I think I woke up first in the trolley. I still don’t know why.
The sun burst into my vision, blinding me until my eyes could adjust. Bright sun, blue sky, thick tropical forest lining the stone pavement under the trolley. The green felt deep. I could lose myself in every blurring shadow between the trees and the air tasted thicker and saltier as the car descended. I leaned forward through the open window, feeling the wind chap my lips and pull at my hair.
Still I had the feeling of unease that you get after waking up from a bad dream, but I didn’t remember my dreams, and my memories to that point were more facts than flashbacks. Not like what I get now. I knew that there was always money in my account because my rich great-uncle had died and left me his fortune, and I knew that the amount didn’t matter because it was more than I’d ever need, so of course I moved to a rich island community with about two hundred year-round residents.
And I even knew the trolley routes, the main one being the washed-out red-pink trolley that went from higher on the mountain—where it was a minute or so walk from my neighborhood’s gates—to the village, a stack of white and pastel boxes that bled from the cliff down to the main beach.
I don’t think it’s actually the first time I woke up; I woke up at night. But sitting in the darkness with no context and fading back into that oblivion hardly counts as consciousness. Or maybe it’s some purer consciousness. I don’t know. It could have been here, too, but the problem is that there’s too much light here. I’d give a lot to sleep in the dark again.
The trolley stopped in front of the main café, the one wedged between a gated house and the post office, the white-plastered wall sloping down in the direction of the beach for the rest of the block. Slices of the ocean peaked out between blocks. Birdsong wafted by on the breeze, followed by the sound of a jazz piano emanating from somewhere I couldn’t see, maybe a radio in the post office or an actual piano not too far away.
A couple of men in shorts and clean white tank tops sat at a cast-iron table in front of the house by the café, but when I raised my hand to greet them the one nearest me in the green shorts rolled his eyes and said something like, “One of them,” in a low voice to the other, who scrunched up his face and looked away. I lowered my hand and looked from them to the window of the café and then back to them. I didn’t get it—the main difference I could figure out was in our attire, but even then the main difference was small; my clothes were in a similar style, but in a light violet color and what looked like a softer-but-lighter material. They even had similar olive skin and smooth upper eyelids, though not really similar enough for any of us to be related. I squinted at the glass.
“Them?” I repeated.
I must have been loud enough for green shorts to hear because he looked over his shoulder, squinting like he hadn’t expected me to understand him.
I hurried into the café.
The waiter always hovered in the background, and I chose a seat away from the window. He took my order almost immediately after I sat down, giving me a few seconds to consider what I wanted, although all I really had to say was, “Breakfast,” and he nodded and went to prepare it. I didn’t even have to touch the hand bell and I also didn’t really know what was in Breakfast but I figured if I knew to order it then I must like it.
A tiny bell chimed as I was tracing my finger over the table’s seaglass mosaic and a woman with a red-pink sundress walked in, stopping to admire the café’s interior as if it was her first time in it, feeling the walls and gawking at the patterns on the tables. She had dark curly hair that cascaded down her back, but it was unkempt and looked sort of greasy.
Something clattered.
I tensed, but it was just the waiter setting down plates of scrambled eggs, hot cakes, fruit, and pastries on the table in front of me.
“You seem different today,” he said quietly. He put down the last dishes—a glass of wine next to a glass of orange juice and a glass of water. “How is your new liver?”172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEOWH1J9PmU
“What?”
But he’d already gone to attend to the woman. At one point as I was finishing the eggs I looked up to see that the woman had sat near the center of the café under the skylight, in front of the counter where the waiter stood. She’d ordered a plate of fruit, but it was all unpeeled and uncut and she seemed to relish in cutting a mango, pausing to lick her fingers midway through. With one final—but painstaking—cut she severed the meat from the seeds and then licked the knife. I almost choked on my wine.
She used her hand to pick up one of the mango cubes she’d just cut. A bead of spit formed like sweat when she opened her mouth, slowly sinking her teeth into the fruit until the bead started to drip and then flow down the corners of her mouth as she finished the first chunk. She closed her eyes and let out a moan that was almost moistened the mango juice.
I hated it.
I couldn’t figure out why. I’d never had such a visceral reaction to watching another person before, but then again I couldn’t remember watching another person before. But I did vaguely recognize her—did we live in the same gated neighborhood?—and something felt almost horrifying about the thought that she didn’t seem to recognize a mango, or at least hadn’t eaten one before. Somehow her face was recognizable but her eyes, fluttering in apparent ecstasy at the taste and smell of the mango, her eyes didn’t seem right. She moved like she wasn’t used to her own body, knocking over her water twice before finishing that first mango.
Before I could avert my eyes the waiter’s soft floral shirt and khakis filled my vision. Although I was sitting, he looked a little taller and a little thinner than me, and much paler, with close-shaved light brown hair. His eyes were the blue of the deep ocean out on the horizon on a clear day.
“I wasn’t staring,” I said.
“You were,” he said, his expression barely changing. He didn’t say it in an accusatory way. He glanced over his shoulder, past the woman, and then through the window. Then he pulled up a chair and sat in across from me. “It is you, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Nevermind. I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else. I’m not trying to be a creep.”
I didn’t know what to say.
He pulled a pen and a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote a number. “Sorry, I don’t have much time on my break. If you’re ever feeling …weird again. Keep this in your pocket.” He pushed the paper over to me.
“W—” my voice sounded crusty and I had to clear my throat. “Weird?”172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUkLo2Df8b8
“Yeah, well, if you—if you ever want to—you know—”
“Talk?”172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHuLQyGO4nW
“Sure. Yeah.” He looked behind me again and stood up. “Call me if you’re ever free again.”172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcKJKf1U7lC
“I’m free all the time.”172Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWYqzKmIf7x
“You’d be surprised.”
The woman at the other table rang her bell.
“I’ll be right there,” he said. “Oh, and no offense, but I think you should try cutting your hair. It’s the perfect length.”
I was sweating.
My silk sheets tangled around my naked body and the only light was the faint red glow of the line of night lights where the walls met the ceiling. Sometime during the evening I’d pulled the balcony curtains shut, cutting off any outside light. My damp hair clung to my neck; I heard the waiter’s advice again in the back of my head and as much as I wanted to resent it I also had the urge to cut it.
I had a small case of morning wood but I ignored it, swinging my legs off the edge of my bed and slid off, the cool marble shocking the pads of my feet. The air also felt cold against my wet skin and I shuffled into my dark bathroom, not bothering to turn on a light or shut the door.
Scissors.
The mirror took up half the wall, the marble sinks and countertops occupying the lower half. I stared.
They’re in the drawer.
In the low light my pupils fused with my irises to become black discs. I took out the scissors.
Turn.
I turned to the mirror across from the counters, a floor-to-ceiling mirror about three times the width of my body. Taking the scissors in one hand and my hair in the other, I angled myself so that I could see the reflection of my back in the other mirror. I pulled my hair to the side.
Turn on a light.
But I didn’t. All I had to do was say the word, but I didn’t. Instead I stared at the valley in the middle of my back and the lump of spine that ran from it up my neck. A palm’s width from the base of my skull I felt what I’d thought was bone, tracing my finger in small circles around a blue light radiating from a spot at the base of my neck.
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