"Retrospect" by A. J. Bermudez
From our Summer 2022 issue, guest edited by Jose Diego Medina. Click here to purchase the print edition and click here to purchase the digital version.
A sign appears above the shop on 14th Street: Beauty Is in the Eye.
We laugh when it’s installed. Beyond the comically quaint storefront, the antiquated clapboards, and the aforementioned sign swinging idly from the awning, one can see clearly, through the smeared glass of the front window, that the interior is empty. Weeds sprout from the cracked concrete floor. Ivy trickles down the walls at odd angles. At the center of the space, a gaping rift in the concrete glows with the embers of an unattended campfire. The roof, of all things, is simply absent. (Was there a roof before? Surely there must have been.)
We are united in our eye-rolling, our smirks. We are not so much disturbed as amused. There’s something rustic, nostalgic even, about the scent of the campfire that wafts through town at all hours. Something magical about its glow, half-obscured by the fountain at the center of the square.
Over the coming weeks, our amusement shifts to annoyance, then, gradually, curiosity. More and more people enter and exit the shop, ostensibly to see what all the fuss is about. They emerge in one of two ways: scoffing and guffawing, typically within moments of entry, or hours later, gazing up toward the sky like a baby seeing its first balloon.
More weeks pass. The sky, tinged with smoke, edges from blue to light blue, then a drained shade of white-grey. Farmlands curl into dry, barren patches of bald earth, although the farmers seem inexplicably pleased. The forest around town grows withered and gnarled, pale with the first signs of decay. “The season,” we say. “The winter. That’s all.”
People go missing, and there’s a kind of charm to the mystery. These same people are found, at unpredictable intervals, in odd poses about town. Lounging in the home of a rival, confident that it’s their home. At the local hall, giving a lecture on a topic about which they know nothing. Splayed (just that once) in an outline of blood, arms spread wide, as though having fallen while attempting to fly.
Curiosity festers and gnaws, claws and swells, until one day, I visit the shop. Outside the entrance, two women are hunched, cooing, over a mongrel nibbling the limb of a dessicated, unidentifiable animal. “How beautiful,” one of them says softly.
I enter the shop and, almost instantly, as though a bell had been rung, the shop owner appears. He’s astonishingly dapper, suit-clad, with all the trappings of a typical shop owner. He smiles conspiratorially. “Here to see what the fuss is all about?”
I feel myself blush. Why lie? “Yes,” I say, “Why else?”
The shopkeeper tilts his head toward the fire. “What do you see?” he asks. “Fire,” I say.
He laughs. “And what do you wish to see?”
I stare into the fire. Here, from the inside, the wall-crawling ivy, laced with shadows, makes sense. The sky above is breathtaking. (Why have we ever had roofs?) The flames lap and lull with a kind of low-slung genius.
“I wish to see things as they were,” I hear myself say. I surge with embarrassment, but the shopkeeper smiles.
“Expensive,” he says, “but worth it.”
He guides me to a storeroom at the back of the shop, converted to a minuscule clinic. Above a cloth-covered cot, a trio of surgical lamps is perched, nimble and elegant as long-necked birds.
In answer to a question I haven’t yet asked, I’m handed a menu. Prices are listed, in escalating order, alongside a smattering of items:
More handsome husband.
Well-behaved child.
Good weather.
Prosperity.
“Magic, I know,” says the shopkeeper, as though he, too, is chagrined by the premise. I sit on the edge of the cot, dizzy from the smoke.
“People see what they want to see,” he continues. “In a sense, this is merely a formality.” He scoots a slick white device toward my head. “Simple laser eye surgery,” he says, and through the lens, I can see a wealth of glass reflected on glass. A kaleidoscope of possibility. At center, the laser, warning-red.
“When were you thinking?” he asks, attentive and casual as if he were asking my favorite ice cream flavor.
“When things were good,” I hear myself say.
He nods, and I can see in this nod that I’m not the first to have said this.
“Open your eyes for me,” he says.
In the weeks to come, I am stunned by the beauty of the world. The sky has never been so blue, the water so clear. Neighbors who seemed moronic are suddenly sensical, not obese but robust, gracefully aging into strong opinions and the splendor of prestige.
Sounds, occasionally, are odd. I wake, one night, to the sound of sirens, but am relieved to find not a crime scene but a parade. In the morning, there are bodies on the pavement, still, presumably, passed out from the festivities.
Weeks pass. There are more parades than usual.
I’m delighted for the happiness of the populace, respectful of the partygoers passed out in the square each morning. I’m thrilled by the appearance of roses, violently red, planted in unexpected splotches and tendrils throughout the square. I’m puzzled but unfazed when the roses are cleared each morning.
Nonetheless, despite the air of festivity, there is something to be said for peace and quiet. I make my way to the edge of town, past the drained fountain, the closed shops (owners on holiday, no doubt), where the forest has grown more verdant than ever. Here––I remember from childhood––there’s a cornfield that produces the most perfect, succulent corn. As of now (on account of the season), it’s flat and lush with grass, green as an emerald, struck through with stones roughly two feet high––markers, no doubt, of where the various corn strains will go. I sit at the edge of the field, breathing the cleanest air imaginable, beneath a sky brighter, bluer than it’s ever been, and wait for the corn to grow.
A. J. Bermudez is the author of Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, winner of the 2022 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her work can be found in Creative Nonfiction, Boulevard, Story, Chicago Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.
