Portable Curiosities

by Julie Koh

  ‘Shouldn’t you have worse existential anxieties than I do?’ asked Orla.

  ‘I’m the therapist here,’ Kabuki laughed. ‘So out of the two of us I’m clearly dealing all right.’

  ‘How do you think I should fix it?’

  ‘You already know how,’ said Kabuki. ‘There’s no new path to happiness. It’s a choice.’

  ‘Well, I know what people say will fix it. But I don’t think it will work.’

  ‘Tell me anyway. But let’s start off with two of the more common solutions. First, a little bit of Vitamin D for mood elevation. Second, exercise. So let’s walk.’

  Suddenly, Kabuki was up off her seat and out the door.

  Orla followed Kabuki up Hunter Street.

  It was near empty – a few people wandered around, lost and hung-over. Orla noticed Kabuki had the same slight lag in the feet as Rhonda did, but that was the only sign she wasn’t human.

  ‘Are sudden walks part of the therapy?’ Orla asked. ‘It feels unusual.’

  ‘I take a flexible approach,’ said Kabuki. She took a deep breath through her nostrils and looked to the darkening sky. ‘I smell a storm coming.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to keep going?’

  ‘No time like the present. I love the drama of a thunderstorm.’

  ‘What if you get struck by lightning?’

  ‘Zapped, schmapped.’

  Orla was already panting on the uphill ascent. Kabuki was practically power walking.

  ‘So,’ said Kabuki, ‘tell me how you’re going to make yourself better.’

  ‘Well,’ said Orla. ‘I’ve been reading a lot of self-help and all of it says I should socialise even when I don’t feel like it.’

  ‘Good start.’

  ‘Also, my mind apparently shapes my own reality. So constant rumination isn’t healthy.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But don’t you think it’s weird, tricking myself that things are good when they aren’t?’

  ‘It’s a matter of distorted perspective. The melancholic mind tends to remember the negative and discount the positive.’

  ‘But what if I’m sad because I can see things clearly?’

  ‘Some of the most intelligent people in the world experience negative events and yet choose happiness. But,’ Kabuki continued, ‘we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I want you to start with the basics. Like, pick up a hobby.’

  ‘A hobby?’

  ‘Pick anything.’

  ‘What would I do? Do you have a hobby?’

  ‘I act in my spare time.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I like the idea of total immersion. Understanding human motivation at its deepest levels. People even say I have the charisma of De Niro in his Taxi Driver years.’

  ‘But De Niro’s a guy.’

  ‘I guess I have cross-over appeal.’

  The sky cracked and rain gushed. It got into Orla’s flats, and streamed down the gutters. The wind picked up and blew Orla’s hair across her face.

  Kabuki strode on unconcerned.

  ‘Isn’t it a treat to be alive!’

  By the time they reached the Royal Botanic Garden, Orla was drenched through. Kabuki showed no signs of wanting to turn back.

  They walked towards the harbour and ended up at the water, the Harbour Bridge visible in the distance.

  On the grass to the right of a large tree, a few dozen white wooden chairs had been set up in two sections. An aisle of pink and white rose petals ran between them. Here and there, petals skipped in the wind. Women clutching white umbrellas kissed hello, holding their billowing silk dresses down at the sides. Two tourists in shorts stood by, cameras ready.

  ‘A wedding!’ said Kabuki. ‘I love weddings.’

  ‘Who gets married on New Year’s Day?’ Orla muttered.

  ‘Let’s be wedding guests.’

  Kabuki grabbed Orla’s hand. They sidled up to stand behind the white folding chairs, next to small children in clear rain ponchos hiding behind their fathers’ legs. The children rubbed their eyes and howled at the wind.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit sociopathic?’ said Orla. ‘Joining a stranger’s wedding?’

  ‘We’re not discussing me. You’re the one in therapy.’

  The wedding photographer raced up and stuck a lens in Orla’s face.

  ‘Twins?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s my—’

  ‘Sister,’ said Kabuki, and hugged Orla’s shoulder.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said the photographer, snapping away. ‘Just beautiful. How do you know the bride?’

  ‘We’re colleagues, actually,’ said Kabuki. ‘She’s stunning, isn’t she? Just stunning.’

  Orla watched the bridal party approach. The bride beamed, even though she was nearly lost in a dress made of infinite layers of fluff. Three bridesmaids in aqua followed. Each pulled along a gigantic round white balloon, tail adorned with coloured paper tassels. The balloons were acting up, trying to pull themselves free at every moment.

  Everyone stood for the bride. A quartet began to play. But the music could barely be heard over a sudden gust of wind that blew the bride’s dress up above her head and kept it there. She let out a bloodcurdling scream. She wasn’t wearing underwear – just a triangular patch of blond hair.

  The bridesmaids shrieked and let go of their balloons. They rushed to pull the dress down, battling the layers.

  The dress stayed up for what seemed to Orla to be a glorious eternity. The photographer’s camera fluttered. Guests sighed in sympathy. Parents clapped their hands over the eyes of their small children, who squealed in anger. The wedding celebrant, in a voice of rising panic, asked for calm.

  Orla watched the balloons escape up and over the harbour, disappearing into the sky, tassels streaming. She looked from the vagina to the balloons and back to the vagina again.

  She laughed and laughed and laughed.

  They walked back to Wynyard.

  ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ said Kabuki. ‘Crashing a wedding – fantastic.’

  ‘Best start to the year ever. I feel bad about laughing.’

  ‘You know, life’s about meaningful experience,’ said Kabuki. ‘You need to be out in the world connecting with that. And you need to be eating right. Are you eating right? Lots of leafy greens?’

  ‘Can’t really afford them,’ said Orla. ‘But I’ll try.’

  Orla felt like things were looking up. She would go home and make a salad and get on the stationary bike and take up a hobby – maybe cross-stitch.

  Behind the reception desk, Kabuki printed her off some material.

  ‘These are worksheets on perfectionism,’ said Kabuki. ‘They’ll help you improve your tolerance when the world falls short of your expectations, as well as your ability to accept the state of things when you can’t change them.’

  Orla looked at the worksheets.

  ‘Are these spelling mistakes deliberate?’

  Kabuki laughed. ‘Time’s up. Next week it’s down to serious business. We’ll discuss some medication options, and map your life across six domains to make sure you’re on the optimal path for success.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Orla.

  Kabuki shook her hand. ‘I’ll leave you with Rhonda to make our next appointment. One week from today should be fine.’

  Orla was about to exit through the glass doors downstairs when she remembered the client drinks for Rising Tide. They clashed with the appointment she’d just made.

  She took the lift back up to the office and found Rhonda slumped over her desk, unconscious.

  ‘Oh my God. Rhonda?’

  She shook Rhonda’s shoulders but got no response. Rhonda’s body felt rigid, like she was locked into place. Orla put two fingers on Rhonda’s neck to check for a pulse, then remembered that Rhonda was a robot.

  What am I doing? she thought.

  She hurried down the corridor to the consultation room.

  ‘Kabuki?’ she said, knocking on the do
or. She turned the handle. The door clicked open.

  No one seemed to be in the office. There was an odd gap in the corner of the room. One of the walls seemed out of place, as if it had slid to one side. She could hear Kabuki’s voice coming from behind it.

  ‘Yeah, drinks would be great,’ Kabuki was saying. ‘Talking to losers all day is such a fucking drain. Just pack up the chairs, bring the dress back to the office. That sudden wind, though – perfect! Unrehearsable! Yeah, let’s get wasted, forget work. Just give me some time to freshen up? Gotta get this fugly suit off and find a hotter one. Sure. Twenty minutes?’

  Orla stepped through the opening.

  She found herself in near darkness. Kabuki was facing away from her.

  ‘Half an hour, then,’ Kabuki said. ‘Meet you out back.’

  Kabuki pulled out what looked like an earpiece and dropped it on the carpet. Then, with one hand, she reached back to the nape of her neck, dug her nails into the flesh, and began to pull. Her neck and microchip and hair and scalp started to separate from the rest of her body. She kept pulling the flesh up and forward over her head. Her ears and face peeled off with the rest, in one continuous piece.

  Underneath was a shining wet skull – a twisted network of metal balanced on metal vertebrae.

  A strange fleshy odour, sweet and foul, filled Orla’s nostrils. She gasped.

  The android spun around, holding Orla’s replica head by the hair. The android’s own head had two eyeballs and a set of teeth fixed onto it.

  ‘Orla?’ said the metal face.

  ‘Hi, I—’

  ‘Isn’t Rhonda out front?’

  ‘She’s—’

  ‘Oh,’ said the face. ‘Recharging. Rhonda’s so ancient she still has a bloody model number – Réception 3600.’

  Orla watched the android toss the head onto a nearby chair, and then climb out of Orla’s replica body.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the android, looking down at her metal skeleton. ‘You got me at an awkward moment. What exactly did you overhear?’

  It was then that Orla saw how far back the room extended. Along the three walls, queued up on hooks, were dozens of Kabuki’s ‘suits’. Each was suspended in a clear plastic pouch, like a giant IV bag, filled with dark yellow liquid. Orla squinted. One of the nearer ones looked a bit like Rabbit. It was hard to tell, without a skeleton filling it out.

  The android seemed to lose interest in Orla, and turned to scan her collection.

  ‘Who do I feel like putting on today?’ she murmured.

  She paced up and down the room until she decided on the suit she fancied. She entered a number into an interface next to Orla, and the hook bearing the chosen suit swung down the line towards them.

  The android pulled out her eyeballs and teeth and flung them onto the carpet. The eyes bounced at Orla’s feet.

  She punctured the bag with her claws and ripped it apart. Liquid flowed out, soaking the floor. She felt around in the bag for her new set of eyeballs and teeth, and pushed them onto her face.

  She took the selected scalp, stretched it over her skull like a swimming cap, and pulled the new face into position.

  Suddenly, the android was blond, with full lips and blue eyes and a cute button nose.

  She pulled the rest of the body from the bag, stepped into its toes and pulled it up over her frame. Her bones lengthened to fill the suit.

  Her thighs and arms were thin, her stomach was flat. She adjusted her breasts. They bounced in just the right way.

  She took a towel and dried off the liquid. She raised one arm and tilted her head upwards. Hot air blasted from somewhere above. As her hair dried, she closed her eyes and moved her head sensually from side to side. She tossed her lustrous locks. They cascaded in perfect waves.

  Finally, she pulled a sky blue dress over her head and shoulders, and nearly lost her balance as she slid her feet into a pair of pink suede pumps.

  ‘How do I look?’ she said, in a new, husky voice. ‘Everything in place?’

  Orla nodded. The android looked and sounded exactly like the sniffling blond from the lift.

  ‘You look shocked,’ said the android. ‘Come on, let’s be real. It’s hardly the singularity. What else can I do? Creep around town like a four-legged metallic praying mantis? This is a client who never has fun. I’m just taking her out for a spin in my spare time. Think of me as a voyeur into dysfunction – makes me a better therapist, don’t you think?’

  Kabuki turned to a mirror hanging on the back of the sliding wall. She pulled out a syringe and injected its contents into her lips. She lined her lips with pencil and shaded them in with hot-pink lipstick. She popped an index finger into her mouth and pulled it out.

  ‘Don’t want lipstick on our teeth, do we?’ she said, admiring her inflated pout.

  ‘No,’ said Orla.

  ‘Well, better be off. Got my cutest face on and no one to show it to. Best if you don’t say a word to anyone. Parent Company’s trade secrets, more or less. You understand. I’ll see you next week.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Orla.

  The android smoothed her hair in the mirror. Her gaze met Orla’s and her new set of teeth glinted in the dark.

  ‘Then, my darling,’ she cooed, ‘time is really up.’

  The Fat Girl in History

  My mother and I are sitting in front of the TV. We’re talking about going on the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet.

  I’ve filled in a preliminary form on the official Diet website. Based on my responses, it tells me that I’m Overweight, and that if I do the Diet, I could lose up to 8.3 kilograms in twelve weeks.

  I feel relieved that I am Overweight and not Obese because there’s less work to do and I’m lazy like that. This sort of thinking is more or less how I became Overweight in the first place.

  ‘If you lose weight, Julie,’ my mother says, ‘when we walk down the street everyone will turn and say, “What a beautiful girl that lady is walking with!”’

  ‘I’m already beautiful,’ I tell my mother. ‘All mothers should think their daughters are beautiful, all of the time.’

  My mother is becoming upset about her sagging chin and arms, and her sagging everything in general. She’s in her mid-sixties but looks like she’s in her early fifties.

  ‘You should be grateful,’ I say. ‘Other women your age don’t look as young as you do. Imagine if you actually looked your age. You would absolutely die.’

  I remind her that I’ve never had skin as nice and clear and white as hers used to be when she was young. Everyone ages, I tell her. She should be glad she even got to be pretty in the first place. Some people go through their lives ugly, from start to finish.

  She doesn’t look convinced. She touches the slackening skin under her jawline, as if to see if it has miraculously tightened.

  The problem everyone has with my body is not really that I am heavy-boned for a woman in general, but that I am heavy-boned for an Asian woman.

  My university boyfriend, the one I thought I would marry, used to squeeze my arms and legs and call me Chunky Monkey. I was over 8.3 kilograms lighter in those days. He’d probably call me a Fail Whale now.

  I once told him I wanted to buy a backless dress. It’d make me look chic, like I was from Paris or something.

  ‘Don’t you need a nice back to wear a backless dress?’ he’d said.

  In that moment, I suddenly became aware that not only did I have thunder thighs and a belly and adult acne and a fat head, but I also had a back that didn’t look good from the back.

  So I didn’t buy a backless dress. I bought a hessian sack that covered my body from my neck to my knees, so that no one could tell if there was a woman underneath or a glutinous green blob with an unsightly green behind.

  I’m sitting on a train wearing my hessian sack. I look at all the petite yellow women around me in a tableau determined by seating preferences and station order. Each little woman takes up just half of her blue seat. Overweight can look Obese when you’
re comparing yourself to delicate yellow peonies who blow gracefully in the wind.

  I sit there and think about how they’re all so tiny that I could squash them.

  I also think about all the white guys I’ve met lately who have yellow fever. Even they reject me now. I’m not petite and Asian enough. I reject them and they reject me, and we are all filled with horrible feelings of rejection.

  At a friend’s wedding I’ll be attending in the near future, I will avoid the dance floor and instead accost a friend’s mother and complain to her about my dating woes – in particular, the phenomenon of yellow fever.

  ‘Maybe,’ she will say, ‘the overwhelming attraction of some white men to exclusively Asian women is biologically the unconscious subjugation of one race by another.’

  I like this theory. I like the idea that I am fighting a civilisational battle using my vagina.

  I think that my heavy bones must be an indication that we have had a robust Russian somewhere in the family line, or maybe a Viking.

  I order a DNA ancestry test kit online. When it comes in the mail, all I need to do is spit into a tube and post it back.

  The lab sends the results by courier. I sign for the box. Inside the box is a pretty snow globe that fits in the palm of my hand. I stare into it.

  In the background of the snow globe is the double helix logo of the DNA testing company. In the foreground is a tiny figurine of a big man in traditional Cossack gear. He’s standing in the snow shielding a little Chinese woman from the weather by wrapping her in the folds of the coat he’s wearing. Her shoes are at least six sizes too small. In fluent Mandarin, he’s telling her that she will bear him gigantic, beautiful semi-Slav babies. She smiles and blinks. Snowflakes cling to her eyelashes.

  ‘Of course,’ I say out loud. ‘My blood’s part-Russian, not Viking.’

  This should already have been clear to me, given that I’ve never had any upper body strength. I’m unable to lift a finger, let alone row a boat from Scandinavia to China.

  ‘Can a lab be this specific about my ethnicity?’ I ask myself. I revisit the website of the DNA testing company. I realise that the company specialises not only in DNA Testing but also in DNA Wish Fulfilment, and that I’ve unwittingly ticked the optional Wish Fulfilment box at the end of my test kit request.