Natalie Touches Upon the World
Ivan Faute
During the smoke break that day, Natalie saw the hag sitting on the edge of the marble benches, muttering to herself. The way the old woman crossed her legs back and forth, back and forth dislodged something in Natalie's memory and she realized that this person had been flitting around the edges of her consciousness for the past week. The first memory involved a shadowy presence on the bathroom wall when Natalie had swung open the door. The shadow dissolved like an underwater reflection. The second time, Natalie was working late and someone was traipsing through the hallways. Assuming it was the cleaning people, Natalie had not paid attention. But when she went to get coffee from the break room, it looked like a cat was skittering around ahead of her every time she turned a corner. Seeing the old lady in the courtyard, these three instances snapped into place. Natalie formulated a theory – her run of bad luck could be tied to these sightings. The broken toe, the mysterious aches and pains, someone had scraped the side of her car, she'd lost two accounts at work. Everything could be traced back to these sightings. Seeing a hag had to be an omen of bad luck.
The afternoon the apparition appeared the third time, Natalie carefully stubbed her cigarette out on the concrete barrier that separated the mingling office workers from the cars and busses. The hag stopped fidgeting and sat very still and stared at Natalie. No one else seemed to take notice of the old lady, dressed in what could have been a greasy tablecloth, clumps of hair pointing in several directions. Suddenly, a group of exceptionally tall men in identical blue suits with identical brown ties surrounded Natalie, and, after the men had swept past her, the hag had disappeared.
If Natalie had been satisfied with her life and job, she would have probably been less infatuated with the prospect of a hag appearing in the midst of downtown. She was not one of those people who suddenly awaken to realize their lives are not all they had dreamed in the optimistic and heady days of possibility, probably sometime between 16 and 25. Natalie had succeeded at her job, to a point, and it was that point, which she could not seem to get past, that frustrated her. She could organize a marketing campaign well enough, better than most. She was never flustered, always knew how to answer a question, face-to-face or on the telephone, no matter its content or her lack of knowledge. She couldn't claim to be creative, but that's what artists and designers were for. Creativity had no market share. She believed execution was the skill most desired. And Natalie could implement with authority and unflagging cheer. Only in her last campaign – trying to push a cheese-filled pastry puff at county fairs and regional festivals – one great disaster after another had overtaken her careful planning. The cheese puffs wouldn't puff in toaster ovens. The samplers, a group of would-be models, continuously engaged in sexual and psychological terrorism upon each other. Every day, at least one team had a flat tire, or an exploding water filter, or a broken windshield. Over one weekend, three teams had their food preparation permits revoked for unsanitary conditions, and over the last two weeks of the dismal promotional period, the cheese puffs sent out by the company were spoiled, and the accompanying coupons were expired. Nothing was particularly Natalie's fault, but somehow the stink of it clung to her. You the "cheese puff" girl, everyone's eyes seemed to say. And what was it that irritated Natalie the most? It wasn't the accumulation of problems (that was her job). It wasn't even the failure of the promotion (that was an expectation of the work). Who could really measure the relative failure or success of any sort of marketing push anyway? It was successful if the client was pleased. What did bother Natalie was the "girl" part. No one said that anymore of course, but the small gleam, the sweep of his eyes, the constant joking about how no one could say "you guys" anymore. Natalie was still being assigned clients and promotions; there was just something unsavory in the way things were being doled out. She felt slighted.
Natalie didn't blame her professional ennui on the apparition she'd seen, but it did give her an idea. In all the old stories she remembered from childhood, there was always a deal to be made, a trade to enact. Those kind of deals were always a little dangerous, for the mortal, but somehow they also always worked out. The marriage survived, the princesses found satisfaction, the children were returned, more or less intact. Natalie realized if the apparition were bringing her little slights as well as a shadow of bad luck, she might be able to strike a deal and get something out of it.
But how does one handle an apparition, Natalie wondered? How does one exorcise bad luck when it takes a physical form? She'd organized her professional and personal life around the assertion that she was capable of wrestling any problem to the ground, pin any opponent to the mat, defeat any foe through doggedness and determination. Her resume confirmed it. She'd supervised six-dozen college students through twenty-seven state fairs and over two hundred local festivals, communicating only through text messages and late-night telephone calls, in the highly lauded "Canned Corn Wrestler's Challenge." The six month "Coffee in a Clutch" campaign was not only her idea, but also set a new standard for sampling in the ex-urban professional demographic. The key to any working campaign was the pitch, not the solution. So what if she'd had a few runs of bad luck? She just needed something a little more a challenging to show everyone that one small disaster did not a career define.
It took Natalie two weeks to find the gorgon again. Over those days she managed to see evil omens in every accident of everyday life. She dropped hot coffee on a white skirt, constantly missed the bus and the elevator, lost cell phone calls every time she turned a corner – all signs of evil influence. The constant dropped calls led to complaints from clients. She was not attentive, they said. She wouldn't be available when she should be. This resulted in review meetings with supervisors about client service and customer prioritization and key learnings of failed communication strategies. Natalie assured everyone, client and bosses, that her dedication, commitment, and service strategies were intact and functioning. After one such scolding call, Natalie turned her back on her desk, pressed her temples to stop a headache, and looked out her reflective window across the chasm of the street to the reflective window across the way.
Upon turning back around, Natalie found an old woman with no teeth and wild hair sitting in her visitor's chair. Natalie did not generally scream at work, although she certainly wanted to at that moment.
"Doing that will shorten your life," the old woman said. Her voice was oily and thin. Her nose was covered in pustules, and she had a black mole on her chin that sprouted three wire-y hairs.
"What?"
"Stuffing your emotions into your large colon. I knew a man who did that and he tripped over a log in the woods and burst open like a broiled sausage."
Something caught in Natalie's throat, like the sound of a smothered bird. "What are you doing in here?" Natalie stepped toward the telephone and fingered the buttons. "You should have an appointment."
"Crying can be good for you. Sometimes. You could always close the door." The woman pointed with her long, pointed chin to the shut door.
"Yes. I could." Natalie still fingered the telephone.
"I'm not dangerous, if that's what you are worried about. Not in the general sense of the word." The hag looked up at Natalie with a sly and, remarkably, coquettish flit of her eyes. The old woman squinted and raised a long, bony finger to point. "I've been watching you."
"I'm not sure I'm comfortable –"
The old woman cut her off; Natalie wondered if the lady might be hard of hearing. "Lots of times when people like me start to hang around, people get suspicious. I suppose they have good reason to, but I get blamed for a lot of things that aren't my fault too. Things that otherwise might go… un-remarked."
"Not at all." Natalie felt blood rush to her head. She liked to think her thoughts were always her own and she could masterfully present a stoic and neutral front to the world. When anyone, whether mother, friend or current lover, accurately guessed her thoughts, she felt as exposed as she did in junior high gym.
"I'd never claim to be above that sort of thing." The old women paused and adjusted her garments – they were definitely garments, not clothes. A faint odor of burnt, wet wood filled the room. "But even I have limitations. If I were all-powerful, if I could manipulate space and time at will, do you think I'd want for anything? That I'd still look like this?"
"Well…" Natalie began. Metaphysics and the nature of relative female attractiveness seemed far a field from hawking plastic children's toys or canned chili. "It's not really my area."
"I don't want you to get the impression that I'm shallow. I'm not. Never have been. It's just this world…" The hag waved long, twisted fingers topped with yellowing nails that reminded Natalie of her grandfather's toes. "I never was the hero. You can't expect that sort of treatment. From others, I mean. Whatever else I can do, I can't change people's feeling, can't change the tone of the story. Know what I mean?"
Natalie wanted to nod, but her face betrayed her and her mouth twisted in a strange pucker. If the hag noticed, she chose to ignore it.
The old woman continued. "That's where you come in. Marketing is a lot like what I used to be able to do, what I used to be able to accomplish, I mean. Getting people to think they need something they don't. Making them think they desire something that's not really in their best interest. Although certainly in the best interest of someone."
She crossed her legs and jiggled her foot as if she'd had too much caffeine.
"The thing is, Natalie, this Middle Ages shtick is getting old. You'd be amazed how long it worked. But now, what with global corporations advertising in every small out-of-the-way mountainous hamlet… There's not a village in the Balkans that doesn't have posters for soda drinks and chewing gum and blue jeans. Look who I'm talking to. It's partly your fault, isn't it?"
"I don't often get involved in international campaigns."
"The point is: standards change. They start to see these people, these models, and that's what they expect. That's what intimidates them now. What used to scare them – old age and disease – doesn't work any longer. They want to be wowed with beauty and perfection. They want to be frightened by how much they don't measure up. Who would have thought anxiety, at least of that sort, could be such a motivator?" The woman jumped so quickly toward the edge of the desk, Natalie might have thought she'd flown. "You know the stories. They've rehabilitated them, made them more palatable for you people, but the one thing they couldn’t change, the one thing that's still there – me. The old hag, jezebel, hellcat, biddy, shrew, gorgon, witch, crone, beldam. It's all the same. You know where that comes from? Fear. Call something a monster cause you are afraid of it. And then, well, once we are monsters…" She raised her wiry eyebrows and bulged out her eyes. "I've always wondered what came first, the power or the fear. I have power over them cause they fear me; they fear me because I have power over them. A conundrum, no doubt. What do you think?"
"I'm, well, it's just that, you see, I'm not that versed… What exactly are you asking me?"
"I need a makeover. I can't scare them anymore. They think I'm some sort of homeless woman. Everyone wants to clean me up, get me some face cream and into counseling for my anger issues. I've spent too much time in these backwater towns; haven't kept up with this postmodern age. I need to update my look, Natalie. How can I wreck havoc if I don't have access?"
"Havoc? I really don't do that sort of thing. I mean for people. If you were a company or a product…"
"Who isn't? I know it's not your normal sort of thing. When I say 'make-over' you think of make-up and dresses and such truck, but I'm not talking about that. I need branding. I need to be re-branded. That's what you call it, isn't it?"
Natalie looked the old hag up and down. How did one repackage "hag"? How did you make a witch look cool? Redesign her presentation? She'd need a through-line and some very clear goals. Natalie felt her mind formulating. She waved her hands in front of her face. "You should go see Brian. I don't do branding. That's an entire different sort of skillset. In my last evaluation, they said I didn't really have the aggressor-competitor psychological makeup for that sort of…" Natalie trailed off, not only because she'd resented the evaluation at the time, but also because saying it aloud seemed more demeaning and meaningless than it had when she'd read it printed on 24-lb bond paper. "Brian does branding two stories up."
"I don't want Brian. He couldn't handle it."
"But then my schedule." Natalie flipped through the book on her desk, many things were crossed out, cancelled meetings and planning sessions.
The hag tilted her head down. "I might have had something to do with that. Don't worry; I can make it worth your while. Call me…well, let's start with 'Gertrude'."
If Natalie understood the mechanics of fear apart from the sugarcoated version used in television commercials and Halloween-released movies, she'd have hesitated. Natalie understood her job was to manipulate people, but she'd seen it as a sort of codependent relationship, a wink-wink interaction. She'd certainly never felt she'd bought into, metaphorically or literally, any sort of product push against her deepest beliefs. She used advertising of course, it was impossible not to, but she'd done it with open eyes. She never felt manipulated, but she was just a fish who never notices the water.
They started that afternoon. Natalie began with a preliminary list of what Gertrude hoped to achieve. They brainstormed ideas from the most trivial to the grandiose. Although Natalie had never "done over" a person before, she approached the task like a product launch. Natalie prioritized goals according to most desirable and most achievable, and broke down the specific steps needed. They claimed a table at the coffee shop on the corner.
"We want to start with implement-able, end-product changes immediately. Something the client, I mean something you can see, feel, sense right away. An impactful, measurable result." Gertrude's face remained blank. "I want you to start to feel good about yourself right away."
"Got it." Gertrude crossed her legs and leaned on the table, anticipating. She twitched her foot wildly again.
Natalie noticed the burning smell again too. "What's one thing about yourself you'd change today?" She poised her fingertips over the keyboard of her laptop.
"The smell." Gertrude nodded vigorously and something inside her jangled. "I can see it on your face. The way your nose wrinkles."
Natalie concentrated on the screen, not the burning smell creeping up her nostrils. She typed "SMELL." "How would you describe your market position in relation to smell now?" Gertrude stared. "What I mean… if you had to describe your smell as something else, anything else, what would it be? It can be anything – a car, a color, a food, a place – anything you think of."
"Know how I got to smell like this?"
Natalie shook her head. "That's not the point."
"They tried to burn me at the stake. Piled the biggest bunch of twigs, branches, leaves, old chairs. Had everyone in town helping. Little children, not even in pants yet, with fat fists trying to hold a stick or two and throw them on the pile. What kind of life lesson is that?"
"Yes," Natalie nodded deliberately, "so I hear you saying that it's forest products, perhaps children and…"
"A misunderstanding about my flammability," Gertrude said. "But you need something more practical. I'm starting to see how you work. This is what drew me to you, none of this talk of woods and streams and villagers with torches." Gertrude looked up at the ceiling. "Drain cleaner," she said.
"Drain cleaner?"
"That's what first comes to mind – drain cleaner."
Natalie typed, "drain cleaner" under "SMELL." "A good start. Now let's think where you want to be. What do you want your smell to be? Again, anything."
"Blue," Gertrude said without hesitation.
"I'm sorry?" Natalie asked.
"Blue. I want people to say, 'Gertrude, she smells like blue.' That deep blue of a summer sky. Something you feel like you could scoop out with a spoon."
Natalie duly typed "summer blue sky" and inserted an arrow pointing from "drain cleaner" to the new product position. "I think you're getting the hang of this."
"What's next?" Gertrude jumped a little in her chair.
"Why don't we tackle clothes?" Natalie suggested and typed away.
The process took more time than either would have guessed. Gertrude had a lot of goals – fingernails, demeanor, hair, the strange metallic sound she made when she moved, facial expressions, anger management, shoes, body hair, lips, teeth, skin, her wandering eye, eating in public, answering questions in an appropriate tone, using the telephone – on and on the list grew. As they broke each goal down, everything looked like it would take far longer than one might have expected. But it was what Natalie was good at, what she wanted to be known for. She saw the work behind the product, could decode the effort and material needed to make something seem simple and clean. She thought this skill would propel her to something.
Devoting time to Gertrude became much more satisfying than developing strategies for cheese products and whole-grain, after-school snacks. When Natalie took Gertrude for touch-ups and an exfoliation, she saw the results in front of her, not in color-coded charts with ambiguous keys in the lower right corner. Gertrude had shinier hair and polished nails; there was no need to divide the body into various geographic structures and economic sub-strata. Natalie's office work suffered, and she was let go.
"I suspected that would happen," Gertrude said over mani-pedis. She needed a lot of pedi work. "They'd didn't see your skillset. But I've got you covered." Gertrude had access to a store of gold and other sundry "baubles," as she called them. They'd been offered to her over the centuries in exchange for favors, most often to insure the marriage of some duke's daughter to someone else's son. "A whole lot of nonsense over a few acres of scrub trees," is how Gertrude described it. But, she admitted, the parents were happy and lavished loads of jewels, gold, and portable wealth on her, something she had no use for, since she lived on toads and swamp water. "Swamp water tastes as bad as you can imagine, but somehow it's the only thing that satisfies me," the old lady explained. Thereafter, Gertrude picked up the tab and irregular amounts of money appeared in Natalie's bank account by wire transfer from accounts in European cities with names that seemed made-up.
From then on, whatever work Gertrude needed, Natalie was there to supervise. Visits to the dentist and hair salon, nail appointments and dress fittings. Electrolysis was a chore, but they both enjoyed the facials because Natalie would get one at the same time and it gave them time to talk. Gertrude could not understand gossip magazines or the back page of the newspaper, and Natalie took pains to explain why such-and-such celebrity mattered and why society wanted to know about the sexual proclivities and marriages of various actors and musicians. "But they don't actually have any power," Gertrude would try to argue. "They don't do anything or own anything or change policy or have their armies invade Poland."
"But they have a different kind of power," Natalie would explain. "They have influence."
"Influence?" Gertrude sputtered over her drink. The spa they frequented served Long Island iced teas, which Gertrude developed a taste for, over time. "All they have is money, and anyone can get money. But when you can get someone to do something… When you can force them to live somewhere… Well…" Gertrude sighed, while Natalie sat a little stunned. Gertrude picked up her glass and toasted. "To the Polish cavalry! Greatest group of men you ever saw," she proclaimed loudly, as if the cucumber slices blocked her hearing. After a drink or two, she inevitably brought up the Polish cavalry. "You never saw such thighs, on man or beast." They clinked glasses. "You know, with a shot of nail polish, these drinks taste just like swamp water."
Despite the temptation, Natalie avoided clarifying about Gertrude's past, like why the old women would have intimate knowledge of the Polish cavalry, or courts in Brussels, or the folk dances of Bulgaria. And although she found her new friend fascinating, as the changes began to take shape, Natalie could not help thinking of where this was headed. She brought it up to her charge one afternoon. "We've done a lot. I think." Natalie tilted her head and smiled crookedly. "But, I know we came up with all these goals, but we've never talked about THE goal."
"What do you mean?"
"How do we test our success? How do we know we've succeeded? How do we see if you can fit in?"
"I've never been one for that. Fitting in that is."
"If the project is re-branding, to update the image, get you in with the right people, let you do… what it is you do, how can we test that out? I don't want to send you out in the world to fail. I think we need some kind of test."
"A test… I think you worry too much. Things always have a way of working out."
"Working out? How do we know if we've been successful? Marketing is about immediate results, not letting things fall as they may. I know you are used to these generational things, but that's not the way it works anymore. You only have one moment to capture anyone's attention these days."
"If you think so… I was always big on three chances. Building the tension. Or a riddle. Some sort of test that seems easy but isn’t. Or is so easy that the person overthinks it and assumes what they want is what they want but what they really want is what they already have."
"No," Natalie cut her off, "I think you misunderstand. Let's say you were a new kind of ice cream. We wouldn't just make 10,000 gallons of that ice cream without first letting people taste it, just a small group of people, and they would say that they wanted a few more chocolate chips or more creamy."
"A preview?"
"Before we make the final edits. So to speak."
That afternoon Natalie and Gertrude took a long, long walk by the lakefront and discussed various options. The point of the enterprise had seemed clear to Natalie before, but now that it came to a test, what she'd been trying to accomplish grew murky and muddled. Did Gertrude want to fit in? Did she want to pass? Was she hoping to be a "modern hag," whatever that might mean? Would success come through some sort of entrée into someone's confidence? An individual? A group? Some grand, spectacular display of "havoc"? A concept Gertrude liked but Natalie was still unclear on and unwilling to examine too carefully.
"Perhaps we could find you a date? If some nice gentleman asked you out on a date, that would show that you'd overcome your… difficulties and achieved acceptance?" Natalie saw Gertrude's protruding chin, the ragged earlobes, and the feet that seemed to grow bigger every week.
"Did you think this was about dating? I thought you had more imagination than that, Natalie."
"Of course. I have lots of imagination."
Natalie suggested a job interview, a sports league, charity work, running for school board, something that required affirmation and acceptance by peers, but Gertrude decried every suggestion as impractical or imprecise. Exasperated, Natalie sat on a bench facing the water. "I'm talking myself in circles. Everything I suggest, you tear down. Answer this question: What are we testing for?"
"Success, Natalie, success."
"That’s not an objective, that's a result. We have to know our aim."
Gertrude sat next to Natalie on the concrete bench. "No one will ever like me, Natalie."
"What?"
"How do I explain?" Gertrude folded her hands and placed them in her lap. Natalie had never seen her friend look so humane. "Remember what I said the first day we met? I'm not the hero of this story. I never will be. That doesn't mean I'm not a main character. So that leaves, well, that means I'm always going to be the villain, doesn't it? There aren't that many roles available. The good, the bad; the hero, the villain; the princess, the witch. They don’t write the part you're hoping I can play, dearie."
"Then, what? I mean, why?" An electronic beep cut Natalie off and she reached for her purse to pull out her planner, but it was Gertrude's that had gone off. "Since when do you have a planner?"
"I picked it up last week," Gertrude shrugged in a way Natalie'd never seen her do before. "I really have to go. I hope I'm not late." She practically sprinted away.
"Late for what?" Natalie called after.
"A job interview," Gertrude called over her shoulder.
Perplexed, Natalie wandered back to her apartment. How was it that Gertrude had a job interview? An interview for what? In her interactions, it had never occurred to Natalie that the woman might have marketable skills, apart from spells, curses, and a capacity for hyperbolic storytelling. The revelation that Gertrude might know how to type or use an espresso machine or perhaps file alphabetically had never been a consideration. More perplexing was the thought that Gertrude could and would take orders from a boss. If the supervisor annoyed her, would she turn him into a small woodland animal or an amphibious creature? Perhaps this was the best test of her success. If Gertrude was hired, wouldn’t that be affirmation of Natalie's abilities?
A few hours later, the buzzer rang and Natalie opened the door to a flushed, excited and winded Gertrude. "I got it!" Gertrude strode in the room, followed by a smell of nutty warmth, like a pine glade on a summer afternoon.
"The job? That's wonderful." Natalie smiled broadly. "We have to celebrate. Swamp water for everyone! But why didn't you tell me? We could have practiced interviews or resumes or something. Where is it?"
Suddenly, all ebullience left Gertrude and she seemed to grow as heavy as stone. "What kind of job do you think I'd want, Natalie? Truly, to fit into my goals. It had to be something influential. There aren't that many jobs left that are. Not really. I identified one several months ago, after lots of research, but you already had it." The room darkened, as if the sun fell behind some clouds, and a cool wind rushed through the room. The lists and charts she'd pored over and rearranged and color-coded flashed across Natalie's mind. "Remember what I told you about this story?" Gertrude shrugged. "It's the role I play."
Natalie gave a little laugh that sounded forced even to her own ears. Something like a cold hand grasped the nape of her neck and began to squeeze. Natalie's eyes dimmed a little and she felt a rush of blood to her brain.
"I'm afraid that I'll have to get a whole new wardrobe. I really don't have much to wear. I had to take back the little gift I put in your bank account a few weeks ago. Feel free to pay back the rest when you get a chance." Gertrude turned her head to the side to see all of Natalie's body. "The one thing they always get wrong is that it's all pleasure for us. As if I didn't feel any compunction of guilt at all. I'm capable of sadness too. Of feeling empathy for someone's bad times. You believe me, don't you Natalie?"
"Why wouldn’t I?" Natalie spoke in a small, constrained voice. "We're not living out a melodrama. Even the bad guys have feelings these days. Even they feel conflicted about evil."
"Of course we do." Gertrude turned and opened the front door. She turned and looked at Natalie, who was sinking to the floor.
"You'll do very well." Natalie focused on and talked to the hag's wide feet, unable to lift her head. "I believed you completely."
Gertrude took a step back into the apartment. "The thing is, dear, they will always need us. The princesses and farm laborers, and the insufferable children. Those types are interchangeable, a dime a dozen, might as well be factory knock-offs. The one's like us, Natalie, we are unique to each tale." Gertrude patted her protégé on the head like a forlorn puppy and closed the door behind.
Natalie could hear the clip-clopping of heels all the way down the street. She felt a hard bubble of air burst open in her colon and start to work its way through all the curves and turns of her intestines. It popped into her stomach and ricocheted off her spleen, knocked against her liver and bumped her heart before pushing aside her lungs and sticking in the hollow where her collarbone came together. She banged her head against the wall where she sat, hard, harder, harder. The lump stuck in her throat dislodged suddenly. Natalie heard a loud pop and felt something brush her face. She crossed her eyes and looked down and there was something on the tip of her nose. She wiped it with the tips of her fingers, but it wouldn’t come off. It was a hard, round wart.
Ivan Faute has published work in a variety of journals and anthologies. Also a playwright, his dramatic work includes productions in New York, Washington, Houston, and elsewhere. His play On Arriving, which traces a refugee’s journey as she searches for a safe home, will premiere at VAULT Festival 2020 in London. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and named a finalist for the Calvino Prize and the ATHE Excellence in Playwriting Award. He teaches creative writing at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. ivanfaute.org.