Alexandra Kleeman - You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

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 EVERYpart 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 EATERInfotoons 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 AWally’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 shoes 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.