Reunion
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Today’s post is more old writing. Not 20 years old, more like eight. It’s straight up fiction and doesn’t have anything to do with trauma. But it was co-originated with Sharif Abdul-Malik in Joanie Blaine’s living room and would’ve stayed buried in a drawer if I hadn’t stumbled across Beth Feagan’s favorable critique from back in our Hollins days... So, a community effort. I’m an isolator and it’s too easy for me to distance myself from awesome people who have helped me out or joined forces with me or just been really cool along the way. That might have something to do with trauma...but whatever the reason, all y’all hold forever places in my heart, even if I never send a Christmas card. This one’s dedicated to you.
Reunion
Toby thought he would be a famous artist by 30 but finds himself teaching at 40 instead. He goes to parties and bars with his students and thinks this means he is still young. One night he goes with one of his 2D Fundamentals students, a waifish girl with a tattoo of a Canadian goose on her upper arm, to a hipster dive on the Lower East Side.
“Only Russians or something come here,” the waif says as they push through a door with no sign.
Everyone in the bar is young and Eastern European looking and Toby thinks he blends because he is thin and his jeans are tight and his still-full-head-of hair is carelessly mussed.
“Professor, you should get your fortune told,” the waif giggles and orders a shot of paint-thinning Vodka.
There is a tired-looking woman sitting in a corner booth with Tarot cards spread out in front of her. The waif giggles some more, and some of the other young people in the bar start giggling too, watching Toby and the fortune teller, the only two people over 25 in the room. Toby shrugs like he couldn’t care less, and as he gets up to cross the dingy bar, he realizes this is true. He couldn’t care less. About anything. In the seven seconds it takes him to arrive at the booth and slide in across from the fortune teller, he begins to panic. He knows he used to care about something, but he can’t remember what it was. Just then the fortune teller lifts her head, looks him in the eye, and Toby feels as though someone has reached into his chest and grabbed his heart while simultaneously driving a fork into his brain.
Toby’s vision goes searingly red and he writhes in pain. Then the pain stops. His eyes clear and he finds himself standing on a golden hilltop under a golden sky, listening to the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. He looks down upon a golden valley and sees strange beings moving below. They walk on two legs like humans, but they are large and dark and beastly. There are hundreds of them, all moving in the same direction, and somehow Toby knows where they are going. He knows because he wants to go there too, inexorably drawn towards the beautiful sound. He’s never heard anything like it, a resonant cross between a lion’s roar and chanting monks, accompanied by the falsetto of a winter wind that makes his bones shiver and dance. He begins to run down the golden hillside towards the beasts, shouting, tears running down his face, begging them to wait for him, to take him with them.
The pale face of the fortune teller looms in front Toby. He blinks hard in the smoky darkness of the bar, his pupils still contracted by golden light. “What just happened?” he gasps. “What did you do to me?” He can hear the waif and her young friends still laughing.
“I did nothing!” the fortune teller says. Her voice is heavily accented and she looks frightened. “I did not even look at your cards.”
“But you know something just happened!” Toby insists. “It wasn’t just me. Something happened!”
The fortune teller stares at him, her eyes wide.
“I have to get out of here.” Toby makes a break for the door, ignoring the waif when she calls to him in a pouty voice.
That night he dreams of the singing of the beasts.
The next morning Toby doesn’t go to work. He goes back to the bar, half expecting the unmarked door to have disappeared. But it’s still there, and sitting in front of it is the fortune teller. In the light of day she looks much younger, despite the shadows under her eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Toby asks her.
“Waiting for you,” the fortune teller says miserably.
“Why?”
“I dreamed.”
“You dreamed?” Toby repeats incredulously.
“Of the Snow People. The singing beasts.”
“Mother fucker,” Toby throws up his hands. “This is insane. I have to go to work…” He turns and starts walking uptown.
The fortune teller doesn’t run after him or call to him. Half way up the block he stops and looks back at her. She is still sitting in front of the bar, her head down. He walks back.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Anastasia.”
“Of course it is,” he sighs. “Anastasia, what the hell is going on?”
“You think I know?” she spits, suddenly annoyed. “I work in this shithole because they pay under the table and they wanted a fortune teller. I learned to read the cards on-line. You think this is bullshit? Ithink this is bullshit. I just want to go to school to become a beauty technician in America.”
“You called the beasts the Snow People,” Toby says. “Why?”
“I have heard the singing before, not in dreams.”
“Where? How?” Toby asks excitedly. He can no longer hear the beautiful sound but he still feels its pull strongly.
“In the mountains near my home.”
“Where is your home?” Toby asks.
“Kemerovo. Siberia.”
“Motherfucker,” Toby says again.
Four Weeks Later:
Toby thought he would be a famous artist by 30 but finds himself close to death on the Siberian tundra at 40 instead. He is suffering from malnutrition and dehydration and all manner of gastrointestinal distress. The guides gave up days ago, telling him he had gone too far. He had to leave Anastasia behind that morning, barely conscious, wrapped in sleeping bags with their remaining food beside her. He told her he loved her before he left, and apologized for dragging her back to Siberia, ruining her dream of becoming a beauty technician in America. He also apologized for leaving her there instead of carrying her back to safety. But Toby has heard the singing of the beasts. Not in his dreams. With his own two ears. And he must go on.
The singing is getting louder. His vision is going dark and he can barely walk, but he knows he’s getting closer, any moment now…
“Hey! You mind?”
Toby sees nothing but tundra. He thinks the voice was a hallucination.
“Taking care of business here.”
A mound of turf to his left shifts position and with a start, Toby becomes aware of the fact that he is standing next to one of the beasts. He’s found them at last! But the beast, who is squatting on the ground, looks extremely annoyed.
“Typical Hairless Ape,” the beast growls. “No respect for a zhivotnoye’s privacy.”
Toby realizes that the beast is taking a dump, and turns away, blushing. “S-sorry…” he stammers, disoriented. This doesn’t match any of the first contact scenarios he’s been imagining.
“S’okay,” the beast says. “Done now.”
Toby turns around. “I was…following the singing…I thought…”
The beast holds up a huge and hairy hand. “I know, I know. You heard the singing and you couldn’t resist. You followed it all the way out here.”
“You sent for me, didn’t you?” Toby asks feverishly. “Or your people, the Snow People, did. They wanted me to come. Why else would I have had that vision in the bar? Why else would you let me hear the singing?”
Despite the crude introduction, Toby feels certain he is on the verge of a great truth, something he now knows he has been seeking since long before he started carousing with 20 year-olds in Russian dive bars on the Lower East Side.
The beast chuckles. “If I had a nickel for every time I’ve come across a poor sap like you--though I have to say, getting caught in the can is a first. Actually, if I had a nickel for every time, I’d still be piss poor. The nickel ain’t what it used to be. Don’t even get me started on the ruble. “
“But…” Toby says, his voice cracking with exhaustion.
“I’m sorry, man. What you heard was a mating call. It works that way sometimes, the blood of your ancestors rekindled in your veins, kinda like a biological clock. You do know we share a family tree? You swing from the Homo Sapiens branch, while I hang more on the Neanderthal side of things. It sounds pretty epic at first, but really all it means is you came all this way to get busy with, well…me.”
“What?” Toby gasps.
“Yeah, I’m a she. Lucky for you, I’m not ovulating, or we wouldn’t be standing here chatting.”
Toby realizes he’s been staring at a pair of pendulous, hairy breasts without recognizing them. He feels deflated. “I thought you were going to show me the meaning of life,” he says. “Or at least warn me that humans are destroying the planet and the Snow People will come out of hiding just in time to work with us to save the environment and each other…” he trails off, out of breath.
The beast makes an empathetic face, which despite her large and fearsome features, makes Toby feel as though he is four years old again and just had a boo-boo kissed better by his mommy. She reaches out one of her humongous hands, and pats him gently on the shoulder.
“No,” she says, gently but definitively. “You are destroying the planet, but if any hominids are likely to survive, it’s us, all the way up here. In fact, we could use a little warmth in these parts. We’re not going to mess with the odds by getting involved with you Hairless Apes.”
Toby falls to his knees, crushed. “I came all this way for nothing?” he moans. “You don’t have a solution for my existential crisis? I quit my job for this!”
“Look, I feel bad for you,” the beast says. “Dressing like that at your age…” She makes a tutting sound. “So I’m going to get some friends and we’re going to carry you and your girlfriend to safety so you don’t die out here. Okay? Does that make you feel better?”
“What’s the point?” Toby whines. “We’re all gonna die anyway.”
The beast frowns. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. You want me to take you home or not? We better get a move on or your girlfriend might not make it.”
Toby thinks about Anastasia and wonders if she’d be willing to model for him when they get back to New York. It’s not hip, it’s not going to make him famous or solve global warming, but Toby suddenly feels inspired by the thought of drawing Anastasia’s naked human body.
“Come to think of it, yeah,” Toby says. “I’d appreciate it if you’d take me back to where I came from.”
“Sure thing,” the beast says. “Here, let me give you a hand.” She scoops Toby up, cradling him like a baby against her hairy breasts, and sets out towards home.