6. I’ll Make a Man Out of You #2
That seemed to satisfy the guy enough, especially since he worked on commission.
He shrugged and went about unpacking the phone and setting it up with a SIM card.
I checked my own phone, closing out several unhelpful search tabs reading: Mannequin come to life?
Spontaneous adult human? Is magic hour really magic?
I scrolled through some news articles and double-checked my shopping list. When I looked up, Aidan was gone.
Panic prodded my chest.
“Did you see which way my friend went?” I asked the phone salesman.
“No, I was kinda doing this,” he said, pointing his slender nose down toward the phone.
“Right, right. I’ll, uh, be right back.” I slipped my credit card from my wallet. “Take this as collateral.”
Frantically, I searched for Aidan. He couldn’t have gone far. I peered into every store window I passed until I overheard, “I’d like one house, please.”
I turned and there he stood in a pair of Cam’s left-behind, dark-wash designer jeans and his too-small parka from last year talking to a Black woman in a pantsuit who flashed him a dentist-approved smile. I hustled over as she was asking, “What kind of property are you looking for?”
“Something with a large shoe closet. I’m going to have a lot of shoes like Carrie Bradshaw. Do you know Carrie Bradshaw? She’s not real,” he said.
“Sure,” the real estate agent said with a furrowed brow. “I can do a walk-in. Did you have a budget in mind?”
“Sorry!” I jumped in, cheeks ablaze. “He’s doing a bit. He’s not in the market for a house.”
“Yes, I am.”
“ No . You’re not.” I stared him down, hoping he suddenly became fluent in body language.
“Buying your first home can be scary. Lovers’ quarrels are to be expected.” The woman smiled and reached into her blazer pocket. “Just in case you guys come to an agreement, take my card.”
Aidan took the red business card with strange reverence. “Did you make a wish, too?” he whispered conspiratorially.
“Thank you for your time.” I yanked him away. “You can’t buy a house. You don’t have any money.”
“Money? Oh, is that what’s loaded onto the plastic cards Carrie swipes when buying Manolo Blahniks?”
“Yes.”
“ You have those,” he said.
“We are here for a phone and clothes,” I told him. “Not a house.”
“I’m wearing clothes,” he said. I tried not to think about whose clothes he was wearing nor what memories they dredged up nor how good they looked on Aidan.
“Other clothes. Different clothes. More clothes. Clothes you can wear for the next four weeks,” I said. Though four weeks was still sounding like a torturous eternity with all these pestering questions.
I paid for and collected the phone. I thought about giving it to Aidan but decided it was best I held on to it until we got back to the apartment lest he lose it or break it in the interim.
In the nearest men’s clothing store, I barely glanced at what I grabbed from the display racks. Anything that appeared trendy and in Aidan’s size, I hung in a dressing room and commanded him to try on. The employees seemed puzzled by my mission-focused attitude.
Unsurprisingly, nothing I picked out looked bad on Aidan.
How could it? His proportions were perfectly sculpted to sell clothes.
I paid an arm and a leg (no pun intended) for a whole new wardrobe for a mannequin.
I wouldn’t even be able to wear any of this stuff when he was gone because the ghost of his immaculate form would haunt me as the fabric drooped around my skinny arms and concave chest.
On the way out, Aidan stopped to admire the window display. “Whoa, now he’s sexy .” He ogled a mannequin in jeans, a sweater, a beanie, and a scarf. The befuddled looks from passersby who overheard burnt a hole in the back of my head.
“Careful, your Samantha Jones is showing,” I said to mask whatever other feelings bubbled up inside me. “And of course that’s your type.” I walked quickly in the direction of our next stop.
“I’m sensing notes of anger and upset in the tone of your voice,” Aidan commented. “Should I not have said that?”
Self-consciousness weighed down my shopping bags. “It’s fine.”
“Why do you say it’s fine when your expression says it’s not? Like when you drank the bean water this morning,” he said.
“Coffee.”
“Right. Coffee. I knew that. It appears you’re avoiding the question,” he said, stopping in his tracks.
“Because I’m jealous, okay?” I whipped around to face him, still shaken by seeing a different man in Cam’s clothes. My inadequacies slapped me across the face. I sighed. “‘Jealous’ means I wish I looked more like you, more like that mannequin. This is rock bottom.”
Aidan took the bags from my cramping hands and asked, “Why do you want to look like him when you look like you ?”
“I think it’s sorta obvious…” I said, eyes cast down at my shoes, which I’d cleaned as best I could but there were still yellowish stains on them. There was something mortifying about buying new shoes for a mannequin-turned-man but deeming myself unworthy of the same kindness.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You’re also sexy.”
“I’m not but it’s fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“‘Fine’ does not seem to have a firm definition,” he stated. “By watching many episodes of Sex in the City —”
“It’s Sex and the City . It’s a common misconception. There’s a whole Mandela-effect thing.”
Aidan went on as if I hadn’t spoken, which, fair.
“Sexy isn’t only in the body. It’s a state of mind.
I should know. I’ve always had a body, but only just got a mind.
” I did not want to touch the concept that he might have had an unanimated consciousness this whole time.
That objects possessed potential to spring forth into humanness at any moment was unnerving.
“What’s it about that mannequin, then?” I asked, still having a view of it from across the walkway.
“It’s the way he’s standing, the way he’s dressed, and his confident, unwavering gaze.”
“It’s unwavering because he can’t blink!”
“That’s not my point!” he shouted. His voice had never gotten that loud before.
He clasped his hands over his mouth, and when he removed them, he wore this wide, irritating smile.
“Whoa, is this what an argument feels like? Are we having an argument like Carrie and Big?” I shook my head and trudged on.
Working down from the top of my gift list, I bought a Puccini record for Dad, a necklace for Mom, and a Criterion Collection DVD copy of The Philadelphia Story for Great Aunt Isla because she didn’t have a smart TV and she didn’t always like what was playing on TCM.
I was almost about to call it a day until I craved a soft pretzel, which ended up being my downfall. Not because of all that salt, but because I forgot the Auntie Anne’s was right past—
“Henry? Is that you?” Without a doubt, it was Sid’s throaty croak.
Alexa’s new fiancé and our former classmate had a voice reminiscent of Kermit the Frog if he had a fly stuck in his windpipe.
He stood beside their soap kiosk in tan pants and a white button-down that made his pale white skin appear even paler in the unforgiving mall lighting.
When I looked at him, I still saw the starting center on the Ocean Glen High School basketball team.
I pictured him standing behind his friends as they drew tiny, crude dicks over my signature on the art pieces my teacher hung up in the hallway, snickering the whole time.
He might not have been the dick-drawer himself, but he never stopped them. To me, that was just as bad.
“It is Henry!” Aidan responded brightly, walking right over. “And I’m Aidan! Who are you?”
“I’m Sid, Henry’s soon-to-be cousin-in-law. Nice to meet you, Aidan.”
“What are you selling?” he asked. More than one person was picking up the various soaps and sniffing them. For a dying mall, it certainly had its faithful shoppers.
“Organic and natural hygiene products,” Sid said with a dazzling customer-service smile. I never could figure out how to perfect my own. Every time I tried, Great Aunt Isla said I looked like I was a party clown trying to hold back tears.
“Hygiene! I know about that,” said Aidan, thrusting the bags back to me before picking up the nearest bar of soap and pressing his nose to it. He took a sharp hit as if it were a party drug.
“Good to see you, Sid,” I lied, laden with bags and discomfort. At least Alexa wasn’t—
“Henry? Surprised to see you out and about!” Alexa’s voice rang high and bright like the top note on a xylophone hit repeatedly. She stopped short when her eyes landed on Aidan. “Who do we have here?”
“I’m Aidan,” he said. She held out a hand for him to shake. He just stood there, staring at it. The awkwardness ballooned.
“Alexa. Nice to meet you,” she said, stretching her hand out farther. Still, nothing from him. She squinted and wrenched her hand back. “You look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?”
“No!” I shouted. “No. He’s new. Around here. New around here.”
“Oh, okay,” Alexa said. “What brings you to the mall?”
“Just doing some Christmas shopping,” I said.
“And he’s buying me new clothes,” added Aidan.
“Looks like you bought the entire mall,” Sid said.
I had perhaps pulled a Pretty Woman with Aidan’s wardrobe, but he needed options and I had several rewards coupons. “Guess I got a little spend happy.” My credit card statement would be a whopper, but that was a problem for later.
“Be careful. It’s the first of the month. Us business owners know what that means,” Alexa said. Running a kiosk and an online shop was not the same as running a brick-and-mortar store near the shore, but I smiled politely regardless, hoping that would get us out of this interaction quicker.
Aidan asked, “What does the first of the—”
“Well, it was great to see you both. We should be going,” I said, ushering us back toward the car.
“What’s your rush?” Alexa asked. “I want to get to know Aidan. Henry, I had no idea you were seeing someone.”
“Henry does see me. He even saw me last night without clothes on,” said Aidan.
Sid blushed. “Did he now?”
“It’s serious then?” Alexa asked, eyes alight with intrigue.
“Excuse me,” said a short, brown-skinned woman holding two bars of soap. “Can I get these gift-wrapped?”
“Of course, one moment please,” Alexa said, charm vibrating inside each word. “Business calls! I hope this means you’ll be coming to Christmas this year, Aidan. If so, be sure to RSVP via the link I emailed Henry. No later than December tenth, please!”
I nodded before waddling away. “What about your pretzel?” Aidan asked.
“I’m not hungry anymore,” I said, grabbing my car keys and fleeing to the nearest exit.
After dropping Aidan off at the apartment to learn how to use his new phone, I hightailed it to the beach to end this fever dream once and for all. So what if I’d wasted a ton of money on clothes and shoes and underwear? A small price to pay for getting my sanity back.
The day was lightly overcast but golden hour still came as it often did, sweeping the sky with wide brushstrokes of vivid color.
The clouds parted enough to give the sun a clear shot at me like a spotlight for sad sacks.
I stood as close to the surf as I could withstand in this cold, checked for any peeping strangers in my periphery, and then shouted, “I wish to undo my wish!”
A flock of perturbed seagulls took to the sky. I’d have wanted to flee from me, too.
“Did you hear me?” I called to the sky. “I wish to unwish my wish!”
But I sensed no change. No bright light. No directional shift in the breeze. No sense of calm in my stomach.
Maybe it was a one-wish limit, and I’d used mine up.