The Buying of Lot 37

by Joseph Fink

  “Hey there, Cecil. I date a lot of people but never for very long. I find that while I sometimes say, “I love you” to my girlfriend or boyfriend at the time, I don’t think I have ever meant it. How do you know if you’re in love?” Signed: Loveless in the Barista District

  Hey there, Loveless. I think when you’re truly in love you’ll know it. But you have to be in the right place with yourself to find that love. As my mother used to tell me, “You can’t learn to love others until you learn that others are fiction and that self is unreliable.”

  Next question. “Hey there, Cecil. My husband and I regularly host dinner parties for our neighbors and vice versa. When our neighbors come over to our house, they never take off their shoes. I personally don’t have a problem with that, but my husband thinks it’s rude. What’s your take?” Signed: Unshod in Old Town

  Hey there, Unshod. This is pretty clear-cut to me. It is customary when you enter a person’s home that you must always remove your shoes. Then you must remove their shoes. You must hold that person down. Take their shoes. Get their shoes off. This is standard etiquette.

  We’ve got time for one more question. “Hey there, Cecil. You know the tower? The one that casts no shadow? It also sounds like an untuned cello? Do you know the one? Smells like sulfur? Well, it’s glowing now.” Signed: Malevolent in Mission Grove Park

  Hey there, Malevolent. You know as well as I do that tower was destroyed a century ago. Never write me again. [whispered:] Please write me again.

  Old Woman Josie and her friends who are not angels, just a bunch of really tall people with wings named Erika whom we cannot bear to look directly at, said that the new Old Night Vale Opera House was coming along nicely. Although, I drove past the construction site the other day, and it’s still a mostly empty lot. The only difference is that they changed the sign from “Josefina Contractors Inc.” to “StrexCorp Operatics Ltd.” Also there’s a giant opera house there. But other than that it still looks nearly the same as when they broke ground months ago.

  Opening night of the new Old Opera House will be June 15 and will feature the world premiere of an original opera by the famous actor and composer Lee Marvin, Night Vale’s own immortal legend of stage and screen.

  Still no word on what an opera is. I’m being told it’s like a petting zoo, but with fewer starving wolves and more intermissions.

  Breaking news from City Hall as the Sheriff’s Secret Police say they have now arrested more than a dozen Faceless Old Women.

  The spokesdeer, still speaking in Russian for the Russian-speaking press, while also writing English words in the dirt for the embittered English-speaking press, says that the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home seems to be several bodies connected to a single sentience. She seems not to be omnipresent at all, merely multipresent. The Secret Police spokesdeer then laughed in Russian while writing “hee hee hee” in English in the dirt.

  [a voice whispering into Cecil’s ear]

  Oh. Oh dear. That’s simply not true. I—

  Okay, now there’s a very long insect crawling into my ear. It’s all the way in my ear. I am not okay with this, Faceless Old Woman.

  Faceless Old Woman?

  [silence]

  Gah! Listeners, hang on while I get this silverfish out of my ear canal.

  [off-mic: sound of ripping. then a great beast roaring. then maybe some loud hammer whacks or even gunshots? whimpering? silence.]

  Okay. Okay. So. Traffic.

  [voice is wavering. he can’t hear himself very well in his headset]

  It looks pretty bad out there. We’ve got a jackknifed eighteen-wheeler on the shoulder of westbound Route 800 near exit 4 causing serious delays.

  At the bus depot on Somerset, a fire hydrant was cracked open and now space and time have collap—I’m sorry, listeners. Taking my headphones off. I’m having a hard time hearing myself. I think the Faceless Old Woman really did damage my ear.

  Anyway, traffic’s awful of course. Always is. Don’t drive on Somerset, unless you want all of your matter collapsing into a singularity.

  Really glad to be home! Great homecoming.

  An update now on the multiple arrests of the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. Apparently they’ve managed to find fifteen more versions of her in homes all over town. But according to the spokesdeer, the Secret Police are running out of room in the jails. Also, even at the homes where they have arrested these Faceless Old Women, there are still reported cases of vandalism and whispers and suggested violence and sudden but inscrutable movements in the corners of vision.

  In fact, these reports are happening even in homes where an arrest of the Faceless Old Woman had already been made.

  Many city buildings, especially the Secret Police’s Secret Police Station, hidden in a hovercloud have received quite a bit of damage: bird parts in filing cabinets, bullets replaced with worms, badges reading “ROTTED MEAT” instead of “SECRET POLICE.”

  Mayor Dana Cardinal has called on the police to temporarily cease their crackdown on the Faceless Old Woman. The mayor claims she’s been terrorized by falling televisions and window-mounted A/C units as well as all of the carpet in her City Hall office being replaced by dark, heaving fur as if the floor were now the back of some terrible beast.

  Listeners, I’m not falling for this bit again. Mayor Cardinal, once my friend, has abused my good nature too much. She bought me at an auction and has since been using me against my will to rescue her from danger. Well she’s just going to have to figure it out on her own this time.

  [whispering voice again; then another silverfish in Cecil’s ear]

  Uck gross! Stop it, Faceless Old Woman. Stop it! Weather! Let’s go to the weather!

  WEATHER: “Matches” by Sifu Hotman

  Well I have cotton swabs in both ears now, listeners, and am more than a little bit irritated. But on with the news. The Secret Police just retracted their earlier reports that they had captured the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. They thought they had been arresting several corporeal forms of her across town, but in actuality they had just been arresting a bunch of faceless old women who openly live in their own homes. It seems in retrospect that the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home still secretly lives in your home and has never stopped vandalizing your home in protest of these arrests of innocent women.

  These Faceless Old Women are now filing a civil suit against the Sheriff’s Secret Police for unfair profiling practices against elderly women who happen to have no faces, and the Sheriff just issued the following public apology: “Nonspecifically my bad,” said the Sheriff from his hoveroffice in the clouds. “In general, real sorry about all kinds of things. We’re cool now, right?” the Sheriff added before dissipating into tiny crystalline droplets, which fell gently, a silver movement to the hardened earth below.

  Maybe I did speak too soon about being happy to be back home. While I was reporting the weather, I received this voicemail from Carlos:

  CARLOS:Hi, babe. I heard you were apparently off saving the mayor again just now, sorry I missed you. So I wanted to ask. I was so afraid to ask while you were here because I didn’t want to complicate our peaceful vacation with difficult choices, but here goes: Cecil, remember that building. The simple rectangular building with the tall point atop it, covered entirely in a tarp? You asked several times what that tarp was covering, and I said I didn’t want to say. Yet. And you remember the familiar-seeming man wearing dark sunglasses with what looked like bloodstains on his shirt but I assured you was just barbecue sauce? Well he built that building under the tarp. Cecil, it’s a radio station. Kevin built a radio station. He doesn’t seem to be planning anything evil. In fact, he seems pretty relaxed and friendly these days. He built it for anyone who wants to broadcast or listen to broadcasts. And it got me thinking. And you don’t have to decide now, and you don’t even have to decide yes at all. But would you ever think about—Would you ever consider—oh this is tough
to ask on voice mail. Just call me okay. Call me when you’re off the air. I love you.

  CECIL:Yes. Yes I would, Carlos. I think I really would. It was so serene there. So lovely. Okay. Private thoughts done. Let’s turn my microphone back on now.

  Well, listeners, I wonder what Carlos might be trying to ask me. I mean, it’s probably nothing, and even if it was something, I don’t think I would move away or anything—Move away? no one said anything about moving away. Who moves away? I have to stick around a bit anyway because my sister and brother-in-law are going out of town for a couple of weeks and need me to look after my niece, Janice. I don’t want to disappoint Janice. I mean how could I disappoint Janice? By moving away? Why do you keep saying that? Who’s moving away? Not me. So I’ll be sure to stay very focused on being a good uncle and guardian. Plus, apparently the mayor needs me around to save her all the time. Hate to leave that behind.

  Stay tuned next for the sound of folding cardboard and long strips of tape.

  And to all of the Faceless Old Women, living secretly or living otherwise, fight the good fight. Just leave me out of it, okay? These cotton balls are already soaked.

  And to everyone else. Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

  PROVERB:Don’t be afraid of the dark. Be afraid of the terrible things that are hiding there and the terrible things they will do.

  Episode 69:

  “Fashion Week”

  JUNE 1, 2015

  NICE.

  I worked for years at a prepaid debit card company whose offices were in midtown, right near the heart of New York City’s fashion week. Once a year, there would be all sorts of events going on all around while I was just trying to find some falafel to eat for lunch so I could get back to a job I hated so much it would give me headaches if I made the mistake of thinking about the fact that I was still working there. But I just don’t understand fashion. I’m sorry. I’m sure that there is a lot of complex and beautiful things going on there, but from my uneducated, Target-shopping eyes, it looks like tall, alien people wearing clown costumes. Maybe I do get it a bit. Tall, alien people wearing clown costumes is pretty entertaining.

  This episode marks the return of a character whom I enjoy, but who has, according to my search of our script database, only actually shown up in four episodes, two of which were live shows. Still, I have a real soft spot for Janice Rio, from down the street. Mostly because her name is the epitome of a Night Vale naming convention that I enjoy, where people are identified by a recurring phrase. John Peter, you know, the farmer. Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town. But Janice’s is special, because it makes no sense at all. Down the street from where? From who? Why would she be identified by what she is down the street from? By divorcing the phrase from any possible useful purpose, her name becomes entirely about the words themselves. Which is a lot of the goal of Night Vale. Create images so weird they’re impossible to concretely visualize and it becomes instead entirely about the words that are pointing toward the images.

  Finally I want to talk about a part of this episode that is incredibly emotional for me, but that is easy to miss. The traffic in this section is actually a memorial to a person who was very important to podcasting. Harris Wittels was a comedian and TV writer, perhaps best known for being an executive producer of Parks and Recreation and co-creating Master of None. He was also a prolific podcaster, appearing on a number of shows and hosting a show called Analyze Phish, still one of my favorite podcasts of all time. In it, Harris, an avid Phish fan, tries to convince his skeptical friend Scott to like the band Phish. This is made difficult by the fact that Phish’s music is, objectively, not very good, and so the gentle and friendly struggle between the two continues through episode after beautiful episode. I’m afraid of flying and when Night Vale blew up, I suddenly found myself in a job where I fly a lot. And so there were many airports where I, facing a panic attack, would pace around the airport listening to Analyze Phish. Harris talked me through these low moments in my life and, when he died of an overdose in 2015, it hit me harder than any other celebrity death in recent memory. Because he wasn’t just a celebrity. He was a voice in my ear that had talked me through a lot of difficult times. It genuinely felt like losing a friend and I wanted to use my own podcast to say good-bye to him.

  He was our tour guide through the cosmos. Sorry.

  —Joseph Fink

  “I don’t write the story of my life, I only live it.”

  When fans ask us, “What does Cecil look like?” we, the creators, say, “What do you think Cecil looks like? And that’s the correct answer.”

  But while our fans usually create art of Cecil looking very dapper, in a vest and suspenders like a bespoke hipster bartender, whenever the podcast actually describes what Cecil is wearing, it’s something completely bizarre—in this episode, it’s “leather pants, and a Hawaiian shirt, and a baseball hat made of honeycomb.”

  My father gave me only one piece of masculine fashion advice ever, which was if you have to speak in front of a crowd and they’re wearing jeans and a T-shirt, you should be wearing business casual. If they’re wearing business casual, you should be wearing a suit. If they’re wearing suits, you should be wearing a tuxedo. And I took that to heart. So when Night Vale first started performing these live shows that were more of an event than just a reading in a bookstore or coffee shop, I tried to dress the part of someone who deserved your attention for ninety minutes.

  After the raw, emotional Ghost Stories tour, the script for All Hail seemed to have more room to play, in terms of physicality and audience interaction, and so an opportunity to experiment with the fashion thing arose. Side note: In the Sandman series, Dream of the Endless actually employs an entity called the Fashion Thing to make sure he is appropriately attired for whatever era he finds himself in. Leave it to Neil Gaiman to get right to the be-sequined heart of the thing.

  I just happened to know an amazing, revolutionary designer, Bradley “BCALLA” Callahan who designs primarily for drag queens and, even though I am definitely NOT a drag queen and Bradley had never done traditional menswear, we started discussing collaboration for the “ALL HAIL” tour.

  I invited him to come see a Night Vale live show at the Bell House to see what I did, then we met at a coffee shop in Bushwick to talk about our inspirations. I mentioned Rei Kawakubo’s cutout collection for Comme Des Garçons and David Byrne’s “big suit” from Stop Making Sense, while Bradley brought up maritime dazzle camouflage and the Grand Old Opry glamor of designer Nudie Cohn.

  One of the moments that led me to fully embrace my Year of BCALLA was the tragic one-two-punch deaths of David Bowie and Prince. While doing an action as simple as talking, singing, playing an instrument, they were fully themselves on stage, but so much more than themselves and achieving iconoclast status.

  It’s simple: When given the opportunity to dress as a Batman villain with impunity, you dress like a Batman villain!

  Acid-yellow checkered plaid suits, lined with black vinyl and silver zippers.

  Tweed, suede, and leather fetish Western wear.

  Sparkly blue vinyl tai-chi robes.

  As someone who is not classically beautiful, but has a certain acquired taste je ne sais quoi, I have a love-hate relationship with fashion. I say most fashion is self-aggrandizing bullshit—what’s “hip” or “in” or “everything.” Will you be spared by the sphere or not? But style is something quite different. Style is personal. It is you, at your finest, your most comfortable and confident. And isn’t knowing yourself worth so much more than being just another slave to the Fashion Thing?

  —Cecil Baldwin

  But don’t you see? You never needed anything else. The weird was within you the whole time.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

  Hello, listeners. Later, News. Capital N. But forget about that. First, news. Lowercase n.

  It’s Fashion Week in Night Vale, that exciting time of year in which we all get to decide what is fashionable and what is not. To use the ch
arming colloquialism, we decide what is “in the sphere” and what is “spared from the sphere.” This is Night Vale’s hippest event, and everyone is there, because it is required by law. So everyone is there and scared and it is hip as heck.

  Michelle Nguyen is the only one that doesn’t look scared. This is her favorite holiday and she is wearing a vintage summoning cloak and a dogcatcher’s cap and has two tiny neon signs attached to her face indicating her eyes. She is the most fashionable person in town and certain to be spared from the sphere.

  Others are less lucky. Town clerk Veronica Rothschild is running around saying, “Oh no, oh no” and adjusting her unfashionably distressed eyeglasses, casting glances backward at the sphere which is moving implacably to devour the unhip and absorb the outdated. Soon she will stumble and then the sphere will be upon her. It’s like that popular joke. Why did the hipster burn her mouth? Because she survived the sphere and was able to eat her pizza before it was cool. And sure enough Michelle Nguyen, pizza in hand, is cackling madly, watching the chaos and listening intently to headphones that are plugged into nothing at all.

  The Sheriff’s Secret Police are seeking any leads or witnesses in the case of the disappearances at the housing development of the Shambling Orphan. Over the last several weeks, at least 12 people have vanished without a trace, except for our memories of their previous existence, which, according to a roving gang of pedantic philosophers who have been interrupting Secret Police press conferences, does in fact count as a trace.

  “Memories are as real as any of our constructed experiences of the world,” said one philosopher, without invitation, interrupting important information about the missing persons. “I bet you think reality is a thing,” he continued, much to the delight of his fellow philosophers and not a single other person in attendance. The philosophers were last seen high fiving each other while drinking cheap but locally made canned beer.