You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

by Alexandra Kleeman

  C squinted at me as if he were trying to make me out through my body and my face and all the different stuff that had been caked onto me.

  I felt like I might cry, only I couldn’t quite believe this was happening. Technicians spoke into small microphones that wrapped like slender stems around their faces. The studio audience just sat there.

  “I looked for you,” I said. “I waited outside your apartment and I watched your door. I waited for you to come back. I was there all the hours of the day, every day. Except when I had to go to Wally’s,” I added.

  “I was there,” I said. “And you were never there.”

  Nobody said anything. Nobody did anything. C looked like he was trying to consider the possibility that I was someone he knew. His shoulders, usually slumped forward, had pulled themselves upward and back, as if they were trying to protect the rest of his body by moving it a few precious inches away from me.

  Then one of the blondes took a couple of steps in my direction. She was looking deep into my face in a way that nobody had in months or maybe years. She was rifling through my face with her own, and it hurt. It almost hurt. It was like holding still for the dentist. Whatever she was searching for, her facial expression looked like she was having trouble finding it. She put her hand on my shoulder and I realized I was cold. I was shivering even under the hot lights. We were the same height in these standard-issue sequined shoes, and she had a pointy chin and big dark eyes the color of something I remembered having remembered some time ago. Her dry, bony hand on my arm reminded me inexplicably of autumn.

  Then I felt it pushing on me, the knowing that this was probably B, must be B. B was the other contestant on the show, which meant that she was C’s partner, which meant they had loved each other, or something like it, for more than the qualifying number of months. How long had I been gone?

  As I looked at B, her face pulled itself together, like in a time-lapse sequence in a nature documentary, a sun rushing from left to right across the TV screen or a deer carcass turning its insides out as it slumped into bone and soil. It was her, her features heavy with familiarity. This had been my friend. From her face, it was clear that she couldn’t quite place me.

  “I looked for him all over,” I said. “Did you know?”

  “You might have had the wrong condo,” she said gently.

  “I’ve gotten lost there too,” she said. “All the buildings look the same and it can be pretty confusing.”

  I stared at her. What she had suggested was possible.

  “Is it you?” B asked, still sounding hesitant.

  “We missed you?” she said tentatively.

  It was possible. I hated her.

  C HAD ONCE TOUCHED EVERY part of my face with his hands, with his lips and tongue. He had tried to find out how much of it he could fit into his mouth, licking my nose and then clapping his whole mouth over it, grunting as he widened his hold on my face. We practiced breathing through each other, sealing our lips together and relaxing the nasal passages, taking turns inhaling, drawing air through the holes in the other person’s body, breathing circularly. We put our lips close and spoke down the other’s throat so that we could feel the words trembling in our tissue, as if we had said them ourselves. We licked each other’s ears, necks, teeth. He had tasted every part of me, even some of the parts inside, but it didn’t mean anything now.

  I walked along the side of the highway, where people had strewn plastic wrappers, soft drink containers, broken pieces of car. Headlights came and went like hours. I wasn’t really dressed, but I could barely feel the weather on this body that still hung heavy on me no matter how I tried to shake it off. At the studio someone had thrown a black robe around me, one of those hair and makeup robes that hang dozens deep in the long dark closets of the soundstage. People had been arguing over what to do with me, standing there naked on the stage. I needed to leave right away: if the Eaters found me in this situation, where it was clear who I was and what I had done, they would make me a Tester or a Knowledge Leper and I’d never again be on the path to becoming my own ghost, which was the last thing I had left. I had to become something. I was nothing as I was.

  If I stayed, I wouldn’t have a choice. But if I could get to another Eaters compound, one where they didn’t know me and wouldn’t recognize me from the episode of That’s My Partner! that fortunately had not aired yet, I could slip in and take a position similar to my last one, as a processor. I could slip in and hide myself in an inner room, wait there until things changed, until I had turned my body into its own disguise.

  THE FIRST OF THE EATER Infotoons that I’d seen in the red room began with a simple white background. A cartoon fish comes strolling by on its back fins, upright like a human, with a sexy, wriggly gait. It’s kind of dancing, wobbling from side to side, smiling a suggestive fish smile, when pieces of it begin to peel off: whole chunks, perfectly smooth and fillet shaped, exposing the whitened fish skeleton beneath. The more it wriggles, the more it comes apart. When the sticky chunks fall to the ground with meaty little thumps, cartoon people run up from behind and gather them up from the ground. You hear dozens of gulps as they slide the pieces down their throats, you see the lumps of food creep down, down, to the larger lump of the stomach. Everyone is doing it, filling their bellies with fish flesh, eating as much as they can hold. Everyone except the pretty cartoon girl at the back of the group. She’s just watching. Her hands are clasped in front of her demurely. The fish topples over and lies still, which makes sense: it’s all out of muscle stuff. Then, all the eaters begin to die. One by one they lie down on the ground and curl up like cooked shrimp, turning ashy and still. But the pretty cartoon girl is radiant, smiling with teeth that are very straight and very white.

  She looks around at all of them, the people she knew, getting rigid there on the floor, and she’s serene. Then she opens her pretty mouth and thrusts her whole hand inside, wriggling it around until she gets hold of something and begins pulling it out. It’s the back fin of a fish, a ghost fish, whitish and see-through, emitting a pale green light. She pulls it out whole, fin and torso and fish skull, holds it aloft like a torch, and is more beautiful than ever. Her feet don’t quite touch the ground. She’s a living example of the benefits of Uneating, the highest of Conjoined techniques and one that we are all working toward, though we don’t know what it is exactly. The message flashes on the screen:

  ALL YOUR LIFE YOU’VE BEEN PASSIVE.

  NOW BE ACTIVE: ACTIVELY AVOID.

  I had avoided all the Dark foods, I had eaten whatever approved ones had been put to me by those who knew better. And then when Darkness had been discovered in those approved foods, I had stopped eating them, too. When approved food dwindled to the singular, I ate the only thing that was permitted. I had done everything that was demanded of me, and my progress must be going well, therefore. I should increasingly be resembling my ghost, my truest and most recognizable self. And yet it didn’t quite feel like that was happening. I had seen the few things I cared about forget me seamlessly. I had seen the life I never really fit into heal up around my absence like a wound scabbed over.

  I touched my face. I squished it around. I couldn’t feel what had gone wrong.

  UP AHEAD, I SAW A Wally’s glowing with its signature red neon lighting, the burning bright bands outlining a Wallyhead whose mouth flashed open and shut furiously. What was missing from Wally’s, what had always been missing from it, was the possibility of loitering there without purpose and without any money. That was what I used to have in the apartment with C, even with B: it meant that even if someone wanted to use you, consume you, they at least wanted to consume the parts more specific to you, parts you needed to spend some time digging out. My body felt cold and sweltering at the same time. My feet were lumpy and blue. Walking was difficult. The lights in the distance grew brighter and dimmer for no clear reason; my eyes felt sore just looking at them.

  I climbed the hill toward the bright red light, the straps from my sparkly decoy s
hoes cutting the shape of a sandal into pale angular white feet the color of cavefish. I saw the inside of the Wally’s, still miniature at this distance, bristling with activity: the Wallys double-stocking full shelves of food product, polishing the food chandelier, moving heavy boxes of stock from the visible area to the invisible, and vice versa. It was only when I got closer that I realized I had found a Wallyform instead of an actual Wally’s. I didn’t know exactly what a Wallyform was for, but the Church had explained to me that they performed a very special role and required unique, highly talented employees. I had met Eaters who worked in them at the Church. They were trained in mime; they did everything gracefully. They even managed to make dismembering the Kandy Kakes look appealing.

  A Wallyform looked like a Wally’s store in almost every way. It was only when you looked for the flaw that errors began to surface. Employees bustled around at the checkout counters and the shelves closest to the front of the store, but the areas in the back, the bakery section and the swinging freezer doors behind which heaps of food sat in suspension, were desolate, backgrounded. The fruit in the produce section was perfect and unblemished, which was normal, since all Wally’s produce was waxed, polished, and painted before being put on display. But this fruit was not only unblemished, it was identical: each pear like another, modeled after a Primary Pear and repeated over and over and over in the bins. As long as you pointed them at slightly different angles in the bin, it looked natural enough. As I walked up to it, I saw the sign on the door: CLOSED FOR RESTOCKING. The Wallys glided around within, unnaturally graceful, handling their items as though they were living things, baby animals or organs for transplant. They were Wallybaffles, trained Eaters who authenticated a Wallyform by performing in full view the customary gestures of a Wally’s employee.

  I was six inches from running into the sliding glass door when I realized that it wasn’t going to open. Looking closer, I saw how hopeless it was: the seam between the two glass panels wasn’t even a seam, it was just a line painted on solid metal, depth cues added with a touch of darker paint. Still, there had to be a way in. I knew this because I knew people at the compound who were Wallybaffles. They were special people: they managed to do even the small things, the Kandy Kakes consumption and the programmed vomiting, with a sort of lightness and finesse. They made the things they did look blameless and right. While I was at the Church they had showed up for weekly inspections, and that meant that they must have a way of getting inside the Wallyform and then back out again. I hit the glass not-door with my skinny fists again and again, then I went around to the windows in the front and hit them, too. I remembered from movies and TV that a human being striking a window could cause it to shatter, but the glass was too strong, or I was too weak. My body didn’t do much anymore when I put it to things. I didn’t even make much noise pounding my fist against the glass: the ones that turned to look dismissed me almost before they had swiveled their heads. I might have been a painting of a hysterical female, paused in motion and screaming decoratively. But my throat was going raw, and my hands hurt dully.

  Then one of the fake Wallys inside seemed to notice me for the first time. He tilted his Wallyhead up and looked at me through his real eyes. Then he pointed toward a spot behind him, behind him and to the left.

  I WENT AROUND TO THE side of the building. It was gray cement all the way up, cement bricks stuck together, and some dry grass on the ground, except where it had been worn away. A portion of the wall opened out and a Wally came into the outdoors. He was of average height, or at least not of a height anybody would comment on. I had to assume he was the one who had motioned to me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “It’s you,” he said.

  This was true, but how could he know that?

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You must remember me,” said the Wally with a pleading tone that I recognized, though I couldn’t recognize him.

  I looked at him in what I hoped was an encouraging way. I wanted to recognize him. I wanted to give him that, counterfeit it, if necessary. My invertebrate face felt soft and confused by the order.

  “We were at the Randall compound,” he said. “I saw you every day in the corridor leading to the Testery. We looked at each other. Sometimes you with your mouth open like you had something to say to me. Once in the Big Room you gave me one of your Kakes. It was a nice gesture, I thought, even though nobody really wants more Kakes.”

  Had I done that? I wasn’t much of an expert on myself anymore.

  “Faces are a big part of how I remember people,” I suggested.

  “Oh, right,” said the Wally, fumbling with his Hospitality Hat.

  “You get used to the masks,” he said, “I mean really used to them. Without them, I mean, there’s a rawness,” he added. He grabbed at the base of his throat and dug under the flesh-colored rim. He pulled it up and over, turning it inside out in the process, talking the whole time.

  He added: “It gets so the normal air chaps your face.”

  With his mask off, he looked like someone I could have recognized but didn’t at all. He was young and rounded, his freshly shucked skin glistening pink in the light of the streetlamp. He had a pouty little mouth, compact like a nose, and two swaths of hairless fuzzy cheek rising up on either side of his face. He looked nice. I could have known him if I had ever met him. He looked friendly. I didn’t want to mislead him, but wasn’t it kinder to pretend? It would be better if we all could come home to the wrong house, sit down with strangers to a dinner that wasn’t ours, treat them like family because we didn’t know any better. Then hug all their strange bodies good-night and go to the wrong bedroom for a thieved sleep. There would be nowhere you could go, nowhere you could run to, where you wouldn’t be among family and friends. You would run from home, to home, inevitably. I should give that gift to this boy, whoever he was. And then I would climb him to safety, like a ladder.

  “What was your name again?” I asked decisively.

  “Chris,” he said.

  “Chris,” I said, “of course. I remember you. Possibly you’re the only thing I remember from those days. I looked for your ghost many times during the lessons, but probably you were always out of range. I hope you understand that I gave you that Kandy Kake only because there was nothing else around to give. If there had been other things, I would have given you something you liked much, much more.”

  “I thought that was the case!” he said, pleased.

  “It was,” I said.

  “Look, Chris,” I said, “I’m going to have to ask you for a favor. Someone who looks exactly like me has just done a thing on national television that the Church isn’t going to be happy about. Obviously I’m a loyal, hardworking Eater, just another minus believer trying to choke down my Darker twin and transition the ghost to sole proprietorship. But for right now I need to hide. Can I hide in your product baffles?”

  He considered this for a moment, searching my face for duplicity. He seemed to see something in me, whatever it was. Then he let me inside.

  I WAS TRYING TO FIGURE out if there was anything in here that would tell me who I was now, why nobody saw me in me, why others saw someone I had never been. Chris still followed me, trailing ten feet behind and probably wanting to ask more questions, but the other Wallybaffles kept working as though I weren’t even there. I passed so close to them that I could smell their sweat mixing with the treated foam plastic of their masks, and still they remained perfectly fixed on their work. I felt like a ghost haunted by another ghost. We wove through the aisles. I watched the Wallybaffles do their graceful shelf-restocking dance. They sank squatting to the floor, reached out, and pulled the product close in toward their chest. They paused, compacted themselves. Then they propelled upward again, to a standing position, from which they proffered the product, gently, to the shelf. From this distance, though, it was clear they weren’t restocking anything. How could they? The products would overflow, choke the shelves. They’d need unstockers to take down
the products they had placed, and if anyone from the outside were to see those, it’d all be over. So instead they rose and sank like ocean waves, hoisting product and then bringing it slyly back to the floor, where they would pick it up and hoist it once more.

  I tried to find something a Wally’s would sell that might be shiny enough to show me my reflection. Ever since C had failed to recognize me I’d been wondering if there was something newly wrong with the way I looked, if I had maybe begun to transluce or take on an ethereal look because of the ghosting process. The plastic-wrapped meats on their trays of Styrofoam were glossy, but not dark enough to reflect anything apart from my shadow looming over and onto their surface. The canned goods had flat metal ends, but the metal was dull and dark and I didn’t even show up. Nothing in there looked out at me, all the objects stared deeply into themselves. I picked them up and put them back where they were. They were lighter than I expected, though lately I had been finding normal objects weirdly heavy.

  Then I noticed the TV screens mounted on the walls. On-screen, an episode of That’s My Partner! was playing itself out, the dancing girls smiling and turning and spinning, first in a front view, then overhead. They spun like sparkly gears around one another, glittering like sharp metal. I looked up at them grinning down at me and it seemed impossible that I was ever there at all. How could I ever have looked so happy, so graceful, so small? They were weightless, made of light. They were the color of the sky at hours in which everyone’s asleep. Then their smiles started to come down: they were looking over at something else.

  The camera angle changed, and there was a pale swipe on the screen, some shape moving in the blur, painfully white but stained by shadow. The blur convulsed and suddenly its edges were there, cutting the shape of a creature out from its background. A haunch collapsed inward, dark in the hollow and skinny like a dog. Above it a section that reminded me of moonlight passed through the gaps of a venetian blind, carving strokes of bright out from a dark room. The mass came into view, then blurred back out, the focus continually changing as if the cameraperson couldn’t decide whether it should be on-screen or off-. I looked hard at it. It was the color of natural wax, pale and creamy. It had shadows in places, strewn through its smoothness. Then I saw. Those were ribs. That was the jut of a hip bone. It was a whole human body: female, naked, holding its arms out as though waiting for an embrace.