Free The Bed Moved by Rebecca Schiff Page B

switching to a five-star system.”
    The note stayed up for weeks, but the man who did my highlights never came back. I thought about calling him up, but I didn’t want stars. That would make me feel like a restaurant.
    —
    MY BREASTS got an eight. That was a surprise, considering their average buoyancy. I wondered if one of my raters was getting soft on me. Maybe he was into me now, the speed at which my appendages shipped, the re-taped box, the packing peanuts. Maybe he just liked nipple hair. I like it. We have to stay sentimental about one flaw, coddle our attachment to something, so we can do extreme violence to the rest. It’s like how the president has a dog.
    —
    “ARE YOU CRAZY?” asked my mother.
    “I have to live my life,” I said.
    “Rate your life,” said my mother. She left messages saying she was just calling to say hi, but when I called back, it was always more than that.
    —
    MY NIPPLES came back bruised. Someone had been gnawing on them.
    I held for an operator while an automated voice asked me to rate my call so far. The operator, when I reached her, said that she would strive to address my concerns to the best of her abilities. I told her my concerns. The operator said that Rate Me could not be held responsible for damages incurred during the shipping process. Also, might I consider electrolysis on my nipples? They had a guy. He was very good.
    “Packages don’t bite nipples,” I said. “And don’t women over there do anything besides answer phones? Women have broken into electrolysis in the non-rating world.”
    The operator assured me that she had many job responsibilities, then asked if I wanted the truth about my ass. I didn’t want it yet. An ass rating meant new skirts to hide flaws, or to show off the ass you didn’t even know you were hiding. I had already let the Rate My Wardrobe people into my closet. They let women do the closet, or at least hold the trash bag.
    “You could be an operator-rater,” I said to the operator. “You could rate voices. Voices are underrated.”
    “Silence, too,” she said. “I’m going to need you to hold for just a moment while I fetch a supervisor.”
    “No, wait, Linda, don’t bother. I’m terminating my membership, effective immediately.”
    I had no idea if her name was Linda, but saying “effective immediately” made me feel strong. I had quit dating sites with the same terminology. I had stopped wilderness catalogs from coming to my home.
    “Rate Me is sorry to see you go,” she said. “We thought parts of you had potential.”

World Trade Date
    SHE WENT ON DATES with guys who’d been there. They seemed to be doing a lot of dating, the ones who’d escaped, and claimed to be humbled, but they were usually as humble as guys who hadn’t been there. The only ones humbled were the ones who hadn’t escaped, maybe, but they were out of the dating pool. She felt sorry for her dates, regardless. It seemed sad that to sit in a bar with her was what you did when you got your life back.
    You also moved to Brooklyn. You got your life back in Brooklyn. Guys who had designed web pages in or near there left to design web pages in Brooklyn. One of them showed her his pages. He had designed for a bakery, a congressional aide, an aunt. They looked at his pages for two hours, then had intercourse.
    “I had a really nice time,” he said.
    She and another guy got a ticket for trespassing by the river to watch the sun set over what was no longer there.
    “I would have never done this before,” said the guy, as they climbed through a hole in a fence about to be gentrified out of having holes.
    She was grateful to the cop for interrupting the sunset, any requirements it might have had. The guy told the cop there should be a sign. The cop sighed. He handed them each a summons and pointed to the fence.
    “In New York State,” he said, “your fence is your sign.”
    Had the cop been there? If he’d been there, he probably wouldn’t be here,