Why Visit America
Page 38
I stood naked for a while in front of the bathroom mirror on the evening of my interview.
The flesh on my stomach had hardened. My teeth seemed to have gotten whiter. I was looking good.
I had set my lucky green ticket down on the counter. Glancing over, I saw that the ticket had a damp spot where the rippled water stain had always been. I picked it up, and then the ticket was dry and the stain was gone, leaving a blotch of water behind on the counter.
I put on my suit and my shoes, tucking the ticket into my pockets, along with my phone and my keys and my wallet. Violet hugged me, gripping me tight, suddenly getting emotional. I decided the hug meant that she forgave me for never wanting to have sex with her, or even be naked around her, which a couple of times she had gotten testy about, and for hardly ever talking to her, and for always being so gloomy. I decided the hug meant that she was proud of me. I was finally going to find a purpose. Or to try.
The leaves on the trees had changed from orange and yellow to a bright shade of green. Pigeons were pecking at the sidewalk. I was worried about being on time—I’d left early, but the streets were crowded. Just walking to the foot of the bridge took me over an hour, and the crowd on the bridge was even worse than in the streets, a tight press of bodies shuffling along with bent heads. Not to mention that the weather was looking bad—thick dark clouds had formed above the city, and gusts of wind were blowing around downtown, stirring up dust in the alleys.
But then the construction site came into view and it was still only late morning.
Ceremonial flames had been lit across the neighborhood. The neighborhood had been decorated with ceremonial papers. Thousands of people were swarming around. All sorts of humans had come out to watch the inaugural ceremony. I wasn’t just going to watch, though. I was actually going to get to go inside. I couldn’t stop trembling. I was so nervous, I actually got teary. Embarrassing, I know. Anyway, I did.
I wandered around for a while, wondering if any of the other volunteers had come. I didn’t recognize anybody. I needed to calm down. I was starting to panic. I felt completely overwhelmed, and distressed, and anxious, and also had that jittery hyper feeling that my body got when there was too much caffeine in my system. I walked to a coffee shop across the street to spit up some coffee.
I sat down by the window at a table with an empty cup. I had a perfect view of the construction site. I tried to relax. I waited. But everything felt wrong—there were no wrecking balls, no bulldozers, no excavators, no crew in vests. I suddenly felt terrified—what if there’d been a delay? What if the city ran out of funding, what if the project had been shut down, what if there would be no building after all? What would happen to my interview? Would my interview just be canceled?
I had just reached for the empty cup, about to spit up a mouthful of coffee, when the ceremony began.
It started without warning.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
The architects were brilliant—instead of wrecking balls, somehow using the weather, a strange haze of dust that formed in the streets, gradually becoming so thick in the air that the construction site faded from view and then the street faded and then the cars faded and then the fire hydrant and the bike rack and the sidewalk all faded and nothing was visible beyond the window except for that dark haze of dust, and then the ground started to tremble and with a powerful surge of energy the dust rushed through the streets, rapidly converging on the construction site, until with a blur of dust the air was suddenly clear again, the sidewalk and the bike rack and the fire hydrant and the cars and the street and the construction site were all visible, revealing a towering funnel of dust that had formed between the construction site and the clouds above downtown, billowing and churning and ripping the building straight from the ground—a whirl of shapes, trapezoids, scalenes, crescents, kites—concrete slabs the length of a city block, steel grids the width of a subway platform, fresh sheets of glass, leaping, unaided, into place—an entire skyscraper rising into standing position story by story by story, gradually replacing the dust with gleaming architecture, perfect parallel lines in alternating columns of black and white, as the clouds above downtown fed from the energy, getting thicker, getting darker, and a roof with an antenna appeared in the sky, and the crowd went just completely insane at the sight, at which point my father called me, I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket, glanced down at the screen but didn’t answer, couldn’t look away from what was happening, it was all just happening so fast. I felt something like terror now, something very different than the sadness, something separate—I got out of the chair and started to pace, I wanted to move, I needed to move, I had a ridiculous urge to run toward the building while it was still warm and smoking, to do something, to do anything, but couldn’t—I was afraid—and nobody needed my help anyway, I had already done my part in creating it. I sat back down in the chair, choking the life from my cup, and my father was calling again, I didn’t answer, I couldn’t answer, because now a second skyscraper was coming to life, another haze of dust formed in the streets and then rushed toward the construction site, revealing another towering funnel of dust between the construction site and the clouds above downtown, and as the crowd shrieked and screamed the storm ripped the building from the ground with a terrifying rumble, drawing the concrete and the steel and the glass into the sky, and then the bodies of humans, leaping from the pavement into open windows, into not just one building but both, hundreds of people, all of them born all at once as they went flying up along the faces of the buildings, seeing themselves, for the first time, as they glanced back at the glass. And then they were standing at the windows, just part of the sculpture, before disappearing inside, so many little new worms, wriggling off across time toward somebody else’s womb. Then the process seemed to reverse, the clouds no longer feeding from the buildings, but now the buildings feeding from the clouds, swallowing the storm into the inside of the towers, wherever those new humans had gone, leaving the sky empty, clear. And then, just when all of us down below thought that everything had finished, that there could be no more magic than this, then one after the other the mouths of the towers exploded, spitting out entire planes, which went soaring off into the sky, carrying cabins full of newborns.
* * *
I spit a couple mouthfuls of coffee into my cup, waiting for the crowd to scatter. The wind had blown out all the ceremonial flames. The ceremonial papers had floated off into the air. The construction had taken over an hour, but there were still a couple of minutes before the interview. I sat watching the street, which was already swarming with bicycles and buses and delivery vans and cabs. Businesspeople in suits went flocking toward the new buildings, some carrying briefcases, some carrying purses, some empty-handed or carrying bagels wrapped in tinfoil. A pair of people in matching hats, maybe teachers, herded columns of children into the plaza, pointing at the bronze sphere.
I spit a last mouthful of coffee into my cup, which was steaming now, full to the brim. I felt calm. Peaceful. I crossed the street and went into the first building that had grown out of the rubble, taking the elevator to the ninety-third floor.
A woman wearing cat-eye glasses was waiting for me at the door to her office.
“Come in, come in,” she said, before she had even given me her name.
She told me to sit in an armchair across from her desk.
“So you’re the artist?” she said, rifling through a drawer. I went to respond, but then she said, “Yes, here we go then, here’s the folder for you.”
“What folder?” I said.
“Your first assignment,” she said, handing me a beige folder full of paperwork. “A bit boring—it’s a promotional brochure about our different financial products. We’ll need you to take care of this layout for the cover. Just do the best that you can. You’ll have assistants eventually. We’re still working all of that out.”
“Wait, so that’s it? I already have the job?” I said.
“Yes, of course. We’re a n
ew division—we’ve only started just this morning. So we’ve been hiring on in droves. Mostly newborns, including myself. I had heard that you were one of the exceptions, though. I was told you’ve been around for quite some time.” She took off her glasses, rubbing her eyes. “I’m sorry if we seem disorganized. It’s been an overwhelming couple of hours for all of us. We’re still figuring everything out.” She put her glasses back on, glancing at her clock, then back at me. “Speaking of new hires, I’d better go see how the newborns are getting along. You’ve got a couple yourself, yes?”
“Sorry?”
“Newborns. You should have a claim ticket—did anybody give you a ticket?”
“No.”
“You didn’t get one? A little green thing?”
“Wait,” I said. “175?” I pulled the green ticket out of my pocket.
“Yes, that’s the one. They’ll be in the building across the plaza.”
I had started out the day unemployed. Now, I had both a job and assistants. I took the elevator down to the lobby, then smoked a clove, walking across the plaza. I was nervous about meeting my assistants. My assistants wouldn’t be scary, I decided. They would be boring. They would be polite. They would have cubicles.
But when the receptionist in the building saw my ticket, the receptionist pointed me away from the offices, down toward a brightly painted room at the end of the hall.
A guard with a nametag was standing at the door.
“175?” I said, giving the ticket to the guard.
The guard glanced back through the doorway, calling, “175!”
The corkboard beyond the doorway was pinned with messy drawings—snowy mountains, a bird next to a spotted egg, a stick figure wearing a police uniform. I heard some zipping noises, and then an elderly employee led a pair of children out into the hall, a boy and a girl, nearly identical, both carrying backpacks covered with tiny cartoon characters.
“Born just this morning,” the guard said.
“We found them after we’d brought the other kids in for a tour of the new daycare facility,” the elderly employee said, ruffling the children’s hair. “Apparently they’d been hiding in a bathroom.”
“They’re the last ones left. It’s late. Time to bring them home,” the guard said.
I stared at the children. Those same faces from the photos, but in three dimensions now, blinking and grinning. The boy had a runny nose. The girl wore a rainbow scrunchie. I had never had a feeling like that before. It was breathtaking. In that moment, I felt so glad to be alive.
“Come on,” I said, offering them my hands. “Let’s go.”
And so we went out to the street, and by the time we had hailed a cab they were already telling me stories, about the dark place they had woken up, and how confused they had been, and how uncomfortable they had been, and how long they had waited for the building to wake up too, and how awesome and pretty it had been when all of the walls had suddenly floated together and all of the lights had turned on inside, and about how much they’d already learned about sneezing, and how they’d gotten to work on some drawings, for just a couple of minutes, before they’d heard me arrive at the daycare, before it had been time to leave.
And then they wanted to know about where I’d been born, and what it had been like for me, how long I’d had to wait in a dark place of my own.
“Yes, yes,” I said, “I’ll tell you all about it.”
I didn’t, though. Instead, I lied—I invented a story, one which both was true and wasn’t. I did not tell them about my own birth. I did not tell them about their empty caskets, or about the time before I knew their mother, or about how long I had waited at the table in the coffee shop, completely unaware that they were somewhere inside of the buildings growing out of the ground. I did not tell them any of that, and will not tell them, not now, not ever. And nobody can blame me for that, I think. Not even myself.
Thanks
To Libby Burton, my fearless editor. Your patience and wisdom are awe-inspiring. You deserve a monument in Central Park. I am forever grateful to you, to Gillian Blake, to Kerry Cullen, and to the rest of the fam at Henry Holt.
To the dream team: Sarah Burnes, the smartest and kindest agent a writer has ever had; and Michelle Kroes and Darian Lanzetta, who are hands down the most talented agents in Hollywood. You all deserve trophies, fireworks, and fountains of champagne.
To my teachers: Tony Earley, Lorraine Lopez, Jill McCorkle, Nancy Reisman, Heather Sellers, Danzy Senna, and Steve Yarbrough. There should be a national holiday on each of your birthdays. I did my best with these. I hope you like my book.
To Vanderbilt University, the Fulbright Commission, the Whiting Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Blue Mountain Center, Prairie Center of the Arts, and Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Your support was life-changing.
To the editors and readers at American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Lightspeed, Michigan Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, One Story, Salt Hill, and The Paris Review, who first believed in these stories. Special recognition is due to Jill Meyers, Callie Collins, Bradford Morrow, Micaela Morrissette, Michael Sarinsky, John Joseph Adams, Wendy Wagner, Jonathan Freedman, Vicki Lawrence, Speer Morgan, Evelyn Somers, Hannah Tinti, Will Allison, Jono Naito, and Emily Nemens. This collection would not exist without you.
To Netflix, Amazon Studios, Fox Searchlight, Fox, FX, 26 Keys, 6th & Idaho, Christina Hodson, Morgan Howell, Makeready, The Picture Company, Writ Large, and James Ponsoldt. Your enthusiasm and passion for these stories means the world to me. I’ve got a bowl of popcorn ready. Let’s see what you all can do.
To my family, far and wide: living among the lakes of Michigan; in the forests of Virginia; in the plains of Texas; in the deserts of Nevada; among the mountains of Montana; among the swamps of Florida; among the fields of Illinois; in the woods of Ohio; in the hills of Kentucky; on the coast of California; and among the islands of New York; with special thanks to my sisters, for inventing games and inventing jokes and making home movies with me, and to my parents, for driving us all over the country in the summers when we were young.
And to Jenessa Abrams, the greatest living American.
ALSO BY MATTHEW BAKER
Hybrid Creatures: Stories
If You Find This
About the Author
MATTHEW BAKER is the author of Hybrid Creatures, a collection of stories written in hybrid languages, and the children’s novel If You Find This. Born in the Great Lakes region of the United States, he currently lives in New York City. You sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Fighting Words
Rites
The Transition
Life Sentence
A Bad Day In Utopia
Testimony Of Your Majesty
The Sponsor
One Big Happy Family
Appearance
Lost Souls
The Tour
Why Visit America
To Be Read Backward
Thanks
Also by Matthew Baker
About the Author
Copyright
WHY VISIT AMERICA. Copyright © 2020 by Matthew Baker. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271
www.henryholt.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
e-ISBN 9781250237194
First Edition: 2020
&n
bsp; Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.