On my way to the food court, I looked for Peter, to see if he was still as good-looking as he’d been that morning. Or to see if he was sitting on a bench somewhere asking another girl if he could interview her. The thought had crossed my mind. From the right angle his interview/thesis line could have been something he said to every girl he met at the mall. What did I know?
I didn’t find him, but I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I was sure he had something to do. I was sure he’d show up somewhere… and he did.
“Who’s that?” Ellie asked me while we waited in line for calzones. He’d waved and sat down at the area with the most traffic—presumably to smile at people coming to eat their lunch.
I said, “Peter.”
“I met him this morning,” I said. She made a face as if to say she didn’t like me meeting anyone.
Ellie and I ate lunch and talked about our transmissions. Ellie periodically looked over at Peter and eye-flirted.
“So? Did you see anything new today?” I asked Ellie.
“I now know that some guy I never met before likes to smell people’s shoes when they’re not looking. And I know about some woman’s grandfather who used to be a tap dancer and I know about some little kid and how her daughter is going to live in the trees.”
“Exile,” I said. “She’s going to live in exile.”
“Did you find your wheelchair guy?” Ellie asked.
“I’m hoping he comes to lunch,” I answered, then looked around. No wheelchair guy.
Ellie was trying to eat a Styrofoam plate full of hot, radiated enchiladas with a plastic knife and fork. Everything was cancerous. I took a picture of it. Cancer Enchilada.
Ellie kept looking at Peter, trying to get his attention. I watched her and realized that I’d thought Ellie was the only person I’d ever have in my life. But in one short morning I’d met a real person who wasn’t interested in where I could drive him or what I could buy him at the drugstore. He was just interested in whether I smiled or not. And in what music I liked.
“What’s happening to us?” I asked.
“We drank God,” Ellie said. “Now we can see everything… including shoe smellers, apparently.”
She laughed but I hadn’t meant it that way. I meant it in the way she didn’t know yet. I meant it to say: Why are we even pretending anymore? I said, “Everything is changing.”
Ellie looked at Peter again and then looked at me. She said, “His parents live in an over-fifty-five place in Florida and his dad likes to ride his bike a lot. It’s green. His mom hates wearing a bathing cap when she uses the community’s pool. They have a cat.”
Peter looked at me then.
Transmission from Peter: When his grandmother moved into a nursing home, she was bullied by other residents and combated it by playing jazz piano before break fast every morning. Peter will do the same thing as an old man during the Second Civil War. He will play harmonica every chance he can to remind fellow rebels that there is good in the world.
“Holy shit,” Ellie said. “He’s coming over.”
He stopped and said hello. I introduced him to Ellie. Ellie put that pout on her face. I bet if she’d had time, she’d have unbuttoned an extra button on her new blouse.
I asked Peter, “Did she pass your test?”
“Nope,” he said.
“What test?” Ellie asked.
“How many checkmarks?”
“Eleven. Finally hit double digits,” he said as he waved and walked away.
Ellie looked annoyed that we didn’t answer her questions. “You should have asked for his number,” she said.
I got up to throw my trash away. “I already have it,” I said.
I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t hope that the future I saw for Peter was also my future. I was hoping that, of all the people he was meeting at the mall during his experiment, I was the one who turned out to be his soul mate in June 2014.
File under: Dumb but true.
File under: I was sick of not living my life.
As Ellie and I made our way down the escalator, she said, “You’re still pissed about the other day, aren’t you?”
“Not really.”
“You are,” she said. “You won’t even look at me.”
“I’m on a fucking escalator, Ellie.”
“Well,” she said. “Even before now.”
I waited until we were down the escalator and out the doors. If we were finally going to have a huge fight, then I wanted enough oxygen to yell as loud as I could.
And I did. “What’s your problem?” I asked this in loud, enunciating syllables. Three smoker guys circled around an ashtray/trash can looked over at me.
“What’s your problem?” she asked back.
I didn’t have the energy to go to all the way down to her level. The bar was too low.
“All I did was ask if you’re still pissed about the other day. You obviously are.”
“And I said no. But what I say doesn’t seem to matter because you already have all the answers. So why should I even talk to you about it?”
“You are, though,” she said. “Right?”
“No.”
I thought about it. “I have shit on my mind, okay? And you’ve made it very clear that I can’t share it with you.”
“Like you ever shared anything with me in your life,” she said.
“I shared something with you yesterday. And look what happened. Seriously. Why would anyone share shit with someone who’s so self-centered?”
She was about to yell something, but then she stopped. “Self-centered?”
“Self-centered.”
I started walking to the car. She followed.
“I never really noticed that before,” she said. “Being self-centered, you’d think I would have, eh?”
“I guess. I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you want to go back in? See Peter more? I don’t want to make you leave early if you don’t want to.”
“It’s fine. The old guy wasn’t there. I’ll try another day.”
She got in the passenger’s-side door when I unlocked it.
“I was kinda hoping to stay out all day,” she said. “My mom will just put me to work if I go back.” [Insert laugh track laughter.]
I was about to start the car, but I stopped. I looked at her and she frowned. I said, “We can go back in if you want.”
“How about somewhere else?” [Insert laugh track laughter.] “Main Street?” Ellie said.
Main Street was the only living street left near our local poverty-eaten city. It was made possible by people who got a revitalization grant. It was a cute, real street where there were stores that didn’t have a corporate logo and didn’t import everything from China.
So I drove us to Main Street.
And on Main Street, Ellie and I went our separate ways. We agreed to meet back at the car at four. I sat on a fancy-looking bench and smiled at people. Nobody smiled back. I took a small notepad from my purse and started keeping track. An X for no smile-backs, a checkmark for smile-backs. I got some transmissions, too.
Transmission from X #4: A distant descendant will open a coffee shop on Jupiter’s first space orbiter. He will serve the best chai lattes in the galaxy.
Transmission from X #8: His father forgot to turn the coffeemaker off this morning and melted the countertop in his condo.
Transmission from X #14: His grandson will rob a bank in Mt. Pitts, Pennsylvania, and will spend nine years in prison for it. His other grandson will attempt to abduct a seven-year-old girl and will go to the same prison for three months before he is released. That grandson will euthanize his grandfather so he can have his car, a 1997 Dodge Neon with no air-conditioning and low mileage.
Transmission from X #19: His ancient ancestor fought in the Mongol invasion of Iraq in the thirteenth century. He fired arrows from a crossbow and killed seven people with his bare hands.
Transmission from X #24: Her great-granddaughter will be exiled after the Fathers Count Law is passed. She will join the rest of the exiles—all single mothers—and form a community that lives deep in the forests east of their suburb.
Transmission from my only checkmark, a woman in her twenties with a really cool tattoo on her clavicle: She will join the revolution and take food to the forests. She will lead many to safety. She will lose both of her daughters to the machine. She will eventually become my best friend.
I smiled back at her smile. She slowed as we looked at each other. I already liked her. I already wanted to hang out with her more than I wanted to hang out with Ellie.
She made me see the possibilities.
Fact: There are so many people in the world.
Why was I hanging out with one I didn’t really like?
Was everyone stuck with geographical friends like this? Longitude-and-latitude friends?
I sat on the nearest bench and looked at my paper. Thirty-four Xs and one checkmark. My cheeks hurt from smiling so much. Or maybe they were fatigued because so few smiled back.
Peter must have been exhausted. I took a phone picture of my tally and sent it to him on his cell phone number, which I found on his card. I didn’t want to get too familiar. I just thought he might want to know that he inspired me. Maybe smiling at people would be my new revenge on the bullshit world.
Maybe smiling at people would be my cure for mother-in-the-oven.