*Fiction — November 3, 2022
Man and Woman c. 1921
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I wake up feeling down, ash in the back of my throat. In the kitchen, charcoal fingerprints cling to my white plastic espresso machine as the capsule drops and I feel, for a moment, caught. I run my fingers across the countertop and think this must be what they measure in those air quality alerts. Out the window, a thick smoke hovers from East Pasadena towards the ocean.
This smoke is different than what we’re used to, even in peak fire season; the smell is sour, and it stings. Last night, the plastic factory by the Los Angeles River, just south of Frog Town, caught on fire. My phone alerted me to the brush fire spreading from a car with engine trouble on Fletcher Avenue at 12:17 am, just as I was settling in for three episodes of the show I watch every night until I fall asleep. It’s the one with two older women who move in together after their husbands leave them, then drink too much, argue a lot, and alternate having back pain. Somehow it’s funny, or it loosens the tightness in my chest and makes my heavy things lighter. Halfway through the episode, I sent a screenshot of the alert to Adam. Even now my intention was unclear—was I fishing for concern? Trying to show it?—but he anointed the gesture with two exclamation points.
I touch my own fingerprints again and wait for the machine’s grinding hum. As I drink my double espresso, I half expect to see the city outside my window finally abandoned. Across the street, the neighbor’s kids bounce on a trampoline. A bearded old dog stretches, languid, in the grass of its fenced-in yard next door. Down the block, a jogger passes between two cars—both stopped to watch the looming cloud.
The factory is operated by Self-Me, maker of those customizable dolls dangling from little hands across America, the ones where kids take selfies and upload them to the Self-Me website, then a few weeks later receive a doll that looks just like them—in a combination of four skin, eye, and hair colors. Most of the dolls that get shipped out look the same. I actually applied for a job there, in marketing, and this was confided when I showed up for my in-person. Now I can’t stop picturing all those little dismembered plastic hands and feet and plastic, shiny eyes, wrapped in their plastic foil. Burning.
The dark cloud outside looks like the thunderstorm we so need, and as I peel open the sliding door to my balcony, my body anticipates the cold rush of air that comes right before cracking thunder. But there’s no curtain of humidity, no breeze. Even the bamboo my neighbors planted for privacy seems to vibrate against the invisible heat. I remind myself of the fire, the darkness caused by smoke, and hold my breath. Then, what seems a miracle—tiny, scattered hail! My neighbors run out of their homes, and we all hold our phones up to the sky, closing our eyes as the tiny pellets ricochet off our devices. It takes a few dozen tweets of celebration before anyone looks closely enough to realize the tiny glittering capsules are just re-solidified plastic.
The kids from the trampoline stand in their driveway, tiny hands cupping the pale, glittering snow that feels cold at first but is in fact, they scream, burning hot. When they drop them, the plastic rattles like Skittles across the asphalt.
*
Adam and I met a few weeks ago on one of these exclusive invite-only dating apps for celebrities, neither of us being personally famous but each with enough celebrity-adjacent friends to be invited. We were there to take up space, like those seat fillers at the Oscars who come in so celebrities can go pee. Initially I assumed us fillers would mostly date each other, buoyed by proximity to fame that might even give our normal romances a certain buzz. It was an honor just to be nominated and all that.
Then the celebrities started marrying us. First a female comedian who had recently run for state senate, next a professional hockey player, then a pop star. You could see it in the fillers’ eyes, widened with the notion that any one of us, with the right profile photos, outfits, and casually chosen props, might be plucked from obscurity. Perhaps we made the whole premise worthwhile. We were regular people—the truly famous person’s dream—within the safety of an exclusive bubble.
My first date was with an actor who flattened in front of me if we weren’t talking about his career. Who felt most alive on the long walk into a restaurant and to our table, eyes charging him with an energy that dwindled throughout the meal. There was the celebrity woodworker who had a modeling contract with Gucci and impossibly soft hands. There was the divorced tech entrepreneur who hadn’t mentioned his kids until my foot brushed against a diaper in his car’s passenger well. Unused, but loaded nonetheless.
And then there was Adam. Adam, who hasn’t yet implied that my hobbies like butter carving or trying every new Oreo flavor should lead to brand sponsorships, luxury fashion collaborations. Who doesn’t secretly expect that I’m a beauty ambassador. Adam, who in our two weeks of texting has made me feel fine just as I am.
Or maybe he just seems to be exactly as he is, and I accept him for it because the things that once felt tragically ordinary suddenly seem distinguished, honest.
*
Driving, the tiny plastic pebbles under my tires feel like stepping on broken glass with a thick sole — safe but precarious; oddly satisfying. When I arrive at a stationary store I frequent for their selection of pens and pencils in varying pastels, I’m almost surprised to find it open, but inside is business as usual. I scan the wall for whatever Baby on the Way card will most make it seem like I understand what it is I’m congratulating another friend on. Mostly I’m looking for the least amount of white space inside, the most elaborately large text.
One card in the Holiday section has Fire Season written in big bubble-y letters over a pair of mittens, hovering over one of those campfires that would never actually burn—logs spidered in all directions, a perfect orange flame on top. I wonder what their buying process is, and especially how something cozy in one place can turn terrifying, apocalyptic, in another. Another card that says Sweater Weather mostly makes me think about perspiring. But I’m a sweater. We’re prone to overthinking—tightly wound, lest we leak into a puddle in front of you, like Alex Mack.
I catch myself in the store’s quirky design mirror: two dots for eyes and a yellow smile drawn in the space where my mouth would be. I’m struck by my reflection nonetheless. I’m old for being so indifferent, so in flux. I am jealous of my friends with families, less for their kids than for their choices having now been made. Unlike them, I could easily leave this city built on fault and fire lines. It strikes me every day, just how easily I could go. I’d have to tell the girl who lives above me, whose packages I take in when she travels for work, but otherwise.
I even work remotely, writing advertising copy for companies like that smoldering toy factory still giving me a sore throat. When I took this job, I thought it would give me an office, and coworkers, but my first day I got dressed and then sat back down on my bed. By noon I was under the covers. The great thing about working from home is I told everyone I have a roommate who finds Zoom to be an untenable privacy violation within our apartment, which I think made everyone believe our apartment is a room with two beds and a toilet, so on our regular calls, I join with audio only and can blink, dead-eyed, while my voice fakes the rest.
I could do that anywhere.
*
For our first in-person date, Adam and I plan to meet at a café with playful décor and menus designed by art school grads, where I’ve made an effort to become a regular. I figured if he was weird, I could roll my eyes at the barista or cashier when he wasn’t looking, and they’d save me with some funny excuse we would laugh about later. I test that out as I wait for him, but no one looks over.
I end up sitting right next to a couple clearly in the early stages of dating, still on their best behavior. Leaning over the table to be closer, listening more attentively than one might during their own NPR interview. The girl’s baby-voice seems too cheerful for her age, and when she laughs it pulls at the unhappy parts of me, as if a challenge to their very existence. That anyone should sound so bubbly, so unbridled. She must be deeply unwell.
I can’t help but listen as they drop names, their shared touchstones. They all sound fake, these people with no faces, no stories to me. Have you seen Blake? Maybe Joy will drop by Cory’s later. For them these names are fully round, fully fleshed. Or they’re sociopaths, pretending to have a conversation about real people, in their fake personas.
When Adam finally shows, I stand up to greet him and he’s shorter than I expected, though not entirely unattractive. I try to stay in the moment. I try not to spiral. I’m sure I’m different, too. I know him too well after all our messaging — words exchanged from bed, the couch, the floor, the toilet — to feel this awkward. The couple I was eavesdropping on earlier go quiet as Adam and I fumble to define ourselves to one another. I say I’m a big fan of the grain bowl and quickly consider who I’ve just become.
*
At a panel with a Hollywood actress, I accidentally sit in the front row and already feel a kink forming in my neck from nervously nodding to her every word, too exposed not to feel a part of her performance. The actress wears a long black dress and a short bob with a headband so high it gives her a halo. The dress drapes off her slight figure as if still on the hanger, and she strikes me as a woman who could wear anything and look glamorous. I picture her in the faded pastel gown at the OBGYN that doesn’t really close no matter how tightly you tie the strings, and immediately find myself yearning to buy one. I imagine her wearing it to dinner at the San Vicente Bungalows, forwards or backwards.
I stare at her lips, a bright, poppy red, and her eyelids shimmering ever so slightly whenever she glances down. When she hooks her stilettos around the lower bar of her stool, it makes me nervous, again so close that I feel implicated. But then she switches the hand holding the microphone, her left glittering with the mark of her freshly announced engagement, and I know I don’t need to worry. Everyone is thrilled for them; that’s the consensus. What a thing, to see happiness flickering off someone like sparks.
She keeps saying she is jetlagged and dazed, so would we please pardon her, but all I can think is how glamorous it is to be flown all over to talk, even if the thing you then talk about is how tired you are. She must know she’s making perfect sense. That she has us transfixed. No one apologizes for not making sense, not when they need to.
After the panel I text Adam that I want to see the new movie this actress is in. He says he hasn’t heard of it and changes the subject to another movie without giving me a chance to mention the panel, which was the entire reason I’d texted. In fact, I’d gone mostly so I could tell him about it after. Now it feels as if I didn’t go at all.
After the panel I text Adam that I want to see the new movie this actress is in. He says he hasn’t heard of it and changes the subject to another movie without giving me a chance to mention the panel, which was the entire reason I’d texted. In fact, I’d gone mostly so I could tell him about it after. Now it feels as if I didn’t go at all.
*
Adam and I meet at a museum for our second date. Neither of us says it out loud, but we choose it for the clean, filtered air. Wildfires across the Angeles National Forest have brought another thick layer of ash over the entire city now, and the Santa Ana winds continue, relentless, night after night. Out of context, the term we’re searching for sounds somewhat hopeless, dystopian even—“climate control”—but I’ve learned that in any state of emergency, one should head to the Art. Stay close to the Art. Few things are as protected.
I’m attracted to Adam, which feels like a good sign because he’s neither conventionally handsome nor famous. Maybe I do believe in chemistry, after all. I debate telling him this but I don’t want him to take it the wrong way—that I’m not obviously attracted to his looks; that this feels like a feat in a city that values nothing more—so I smile and squint at the painting we’ve been standing in front of for a few minutes.
As we turn to walk into the next room of European Painting, 1900–1940s, Adam leans in, and suddenly I’m less in my body than in the space between us, all other thoughts muted and dulled by the energy pulling us closer. He kisses me, I kiss him, and then he steps back and smiles. I smile back, or I mean to, but I’ve forgotten briefly that I have feet, feet attached to legs, because somehow, they get crossed. I want to seem cool, so I turn to keep walking, ready to continue our stroll in this museum that feels suddenly built for us, for our day, for this kiss, but my feet still haven’t left the flutter.
I see a hundred ways to steady myself—all of them from his perspective, all of them ruining the moment I thought we were in—as I glide through the air, doing nothing, my left arm bent as if still touching his side. Quickly, that hand hits a smooth, tacky surface, but it’s thin, and I go right through. Then I’m no longer falling, stuck with something stiff against my wrist, my hand against a wall on the other side. A sharp pain travels up my arm and an alarm beeps slowly but persistently. Nothing else changes.
I notice a guard staring at me with an expression that says he, who primarily tells people not to use flash photography, has no idea what to do. Another guard talks loudly into his earpiece. My wrist throbs from the weight of my body and its angle against the wall. Two strangers hold their phones up, recording me. There’s a flash. And another.
I feel the eyes on me multiplying, taking in every inch of my choices —a beige slip dress, my gold pinky ring dull from sunscreen, that extra swipe of blush I didn’t need — and I see myself, heels hooked over the stool, flickering with panic, and no one there to catch me.
I turn towards the painting, its rich plum, gold, and forest green that made me, for a moment, feel grounded when I saw it earlier. My hand, which moments ago touched the soft fabric of Adam’s shirt, appears to have punctured the torso of a woman rendered in rounded lines and shapes. The woman is all soft edges, as only a man would paint her. Her hair is her one, chic edge—a bent rectangle, shining where it waves. The man she leans into is a suggestion, hinted at by the round head that disappears behind hers, by a cap, and by a torso vanishing into their environment of gridded shapes. When I look more closely, I realize their kiss, and the canvas stings fresh where it scratches my forearm. It’s the pain of my perfect kiss, moments before, and of the many suggestions of men I have held even as they disappeared.
When I turn again, Adam is gone, and the two guards stand in his place. They grasp my shoulders, holding me steady so I can finally relax my wrist, and at first it seems like they care about my body, the damage to its parts, but from the way they hold me, gripped firmly enough to bruise, I realize they are protecting the painting from further damage. Looking, as so many have, for the best way to extract me.
When I turn again, Adam is gone, and the two guards stand in his place. They grasp my shoulders, holding me steady so I can finally relax my wrist, and at first it seems like they care about my body, the damage to its parts, but from the way they hold me, gripped firmly enough to bruise, I realize they are protecting the painting from further damage. Looking, as so many have, for the best way to extract me.
My first instinct is to run, but of course I cannot. I’m tangled, connected to the painting. What if by pulling my hand out, it tears the canvas further? What if it’s not worth the risk, and I have to stay like this, leaning against this wall forever?
I can still feel the weight it took to puncture, to break something so valuable. I think of all the people who’ve seen this painting, all the eyes that have charged it with value. Loaded and latent, measured against what it would be to destroy it. I feel trapped, humiliated, and I wonder again what they’ll do to me, worth so much less than the layers of paint and canvas still scratching my wrist.
Behind the painting, I rub my thumb and forefinger, feeling the residue, the stickiness of time untouched. No one must have touched the canvas without gloves, a paintbrush, or a scalpel in decades. I wonder at my unique privilege, my mistake. A crowd of people has now filled the empty space, and most hold out their phones, eagerly waiting for the next move. I imagine the videos being recorded that, like the painting, will outlast me. I wonder how I’ll look to them, if I’ll appear soft and curved, if I’ll glimmer.
*
In the days after, I expect calls from debt collectors or lawyers, but none come. The museum’s insurance company finally calls to confirm the basic details for the claim, and that’s it. That’s all they need from me. I wonder at the money, waiting, for accidents like these. As if its check was already written, waiting for me. I think about how different it feels to get sick, and I think about protection, as my plastic espresso machine hums.
I still feel the paint, crested under my fingertips. Hardened over time, allowed to exist that way for a century. What a thing to accrue value simply by existing, while the world around you changes.
Adam hasn’t answered my texts, and I haven’t gotten any new matches. Part of me thinks they’ve all seen the videos, guards pulling me back through the damage I made, as if I could’ve gone out the other side instead. Though I still haven’t found the videos online. Part of me keeps waiting.
*
In the Valley, a Palo Santo packaging warehouse catches on fire. The giant concrete building where machines tie strings around little bundles of uniformly cut sticks sends more smoke, this time lower and longer, across the city.
All sorts of other things in the factory burn, too—swivel chairs, computers, linoleum floor tiles—but we open our windows, close our eyes, and inhale.
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 10. View full issue & more.