SLEEPING GIANTS

 

The Sleeping Giants law has made me a wanted man.

Aeonic killers, rapists, and money-hungry monarchs are running for their lives. They packed up their knapsacks and stashed their old photos and planted wistful kisses on the foreheads of their children before dashing out the door one last time. If they were lucky, they made it to the bank and stuffed their pockets full of delicious green splendor before the tellers could nullify withdrawing privileges. Then, they swarmed the nearest bus station and demanded their drivers dump them out in Hicksville or Gale Country or where Jesus Left His Sandals. And if anyone was hesitant, good ol’ Benny Frank could be an excellent persuader.

But if they were unlucky like me, they got kicked to the curb with nothing but the shoes on their feet and the cash they had stashed in their bedroom safe.

Once Sadie found out I sentenced thirty women to death during the Salem Witch trials, she accused me of being a sexist pig who could only think of women as percolating hysteric machines instead of rational human beings. At first I tried to deny this fact-- pointing out all the instances when I didn’t judge her for being emotional-- but this made her more irate and sent forks and knives (and later a cast-iron) skillet soaring above my head.

“Bullshit!” She cried in a shrieking hiss. Her voice reminded me of the noise kettles make when their water comes to a boil. “Every time I’m on my period you act like I’m some sort of monster! One wrong look and you think I’m going to pounce on you! Like some rabid dog!”
“That’s not true!” I protested. “I just know it’s… a sensitive time for you! I try to be cautious, that’s all. Last month I even got you chocolates!”
That was the final straw. Sadie locked her jaw in a gravelly grimace and began to hurl the kitchen silverware. Apparently bringing up the Lindor truffles I bought last month was enough to trigger an explosion.

“What the hell are you doing!?” I cried as a spoon clanged against my shoulder. “Sadie, put down the forks! Those things can be weapons!”

“Or what? Are you gonna kill me like you killed all those women? Go ahead and try!”

Although I was jaded by my wife’s litigious nature--after all, we’d been married for seven years-- I understood why she was furious. Sending thirty women to burn at the stake? Refusing to hear their stories? Eroding their lives into blazing black ash when they may have had a job and a family? I can’t excuse the actions of my past, but only learn from my maleficent mistakes and try to be a better person.

“Get out!” She cried at last. At that point, both drawers had been completely empty and a slew of knives, spatulas, and other cookware gadgets lay on the tile like empty shotgun shells. “Just get the hell out of here, okay? I can’t bear to look at you knowing what you did.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, voice warbled into mush. “All I can say is I’m sorry.”

________

So now here I am, towing railroad tracks like the misfit of The Outsiders, squelching bugs and kicking pesky pebbles as I see them. I have nine thousand bucks (and seven cents) to my name and a half-empty flask of lukewarm whiskey. But unlike the S.E. Hinton characters, I can’t just change my clothes and dye my hair and magically evade all my problems. It’s gonna take more than a copy of Gone with the Wind and a rust-encrusted T-Bird to get me out of this mess.

“Hey there!” Croons a farmer with a southern drawl. His unburn is so severe that it looked like someone cut off both his arms where the cuffs of his shirt ended and reattached a pair with sickly reddened skin. He must’ve been working out in the fields from sunup till sundown without a lick of SPF.

“Hey!” He calls again, this time more forcefully. “What are yew doin’ on here? You lost or somethin, boy?”

“Sorry!” I shout back. “Is this private property?”

Now that the Sleeping Giants law passed through the Senate, you had to be awfully careful disclosing yourself to strangers. I spent the morning hitchhiking and wracking my brain for potential aliases, but came up with nothing of note. Allen Hatch, Elliot Conway…I needed a name discreet enough for the tongue to forget yet rugged enough to fit in with the locals.

“Naw, it’s not private, but yew better be careful up on them tracks!” The man yells sternly. He’s wagging a finger at me now. “There’s rumors of a Vietnam vet who guards the railway station. He’s a cop now, damn near close to retirement, though. Still, he’s pretty crazy--he shot a kid once for playin’ hookey near the crossing.”

“Thanks for the tip, but I think I’ll take my chances.” I say politely. The farmer clicks his tongue.

“Suit yerself. Yer not obligated to take my advice. I’m just lookin’ out for ya, boy.”

“And appreciate it.”

And that was the end of our conversation. After almost a week-long voyage, I’d traveled from the chiasmic heart of downtown Chicago to the weedy outskirts of Wyoming, dumpster-diving and shoplifting my way across the midwest to keep myself alive and en vogue. If I walked into Macy’s wearing nothing but rags, they’d have security on me like ants on a splattered ice cream cone-- which meant to avoid any sort of suspicion, keeping up appearances was almost as imperative as staying on my feet. Being on a constant hunt for food, water, and safe places to bathe was exhausting enough. I didn’t have time for a vapid conversation with a rangy old farmer.

Even so, I offer a friendly wave and carried on with my sulking.

________

Katanja, the fortune teller who ousted me, is hot on my mind as I trek through the 

scalding sun. Last week, she’d revealed and reported to the Illinois Board of Personal Histories that I’d been Warren Haroldburg in a previous life: Born in 1645 in Wichita, Kansas, I spent my youth as a traveling salesman before becoming a judge in 1691, two months before the Salem witch trials began. During that year-long manic outbreak, I falsely condemned thirty women to a public execution right outside the City Hall, and rather remorselessly so. Their friends, husbands, and sometimes even children got to watch as the women went up like firecrackers, lion’s-mane flames licking their naked skin until there was nothing left but ash and bone. Along with slithers of smoke in the sky, sometimes the remaining flesh would hang off their skulls like an over-toasted marshmallow. It was flakey, tar-black, and roiled like a reptilian underbelly. Not to mention the stakes they burned on reeked to high heavens. If I didn’t remember the deaths, I could at least remember that much.

Katanja laid out my lineage during a palm reading. Nestled in a small shop sandwiched between two oddity stores, I sat across from her as she traced her fingers along my hand. I nearly gasped at the look on her face--stricken with moribund horror--after reaching back to the 17th century. Usually mediums could only trace two or three past lives, maybe four if they’re lucky, but Katanja was the best in the business. She’d come from a long line of Punjab gypsies (both her parents were persecuted by Nazis in 1939) and knew how to make sense of even the driest creeks in the fairest skin. It made bookings with her rather hard to wrestle, and even more exhausting on the wallet. That night, I essentially paid 200 dollars to put a bounty over my head. If only I knew it then.

As soon as Katanja exhumed Mr. Haroldburg--a pusile, infectious disease-- she dismissed me free of charge and reported me to the Board the next day. If I’d been a tyrant in all my previous lives, I wouldn’t fault her for turning me over. In fact, I’d understand. But Katanja also knew I was Walter Kermunsch, valiant teen who died in the trenches in WWI, as well as Wilbur Torres, a suicidal poet whose work was lost to a flood in 1831. But none of those histories mattered, at least not to her.

When the letter requesting me in court arrived the following Friday, I felt an acrid hole open up in my gut, an avaricious betrayal. Only one instance of an Unlawful Character was enough to shackle you to Shawshank, and in my case, it’d be a stay that spanned over a decade. How could Katanja do this to me?

Under the new Sleeping Giants law, who you were in a past life was intrinsically tied to your soul, each reincarnation like another layer of shadow caked onto the mass that haunted behind you. And even though I’d been a law-abiding citizen for thirty-nine years of my life, the ghost of Warren Haroldburg has given me a permanent stain, a bruise that would never fade-- splotchy, the color of a rotting plum. When the verdict finally passed, virulent riots sprouted up in the streets, but they never amounted to much. Thanks to the tipping vote of Senator Lauer, anyone who committed a crime in their previous life was deigned to serve a modern equivalent of whatever that sentence may have been given at the time. So I got ten years to life, and Katanja got a double-digit cash prize.

Which, to make a long story longer, was why I was on the run. My family, Sadie, and everyone else in my inner circle no longer saw me as Wilcox Ballinger, sales manager at Sheef Leaf Paper Co. A man who spent his evenings binging Columbo reruns and admiring sunsets on the swing of his porch, harmlessly watching sleepy-headed clouds bleed into a dreamsicle sky. Someone who bought jumbo-size candy for the Halloween children and silently nursed Coronas on the weekend. A father, a husband, a golfer at the Putt-Putt Club, and an avid member of the neighborhood watch.

No. Now I’m just the teeming vessel to house a murderer from over three centuries ago, according to the government. Becoming a vagrant was my only chance at freedom.

________

A rusted bell chimes above my head as I clobber my way into a supermarket (although I shouldn’t say super-- it’s actually quite small, and likely the only store with fresh fruit and vegetables in a ten-mile radius). 

But I’m not surprised. Casper is a soporific town, albeit highly populated (or as highly populated as a backwoods town can be). Homes line the hills like popsicle craft creations and lumbering spruce trees guard their entrance gates. Rugged and mighty, their ligneous presence is like an act of defiance-- an act of refusing to be axed down and bladed into fine pulp in the name of the human race. In the few days I’ve spent here, I’ve watched residents plod roads in a sleepwalking daze, always with glazed-over eyes, glancing in my direction with mercurial interest.

Which is a good thing. With my five-day beard and hiking boots, I fit right in in this small Wyoming bustle,  although if I stuck around long enough I’m sure people would begin to question a foreign face in their close-knit cadre.

As I take my ticket for the deli section, I decide to abide my time by flipping through the local paper. There’s a newsrack by the edge of the counter, and without a TV or a radio, it’s hard for me to keep up-to-date on politics. As I peruse the Casper-Star Tribune, I stumble upon a thick sheaf of print wedged into the center of the paper. Curiously, I unfold it, and then detestfully furrow my brows.

CITIZEN-CALL INS: HELP US CATCH THE WANTED

In the wake of the Sleeping Giants law, many convicts with unsavory Personal Histories are currently on the run in an effort to escape jail time. Over 3,000 people in Wyoming

have been reported missing and nearly 100,000 are missing nation-wide.

Such a large number of people going AWOL has prompted the rise of tip lines. The following pages include a shortlist of each state’s most dangerous runaways, along with information about their height, weight, and crime of Personal History. If you see any of these people on the run, you can now call in to Casper’s tip line to report their whereabouts to responders. A small cash prize will be issued to the first person to report a sighting, but only after the runaway has been captured.

[Please note that some of these vagrants may have intentionally changed their appearance to evade arrest, so the photos provided may not match their current profile.]

With trembling hands, I flip to the Illinois page, heart pounding like a gong embedded in my rib cage. Each beat seems to reverberate within my bones, an internal warning to turn back, a harbinger telling me I won’t like what I see-- all while the pomaceous deli man profusely calls my number.

There, wedged between a woman who murdered her entire family by poisining the Thanksgiving turkey in 1921, and a teenager who dumped six bodies into Lake Erie in 1899, was the photo from my work ID, plastered and printed in black and white. The caption of “KILLER OF 30 WOMEN DURING SALEM WITCH TRIALS” underneath my winning smile and slightly wonky glasses was such an absurd juxtaposition that I laughed out loud right there in the store.

And then the panic set in.

“Sir!” The deli man exclaims. “Aren’t you number five? Do you still want your half-pound of krakus ham? I’ve been calling your name for almost a minute.”

“Sorry,” I say, rather sheepishly. “Got caught up in the Funnies. Sorry to waste your time, but I’ve got a run. Can’t take the ham with me, I’m afraid.”

“No worries. Everything alright?”

“Family emergency. But nobody’s dead.”

The man defeatedly looks at the package he wrapped, paper folded like origami with a cherry-red sticker taped to the front. 

“Well then God bless ‘ya, and Godspeed.”

In a minute I’m out the door, and then a minute later I’m sprinting across the parking lot with pages of newsprint flying from my fists like bats escaping a darkened cave. There’s an indistinct voice shouting at me--probably a cashier-- warning me to “PAY FOR THAT PAPER, OR ELSE!”

But I have no time to heed the warning. My face still resembled the one in the photo just a bit too uncannily, and I knew if I hung around Shop Smart for too long, somebody was bound to make the connection.

Spending every waking moment on a telephone wire was certainly no way to live. Between risking arrest every time I stole a meal and brazenly baring myself to the public, I was one scare away from inciting a stroke. After all, I was already pushing fourty. Standing at the corner of Willow and Panther Street, doubled over like a hunchback, spindly fingers gripping my knees like wrinkled eagle talons, I let myself collapse into exhaustion. A wad of used bubblegum ogles me from where it was perched, thumb-smashed into the bus stop panel above me. It’s comically covering the nose of a woman who was advertising some sort of denture cream.

“Excuse me.” A stoic man approaches me, standing across from where I lay on the bench seat. He waits for the bus but keeps his eyes on me only.

“Sorry, do you want to sit down?”

The man shakes his head. “Thank you, but I’m good right here.” He says flatly.

As he continues to gawk, I realize I’m in dire need of a makeover. I need some way to reconfigure my face, to take a black brush to canvas, completely smearing over the mess of the first muse to make way for the second. Dyeing my hair and buying some sunglasses wasn’t going to cut it anymore. I needed a way to make myself so notably different from the weedy and angular Wilcox Ballinger that my own wife wouldn’t recognize me.

But how would I go about doing that? Could the farmer be of any help? Perhaps I was grasping at straws, but I had to ask myself honestly: would any old stranger warn you about running into a police officer if they thought you were just taking a mid-afternoon stroll? Maybe, but it still wasn’t likely. I had a hunch his intentions were deeper than that.

The bus arrives in a rattling torrent, and the man steps inside. Still frightened by his staring, I let him go curtly and decide to walk south. With the risk of so many eyes on me at once, I swear off suburban transport and decide to get to the farm on foot. 

________

Three days have passed since the incident at the Shop Smart. After walking until my feet throbbed and my calves burned from movement, I finally find myself back at the tracks from my first day in Casper. I’m borderline loitering in front of the farmer’s rundown ranch, kicking a dented green bean can down the waning gravel road, each whack! stirring up flumes of barren dust. I’m waiting for him to come out and greet me again.

Perhaps it’s just the sun baking my brain into mush, but I have a nagging hunch this man knows who-- or rather, what-- I am. At least, that’s what I’m trying to convince myself is true as a way to justify the fifty-mile hell I just put myself through. Every time I replayed our interaction in my head, there’s something about the way he spoke to me the other day that made me feel safe, protected, even. But still-- what if my hunch was wrong? What if he was just an ordinary guy, just trying to be good samaritan? What if I was overthinking again?

“Back again, are we? I’ve been watching yew muck around on my property. ‘Ya got the jitters or what, boy?”

The farmer, now standing at the mouth of the barn, picks up a jar of moonshine and begins to shake it gingerly. He watches its murky, opaque content slosh around like saline in a snowglobe. Finally, he takes a swig.

“Sorry. I really didn’t mean to trespass.”

“Then why the hell are you walkin’ circles around in my yard for? ‘Ya know I live here, or are you that thick?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just… I thought you could help me. But maybe I’m wrong.”

I pick a dying dandelion and crush it nervously. The farmer unleashes a wry chuckle, his laughter like the clang of old machinery. He seems upset by my presence, and all too quickly I feel like a fool for thinking he could be my out.

“Help? What kinda help? I’ve been on this farm for over a decade, and  I’ve been known to offer my services from time t’ time.”

The man downs the rest of the moonshine and stares at me with mildew teeth. They’re yellow-grey and spotty, flecked with morsels of death and decay. In fact, everything about him seems to be eroding--except for maybe his brain. I can see a piercing sharpness in his eyes, behind the cloudy incipience of a cataract problem. He’s holding a newspaper under his armpit. Yesterday’s paper.

“Do you…do you…”

The dandelion has become a verdant smush now, stem crushed into what looked like pesto, wispy seeds disintegrated into nothingness. It’s become impossible to gauge where his loyalties lie. Still, I must find out.

“Do you…do you think you could--”

“You don’t need to say it,” The farmer chuckles wryly, moonshine jug now tossed to the ground. “I think I can help. That’s what yew were going to ask, wasn’t it?”

I nod solemnly.

“I could tell from the moment I saw ‘ya. You’re the brass’s newest hot commodity. Chased for somethin’ you did before yew were even yerself. And y’know what’s funny? I knew yew’d be back here, too. They always come back, your type’a people.”

I’m starting at him now, completely agape, briefly wondering if the rest of my body is just as transparent as my past.

“How’d you know?” is the only thing I can muster.
“For starters, I saw yer picture in the paper this mornin’, which just confirmed my suspicions. Bloodshot eyes, tryin’ too hard to look put together…it’s a shame what the government’s done with all of this.” The old man rattles his noggin. “I can offer yew a way to ease yer worries. I’ve been helpin’ people for a long, long time.”

He plods forward and beckons me to follow him into the farmhouse. I do so reluctantly, still on high alert from relentless weeks of fending for myself. The thought of the man that idled at the bus stop yesterday-- staring at me with a copy of the paper in his hands-- flashes through my mind; as much as I want to trust the farmer, a stranger is still a stranger, and I don’t even know his name. Walking through the parlor, I take note of all the exit and entrance points--just in case I need them. Was I being foolish?

“Watch yer head comin’ through here.” He warns, ducking as we pass into a green room. I nearly trip on the half-step leading down and find myself on the deck of a porch enlaced with fine netting. A tiny trough of animal feed collects dust in one of the corners, nestled next to a giant elmwood desk stuffed to the brim with a menagerie of knick knacks. Loose papers jut out between books like obtrusive teeth and porcelain eyes painted me with an obtrusive glare.

“Here,” The farmer pulls a small leatherbound book like it’s a teetering Jenga block, as if one wrong move would send the whole shelf crashing down. He thumbs through the coffee-stained pages with a calloused thumb before stopping at a dog-eared fragment.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a phone number.” He says. I stare vacantly at the numbers etched into the paper like a ciphered code. “I know a surgeon who can fix yew up good.”

For a moment, I’m too nonplussed to speak. My tongue feels like a spongy cadaver, and I’m suddenly aware of its obtuse weight and lolling around on my bottom teeth. I continue to stare at the numbers until they start warping and wriggling before my very eyes.

“Well?” The man huffs. “Are ya’ gonna stand there and ogle me like a goddamn scarecrow, or are yew gonna pick up that phone before I shut this book closed and change my mind?”

“The phone,” I murmur timidly, and go to pick up the line from the kitchen. The obstreperous dial tone blares in my ears as I punch in the numbers with trembling hands. After nearly a minute of waiting, a husky voice crackles through on the other line.

“Arnie’s Mufflers and Autobody. How can I be of service today?”

I glance at the farmer to feed me lines, but he’s scribbling something down on paper. His barely-legible handwriting reads ask for a Wave Cancellation DXL, for your Mustang. I nod and repeat the words in the mouthpiece, but they feel clunky and disjointed. I’ve never been a car guy, and haven’t the faintest idea what a wave cancellator refers to or if it’s even a car part at all. Nonetheless, who I presume to be Arnie grunts brusquely and tells me to hold my horses. There’s a click followed by static silence, and not thirty seconds later another voice comes through the line.

“Arnie speaking.” The real Arnie bellows. “Lookin’ for a DXL, I hear?”

“You bet!” I say with false confidence. My tone is hollow, full of echoes. “Do you…have any of those in stock?”

“I do, but it’ll cost you a pretty penny. You’re lookin’ at 10k, cash. And I’m afraid I’m gonna need that upfront. We don’t take checks or cards on account of a scam last year.”

A trapdoor opens from underneath my ribs, and I feel my heart plunge into my stomach. I only had nine thousand when I left last month, and now I’m lucky if I’ve even got eight. Even so, I hastily agree to the terms, not telling Arnie’s that I’m almost two grand short, and wait as he takes down my name and my car. Apparently I drive an eggshell Cobra with a 130-hp turbocharged engine. I still have no idea what any of that means.

“Sounds good,” Arnie concludes, ringing some sort of bell. “See you at the shop at 4:30. If you come even a minute late, we can’t guarantee that part will still be there. It’s a very popular item, you see? And we can only hold it for you for so long.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be on time.” I assure him. The ringing gets louder and louder.

“Alright. It’s a done deal, mister….?”

“Corcoran.” I say without missing a beat. “Jamie Corcoran.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, Mister Corcoran.”

Now, I hang up the phone and turn to the farmer, unable to admit such a callow mistake.

How was I going to make up my money in only a couple of hours? I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d wasted his time.

“What’s wrong?” He asks bluntly.

“What do you mean?”

“Somethin’s wrong. Yew don’t have the money, do ya?”

For the second time in less than an hour, I had to look down at my wrists to make sure I wasn’t see-through.

“How did you--”

“Like I said earlier, I know yer type. This sorta thing always happens, which means I’m always pitchin’ in to help. Anyone who’s shy on dough can take a loan, granted they pay me back. But you gotta promise, when all is said n’ done, you’ll come back with my money.”

“And if I don’t?”

A twitch of a smile tugs at the old man’s lips. The crow’s feat near his temples deepened into plunging fault lines, and he waves his booklet cunningly. 

“Connections.I can find out where yew live. I’ve been doin’ this a long time-- don’t yew forget that. I’ll get my money one way or another. How much do ya need?”

“Well, I started out with nine thousand dollars, and between buying 

everything that I couldn’t risk to steal, I’ve blown through a good grand. Maybe even two.”

“Sure sounds like a pickle.”

“It sure is.”

Now it was my turn to smile. The absurdity of the whole situation was enough to make me burst into a giggle fit, and soon I was splitting my sides like I’d just finished a special from Comedy Central. The farmer joins in, his chuckle a deep brass, and in that moment we’re just two old friends-- perhaps ones from another life--having a good laugh.

________

It’s time.

I feel like Dorothy as I tap my toes together, but instead of standing on the Yellow Brick road, I’m standing in front of a once-defunct laundromat turned makeshift-operating room run by a doctor who earned his medical license from a collage devoid of all records. Even though I knew I wouldn’t be going to an auto body shop, I was still expecting some sort of legitimate business. In the movies, they always had the clients sift through the crowd and slip behind some undisclosed door. But in my case, the whole business was an undisclosed door.

A man peers through a window slat  rather indiscreetly before unlocking a series of bolts. He’s cresting five-foot-ten and wearing a lab coat, wrinkled and ill-fitting. Tufts of grey hair sprout up around the sides of his head, and a pair of wired spectacles sit wonky on his aquiline nose. I wasn’t sure what I imagined Arnie to look like, but it certainly wasn’t this.

“Mister Corcoran?” He asks politely.

“The one and only.” I reply.

“Step in to my office.”

“I’d be a pleasure.”

After slipping into a hospital gown (despite the surgery being on my face) and signing a 

series of nondisclosure papers, I find myself on the chopping block. The incandescence of the overhead lights burn into my coneras and straight into my pupil, spotting my vision with little black spots that wriggle whenever I blink. The muted hum of the bulbs is almost trancelike, and it helps me draw focus away from the clang of the surgical tools on the other side of the room. Arnie was busy sanitizing his scalpels. Next to him were a plethora of other instruments whose purpose I didn’t know. I figured it was better not to ask.

“Ready?” He asks, almost facetiously. If he’s been doing this for as long as he says he has, Arnie should know that there’s no real way to be ready for something so daunting.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I say candidly. I close my eyes and listen to him glide next to me on his swivel chair.

“This is gonna be one helluva surgery, so I’m going to give you some general anesthesia. It’s best to minimize as much pain as we can. You’ll be out for roughly two hours. You ever get put under before?”

“Once.” I choke out. My throat has become sandpaper, my tongue a prickly cactus. “Once when I was a teenager. I had to get my wisdom teeth out.”

“Perfect! So you know the deal. Just count back from ten, and before you know it, things will be over and done.”

Before I had time to react, Arnie slides a needle full of yellow fluid into a vein in my arm. I watch as what looks like fresh piss enters my system, slowly but seamlessly. For a second, I feel nothing, but then when I open my mouth to start counting, I find that I can barely work my mandible. The black maggots double in size-- and then triple-- and before the ten seconds are up I’m completely submerged in the black spots that took over my vision.

________

No one knows what happened to Wilcox Ballinger. Some say he disappeared into the Wyoming wilderness, living as a bucolic hermit until the elements finally ate him away. Others say the government finally found him--tired, haggard, and stomach barely the size of peach pit-- on the shoulder of a dusty backroad. They cuffed him and forced his brittle bones into an orange jumpsuit with Shawshank insignia, which was where he died less than three months later.

But others, the few idealists out there, mused about him returning home to his wife and being welcomed with open arms. Those select few would be right, at least about the first half of that statement, because right now I’m staring up at Sadie’s window.
Arnie was a man of his word. Despite the grueling recovery and flirting with a painkiller addiction, he managed to shave down my sundial nose into a straight-cut schnoz, permanently recolor my eyes, and reset my jaw to give me a more defined look. I received an entire new set of teeth (I don’t want to know where the replacements came from), a lip-flip to plump up my nonexistent kisser, and plugs for the thinning patches of my hair. Even though I was nearly fourty, I hardly looked a day over thirty-five. After all the patches and bandages came off, I found myself standing face-to-face with a stranger in the mirror.

And if I can’t recognize myself, there’s certainly no way Sadie could see through my guise. Rationalizing this in my mind led to the brash and admittedly foolish decision to return to Chicago. As risky as it was, I couldn’t resist the chance to fall in love with my wife all over again-- tulips on the first date, Navy Pier on the second, and a trip on the lake on the third. No psychics, no palm readings, and no mentions of my past. I’d learned enough from my mistakes. This time, I’d do it right. 

 Tommy, our old mailman, shoves a jumble of papers in the mailbox, whistling as he went along. I watch with peeled eyes, waiting for him to move on to the following block before making my move. Our small suburban bungalow feels like an erected like a monument, a relic from an ancient world, the banisters waxed to a shine and the garden more pristine than a magazine display. My only hope was that Sadie hadn’t moved on to be with another man during my absence.

With Tommy out of sight, I surreptitiously leap out from behind my neighbor’s bush and retrieve the stack from the mailbox. I do a cursory scan of the bills and letters just to make sure there’s nothing fishy, and then promptly ring the bell.

My hands are electric as shuffling erupts from behind the door. Pallid skin sprouting with goosebumps, I plaster on a winning smile and nearly melt into a moonstruck puddle the moment the front door swings open. There’s Sadie, all dolled up in a satin blouse and what looks like a pair of new bellbottoms, starting at me with snowglobe eyes.

“Hello?” She says meekly. “How can I help you?”

“I’m Jamie Corcoran, your new neighbor.” I reply with a baritone lilt. Weeks of vocal training seem to have paid off. She hardly notices the difference.

“And what do I owe the pleasure?” Sadie asks, extending a mannequin hand. I shake it gingerly,  sparks of fervor soaring up my fingertips and sparking my heart into overdrive. Soft, smelling faintly of lavender lotion…she feels exactly as I remember.

“The mailman delivered your mail to my house. Seems like he got things mixed up.”

“Oh! Thank you!” Sadie takes the stack of bills. “Sorry about that! His name is Tommy--sometimes he can be a bit spacey. I’ve gotten mail all the way from the other side of Rogers Park.”

At a complete loss for words, I can do nothing but lose myself in the crystalline sparkle of her champagne eyes. Sadie seems a bit flustered, too.

“You’re new to the neighborhood you say?” She questions, voice laced with intrigue. “How about I show you around one day? I know a wonderful coffee shop just down the block. It’s called Roast and Riches.”

Now I’m beaming, but I can’t even help it. I don’t care that she knows I’m in love.

“Sounds great.” I exclaim. “Lovely, in fact. Maybe we can go Friday?”

“Works for me. I don’t think I’m busy that day. Call it a date?”
I shake her hand once more.

“Perfect. Let’s call it a date.”