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  Greta cleared her throat, trying to speak, and Julia wondered if the other woman shared her astonishment at this meeting. “What is your name?”

  “Julia—Julia Chandler.” Julia almost extended a hand, but something told her not to, that Greta would frown on physical contact with someone she’d just met. “Your photographs are very special to me,” Julia said, barely looking up. “They take me places.”

  “As all art should.”

  Now Julia did look up, and Greta was smiling at her. It was a smile of shared understanding, of secrets exchanged. Julia was about to say something when the waiter returned. “Can I get you something?”

  Julia looked up—and couldn’t stifle a gasp when she saw the waiter was tall, with a ring of tentacles surrounding his neck, poking out from over his waiter’s apron. She must have gone pale because he asked, concerned, “Hey, doll—you okay?”

  When she couldn’t answer, Greta said, “Give us a minute.”

  “Sure thing.” The waiter moved off.

  Greta said, “That’s Stanley. He’s a nice man—works hard at two jobs.”

  Her voice barely a whisper, Julia said, “The other is at a museum.”

  “Yes, LaRue’s. Have you seen him perform there? He’s very gifted.”

  Julia looked up, surprised. “Gifted?”

  “Yes. He’s an extraordinary pianist. They call him ‘The Human Squid’ because of how he can seemingly reach eight octaves at once.”

  “But I thought . . . ” Julia glanced over at the waiter, now leaning over the grill to retrieve plates of food. “ . . . I thought . . . ”

  “They called him that because of what grows from his neck?” Greta’s face twisted slightly in disapproval.

  “Yes.”

  Greta hesitated before picking up her camera. “Miss Chandler, do you know why I wanted to take your picture?”

  “No.”

  “Because you seem out of place. It’s not just your clothes, although they are strange, or your hair, but . . . you. I think maybe you are still trying to find your place in the world, yes?”

  Julia nodded, uncomfortable, as if she’d been caught doing something illicit. “I don’t know why I’m here, but I think . . . I think it has something to do with your photos.”

  “Did you know,” Greta said, pausing to smile up at Stanley as he set a steaming cup before her, “that some tribes of primitive people believe that cameras capture the soul?”

  Julia glanced up as two people sat down in the booth behind Greta. The man was wrapped in bandages, the exposed skin of his face glistening red. The woman was slender, pretty but forgettable—until she yawned, stretched, and rotated one arm all the way back until it was behind her head. They laughed together over some small joke, grinned at Stanley when he approached to take their order. Julia envied their ease with each other, their camaraderie; she wanted to be with them, in their world.

  Greta asked, “May I take your picture?”

  “Yes,” Julia said, composing herself.

  Greta raised the camera’s viewfinder to her eye.

  ***

  LIVE ON STAGE

  THE HUMAN BLANK

  The first thing that caught Stanley’s eye in the old photo was the banner strung across the rear wall of a small stage. It took him a few seconds to realize that the woman standing in front of the banner had absolutely nothing special whatsoever to offer. He pitied her dull, symmetrical form, her unmarred skin, her unmemorable features.

  Stanley’s tentacles writhed in irritation—it was warm in the antiques store, and he was getting uncomfortable. But something about the photograph drew him in, caused him to examine it with more care—

  There. He had it: the girl’s face, while neither beautiful nor ugly, nevertheless possessed one special quality that struck him the more he looked at it.

  He’d never before seen someone so completely at peace, so centered in their surroundings.

  I’d like to meet you someday, he thought, as he took the photo to the small shop’s front counter.

  (For Diane Arbus and Vivian Maier)

  WILDFLOWER, CACTUS, ROSE

  Brian Kirk

  See her in silhouette and you’d think you’re looking at a starfish. Or Lisa Simpson from behind. The dorsal fins, as she calls them, are triangular polyethylene implants. BPA-free, of course. She used to have voluminous, glossy red hair—mine is more strawberry blond—but she shaves it in the spots where the fins break through and keeps the rest cropped close to her skull. Her skin has been scalloped into wedges. Pale stitches form the crevices beside each ridge. Her face is punctured with steel tread holes where the two-inch spines screw in. She was beautiful once. Then she was ugly. Now she’s a cactus.

  Here’s a trick she taught me. Stand at the corner of some bustling street—say Fifth Avenue and Broadway or Haight and Asbury or Hollywood and Vine—and pick a mood: happy, angry, horny, scared. Set your face to epitomize said mood, then walk and watch the world transform. A smile will get you a smile. People light up like Christmas bulbs as you stroll along. Same with a scowl; it’s like lowering a dimmer switch. Turn off too many people and you can trigger a mob. I liked to act frightened as it attracted the most attention. Plus, I didn’t really have to pretend that hard. I met Clegg that way. And Clegg inspired Mom—Samantha is her name—to visit Dr. Xavier. And Dr. Xavier turned her into a cactus. She’s transcended this trick she taught me. Now when she walks down the street people go into a state of shock no matter what expression she wears.

  That kind of power frightens me. Everything frightens me.

  I was huddled against the brick wall of Saks Fifth Avenue, looking lost and scared, like I’d just narrowly escaped a serial killer’s trunk. Basically, my default setting. We’d passed a homeless man begging for change and Mom had whispered, “Free Range Human.” That’s another one of her tricks. Use perspective to shift reality. It all comes down to the words we use, which is why I prefer words that are literal descriptions of the objects they define. Like, Toothbrush. That’s a good word. Or Washing Machine. Spoons should be Food Scoopers. Shoes should be Foot Cushions. Lady Bugs should be Flying Polka Dots. Actually, Lady Bug is pretty good.

  I was crying. Always crying. My eyes—I call them Looking Balls—had sprung a leak early in life and never been repaired. Must have happened when my dad left and began his great migration out west. New York > Chicago > Denver > Flagstaff > San Diego. The calls coming less frequently as the long-distance rates climbed. Now it seems like the only time he calls is to tell me I have a new step-mom. My real mom—my cactus mom—dubbed the castaways Dad’s Alum. We read their old birthday cards whenever we need a good laugh. To The Daughter I Always Wanted. And had for like eleven days. Signed with the least sincere “Love You” ever written. XOXO, my Seat Cushion. AKA, my Ass.

  Some men see a beautiful girl—my dad’s words, not mine—looking scared and crying and it’s like a vulture spying road kill. Three other guys came over to rescue me before Clegg, each with their own brand of bullshit. This was before Mom’s surgery. Maybe even the day before. She had visited every accredited plastic surgeon in Manhattan to confirm the initial prognosis. Obstructive sleep apnea, potentially fatal if not corrected. My poor mom was at risk of snoring to death.

  Clegg looked like a skeleton in skin-tone latex. Spiky hair, blurry tattoos covering his arms, ribbed chest, and neck. More steel in his face than a studded coat. My dad would have hated Clegg, even though they had much in common. I fucked him later that day and made the mistake of giving him my number. I figured Mom would sleep most of the afternoon following her surgery. But neither of us could have predicted the aftermath. I’m not sure what went wrong in the operating room, but she went in with a face that could cover Vogue magazine and came out with a malpractice suit.

  “Please Doc, don’t fuck up my face,” she had said, and we had all laughed while in the bland comfort of the prep room. The one adjacent to the operating room, where blood gets shed.

  “Rela
x, Mom. You’ve got beauty to spare.”

  “Yeah, well.” Her hands began trembling despite the two milligrams of Klonopin she’d taken before leaving home, and that made me more scared than usual. “If this goes badly, I may be taking back some of yours.”

  The doctor motioned for the anesthesiologist, who wheeled her equipment over to my mom’s cushioned reclining chair. “You won’t feel a thing,” he said as she lost consciousness, which was the one thing he got right.

  She was supposed to keep the bandages on for twenty-four hours, but couldn’t resist the urge to look, guiding me to the powder room with its large vanity mirror as soon as we got home. I watched with escalating dread as she unwrapped the dressing—the curse of the mummy coming to life. Blood stained the inner layers and we both gasped as it unwound and fell to the floor.

  Forget the mummy. She was a werewolf caught mid-transformation.

  “It’s not that bad,” I said as tears began to drip from my leaky faucet. “Dr. Lask said there would be bruising.”

  Mom took a step forward, angling her face, which only made things worse. “Bruising? He butchered me.” Ruined was the word her boss at Darkstar Energy would later use. “I’m fucking disfigured!” Which was the only way to describe the rodent-like protrusion of her nose and upper mouth creating an overbite that made eating seem impossible. “My face is everything!” Or had been. I’d seen childhood pictures of her at Nana’s house, back when we were still allowed to visit, and she was less a child than some miniaturized adult. Wielding her beauty like a weapon the moment she broke free of the womb.

  The front door opened and slammed closed as we stood there in shock. Heavy footsteps thundered up the stairs. “Hey, T, where you at?”

  T is for Tyler. This was Clegg who had been drawn in by my not-so-pretend fear.

  Mom was searching for a place to hide her face—the toilet bowl a potential option. “Who is that?”

  “Yo, T!”

  All I could do was cringe.

  Clegg gave a cursory knock before barging into the bathroom. Mom could have been sitting on the toilet and it wouldn’t have slowed him down. He started laughing when he saw her reflection in the mirror. “Holy botch job, Batman!” he said. “You’ve got a malpractice suit for days!”

  The most horrifying moment of my life was the most momentous of hers. “His tattoos were like tiger stripes,” she later told me. “His face so deliberately ugly it’s become impervious to further insult.” In many ways, my mom became a cactus because of Clegg.

  He called her a “wererat” that night in my room and I started laughing. Then I started crying. Then I slapped him and he slapped me back, just like I knew he would. I pushed him and he pushed me so hard I fell. I said mean things about his manhood and he choked me until I saw black dots and then we had sex one more time and he left and I never saw him again. That’s pretty much how most of my relationships go. Or went. I’m expecting this to change.

  After much trial and error, I found that Kat Von D concealer is the best cosmetic for covering bruises. Or, as I like to call them, Blood Shadows. I applied it liberally until Clegg’s fingerprints faded from my neck. Mom had asked for a week off from work, but something terrible had happened that required her immediate attention. Unfortunately, I knew of no cosmetic able to conceal her newfound snout or camouflage the purple and yellow patches underneath her eyes. No utensil to thin her bulbous nose. She wore a turtleneck, and a scarf. And a hat. And wide-rimmed sunglasses. The forecast called for a balmy 92 degrees. At least her hair looked good. Thick, flowing red locks curling down from underneath her felt cap. This was before she shaved it for the dorsal fins and dyed the rest green.

  She returned two hours later. Mark, her boss, had sent her home. One look and he had fallen into a coughing fit that lasted long enough to attract an audience of stunned onlookers. “What the hell happened to you?” he had said when he finally regained his voice. “I thought you were having minor surgery, not going twelve rounds with Mike Tyson.”

  Beauty had been my mother’s greatest asset, and it was being repossessed.

  They sent a computer guy to our house a day later. Programmers are the punk rockers of the corporate world. Shaved head, long sleeves to hide the ink, plugs in the stretched ear holes that held spacers on the weekends. This was Clegg, just with better clothes. He was there to install a new video conferencing app on Mom’s laptop for an important call with one of their major clients. He at least had the decency to blush when the app loaded. I started crying, of course. It was difficult to discern Mom’s expression through the misalignment of parts.

  On the screen was a cartoon replica of Mom pre-surgery. An illustrated caricature where every feature was exaggerated: the cascading red hair, the wide, green eyes, even her cartoon boobs were a cup size larger. Some asshole had drawn that garish thing. It had probably been approved by a committee.

  “It’s, um, voice activated,” the computer guy said, and the cartoon avatar began moving its lips in a crude mimicry of speech.

  I leaned closer, and said the first thing that came to mind. “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” A beat passed, and I began crying even harder—squirting Salt Liquid out my Looking Balls. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said.

  She turned and was eye level with my ravaged neck. Kat Von D can only do so much, and I could tell she saw the marks Clegg’s fingers had made. Saw it in the crinkle between her eyebrows. That wrinkle of concern.

  I showed the computer guy out. He asked for my number and I gave it to him. We went out a couple of times, and it ended poorly. I’ve got the Blood Shadows to prove it.

  I knew my mom was in public relations, and that she worked closely with the media. And I knew that Darkstar Energy was a major oil company. But I never really considered what it was she did for them. I hid in the hallway as she made the call. She was still dressed in her robe with her disheveled hair and her mangled face. At least the avatar was wearing a chic business suit.

  Here’s what I heard.

  “Leaks occur all the time,” Mom said. “It’s an expected cost of business. The cleanup is already underway, so our attention should be focused on how best to capitalize on the event.”

  Some man spoke. He sounded like a toad. “Our money is washing down the river as we speak! Unless you plan to refund us, I don’t see any silver lining here.”

  I imagined the avatar miming this next part as I heard my mom say, “The government will subsidize the spill, so you will indeed be refunded. In fact, this spill will only drive up the cost of oil, improving your returns. The cleanup effort creates jobs, which the state loves. And Trump has rekindled his feud with Rosie O’Donnell, calling her, quote, ‘Blubber Brains,’ which will dominate network news. This whole incident will be swept under the rug, and will result in greater overall profits for your stake in the project. That, sir, is your silver lining.”

  Wait a minute. This was that oil pipeline in North Dakota that I’d protested against. I’d fucking checked into the location on Facebook to confuse the local law enforcement, or something.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to worry,” I heard her boss say.

  Without realizing it, I had been sucked in by the call and was now peering around the corner at my mom. She looked up and saw me then. Saw whatever ugly expression was stamped on my face.

  “This will not impact your investment negatively in any way,” her boss was saying. The man who had kicked her out of the office and forced her to hide behind a cartoon drawing. “In fact, in many ways it’s a win.”

  My mom’s transformation started at that very moment. I could see something shift in her swollen and bloodshot eyes.

  “Actually, there is one negative to this,” she said, and silence fell. Toad-man cleared his throat. I watched as she hit the command to cancel the avatar so that her face was broadcast to the room.

  Chairs screeched. “Jesus!” was screamed in mortal fear.

  “Despite the cleanup,” she said, her voice turned oafish from
the overbite. “We will all have to live with the truth of what we’ve done. We promised these people this wouldn’t happen. And we lied. And while we benefit financially, the locals are forced to feed their children toxic water and poisoned fish. So, there is a downside. The downside is that we could have prevented this, and didn’t.”

  “Turn her off!” her boss was saying. “Get that thing off the screen. The doctor ruined more than your face, Samantha!”

  “No,” she said. We didn’t know at the time the call was being recorded through the conference app. “He fixed me.”

  My mom once said she thought grooves would form on my cheeks through erosion. She made sure I drank saline water to sustain my constant flow of tears. These, at least, were happy ones. I think. Life is so confusing.

  Now my mom was plaintiff in two court cases. Malpractice and wrongful termination. It was during this downtime that she got Clegg’s number from my phone. He gave her the name of someone who gave her the name of someone who sent her to Dr. Xavier. “Peace out, Minnie Mouse,” he told her. Which I guess is an upgrade from wererat.

  Dr. Xavier’s office—Doctor? I assume he was a doctor—was down a dark alley underneath a place for prenatal yoga that looked like it could maybe accommodate three or four clients at a time—depending on the trimester. Twins? Forget about it.

  Opening the door triggered the sound of a Tibetan singing bowl—a resonant gong that gently faded. Dr. Xavier was there to greet us. It didn’t appear as though he employed a receptionist. Or an assistant. Or a suit. He was wearing a black button-down shirt with a cactus embroidered on the back and camouflage cargo shorts. He had the face of a lizard—an appearance so shocking I actually squealed. His brow had pronounced ridges, his nose had been reduced to slits, lines had been tattooed on coarsened skin to create scales. When he smiled, I saw that his teeth had been filed to points and his tongue forked down the middle. His voice hissed during his introduction, pleasantly.

  “That is so cool,” I said.

  He basked in our wonder like a reptile under the sun. “Let’s talk about you,” he said to my mother. “What brings you here?”