by M. E. Roufa
A very small man with very suspicious eyes was staring at her.
“Hey!” He said. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”
If it was possible for a human being to look like a frog, this man was him. Short in stature, with large bulging eyes and curiously elongated arms and legs on a scrawny body, there was something well, oozy about him. He also was not wearing pants. The suit trousers he was changing into, or out of, were still at half mast. Norma shuddered. She debated whether or not to admit that she worked there. Had he seen her hiding the dress or hadn’t he? She decided to play it safe. There was one advantage to a man so uniformly unattractive: with so little likelihood of a Mrs. Frog in his life, he would probably take the fall for her if she needed him to. She’d sweet-talked worse.
In one graceful gesture, Norma grabbed a suit off the rack—carefully sizing it up to be certain it was absolutely wrong in as many ways as possible—and tried to look as casual as she could under the circumstances.
“Excuse me,” she said to him, breathily, gazing into his eyes with her most liquid stare. “Could you possibly help me?”
Norma held the suit up, her eye contact never wavering. The man gulped, but said nothing. He stared at her, his eyes bulging ever so slightly more. Norma was half afraid that his tongue would shoot out and check her nose for bugs. Then the man spoke. Even his voice was fairly froglike. “Me?”
Norma broke eye contact to look around. There was no one around. No one. Yes, you. Either you or the mannequin over there. Without a head. And I’m not looking at the mannequin. She raised her eyebrows slightly. Clearly she’d found a winner. But it was too late to turn and run, and for all she knew she was running out of time. Mission Impossible. The misguided sequel, starring the Muppets. She had to get away from the dress, though, and she couldn’t afford an eyewitness, and it while she completely trusted Mr. Headless over there, leaving Kermit to his own devices was too much of a gamble. She returned her eyes to his, and resumed her sultry request.
“Uh huh… I was just wondering if you could do me a favor. I was trying to decide if this suit would be right for my boyfriend, and, well…” she paused, and looked down at her feet shyly, giving the impression that she was blushing—damn she could act!—“I was just wondering, since you’re kind of the same size as him, whether you might try it on, so I could see how it looks?” She raised her eyes back up to his, and bit her lip ever so slightly. She was a pro at this. The effect of her white teeth against her red lip, her big trusting eyes looking into his, her chest rising slightly as she breathed in… the kind of look that’s specially calibrated to make a hardened master criminal drop his gun and raise his other gun… boop boop a doo, baby…
The frogman swallowed, his fly apparently unmoved in any way. In fact, he was quickly taking the time to pull up his pants and fasten them as tightly as possible. “Let me guess—you think if you butter me up, I’ll buy you that dress, huh?” Shit. He’d seen it then. “Look, I don’t have that kind of money. Or that kind of time.”
Norma was flabbergasted. Far in the distance she saw another clerk approaching. She knew she’d be asked what she was doing in his department, and her lunch break was definitely over. She needed to change tactics. “I’ll give you fifty bucks.”
“To try on a suit?”
“To shut up about the dress.”
For the first time, his eyes lit up, with a quick oleaginous gleam. “Oh I see…your boyfriend won’t buy you the dress, so you try to lure some sucker in here to buy it for you—but you don’t want him to know so now you’re trying to buy me off… Yeah, I’d like to ‘try on the suit…’” Now it was his turn to look suggestively, which was nowhere near such a pretty sight.
“Oh my God! Eww!” It was all Norma could do not to lose her breakfast, right there in the cubicle. There were bad pickup lines, and bad pickup moments, but she’d never been accused of prostitution before—welcome to a new low, baby. And at the same time, a teeny tiny part of her fashion-loving brain was processing how, if he hadn’t already mentioned that he couldn’t afford the dress, and if he was even a little bit cuter… ew! ew! ew! ew! ew!!! Norma made a mental note to find a brain surgeon to have whatever piece had formed that thought removed.
Somehow she kept her head. Vomiting on his shoes wouldn’t be a good idea. She just had to make a graceful exit somehow. And soon, because the Menswear clerk was now just yards away.
“I mean, no. You’ve got it all wrong.”
The frogman saw her increasing panic, saw the approaching store clerk, and made a quick mental calculation. “Well, it’s going to take a lot more than fifty dollars.”
“How much?” Norma didn’t have much more than the fifty she had offered, but what was she going to do? With relief she noticed that the clerk had turned off to the side and was straightening the nearby tie display—that bought her another minute or two at least. Why hadn’t she thought of rummaging messily through all the ties on every table as a first line of defense? And the money! Why had she offered him a bribe in the first place, when for all he knew she was just misplacing a dress? She couldn’t even really afford the fifty—what was she thinking?—and now his assumption that she was at his mercy effectively put her there.
“Go out with me.”
Norma tried going back to her original story. “I can’t. I have a boyfriend. He’s very jealous.”
“Then I’ll tell him you’re giving happy endings in the men’s dressing room at Lord and Taylor’s for cocktail dresses.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“So are you.”
For the first time, Norma smiled. At least he was smart. She hadn’t had a date in a long time, so even if it was as awful as she was sure it would be, at least it would be someone else paying for dinner and treating her like she mattered. It was hard to say no to that. Deep down it was always hard to say no to being wanted. She gave him her number, then started to walk away.
“Hang on.” He grabbed her arm, and started dialing the number she gave him. Deep within her handbag, her cell phone started to ring. He grinned. “Just checking.”
Norma started to leave again, then stopped. Somehow she still felt she needed to explain herself. “It wasn’t a cocktail dress. It was couture.”
Their eyes met. The frogman spoke first. “Then I wouldn’t have just told the boyfriend.”
9
Well, it wasn’t the turnout he had hoped, but it could have been worse. After two weeks of plugging, reminding, and offering extra credit, Abe had finally been able to convince a grand total of nine students to agree to come to the Emancipation Proclamation exhibit’s opening party. Given the peripatetic nature of high school students in general, and of a couple of the students on the list in particular, he genuinely only expected to see about half of that number. But still, the exhibit would be in town for several weeks, and if even one of those students could be sufficiently jazzed up by anything he or she saw tonight, maybe it would be enough to excite a dozen more. It was a long shot, but it was a party, which meant there would hopefully be something exciting going on above and beyond the actual excitement of the rare historical documents that were the raison d’être of the show. And if all else failed, alcohol would in all likelihood be served, and Abe had already decided to turn a blind eye to any underage maneuverings in that department. After all, he reasoned, there was no legal drinking age in the 19th century. That was a living history lesson right there. He had no doubt that the kids were going to pretend they didn’t know him. It wouldn’t cost him anything to return the favor.
He scanned the crowd hopefully, but he had arrived early and there was no sign of anyone he knew. He had to hand it to the theme park “imagini-storians” who put the exhibit together: there was a real nod toward verisimilitude everywhere he looked. The hall itself was set up with life-sized moving dioramas of the torments of slavery, of the underground railroad, and several scenes of Abraham Lincoln’s own life and Presidency, all with information-rich signs and i
nteractive screens that visitors could use to seek more information or to park their used cups. There was a scale model of Lincoln’s boyhood Kentucky log cabin, about the size of a New York studio apartment, for visitors to explore, and a display of clothing the former president had worn, including his distinctive stovepipe hat (far furrier than Abe would have expected). Abe stopped to take in one of his animatronic doppelgangers, this one delivering the Gettysburg address. No matter how many times he came upon an image of Lincoln, in whatever form, it never failed to arrest him. From the worst caricature at the cheesiest used car dealership sale, to the commanding statue in the Memorial in Washington D.C., all of them seemed to speak to Abe.
And he always wanted to ask them the same question: Who am I? As if all of them—from the portraits painted by men who had actually known the man, to the creepy men wearing fake beards—would somehow, somewhere, have the answer. He knew that what he was feeling was just garden-variety existential angst, and that he was lucky enough to have the other Abes there to stand in for the answer if he wanted them to—whereas years earlier Sartre asked the same question and, having no one specific to ask, got the answer Well, I guess I’m nobody then. But still. Looking into those plastic eyes, his own eyes, his own features but not, Abe still felt an odd connection. He decided he wanted a drink. He hadn’t seen a bar anywhere, which was a relief considering that the only flat surfaces in the room were the cases at the far end that were set up displaying the Proclamation and a selection of other significant documents. But shouldn’t there be waiters bringing around trays of champagne or something? Had he come too early?
He felt a tap on his shoulder. “What are you doing out here? You’re late!” Abe turned to face a man he’d never seen before, who looked just the tiniest bit too irritated to be angry, or possibly the other way around. “Didn’t the service tell you to use the staff entrance?” Abe gaped at him, his face as almost as empty of intelligence as the robot behind him. Abe pointed to himself, wordlessly, making the comparison to the animatronic model even more vivid. The man stared back, as if startled by Abe’s clear show of stupidity, then just gave Abe a shove toward a door marked Staff. “Just go. Get in your costume, and start bringing around trays of champagne… people are waiting!”
His head spinning a bit even without the benefit of the champagne that he was now apparently supposed to be on the giving end of, instead of the receiving, Abe backed through the door into what turned out to be a staging area with a small galley kitchen. Once again, people seemed to be expecting him and pissed at him at the same time. He was told he was late and a bundle of black and white clothes was pressed into his hands.
“Where…” he started, but before he could finish, he was pointed to the door marked Men’s.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Abe looked down at his reflection in the mirror and almost literally felt his stomach sink. The clothes fit, which was impressive, considering no one there knew him. When first faced with the decision of whether to put the costume on or not, he had he had chosen the lesser evil, assuming that once he tried squeezing his lanky six-foot-four inch frame into whatever size garment they handed him, he had an easy way out to explain that they had the wrong man. He didn’t expect that the pants would fit, let alone the shirt. Certainly not the jacket. But of all the things he didn’t expect, of all the nightmares on top of nightmares he didn’t expect when he made the first mistake of not explaining the mix-up immediately, he truly didn’t expect what he beheld now, looking at himself in the dirty mirror bolted to the wall of the staff bathroom of the exhibit hall. Even before tying on the bow tie, it was painful to see.
They had dressed him as Abraham Lincoln.
10
Abe walked out of the bathroom still in his socks, not even waiting to change back into his street clothes. He needed to find the manager and explain. He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t even play Lincoln back in elementary school plays; he certainly wasn’t going to start now by starring in Abe Lincoln: the Cocktail Waitress Years. But what he saw when he exited the bathroom brought him to a standstill. The staging area was filled with Lincolns, all dressed exactly like he was. A few wore the traditional beard, a couple were women, but all of them bore more than passing resemblances to the 16th president, all wore the costume, and the only major difference between them and him, other than genetically, was that he didn’t have a tray of champagne. Or shoes. A point that was quickly screamed at him by the same man who had accosted him earlier.
“I’m not…” Abe tried to explain, as the manager bore down on him, his face getting redder. Their eyes met and Abe gathered his courage together—no matter how angry this man was, Abe had the facts on his side. “I’m not a waiter!”
“Of course you’re not—you’re an impersonator! They’re not expecting perfection—just competence. Shoes! Tray!”
The other Lincolns had started to exit the kitchen in pairs, and Abe could hear the muffled sounds of applause and appreciative laughter as they made their way into the hall. Clearly this was supposed to be a grand entrance, and his delay—or rather, the delay of whoever they thought he was—had spoiled the overall effect. Instead of ten pairs of Lincolns together in double file, only nine pairs of Lincolns exited in formation, with a solitary solo Lincoln trailing behind. Thanks to him, it wasn’t quite a score. Abe wondered if he should apologize for that too, then decided the man probably wouldn’t appreciate the humor.
As Abe was lacing up his shoes, the back door opened and a tall gangly boy of about 19 came rushing in from the parking lot, looking very flustered. He threw his jacket off onto a nearby chair and looked beseechingly at the man, who Abe had by now concluded must be running the event.
“I am so sorry I’m late. My car got a flat and I didn’t have the number here to call… it’s okay if you don’t pay me the whole amount, but I can get suited up real fast if you still need me…?” The kid looked at the man and then at Abe, just as the man was looking at Abe and then at him. Only Abe wasn’t looking from anyone to anyone, because for the first time, he was the only one in the room who knew exactly what was going on.
The kid stared at Abe incredulously. “They sent a replacement already? I didn’t tell them I wasn’t coming in. I didn’t even tell them I was running late. Dude—that is so uncool.” The kid actually looked like he was about to cry. From the looks of his clothes, his beaten-up shirt and frayed khakis, and the worn-down look of his shoes, it was clear that he wasn’t doing these jobs just for the fun of them.
Abe got up from his chair, his unlaced shoe already off, the stockinged foot clawing at the laced one. “Oh no,” he said reassuringly… “I’m just—” he groped for a word, “—freelance. I was here to see the exhibit, and um…” He looked at the manager, but he was offering no help, “…this guy grabbed me to fill in. But you can see I wasn’t any good. I’ll just change out of this so you can take over… come on…”
Abe headed to the bathroom to change back into his own clothing as quickly as possible, which wasn’t quick enough. Handing over the costume, he smiled at the kid. “How’d you get started being Lincoln?”
“Oh, I dunno,” he answered. “Pays better than being Howard Stern.”
So there you had it.
With a sense of relief, Abe exited the bathroom into an empty kitchen. He thought about helping himself to an entire bottle of champagne as hazard pay, but didn’t want to risk another run-in with the source of the hazard. So instead he decided to rejoin the party he had come to attend in the first place.
Since he had last been in the hall, it had undergone a subtle yet unnerving transformation. The addition of a hundred more people, now holding drinks and hors d’oeuvres—not to mention the 19 people dressed as Abraham Lincoln serving them—made all of the historical exhibits seem a lot less educational and a lot more like really bad conceptual art. Then again, as far as he could tell no one was actually looking at the exhibits. Of course, Abe realized with another mental thud, this party was yet one mo
re place for people to be seen and to tell people they had gone to; another theme event. No different from any other party opening an art exhibit or theatrical performance, or honestly, if they had parties for that sort of thing, new rides at the theme park just outside the building’s back gates. With a fresh burst of cynicism, Abe wondered how many of the people gathered there actually knew what the Emancipation Proclamation was, or even in which of the clearly marked handful of cases it was located. Whether, when asked tomorrow what event they had attended, they would mention having seen the document—the original preliminary manuscript, written in Lincoln’s own handwriting with comments added by his Secretary of State, valuable beyond comparison—or whether they would just say they were at “that Lincoln thing” and leave it at that. Then again, most of his own students were only deigning to show up for extra credit—if they even bothered to come—and was that really any better? Was the purpose of preserving these artifacts, this proof of history, merely in order for people to appreciate them with constant reverence? Or was it enough that people simply continued to gather in their presence for any reason, however trivial, just to continue to bear witness that they still existed? Questions like that had made Abe decide to become an American History teacher in the first place. Even though he knew that the answers to those questions was simply that most Americans didn’t care about either appreciating historical artifacts, or appearing in their presence, without alcohol or people in costumes or talking animals or other spectacles. Which, ironically, was probably what was bringing an awful lot of people there that night. Also there would be fireworks.