Earth's Sunny Solar System

 by

Kathryn A. Kopple

   

Robert Rauschenberg

    Small hands gripped the corners. It was a girl in a baseball cap and loose-fitting shorts with a puzzle in her hands. Her head was down as she studied the puzzle art on the box. Planets flung out across space with earth surrounded by a thick, blue halo off to the left. It was the most difficult puzzle in the store. All puzzles pose specific challenges but what counts is the number of pieces; this solar extravaganza boasted a thousand of them.

    I coughed to let the girl know she wasn’t alone in the aisle. She glanced in my direction, her round face half hidden under the baseball cap, fingers still gripping the puzzle box like talons. Kids grip only the things they want. Their little fingers are endowed with strength beyond their height, weight, stamina. They are also precocious, going after games and puzzles that their parents don’t understand or like—and most of all fear will wind up in a mess on the living room floor. I’ve witnessed the tug-of-wars between adults and children, and the adults generally win, but not before something ends up on the floor. The Earth’s Sunny Solar System was dropped a lot. “Now look what you did!” “You made me!” “Don’t talk back to your mother!” “But you promised!” “You don’t even like puzzles!” The quarrels nasty and dry-eyed repeating like an unhappy song chorus—and the Earth’s Sunny Solar System, caught in the middle, going nowhere but back on the shelf. And yet, despite past disappointments, I held out hope that this would be the day I’d finally sell Earth’s Sunny Solar System.

“Nice puzzle,” I said.

“Dope,” she replied.

I suggested we look inside and put out my hands.

She wouldn’t let go of the box. “The earth only looks blue from space.”

“Makes you realize how much they paid attention to the details when they made this puzzle.”

“It’s mostly blue. If it were all blue, the whole planet would be covered in water.”

“Excellent point.” I didn’t care if the earth were flamingo pink because all I wanted was to move that puzzle off the shelf.

“It’s going to happen. I read about the ground disappearing.”

“That would be wild. I guess anything could happen.”

“Anything does,” she said.

    I decided to redirect the conversation. “If that puzzle doesn’t interest you, I could show you something else. We have lots of games. Do you like Parcheesi?”

“I’m good,” she said.

“Yeah, that puzzle you’re holding is the best. Should we ring it up?”

“Maybe later.” The girl put the puzzle on the shelf and walked out the store.

    Puzzles have a shelf life. After a year on the shelf, the boxes take on a ravaged appearance. Earth’s Sunny Solar System was going on three years. I peeked inside to discover a spider that turned out to be a hermit crab. Alone and unshelled, the pitiful thing scrambled over the jumbled cosmos.

    I wondered how many hermits escaped their crab-it-tats—if they were hiding (and dying) all over the store. I hurried to check and found the lot of them in distress, climbing the silicon walls desperate to get out. The mice didn’t look particularly happy either. They were thin and mangy, and no one wanted them. A garter snake hissed as I walked by. A menagerie of hostility caused by shortages in the supply chain. The chain, I imagined, wound the globe east and west, north and south; it held the world together. Now, that chain was coming apart link by link. We’d soon have to start feeding the mice to the snakes—and where that would leave the hermits I had no idea.

    When I mentioned my concerns to the manager, he took a hit off his vape. “What do you expect me to do about it?” Then, back turned to me, he lapsed into reverie. Unlike the hermits, he appeared pleasantly lost.

“Uh, maybe I could have a hit?”

“You’re too young to vape.”

“I’m eighteen.”

“In answer to your question, no. And get back to work.”

“But the hermits…”

“Fuck if I know,” he said.

“That’s all you got for me?”

“Pretty much.”

    Days later, the hermits and crab-it-tats vanished altogether. I gave the manager a look. “Was there a seagull attack?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The crab-it-tats are gone.”

“Yeah, the crabs. Why are you bothering me about gulls?”

“Gulls eat hermits in the wild.”

He hit his vape. “You got some weird obsessions, that’s for sure.”

“Because I care about the hermits?”

“For starters.” Lemon haze poured out his nostrils. “It’s for the best.”

    I nodded, not because I agreed. I just knew—and that certainty gutted me. “Did you have to?” I got a rag and started dusting. People wandered the store lost in aisles of emptiness. Sometimes, they bumped into one another, saying “Excuse me” in zombified voices. No one shouted. No fights broke out. The sluggishness and monotony made me wish someone would start something. Time went faster when the kids and adults got into it. Or, when someone got caught shoplifting. It was store policy to take the offender straight to security. Her name was Lal. She was tough, like she’d been born to put people in a line up. She paced the catwalk (her name for the long plank held high in the air by two ladders) and, if she saw anyone sneaking around, she’d blast the suspect with her bullhorn. “You! In the Run-DMC t-shirt and cut-offs. Front of the store!” Typically, people would run, a stupid thing to do but people weren’t smart when stealing—always thinking no one was watching when no one escaped Lal. Maybe that was the real crime. Thinking they could get away with it. Not under Lal’s watch. She was a one-woman panopticon.

“Hey!”

“What!”

“How about you come up?”

    I hesitated. It never occurred to me what life up there was like—that I, a mere salesclerk, would receive an invitation from Lal on the catwalk. Things like that just didn’t happen. The catwalk was where Lal worked and the rest of us underlings kept to the aisles, cash registers, and restrooms. Everyone and everything in its place. My place was below while Lal worked from on high.

“Come on up.”

“Okay.” I stuffed the cleaning rag in my back pocket. The ladder shuddered. I looked up at Lal. In what universe was this a good idea? I made a few calculations. Lal weighed approximately 150 lbs. I weighed in at 140 lbs. Our combined weight might push the scaffold’s weight-bearing capacities too far. A net was called for, at the very least a bunch of boxes—anything to break the fall.

“What’s the matter? Afraid of heights?”

“Nope.”

“Then get your ass up here.”

I girded myself for the climb. It was a lot farther to the top than it looked. When I managed to pull myself onto the plank, I was panting hard. Sweat stung my eyes.

“Cat got your tongue.” Lal gave me a freaky smile. She reached out her hand. “Stand.”

“Up?”

“You can’t appreciate the entire effect sitting. You have to stand. It gives you added height.”

“I figured.” Closing my eyes (which really was the stupidest thing to do while suspended mid-air), I managed to get my feet up under me and stood. “The view! It’s wild.”

“You can see all.”

“I never knew.”

“You think I work this job for the lousy minimum wage! No, sir. It’s the rush that gets me out of my warm bed in the morning. Up here, I feel alive, free. It’s the best.”

    I glanced floorward. The linoleum looked hard, cold and cruel. There was always the chance I might survive a fall but, unlike Lal, I didn’t receive employee benefits. If I cracked my skull open, no HMO was going to cover surgery. I decided to sit.

    Lal remained on her feet. “I could weep to see the store. It’s so beautiful when filled with people. I see their happiness, like this one time a guy comes in. He’s very rich looking. Nice clothes. He has a woman with him. She’s also very rich looking. They have a child with blonde hair. A perfect angel. They buy bags of toys. The child gets a bunny. They don’t even try to steal anything.”

“That is amazing.”

Lal grew solemn. “I never had kids.”

“Me neither.”

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

“I wasn’t,” I said. “It’s just that we don’t get a lot of families these days. There was a little girl, though.”

“The one in the baseball cap.”

“I thought for sure she would buy that puzzle.”

“The one with the crazy cover and a thousand pieces.”

“It’s called Earth’s Sunny Solar System.”

“Whatever. She didn’t bite.”

“No, she didn’t.”

    Lal rested her hand on my shoulder. “If things keep up like this…” She paused, the logical conclusion to her thought difficult to articulate. Where would she go? Or me for that matter?

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “They’ll get the supply chain up and running. When they do, this place will be stocked to bursting, and you will be back in business catching the bad guys.”

“If only.”

I let her have a moment. The scene below was dreary. Shell-shocked customers going round in circles. Cashiers slumped over the registers. The manager walking the floor vaping. “I’m going down.”

“Stay a bit longer.”

“No, really, I’m on the clock. I should get down.”

“Your choice.”

    Easy for her to say. She loved it up there. She felt alive, free. I felt like I wanted to throw up. There’s no easy way off a plank. I had to roll over on my belly, kick out my foot till I found the ladder, then slide down until I could use my hands to hold on while I descended the rungs. I could feel Lal pacing above me. I closed my eyes and kept going. Above me, Lal cackled in amusement. I stepped away from the ladder. She waved down at me. I walked briskly to the bathroom, splashed my face with cold water, used the urinal, washed my hands, splashed my face, and used the urinal again.

    The following night, I stayed late. After the crab-it-tat fiasco, I wanted to make sure the animals lived through the night. I also figured that they had to notice what was happening, that they too felt the scarcity as keenly as the rest of us. My presence might offer some comfort.

    The door rang. I must have forgotten to lock up. “We’re closed!” At the end of Aisle C, near the front of the store, there was the girl in the baseball cap. “Oh, it’s you.”

“I want to do it.”

“Excuse me?”

“The puzzle. I want to do it.”

“And if I let you, will you buy it?”

“I don’t have money.”

“I can’t let you have the puzzle. I can let you look at the bunnies. But just for a minute. Then, you have to go. No one is supposed to be here after hours.”

“No one is here anyways.”

“Even more reason for you to go home.”

    She shrugged. Home didn’t seem to do much for her. I began to suspect there was more going on, like she was in foster care or homeless or… both. On the other hand, she looked fine. No visible signs of stress.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“It’s about to rain.”

    I went to check. I pushed against the door only to feel it push back hard.

“That’s the rain,” she said. “It’s coming.”

“It’s just the usual deluge for this time of year.”

She started down the aisle. “We should do the puzzle.”

    The rain started in, harder and faster; water rushed under the door, around it, over it. I grabbed the girl’s hand. “Up the scaffold.” She didn’t ask questions. She began climbing. I stayed below and spotted her. After she reached safety, I followed. The ladder rungs were slimy and slippery. The lights flickered. I kept climbing until I was able to ease myself onto the plank. “It’s here,” she said.

    I stared through my knees. The watery umbra sloshed up one wall and down another, sweeping along plushies, rubber balls, gift bags, costumes, deluxe Legos, light sabers—and dozens of other gizmos ripped from their packaging and bumping around in the shadows.

“It seems to have stopped,” I said with forced optimism.

“There’s more coming.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I saw it from my house.”

“Where’s your house?”

“It’s not there anymore,” she said. “It was washed away with the others.”

“That’s terrible.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked her name.

“The name I use?”

“Uh, okay.”

“Yessel.”

“That’s your username?”

“One of them,” she said.

    In an otherwise functioning world, I’d try to get more information from her—like, place of origin, age, and address. Right now, our address was the mess down below and our precarious refuge above. I felt cold, queasy. Yessel put her arms around me. We sat without speaking. Beneath us, the water lapped hypnotically as the store grew darker until only the red neon of the exit signs were visible—and soon they started going dark. “Are you okay?” I asked to remind myself I was alive and okay.

“It’s still coming in.”

“It’s stopped.”

“It’s coming closer.”

I pulled her arms tighter around my waist. “Yessel, it’s going to be okay. I promise.”

“We’re stuck.”

“Only till help comes.”

“We don’t have that long,” she said.

    I suddenly felt the water around my ankles, then my knees. I braced myself. There really was only one way out. We’d have to swim.

“What is it about that puzzle?” I asked her. I lowered myself slowly into the water.

“It’s how I always imagined it.”

“The solar system?” I treaded vigorously. The water was freezing.

“Except the solar system is a lot bigger than a thousand pieces.” She reached over to test the water. “It’s like ice.”

“Don’t think about it.”

    She slipped down off the scaffold. I grabbed her under the shoulders. “Put your arms around my neck and don’t let go.” I held her fast in the whipping current. The building groaned. The water shoved us up against the large windows. Above the sky had disappeared behind thick, greenish clouds. Yessel was still hanging on. I kicked out a foot and the store entrance collapsed. The water swept us out across the parking lot, down block after block, before we were spit onto a mound of land. We believed the worst of it was over, though the ground was a sponge and every step sucked us further into the ooze. Somewhere, a shuttle rocketed through space. Earth’s Sunny Solar System. Yessel and I struggled on, walking and sinking—and consoling ourselves with the idea that, if we could survive here, we could survive anywhere.

Credits:  This story first appeared in the December 2022 issue of Blue Mountain Review.