The Doctor’s Appointment
Jill is a tactile person; she likes to feel things. It’s not a philosophy, more of a compulsion. Even her heavy black dress with the embroidery dragon on the side is a sensory experience. It’s stiff with tight curves and an unforgiving waist. The rigid personality of it makes Jill smile, and she likes the dragon because it matches her tattoo. Leering from behind her collar, half his crown up the back of her neck, the old Chinese dragon doesn’t look wise or lucky, he just looks mad.
Dragging her hands across racks of clothing, Jill’s hips sway to soft music from speakers in the ceiling. It’s a French pop song, a little like the Slavic Jazz she’s used to. It’s got a beat she can work.
Big clothing stores like this have a good selection. As usual, much of the stock disintegrated on the hangers, but if the store’s big enough there’s always something good around. A particular style is on Jill’s mind today. She was into fashion magazines for a while and loved pictures of punk Japanese girls. Rebellious Japanese girls are like angry butterflies or flowers made of razor blades, dangerous-cute and Jill thinks it’s cool. If Jill has to be a Japanese girl, and apparently she does, she wants to be that kind of Japanese girl.
From a broken ceiling panel a speaker hangs almost to the floor singing in French to the carpet. Right next to it, Jill finds a rack of punk clothes in petite sizes. There’s a teeny pink shirt with the glittery word ‘Girl’ written on the front and a little black skirt with pink pleats. It’s a minimalist look, much less coverage than her old outfit. Jill likes it.
Off go the old clothes and Jill struggles into the tight new ones. The little shirt fits like a rubber glove. It doesn’t cover much of her stomach but that’s okay, the shape of Jill’s stomach is nothing to be shy about and she thinks her belly button is cute.
The hem of the skirt is even more brash. Jill’s waist is high, so she has to pull the skirt down on her hips just to cover her underwear. Even then the tops of her stockings show.
Looking at herself in a mirror, Jill turns from side to side to see if the new skirt makes her rear end look fuller, it doesn’t. On top of that, no matter how she arranges it, the skirt can’t cover the gun holstered to her thy. It doesn’t really interfere with the look though, and there’s nowhere else on Jill’s skinny body to hide the thing, so it’ll have to do.
As far as new outfits go, Jill loves this one, and it goes with her little black boots, which is good because Jill likes the boots. The shape of her whole body shows along with plenty of skin, Jill thinks the outfit is probably really sexy, but she’s been wrong before, she’ll have to ask someone.
Jill hangs her old clothes on the rack. It doesn’t matter really, she’ll probably never be back, but the emptiness in the store feels vulnerable, whatever order there is should be protected. If a little effort will help preserve any kind of peace in this place, Jill will make the effort.
The door is jammed open with a broken machine, it looks like a cash register. Jill slips out to the sidewalk. A jagged ridge of refuse lines the curb for the entire length of the block. It’s a mix of appliances, furniture, and heaps of boxes.
When the city was evacuated, people had to leave by foot. Accustomed to public transportation, no one understood what it meant to walk out of the city or how far they had to go, so they carried ridiculous things, televisions, couches, family heirlooms. Most of it wound up discarded along the road. “Evacuation litter” they called it, and police had to push it aside with snowplows to keep the roads clear.
Jill walks through a gap in the litter and out into the street. Down on the left, Jack is leaning against an overturned truck smoking a cigarette. Jack’s a tall young man with sharp features that make his vacant stare seem like light from a cracked door in a dim hallway. Strands of black hair lay across his head in vague disorder, a flawless disorder with the precision of a great work of art.
Jack wears a business suit of metallic blue, dark but radiant blue, with secrets lurking in the color that seem to warn it could change so it must be enjoyed in the moment. The whole outfit is poised with dignity, cufflinks, a silk scarf in the breast pocket, the red tie, even his wingtip shoes, all perfect and crisp as a frozen lake, perfect as a mannequin in a store window. Jack is the background over which the suite is painted, his skin a living canvas of empty grey, like a troubled sky that never becomes a storm.
“Whad’ya think?” Jill shouts, spinning around. “I look really good, huh?”
Except for the drifting smoke of his cigarette, Jack is motionless.
“Come on! Whad’ya think?” Jill stomps her foot. “It’s a totally new outfit, I look like a million bucks on a Friday night!”
“You’re almost naked.” Jack’s voice is a long easy sound with the urgency of settling dust.
“Not hardly! Well… sort’a. Don’t my legs look long with this skirt?” Jill holds out her leg for a better look.
“What’s the shirt say?”
Jill looks down at the glittery letters spelling out the word ‘Girl’ on her chest. “I dunno,” she shrugs. “Who cares? Come on, don’t you think I look hot?” Jill twists her leg so she can see the back of it.
“I’m your brother,” Jack says with a stern tone, his equivalent of a shout. “I don’t wann’a see your legs.”
“Well, you’re seein’em anyway,” Jill doesn’t take her eyes away from the leg on display. “And you gotta’ admit, for a skinny little Japanese girl, I got it goin’ on!”
With a long drag on the cigarette, Jack’s eyes shift out of focus into the distance.
“I’m not asking you to kiss me,” Jill looks up from her leg. “Just tell me I’m hot! You’re the worst shopping buddy. How about a little encouragement big brother?”
The word brother seems to wither away, dying in the stillness of abandoned buildings. They stand in the middle of the street looking at each other. Jack’s much taller than his sister, she hardly comes to the middle of his chest. Jill the skinny little Japanese girl and Jack the towering grey statue, staring at one another. Brother and sister, a frightful space between them that seems only filled with the whispering of the past.
An old wound inside begins to ache, the place all bad things go when Jack can’t figure out what to do with them. Over years the ache has grown, cancer of the heart until it came to guide Jack’s life. Until it pulled closed the curtains to keep out the light.
No one else can see the softness in Jill’s eyes, only Jack. Only he knows what his sister has become. Of course, they know about the surgeries, the surgeries Jill doesn’t talk about and hopes no one sees. The surgeries that changed the shape of her body and gave her those almond eyes, dark and trembling like the Hudson on a moonless winter night when she’s pleading for Jack’s approval.
If Jack could reach across the miles between them, if he could reach out with his hand and take his sister in his arms he would wipe away years of distance and emptiness, all the pain that’s come between them as their bodies and minds have been warped by the world and their own vices, but Jack can’t lift his hand. He can’t lift his hand any more than he can open his heart.
Jill can see stillness settle over her brother. She may never know what he feels when, in a moment such as this, he looks at her the way he did when they were children. She may never know what he feels, but she knows what it means.
Something inside Jack fought for years to hold together, it finally became too great a burden, and he let it collapse. Her brother is a shell, hardly a whole person anymore, filled with the wreckage of whatever fell apart, and the distance between them feeds from the shattered pieces.
The old familiar feelings return, that horrible place in Jill’s throat where desperation and sadness collect. With sadness comes confusion, Jill’s mind drifts into strange places when she tries to understand her brother. Focus returns though, Jill has a way to shock herself from that gathering dim. Clenching her jaw till her teeth ache Jill focuses on her brother, her beloved brother. One thing on this earth will remain if all else is burned to ash, and that’s her brother. Distance, silence, loneliness, Jill carries them all as a burden of devotion. Jack can drift away, he can do whatever he wants, he earned it, but Jill will never fail to protect him or stand at his side.
“Fine.” Jill throws her shoulders down and sulks past. “Don’t care! I should have known better. My brother’s got a heart like a refrigerator.”
Beside Jack is a vehicle that looks like part of the evacuation litter. It’s a strange beast, welded together as if its creator didn’t know what the end product would be. Clumps of wire hang out of half-broken compartments and the whole thing is filthy with dirt and rust. It almost looks like a motorcycle with a third wheel sticking out to the right.
Mounting the bike, Jill flips a switch and checks a few gauges. The machine is complicated, more so because it’s several machines linked in ways contrary to their original design. It’s confusing and Jill doesn’t understand how it works, she can barely understand how to operate it.
Standing beside the bike, Jack takes hold of a cord coming out of the engine and braces his foot on the frame. Her hand on the throttle, Jill sets her foot on a kick lever and looks at her brother.
“One… two… THREE!” On three, Jack pulls the cord and Jill kicks the lever with all her might. A series of nested orange cones roar like thunder, filling the air with steam, and the thing that looks like a fish tank full of sticks glows aqua-teal pink. Jill taps the glass and the pink fades away. “Good,” she says, letting off the gas, and the engine settles from thunder into a soft rumble.
Jack sits in the naked chair bolted to the sidecar frame. Beside his seat is a radio with a microphone on a cord. Jack turns it on and holds the microphone to his mouth. “Kali, are you there?” No reply.
Her elbow on the handlebars, Jill rests her head in her hand.
Jack tries again, “Kali, can you hear me?” but the radio is silent.
“It never works,” Jill grumbles.
“StraDeC this is Jack, if you can hear me we didn’t find anything out here and we’re coming back.” Jack turns off the radio.
“I found something,” says Jill. “You could mention my new outfit.”
Jack crosses his legs and taking a drag on his cigarette he stares straight ahead.
Jill knows she can’t expect more from Jack, has been this way for years. Always stiff and blank with a cigarette in his hand. If he were a billboard, Jill would get just as much compassion out of him.