Tikibik

Dominic Blewett

Wildly in love, we did not pause to consider failure. Ina was ready to return home and I for a new adventure. We moved quickly, recklessly, uprooting our lives and flinging them across the globe.

Neither of us secured work in advance, and had eaten through our savings by the time Ina found a job. I had signed up with the agencies and been asking for work every day, but couldn’t get hired without speaking the language. Ina had been supporting both of us for months. Her pay, which barely covered rent and bills, couldn’t stretch to language lessons, and she had neither the time nor energy to teach me herself. While I festered in our sublet, wrestling with a grammar book, she traveled to the other side of the city to earn the money that would keep us afloat. Sometimes when she got home, she would ask me how was my holiday. Some holiday.

Finally, a job had come up. No language necessary. All I needed to do was take myself and a professional-looking camera to a theater in the city center, and I would get paid. The job sounded stupid. I had been hired as a photographer for a film premiere, but didn’t have to take any pictures. And it wouldn’t earn me much. After subtracting the cost of the bus rides to and from the location, plus out to the agency to collect my pay, there would be almost nothing left.

“Just do it,” Ina said when I complained. “It’ll be good for you to get out of the apartment.”

“Good for me or good for you?”

“Both.” Already she looked tired.

Outside the theater, glowing boxes contained posters of the film with foreign words all over them and the faces of actors I didn’t recognize. The red carpet stretched out of the building like a tongue. I followed it back through the lobby into the foyer, where it was cordoned off on one side by a thick black rope and lined on the other by a floor-to-ceiling board with the name of the film and its sponsors repeated all over it. I looked around, unsure what to do. I heard a voice and saw a short, gray-suited woman with a tight blonde ponytail coming toward me. We looked at each other for a moment. Then she said something I didn’t understand, followed by, “English?”

I nodded. “If that’s okay. I’m learning, but…”

“It’s okay. I speak a little. Agency?”

“Yes.”

“Nadja,” she said, putting a hand on her chest. “Come.”

She led me through a set of glass doors to a tall, round table. Two other people were there—a mousy girl in a miniskirt with a large mole on her top lip, and a stocky guy with a long, stiff-looking perm—each with a camera slung over their shoulder. We nodded at each other. I took my girlfriend’s camera out and hung it around my neck.

“We’ll do this in English,” said Nadja.

The Perm said something to her, and she tilted her head toward me and said, “Yes, but we all need to understand.” My cheeks burned.

Nadja looked at her watch and sighed. “Should be more than three of you, but we’ll start anyway.”

“The film is, obviously …” She said something that must have been the name of the film. “We need to photograph the guests as they arrive on the red carpet. We don’t need their pictures, so it doesn’t matter what your photos look like. Just point and shoot.” Needlessly, she mimed photographing. “Point. Shoot.”

“Why do you need us if you don’t need the pictures?” said The Perm, then to me, “Sorry for my English.” He put his thumb and forefinger close together. “I speak just a little.”

I felt my cheeks redden again. A little, everyone said, meaning fluent. “No,” I croaked, “it’s great.”

“We need to fill the line. Our guests must feel like they’re being photographed,” said Nadja. “The promotion company worries that no press will come tonight, with, you know,” her fingers tickled the air, describing snow, “the weather. Could be embarrassing.”

“How will we know who to photograph?” said Mole Girl, glancing at me apologetically.

“Take everyone’s picture. But it’ll be obvious who the VIPs are.”

She took us back through the glass doors to the red carpet and said, “Stay behind this rope. And spread out so it looks like there’s a lot of you.”

She left, and the three of us stood against the rope. I practiced saying the name of the film under my breath, trying to get the sounds to match what I saw: Guchkurnocenenen; Crchkochnikienen. I asked The Perm to pronounce it for me. “Tikibik,” he said, or something like that. Then, in English, “It means: I’m Not Here.” I asked him to repeat it in his language, my voice too quiet perhaps, or sad, as without reply he turned to take test shots of the board on the other side. Swallowing a sigh, I did the same. Then the camera died. Although I knew it didn’t matter, I cursed Ina’s lack of foresight, then, dimly remembering her telling me the battery might need charging and that I should “just in case,” cursed myself for cursing her. At the door, people started to arrive.

Security checked their tickets and sent them along the red carpet. Most looked bewildered, giggling with each other as we pointed our cameras at them. The Perm was best at getting people to stop. He would shout something like “Sskm!,” point aggressively at his lens, and they would shuffle over to the board. Me and Mole Girl didn’t need to say anything; The Perm would shout, they’d get into position, and we’d shoot.

Before long, the pros arrived. They ducked past us to the foyer, dumped their coats, then scurried back to the entrance to pass us again in their elegant clothes, preening in front of the board. The women pouted, one arm dangling by their side and the hand of the other resting on their hip. The men faced us with hands in pockets, smiling first, then serious, close-lipped, cheeks sucked in as they bit the inside of their mouths. And with the arrival of these pros, we changed too. We pleaded with them to look directly into our lens. We jostled for position, forcing each other out of the way. I leaned into The Perm and he pushed back. He forced his camera in front of mine, blocking my view. One of the young women from the movie poster turned up on the arm of an older guy with a thick scarf and a large, shiny head. Desperate, I trod on The Perm’s foot, and he elbowed me hard in the ribs, winding me. I managed to fire off a few shots while doubled over, but I doubt they would have come out well.

After the poster girl and the man with the shiny head, the flow on the red carpet died. We stood there for a while longer, Mole Girl red-faced and staring straight ahead, me rubbing my side and glaring at The Perm, and him looking pleased with himself and ignoring me, flicking through his shots.

“Get some good ones?” I said.

“Some are nice,” he replied, tilting his screen towards me. I didn’t look.

Nadja appeared and asked us to follow her upstairs. The director would be giving a speech before the film and she wanted us there. Mole Girl looked at her watch, then said something to Nadja, who replied crossly before turning to me. “One hour overtime, paid, okay?”

“Okay.” Now I would make a profit. As we crossed the foyer, I texted Ina: Overtime pay. Groceries on me.

We walked up the staircase, through a bar area, then down the aisles of the buzzing auditorium.

“Take photos of the audience, and the director talking,” said Nadja. “When the film starts you can go.”

We fanned out. As my lens scanned the rows, people raised glasses of wine at me and smiled. I pressed the shutter button. They gave me thumbs-up and I gave it right back, reassuring them that I had taken a good one. Eventually, the lights dimmed. A spotlight hit the plinth beneath the screen, and a man with a microphone mounted the stage. I crept to the front of the room and crouched close to him as he addressed the audience. I listened for words I understood. Other than the word like “Tikibik” The Perm had said, there were very few. He then introduced the man with the large gleaming head, who spoke for a long time, also saying “Tikibik” every so often. The other things he said must have been entertaining, as the audience kept laughing, and after a while I did, too, whenever they did. I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t taking photos anymore.

Then he left the stage. Everyone clapped, including me, and the film started. I walked quietly up the dark slope of the aisle to the door and out into the empty bar. The city lights shone distorted through the wet snow sliding down the outside of the floor-length windows. I checked my phone. There was a message from Ina: About time. Can’t do this anymore.

My heart sank. I tried to send a reply as I descended the staircase, but nothing came. As always, I felt guilt for being the source of our struggles. Sore at the life that needs money to oil it, and the lack of it that hurts. Another message arrived: Sorry. I mean, that’s a relief.

I met Nadja coming the other way. “Great job,” she said. “I’ll be in touch when we have more work. Many premieres in the city.” I hummed a silly tune as I texted Ina: Good news – more jobs coming.

I was getting ready to leave when I saw someone descending the stairs from the auditorium. It was the director, wrapping his gigantic scarf around his neck and shrugging on an overcoat. He walked out into the night. After him came two women, chatting, putting bare arms through coat sleeves as they left the building along the red carpet.

“He kept on talking as if we were having a conversation. Like the rest of them, talking talking talking all around me.”

I followed and saw the women catch up with the director, link arms and walk on, plumes of breath hanging amber above them in the snow-haloed streetlights. I started after them, then hesitated. I saw my bus arriving in the distance and ran across the road to the stop, skidding once on a patch of ice. The doors hissed open. As I stepped in, the driver said something to me—I shook my head, felt myself blush—then spoke again more forcefully. I put all the coins I had on his tray and let him take what he wanted. He said something else. “Yes, yes,” I replied, scooped up my change, ripped the ticket off and found a seat.

My leg vibrated. I took out my phone. Just one word: Good. I wished I could see Ina’s eyes, hear her voice to know how she would have said it. So things are looking up now, right? I replied. The slight hope that had begun to infect me after Nadja’s parting words was dissipating, and I was sinking back into the strange puddle of fear, gratitude, and resentment I had been drowning in since coming here.

“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” Ina had told me.

“You mean ‘we,’ don’t you?”

“I guess.”

Another time she said, “You’re a different person since we moved. Like you’re not even here.” Her chin cupped in her hands.

I’m not here, I wanted to say, but didn’t, unsure of what it truly meant.

“Is it me?”

“It’s not you,” I said, then, as I opened my mouth to say something else, my mind went blank. Was it her? Or was it me? And if I was no longer myself, how would I know?

Anyway, she was right. I did feel like someone else: the trembling hologram of an actor in a strange theater, playing an unfamiliar part without direction or prompts. The vast invisible eye of the audience looking down. My leg quivered. I took out my phone again. Nothing. A phantom.

Looking out at the street, at the passing beat of its lampposts, I deepened my breath, which was coming short, and tried to swallow away the tightness in my throat. I turned the night over in my mind. Why had the director left his own film? I’m sure he had seen it many times, so it might make sense for him not to stay. But why hadn’t there been a limo waiting for him, or at least a taxi? Maybe, I thought, he wasn’t the director. Perhaps the women, too, were pretending. I imagined the theater emptying, the audience spilling out into the streets, leaving the film to play to itself. All of them actors, just like me, hired to pretend to be someone they weren’t, to earn money that was pretending it wasn’t already spent.

I looked around at the passengers. Many had the same kind of thick scarf, like a giant neck brace, as the director. Suede jackets were popular too, and most of the women wore an identical purplish shade of lipstick—Ina’s color. White socks poked from under trouser legs. As if they had been dressed by a costume department.

At the front of the bus, the driver’s face hung in the rearview mirror, the stubble on his cheek washed rhythmically by the streetlights. Was he looking at me? Quickly I looked away. Maybe he wasn’t real either. Maybe the real bus driver was on holiday under palm trees and a brilliant blue sky, and had hired someone to pretend to be him while he was away. And maybe that person had then hired someone else to do the job they were supposed to pretend to do. Maybe everyone around me was pretending to be somebody else. Hired by the agency to fill the bus and save the company embarrassment.

Dark snow spattered against the window, melting the streetlights. At this hour, pedestrians were few and far between and merely indistinct shadows when they came; dark, wavering blots painted on the pavement. I closed my eyes and tried to cool my forehead against the window. The engine hummed and vibrated. Unintelligible words murmured around me. I became drowsy and eventually dropped off.

I dreamt of a bloodied head rolling along tarmac, then woke with a start. It took me a moment to remember where I was. The seat next to me had been empty, but now a thickset man sat in it, his leg pressing against mine. A strong smell of suede wafted from him. He glanced at me, said something, and looked away. As I blinked at the deep folds in his neck and tried to remember where I was, I thought of something I had seen on the news. On a bus traveling through Canada, one passenger had decapitated another while he slept. I wondered if it had been like this; the attacker waking lost to find someone he didn’t expect next to him, someone he wasn’t sure was real, and using his knife as a test. I imagined a thick red line opening at this man’s throat.

He spoke again.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t understand.” But he kept on talking as if we were having a conversation. Like the rest of them, talking talking talking all around me. These people who could probably speak English better than I could, who could possibly all be English and just making this language up. To invent a foreign country.

Rattled, I decided to get off the bus early and walk through the park. I leaned across the jabbering man to press the button, and the bell rang like the recording of one. The passengers grew quiet, and my neighbor turned to me and said something. Did he think I was also hired to ride until the end of the line? “I’m not,” I said. Too loud. My voice a strangled, barely recognizable bark. I pointed outside. “Here,” I said, more quietly, “I get off here,” standing, squeezing past legs in the aisle, trying not to make eye contact. I wondered if I would be allowed to get off. The bus heaved to a stop and I stepped out into a deep dark pool of icy slush.

I leapt, swearing, onto the pavement, the words lost in the growl of the bus pulling away. For a second I felt tears about to come, but they receded as I took a freezing gulp of air. I looked both ways along the street. There was no one around, no traffic either. The world was still and hushed, the way it always is around snow. But instead of calming me, it made my thoughts louder, crowding in, chasing me along the path. Heavy snow was coming down, thick flakes catching on my eyelashes. It was so cold I felt like my skin had been torn off. I walked faster.

My phone vibrated, and I jumped. Pulling it out, I tapped the screen, which flared an eye-watering white in the dark.

Send 10 photos by tomorrow so the agency knows you were there. Red carpet, speech. No photos no pay. Nadja.

My heart kicked. I started typing, squinting at the words—But …—when there was a swishing sound. I looked up, and in the bright rectangle stamped on my eyes, I saw the outline of a face. I fell backward with my arms out, waving them around and yelling. I thudded onto my back and thought I saw a figure leaning over me, but I was blinded by the trails of light from my phone.

I was crying out, all the words in that language I could think of, some not even, saw a flash of teeth or an eye, felt a hand on me, and I thrashed around, now saying, “Tikibik tikibik tikibik” over and over, thrusting with my arms and legs until I was exhausted. Then I rolled and rolled to the side and jumped to my feet, shining my phone around, panting and whimpering kind of, melting snow trickling down my spine.

There was no one. Lights from traffic back the way I had come brushed against the trees, wiping their shadows over me.

I walked quickly, sobbing, wiping my eyes and shivering. In no time I was out the other side of the park, slapping the snow from myself and stamping my feet as I hurried along, trying to get the feeling back.