This Location of Unknown Possibilities (9 page)

Early into the many-paneled conference proceedings—a hive humming with intellectual enterprise of varying merit—Marta had succumbed. She decided the ideal moment to “scratch an itch” (the phrase, along with “shit or get off the pot,” jumped directly from her father's stock of tart phrases, marvelous and vulgar but never repeated aloud) stood before her. Aged two years, give or take, the condition was entrenched, she admitted, resembling one of those inconsequential yet apparently chronic maladies of television commercials, like dandruff, winter dryness, and the terrible shame apparently caused by dingy carpets and coffee-stained teeth.
Or feminine itch
, Marta had thought. It appeared to be a syndrome only the right medicine could heal.

3
.

A
s she would for an oddly coloured mole, Marta had kept track of the rogue itch-sensation, and could identify the very second it had arisen, shark-like—cancerous?—and unbidden from a murky depth. On a Monday morning early in the autumn semester during a course about narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London, she'd been lecturing about
Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
. The mid-sentence epiphany—a cartoon incandescent light bulb illumination that caused her to stall, arms frozen in mid-gesture, and then react with a spontaneous, titter-spurring Cockney-accented proclamation: “Guvnor, I seems ta 'ave lost me train o' thought”—was unadulterated excitement. At the thought of a double life's prospects—pretense, danger, creative challenge—her pulse had quickened, the theatrical secrecy a kick too.

Long minutes later and in the refuge of her closed-door office, Marta could tell that the odd fleeting tingle in class hadn't entirely dispelled. Analyzed, the heightened sensation—racing blood flow and excited neurons, she presumed—looked analogous to creative fireworks, the febrile state identical to the promise of a budding writing project, when the sheer potential of the blank page appeared as an enigmatically wrapped and as yet unopened gift. Less diagnosable was the accompanying bodily symptom—vague: a shiver that transformed into a deep-seated and steady ember burn. A remotely sexual element lurked too. Then again, she'd smiled, it might as easily be gastric distress—a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese. Or: unrelated, a simple coincidence. When she resumed thinking about Mr. Hyde and alter egos, the peculiar shiver failed to recur.

At home that day Marta had changed into a robe, reclined on her thinking chair—she'd been told “slipper chair” was the proper name; and her request for custom upholstery in mossy velvet had delayed delivery from Quebec for an unaccountable eight weeks—and closed her eyes. She tinkered with a working definition of alter ego as growth, a creative act, a vehicle of self-expression, and not a panicked disorder.

Sliding her hand along the furry plush, she thought,
It's similar to this chair, a reflection of the range of my taste and interests
. Contrary to puritanical Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson and others, an alter ego didn't have to be a dire symptom, one indicative of injured consciousness or pathological
dédoublement
. Well, not necessarily anyway. Yes, nobody could deny
Sybil
and the genre's shattered mirror motif—such incoherent fragmentation, so hopeless a case. Fear and propaganda. A perfectly seamless and unified selfhood is a consolatory fiction, she concluded, irked to be quoting from a source she couldn't grasp. Salient-shaped words competed for her attention:
inhabitation
,
augmentation
,
polymorphism
,
masquerade
,
guise
.
With so many perspectives to consider, the possibilities tilted into the carnivalesque.

Worries about severe psychological abnormality tamped down, Marta had moved on to a less fraught topic: logistics.

Obviously, the location—a destination promising the least chance of the situation going awry—must also be the edenic place with the remotest likelihood of running into a colleague.

The standard moues of qualification aside, Marta respected guile and accomplished impromptu liars; though she could deceive when necessary, she required forethought and, if possible, cue cards. Without that preparation, she bungled lies, the stammering textbook examples limply ridiculous. Her sputtered improvised answer to “Marta, what on earth are you doing here dressed like that?” would sound glaringly awkward and false, peppered with inept prevarication that even a child could detect. Disastrous. From a secure distance the situation drew a smile; she'd rather eat glass than count the miserable real-time seconds of the concrete experience.

So: a different city, perhaps. Better yet, a neighbouring country. Curled on the chair, she'd pictured herself as vivacious and disembarking at an Alpine train stop, having shed off demure Marta Spëk en route. This new person, _______, would possess an icy Hitchcockian countenance, the exquisite angles of shoulder and cheek signaling
arrivisme
or perhaps
hauteur
. Marta had frowned. The woman—persistently French, a favoured affectation dating from junior high school—was untenable and risible, an elaborate surgical remake that owed as much to Kim Novak as to Cruella DeVil. A hopeless travesty. Even if she aimed for such an extravagant imposture, she'd never attain it.

When Marta had attempted a second version of the fantastical step off the train—a feasible charade, one based on her quantifiably modest capabilities—no new figure emerged. She only saw herself wearing the tan Burberry trench coat she'd splurged on last year. Evidently a merely superficial transformation would be a stretch.
Nonchalance
held greater promise than
hauteur
.
Where there's a will there's a way
, a voice chimed.

The perspective appeared off kilter, Marta came to realize. Assuming a role was not the same as a play or film she planned to watch or address in an essay.
No, the role created a unique kind of theatre in which she'd inhabit actor and spectator simultaneously. Even so, to step into that character and actually
scratch the itch
could hardly unfold as simply as that inadequate figure of speech implied. For the proper payoff the sensation had to register deeply, and not feel like the ironic donning of a costume, or a jokey thrift store wig on Halloween. True, changes could be cosmetic to a degree, a purchasable ensemble, but there needed to be substantial dimension, fathoms. Sweating thespian as well as skeptical audience, every outcome she foresaw corroded an already tarnished,
14–
carat resolve. Happily, the deflated state did give her insight into the practical challenges of split personalities and bigamy.

During solitary meals and quiet intervals sitting on transit, Marta had grown studious about the practical facets of the alter ego (the term itself sank into obsolescence, replaced by the lyrical, Bergmanesque persona). As for unconscious motivations or root causality, that persisted as a thread she'd resist pulling. “Trifling, I'll return to that later,” a mewling retort to the intermittent voicing of conscience, kept the overall transformative impulse alive.

There were pressing factors to make allowances for, Marta came to see. Sensitive to narrative triteness she'd fretted in particular about the
ne plus ultra
of the venue. And to complicate matters, clarity about what she'd like to have unfold remained tightly wrapped. To appear in public as
someone else
presented a moderate challenge; but to commit to interactive, unpredictable socializing—and colluding in the outcome of whatever contact instigated—only summoned the spectre of woeful consequences from foolish actions with inexplicable motivations. Farcical messes. Or worse: bad dates, as
Angel
's Mae would call them. Danger seemed a minor probability, but embarrassment loomed as certain as sunset.

Start small
, she'd thought, a grimace shaping seconds after. Typical Spëk. No, comfortable or not, a
leap
it would be, “of faith” the preferable, courageous figure of accompaniment. “From an office building window on Black Tuesday” bubbled up contrarily within minutes.

The challenge of the live performance caused vexation too. Even in high school Marta had shied away from publicity although she'd pined—acutely, in fact, a pale teenage Pushmi-pullyu—for the notoriety it might bring, agonizing about a two-line role in
Our Town
before finally perceiving the stymieing thinness of her skin. Speaking in full view on the gymnasium stage before a cold-eyed jury of peers for three consecutive nights, she'd predicted, would induce torrents of perspiration, if not cardiac arrest. Shame-faced while dying: nothing could feel worse. For the nights of the play's run, she begged for extra shifts at the part-time job at the cedar-shingled public library and tried with patchy success to stay attentive to a pet project, developing a better technique for efficiently shelving books.

Pondering the surfeit of hazards this performance might attract while seated in the Dark Tower and nestled within Undre Arms, Marta conjured an adult roster of preparatory choices. A drop-in acting class for improvisation? Toastmasters? A few hours of introductory pole dancing—
ladies, shake away your inhibitions?
Marta briefly entertained the ideas. She'd pulled away from that nettlesome hitch—having clearly understood the term performance anxiety—and thought
save it for later
. She stopped picking at the implications of
later
.

Setting, an easier challenge, puzzled her even as she enjoyed sorting the pieces. Hotel lounge: likely mistaken there for a working girl and subject to harsh questions from a management type. She'd seen
Pretty Woman
. Or else viewed as a lonely lady and prey to a self-styled rescuer or, worse, a wolfish ladies' man. A nightclub: too
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
? Noisy as well. Where else promised hope? A bookstore or library? Overly familiar, claustrophobic, not conducive to living conversation. Pie and black tea in a café, now that might work.
Just right
, as with Goldilock's chosen bowl: Marta could map her limits well enough.

And she'd mulled over attire too. Since being virtually anyone was not impossible, she could also dress according to whim. Then again, no one could tell the difference if she chose ordinary clothes in a foreign place. She'd opted against outlandishness, settling on a new persona-synched blouse as suitable. Outlawed: wig, costume, accent, complicated back-story. Onerously far from a core of truth, such props represented an overreaching acting exercise. Things might go—
would go
—askance.
And she'd be remiss to overlook the puckish need of the cosmos to throw an arbitrary complication into an ostensibly foolproof plan.

And last: the name. “I'm Marta” represented a complete failure of resolve, a shrinking away from the grand gesture. Sadie, she'd decided. Marta was acquainted with no Sadie, but the name had surfaced without effort. Old-fashioned and slightly exotic, but not freighted and antique (Evangeline) or silly (Chenille), Sadie would be both suggestive and inviting, hinting of ambiguous values, diaphanous cloth, and fragrant carnation. Better yet, she'd raise no alarms, no inquiries, and no smirks of incredulity.

Seeking to sabotage a worrywart nature, she'd resisted the urge to chew over hitches and chart probable consequences. Sadie she would be, one day.

For Sadie, Marta later purchased a tiny ampoule of Chanel No.
5
. Sadie's bouquet was “classic, but totally posed for a revival,” a clerk with a face modeled after an Art Deco doll had declared. “Perfect,” Marta said, having given up on sliding “poised” into the conversation.

Ideal in its own way, Boise, home of fervent Broncos fans she'd read, beckoned, a natural locale for Sadie's inaugural test run.

4
.

I
f the ensuing scene was not anti-climactic, neither could it truly be described as enthralling. Nor exciting; barely a molecule of intrigue existed for savouring. A bubble of relief buoyed Marta: at least the scene had steered clear of humiliation. As for dangerous, that concern melted away as soon as she'd entered the room. There'd been a belly murmur of excitement, at best; cold hands and nervousness—a distant cousin to the hoped-for ecstatic charge—seemed third-rate symptoms, letdowns.
Picaresque misadventure
, a dramatic unfolding for which she'd intermittently readied herself? Nowhere in the vicinity.

Whereas the pulp novel version of the excursion would result in terror (being hassled, at minimum, by a creep, and downhill from there), a torrid entanglement, intercourse, and morning-after remorse, or else Hollywood epiphanic (being hassled by a creep, experiencing being weak and helpless, taking a karate class, becoming self-reliant and empowered,
take back the night, grrl
), Boise's would-be narrative of danger turned out to be humdrum and uneventful, scarcely an episode, at moments on par with sitting in an airport waiting for the arrival of a delayed flight. No lady's man, no serial killer, no transvestite prostitute—
street-wise but tragic
—no honour roll student by day, no conversational pyrotechnics or improvised autobiography. An anecdote composed of virtually nothing, she saw.