There was once a busybody who lived on an island that was technically inside of a big peninsula. Her name was Maggie. Everything she posted on social media she immediately deleted, so her profile always looked as if she had passed away. But this was not the case, at least yet, because she consumed and yearned just like any alive person. In fact, consuming and yearning were her two favorite things to do.
Maggie had trouble escaping her thought patterns. She repeated the same things over and over again. Words she heard or read would tumble around in her brain clumsily, unable to convert into a useful or interesting impression. She silently hoped that international travel would fix this—that her thoughts would become brighter and more varied if she could get off the island.
Maggie’s lover, Sam, had bad breath that even the strongest mouthwash couldn’t fix. It always came back. This was, deep down, admirable to her—his ability to leave a trail. It was such a grounding, human thing to be: incurably odorous.
They met in a Sears parking lot, or rather the Sears was just a near-empty building with a faint “Sears” sign on the front, where they had both parked two rows away from each other, scientifically proven to be a distance where a person looks most attractive. The “Sears” was right next to the movie theater, where they had both seen the same movie, as they were placed, again, two rows away from each other. In that semi-euphoric, fleeting state after seeing a film—they fell in love, which is to say they hurried to their respective cars in the dark, even though neither of them had anywhere special to go, and turned their headlights on, with a newfound hope that they could evade their habits and afflictions.
Maggie went to community college and Sam would often drive over to the campus to hang out after class. Their route quickly became muscle memory: around the auditorium, past the vending machine hall, behind the bookstore, through the cafeteria, and finally out to the gazebo area, where small turtles stuck to the sides like magnets, hoping for bread. In the gazebo they looked at the reservoir and stumpy palm trees surrounding the derelict planetarium on the other side. Sam talked fast and jumped from idea to idea in a way that sounded smart to Maggie—his transitions were always connected and he seemed to care about Maggie’s facial expressions in a way that other guys hadn’t. He was interested in hearing about her semi-poetic mistranslations of life, “When I was younger I thought acne was the process of little seeds coming out of people’s faces…” and was attracted to the gross, the dark, the catastrophic. Maggie wanted to be attracted to these things.
He related to the self-disgust of Kafka and would often text her snippets of his letters late at night: “It is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little.” Maggie would always respond with some kind of emoji, like a swan or a rose or a crying face, whatever fit the mood. She was grateful for emojis.
He complained about his job and Maggie sympathized (Sam delivered sandwiches to people on streets named after birds, shells, and other beach-related nouns). He said that the phrase “hold down a job” always felt strangely apt because the jobs he had to work felt like sitting on top of a coffin that held a zombie who was desperately trying to get out, screaming and thrashing limbs and all that theatrical stuff, and your entire life you were warned that the zombie was going to kill you if you stopped sitting on that coffin, when they were probably just really tired of being cooped up in there and if we’re speaking candidly probably wasn’t even a zombie, not in the pop culture depiction of the word at least, and to be even more candid why even sit on the coffin? Why not have it locked up so you could do other things with your life, things that didn’t feel so mechanical and unnecessary and oftentimes cruel? Or, better yet, set the zombie free for them to do their bidding, which was probably to just ask for a glass of water and say, Damn, it was dark in there!
Maggie really liked that description, and therefore really liked Sam. So when he offered her Adderall on the gazebo Maggie quickly swallowed it with a swig of her oversized bottle of water.
◆
The first night they spent together, Maggie and Sam sat at his dining table under a painting of a bashful looking egret that belonged to his roommate, who Maggie never saw. Their knees touched and they took stimulants and spat memories at each other. It was hard to feel closer to a person, Maggie believed. She didn’t sleep well, she never did in other people’s houses, but for the few hours she did she vividly dreamt that she was an ant and fell in love with a shoe. As an ant, it obviously didn’t look like a shoe, it looked more like some sort of entrancing monolith, and observing it made all of her senses tingle in fear and ecstasy. The shoe didn’t step on her, even though it easily could, especially when it lifted high into the air, lovingly engulfing her in shadow—it narrowly avoided her multiple times throughout the dream. It was unclear what she was carrying on her back while this love scene was playing out, but it was heavy, unbelievably so, and a tan color, like a potato chip. She felt a lingering sense of guilt and excitement when she woke up, the outline of her sweaty body marked on his rough maroon sheets uncarefully draped across the bed.
“You made noises in your sleep,” Sam whispered in her ear, his feet peeking out of the dampish blanket.
“I don’t usually do that,” she replied, but how is one to know what exactly they do while they sleep?
“They were words actually, not noises,” he said. “You wanna know what you said?”
She was silent, reached down to the carpet, which wasn’t that far of a reach, and grabbed it like she was trying to rip blades of grass out of a soccer field.
“You kept saying ‘never in my life, never in my life, never in my life!’” he burst out in the kind of laughter where your lips are somehow surprised at first and create a pfff sound as a result, and feeling captured or cornered, Maggie responded by mimicking the sound.
◆
Maggie and Sam always forgot to eat when they were together. It became a sort of big but unspoken issue between them. And by the time she had realized it, she was already hysterical, desperate, taking offense, her body trying to convert nothing into something.
Maggie and Sam were driving around on the highway after a whole day of not eating and having energetic, tennis-like conversation.
It’s so easy to riff with you,” Sam said, a Father John Misty song playing in the background. Maggie felt happy and manic, the quiet dread of the mania seeping into her happiness like an oil spill.
When conversation lagged they stared out of the water-spotted windows looking at the side of the road, in which small people wearing brightly colored vests could be seen gutting the fields, slowly building a train system starting from the airport and ending where the cruise ships left for clearer waters, a distance of forty seven miles. It’s funny how, in the process of building something, the thing resembles ruins, then it becomes the thing for a while, then it becomes ruins again. Maggie was more or less thinking that, or on the verge of thinking that.
“You have something on your lip,” Maggie got close to Sam’s face and touched her own lip to show where the something was. Sam must have thought Maggie was going to kiss him or something, because when she didn’t his face changed. He looked like he was about to cry.
“You’re a great actress, you know that?” It seemed like he meant to wound her greatly with this comment. That he wanted her to question herself, to feel like he was the only one who could truly tell when she was being authentic. But maybe he didn’t really want to do that at all. Her legs ached. Her motivations were scattered, blurry, unpredictable. She could see it happening in real time—her brain filing tiny miscommunications and grudges into some nefarious Sierpinski triangle organizing system.
Instead of looking at the road, Sam stared despondently at the moon that was making its way into the sky. He still had that thing on his lip. Maggie looked at her lap blankly, trying to conjure up worry over the fact that Sam wasn’t looking at the road, but nothing came.
◆
Maggie worked at Books A Million, which was semi-popular in her book-hating town because the higher-ups at the company were adamant about selling knick knacks: toys, plushies, and puzzles, etc. Most of the customers were grandparents lazily shuffling around the front of the store searching for gifts for their iPad-clad grandkids whose work ethic they foundationally despised.
Maggie’s manager was an ugly, gruff man with a beautiful voice who stole funko pops from the side displays.
“Huh, three funko pops are missing,” Maggie said early in her career at the bookstore, not feeling any emotion as the words spilled out of her, after a long Friday of doing inventory. She received a death stare from the sixteen year old girl training her, so after that she stopped checking the inventory closely. The point of inventory became taking note of but not reporting stolen or damaged items, at least specific, lower priced ones. But the company did take high-priced theft very seriously, evidenced by the “Wall of Shame” collage of security cam photos of people who decided to steal record players, noise-cancelling headphones, and the like.
DO YOU KNOW THESE FACES? was written in a blaring purple font at the bottom of the collage. Maggie would stare at the photos for so long on her lunch breaks that yes, maybe she did know them, perhaps she knew them better than their own parents did, if one takes into account how much time parents actually study their children’s faces. Then she would throw away her meal, put her apron back on, laugh that she had to wear an apron to work at a bookstore that barely sold books, let alone food, and then resume her duties.
Before every transaction at the store, anyone working the register was forced to recite a speech written by management to entice customers to join a rewards program, which used words like “benefits,” “exclusive,” “save [up to] ___%!”, etc., but if one were to look at the fine print, there were asterisks next to almost every word explaining the loopholes that rendered the rewards program a well-cushioned scam. Staring at the script, Maggie thought it looked like some sort of alien language.
“Would you like to join our Trillionaire Club? You can get—”
“I’d love a trillion dollars,” said a tight-faced woman with AquaNet hair. Her plastic surgery made her look like a restored painting, the type of restoration that attempts to recreate the original face but ends up looking sort of melted and kiddish. She was quite smooth, though, and that was probably what mattered most to her.
“Ha! Well if you join this rewards program, you’ll be on your way there,” Maggie continued, looking at the woman’s hair instead of into her eyes.
“No, I won’t,” the woman said, sounding suddenly sad.
“Anyway,” Maggie laughed politely, “For only thirty dollars a year, you’ll get free shipping on online orders, and receive up to fifty percent off our—”
“Just give me my goddamn prayer book, will you? Do you just think I have all the time in the world for your little sales pitch? Is that what you see me as? Is there a dollar sign on top of my head? Where’s Julie? Julie would never do this to me.”
“There’s no Julie that works here, ma’am,” Maggie tried to lift the sides of her lips up.
The woman mumbled something, then stopped mumbling, then made a sort of barking sound that was maybe meant to clear her throat, and slowly headed for the door.
“Make sure this busybody does her job, will you?” the woman said to Maggie’s manager, who was staring at the magazine wall, petting his beard.
Maggie and her manager took a smoking break together overlooking the parking lot. They stood close together under an awning because it was one of the only spots of shade. The manager, unprompted, began to describe his new dog, Lucy, to her in detail. Lucy was purchased from a breeder who put half and half in her coffee and lived in a pink trailer in Volusia County. The dog had translucent eyes and experienced difficulty walking in a straight line. The manager showed Maggie a video. He had placed cameras in his apartment and recorded her once while he was at work and the dog made human crying noises.
“She’s very attached,” he said sadly and confidently at the same time.
Maggie asked many questions about the dog, like: is the breed known for dental problems and does she like chicken or beef flavored food. She figured that showing enthusiasm was the polite thing to do, even if she didn’t feel it.
The manager seemed perplexed. “I’ve never seen you ask so many questions,” he said.
“Sorry, I like dogs,” Maggie said.
“Don’t apologize,” the manager said, leaning against the wall. “Hey, that guy who picks you up sometimes, does he have weed? Kids your age always have weed.
◆
Maggie and Sam were on the floor, their stomachs rumbling, watching Pawn Stars, where a tiny man, even with the height-warping effects of television, was attempting to sell a baseball glove allegedly signed by Babe Ruth. The family of thumb-shaped men laughed at the tiny man, and he started to break out in what looked like hives from anger, so they brought in the autograph expert who spent many lonely, crazed hours comparing loops of ink, and he said no, it was not Babe Ruth’s signature, and the man responded “What if Babe Ruth didn’t want it to be sold and signed it wrong on purpose?” and no one really responded to that statement as the episode continued.
“You people are cowards,” the tiny man said to the camera. Maggie, even though she knew the words weren’t directed at her, took them personally and applied them to her circumstances.
“I don’t think I wanna be here anymore,” Maggie said, grabbing her backpack.
Sam was rocking back and forth. “I think you’re only with me because you feel bad for me,” he said abruptly.
Maggie stood up, her vision blurry for a moment. “I’ve never felt bad for you, not even once,” she said, propelled by his accusation. “I think you’re only with me because I look like a cartoon character you became obsessed with as a child while your parents were divorcing,” Maggie was practically puking her words because they felt so incredibly dumb in her head and she couldn’t bear to keep them there. But she did kind of resemble that cartoon character. She sat in the anxiety of a situation she couldn’t understand, the situation being that she was with Sam and he was with her, even though they did not encourage or improve each other’s quality of life, only their ability to cope with the quality of their lives.
“What is this? What are you talking about? Is this what you tell yourself? How do you sleep at night?” They both asked each other for a while.
“You should go home, I guess,” Sam said, shrugging. Maggie gave a simple nod, a sign of comprehension, even though that was the last thing that she was doing. Those were the final words that were said between them as a couple, so flimsy in retrospect, but final—and given they lived on the same island on the same peninsula, it took a certain amount of caution, respect, and maybe even love to avoid each other for as long as they did.
◆
Life was continuing in the way it had to. Maggie went to school and work, with little energy to think about the substance of her days. She tried taking new routes to her destinations, hoping to feel differently about a setting she was tired of encountering.
One day Maggie was at Publix having withdrawals. She wandered up and down the store, retracing her steps, avoiding the frozen aisle and then relenting, peeking at labels, sighing to herself, feeling nauseous.
“Hello,” an old woman said, looking at the selection of chicken stock.
“Hi,” Maggie said, startled.
The woman began a monologue.
“I had to wake up early because there were ducks at my door,”
“Ducks?” Maggie asked, unsure if she heard her correctly.
“A momma duck and her ducklings, yes, and they really wanted food,” She grumbled. “I gave them some bread and water. They were actin’ really desperate about it all. I live near a pond, you see. In Dover Shores.” She looked at Maggie like she should know the neighborhood.
She reached for something in her pocket. Maggie backed up to the other side of the aisle as someone passed through them like they were two ghosts.
“Tell me if you can read this, doll,” she gave her a piece of paper ripped from a legal pad.
The script was basically illegible, too many loops and scratches to be actual words, but resembled a list of some kind.
“I can’t really make out any of the words, no, sorry,” Maggie laughed weakly and handed her the note back.
“My sister has the worst handwriting, and told me to get her things. I have no idea what the hell this means,” she wiped her hands on her pants.
“Maybe call her and ask?” Maggie offered, distracted by the twitching fluorescence. When she looked up at it her photoreceptors created moving, bursting shapes all over.
“She doesn’t know how to use that phone of hers,” the woman waved away the idea.
For a few minutes they stared at the note together, sounding out words that didn’t exist. Maggie would become anxious and suggest a real word every once in a while and the woman would grunt in disapproval. “No, that can’t be it.”
“I’m from the midwest,” she announced suddenly, like this was an explanation for something.
“Malls,” Maggie said, nodding.
“Yes, malls!”
And then they talked for a bit about malls, with a certain amount of pity in their voices, as if discussing animals on the endangered species list.
“Do you want me to help you get some basics? I don’t think I can really help with the list,” Maggie found herself saying.
The woman had a betrayed look on her face. “You don’t work here?” She stared at Maggie’s clothing.
“I don’t work here, that’s true,” Maggie stared at the clothes she had on her body.
“You said you worked here.” The woman began pushing her cart very slowly.
“I don’t think I said that—”
A man with a vest and a name tag walked by. The woman began talking to him. “I had to wake up so early today. The ducks were at my door…”
While heading to the front of the store, Maggie saw Sam’s figure, hunched over the coin machine, loud crashing noises coming from the inside. Sam turned around and made no discernible expression that she could connect a mood to. His face looked like some sort of collage of other people’s features. He walked over to her. Her hands began to shake and she felt extremely cold. She was angry that he would break their unspoken agreement to avoid each other.
“There a hurricane coming?” He asked her, smiling.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I saw on TV that there might be a hurricane coming. And all the water jugs are sold out. And the flashlights. Something about a cyclonic gyre, the meteorologist said. You know what a cyclonic gyre is? You were always the smart one.”
“Are you high?” Maggie asked after a long pause.
His face drooped.
“There’s no hurricane coming. It isn’t hurricane season.” Maggie said.
“Saw you at Dockside,” he said, looking at his shoes. They were the same shoes he’d always worn. “And the mall. And Graham’s. And Cherry Down too, I think.”
“I’m sure you did,” Maggie said. She had seen him, too.
“Don’t be like that,” he said. “I’m being polite.”
“Sam,” Maggie said.
“Don’t be like that,” he whispered, pleading, rubbing his temples.
The coin machine made a whirring noise and spat out a receipt.
“You should cash that, I guess,” Maggie said. He turned around and grabbed the receipt in a jerky motion to examine it.
Maggie stood there, waiting for him to turn back around. “Please be safe, Sam,” she said finally, trying to say it as seriously as possible, because she really meant it, but the words felt very parental and heavy coming out of her mouth, so the delivery was a bit weird.
He looked over his shoulder, disoriented, and made that pfff sound. “Yeah.” he said. “Yeah, you too. I hope you…you know.”
Maggie did not know. She thought about that “you know” for a long time. She hoped for the day when that “you know” would drift away from her like it happened to someone else and she’d wonder what fixation replaced it, then go about her tasks peacefully, shaking her head like, “So this is how it goes on.” She left the store with nothing, embarrassed and breathing heavy. Outside, the sunset looked bruised—a rotten, pimplish purple. Steaming rain came down from the sky, and she walked slowly to her car, too out of breath to run.
◆
Years later, Maggie was sober after multiple failed attempts and had saved up enough money to travel to Europe for a few days. She was still holding onto the belief that traveling a far distance might solve some of her problems.
“What business do you have in London?” asked the customs officer.
“Religious thing,” Maggie replied. There was a machine that scanned the picture of your face on your passport and compared it to your actual face for verification purposes, but it didn’t work on Maggie. There was no surprise in her body as she reacted to this—she searched for it and could find none, which probably made her look suspicious. She stood there for a long time with red lines closing in on her digital likeness, the lines pulsing dramatically to express error. More often than she’d like to admit, she would find her thoughts floating to a theory that perhaps she had died while she was with Sam, maybe not fully died but something about her transience became fully realized, is the best way to put it—she always sort of believed that there was no life after Sam. That there was something too overwhelming about them even meeting in the first place that made all of reality shatter. Or maybe it was drugs. She began to cry in front of the customs officer when she realized that all of her memories from that time were bookended with that thought.
“Glory be,” the customs officer let her though.
◆
In London, it looked like all the buildings had been rubbed with cinnamon. In Norway, it looked exactly like all of the pictures on the internet. She went to bars and park benches, hoping to place herself in serendipitous encounters, but no one spoke to her. She ate a few bland meals, slept a few nights where many others had slept, then returned to the island to go back to work.
She bought a lot of postcards while she was there, ones that had grainy images of churches, monuments, and landscapes with the names of European towns written in distracting, loopy letters. All of the backs were left blank, no to or from, and ended up occupying space under Maggie’s bed. She would lie awake at night staring at the word correspondence and tracing her fingers over the thin lines where the address was supposed to go. She thought constantly about who to send them to, and what she would say, and how they would react when they held it in their hands, and whether or not that would change the course of her life. But then she got quite used to them being under her bed, one might even say attached. She cocooned herself in their potential. It gave her something to dream about.