to break loose the thoughts that were jammed in her head. “I’ve never seen anyone like you.”
“I wasn’t always like this,” he said quickly.
“Will you be all right?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He didn’t want to talk about himself. “Who was on the phone?”
“The engineer. You’re not from the city, are you?”
“I just got here, from the inland. Today, actually.”
“What will you do now?”
“Start over,” he said.
“It’s not easy,” she said. “Just when you think things are fine, your life can change—like that.” She laughed so hard he thought she was laughing at him. She covered her mouth, stifling her trill of a giggle. When she recovered, she sighed and stared at the floor. “Today I lost my job, and I don’t know what I’ll do. All I think I can do is laugh at myself. Sorry.” She looked at him until he turned away. “How old are you?”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Why, with skin like that you must be a hundred years old!”
He bowed his head.
“Relax, it was a joke,” she said.
“You’re not afraid of how I look?” he asked.
“Why should I be?” She smiled and he found this very comforting.
“I’ve fallen apart.”
Before he knew what was happening, she was touching his dented eye socket and brushing her fingers across his cheek. He tried to stay still, but it was the first time in years that someone had touched his face. He retreated into the doorway.
“I could fix you up,” she said.
“You’ve already done so much for me,” he said. He wanted to say more, that he thought he would have died today if she had not rescued him, but he couldn’t shape the words in his mouth. Besides, he had seen the damage and knew he could not go back to how he looked before.
“Don’t be silly. I’ll fix you. Then you can go your way. But you don’t seem prepared. Where are your things? Do you have any money?”
His head sank, remembering the one thing he missed: his notebook.
“Someone stole my money. A one-eyed man.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching to stroke his frayed head of yarn. “You poor thing.”
He wanted to run away. He was tired of real people reaching out at him. But where could he go? Outside it was likely still raining.
She asked, “Are you hungry?”
He explained what he liked to eat: newspaper soaked in milk. This seemed to give her a new purpose. She went through the curtains that separated the kitchen from the drawing room, which was flooded, and climbed a set of stairs. He realized they were in a basement apartment, and the only window was at the top of the staircase. She returned with the evening edition of the City Mirror.
“Look at that,” she said, pointing to the front page. A photo of a crowd of people was below a headline that said DEAD MERMAID CAUSES ACCIDENT.
She used scissors that shined in the overhead light to chop up the newspaper. She shredded it into bits that she put into a bowl on the stove before adding a splash of goat’s milk. For herself, she made noodles with mushroom broth. Was this the source of the persistent fungal smell in the apartment? Through the strands of her hair hanging over, her eyes blinked rapidly like a camera.
“What’s it like,” she asked him, “to eat paper, when you’re made of it?”
He nearly choked on his first bite. He cleared his throat and said: “I imagine it’s the same as people eating meat. Is eating meat strange to you?”
She grinned. She tipped her bowl for him to see the noodles.
“I don’t eat meat.”
Underneath the table their stomachs moaned like two whales singing in the sea.
5
HER NAME WAS MAIKO, AND SHE WORKED IN THE DISPLAY WINDOW of Willard’s, the largest department store in the city. Three days and three nights a week she was a fur model, wearing anything made of fur: rabbit berets to foxgloves and mink stoles to weasel earmuffs and muskrat-trimmed boots. Sometimes, she shouldered a sable purse. She and two other girls modeled in a display not larger than a small waiting room, and smiled and waved at those who walked by.
“There was no notice,” Maiko said. “This morning, when I climbed into the display window, ready to work like any other day, I found two new women waiting for me. They gave me the cold shoulder.”
Michael blinked uncomprehendingly.
“They were actually mannequins, Michael, and I soon learned they were to replace all the live girls who worked as fur models. My supervisor who had hired me a year ago—she was a family friend—explained that it was a way to cut costs. It came from the top, and she had no say in the matter. Fur sales were slow in the summer. She offered a position at the perfume counter, but I turned it down.”
“Why?” Michael asked. He pushed his empty bowl toward the center of the table, a habit from his life back home. Michael had been exempt from washing dishes because of his paper hands.
“At the perfume counter, you have to talk to people. And they want you to tell them what scent is best for them. It’s a lot of work. I know because I’ve talked to the girls who work there. But as a fur model, you don’t have to say anything. The customers just look at you and wish they could be you.”
She sat back and her chair creaked. She looked extremely tired now that she had eaten, but she continued.
“I stayed late, this last day. After all the other models left, I stayed to walk between the arms and legs of the mannequins and act as if we were all at a rooftop party. Normally the other girls and I walked and posed to an unspoken rhythm we all followed, always giving each other distance to take a turn at the front of the glass. The mannequins wouldn’t allow this. They stayed in one spot, commanding the center. I was like a hamster in a maze.
“Modeling had been my dream, and after failed auditions for fashion shows, I had settled for a job as a fur model. I say ‘settled,’ but I loved being the sophisticated girl in the window. Everyone recognized me, and everyone wanted to be me.” She smiled to herself.
“That’s got to stand for something,” Michael said. “Couldn’t it help you get a job at another store?”
“Willard’s is the store here in the city. Anything less and I might as well be a waitress. Or a girl on the street.”
That last day, she said, only a few shoppers who passed by paused to watch her. As she clumsily squeezed past the tall mannequin with outstretched arms, the frosted mink scarf draped over her shoulders caught on the thumb of another mannequin and was yanked off. The shock of cool
