THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME

I WAS WORKING as an actor. I got the job through a number Eden gave me after they let him out of jail. When I called the number, the woman who answered told me to come in to the office so she could see what I looked like. She didn’t want to know anything else about me.

“Should I bring a resumé?” I asked.

“If you like,” she said, “but it’s not really necessary.”

“What about references?” I asked. “I’m sure I could find somebody to give me a good reference.”

“It’s not really that kind of job,” she said.

“But don’t you need to know about my work experience and all that?”

“All I need to know is that you look normal.”

The office was a studio in an east-end warehouse. There were Asian men working behind computers in the room next to it. They stared at me as I walked past but they never stopped typing. A fan blew the smell of sweat out into the hallway.

The walls of the office I went into were lined with old movie posters and black-and-white photographs of people I didn’t recognize. Half the office was taken up with sealed packing boxes. The woman I’d talked to on the phone sat behind the desk that was in the other half of the room. She was dressed in shorts and a black T-shirt, and she was playing solitaire on her computer when I walked in.

She just looked at me for a moment after I introduced myself, then nodded to herself. “I guess you look all right,” she said, “but I need to ask you a few questions.” She motioned for me to sit in one of the two chairs, then pulled a form out of her desk. There was a coffeemaker with a full pot of coffee sitting on the windowsills, but she didn’t offer me anything to drink.

“Do you have a car?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever threatened a co-worker with violence or stolen from your employer?”

“That’s one question?”

She tapped her pen on the table but didn’t say anything.

“No,” I said.

“Bondable?”

“What does all this have to do with acting?” I asked.

“I should tell you now,” she said, gazing out the window, “that this job will not lead to any big breaks in the movie industry.”

“Bondable,” I said.

“Have you ever tried to associate with any actors against their will or followed them without their knowledge?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Not really,” she repeated, looking back at me again. “Now what does that mean?”

“No,” I said.

She made a few more notes, which I couldn’t see because she shielded them with her hand, then put the form back in the desk.

“So, do you have a job for me?” I asked her.

“I have the perfect job for you,” she said.

THE AGENCY GOT ME a television commercial job. I was paid seventy dollars and a free breakfast for an hour’s work. There were fifty of us, all from different agencies around the city. We were playing the parts of business people on our way to work. The shoot took place in front of the stock exchange downtown. The street was blocked off at either end with yellow tape. We walked along the sidewalk in front of the cameras in small groups, carrying briefcases and bags the costumes woman had given us. I was wearing the same suit that I’d worn the day I married Rachel.

The assistant director briefed us at the beginning of the shoot. He was chewing gum rapidly and his hands shook the whole time he talked to us. “Look like you have somewhere important to go,” he said. “But don’t overact — you’re just the background for the shot.” It was the only direction anyone ever gave us. The only other people who spoke to us were the production assistants, two women in baseball caps and sunglasses who stood at either side of the set and told us when to walk in front of the cameras. They kept coffee cups to their lips the whole time, breathing in the steam even when they weren’t drinking. It was five in the morning. The buildings all around us were lit up even though no one was in them yet.

I watched the shooting from the side of the set while waiting my turn to walk in front of the cameras. The stars, two men in nicer suits than anyone else’s, stood talking at the edge of the sidewalk while the extras walked at least five feet behind them.

“They have to keep them on a different plane,” one of the other extras, a black man with a French accent, told me. “Or the audience won’t know who’s important.”

One of the stars was Mercedes’s boyfriend, the man that I’d whipped in The Code that day. I was afraid that he would see me and have me kicked off the set. But he looked right at me during a break in the filming and he didn’t even blink.

There was garbage everywhere on the streets that morning. When it was my turn to walk in front of the camera, the wind carried a stray piece of newspaper into my leg. I tried to shake it off, but it wrapped around my leg. There was a photograph of a group of firemen standing around a burning tanker truck on the outside page. I bent down to pull it off, but the man with the French accent bumped into me from behind. “Keep going,” he hissed. I kept walking until I was at the edge of the set. The newspaper remained on my leg the whole time.

The real business people began showing up a few hours after we began shooting. They stood behind the tape at the edges of the set, checking their watches and waiting for us to finish. Those of us who’d already been in the shoot stood around the food tables, eating muffins and drinking lukewarm coffees. While I watched, a pair of men in tan overcoats and black briefcases stepped around the tape and walked through the set the same way we had, while the cameras were rolling, and went into the building. No one seemed to notice.

They wrapped the shoot a few minutes after that. The production assistants took down the tape while the camera crews cleared the street. Suddenly there were young men in shorts and baseball caps everywhere, coiling cables or moving lights. The costumes woman collected all the briefcases from the extras. Within moments you couldn’t tell there had been a film shoot there at all, except for the trailers and the extras still standing around in a group. I had no idea where the stars had gone.

I found myself beside the man with the French accent again. “Well, now what?” I asked.

“Now we wait for the cheque,” he said. “If it takes any longer than a week, call your agent. These guys may not be in business a month from now.”

“You do a lot of this kind of thing?” I asked.

“This is all I do,” he said.

“So television commercials are your job?”

“Blending in is my job,” he said.

Most of the other extras went down the street to catch the bus, but I went over to where one of the cameramen was pouring himself a cup of coffee. “How did I look?” I asked him.

He squinted at me and said, “Who are you?”

“I’m one of the extras,” I said. “I had the newspaper on my leg.”

“Oh, right.” He took a pill from his pocket and ground it up in his hand, dropped the powder into his coffee.

“I’m just wondering how everything worked out,” I said. “Did I look real?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, stirring the powder under. “Better than real.”

THE AGENCY GOT ME all kinds of shoots. Once, I was hired to be an audience member for a new talk show. We shot it in the middle of the night, in a downtown studio. I sat between a woman doing a crossword puzzle and a man who looked under his seat when he sat down. “Sometimes the day show puts prizes there and people forget to take them,” he explained to me. “Or sometimes people just forgot what they brought.”

“The day show?” I said.

“That’s the show the set belongs to,” he said, nodding at the stage. There was nothing up there but a beige backdrop and four chairs that had been taken from the back row of the audience. “It’s been on for years.”

“But they changed the chairs,” the woman on my other side said. “The day show has those upholstered ones.”

“Oh yeah,” the man said. “They wouldn’t want to waste those on this operation.”

“The day show is those chairs,” the woman added.

The host came out of the back just then and started talking to the one cameraman. He still wore the cloth to protect his suit from the makeup. His skin looked orange.

“How many times have you worked for this show?” I asked the man beside me.

“This is the first time,” he said. “It’s the pilot.”

“But you’ve worked here before,” I said.

“There’s one of these pilots every week,” he said.

“And how many of them make it to air?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen any yet,” he said. “But all it takes is one.”

A man wearing a headset and carrying a plastic bag walked over and said to me, “You have to take that shirt off.”

I looked down at my shirt. It was a plain black T-shirt. “But it’s all I have,” I said.

“Too many T-shirts in the crowd,” he said. “Everyone looks unemployed. We need some professional-type people.” He reached into the bag and took out a white button-down, tossed it at me. “Just remember to give that back when the shoot’s over.”

I took off my T-shirt and dropped it under my chair, put on the button-down. My skin started itching right away. I couldn’t stop thinking of lice and crabs.

The host gave us a speech before they started the show. He was still wearing his makeup cloth. “Remember,” he said, “we’re the new kind of talk show. We don’t want people sitting on their chairs clapping when the applause sign comes on and then stopping when it goes off.”

“Do they even have the budget for an applause sign?” the woman beside me asked.

“We want people throwing their chairs,” the host went on. “We want confrontation. Conflict. Drama. Spectacle. Don’t be afraid to shout things out or do something spontaneous. If you’re exciting enough, we may even get picked up.”

“He gave the exact same speech with the last pilot,” the man beside me muttered.

The host walked to the center of the stage and nodded at the camera. The man who’d made me change shirts ran up and yanked off the host’s makeup cloth, then went to the edge of the stage and held up a sign that had Quiet hand-painted on it.

“Welcome to The Zone,” the host said to the camera, “your new guide to the afternoon.”

The woman beside me rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling. The man on my other side looked under my chair and picked up a dime off the floor.

“You’ll like today’s show,” the host said. “It’s about people who are afraid of the end of the world.”

The man with the Quiet sign yelled “Cut!” and the host sat on one of the chairs while the cameraman moved the camera into a new position.

“This is a sorry fucking operation,” the man beside me sighed.

“Isn’t everyone afraid of the end of the world?” the woman on my other side asked.

The first guest was a man in a military uniform. The host told the camera that he was a colonel in the army.

“Ex-colonel,” the other man said. “They kicked me out on account of me revealing all their dirty little secrets.”

“What secrets are those?” the host asked.

The ex-colonel leaned forward and glanced between the host and the camera. “They’re already poisoning us slowly,” he said in a stage whisper.

“Who’s poisoning us?” the host asked.

“The government,” the ex-colonel said. “They’re putting chemicals and nuclear waste in the water. Next it’ll be a nuclear device in one of our cities. Maybe not a full-scale one, but a dirty nuke at least.”

“Why would they do that?” the host asked.

“So they can increase our taxes,” the ex-colonel said. “On account of the threat and all.”

“What exactly does all this have to do with the end of the world?” the host asked.

The ex-colonel leaned back in his chair. “Where there’s one nuke, there’s more,” he said. “You can make them with intel from the Internet now. All it takes is one to start, and pretty soon everyone’s blowing one off in the back of a rental truck.”

“I don’t know,” the host said, shaking his head. “Let’s see what the audience thinks.” He looked out at us, and for a moment no one said anything. The ex-colonel cleared his throat several times.

I raised my hand. The host quickly pointed at me. “You have something to say,” he said. The man and woman beside me turned and stared.

“I think you’ve been watching too much television,” I told the ex-colonel.

“Yes!” the host said, nodding. The man who’d been holding the Quiet sign now held up a sign that had Applause painted on it, and audience members here and there clapped.

“It’s all true,” the ex-colonel said.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Haven’t you been watching the news?” the ex-colonel asked.

“In fact,” I went on, “I think I saw that very movie last week.” The man with the sign raised it over his head and more people applauded.

The ex-colonel stood up, knocking his chair over as he did so. “All right,” he said, “pretend like nothing’s happening.” He walked off the stage and into the back area. He paused just before going around the backdrop. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you when you’re nothing but a shadow burned into the side of a building.”

“I saw that show too,” I said.

“What is wrong with you?” the man beside me asked when the ex-colonel was gone and the crew were getting ready for the next segment.

“I know, I know,” I said. “That guy has probably been trained how to kill me a thousand different ways.”

“I think I went to theatre school with him,” the woman on my other side said.

The second segment of the show was a family. A balding husband in a navy blazer, a daughter with braces, a mother with black hair and red-framed glasses. This was Iris, although I didn’t know her name at the time. The host asked them what they were afraid of.

“Asteroids,” the husband said. “It’s only a matter of time before a planet-killer hits us.”

“We’ve seen that movie too,” the host said, looking at the audience and rolling his eyes.

“Tell that to the dinosaurs,” the husband said.

“What about you, darling?” the host asked the daughter. “What are you afraid of?”

“Nuclear meltdown,” the girl said. “Radioactive fallout that kills all the livestock and causes cancer for hundreds of miles away from the epicenter. Firestorms. Nuclear winter. Entire cities abandoned. Outbreaks of disease. Foot and mouth. Tuberculosis. AIDS.”

The host just looked at her.

“Like that Chernobyl show,” the girl added.

“We’ve been letting her watch A&E,” the husband said, nodding and smiling.

“And what about you?” the host asked, turning to Iris. “What are you afraid of?”

“God,” Iris said.

“God,” the host repeated. He looked at the camera and smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“God is the atom,” Iris said. “Remember, when Oppenheimer saw the atomic bomb explode at Los Alamos, he said, ‘Lo, I am become God, destroyer of worlds.’”

“Who’s this Oppenheimer?” the host asked, frowning. “Is he a terrorist or something?”

“God is our destroyer,” Iris went on, “and only God can save us from himself.” She dropped off her chair, to her knees. “Let us pray.”

The host didn’t know what to say. He looked to us for help.

Iris dragged her husband and daughter down to the floor with her. The little girl actually started to cry. “Who will join us?” Iris asked. She looked out over the audience, and our eyes met. She stared at me for a few seconds, and then I was up out of my chair and pushing past the woman beside me and running up to kneel on the stage too. The host’s jaw actually dropped as I went past him.

Iris took my hand and smiled at me. Then she looked straight into the camera. “Heavenly father, destroyer of worlds,” she began.

How could I not fall in love with her?

AS IT TURNED OUT, Iris worked for the same agency as me. Once, it got us work together in a commercial. This one was in a burned-out warehouse across the city. The shoot took place in the front lobby. It was just one scene: Iris and I had to walk hand in hand across the lobby, which the crew had cleaned and filled with fake potted plants. We were in the background of the shot.

“What’s in the foreground?” I asked the woman in charge as she directed the cameramen where to set up their equipment.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They’re going to add it in later with computers.”

“What’s the product?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know that either.”

“But people will still be able to see us, right?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” she said, “you’ll be stars.”

Iris had a son who came to the shoot with her. This was her real son — the family from the talk show worked for our agency too. This boy was in a wheelchair, and when I looked close I could tell there was something not quite right about him. He had the body of a boy, but his skin was all wrinkled and his hair was starting to fall out, like he was an old man. Iris parked his wheelchair to the side of one of the cameras, where he could watch us work. He had a camera of his own — a digital one — and he filmed the crew setting up with it.

I asked Iris what was wrong with him while she was doing her stretching exercises.

“He’s got that aging disease,” she said, not looking up at me.

“Is it fatal?” I asked.

“Aging usually is,” she said.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Walker,” Iris said.

“Isn’t that a little ironic?” I asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, doing the splits and touching her head to the floor.

I wandered around the place while we were waiting. The rest of the warehouse was divided into large rooms, each holding different appliances. One room was full of televisions stacked on skids that had been put down in loose, winding rows. Another room was full of fridges and microwaves, their white exteriors scorched by the fire that had closed down the place. Another room was computers piled loosely on the floor. For some reason, the monitor on each one had been smashed. Water dripped from the ceiling in each of the rooms, and I could still smell smoke.

Back in the lobby, I asked the woman in charge what kind of warehouse this was.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I think it was one of those places they stored things that nobody wants any more.”

“Who wouldn’t want all of this?” I wondered.

“I mean, I think it’s stuff that’s not in fashion any more,” she said. “You know, things that got old before people were done with them.”

“Oh, I know all about that,” I said, but she didn’t answer because the cameramen were yelling that they were ready for the shot. Iris and I took our places.

We walked across the room, hand in hand. Iris’s palm was moist in mine, and I could feel her heartbeat when our wrists touched. When we were done, I asked the woman in charge how it looked.

“You’re supposed to be in love,” she said, shaking her head.

“Oh, we are,” I said. “See?” I was still holding Iris’s hand.

“Then try to show it more.”

“How would we do that?” Iris asked.

“A look,” the other woman said. “A smile. Something.”

“How about a kiss?” I suggested.

“Let’s not get carried away here,” Iris said.

We went over to where Walker sat in his wheelchair. He’d filmed all this but he put the camera down when we approached.

“Did you get it?” Iris asked.

Walker nodded but didn’t say anything.

“What are you filming this for?” I asked.

“It’s for the archives,” Iris said.

“I see,” I said, although I didn’t. I reached out and ruffled Walker’s hair, and when I brought my hand away, there were individual strands of hair clinging to it.

“Please don’t do that,” Iris told me. “He needs all he’s got.”

When they were ready with the cameras once more, Iris and I went and did the shot again. This time I looked over at her and smiled as we walked. She smiled back. I squeezed her hand. She squeezed mine back. It was like we were actually a couple.

“That was better,” the woman in charge said when we had crossed the lobby. “One more time, just in case.”

Iris went to talk to Walker again, but he was gone now. His wheelchair was still there, but it was empty except for the camera on the seat. “Walker?” she called, looking around. “Where are you?”

“You mean he can actually walk?” I asked.

“Of course he can walk,” she said, pausing to look at me. “What did you think?”

“So the wheelchair is just for show?” I asked.

“Walker!” she cried, turning in a circle.

The woman in charge came over. “What’s the problem?” she asked.

“Our son is missing,” I told her.

“We have to find him,” Iris said. “I don’t know where I’d be without him.”

“We’ll organize a search party,” I said to the woman in charge. “We’ll divide up into teams and mark things off on grids and stuff.”

“You go ahead,” she said. “We’re going to set up for the shot again. Try to find him before we’re ready.”

Iris and I went into the room with all the refrigerators and micro-waves. “Walker!” she cried again. She opened a freezer and looked inside, like he was hiding in there.

“Maybe he was mad at us,” I said, “on account of the shoot and all.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, looking at me.

“I saw this show once,” I said, “where these kids were upset because their parents had started dating after the divorce or death or whatever it was that had taken place. Maybe Walker’s upset because of this couple thing we’re doing here.”

“Maybe we should split up to look for him,” Iris said. “I’ll take that room with all the computers.”

“Where do you want me to look?” I asked.

“Anywhere but there,” she said.

“All right,” I said to myself after she was gone, looking around the empty room. “Where would I go if I were lost?”

I found Walker in the room with all the dead televisions. I heard him before I saw him. He was making this mewling noise. I followed it around the maze of televisions. I ran into several dead ends and had to backtrack before I finally found him. He was sitting on the floor in front of a big-screen television with a broken screen. He was crying, but he didn’t stop when he saw me.

“There you are,” I said. “We’ve been worried sick about you.” I put out my arms, but he just looked at the broken television and kept on crying. I picked him up and carried him back to the lobby.

They were set up for the shot again by the time I made it back there, but now everyone was on a coffee break.

“It’s about time,” the woman in charge said as I put Walker back in his chair. “I was beginning to worry.”

“So was I,” I said.

“Another hour and we have to pay the crew overtime,” she said.

We waited for Iris to come back, but she didn’t. “Maybe she’s lost too,” I said. “Maybe I’ll have to rescue her as well.”

The woman in charge looked at her watch. “Maybe we should just go with what we’ve got.”

Walker wouldn’t stop crying, so I patted him on the head. “You’re okay,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with you.” But still he kept on.

I took the camera from him and rewound it until I found a shot of Iris and me walking across the lobby together. I paused it and held the camera out to Walker. “Look,” I said, “there’s your mom.”

He stopped crying and took the camera. He put it in his lap and stared down at the image.

“You see?” I said. “Everything’s all right.”

AND ONCE THE AGENCY got Iris and me work as mannequins at the downtown mall. One of the department stores was having a promotion and wanted live people modeling clothes in a display window. We changed into their clothes, and the man in charge, Tiff, walked us to the display. “I have to lock the door when you’re inside,” he said, “on account of store regulations and all, but I’ll let you out every hour for a washroom break.”

“What do you want us to do?” I asked once we were inside the display case.

“Just act natural,” Tiff said.

“This isn’t exactly a natural setting,” I told him.

“What I mean is that I don’t want you to act like mannequins,” he said. “I want you to act like people.”

“I can do that,” I said.

“I hope so,” he said, “because that’s why we hired you.”

“I’ve been acting like a person all my life.”

The display window was where the store met the rest of the mall. The inside of it was set up like a living room and kitchen. There was a couch, a television, chairs, lamps, a stove and refrigerator, the whole works. It was all from the store. It was the kind of place I dreamed about living in.

Iris and I sat on the couch and watched a DVD on the television. It was one of those expensive DVD players, the kind that held six discs, so we could have sat there and watched movies for the entire shift, but after a half hour or so, Tiff opened the door to the case and told us we had to be more dynamic.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“Move around,” he said. “Use all the products.”

I got up and went over to the fridge. It was plugged in and full of bottles of water. I opened one and drank from it. Outside, in the mall, people stopped to look at us. I waved at them. Tiff pounded on the glass wall of the display and shook his head.

Iris went over to the exercise bike in the corner and started cycling. She was still watching the movie. I took a water bottle over to her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, looking at it.

“I’m bringing you water,” I said.

“Why?” she asked, looking at me now.

“I’m trying to pretend like we’re a couple,” I said. “On account of the display and all.” I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

She shook her head but took the water. “I need to find another job,” she said.

“This is the best job I’ve ever had,” I said.

IRIS AND I WORKED as mannequins for a couple of weeks. When we were on break, I liked to stand out in the hallway, looking in at the display case. Sometimes I even polished the window with paper towel and glass cleaner I got from one of the women who worked the perfume counters.

After a few days, Iris started bringing Walker to work. She parked his wheelchair in front of the display case, where he could watch us. He filmed us all day long with his digital camera.

On one of our breaks, I tried talking to him. Iris was off in the washroom or buying food or something, so it was just the two of us.

“How’s it going, son?” I asked him.

He turned the camera on me but didn’t say anything. The one eye I could see was closed so he could look through the camera’s viewfinder.

“Maybe someday we can take you in there with us,” I said, indicating the display. “Would you like that?”

He still didn’t say anything, just kept on filming.

“All right then,” I said and looked back at the case. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn the camera back on it too.

When Iris came back, she asked us what we had been doing.

“We were bonding,” I said, and Walker laughed.

THE MANNEQUIN JOB ENDED for us when I lit the display case on fire. I’d brought in some soup and I was heating it in a pot on the stove when I smelled something burning. I lifted the pot and looked underneath but there was nothing on the element.

“Now what have you done?” Iris asked, coming over from where she’d been doing jumping jacks in the middle of the living room.

“I haven’t done anything,” I said. But when I turned off the stove, the smell grew even stronger. Then Walker rolled his wheelchair over until he was directly on the other side of the glass from us, and he pointed behind the stove. I looked back there. The curtains that were framing the fake window over the stove hung down where all the electrical outlets for the display were, and the bottom part of them was on fire.

“How did you manage that?” Iris asked.

“I didn’t do it,” I said. “It must be some sort of wiring thing.”

“Well, we should put it out,” Iris said.

I threw the soup on the curtains, but it only put out some of the fire. The case was beginning to grow hazy with smoke now, and the people who had been watching Iris do jumping jacks started to back away.

“Now what?” I said.

“Now I think we should leave,” Iris said.

But when we went to the door, it was locked. “Tiff!” I shouted, banging on the door, but he was nowhere in sight. The only people from the store I could see were the women from the perfume counter, and they just stayed by their counter and stared at us. I ran to the phone on our end table, picked it up, and dialed 911 before I realized there was no dial tone.

Iris was at the other end of the display case, shouting to Walker through the glass. “Don’t let anyone take the camera away from you if we die,” she said. “You’ll need that film for the lawsuit.” He nodded and kept filming.

Now the curtains were totally on fire, and the flames had spread to other things. The fake window frame was burning, as was the edge of the carpet. And there was a thick layer of smoke at the top of the case.

“Why isn’t there a fire extinguisher in here?” I asked. “Every home should have a fire extinguisher.”

Iris ran to my side. “Have you got any ideas how to get us out of this mess?” she said.

“We should lie down,” I said. “In the movies, people always lie down to get away from the smoke.”

“We don’t need to get away from the smoke,” she said, “we need to get away from here. We need to break the glass.”

“I don’t know,” I said, looking at the large windows. The display case was completely ringed by people watching us now. “What if they charge us for that?”

“Oh my God,” Iris said and ran to one of the walls. “Help!” she screamed, pounding on the wall and waving at the crowd. “Someone help me!”

I saw then that it was up to me. I went over to the television and picked it up. It was a big-screen model, and I could barely lift it. I staggered over to the wall that Iris was pounding on and threw it at the glass.

The wall shattered as the television went through it, and large pieces of glass fell out into the mall. Some people in the crowd screamed and ran away, but others applauded. Iris pushed past me and jumped to the floor, then ran to Walker. I followed her but only made it about halfway before I collapsed to the floor. Now that I was in the fresh air of the mall, I could barely breathe — all I could do was cough.

I looked back at the display case in time to see Tiff rush into it with a fire extinguisher. Everything was burning now — the rug, the couch, even the fake flowers on the kitchen table. Tiff sprayed wildly with the fire extinguisher for a moment, but it ran out of foam before he’d even put out the couch. Then his pants caught on fire. He ran out of the display case, burning and screaming, in the direction of the women at the perfume counter, who scattered at his approach.

But that was all I saw, because then I was rolling over and throwing up on the floor. After I was done throwing up, I passed out. At least, I think I passed out, because the next thing I knew, I was on my back and staring at the sign of the Starbucks across the hall, while people from the crowd kneeled all around me. I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t get any words out.

Iris was at my side, and she rested her hand on my forehead. “You’re going to be all right,” she said. “I think someone’s called an ambulance.”

I looked around at everyone staring down at me. All those people concerned about me — I almost couldn’t believe it.

My whole body started to shake, and Iris moved her hand from my forehead to my chest, pressing me down to the mall floor. “You’re going to be all right,” she said again, but I couldn’t stop shaking.

Walker rolled up on the other side of me. For a moment our eyes met, even as I continued shaking. Then he held out the camera so I could see the image there. It was of the time that I’d kissed Iris in the display case, before the fire.

“You’re okay,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“That’s right,” Iris said. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

I couldn’t stop shaking but I nodded.

“Say it,” Iris said.

I couldn’t look away from that picture.

“Say it,” Iris said again.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I managed.

© Peter Darbyshire

 
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