Gravity Changes

by Zach Powers

  Do not look for shark teeth. By seeking the object you will find nothing. The shape of the shark tooth is lost amidst the thousands of similar shapes on the beach. It seems every shard of broken shell is triangular, posing as what you seek. But if you look beyond the object, to the traits that make it identifiable as the object, you realize the vast difference between broken shells and shark teeth.

  A shark tooth is the shiniest object on the beach. Its enamel glints in sunlight. This will not be easily noticeable, the distinction between tooth and shell subtle. Train your eye to discern differences in brightness. You are looking for a small shiny spot against the sand, amidst the mosaic of the shell line. With patience and practice, the shiny spots will become apparent. Your eyes will learn to pick them out subconsciously. On the sand, a glimmering constellation. A reflection of the night sky.

  Shark teeth are black. Once you have spotted a shiny object, look for its color. If it is not black, it is not what you are seeking. This process, too, should be internalized. Shininess and blackness should be observed almost simultaneously. The two separate aspects of the tooth, when parsed and reconstructed by the mind, will allow you to locate shark teeth. The whole is broken into its components and reassembled, and this reassembly is called finding.

  From different kinds of sharks come different shapes of teeth. All teeth are black and shiny, but they are not identical. The tiger shark’s is short and hooked. The sand tiger’s is long and needlelike. Despite their variety, the same process is used to locate each type of tooth. Shape is irrelevant. Sometimes there are objects on the beach that mimic the shine and color of shark teeth, usually stones or certain shells. In these cases familiarity with shape can aid in your search. This knowledge will develop naturally, so you should not concentrate on it. Let the idea of shape come over you, as does the falling of night.

  Go to the far end of the beach. This should be an unpopulated area, where the sound of the ocean is greater than the chatter of people. Let the sound fill your ears. Breathe in the scent of the ocean so your lungs too are filled. Empty yourself and let the beach flow into your mind. When you begin, you must concentrate on shininess and blackness. You must force your eyes to be aware of the beach, and you must force your mind to be aware of your eyes. This is how the novice searches, always thinking about the goal.

  Walk the beach, consciously searching, for about an hour. Place the teeth you find inside your container. Do not worry if you fail to find any. Do not be frustrated if you are fooled into picking up an object that is not a tooth. Fling false finds into the water. Do so with joy. Let falsity sink away.

  The first shark tooth you find will bring excitement. Channel this energy into finding more. It is important to keep looking after the first find. This is true overall and for each time you visit the beach. Your eyes, once they have successfully picked out a shark tooth, are then primed to find more. Your mind holds the memory of the first find, and, if you act quickly, that memory will allow you to search more efficiently. It is not uncommon to find several shark teeth in rapid succession, once the eyes have become familiar with the image of what they seek. It is a process of visual memorization, similar to the ability to recognize a face in a crowd.

  Continue to force yourself to look carefully until you begin finding shark teeth without thinking at all. At this point, the learning process is complete. The search has been fully internalized. You will look for shark teeth without looking. You will find them without searching. Conscious effort is what makes one a novice. When the process comes to you instead of you to the process, this is what is called mastery.

  Look closely at the shark teeth you have found. Spread them out on the table before you. Sift through them. Arrange them by size, by shape. Arrange them randomly. Place them in rows. Scatter them. Pick a single tooth, one that appeals to you. Note its utility. Note its beauty. Its form gives rise to both attributes. In your mind, reassemble the tooth out of these two attributes, utility and beauty. This is when you will truly see it. This is when a shark tooth is found.

  You are now here at the beach with me. You have learned the lessons and practiced the art, and your own container, like mine, overflows with shark teeth. The search has become a formality. It is a habit. It is an excuse. The titles of student and master have been reshaped as if by the tide. They cannot be separated. Everyone is student and master. The two titles are reassembled into the whole person, and this reassembly is called finding.

  We walk down the shell line, talking of subjects far from the ocean, beyond the flight of crying gulls. We stop, on occasion, to pick from the sand a shark tooth that one of us has spotted.

  UNDERTAKEN

  My dog’s claws clattered on the stone walkway, a sound like spilling marbles. I let him lead me through the park to a bench that was hidden from the main path by a row of bushes. I sat there almost every evening, listening to the rumble of the city fade. The beat of honked horns came more slowly, the general hum of human life quieted as everyone made it home, went indoors. I could still hear the traffic from the freeway, but that was a constant noise, one that you could forget after a while.

  “Nice dog.”

  She’d snuck up behind me, not soundlessly, but ambient like the breeze or the rustling of leaves. I turned to look at her. Her jawline tapered like a wine glass. She rounded the bench and positioned herself lotus-style next to me.

  “He’s a mutt,” I said.

  “Hell, who isn’t,” she replied.

  “Somebody somewhere.”

  My dog walked over to her, and she scratched him behind the ears.

  “My name’s Dish,” I said.

  “And the dog’s name is what? Platter? Saucer?”

  “Dish is my last name, but it’s what everybody calls me.”

  “You can call me Teaspoon, then.”

  The name fit. I could imagine her stirring something. She wore baggy, ripped jeans, stained and scuffed. Her hair was pulled into a girlish ponytail, which made her look young, but her eyes gave away her age. There was no wonder in them, just a been-there disinterest.

  “What brings you to the park tonight?” I asked.

  “Same as your dog, I suppose. Piss break.”

  “You’ll have to fight him for the territory.”

  “I’ll win.” She wiggled her thumb at me. “It’s an evolutionary imperative.”

  “Technically, we’re supposed to be living in trees.”

  “This monkey’s afraid of heights.”

  “You don’t seem like the frightened type.”

  Her face shifted to a scowl. “What the hell do you know, Mr. Dish?”

  “I guess about the same as you do about me.”

  “Oh, I know all about you. Captain Afraid-of-Failure. In to work early, leave late, like that makes you something special. You’ve got a big fat 401(k) so you can retire when you’re sixty and spend the last years of your life not knowing what the hell to do with yourself. I bet you write a check to some medical charity once every couple months, so when a poor kid dies from cancer it’s not on your head. You smile at all the pretty girls, but you never take one back to your place because you wouldn’t have the first clue how to get her off, and while it’s admirable that you care, your sexless existence is pretty goddamn depressing. So you got this dog instead, because you know what he needs, and there’s little chance you’ll fail him, and even if you do he’s not going to go barking it to everybody just what a colossal fuckup his master is.”

  The words stung. It’s not that she was completely right. She wasn’t. But what she said felt like it was true, and somehow that was truer than the truth. I twisted the end of the leash in my hands.

  “But is that life?” she asked.

  “It’s all I’ve got.”

  She stood, bent down, and kissed my dog on his forehead.

  “Maybe you’re already dead,” she said.

  She moved off into the shadows, dragging her feet through the grass.

  I called in sick to work th
e next day.

  “Dish, is that you?” asked my boss.

  “Yes, sir. I’m not feeling well.”

  “Get better,” he said. The end of the word better faded out, like he was hanging up before he finished saying it.

  I called my secretary.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Dish,” she said. “I’ll take care of everything while you’re out.”

  It was true. She could run the office without me.

  I dug a pair of jeans out from the depths of my closet. They were balled up behind a tennis racket with broken strings. I uncrumpled the jeans, but the wrinkles resisted my attempts at smoothing. Another day, I would have ironed. The T-shirt that I pulled off a hanger had little bumps at the shoulders from having hung there for so long.

  I grabbed the leash. At the clinking of the clasp my dog came running. I fastened it to his collar, flipped off the lights. All my possessions were thrown into shadow. Who would claim them when I was gone? I thought about emptying out the fridge, but decided I didn’t owe anyone that particular courtesy.

  We walked out of the apartment building, my dog and I, and headed east around the bay. An old sidewalk curved parallel to the shore, just inside a crumbling road. Derelict warehouses faced the bay, all busted down doors and broken windows. In the water, Yorokobi’s Island was as flat and desolate as ever. Flocks of seagulls rose from the island and then settled back down, carving arcs in the ocean breeze. Gentle waves, crested with morning sunlight, lapped against the bones of the rocky shore. The busy sounds of the city faded away and the rushing of the ocean wrapped itself around me.

  I paused at the whim of my dog, content to let him sniff every green shoot that poked out from the cracks in the sidewalk. Sometimes, something would clank in a warehouse, a rat or just gravity winning another round against time. My dog’s ears would perk up, two fuzzy triangles on top of his head. He’d stare at the warehouse for a minute, until he got bored with it, just like history had. We’d walk on, ours but the latest abandonment.

  We came to an old bus stop, covered with graffiti. I sat down to rest my feet. Right at eye level someone had scrawled in black permanent marker, I was here, I swear.

  And then I must have fallen asleep.

  “Are you following me around or something?” asked a familiar voice. I heard the first half of the question in a dream, the second as I awoke.

  Teaspoon was already next to me on the bench, in the same casual lotus position as before. Her eyes were closed, like she was meditating. She wore the same pair of jeans.

  I said, “I was here first.”

  She opened her eyes and tracked them across the battered face of the nearest warehouse.

  “But somebody was here before that,” she said.

  “And the Indians first of all.”

  “I believe the proper term is Native American.”

  “But didn’t they just cross over in the Ice Age? Isn’t every last one of us on this continent a guest of whatever animal was here first?”

  “It’s not like I gave anybody smallpox and stole their land,” she said.

  My dog walked over to Teaspoon and received a scratch behind the ears. His eyes were wide and bright.

  “He’s a good dog,” she said.

  “Never barks or bites,” I said.

  “Never spreads smallpox.”

  “I should hope not.”

  Teaspoon looked directly into my eyes. I glanced away.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I figured I should poke my head in and say hi, in case I don’t get to see you again.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  She stood and shuffled off toward the hazy skyline of the city. My dog whimpered quietly at her back.

  Just past the last warehouse there was a single tiny storefront with a brightly lit sign out front, golden letters shining in a blue background: Ray’s Dry Cleaning. After miles of the worn out shells of empty buildings, Ray’s stood out if only for its upkeep. The windows were wiped to perfect smudgelessness, and the brushed aluminum frames looked almost fluid. The awnings were the same colors as the sign and seemed brand new, like they had been hung just that morning. Perfect white light poured out the windows and onto the street, overpowering the black of the asphalt.

  I walked up and looked through the door. My breath condensed on the glass in a perfect circle, obscuring the interior. The handle was cold and numbed my fingertips. A bell tied to the door jangled a lush chord, reverberating like in an empty room.

  The bell summoned a giant of a man to the counter. His head nearly touched the fluorescent light fixtures, and his hands hung well below the countertop. The fluorescent light made the giant’s skin look blue. Eyes like sparks peered out from his tangled bangs. Behind him on the spinning rack were an infinite number of white dress shirts pressed smooth and shrouded in clear plastic bags. The giant looked me up and down with a neutral expression.

  “You ain’t got laundry,” he said.

  I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement, so I answered, “Nope.”

  He motioned with his massive hand for me to round the counter and parted the dress shirts, creating a crisp white tunnel to the back of the store. I nodded in thanks as I ducked through, pulling my reluctant dog along by the leash. A warm breeze rushed past me, like the air leading a storm in from the bay, the scent of distant waters sucked up and spat out.

  The back of the store had more white dress shirts in piles nearly as tall as the giant. I assumed these shirts had yet to be cleaned, though I couldn’t see any stain or wrinkle that would render them unwearable. Standing among the piles was a frail-looking man, skin bleached by age to almost the same stark whiteness as the shirts, but splotched with dark spots and creased deeply where the flesh seemed sucked into itself. He wore a shirt exactly like all the others.

  He looked at me, beyond me, inside me, the ashen rings of his eyes floating in soupy yellow sclera. He smiled, all gums. His tongue scampered around his mouth like an animal. He stepped forward.

  “I guess you’re here to go to heaven,” he said, his voice high, almost whiny.

  “That’s the plan,” I answered.

  “Are you dead?”

  “As best I can tell.”

  “I’ve seen deader.”

  “I’m not trying to compete.”

  “Well,” he said, sweeping his arm in an arc, encompassing all the white shirts and the various apparatus used to maintain their whiteness, “this here’s the gates of heaven. If you’re dead, I don’t see a reason not to let you in.”

  A door behind him cracked open. Brilliant light gushed out, splashing over everything, until all was as white as the shirts. The room seemed to disappear.

  I could feel the light on my face, not as heat, but as peace, like the individual cells of my body were unclenching. I sighed, not really regretting anything, but a sigh seemed appropriate. I reached out my hand.

  “Hold on a second,” said the old man. “You can’t go taking your dog into heaven. It’s gotta stay behind.”

  “He’s coming with me,” I said.

  “What would you need a dog in heaven for? That doesn’t even make sense.”

  I stepped forward, ignoring the old man. Who was he to tell me what my heaven was? But the door slammed shut as if it knew my thoughts, and the old man moved between me and the gleaming golden doorknob.

  “Come on, man,” he said, “I get one like you every century. Hand me the leash, and we can let you in. Your dog will be fine. We’ll even find a nice home for it.”

  My dog looked tired from the long walk, but his mouth stretched into a grin as he panted. He would be fine if I left him. I believed the old man about that.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “to have wasted your time.”

  The old man’s toothless maw gaped.

  He said, “All the gifts of heaven await you just beyond this door. You’d turn your back on that?”

  I smiled. I turned. I pushed my way back through the hanging shirts, and above the rustle of
plastic I heard the old man say, “Well, that was a first.”

  The city glowed indistinct in the distance. Nearby, there was no light. Not even a streetlamp. The stars, I guess, but they gave off just enough to see, not to see by. The leash went taut behind me. My dog had curled up on the ground. I tried to rouse him but he stayed there, inert. His only motion came from breathing. One day even that would stop.

  I sat beside him then lay back. Up above the stars. That’s heaven, I thought, but I’d seen heaven and it was something much brighter than the sky, even in daylight.

  Footsteps. The sound of someone sitting. Teaspoon cleared her throat. She was several yards off. I raised my head but couldn’t make her out in the dark.

  She said, “That was your one chance, you know.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “What’s next?”

  Instead of answering I tried to imagine what it would have been like. I closed my eyes, dimming even the stars.

  SLEEPING BEARS

  Tom came into work with ATE TOO MUCH SPANAKOPITA LAST NIGHT written on his forehead. It was always something like that. LEFT DIRTY DISHES IN THE SINK. FORGOT TO TURN OFF THE BATHROOM LIGHT. DIDN’T COMPOST A COMPOSTABLE CUP. I hated Tom. After spending most of my 20s with PREMATURE EJACULATION in black block letters across my own forehead, the innocuousness of Tom’s faults seemed like a slap. Even his font was better than mine, simple, elegant letters with a subtle serif. Just once, I would have liked for him to come to work with his bangs dangling. I hated how he could always get away with using gel, the sculpted swoop of his hair like a crown.

  Mary wore a red bandanna this morning, pulled down all the way to her eyebrows. She flashed me a guilty smile as she passed my desk. Bandannas weren’t an acceptable part of the dress code, but the bosses usually looked the other way. A bandanna was better than FUCKED NORMAN FROM ACCOUNTING, which a casual hair flip had once revealed on the intern’s forehead. It got Norman fired, but raised him in my esteem considerably. Mary, sloop-shouldered, eyes usually downcast, didn’t seem like the type for such a message, but who knew?