Rubik by Elizabeth Tan

Author:Elizabeth Tan
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781944700584
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2018-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

On Monday, when the mental haze from Jess’s party has almost lifted, I buy an all-day ticket and travel on all the train lines. I pretend I am some sort of queen, surveying my loyal subjects as they parade before me, presenting their various body parts for my critical gaze—chins, ears, fingernails, Adam’s apples, teeth, cleavage. I take their offerings and repurpose them, ink them into an alternative existence. I fasten a woman’s sneer to the spotted face of a teenage boy. With my queenly powers, I tell my subjects: the two of you once boarded a train, at separate times, on separate journeys, and now you are the same being.

This train line runs alongside the freeway, hemmed either side by the backs of warehouses and factories. Their gray surfaces are adorned with giant telephone numbers and slogans. At this particular moment, there is a tow truck driving alongside the train, carrying the shells of damaged cars. One of the cars is missing the driver-side door, so you can see the seatbelt flapping inside like a burnt tongue. This little strip of gray is meant to save our lives.

The man opposite me, whose eyebrows I’m refashioning into the fringe of a hat, is trying to look at me without looking at me. I cap my pen and hold my sketchbook up close to my nose like a diner studying a menu. I watch him through the holes in the ring-binding as he fiddles with his earphones. This is Stirling, the pre-recorded voice announces, seeming to stumble over the consecutive s’s. I try to imagine Tim Spiegel saying it, This is Stirling. This other voice, this not-Tim voice, makes me feel like I am inside an untrustworthy universe. In that real life the waitress mentioned.

The man with the earphones disembarks. The pre-recorded voice observes, this time meditatively, that the doors are closing. It echoes like a gong through a temple. I put my sketchbook back on my knees and uncap my pen.

Two women with exquisitely beautiful noses take the man’s place opposite me. I flip to a new page. The train slides away from the station, and when it reaches peak speed it emits the purest sound, an endless soprano pitch. Beneath it, like a secret melody, the two women are talking in a language that isn’t English. When you don’t understand something, everything sounds so quick, so assured.

My very first job, back in the day, was an appearance in a French educational video. I was twelve years old and I was wearing a denim pinafore. S’asseoir, the voiceover would say, and I would sit. Manger, the voiceover would say, and I would eat. Boire, the voiceover would say, and I would drink. Between each action, the voiceover would wait exactly eight seconds, so that a class would have time to say the word with the correct pronunciation, or recite the various conjugations—je bois, tu bois, il/elle boit, nous buvons, vous buvez, ils/elles boivent. Sometimes, when I am feeling lost, I imagine English words emanating from the ceiling, reducing my movements to a single verb.

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