I never had a pet.
But I should be careful to use the correct vocabulary. We sell animal companions at Petlandia. Not pets: companions. That’s what they said during training: It’s an important philosophical distinction that matters to the consumer. I should always say “companions” even though the department sign says Petlandia. It will always say Petlandia because rebranding is costly and causes consumer anxiety. I think about the difference this way: I never had a companion except for AnnaMom, and she was surely not my pet.
Maybe, just maybe, I was hers.
Do you remember, AnnaMom, when I wanted a hamster dyed to look like a tiger for my birthday? But then my birthday came and I opened my presents and there were mittens that looked like tiger paws and a furry hat with tiger ears, but there wasn’t any striped hamster. I cried and cried. And you said, “Look, Zoë-Zoë-ziger-cat. Look in the mirror. Look at your tiger ears! Kawaii! Zoë-ziger.” And maybe the hat was kawaii, maybe it was cute. But it wasn’t a little living pet. It wasn’t what I asked for so I yelled at you and said, “I can’t love a hat!” And you said, “Enough now, Zoë. That’s enough.”
But it wasn’t enough. And I never ever wore that hat, not once. I wanted something to love, and a hat is not that. Never, never, never. But it’s okay now, AnnaMom. I understand now. I know about the by-products and the extra work. I understand you didn’t want me to learn too soon that love wears out too, faster than a hat. I understand how quickly pets wear out, faster than love. Working here in Petlandia has taught me the most unpleasant thing about working in a department that sells live products. They die.
Dead hermit crabs smell terrible.
Mother hamsters eat their babies.
No one buys rosy-red minnows or pinkie mice as companions. Those are food, live food for other animals. They will be consumed. This shopper must love her companion snake. This shopper must love his piranhas. I try to remember that, to respect that love, when I package those little slivers of fish, those hairless, shrimping mousies. I try to remember that and smile. My smile is AllMART’s welcome mat.
“Zero, you can have an inventory shift tonight if you want.”
What I want is to go home to the Warren and stand under the shower. The water will rinse the itch of litter off my skin and the waxy urine from under my fingernails. But it will not wash the ghost of Petlandia by-products out of my nose. So what I want is a shower and a nose that forgets all of this, but what I say is “Yes, thank you.” And I smile because I’m supposed to be cheerful about extra hours. My smile is AllMART’s welcome mat. Then, when I’m alone, I take a picture of the sign over Aisle 5 and send it to the Warren list. In a couple seconds, I get a photo of my underpants, twisted up into a flower, sitting like a hat on Pineapple’s bright red hair. I don’t have to worry about 5er. Pineapple has it covered. I just wish my underpants weren’t involved.
Inventory is a little different in Petlandia. In Petlandia, the products move, and they don’t have individual scanning codes. So inventory of the live products is sort of old-school. It requires counting. That isn’t so hard with iguanas, which are large and slow, and it’s sort of fun with the puppies and kittens. And Double Half-Moon Beta fish are easy because they sit on the shelf in separate plastic cups of water or they would fight to the death. But it is terribly difficult with the smaller birds, the finches in constant nervous motion, every one of them alike as numbers.
I know I’m not the only one. There are other trainees scooting like raccoons through the deserted, dim aisles. I hear the rumble of the ladder-stairs moving from place to place. Sometimes there is laughing or swearing. It depends on what that person finds during inventory. Along the top shelf of the Great Outdoors there are stray feathers and feet. Here in Petlandia, I find a little white mouse on a can of cat food.
“How did you get here, kawaii mousie?”
The mousie doesn’t answer. It rubs a tiny pink paw along even tinier whiskers. It poops a tiny dark-brown rice grain of poop. I’m so in love. I even love the poop. I put my scan gun down and move my hands slowly. The little mousie doesn’t run away even when I touch the top of its tiny round back with my fingertip. It lets me scoop it up and hold it in the hollow of my hands. I think it is also in the hollow of my heart. Kawaii baby mousiekin, I’m your ZoëMom.
“What are you doing, trainee ZERO?”
“Inventory. You assigned me.”
“Inventory means scanning product codes. Where is your scanner?”
I nod at the cat food shelf. My scanner sits on top of the cans.
I smile and hold up my hands that embrace and make a little sphere, a little world, a little egg. I can feel the bright and busy feet and heart moving on my palm and fingers. “I found something.”
She holds out her hand, I hover mine above, and the little speck of mousie is transferred.
“Damn popcorn mice!” she says. Then she flicks the little white life to the floor and steps on it. There is nothing but a smudge of damp meat.
“Look, when you find them, just kill them. Throwing them hard on the floor will do it with the bigger ones, but the popcorns, step on them or dump them straight into the incinerator. Those little suckers are hard to kill. They can’t be returned to inventory once they escape the cages. Quality control. And these ones, the juveniles, they are escape artists. We don’t sell them at this age because they are unmanageable. They climb and they jump. They jump so high they might as well be able to fly, I swear. A real pain in the ass. I mean, if a couple of them got to maturity, this whole store would be knee-deep in mice a week later — one consumer posts one photo of one mouse sitting on a cupcake in the bakery case and it’s a disaster. So good for you for catching that thing. I’m glad you aren’t squeamish or jumpy. You will be a real asset here in Petlandia. Make sure you sweep the turds onto the floor. Janitorial will be around in a couple of hours. If it happens on the day shift, call for cleanup-on-aisle.”
At the end of my shift I pass by the fancy mice sleeping in Super-Savr Sanitary Shavings, pine scented. Tiny motions of their breathing in and out. Somewhere hidden inside is the tiny heart, a little wet unstoppable engine. That heart doesn’t require any tiny mousie thoughts to command it. Like mine, it just keeps beating, even when forgotten.
When I get to the Warren, Pineapple and Luck want to play keep-away with my pink underpants. I’m too tired for that kind of fun. I’m too tired for any kind of fun. They give up and leave. I should take a shower, but I don’t even have energy for that. I just stand there and stare at the screen.
Voice-over: Bats of Happiness begins naturally.
Scene: A bat is born, hairless, with enormous, meaningless eyes closed shut.
Voice-over: For centuries people have understood the value of guano.
Scene: Sexy pirate with naked chest and poofy silk sleeves strikes intrepid pose against the backdrop of the open sea.
Voice-over: Mining wealth found deep in the earth. Mining a renewable resource.
Scene: A trowel digs into the soil in a flower garden. The dirt looks rich and moist as chocolate cake.
Voice-over: We here at Bats of Happiness have a commitment to beauty and to life on this earth. We believe in managing resources. That’s why we are seeding colonies of bats into abandoned factories, schools, and malls. Our specially trained bat-herds monitor their health and collect the valuable fertilizer.
Scene: Workers in red plastic coveralls walk through a cavernous factory. A hand in a red rubber glove holds an infant bat, feeding it with an eyedropper. A beautiful young girl bat-herd removes her protective hood and face shield and shakes her shining hair.
It’s Belly. The beautiful bat-herd is Belly.
Voice-over: Steam-sanitized. Deodorized. Delivered to you.
Scene: We see bags on an assembly line swelling full of fertilizer and heat-sealed shut. The facility is super-clean, all bright white and stainless steel.
Scene: A flowering garden in an idyllic backyard. A bride and groom stand under a rose ar
bor.
CGI post-production: (1) Insert seven red cartoon bats of the product logo circling overhead; (2) Enhance color and number of roses.
Voice-over: Bats of Happiness. Committed to the future. Committed to beauty. Committed to your happiness.
I watch the entire cycle of news stories and product promos time after time. That bat-herd looks like Belly every fleeting moment she appears on screen, tossing her shining hair. And then the moment passes, and doubt and uncertainty make me sit and wait for it all to happen one more time. Next time I might know for certain. Next time there might be closure.
That is how Timmer finds me when he finally returns to the Warren after his late-night adventures.
There is a scratching at the door. I decide it is a raccoon.
Why would a raccoon want in at the door? Why would it persist in making the same rattle-tap-scratch? I look at 5er squatting on top of a washing machine, pulsing with the rhythm of the agitator. He doesn’t need to know the answer to that question. I’m the adult. I’m the one who needs to know. It is my job. I walk through the mop room toward the back door.
Rattle-tap-scratch. I will open it just a crack and peek out — that’s the plan. There might be rabies out there or . . . I don’t know what else. But I’m ready to grab the big wooden-handled mop and fight. I’m ready to defend my home. I am ready to kill the rattle-tap-scratch. I’m afraid, but I’m ready. . . .
It’s Juliette. She has her hands full. She is embracing two mannequin legs and a pale body. She holds a sharply jointed arm by the wrist. She pokes me with the plastic fingers. She holds a shopping bag in her teeth.
I reach out and take the handles.
“Little help?” says Juliette. She pecks out her lips and points at the ground behind her in the alley.
She’s lost her head. It’s sitting in the gravel. If it had eyes, it would be looking away, but it doesn’t have eyes. It is smooth as an egg. That was the theory back in the day when this mannequin was cast: The silent salespeople don’t need eyes; they don’t need to see; they only need to be seen. Some mannequins didn’t have heads at all, only necks that extended, unbowed, into nothing. I put the head in the shopping bag. It nests on crumpled tissue paper.
I know the rich history of the mannequin people. I studied it in school. The first were made of wax. They had realistic nipples and hair, real hair, fit strand by strand into their wax skin. Their eyes were glass, with mirrors set behind to give them a brightening glance. On hot days, they melted in the store windows and their red lips slid down their porcelain teeth like blood.
Those were the fierce ancestors of this vague blank-paper shell. Mannequins evolve, in our image, in the images of how we want to be.
“My keys are in my pocket,” says Juliette. And she turns her hip toward me so I can see them, a disturbance in the curve.
She needs me. She needs me to reach into her pocket and pull out the keys. That’s what she needs, so I do it. And when I do, my heart flips upside down like a sad little refrigerator magnet. The reason I am touching her is almost jolted out of my head. I forget about her keys and her need and I’m only aware that I need something too. I want to be in her pocket. I want. I want. I want. I get why they are all so willing to carry her boxes and kill her spiders. If we weren’t in the desert, Juliette would disorganize the tides.
Juliette shifts the burden in her arms, and I’m reminded of my purpose.
I have the keys. I lead the way to the door marked ERUPT SALON, unlock it, and brace it open while Juliette passes on a current of air that smells like peaches and toasted sesame.
The space inside the salon feels endless, but that is mostly because mirrors are reflecting mirrors in that hopeless, endless way that mirrors do. no laSt purE, the mirrors tell themselves while they reflect the mural of an erupting volcano and a painted sea with wooden boats.
“It felt lonely,” says Juliette.
I look at the floor; it is scattered with arms and legs.
“Will you help me put them together?”
Yes. Yes. Yes, of course I will. And I will kill spiders for you, and I will do anything. I will live and die for you, Juliette, because when I put my hand in your pocket, my heart woke up in a whole new world.
We get 5er too, and he helps us fit the parts together as well as they will. There aren’t enough heads. Joints jut in the wrong direction. This body has three legs and no arms. We have made them in our own image. The gold light paints the blank surfaces in glow.
I sit on the floor. 5er rests his head in my lap.
Juliette has stacks and stacks of tissue paper, all colors of the rainbow. It was wasting away in the dark corner of an abandoned stockroom until Juliette gathered it up and brought it into the light. I remember when shopgirls wrapped pretty new things in tissue paper cocoons sealed with special store stickers on them like kisses. I remember when I had an AnnaMom.
Juliette sees me crying. “You okay?”
I see her face is as wet as mine.
“Yes,” I say. “You?”
She pulls her phone out of her pocket and shows me a screen. There is message after message from RAOUL. They all say “I <3 U.” She scrolls and it seems like he loves her infinitely.
“Yes.” And, though it is clearly a lie, we are both good with it.
Juliette’s hands make magic little folds, and the pages of tissue paper blossom into perfect clothes for the Mannequin family. The floor of the store is covered with clouds of crumpled paper. It crushes and brushes around her feet.
She works for hours, while I watch her. Then, at last, she steps back, leans against a mirror, and says, “When Raoul comes . . .” The empty thought threads away like candle smoke.
Juliette is holding a baby on her lap. The baby, being a baby, hasn’t learned that it shouldn’t love Juliette with crazy abandon, so it does.
And Juliette, being Juliette, is loving the baby right back with the same crazy abandon.
It is a recipe for disaster.
“Just explain,” says Timmer, “so I can figure this out. How come we got a baby?”
It’s an excellent question. As we learned in Sexual Responsibility class, babies appear sort of slowly, with some indication like a rejection of bacon or a shameful shift in fashion awareness toward unconstricted shapes. None of that has gone on. We have all seen Juliette in her customary naked state. Seriously, she couldn’t have sneaked this baby past us.
But still, there it is, with its wrists and ankles so fat it looks like it’s some sort of balloon animal, a hand like a chubby starfish, touching Juliette’s cheek while the drool of adoration shines all down the front of its grubby shirt.
“Thing is,” says Juliette, “today I was working Baby Escape. I’m bonded, you know? So I can not only handle money and a cash register, I am authorized to work at Baby Escape, where shoppers hand me their babies so they can shop more conveniently.
“Baby Escape,” Juliette continues. “It doesn’t seem so bad from the customer side. Up front’s the playroom, where there are always a couple of babies sitting on the cushy-colorful mats, and there’s always as many staff as babies, helping them play with the toys featured in the JoyZone! sale-o-the-week. But there is also the back room, the nap room. In there, that’s where we keep most of the babies who get dropped off. It’s floor-to-ceiling baby crates. They got a door on the front, and they got a tray on the bottom lined with absorba-pads. And before we put the baby in there, we give it a shot of sleepy-time juice from a sippy cup. Most times, a baby is out for a couple hours before the family comes back. ‘Shhhush!’ we say. ‘Baby’s in the nap room. Come back in ten minutes.’ They come back in a half hour or so, and we got the baby, all butt-clean in a fresh diaper, still sleeping off the sippy cup we gave them or, you know, a little subdued. And we say, ‘She played herself right out. She really loved whatever-toy-is-featured.’ And we point that out, and we scan the parent bracelet and we scan the bracelet on the baby’s leg and cancel them both out of the system. If they buy t
he toy, there’s no charge at checkout. If they don’t buy the toy, then there’s a service surcharge added to their credit card. Easy-peasy. Except this one’s parent didn’t come back.
“That’s not supposed to happen. I wasn’t trained for it. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Leave it there in the nap room? The morning crew would have noticed. And it would have been on me, you know? ’Cause I was the one who closed out the baby register at Baby Escape.”
So there it is. The story of how we got us a baby. Timmer is staring at Juliette, and I can see his face is starting to soften. Juliette is cranked up to eleven, that’s for sure. I know that baby was noticeably smelly when we walked into the salon and first saw it in Juliette’s arms, a trickle of pink-stained curds slipping down its cheeks and disappearing into the wrinkles under its toothless chin. The bulging diaper, the spit-up — Juliette’s wanting is canceling that all out.
“Timmer!” I say. “How are we going to solve this?” I need him to remember that this is a problem, not a miracle.
“Can you take it back in the morning?” says Timmer.
“I’m not scheduled to work at Baby Escape. I’m Fancy ManiPedis tomorrow,” says Juliette.
“If the parents come back,” says Timmer, “and they say ‘Where’s the baby?’ What then?”
“I closed the register,” says Juliette. “So that would be bad, I think.”
“What was your plan?” Timmer has a lot of faith in Juliette.
“I didn’t have a plan,” says Juliette. “I just, you know, the lights were dimming and I had to do something.”
I can almost see Juliette’s powers of persuasion wrinkling the air like heat waves.
Tears collect and sparkle for a moment before they spill onto Juliette’s cheekbones. “This is the sort of thing that will kill my chances for future employment,” says Juliette.
“Poor baby,” she says.
Timmer steps forward and bends to study the bar code band on the baby’s leg.
MARTians Page 11