Lovecraft Country

by Matt Ruff

  She studied her reflection in a department store window. She hadn’t been in the right frame of mind to appreciate it earlier, but she was a good-looking white woman, and there was an archness to her features that suggested she was a take-charge girl, used to giving orders. Maybe, if she picked the right bank teller, she wouldn’t need identification. Though her name might be an issue: Red hair notwithstanding, she didn’t think she looked like a Ruby anymore.

  What did she look like, then? Her gaze shifted to the display inside the window: mannequins in winter clothes, posed in front of a painted mountain range. The mountains were probably meant to be the Rockies, but to Ruby they evoked the Himalayas, and once again she imagined herself on Everest, this time in a new capacity: not a Sherpa, but a commander of Sherpas. The name, Ruby thought, what was the name of that white man, the one who reached the summit?

  “Hillary.” She spoke the name aloud, like an incantation: “Hillary.” What do you think? she asked her reflection. Are you a Hillary? Her reflection smiled and nodded assent.

  While she gazed at the window, other people were passing her on the busy sidewalk, stepping carefully around her. Now, even as she rechristened herself, someone walked right into her, shoving her roughly aside and continuing on without a breath of apology. Ruby opened her mouth to say “Excuse you,” only to be dumbstruck by the realization that the person who’d shoved her was Katherine Demarski.

  This flash of recognition was followed instantly by doubt. But it was her: Ten paces farther on, Katherine collided with a little Negro girl who was walking beside her mother. The girl fell down, crying out as she was nearly trampled, and the mother shouted “Hey!” Katherine, without breaking stride, looked over her shoulder and said, “Watch where you’re fucking going.”

  The words stunned the mother into silence and drew nasty looks from some other passersby. No one did anything, though, and Katherine plowed onward, like a human juggernaut against whom ordinary pedestrians were powerless.

  But Hillary wasn’t powerless.

  Katherine had gone into Marshall Field’s. When Ruby entered the department store, she heard raised voices and quickly spotted Katherine at a cosmetics counter, going nose to nose with the girl on duty there. Ruby walked up to the adjacent counter and pretended to browse a rack of silk scarves while she eavesdropped.

  They were fighting about someone named Roman, who was, or was supposed to be, Katherine’s fiancé. The countergirl—her name, for purposes of this conversation, was You Fucking Bitch, which Ruby shortened to Effie—had been seen making time with Roman, and Katherine wanted to make clear the many ways in which that wasn’t going to fly. Effie for her part denied having anything to do with Roman, but she also, in what struck Ruby as a tactical error, tried to argue that Katherine and Roman weren’t as engaged as Katherine seemed to think.

  The volume and level of profanity increased until a store manager came over. “What exactly is the problem here, ladies?” he said. Fifteen feet away, Ruby selected one of the silk scarves. Hillary looked out from the mirror beside the display rack, nodding encouragement.

  Ignoring the manager, Katherine spat a last warning at Effie and stalked away. Ruby stepped deliberately into her path; as they collided, she slipped the scarf into Katherine’s coat pocket, leaving the corner with the price tag sticking out. Then she ducked back, hands raised, feigning mortification at Katherine’s curses. In fact Ruby barely heard the words, for in that same moment she saw the pearl studs in Katherine’s ears.

  Back out on the sidewalk, Ruby approached a policeman who was getting lunch from a hot dog vendor. “Excuse me, officer,” she said, Hillary’s voice brisk and no-nonsense. “I’m a manager in the store, here? And that woman there just shoplifted a scarf from our boutique department.”

  The policeman regarded her unenthusiastically, his eyes saying, What do you want from me?, and Ruby had no doubt that if he were dealing with a colored woman, his mouth would be saying it too. But Hillary looked right back at him, lips tight and eyebrows arched, sending her own message: You will do your job.

  The policeman sighed. “Keep an eye on this for me,” he said, handing his hot dog back to the vendor. Then he hitched up his trousers and asked, “That woman there? Brown coat and dark hair?”

  “Yes,” Hillary said, adding: “She was in our jewelry department, too. You should ask where she got the earrings she’s wearing.”

  The policeman nodded dutifully and set off at a lumbering trot. He caught up to Katherine near the end of the block; when he grabbed her elbow, she jerked her arm away, her reflexive anger diminishing only slightly when she saw it was a cop who’d accosted her. The policeman, out of breath from the brief pursuit, pointed at the scarf peeping from her pocket. Katherine pulled it out and stared at it in confusion, then looked accusingly at the policeman as if he were the one who’d planted it on her. Then the policeman said something that made Katherine raise a hand to her earlobe and for an instant her composure broke and she got very nervous. But her anger came back, redoubled, and she shook her head firmly.

  But the policeman was nodding; he’d made up his mind. He reached out to grab Katherine’s arm again. Katherine batted his hand away and slammed her palms into his chest. The policeman’s face turned red and he slammed Katherine in her chest, using just one hand but exerting considerably more force—knocking her clean off her feet. Katherine hit the sidewalk and bounced back up and launched herself at the policeman, arms flailing. Then two more cops came around the corner, goggling at the melee in progress, and in the space of five seconds Katherine went from fighting one policeman to fighting three.

  Up to now, Ruby had been enjoying watching the tables get turned, but this sudden escalation in violence made her queasy. The cops were trying to wrestle Katherine to the ground. She clawed at the first policeman’s neck, drawing blood, and he hauled off and punched her in the face, eliciting a cry of “Damn” from the hot dog vendor. As Katherine went down, all three cops on top of her, Ruby’s stomach gave a sick lurch. She turned away as if to throw up and instead broke into a run.

  “I didn’t do that,” she said, whipsawing between horror and a wild exaltation as her feet pounded the sidewalk. “I didn’t do that, that wasn’t me . . .” She ran on, all the way to the other end of the block, and rounding the corner dashed headlong into yet another policeman.

  “Oh my God!” she cried, staggering backwards, fully expecting to get beaten down too now. But this new cop—young, rosy-cheeked, and smelling like he’d just come from an all-night New Year’s Eve bash—reacted in good humor. “Watch yourself there, miss!” he said laughing. He caught Ruby’s arm, not to arrest her but to steady her, his amusement turning to concern when she didn’t smile back at him. “Are you all right, miss? Somebody bothering you?” He looked past her, bloodshot eyes narrowing. “Was it them?”

  Something about the way he said “them” . . . Ruby turned around and saw four Negro boys, teenagers, standing on the corner waiting for the light. Minding their own business.

  “Was it them?” the cop repeated. “They say something to you? Do something?” Ruby felt her stomach give another lurch, and she thought: I could tell him anything at all right now and he’d believe me. I could get those boys killed, if I wanted to. I could . . .

  The cop read her silence as affirmation. “Don’t worry,” he said, stepping around her. “I’ll take care of it.”

  But Ruby stayed him with a light touch of Hillary’s hand on his wrist. “No,” she said. “They didn’t do anything.” The cop eyed her uncertainly. “Really,” Hillary said. “They didn’t do anything. Nobody did.” The light changed and the boys started to cross the street. The cop looked like he might chase after them anyway, just on general principles.

  So Hillary touched his wrist again and said: “Would you like to buy me lunch?”

  “Roman, huh?” the cop, whose name was Mike, said. “Sounds like a real asshole. Excuse my language.”

  “No, Roman’s a nice boy,” s
he said. “At least I thought he was.”

  “If he cheated on you, he’s an idiot.”

  Maybe she had gone crazy, after all. She hadn’t really intended to have lunch with him, but when they got to the restaurant, a diner tucked under the Lake Street L tracks, the queasiness in her stomach evaporated and she realized she was starving, so instead of making an excuse to get away, she went in and sat down. And talked.

  She told him she was Hillary Everest, a tourist in town for the holidays. Hillary Everest: Mike the cop didn’t even bat an eye at that, and the thought came to her again that she could say anything to him, anything at all, and he’d believe her. Entranced by the novelty of a policeman taking her words at face value, she kept going, making up a whole story about her holiday adventures in Chicago, complete with a supporting cast of characters: her fool nephew Leo; her spoiled cousin Katherine; and dear old Aunt Effie, with whom she’d been staying. And when she got the inevitable question about whether she had a boyfriend, she conjured up Roman, her steady back home, who she’d just this morning learned had been stepping out in her absence. Watching Mike get aggrieved on her behalf, exactly as she’d predicted he would, gave her a weird thrill. This must be how it had felt for Momma holding her séances. And though it was wrong, hearing the lies come out in Hillary’s voice, with Hillary’s reflection faint but visible in the window beside the booth, made it feel less wrong, somehow—less Ruby’s sin, anyway.

  “So you’re headed home tonight?” Mike said. “To . . .”

  “Springfield, Massachusetts.” She nodded. “I’ve got to be at work on Monday.”

  “It’s a shame you’re not staying longer.”

  “Oh, I’ll be back,” she said. Making him light up.

  “Yeah? When?”

  “This summer, maybe.” Improvising: “I was talking to Aunt Effie about maybe taking some courses at the university here.”

  “What kind of courses?”

  “Journalism.”

  “You want to be a reporter?” For the first time, he sounded skeptical—though of the idea, not of her.

  “My brother Marvin’s a reporter,” she said, a touch defensive. “No reason I couldn’t be, too.”

  “Hey.” He put up a hand. “If that’s what you want . . . If you do come back, you should give me a call. I’ll show you the town for real.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  The radio on his belt crackled. “Well, listen,” he told her, “I should get back out there . . . No, you stay. Sit, have some dessert. And don’t worry about the check, it’s taken care of.” He jotted his phone number on a napkin and gave it to her. “You have a safe trip home—and tell that Roman guy that Mike says he’s a jerk.”

  She watched him walk out, waved to him as he passed on the sidewalk, then focused on Hillary’s reflection in the glass. Bad girl, Ruby told her, but Hillary just smiled, shameless, and Ruby felt herself smiling too. She thought: Revenge, free lunch, my own police escort if I want . . . What else comes with being you?

  “Dessert, miss?” the waitress said.

  With no particular place to go after lunch, she decided to just walk, some vague homing instinct causing her to set off north. As she crossed the river, the wind did its best to remind her she was bare-legged, but Hillary, fortified by a thick slice of chocolate cake, seemed impervious to the cold.

  As she walked, she thought about the story she’d told Mike, marveling anew at the pleasure she’d taken in telling it. In crafting it—making up a life, the only limit her imagination. Her one regret was using her brother’s name. That seemed truly wrong, involving Marvin in Hillary’s business. Stick to Aunt Effie next time, she told herself.

  Then she thought, journalism classes. What was that about? She caught Hillary’s eye in a passing shop window, asked her the question Mike had asked: You want to be a reporter? Hillary shrugged and turned it back on her: Do you?

  When she’d gone the better part of a mile the cold finally began to get to her, so she found a store that was open—a little antique shop on Wells Street—and went inside to warm up, telling the man at the front that she was just looking. “Just looking” was a phrase that had never worked particularly well for Ruby, but Hillary got a much better response, the proprietor inviting her to make herself at home. Back on the street, she began to notice a similar improvement in the reactions of the pedestrians she passed. Many white people, men especially, smiled at Hillary as they went by her, but what was really noteworthy was that the ones who ignored her, ignored her in a different way than they would have ignored Ruby. There was no side-eying, no pretending not to see her while wondering what she was up to; she didn’t require attention. She was free to browse, not just individual establishments, but the world.

  What else comes with being you?

  On the edge of Lincoln Park she chanced upon a white hair salon, Donna’s. The salon’s sole occupant, a blond girl filing her own nails, looked up and smiled as Hillary entered. “Hi there, I’m Amy,” she said. “What can I do for you today?”

  “Just looking,” Ruby almost replied, but she caught herself and said, “I’m not sure, exactly . . .”

  Amy gave Hillary’s hair a professional once-over. “A nice perm, maybe?” she suggested. “Put some curl into it?”

  “No, no curls,” Ruby said. She told herself she should just leave, but curiosity got the better of her: “Can you just . . . cut it?”

  “Sure,” Amy said. “How would you like it?” She gestured at a line of sample hairstyle photographs culled from magazines, taped up above the long wall mirror.

  Ruby zeroed in on a photo of a famous aviatrix with a tousled bob cut. She was standing in the open cockpit of a small plane, a shadow of mountains visible behind her. “What about that one?”

  “Amelia Earhart?” Amy nodded. “I can do that. If you think your boyfriend won’t mind.” She explained: “Some men don’t like hair that short.”

  “I’ll risk it,” Ruby said.

  While Amy busied herself with Hillary’s hair, Ruby tried on a new life story for her. This time she was a Chicago native, born and raised in Hyde Park. Up until last year she had worked in her mother’s beauty parlor, but then Momma had passed away, and Hillary had sold her share of the business to finance a trip overseas, a dream adventure. (“Did you go to Paris?” Amy asked. “Nepal,” Ruby replied, just to hear how it sounded. “Is that near Paris?” Amy asked.) Now, having spent more time abroad than she could really afford, Hillary was back, staying at her sister’s and looking for a new job before the last of her money ran out.

  “Donna’s hiring, if you’re interested,” Amy said.

  “No, thank you,” Ruby said. “I’m looking for something different.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” Eying Hillary in the mirror: “It’s a new situation.”

  “If you like flying, you should do what my cousin Holly did. She’s an airline stewardess. Goes all over the country,” Amy said. “She wanted to fly international, too, but the airline people said she wasn’t pretty enough. I bet you’d be, though . . . Maybe you could get paid to go to Nepal.”

  In the mirror, Hillary raised an eyebrow. “How do you get a job like that?” Ruby asked.

  “I’m not sure how Holly did it, but you could always try that Lightbridge Agency. You know, the one with the billboard?”

  A miraculously short time later Ruby was back on the street. The entire process—shampoo, cut, dry, and a manicure—had taken less than an hour. Ruby had known white women had it easier, but my God, this was like getting extra years on her life. And Amelia Earhart’s haircut looked good on her, too.

  She walked west with a new bounce in her step. At the first big intersection she looked up, and there atop a small office building was the billboard Amy had told her about:

  JOANNA LIGHTBRIDGE CAREER & EMPLOYMENT AGENCY

  WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?

  The billboard was illustrated with a lineup of white women, modeling professions r
ather than hairstyles. The stewardess was second from the left, her uniform with its little winged badge making her look like an officer in some obscure branch of the air force that served martinis. Right next to her was a woman with a steno pad who might have been a reporter but was more likely a secretary—but high-class, Ruby thought, the kind who’d have her own office in a tower somewhere, and the power to admit or refuse people. As she scanned the rest of the lineup she felt that weird thrill again, her excitement having less to do with any specific option than with the overall sense of possibility and choice.

  WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?

  According to the building directory, the Lightbridge Agency was on the sixth floor. “But I don’t think they’re open today,” the lobby guard told her.

  “Would you mind if I just went up and took a look?” Ruby said.

  “Be my guest.” He smiled and nodded at the visitor’s log, which she signed “Hillary Earhart” in a bold hand.

  On the way up, she checked herself over in the polished elevator doors. Should’ve stopped to buy stockings, she thought, though the dress was long enough that that might go unnoticed. The real problem was the coat—Ruby Dandridge’s coat—which, as Amy had noted as politely as possible, didn’t suit Hillary at all. (“It was my mother’s,” Ruby had told her.) She slipped the coat off, draped it over her arm, and smoothed the dress down carefully. Better.

  The elevator doors opened on a wall of glass with a reception area behind it. The lights were dimmed and a CLOSED sign hung on the double glass doors.

  Ruby went up to the glass and peered in at the portrait hanging behind the empty reception desk. It showed an impeccably professional-looking white woman in a blouse and jacket, arms crossed in front of her, her brown hair cut short in a style very much like Hillary’s. Miss Lightbridge, I presume. Sidestepping a little, Ruby looked down the hall to the left of the reception desk and saw there was a light on in one of the offices back there. She glimpsed a shadow on the wall, a silhouette of a woman with short hair.