The Hope Store

by Dwight Okita

  “Yeah, he’s a likely suspect.”

  I have never been great at keeping secrets. I inherited my openness, my big mouth, from my mother. And now this seems like the perfect moment. A new year will soon be upon us. It's time to start with a clean slate.

  “I think he’s the only suspect,” insists Kazu. “Can you think of anyone else who has the motive, the balls?”

  “Yeah, I can actually,” I say.

  “Who?” Kazu asks. He faces me as the voice of the Natural Hoper drones in the background.

  “Mmm…”

  “Who?” he asks.

  “Me?”

  “Is there something you want to tell me, Luke?” Kazu asks. I don’t like the look on his face. There is an anger beneath his smile that I’ve never seen before. It startles me.

  "Now before either of us blows our cools, let me just reiterate that I handle all things related to marketing of the store, and you handle all things related to the science –"

  Kazu cuts me off. “Are you saying that you were the one that messed up our sign?”

  “Now because you are a man of science, I don’t expect you will understand the mysterious ways of marketing." I don't know if he's getting my gentle joke here. Talking down to him about marketing as he talked down to me about science.

  For a moment, Kazu rubs his large Japanese hand over his face. “Why would you do that? And why would you not tell me you were going to do that? That’s all I want to hear you say.”

  "In marketing," I say, "we learn that even bad press is good press for a new business. Because it gets people talking, it gets your name out there. I think it made our debut even more…newsworthy. I wanted to tell you but I thought you would say no.” I watch Kazu’s face to see how he’s reacting. A big grin spreads across his face.

  “That really works, getting bad press?” he says.

  “Sometimes it backfires, but in our case I think it helped.”

  “You funny Americans,” Kazu says. "No matter how long I live here, I don't think I'll ever be as American as you. I'm not sure I'd want to be."

  “Really. So you're kind of okay with this, you're not --”

  “I wish you’d told me about it in the beginning. I wish you’d trusted that I'd have an open mind.”

  “I’m really sorry, Kazu.”

  He bursts out laughing. “I just wanted to hear you apologize. That is one of the dumbest marketing schemes I’ve heard.”

  “But it worked.”

  “Did it? How do you know how many customers stayed home because of that stunt?”

  “Well…”

  "That’s a deep subject, that well of yours. Be careful you don’t fall into it. Please don’t ever pull a stunt like that again,” says Kazu. “And if you do, tell me first.” He grabs some throw pillows from the couch and hands them to me. “And just for that, you can sleep on the couch tonight.”

  “You’re not serious,” I say.

  “Oh, but I am. I am quite serious, Husband.”

  “Hope is the force underlying much of human endeavor -- bearing children, saving money, sowing crops, building bridges, playing the lottery, falling in love. Hope is inextricably bound up with the future.”

  -- A Biologist's View of Hope

  Vaughn Edgington

  JADA

  27. FAMOUS

  When Psychology Tomorrow interviews me at the Drake Hotel, I feel like a spokesperson. Kind of like the Jenny Craig lady, but without the calorie counting. Me, a spokesperson for anything? It's new to me, but then everything is new to me these days.

  As a native Chicagoan, I’m used to adapting to changes in the world around me. But I’m less familiar with adapting to changes in the world within me. Chicagoans know how 100-degree summers can turn senior citizens into statistics; how arctic winters with their five-foot-high snow drifts can change highways into parking lots. We’ve adapted not only to harsh weather but to great changes of all kinds. When Oprah moved her Harpo Studios empire out of Chicago, we did not crumble. We wished her well and moved on. When Illinois governors, one by one, were marched off to prison for racketeering or extortion, we shrugged our shoulders but still put on our Capri pants one leg at a time.

  But for the past five decades, my life has had no unexpected twists and turns. That is, until now. On this one particular winter day, I remember walking into Barnes & Noble, heading straight for the magazine racks. At first, I don't see the issue so I ask for assistance. "Hi, do you know if you have the latest issue of Psychology Tomorrow?" I ask.

  And that's when the clerk points to it. There I am staring back down at me. My radiant face. Thank god for Photoshop. Did I lose weight? I look amazing. I look around but no one seems to notice. I grab five copies of the magazine and head for the check-out line. I'm wondering if the clerk will recognize me from the cover. But there is a line of customers and he makes no connection, punches the keys on the register and slides my card through.

  "It's me," I say to him shyly.

  "Excuse me?" he says.

  "On the cover. That's me."

  Now he looks at the magazine. His eyes widen. "Oh my gosh! Can I have an autograph?" This the first time anyone has asked for my autograph. I kind of like it.

  When The Hope Store opened shop, I don't think Chicago was prepared for the impact the store would have. Even the hope guys admit they underestimated the love -- and the hate – that the store would inspire. This store has become a very big thing. Throughout the Chicagoland area, in coffeehouses, at dinner tables, in therapy sessions, at water coolers -- brand-new conversations are just getting started about hope. Where does hope come from, how do you make more of it, do I need some?

  The electronic footprint that Kazu and Luke share has grown geometrically in a matter of months. There are rumors that CNN just might want to host the first-ever Town Hall Meeting on Hope. Now that would make for some fine TV viewing.

  As I move through the orbit of my life, I sense there may be something new inside of me. I stroll down Clark Street past Sir Spa, past the cute coffeehouses, keeping my eyes peeled for whatever comes my way. I am prepared to calibrate even the most microscopic changes in my life. But because I am still essentially me, I am also totally prepared for failure, for disappointment on an epic scale. Only when I’m positive that no one is nearby do I dare whisper to myself: "Hope for something, Jada. Hope for anything."

  Otis and I have watched as the city has broken into different camps on the topic of man-made hope. It’s the Natural Hopers vs. the Enhanced Hopers. What some view as ground-breaking, inspiring or evolutionary -- others view as unnatural, controversial or outright dangerous.

  But it is too damn late. The genie, as they say, is out of the bottle.

  It can never be put back inside the bottle again. Hallelujah for that.

  I climb into bed tonight, but my heart isn’t in it. My heart is elsewhere. I toss and turn. I get up and raid the fridge. Gobble what’s left of some pecan pie I brought home from Razon. I watch CNN for a few minutes. I turn off the light and toss and turn.

  Repeat.

  This goes on for over an hour. Surely this is part of the excitement of the night: Kazu showing my brain scan lit up like Mardi Gras. The idea that a national magazine would want to interview me for their cover story! There’s a fairy tale feeling in the air tonight and it’s not just from the wine Kazu and I toasted with. So I’m trying my best to fall asleep but it ain’t happening.

  I don't exactly go to sleep but at some point, I must have waved the white flag because I am aware that my eyes are closed and I feel like I'm sleeping, but I also notice a cold draft. When I open my eyes, I see the streetlights along Marine Drive and some stray cars. I sit up, dazed and frightened to realize I am outdoors, lying on the cold concrete of my fifteenth-floor balcony.

  I have no idea how I got here. I pick myself up off the concrete floor. I reach to open the sliding glass door. It’s locked. I push harder on the door but it doesn’t budge. Where is my cell phone? Through the
glass, I see it’s inside on my desk where it’s supposed to be. I’m cold and dressed in sweats. What do I do now? I look down below at a cold Chicago day; no one is out strolling.

  “Hello?! Can anyone hear me?” I shout to any neighbors who might hear me.

  Nothing.

  I can either stay on the balcony and catch my death of cold, or I can break the sliding glass door. After half an hour, I make my decision. I pick up a big ceramic flower pot. I never really liked it anyway.

  My first attempt is feeble and bounces off the glass. But my second attempt shatters the door. I fall forward upon shards of glass. It’s only later when I’m making myself a cup of tea that I realize it: I’m bleeding. And I can’t make it stop.

  Later I realize this is my first major side effect from the hope installation: sleepwalking. Reading the brochures closer, I see that the amazing benefits of the hope installation may be accompanied by a truckload of nasties of which sleepwalking is just one.

  Luke shares with me that out of 682 clinical subjects over a three-year period, 78 subjects experienced the lesser side effects. One subject suffered a serious stroke and one committed suicide. And while it couldn't be proven for sure these side effects were connected to their installations, a red flag was raised. So they added them to the list of possible side effects.

  I am concerned, but not totally freaked out. After all, lots of modern medicines list awful possible side effects on their labels, but we take them anyway.

  No one ever said that life in the new millennium was perfect.

  And no one ever will.

  JADA

  28. FANCY PEOPLE

  Otis and I are in the emergency room of Weiss Memorial on this chaotic fall day. He insisted I see a doctor. I've got some cuts from the broken glass but nothing that won't heal. Thanksgiving was just last week and already there are holiday decorations everywhere. A handful of nurses in Santa hats strolls by wearing blinking Christmas light necklaces. In the ER lobby, there are people hacking and coughing, a little boy scratching a rash on his arm, an array of patients with secret ailments.[G6][G7]

  “How did you lock yourself out on the balcony?” Otis asks me as he hands me a paper cup filled with bad vending machine coffee.

  “Aren’t you forgetting the other question?” I say. “Like what was I doing on the balcony in the middle of the night in the first place?”

  “Okay.”

  “Otis, all I know is I went to bed last night…and when I woke up I was lying on my balcony. I think I was sleepwalking.”

  “You’ve never sleepwalked before,” he says.

  “I’ve never had a hope installation before either. They said it’s one possible side effect.”

  He sips his own bad coffee and makes a face. "In that case, maybe you better sleep with your cell phone in your pocket."

  “And I better figure out a way to permanently lock the balcony door. Maybe I could sleep over at your place for a few nights.”

  “Maybe.”

  An intoxicated man enters the lobby dressed in a Santa suit and slowly takes a seat opposite us. He stares at me and waves a large candy cane in my direction, but I am totally not in the mood.

  “The doctor will patch you up and you’ll be good as new,” Otis says. “How you feeling?”

  “I still can't believe I'm the cover girl for Psychology Tomorrow! Can you?”

  “Yes, I can,” he says. “You have a story to tell. You are starting to go places, Jada. Exciting places. I wish I could…go with you.”

  “Now what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “I’m just talking nonsense.” I sense that Otis is happy for me, but there’s also sadness.

  Then he says, “You’re changing. You’re coming into your own. I guess you’re spreading your hope wings, so you’re going to be moving in new circles.”

  “What exactly are you trying to say, Otis Franklin?”

  “I’m just saying I am not a fancy man. Never have been; never will be. So if you meet someone else…someone that travels in your new circle…”

  I shake my head. “You’re right about one thing. You are talking a whole lotta nonsense.”

  “I’m just saying, don’t let me hold you back.” Otis doesn’t look at me when he says this. Then the receptionist calls my name so we can’t continue our discussion. I go in to see the doctor alone.

  The doc tends to my cuts and tells me how to change the bandages, but honestly I’m not hearing a word he’s saying. I’m thinking of Otis sitting in the lobby and how he says I’m changing. I can tell part of him is happy for me, for my new hope, and part of him is very, very sad. But I know that I’m still Jada Upshaw. I don’t think the installation changed me so much as it revealed me. Kind of like the way a sculptor creates a sculpture of a person, not by adding to the block of stone but by chipping away at it.

  If sleepwalking is a side effect of my installation, I have to wonder what other side effects I might have to look forward to. How many others can I endure? But if my hope levels remain promising, what choice do I have? I decide to call Kazu and Luke for their guidance. I will have Otis drive me to The Hope Store straight from the hospital.

  At the store, I introduce Otis to the hope boys.

  “Sleepwalking is a possible side effect, but it only affected 2% of our research subjects,” says Kazu.

  “Lucky me,” I say.

  “Before the sleepwalking, Jada also said she was having hallucinations,” says Otis. “We didn’t connect it to the hope installation at the time.”

  "In the middle of one night, I heard someone in my kitchen," I say. It freaked me out. When I walked into the kitchen, I saw my niece Angie sitting at the table eating a turkey dinner by candlelight. She looked at me and picked up a carving knife. I thought she was going to attack me but then she dropped the knife to the floor. I bent down to pick it up and when I stood up – she was gone."

  Otis shakes his head. “That sounds like something straight out of a movie. Jada, you’re too much. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Hallucinations are a possible side effect,” Luke says. “Again, it’s very rare.”

  “So what do you guys think I should do?” she asks.

  “I think we should see how things go over the next week,” says Luke. “I don’t want to do an extraction unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “I totally agree,” says Kazu. “We don’t want to over-confuse the brain. There have only been four instances where people asked for hope extractions during the trial period. In two cases, the subjects returned to their original hope levels but never surpassed them. In the third case, the subject says his hope level was actually lower than when he started.”

  I give a look to Otis. “Okay, that’s three. So what about the fourth subject?”

  Kazu hesitates a moment and looks at Luke. “He’s no longer with us,” Luke says.

  LUKE

  29. A TINY PAPER WORLD

  The cover story on Super Responder Jada hits just days before her sleepwalking episode. And what should have been a high point in Jada's life has morphed into something else. She feels like a fraud. Business at The Hope Store, however, has never been better. It's crazy good. We are booked solid for the next several months and Kazu and I are seriously talking about hiring new staff to help absorb the increased caseload. The investors have breathed a collective sigh of relief for the first time since we opened.

  Today Kazu and I take a break from the store to do some holiday shopping. The mayor has lit the immense holiday tree in Millennium Park and the stores downtown have been playing Christmas music since the start of November. I've dropped a lot of hints that I really wouldn't mind being given one of those fancy Keurig coffee machines with a flavorful assortment of coffee pods. And I'm still trying to figure out what I should get for Kazu, but I know he's really happy with anything I get him. He's not materialistic at all. As long as we can spend quality time together and eat delicious food and talk. Mostly, we just li
ke to talk. From the moment we met, Kazu and I have always felt so comfortable together. That may not seem like a big thing to most people, but it's big to us.

  I'm glad that our chat with Jada has persuaded her to hold off on the hope extraction. The procedure is much more experimental than the hope installation. Jada should just rest for a while and see how things go. I call her and tell her I'd like to stop by her house if that's okay. She says it's okay. I generally like to keep some boundaries between a client and myself but urgent situations call for urgent measures. I want to see with my own eyes where she lives and more importantly how she lives these days since her side effects have begun.

  When Jada opens the door, nothing prepares me for what I see.

  There are dioramas filling up every square inch of her place, little story boxes blocking out any available light, dioramas hanging from strings that turn like mobiles when you breathe on them, dioramas on every available surface. I can't walk anywhere without stepping on a tiny paper world.

  "Don't you love them?" she asks, admiring her handiwork.

  "Wow, Jada," I say. "I'm speechless. I literally don't know what to say."

  "I owe it all to The Hope Store," she says. Her eyes are huge, searching. "As a young girl, I was fascinated by dioramas. They were like mini-museums. It occurred to me that I needed to create a diorama to commemorate every significant moment of my life. To really bear witness to them, you know?"

  What I know is this: something is not right.

  I slowly take in all that is before me. Each diorama is clearly titled: "Getting fired from my last job." "Willis and Angie being born." "Meeting Otis for the first time." "Getting molested by Uncle Robbie." "My most recent, fumbled suicide attempt." "Momma lying in her coma." "Having my first hope installation."