She’s followed later by fellow BP employees Hunter Etienne, Adam Kline, Fiona Corrie, and Juliet Stevens. . . .
One hour and twenty-three minutes into the footage, the shot centers on Eric Loan as he crosses the street toward the camera. This is Eric’s first appearance, long before he filmed any events himself.
He wears Chuck Taylors, fitted jeans, and a BP sweatshirt as per the Brief Pose dress code. . . . He was hired the day before, after quitting his job at the Mermaid Coffee Co. where Tara bought her coffee. Unlike his coworkers, Eric doesn’t go directly into the store. Instead, he interacts with some of the protesters and watches a news report displayed on a laptop. (Sartain 56-59)
I jog across the street, hoping to push past the protest as quickly as possible, but a laptop on a cart catches my eye, halting me in my tracks.
Footage shows a room plastered with BP catalog pages. I think it might be my room, but the layout is different. I lean in close to hear the program over the protesters.
A REPORTER narrates the news: “Carl Lewis shot his mother yesterday with a shotgun before fatally shooting himself. Pages from the Brief Pose catalog were covering the walls of his room. This is the fourth suicide connected to Brief Pose. Law enforcement officials suspect a suicide pact. Matthew Weber, the Brief Pose CEO and founder, could not be reached for comment. Brief Pose’s public relations department has yet to release a statement.”
At the time, it was theorized to be a suicide cult, but clearly, these cases were outliers of a mass epidemic that in hindsight should’ve triggered a CPSC investigation. . . . It was too radical of an idea to purpose: Brief Pose, an American clothing brand, was the causal agent in four cases of murder-suicide.
The news report was originally included in the archive under Supplemental Material but was removed at the request of NBC due to copyright infringement. . . .
For approximately two minutes, Eric watches the news report, before an obese female teenager grabs him by the collar, demanding his full attention. She goes by Abigail in the footage, always wearing dark rimmed glasses, but it’s still unclear if this name is an alias or not, despite the fact she figures so heavily in the finished film.
The shot shakes violently as Bram maneuvers to capture the action. Abigail stares at Eric, holding him close. Eric shrinks back, obviously afraid to antagonize her. The shot zooms in on her face as she says, “The aliens are here. They're inside us. Don’t let BP get you too.”
What seems like a bit of overacted theater is probably the first documented signs of mental degradation caused by the pheromone. . . .
During the first day’s footage, Eric appears in one other shot. . . . He smokes a cigarette behind Brief Pose in the alley and talks to himself. The camera is too far away to hear what he’s saying. After about five minutes, he notices Bram recording him and yells, “Hey, you! Get the fuck out of here!” Bram goes back to the protest and continues to film people entering Brief Pose until the camera, having likely run out of power, abruptly ends the shot. (Brian Sartain, 59-61)
I pry Abigail’s hands off my collar, desperate to be away from her, and elbow protesters out of the way. I feel better about my own sanity. I’m crazy, but I’m not that crazy. I don’t believe in alien abductions. Spending an afternoon in the catalog isn’t the same as shooting people. I’m nothing like these freaks.
13.2
In the men's section of BP, Adam, Fiona, and Juliet silently play catch. The rugby ball knocks over a clothing pile. They leave the mess for later because it doesn’t matter; no one is coming in anyway.
We could call the police, but I think we’re using the protest as an excuse for some downtime. It’s my second day, the work is already boring as hell, and now I’ve run out of things to do. At Mermaid Coffee Co., I’d be rushing around all day without any time to think. Here, even if costumers come in, I still just fold things and ask if anyone needs help. This weekend, after Loo’s funeral, Tara said she’d teach me how to use the register. Exciting stuff.
Those psychos in the news report, they flipped out and killed people they loved. Could that happen with me? I know, given a push, I’m suicidal. How far away is that from a murderous rampage?
Most of the day passes without social interaction. I hate it. It gives me all the time in the world to obsess, but at least I’m not in my apartment alone, looking through the catalog for the millionth time. I’m uncomfortable around my silent coworkers, but here at least I’m less likely to walk into a white light.
I’m not safe alone anymore.
In the checkout section, Tara files her nails while I set up a cologne display using a confusing diagram. I don’t ask for help. I’m hoping this activity will take up the rest of my shift. Yuki sits on a counter, texting. Who is she texting? A boyfriend maybe.
I pull out my phone, just to check the time, not that anyone would care if I was texting too. It’s still early. Time couldn’t be going any slower. I could text Shirin, I guess. With all that’s been happening, I almost forgot about her. That’s not a bad thing. But I could text her now just to pass the time. I could forgive her. After all, she was just looking out for herself when she kicked me out. She grew up in foster care too and probably just couldn’t tolerate another bad living situation. But why forgive her? I could never trust her, never be close to her again.
Tara speaks up. “Can I just say the protesters are like twice as insane as before?” Someone finally talking is a huge relief.
“It would be accurate,” Yuki says under her breath.
“What hypocrites! I sold that girl with the glasses like twenty catalogs at least. Now she has a problem with us? I was doing her a favor. I could've carded her, and this is the thanks I get. I just really need my kickboxing class right now.”
The conversation feels fragile; if it stops now, I fear we’ll go back to silence. I’m so tired of my churning mind that I speak up on impulse: “Have you been seeing things?”
“What do you mean?”
Yuki gives me a puzzled look, and I want to sink into the floor. “It’s okay,” she says, “but you're going to have to give us a little bit more to go on.”
“I'm trying, I just… I think I might be losing my mind.”
I hear the front door. Saved by a customer, but no, it’s JuanCarlos. He kisses Tara. “What’s up?”
“Eric is telling me about how he’s going crazy.”
He crosses his arms. I hate that smug look, but at the same time, I know my loathing is a bit irrational. I need to stop assuming the worst. Loo seemed to think he was an okay guy. Tara likes him enough to date him. I should try to get along.
“He won't make fun,” Tara says. “I promise.”
I have to talk to somebody. At this rate, I’ll never make it to Loo’s funeral. “Ever since Loo died, I've been seeing things.”
“What kind of things?” Yuki says.
“Things from the catalog.”
“You really are obsessed,” JuanCarlos says.
“Fuck you.”
“He's not wrong,” Tara says. “You are obsessed. How many catalogs have you bought?” Of course, she’d side with him.
“You do realize JuanCarlos thinks Buddhism is crap, right?”
I don’t wait for a response and storm off. Yuki follows me into the stockroom. What does she want?
“I fucking hate them,” I say. “Our friend just died. And they act like nothing happened like everything is normal. Loo is dead!” I’m shocked by my own outburst.
“You're not crazy.”
What does Yuki care? Who is she, really? She doesn’t know me. We’re not friends.
She gets close. Her proximity makes me nervous, but something about her, the way she looks at me maybe, makes me confident, almost okay in my own skin despite my nerves. She’s an outcast here, I realize. She doesn’t go and get coffee with the other girls.
“Nobody talks about it,” she says, “but we've all been seeing things. Movement in the posters. Sand on the floor. And a few times… Er
ic, I've been inside the catalog with the models, but they don’t seem like models, they seem like my friends.”
“Why didn't you say something before?”
“I was scared. They started as daydreams. I thought I’d forget about them. But then there was this door and this hallway—”
“In the dressing room.”
“Right! There was a bright light and then I was really there. I thought I had died. But when I came back, everything was okay. I tried to talk to the others about it, but they act like I’m crazy.”
“You're not crazy.”
“But, it's just in my head. Right?”
I honestly didn’t know, but it was in my head too. “How could we both have the same hallucination?”
I watch her searching eyes and see myself reflected back. Is Yuki alone too? Is she as isolated as I am?
“We could go together,” we say as one.
During the rest of my shift, we give each other conspiratorial looks. Sharing this secret with her has made me giddy with possibility. Maybe Yuki wasn’t texting a boyfriend. Maybe she was surfing the web or playing a game. Maybe she wants to start something with me. I’m getting ahead of myself, but even if going into the catalog together doesn’t work, we still confessed this secret to each other. We share a connection.
Tara sits in lotus pose by the register on the counter, meditating. “Peace comes from accepting impermanence,” she says to herself. She makes a humming noise that never seems to end.
Yuki whispers in my ear, “And she thinks we’re the crazy ones.”
I don’t care about Tara, JuanCarlos, or their budding romance, not anymore. I was jealous. I admit it. I thought they were rubbing their relationship in my face, but they were just trying to be happy. JuanCarlos hasn’t done anything for me to hate him. He just has a huge loving family, and friends, and goes to college while I dropped out. He has a girlfriend while I’ve been alone. We don’t get along, but it’s not his fault. I wish him the best and thank God I don’t have to work with him anymore.
My shift ends. Yuki goes on her smoke break in the alley behind BP. She smokes, but no one is perfect.
Protesters chant in the distance. Damn, she makes smoking look good! I’d start smoking for her if she wanted me to. I stand next to her, closer than I normally would. I mean I barely know her, right? The secondhand smoke feels intimate, and the rising curls would look great on film.
“I remember seeing you for the first time. Do you remember?”
She looks at the sky, thinking back.
“It was just after Thanksgiving,” I prod. “It was not a happy time in my life.”
Recognition lights up her face. “That’s right. We had just opened.”
“You smiled at me. Do you remember?”
She nods.
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you smile?”
“You were wearing your uniform. I thought you were cute. Why did you quit?”
I study my shoes. “I still remember how happy that smile made me. I thought it was weird I could feel good after such a crappy Thanksgiving.”
“Eric?”
I look up at her.
“I had a crappy Thanksgiving too.”
I laugh.
“I'll see you when I get off,” she says. “Okay? We'll go tonight.” She stamps out her cigarette.
She touches my cheek. It’s strange, like a mother comforting a child, but it’s nice. “You're not alone.”
She goes inside.
Emotion wells up. It’s embarrassing. I clear my throat.
Bram films me from the end of the alley. How long has he been there? “Hey, you! Get the fuck out of here!”
He scurries away. What are they even protesting? Everything is fine. I finally have someone.
Marshall grabs my arm. I almost jump out of my skin. He has washed his face and slicked back his hair, making him look slightly Native American. I always thought he was Caucasian, just tanned by the sun from being outside all the time, but I guess not. He almost looks dashing, with his eyepatch, his gaunt cheeks, and a white rug draped around his shoulders. He wants to show me something not here.
He walks off.
I hesitate, but I’m curious and follow. I turn the corner.
He hasn’t gone far. He glances back, and I jog to catch up with him. Follow the white rabbit, as they say.
13.3
EXT. MARLOW STREET - DAY
As we walk, Marshall tells me, “You think I'm always in the same place. But it's not true. I’m other places. I'm as real as anybody.”
“You smell real enough. Is that a bathmat?”
“Just listen. Not everyone is like us. They say that everyone has a life, a past, and a history, that everyone has connections. It's not true. Some people are just fiction. Look.”
People crowd the plaza. A couple throws a coin into a large circular fountain. A woman braves the cold to read a book and smoke a cigarette. Old men play chess to the sounds of pigeons. Shops line the outside of the square, many people with shopping bags congesting the perimeter sidewalk. It’s like any other place in the city.
“Look at them. Shopping, going to work. Trading away moments of their lives for money, money to buy things, things they think give them value.”
We stand beside each other and survey. While he speaks some truth, it’s an exaggeration.
“Nobody thinks a T-shirt is going to solve life's problems.”
“Don't you?”
“I gotta go.”
He calls after me. “It's a mistake to think them all real. Their lives are based on fiction and so that's what they are, fiction.”
“My life isn't fiction.” I feel defensive. Why is this getting under my skin?
“I gave my wife and my daughter money. That’s all I gave them, and they imagined my love. If a husband and father’s love can be imagined, anything can be imagined.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Stay
14.1
In my room, I sit on my love seat, anxiously awaiting Yuki’s arrival. I glance at the time on my phone. The pages on my wall don’t feel like such a big deal now. Yuki won’t mind. She understands my obsession. She has been in the catalog too.
Out of nowhere, a sopping-wet Loo is sitting next to me.
I put my head between my hands. “I should've known you'd haunt me.”
“Let go.”
“Not this again.” Loo thinks I still blame myself, but she’s wrong. “It was the Santa's fault. There's nothing for me to feel bad about.”
Imaginary water soaks down the walls and ruins the collage. At least I think the water is imaginary. Unless some major flooding is going on upstairs.
“Let go,” she repeats.
Or maybe she thinks I’m still bitter over Mindy and Shirin’s betrayal, but she’s wrong about that too. “Mindy and Shirin let me down, but I'm over it. I'm better.”
An approaching RUMBLE shakes the room. The subway train! I'm terrified, but it soon fades. There’s no impact, this time.
“See, I’m alright.” I’m still trying to relax after the adrenaline surge.
“You’re not alright.” She takes the shell from my hand, makes a fist, and opens her hand to reveal that the shell is now a fine pink powder. “Yuki can't help.”
“What?”
“It has to be you. You're the only one that can deal. You’re the only one that can let all this go.”
“What does Yuki have to do with it? What do you mean?”
“Go to my funeral. It will give you a chance. All this fantasy, it's not healthy.”
There's a KNOCK on my door. I don’t want Yuki to see Loo but then remind myself that Loo isn’t really here.
Loo blows the powder from her hand. The cloud causes me to cough as I get up.
“This stuff kills,” she says.
I open my door to Yuki standing there in the hall.
I glance back. Loo has vanished along with the pink clo
ud. It’s hard to accept she died in an accident less than a week ago when she keeps showing up like this.
“Aren't you gonna ask me in?”
We sit on my love seat with the BP catalog open between us on our laps.
“So how do we do this?” I say.
The first time I tried pot with a friend in high school it felt forbidden, exciting, and oddly intimate. That’s what this feels like.
“Look at the catalog and see what happens,” she says.
We scoot closer, ready to light up and fly. Nothing happens. We’re looking at a catalog of naked people. It’s awkward.
“I think we're overdressed.” I'm startled by her statement. Does she mean we should get naked, like in the catalog? “If you're having second thoughts…”
I quickly pull off my shirt. If you want to get to Rome, dress like the Romans. We get up and undress, throwing our clothes on my bed.
We sit back down, in our underwear, and our thighs touch. Her skin is smooth and perfect. An erection starts to tent my boxer briefs.
“I think it’s the longing that does it,” she says.
“What?” My face heats.
“That transports us.” It takes me longer than it should to realize she’s not referring to my boner. “Just look at the pictures like you're homesick.”
I scoot away slightly, so we’re not touching. “I'll try, but you're…”
She scoots closer. “What?”
“Distracting me.”
I move the catalog over my lap enough to hide my arousal. We both continue looking through the pages, and I notice, out of the corner of my eye, Yuki suppressing a smile and glancing at me every so often.
I’m not sure when my surroundings fade. Like a million times before, it’s just me, the catalog, and a potent mixture of lust, longing, and acute loneliness (even with Yuki here).
I’ve never thought about it before, but after looking at the catalog, putting on BP clothing feels like BDSM aftercare: protective and soothing. An advertising campaign has seduced me. That’s all this is. I’ve tricked myself into thinking BP can fill the void.
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