The Shape of Things to Come

by CASEY MAUD

• ISBN13: 9780060084417
• ISBN10: 0060084413
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Isabelle, a woman in her thirties without any of the trappings of a grown-up life, has just been fired from her job at a San Francisco phone company. Returning to the midwestern suburb of her childhood, Standardsville, Illinois, she contends with her dating single mother, a neighbor who once appeared on The Honeymooners, and an ex-boyfriend. She also becomes a mystery shopper for a temp agency, posing as a variety of potential tenants for newly built suburban communities to access their exclusive services. Enchanted by the possiblities of disguise, Isabelle spins a web of lies that keeps the world at a distance until she unearths long-kept secrets that force her to rethink everything she thought she knew.

Excerpts

The Shape of Things to Come
A Novel

Chapter One

In the office bathroom, my image trembles back at me. Today marks my first-year anniversary at the installation division of a San Francisco phone company where I spend my days, when I'm not answering the phones, copying oversize cable installation maps. Every morning, I brace myself for the white-hot flash, flash, flash of the giant copy machine. Under the fluorescent yellow of the bathroom lights, my face has the glow of a freshly made-up corpse. The bathroom smells like a re-creation of a pine forest. "You'll look back on this someday and laugh and laugh and laugh," I say to myself in the mirror. I fake laughter. But, today, my hair pulled away from my face with a motley collection of barrettes and bobby pins, I have a grim realization. I am officially "in my thirties," and I have never had a grown-up hairdo.

I began at the phone company as a temp, then floated as a floater into a permanent position, under the catchall title of "administrative assistant." My hair never made the leap. Always in some transitional stage, aspiring to be longer or shorter, it is perpetually on the verge of an actual hairstyle.

What if I become the female version of those men who are constantly experimenting with facial hair -- one day a mustache, another day a five o'clock shadow, sometimes sideburns, occasionally a goatee? People, in describing me, will refer to me as that woman with the -- well, she had hair practically shaved to the scalp but now it seems to be growing out. You know, that girl, the one who is always experimenting with her hair. Isn't she getting a little old for that? I reclip a chunk of loose hair with a pink barrette I found last night, abandoned in a bar bathroom where I'd gone to seek refuge from my date, a man who went on at length about "spiritual athleticism." This morning, my hair stuck in permanent adolescence, I've lost the ability to deny life's weight.

Until today, my life had been a source of amusement. Bad dates and worse jobs were fodder for future stories told to my future husband and a close-knit circle of future friends in the comfort of my future home. I'd always harbored hope for better things, operating on the guarantee theory: Eventually you find yourself in that home, with that husband, with some small children who need you-- at the very least to reach things for them-with a job that makes you occasionally happy, with some money to buy your kids the things they need you to reach. But today my quivering reflection says to me: It is conceivable that you will work at the phone company and go home to Jell-O for the rest of your life.

"Jell-O?" My reflection nods.

I walk out into the empty office, all brown wall-to-wall nubbly carpet and the sharp edges of file cabinets stuffed with papers saved for an unspecified emergency. Flying toasters and bubbling fish screen savers are the only evidence of life. It is still early and I am the first one here. It's my day to prepare the coffee on the office chore wheel -- my boss's idea of office community.

I have no other option. I unbutton my white work blouse and let it slide to the floor. I unhook my bra, tossing it onto Louise's desk where it lands in her inbox. I kick one flat off at a time, sending them clanging into' the warped metal of Simon's desk. I step out of my sexless work skirt, roll off my nylons, climb on top of the copy machine, and go to work. I make a copy of my breasts and my torso. I've just finished my pelvis and the front of my thighs and flipped myself over when my supervisor, a fidgety man who sports a pencil-thin mustache, finds me on my back, pulling the top of the copy machine over me like a coffin lid.

"In this sort of situation," he says after clearing his throat, as if he were reading from the chapter in an office rules and regulations manual entitled "this sort of situation ... .. I won't be asking any questions. I'm afraid I have no choice but to let you go." He rocks back and forth on his heels. He nibbles on his pen.

But I want him to ask me questions. I want to explain that I am creating a life-size version of myself to stand in for me while I figure out how I ended up at this dead-end job, in this dead-end life, alone and without a plan. Instead, I laugh. Lastditch, end-of-your-rope, completely inappropriate, hysterical laughter.

"I mean, come on," I say, when I can talk again. "This is just a little bit funny, right? Me, naked, on top of the copy machine?" For a second, it seems as though this is the kind of ridiculous scene that could bridge the chasm between two people with no hope of connecting otherwise. I feel deep, and on a roll-deeply rolling, rolling deeply. I am a nine-to-five philosopher. I mean, the copy machine."

He can't even look me in the eye, though he's made looking me in the eye the main point whenever he asks me to answer the phones more politely or to call the copy machine repairman.

"Put your clothes back on and climb down from there," he says, blinking hard at the bubbling fish on a nearby computer screen. He turns and walks into the break room. I am wrestling with my nylons when I hear a loud "Christ on a crutch!" He stomps back in, his tiny mustache twitching. "You didn't even make the freaking coffee?" He breathes deeply in an effort to contain his rage. "Get out. Just get out."

When the electricity and the phone were turned off in my apartment, my work friends -- Louise and her husband, Simon -- offered me the foldout couch in their living room. They were very understanding. They would have killed me with their kindness.

The Shape of Things to Come
A Novel. Copyright © by Maud Casey. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from The Shape of Things to Come: A Novel by Maud Casey
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.