I wanted to install a vent into my body, so I went to the hardware store. The idea was to ask the man behind the counter if he could help me, but it wasn’t a man behind the counter. It was a woman. This wasn’t what I had been expecting, but I decided it was too late to turn back. Also, I wanted the vent installed as soon as possible. She was wearing a vest that said Team Member.
“I want to install a vent into my body,” I said to her. “Can you help me?”
“What kind of vent?”
“A small one. Square, aluminum.”
“Where do you want to install it?”
“Nowhere too visible. But nowhere too intimate, either.”
“In that case, I’d suggest installing it on the side of your torso, below your gallbladder and above your large intestine. That’s a common place for men who don’t want anything too intimate to have vents installed.”
“I see. I’m not the first?”
“No one’s the first to do anything, sir. Not anymore.”
“I suppose that’s true.” There was a pause. “So, can you help me?”
“I can show you what we have.”
“I would appreciate that.”
“Follow me.”
She led me to a display near the back of the store. There were vents of all shapes and sizes sitting on shelves or hanging from pegs in their packages. They were all silver or black or somewhere between silver and black. Their grilles and slats were beautiful to me. I felt good about the idea of everything I wanted to vent from my body being expelled through one of these vents. The woman who was a Team Member watched me as I perused the selection. She didn’t look happy or sad or even bored. She just watched me. Eventually, I picked out a polished silver cube with slats. It was three inches to a side. This felt like the size that was right for me, and I liked the angle at which the slats lay.
“I’ll take this one,” I said. “Can I get it installed in-store?”
“Our surgeon is the only one that’s supposed to do things like that. He isn’t here today.”
“Oh. Can’t you do it?”
“I’m not supposed to.”
“I’d really appreciate it.”
“You wouldn’t feel uncomfortable having a woman’s hands on your body?”
“I might, but I think I can take it.”
There was another pause.
“Okay,” she said, eventually.
We went through a clear plastic curtain into an employees-only area. She had me take my shirt off and climb onto a metal workbench and lie on my side. The metal was cold and it made me feel a little cold as well. A small electric fan pivoted back and forth on a folding table nearby. I stared at it as she rubbed me down with gauze soaked in isopropyl alcohol. A moment later I felt my skin being parted, and the hard flatness of the cube being fit carefully into the opening. It was true that I found it difficult to have her hands on me, but it was also true that I was able to take it. I kept my attention fixed on the pivoting fan. It would pivot one way, then the other. It did this abruptly, in sudden jerks. Then, I felt my skin being closed back up around the new, hard flatness. She was finished. The whole process had taken about fifteen minutes. I sat up and examined myself. The vent had been fit snugly into my side. It only jutted out a little bit.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t tell anyone about this,” she said.
“I won’t. This vent is just for me.”
“Don’t forget you still need to pay for it, either.”
“Of course.”
“You know, while I was working on you it occurred to me that there’s no one out front. The store has functionally been left unattended.”
“Does that worry you?”
“It does if something is missing. It does if my boss finds out.”
“Well, I appreciate what you’ve done for me. I hope it doesn’t cause you any trouble.”
“Hope is a luxury,” she said.
We went back out. It seemed like the store was deserted. When I thought about it, I realized I couldn’t remember seeing anyone in the store before, either. As far as I knew, it had just been me and the woman who was a Team Member the entire time.
“It doesn’t seem like anything happened,” I said. She didn’t say anything.
I followed her to the register. The price of the vent was seven dollars and twenty cents. I gave her a five dollar bill, two singles, and a quarter. When she opened the cash drawer to put them away and get my change, she shrieked. There was a pale white snake coiled inside and it was too fully itself for either of us to bear. Looking at the snake, it was like all the air had been sucked out of everything. It was like I was standing on the surface of the moon. I understood then that I shouldn’t have wanted to install a vent in my side, but it was too late. I would have to live with the consequences of my actions, and I did.
Around thirty years later, I was lying on a beach in a part of the country near where Tallahassee used to be and I saw the woman who had been a Team Member again. I recognized her immediately, but I didn’t go up to her. She came up to me. It was her decision.
“Hello,” she said. “I see you still have your vent.”
“I do.”
“Has it been satisfying for you?”
“I guess so. Everything that comes out of it is something I don’t have to think about anymore.”
“That sounds nice. That sounds nice living that way.”
“Thank you. Sometimes it is.”
“My life hasn’t been so nice.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I had a child. A daughter. That gave me so many things to think about. I loved her, and eventually I felt awful about it. And there was nowhere for my feelings to go.”
“Why didn’t you go to your surgeon?”
“He was gone by then. Everyone was gone by then. I was running the store by myself. I still am. No one else wants to do it. No one else cares anymore.”
“I care. You helped me a lot.” This wasn’t entirely true. I cared, but it was complicated. My feelings towards her, and what she had done for me, were actually fairly ambivalent. If she was about to ask me to loan her money save her business, I was prepared to tell her I wasn’t able to, even though I easily could have.
“Thank you,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. It is what it is. My daughter understands. She’s grown now. When you grow up, you come to understand a lot of things, even though you forget other things.”
“That’s true.”
“Everyone understands. I’m easy to understand, I think. I’m a basic model. A system preset.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You don’t know anything about me. Not really.”
“I guess not. Is there something I should know about you, now that we’re both old, and so much has happened?”
“We’re not that old.”
“Maybe not. But we are.”
“Okay. I want children to be happy, even if nothing else is.”
“As a matter of principle?”
“No. Revenge.”
Just then, a plane went by overhead. It was the first one I had seen in years. There was a thin trail of white smoke coming from it.