The Nod

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own. It wasn’t entirely not mine either. There were visual similarities for sure. The same skin, complete with the heavier age spots on the left side of my face, the gin blossoms around the nose, the whisps of silver hair that formed a low crown and the longer trails that represented what used to be my part but were now just remnants of what was, like the sparse grass growing in the ruts of a forgotten hiking trail.

That’s where the similarities stopped. I didn’t believe the mirror though. For one, often times, the room I saw when I looked in a mirror wasn’t the room I was in. I could be in an airport bathroom, or looking at one of those mirrors in the supermarket that keeps you from running into someone rounding the corner, but the room I saw was always the same. It was dark, with the only light seeming to come from my side of the mirror. I could see three of the walls, all appear to be rough wooden planks, charred but intact. The floor was uneven dirt that was damp in places. No furniture, no windows, no door. The room wasn’t always there, at first, I would see flashes of it, but it would go away after a blink. It hasn’t gone away in a long time though.

Second, the person I was looking at didn’t do what I did. They appeared to try, but their movements were all wrong, like a child copying the dance moves of their favorite Saturday morning mascot. If I adjusted my glasses, they would clumsily tickle the smooth skin that covered where their eye sockets should be. I flossed and the slit that appeared to be their mouth would open, nearly ear to ear, revealing row after row of teeth all the way back to their throat. Usually, it just stood there as if observing me, or waiting its turn to speak. I spoke to it on many occasions, but it never spoke back. Not with words anyway. We had come a long way and I felt like we had even found a way to communicate.

***

It was the late eighties when I met Sandy. I was on a business trip to Orlando. A few of the fellas from the office and I were sent down from Chicago for a long weekend for the ‘Expand Your Brand’ seminars. Our company sold fancy kitchen appliances to professional chef types, and we wanted to branch out to the big markets like Kmart and Sears, and the brass thought we needed special training to get to the head honchos of the major chains. What we didn’t tell our bosses is that we all knew the way to impress potential customers were the Three C’s. Cash, Cocaine, and Cooz. Snappy posters and tag lines meant exactly dick to people who already made it to the top of the top.

The seminar was held in a swanky hotel with art on the walls that no one understood and people who were paid to stand in the restrooms. Almost all the attendees were out of towners and their rooms were booked as part of the seminar package. 300 salesmen and women in a nice hotel out of town with an open bar. Marital fidelity was never an option. A room full of people whose sole purpose in life was to convince you that you want something that you might not have even known existed, gathered together in a place no one lived. It might as well have been scripted.

At homes all over the U.S, lines like, ‘Babe, these things are so boring, I can’t even jack off in the hotel room, let alone cheat,’ or my personal favorite ‘These things are full of trolls, if you saw them, you wouldn’t be worried’. In fact, that was exactly what I told Jenny as I gave her a kiss before walking out the door and getting in the cab to the airport. We both knew the score but refused to give up the façade of the perfect married couple. For all I know, she couldn’t wait for me to leave so she could fuck the neighbor.

Fast forward to thirty-one hours after landing, day one of the seminar was over and I was in Sandy’s 28th floor room with my dockers around my ankles next to her green and white striped skirt and we were both facing out the window at a purple glowing Ferris wheel miles away, with her sweaty hands pressed into the hotel window with more trust than I’ve mustered in my whole life.

I didn’t know her last name. I thought she was from Portland, maybe, at least that’s what I thought the placard at her spot at the table said. She said she sold something like timeshares but very niche ones, whatever that meant. I wasn’t listening that hard. She liked white wine, cop movies, and Good n Plenty’s. The only other thing I knew about her was that she didn’t have a condom and didn’t seem to care that I didn’t either.

Fast forward six minutes and we were both lying on top of the comforter in her room with our clothes mostly put back on, her in her skirt and a black lacey bra, and me in my khakis and white A-shirt, both staring at the ceiling. Our witty banter from the bar dried up, as if everything we told each other to get to this point was a fabrication, and post-orgasm clarity was making it difficult to pretend to be who we were minutes before. I broke the silence to answer the only question that kept rolling around in my mind.

“You’re on birth control, right?”

She leaned her head towards me, compelling me to turn towards her. Her silky black hair clung to the sweat on her forehead but somehow managed to perfectly avoid obstructing her moss green eyes. “Of course not.”

“What!?” I asked chuckling as if I was preparing for the actual punchline.

“What, what? I think I got what I wanted.”

I propped up on my arm and turned my whole body towards her. She didn’t change her posture at all. “What did you want?”

She smiled. “To get pregnant, of course.”

“Whu-are you out of your mind? I don’t even know you. I’m fucking married.”

At that moment, her smile widened and I could have sworn her eyes turned black.

“You think I don’t know that? I don’t want a love child. I just want a child.”

I slid out of bed and stood up, buckling my belt and looking for shoes at the same time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. In the off chance you are pregnant, I want you to get rid of it. I’ll pay for it, but I don’t think we should do this again.” I felt in my back pocket for my wallet, but I could see it on the floor by the window.

She lowered her voice to a sweet whisper. “Larry Morgen of 1547 S. Castle Way, born on April 28th, married to Jenny Mae Morgen, I am going to have this child and we will do this again, whenever I say, or I will absolutely ruin your entire life. I promise you. Now come back to bed, sweetie.”

“Are you out of your mind? How do you even know all this stuff?” I slipped one shoe on while bouncing on one leg.

“Let’s just say I’m not like other girls and I promise it is in your best interests to play along.”

“And I’m not like most men, but I know when I’m licked. I don’t know how you know that stuff, but you do. It seems I don’t have a choice.” I took my one shoe off and set it on the floor and crawled back onto the bed next to her.

“Much better,” she said, and she rolled over on her side facing away from me. She reached down with one hand and started pulling her skirt up her thigh. “Now, let’s put all this nasty arguing behind us.”

“Good idea.”

I ran my hand over her exposed thigh, over the skirt, and up along her ribs. My fingers slid up her shoulder and flipped her hair, showing me the full splendor of her soft neck. I placed one kiss just below her ear. My heart raced. Her breathing became excited. I placed a kiss a little lower and then slid one arm under her chin and the other behind her head and I squeezed. She resisted, but I found the strength to persevere. Her arms flailed behind her, never quite gaining purchase on anything other than the inseam of my pants. Eventually, she stopped struggling, but I held her. I held her close. My arms were starting to cramp, but still, I held. Ten minutes passed and I just couldn’t keep going so I let go.

I gave her another kiss on the cheek, rolled her onto her stomach, and stood up to find the rest of my clothes. My shirt was on the desk. My other shoe was under the bed. I had to get down on all fours to fish it out. While I was down there, I felt the bed wiggle. I was disappointed but not surprised, I never was a good judge of time. I grabbed my shoe and got to my feet.

There was a squelching sound and two protrusions broke through Sandy’s skin and rose up above her shoulder about a foot above her head. They were thin and knobby and appeared to be covered in a tan, wet leather. Slowly they unfurled into wings that extended a few feet in both directions.

I stumbled backward, tripping over my wallet and I panicked as my back hit the same glass she had been leaning into earlier in the evening. For a moment I felt the jolt of panic that hits when you fall, but the glass held and I was able to steady myself.

Slowly, everything about Sandy began to wither. The wings dried and cracked like lips in the desert. Small flakes broke off as the drying process seemed to shrink them. Her skin turned grey and spotty, then thin and her vasculature became visible. Within seconds, she turned to dust and then evaporated completely, leaving no trace but her clothes and a dent in the comforter and pillow.

“Huh,” I said to no one, before gathering my things and heading down four floors to my room.

I called my wife and told her how boring my day was and how much I missed her. We blew each other air kisses and I started the shower. Time slipped away in the shower as it often does, and before I knew it, my hands were pruned, and the bathroom was filled with steam.

I stepped out and used the towel to dry off the mirror and that was the first time I saw it. It was only for a brief moment and initially,I thought it was a distortion from the water, so I thought little of it, other than the initial shock. When I wiped the mirror and looked again it was gone.

The next day the conference went smoothly and there was little talk of Sandy. As she had been the only female at a table of five men, a few passing remarks were cast at her empty chair, mostly about everyone’s disappointment that there was nothing to look at.

That night I tried to woo another conferencegoer but was oddly unsuccessful. She was polite, but I could feel her pulling away throughout the whole conversation. Every question felt like I had to drag the response from the bottom of the sea. She was ugly anyway. I hammered down two screwdrivers and returned to my room.

Fresh from the shower, I caught a glimpse of it again. It was me in the mirror, but it wasn’t. It lasted maybe a second and I was able to tell myself it was the alcohol or just the lighting in my room. By the end of the long weekend, it was showing up in every mirror. By the third and final night, I had taped the bed sheets over the bathroom mirror and a suit jacket over the television. I barely slept the rest of the trip and was happy to leave Orlando behind me that following Monday. I avoided looking directly at my reflection in any capacity all the way home.

Once home, I kissed the wife and went to the bathroom for a test. I shut the door behind me while staring at the floor and the mirror to my left. I closed my eyes, turned to face the mirror, and opened my eyes quickly. Staring back at me was the distorted me. Then it was gone, and I was left alone with my own reflection.

This was how it went. I spoke nothing of it to Jenny. I kept working. It didn’t hurt me. It would just appear and then go away. It was becoming part of my routine, like plucking nose hairs. It was unpleasant but manageable.

A year later, I end up in Dallas for another convention. I bought condoms at the Hudson News in the airport. As I wrote the check out, I think about the ‘fool me once, shame on me’ quote, but I can’t ever remember exactly how it goes and in my mind. I kept repeating ‘Fool me once, shame on me, fool me two times, you’re the fool’. I knew it wasn’t right, but it just got stuck in my head that way and the wrongness of it tickled a part of my brain that wanted to do naughty things.

And naughty things I did.

Her name was Mary and she was a waitress at a bar across from the hotel. A tall blonde, big rack, no wedding ring, not that it mattered. We went to the room, both a little sloppier than I prefer. We started making out in the hallway, and I caught a glimpse of other me in the full-length mirror as we stumbled back to the bed. I didn’t have time to dig the protection out of my carry-on bag. I didn’t mention it and neither did she.

A bit later I hobbled back to the bathroom to clean up and I see it in the mirror and for a second it appeared to give me a nod before disappearing. I knew what it was giving me permission to do. Mary put up more of a struggle than Sandy, but not much.

Unexpectedly, wings popped out of her back just like Sandy.

“That you, Sandy?” I asked the still warm body, but there was no reply. She just evaporated.

“I see,” I replied to myself.

When I returned to the mirror, it was there again, but it stayed. I stared at it for five full minutes before I was what I saw in my reflection.

And that was how it went for years. I met a Suzy, a Mary, a Diane, a Stacy, a who-cares-what-her-name-is in every town I traveled to. Sometimes I didn’t even have a conference to go to. It didn’t matter. I would tell Jenny I had to visit a customer, kiss her on the cheek and I’d go a county or two over. I’d meet a gal; we’d end up in the room. Afterward I would check the mirror and if I got the nod, I’d take care of the situation. Like clockwork, wings would pop out, and my problems would float away on the breeze.

Each time, the reflection would last longer and longer. I would have to stand in front of the mirror for an hour to see what I actually looked like. Eventually, I stopped caring.

***

Jenny left me in 2008. She knew for years I had been cheating on her, but it’s not like there was ever any proof. She wasn’t exactly tearing it up in the sheets anyway. No matter. I got a small apartment downtown, which worked out better in the end because when the economy tanked, I lost my sales job, and a whole house with a stay-at-home wife would have been a real pain in the ass.

I got a job at Walgreens. It was the only place that would hire someone my age. I didn’t love it, but it was quiet. Usually, I ran the register alone on the late shift. Occasionally, I would work the photo center, but not a lot of people in the poor part of downtown are looking to develop memories at three in the morning. Kelly did though. Or at least thought she did.

She pressed the button to call for help while I was already on my way to her. I had gotten past being irritated about such things. It didn’t hurt that she was pretty or used to be before she found whatever substance took a handful of her teeth and all the fat from her face. She had definitely done her share of substances, though she appeared to be clean at the moment.

We didn’t have her photos. She said she must have sent them to the wrong location, but she was glad she met me regardless, said I was sweet, and gave me a wink. She was the latest Sandy, no doubt about it. I had gone through enough of them to know. After an unreasonably short exchange, I talked her into the restroom and despite my age, put on quite a performance. When we finished, I checked the mirror and got the nod.

Kelly’s wings didn’t pop out. She didn’t evaporate. She just laid on the floor, slumped against the toilet that was scheduled for cleaning at 4:15 and again at 6 before I clocked out for the day.

I looked at the body and then back at the mirror. My friend was there as always. It stood motionless, smiling back at me with its hundreds of teeth. Saliva poured out of its gaping mouth, and it began convulsing as if having a deep gut laugh, but no sound came out.

“Stop that!” I shouted, but it didn’t seem to notice. I smashed my hands against the mirror, but it wouldn’t break, and only appeared to inspire more laughter.

As if from a hundred miles away, I began to hear tiny traces of the laugh. It got louder and closer, and within a few seconds, the sound was right on top of me, filling the tiny restroom and reverberating off the paneled walls. I crumpled to the floor next to Kelly, waiting for the sound to stop, but it didn’t. The laughter filled my skull and never left.