Helen Phillips - Some Possible Solutions

So this means if they found a female on Htrae who was five feet ten inches tall, who was born on October 11 twenty-four years ago, who had Z+ blood, who had a little dimple in the skull above her ear, who had God knows what kind of intestines, then—

If they found a male on Htrae who was five feet five inches tall, who was born on February 9 twenty-three years ago, who had Y- blood, who had no irregularities in the skull, who—

“Yes,” we say. “Then.”

So we take our paperwork in. We do what we’re told. We, too, have been lonely and disappointed. We, like everyone, wish for something slightly different and better. Like everyone, we hope. We wait.

* * *

And one daywe get home from work to discover a single official letter in the mailbox. A match has been indisputably located! The letter informs us that the matched citizen is invited to catch a SpaceBus to Htrae tomorrow.

We gaze around the apartment, at our shabby couch and the small pile of unwashed dishes, at the seahorse lamp with the green shade and the bedspread that looks like it was stolen from a second-rate motel. One of us will be here, still watching the television, still wrapped in the dark blue blanket, still finding gingersnap crumbs between the cushions.

We begin to pack the suitcase. We disagree about what should go in. The only thing we can agree on is that not much will be needed. Once you’re Joined, nothing matters anymore, or so it seems. You wouldn’t be able to fit into your old shirts and pants, obviously, and the Joined prefer nudity even when given the option of the fine new clothing being designed for their bodies. Their skin always looks radiant, so what good will cocoa butter cream do you? Halfway through, we resolve to forget about toothbrushes, shampoo, socks, books.

Tonight, since it’s our last night, we decide to leave the living room and go walking along the river. Sure, there’s garbage and empty beer bottles down there, but with a lifetime of rapture ahead, it’s easy not to be bothered by such things. We carry the official letter with us.

We stop and sit on a cement barrier where the bank of the river should be. The moon is yellow and slender. We try to spot Htrae, but our eyes aren’t good enough.

We sit there in silence.

No more nights when the tossing and turning of one keeps the other up. No more debates about whether Brussels sprouts should be steamed or fried. No more disagreements about the timer on the air conditioner. No more of those startling sneezes. No more weird smells. No more loud chewing, no more forgetting to clean up the honey when it explodes on the kitchen floor, no more slamming the closet door too early in the morning.

We sit there for a long time.

We use a method we learned in elementary school. We fold the letter in half and tear along the creases. We rip it again and again and again until it’s in so many tiny pieces it’s like it has vanished.

* * *

At home, youtake a shower even though there’s mildew. I sit on the toilet seat. The toenail clippers are nowhere to be found. A whitish towel dangles off the sink. A smear of toothpaste on the counter. A piece of dental floss hanging from the trash can. The shower curtain’s red barbershop stripes move as you shampoo. When you knock the soap out of the shower and onto the floor, I pick it up. The bathroom fills with steam until we’re just a couple of blobs in the mirror.

It began on Tuesday morning; my landlord had been in Florida over the long weekend, and when I glimpsed him schlubbing around in the backyard two stories down, I was stricken by the extreme redness of his skin. Florida! The place where old white men go to turn bloodred. I stepped away from the window. I’d been to Florida once, a big group of friends, a happy bright blur of a week, so long ago.

Showering, smoothing lotion onto my arms and legs, I enjoyed the healthy golden quality of my skin. In the mirror my face seemed almost to shimmer. I felt clean inside and out, my morning poop having arrived precisely on schedule, my immaculate stomach awaiting milk, granola, apple.

It was not that there was anything displeasing about my life. Still youngish, still prettyish, a tiny tidy apartment, parents to visit and friends to complain to, a guy with whom I’d been on a series of lighthearted dates, a photography hobby and a hostessing job at a French restaurant where they deferred to me when it came to arranging the flowers, no great grief or heartbreak, a few moments of lonesomeness and meaninglessness here and there; it pleased me to think of myself as a person like any other.

Somehow I managed to stay in my own world all the way to the bus stop. It happens in big cities. But then, boarding the bus and inserting my pass, I saw the bus driver’s arm and hand, his fingers tapping the wheel.

First there was the instinct to gag, but, ever polite, I tamped it down. Second there was the rational explanation: He’s a veteran, how tragic, don’t stare. Yet the soothing logic of that explanation faded as my gaze moved up his arm to his neck, his face.

I could see his muscles, his blood vessels, the stretchiness of his tendons, the bulge of his eyeballs, the color of his skull.

The other passengers trying to board the bus were getting restless, pushing a bit and clearing their throats. I turned around to give them a look of compassion and warning. The woman behind me was wearing a light brown raincoat; I perceived this raincoat as I turned; atop the raincoat, the woman’s skinless head.

Gagging, I stumbled forward into the bus.

“Yaawlrite?” the bus driver said in some language I didn’t recognize, his bloodred muscles contracting to reveal teeth that appeared uncannily white.

I grabbed a metal pole and clung to it. When I opened my eyes: rows upon rows of skinless faces, eyeballs bulging and mouths forming grimaces as they observed the little scene I was making.

“Wanna sit, sweetheart?” one of them said, standing. A man, probably, though it was hard to tell.

I shook my head and gripped the pole. I would never, ever sit among them. The idea was so horrifying, so absurd, that I half-giggled. The “man” shrugged and sat back down.

There was hope. That this would end once I got off the bus. That this bus was cursed or fucked or something. In honor of this hope, I averted my eyes.

* * *

“What’s wrong, babygirl?” Sasha said, his grimace widening as he whirled past with a pair of wineglasses dangling from the sinewy complexity of his hand. I realized the grimace was their equivalent of a smile. “Table nine’s killing me, just sent back a bottle of cab sauv, Bo’s in quite a mood, shit the phone.”

Frozen at the hostess stand, I gazed out over a scene from hell, well-dressed arrangements of tendon and muscle and bone sipping wine and poking at salads.

I watched the shiny white fat tremble on Bo’s arms and neck as he yelled, “A ru gula!”

In the lavender-scented bathroom I puked — searingly aware of the bile as it passed upward through the caverns and passageways of my body — until there was nothing left, and then I wished I could puke some more.

There was a knock.

“Oh, pardon me.” A civilized British accent contrasted unbearably with the petite capillary-laced package that stepped graciously aside when I opened the door.

They sent me away kindly, solicitous words emerging from their hideous mouths, advice to drink ginger tea and watch romantic comedies; I’d always been well-liked. As they spoke, I tried to focus on the clean, empty space above their heads. It was a relief to step outside.

Yet the streets offered no respite.

A squirrel without skin or fur or bushy tail, demonic; a dog stalking down the sidewalk like a creature from a nightmare, all its organs revealed.