by May-Lan Tan
When she’d made up her mind, she made me tear up the stock room to find one with the cellophane still on the box, and then she had me take it off, because she wanted a picture placed inside before I wrapped it. Times like this, I missed waitressing. People would notice if I spat on their gifts. She handed me a photograph of her and a man with a beard that went all the way up to his eyes on the Champs-Élysées. They looked disproportionately thrilled about being next to each other in France. The photo was twice the size of the frame.
“You can cut him out,” she said, rubbing his face with her finger. “This is for someone else.”
I found the scissors and trimmed it down to size. The frame came with a slick, filmy insert of a male model with feathered hair and a bow-tie mouth, and his sweater sleeves pushed up. I replaced it with hers. Putting the Styrofoam corners back on, I repackaged the frame and wrapped it and rang up the sale. As the customer typed her PIN number, I looked at the fake boyfriend picture. That man was probably someone’s boyfriend in real life. His girlfriend could buy this frame and use it straight out of the box.
The customer left. I yanked the shutter halfway down, locked the glass door, and ran to the bathroom, but by then I’d been holding it so long that I didn’t need to go anymore. I squizzled floor cleaner into the bucket, put it in the sink, and opened the hot-water tap. I went out front and dimmed the lights and stuck a tape in the deck. I x’ed the till, glancing at the CCTV screen as I stapled together the petty cash slips. There was still a customer in the back. I sighed and went through.
“Hi, sorry, we’re closed.”
Army backpack, dirty jeans. I knew another ex-art student when I saw one. He was tall and pudgy and fair, with invisible eyebrows and flushed skin. He held up a music box. “How much?”
“Thirty-four ninety-nine.”
“It’s my girlfriend’s birthday,” he said.
I didn’t think so. Blackheads coated his nose. They were long and pointed, like hair. Any female presence in his life would have yanked those babies out with a Bioré strip by now. I didn’t understand the purpose of the lie, but I was too tired to care.
“OK,” I said. I hoped he would have found something by the time I finished mopping the floor. I went to get the bucket, and as I closed the tap, I felt him come up behind me. He wrapped his arm around my neck, pushing something against my bra clasp. When he repositioned it higher, I felt a hard point poking through the back of my shirt. He was shaking, and he smelled bad. I wished I’d gone to the bathroom before.
“Do exactly as I say.”
I noticed his precise diction and well-spoken accent. I wondered what had gone wrong in his life. As he pushed me to the front of the shop, I looked through the window at the mini-cab office across the road. The owner always leans against the doorway, chewing a toothpick and watching me in a skeezy way. Where the hell was he now? When we reached the till, I glanced at the X-read. Everyone pays by card, so there was only eighty in cash, plus the float. I hit NO SALE. When the drawer jumped out, I blocked his view with my body, pawing the money into the backpack and throwing in the credit card slips, discarded change bags, and counterfeit detector pen to make it seem fuller. I tightened the drawstring before passing it back over my shoulder.
“On the floor,” he said. “Count to a hundred.”
I got down on the tile and clasped my hands over my head. I waited for him to leave. He stood there for a while, and then he sat on top of me. It seemed improvised, as if he’d been planning to leave and something had changed his mind. He was squashing my lungs and I couldn’t breathe properly. I heard a clicking sound I recognized right away as the sound of a box-cutter blade adjusting. The point dug into the soft place behind my ear.
“Are you going to hurt me?” I said. My voice had come out in a whisper, and I wasn’t sure if he’d heard. Maybe he didn’t know. The tip of the blade punctured my skin.
When he shifted his weight, I tensed my body, visualizing how to push him off, twist round, and make a grab for the box-cutter, but he planted a knee in the middle of my back and wrapped my hair around his fist. He made a small incision at the base of my neck, near the hairline. It burned instead of hurt. He held still, and I thought he was looking at it.
He seemed to get lighter, and a strange idea flitted across my mind. I thought it was the weight of his soul leaving his body, and that he wasn’t all there anymore. I got really scared then. I didn’t think he wanted to kill me, but to destroy me in some other way.
I knew what was required, an ultimate act of salesmanship, but I couldn’t think of a single good thing I’d done or might do. I have friends, none of them close, and no immediate family. I lost my parents in a car accident, and my grandmother raised me. She died when I was eighteen. I decided to invent a fiancé and a baby, but when I opened my mouth, a different story came out.
“I’m a failure. I’ve never done anything worthwhile or interesting. I’m necessary to no one. Please don’t make it worse.” I changed my breathing and tried to cry.
I felt my hair unwinding from around his hand. He got up. The change in the backpack jangled and his soles squeaked against the tile. I heard him unlock the door and bang his head against the lip of the shutter on his way out. I stood up and looked at the empty drawer for a while before I closed it. I touched the cut as I waited for the Z-read to print off. I looked at my hand. I wanted a fish-finger sandwich with ketchup. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone. I checked the printout and went across the road to the cash machine. I withdrew a hundred and ninety pounds from my savings account and replaced the float and the takings. I threw out the mop water and set the alarm. It beeped as I pulled the shutter down and slid in the locks.
I walked around the corner and up the street to my house, thinking about what I’d said to the robber. This was the second thing that had happened to me that day. After lunch, a woman had come in with a small girl in a sailor dress. She was the kind of child who’s more interested in how the shop works than in any of the merchandise. She stood by the counter, watching me wrap items for a customer who was still browsing. The kids who come in think of it as a toy store, even though we sell lots of other things, and I thought she probably envied me the way I used to envy the ice-cream man. I didn’t care that she was only a kid. I liked feeling good about my job, for a change.
“So,” she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes, “is this your life job? I mean, is this what you’re going to do for the rest of your life?”
“I hope not,” I said, and tried to laugh it off.
I cast around for her mother to come and shut her down, but she was engrossed in the linen handkerchiefs embroidered by Bulgarian widows. The girl eyed me.
“Um, I have a degree,” I said. “I went to art school.”
“Then why aren’t you an artist?”
“I wanted to be a real artist, but something happened. My confidence failed. These days, I’m more of an illustrator. But you have to put yourself out there, and I’m not very good at that.”
She gave me a cool stare.
“I illustrated a pub menu. I’ve sold a few drawings on Etsy.”
She tipped her head to the side. “That sounds good.”
“Listen,” I said, “I’ll give you ten pounds every time you come in here and question me about my life.”
She twisted her mouth. “Are you married? Have you got a boyfriend?”
“Perfect. Exactly like that.”
She opened her hand and placed it on the counter. “Starting from next time. Today’s the audition.”
She seemed crestfallen, so I gave her a faulty faux-Japanese doll from behind the till. All the girls her age are crazy about them. My roommate Sachiko told me Japanese people have these dolls in their houses if they’ve lost a baby, and someone must have copied them without knowing what they meant. I liked the original idea. I thought there could be different dolls standing in for the different things that have been lost.
It was Friday night. Everyone was
out. I went to the bathroom and put a few Band-Aids on my neck. I thought if my life was a movie, this was when I’d decide to be artificially inseminated, open a cake-making business, or cycle across South America. I put a bun in the toaster oven and slid the fish fingers under the grill. I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to do apart from quitting the shop.
That would just mean having to look for something else. I’ve already worked at the video shop, the normal pub, the racist pub, and the Italian restaurant opposite the Cypriot car wash. Since I don’t know how to cut hair or fry chicken, there’s nothing else for me around here, and I shouldn’t have to commute for the kind of money I make.
I could probably get a better job, in an office or something, if I took out a few of my piercings and covered my chest piece. I never needed any of this before, because I used to be the real thing, an artist. It felt like I was carrying a kind of light inside me all the time. My first year of art school, the light went out. Almost overnight, I became deeply ordinary. It was a kind of paralysis. I didn’t even have the momentum to drop out, so I concealed the absence of an artist with the image of one. This is all I have left of that part of me.
The sesame seeds were singed. I built the sandwich, squirted a fjord of ketchup onto the plate, and took it into the living room. There was a new Time Out, and I flicked through it as I ate. My favorite part is the personals, especially the stories of missed connections, and I like the alternative lifestyles section because of the direct way people describe themselves and what they want.
PROFESSIONAL COUPLE caught my eye because it struck me as funny, as if being together was their job. I read on: 30S, INTO CAMPING, HIKING. I wondered if this was some newfangled party-and-play slang. I tried to guess what the terms could mean. Hiking sounded like it might be sexy. SEEKING CONSCIOUS, N/S FEMALE FOR SOMETHING REAL. LONDON.
I cleaned the tub and ran a bath. I sat in the water, crying about my day. I brushed my teeth and tried to watch a movie on my laptop. I had to rewind the opening scene a few times, because my mind kept drifting. Something real. It totally threw me. Either they were saying it wasn’t all about sex, or it was and it would be mind-blowing. I decided the good thing about finding out you had nothing and wanted nothing, was that you had nothing to lose. I went out to the living room. My housemates were back from the pub. They asked me about my day. Fine, I said, and took the magazine to my room. I sat on my bed and read the ad again before dialing the number. I typed in the code.
“Hi.” It was a woman’s voice. “Er—maybe you could tell us a bit about yourself. OK. Thanks. We’re Jack and Amber.”
I opted to listen to the greeting again. Her voice was warm and hard, like her name. The tone beeped. I still didn’t know what they wanted, so I wasn’t sure how to pitch it.
“Hello? I’m Vivien Chiang. I don’t smoke. I’m conscious if you meant it in the biological sense. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I had a terrible day at work. I guess you didn’t need to know that, but anyway. The wording of your ad intrigued me. I’m open for something new.”
I left my number and ended the call. I went back to watching the movie. I knew I’d sounded crazy, but if I entered a rerecording spiral, it could get expensive. A little while later, my phone played the girls’ chorus from “Walk on the Wild Side.” I paused the film and found my phone on the bed.
HI VIVIEN. DINNER SATURDAY? AMBER
DEFINITELY, I texted back.
WHERE DO U LIVE
SE LONDON. U?
I waited.
WEST. WE KNOW A PLACE NEAR U
OK GREAT
CAN PICK U UP AT YRS
I texted the address and said I’d be ready at eight.
On Saturday after work, I ran back to the house and took a shower. I always come back covered in glitter, even if I’m sure I haven’t touched any. I didn’t think anyone was home, but when I passed Sachiko’s room, I saw her lying on her bed, reading a book. I adjusted my towel before going in.
“Heya,” she said, extending a packet of gummy bears.
“I need help.”
“Sure,” she said. “Anything.”
“I have a date in fifteen minutes, and I have nothing to wear. Just anything is fine.”
She got up and opened her wardrobe. She pulled out a bunch of dresses by their hangers and draped them over my arms.
“Thanks. I don’t know, can I take you out for a beer this week?”
“I’d like that,” she said. “Have fun.”
I went to my room and piled them on the bed. I took off the towel and sprayed perfume on my wrists and the backs of my knees. It was five to eight. There wasn’t time to try everything on, so I held each dress against my body in front of the mirror. They were simple designs in lush, evocative shades, and felt dreamlike against my skin. I put on a midnight-blue dress and black high-heeled shoes. The chorus of girls announced a text.
WE’RE HERE
I shrugged on my bomber jacket, breathing its good, animal smell, zipped my keys, phone, and debit card into the pocket, and clopped out of the house. There was a black car parked on the corner, and as I tottered toward it, I could see them. They were better looking and younger than I’d expected, perhaps five or six years older than me. I climbed into the back and scooted to the middle. They both poked their heads around their seats at the same time.
Amber had a mournful, sensuous face with pretty, purplish crescents under her eyes and dark hair laced into a side braid. She looked at me through her eyelashes like a Modigliani. Jack was an Egon Schiele, with classical features edged by a deranged sort of beauty. His light brown hair had a golden cast. We shook hands. Amber’s grip was firmer than Jack’s.
“There’s this cute brasserie in Crystal Palace with Frenchy sort of food,” she said. “Does that sound fine?”
“Sure. Great.”
When Jack started the car, Amber turned to face the front. “I have to look at the road,” she said. Her hand touched the dash. She had long fingers, pink polish that was almost white, a silver wedding band.
“What do you do, Vivien?” Jack said, tipping his head back as he looked at me in the rearview mirror. He had small, deep-set, gray eyes and starry eyelashes.
“I work in a shop, but I trained as an illustrator.”
“Interesting,” Amber said. “You know, Jack designs fonts.”
“Really?” I poked my head between the seats. “How about you, Amber?”
“I’m a curator at the V&A.”
“That’s my favorite museum,” I said.
“I’m glad.”
I could smell Jack’s aftershave. I leaned back and looked out the window.
We parked on the corner and walked up the street. The restaurant was all black wood and bright brass. A girl took our coats and the maître d’ scanned his roster. Amber had a tight little body wrapped in black jeans and a deconstructed Doors tee. I thought we had both dressed the way the other person normally did. The maître d’ led us to a small, glass-encased room near the back of the restaurant. It looked like somewhere you’d plan a war. The whole idea was to have the ambience without the noise, but it had the opposite effect. The glass didn’t reach the ceiling, so the noise drifted in anyway, and the darkened restaurant turned the glass into a mirror. Amber sat opposite me and Jack sat next to her. We smiled and picked up our menus.
“Cute dress,” Amber said.
“It isn’t mine.”
“You should steal it.”
I peered at them over the top of my menu and pictured us having a three-way. I’d never been with anyone older than me. That there were two of them made me feel safe. When the waiter appeared I wasn’t ready, but they were, so I ordered the same thing as Amber. He took our menus and left.
“Have you always lived in London?” I asked Amber.
“I grew up in Colchester,” she said. “I came here to study. Jack’s from London.”
“Sort of,” Jack said. “I was born in Golders Green, but I spent most of my
childhood overseas. My parents were diplomats. They’re retired and divorced now.”
“Mine never married,” Amber said. “They’re teachers.”
“And you?” Jack said.
“East London, until I was seven. When my parents died, I went to live with my grandmother in Brixton.”
“Oh no,” Amber said.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
The drinks arrived. As Jack took the straws out of his drink, I noticed his beautiful spatula fingers and square nails.
“How did the two of you meet?” I asked.
“It was the weirdest thing,” Amber said. “We sat next to each other on a flight into Heathrow. We didn’t swap numbers or anything. Three days later, I bumped into him on the street.”
“Sounds like it was meant to be. How long have you been married?”
“I can never remember,” Amber said, turning to Jack.
“Nine years,” he said. “We don’t have kids.”
I told them the story of how I’d hired a kid as my life coach. They both laughed at my little jokes, and it felt good. It turned out we’d all been to art school, so we talked about that for a while. We discussed the Turner nominees, the films of Matthew Barney, and a Rebecca Horn exhibition we’d all seen. I decided I was more physically drawn to Jack and more psychologically attracted to Amber. She had a sexier manner, and I thought her reasons for wanting to do this were probably more complex than his.
When the food arrived, they each put half of their food on the other person’s plate. People only do that if they’re madly in love. It means they want to experience all the same things, no matter how insignificant. I didn’t understand what they thought they needed me for. We talked about books and movies, and books that had been turned into movies. Jack expressed his views in a dominant manner, while Amber was subtly persuasive. Whenever I spoke, they both listened in a serious, attentive way that made me think they were after more than a casual hookup. By now, I was very curious about what they wanted, but I never address a delicate matter directly. That’s the Chinese part of me.