I have problems keeping up with the times,” he admitted when Cecil bailed him out.

Still, they’d always been there for each other. They were buds from way back, the good old days, when all they watched on TV were sports. They’d dated the same girl, then agreed she wasn’t worth it, had both been stricken with acne like craters on the face of the moon. They’d been faced together more times than Cecil could remember, vomiting tequila and beer in parking lots and on front lawns.

“Missile headed for us.” Nadja pointed to the missile. “And you talking about lollipops.”

“Missile is headed for us. Speak English, Pollack!”

“I was rich in Poland. I had servants. Years ago, when Poland had chance, my father say to president, ‘Find one thing we do well and capitalize, like fast and safe autos.’ But president chose canned sardines, and Poland went to dogs.”

“Who was the president?” Walter sneered.

“Some man. It’s always man who causes trouble.”

“If your dad was so important, you should know.”

“I forget.”

“You’re a liar. A goddamned phony. You’re probably from Arkansas.”

“Sharkansas,” Cecil corrected. He went into the kitchen. The dishes were piled into the sink. “Nadja, I bought ground beef. Can you do something with hamburger?”

“What? What I do with hamburger?”

“Earlier they said a plague has been let loose. A strain of TB that’s gotten resistant to antibiotics,” Walter said.

“Consumption,” Nadja corrected.

“Huh?”

“I said consumption is what they call tuberculosis. The disease consumes the lungs, the breath . . .”

“She’s creeping me out, Cecil. Tell her to shut up.”

“Make him go home, Cecil,” Nadja begged. “Facist!”

“I told you. Walter’s my buddy. He hangs out here.”

“I want to make love.”

“Now?”

“Make him go and we’ll sex.”

She unbuttoned her blouse. Her skin was the color of birch bark. She smelled like raw potatoes.

“Go home, Walter.” Cecil was surprised at the coldness of his own voice. His shaking hands.

“But it’s . . . dangerous out there.”

“You heard the man,” Nadja hissed. “You not wanted.”

“You’ll be sorry!” Walter ran out the door, sobbing.
The sex became a regular option. Cecil started doing the cooking and cleaning. It made him feel old fashioned for a while, the way he’d felt when he and Walter won a football game and went out with the team for cokes.

After, Nadja was talkative. “Wintertime, in Poland, we would shoot a deer and hang it on hooks in the village hall. Everyone share. No one knew whose deer they were eating. We were so poor, but still, we were a community.”

“I thought you were rich.”

“I have been both.”

“All of your stories about Poland sound like they’re from some nineteenth century novel. Where are you really from?”

“I came here because I heard it was a good place. What a lie.”

“Better than eating deer on hangers.”

“The good life snuck out like dinner guest who steal silverware. But why?”

Cecil thought about that. He had a feeling it was something small: the glut of restaurants serving buffalo wings and fried mozzarella, the volume of TV commercials, the salaries of baseball players. It all reminded Cecil of a childhood story called Shapeshifters. It was a frightening tale about how things transformed in the night: a man into an ironing board, a tree into a monkey, a gun into a sausage.

 

A month passed. No missiles hit, but the airport was out and the cell towers. The changes in weather had given him a cough. No one came to park at the garage where he worked. All of the monitors died but one. Cecil thought of Nadja as he watched the emptiness float past him on the screen. He’d heard that when you die, you travel down a tunnel with images from your life. Would his tunnel be filled with empty parking spaces, the blue wheelchair symbols the only color?

One night, he walked by Stein’s bakery. It was closed. The bread racks were empty. The smashed windows were papered with posters offering word processing, dog watching, and prostitution. A drawing showed a king on the throne doing his business on a small child. Beneath, in black marker, was written: THE RICH ARE SHITTING ON US!

“What took long?” Nadja asked when he got home. She sat on the floor in her bra and underwear. Walter was back in front of the TV. Cecil wondered how he had managed to become fat, when food was so scarce. He worried that this wasn’t actually Walter, but an imposter.

Cecil knelt beside Nadja. “What are you doing?”

“Meditating.”

“You should put some clothes on.”

As if on cue, Walter turned his attention to Nadja.

“Go home, now, Walter. Okay?”

“This is my home. I gave up my apartment.”

“When?”

“After you let her move in.”

“Where do you go when you leave?”

“The fire escape.”

“The Dalai Lama is lecturing about compassion.” Nadja jumped up. “It’s at the Convention Center. Let’s go.”

“The Convention Center burned down,” Walter said. “Besides, the Tibetans are free so who cares?”

Nadja ran toward Walter and began hitting him. Walter pinned down her arms. It was too similar to an embrace and Cecil wanted to pull her away, but the room felt like a Tilt-a-Whirl. “Why is it so hot in here?” Cecil unbuttoned his shirt and threw it in the sink. “I’m coming down with something. One of you has to get a job.”

“The slut can get a job.”

“I have to hear the Dalai Lama.” Nadja struggled in Walter’s arms. “Only he can save me.”

“I’ve saved you,” Cecil said. “Consider yourself saved.”

“Different kind of saved.”

“I had a dream last night,” she said. “About the Dalai Lama. I was swimming in a river filled with funeral pyres and floating heads. The water kept rising. There was no place to get to shore. I struggled along, grabbing whatever I could hold onto, not caring if I made someone else drown.”

“It was just a dream,” Cecil said. “Wasn’t it just a dream, Walter?”

Walter shrugged. “Who cares?”

“The Dalai Lama was on the shore. In his saffron robes, his shaved head. Do you know how he is chosen? By signs. By circling birds, by the direction of clouds. The last Dalai Lama liked to fix radios, but this one likes to sing. Even as a baby, he could sing in several voices at once. He looks at me with his compassionate eyes, and I am saved. He is seven years old.”

“You know what I brought home for dinner?” Cecil pulled a jar out of his pocket. “Caviar! Can you believe it? I’ll send Walter out for champagne. He can rob a liquor store. We’ll start making him useful.”

Curfew started. The sirens howled. The Pope once gave a mass at Dodger Stadium. Would a world spiritual leader kneel in the ashes at the Convention Center?

“Are you going to take me, Cecil?” Nadja begged.

“I can’t go out there again.”

“Then I’m lost!”

Cecil remembered a song from Damn Yankees. If there were a savior, it would be baseball: Two lost souls, on the highway of love . . . Isn’t it great? Isn’t it grand? We’ve got each udder.

Walter pushed Nadja onto the couch. They began kissing.

It was here. Cecil’s own little apocalypse. He coughed and blood splattered onto the counter.

The TV sounded the emergency alert. Cecil rushed to the set. “Something is flying toward us! I can see it on the news. How did this happen?”

“This is how it happens,” Nadja said from beneath Walter, no trace of accent left. “You’re in your own land. You don’t notice it. There are other lands. You don’t pay attention. The skin you’ve pressed against for years has grown slack. You don’t notice. The landlord’s son has taken over for him. But you still call him Charlie, thinking he’s the same man. The apartments all look the same, even the residents, dressed in khaki’s and topsiders, as if they live by the sea. You open someone’s door, mistaking it for your own. One room leads to another, like in an Italian movie. But you don’t notice. What are you adding to this world you haven’t noticed?”

An explosion sounded outside. The sky lit up. “Is it a bomb?” Cecil rushed to the window. Pieces of street illuminated and went dark, like photos of a crime scene on reality TV. “What is it?”

Another explosion. Orange sparks erupted in the sky, then blue, then green. Cecil watched out the window, but still couldn’t tell if it was real or unreal, a bomb or fireworks, or even if it was beautiful.

***

 

from Invisible Cities (TLR, spring 2013)

Kelly Easton is the author of several novels for children and young adults, such as Hiroshima Dreams: The Outlandish Adventures of Liberty Ames; and The Life History of a Star. Awards include the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award, and the Golden Kite Honor Award. She is on the faculty at Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Her particular interest is writing in clinical settings.