The Smiling Man

“Mateo, come!” His shout wakes me up. It takes me a moment to pin down who I am.

I’m Mateo.

“Mateo!” he calls again.

Sebastián is calling me from the shower. He’s my husband. I fling the comforter to the side and, with it, a dream already forgotten. We’re about to have shower-sexy-time We haven’t had shower-sexy-time in months. Not since Sebastián became an even bigger shot at the bank and started showering in the morning to crisp up, now that he has also given up coffee.

“Come quick!”

The sight of Sebastián’s naked hairy body jiggles my horniness loose, as if I were encountering his delicious nipples for the first time, impish through his coarse chest hair, or his stout hanging penis—borrowed blessings I enjoy when possible.

“Come in here,” he orders.

He isn’t in a sexy mood. Rather rattled. I swing the glass shower-door open.

“Take your clothes off!”

I’m quick to strip. I always am. I step in naked and semi-hard.

“Count my toes.”

I kneel on the warm shower tile. The water stings too hot on my back. Seems like Sebastián is boiling himself a new skin. I’m not complaining—a frizzy, eager part of me still hopes for sexy-shower-time. I count his toes. One, two...nine. Sebastián has nine toes total. My belly cramps. I recognize the empty fall of terror. He’s missing his right pinky toe. I count again, sweating for a way to reach ten, but one can’t simply conjure up a missing toe out of roaring distress.

“Nine, right?” asks Sebastián.

I graze each of Sebastián’s hairy knuckled toes one more time. Even in panic, I’m delighted to touch his toes.

“Nine,” I say.

“Count again, please.”

I count for a fourth time. In place of Sebastián’s right pinky toe there’s nothing: no scar, no tiny stump, no bone sticking out, no congealed blood, as if the toe had never grown.

“Your pinky toe is missing,” I say, pruned from the water and blushing.

Sebastián knows that when I blush I’m lying or, at best, hiding something. I’m terrible at deceit, but with the scalding water, the steam, and both of us panicked and sweating, Sebastián doesn’t clock my guilt. Besides, his missing pinky isn’t my fault. I didn’t eat it.

The man comes at night, stands by the entrance to our closet where moonlight and streetlight shine least, and smiles. His teeth are large, square, widely gapped, and bright. Each like a lamp carrying its own set of fluorescents. The rest of him is utter darkness, no eyes, no nose, no arms, no legs, the sleek tubular shape of an ironed-out ghost. The Smiling Man also wears a large wide-brimmed fedora, almost too wide to be taken seriously if he didn’t carry it with a panache that shuns the ridiculous. I’ve known this man since childhood, forever smiling in the darkest corners of the rooms I sleep in, quiet until he gets hungry. When I was six, he spoke for the first time, “Feed me,” he said, and ate my left middle finger down past the knuckle; at thirteen, he ate two-thirds of my right ear; at twenty-one a peach-sized chunk out of my calf. I let Sebastián think my body’s missing parts are birth defects, something old and irremediable. I don’t want him to realize I’m cursed. He’s too luminous to understand darkness.

“Should I make you an egg?” I ask.

Naked on the bed, Sebastián inspects his foot, wiggling the toes that are still there. I towel myself dry and gather slacks, a shirt, underwear and socks for Sebastián to wear, hoping he’ll soon register he has a job to go to and stow his missing toe in the back of his mind. I need to regroup, swallow my guilt, and stop sweating so I can keep pretending I have no clue what’s going on. I’m forty-two. I recklessly believed the Smiling Man had finally lost his appetite and remained with me only as a dark guardian angel sent by a god with a bizarre sense of what is comforting.

“Where’s my toe?” Sebastián asks in a high-pitched whisper, ignoring the clothes I’ve laid out for him.

I pull his head to my chest and attempt to squash his worry. In our two years of marriage he hasn’t been sick once. But the year before we got married, only a few months after I met him, he got mono and fussed as if Death were outside just waiting to ring his intercom. I nursed him with his favorite lima soup from the Yucatán stall at the market, served scalding. We watched arthouse films—films he finds comforting and I try hard not to sleep through. He’s trembling under my embrace. I kiss his head. If I had superpowers I’d make him forget all about his missing pinky. Zap! Although, if I did have superpowers, I would’ve gotten rid of the Smiling Man a long time ago.

His phone rings. I let his head go. He has tears in his eyes. I poke him with his phone. The name of one of his most important clients glows on screen. He shakes his head. The phone goes silent. What now? Will he want to go to the doctor? Have a million tests done? They’ll find nothing wrong. The Smiling Man isn’t a medical condition.

His phone rings again. “Seems important,” I say.

Sebastián ventures no effort, and I answer for him.

“She says it’s urgent,” I whisper.

He takes the phone. His voice comes out thin, and he asks his client for a second. He clears his throat, straightens himself up, and finally speaks as if his toe weren’t missing. “I’ll take care of it.” He hangs up. He accepts the pair of socks I hand him and slips them on without looking.

“I have to go.”

I nod.

He stares at me as if I should stop him. As if I should tell him he’s crazy to put work over a missing toe, but I smile and kiss him goodbye.

I list things when I’m frazzled. I list the friends I met when I lived in Berlin, after I’d lost my first two loves and decided not to love deeply ever again, when I was easier with my skin and my drugs and I swung naked over the Spree on a makeshift swing waiting for the sun to rise, before I came to Mexico City and met Sebastián. There was Leni who thought I’d be a famous artist one day—I crocheted such pretty things. There was Akiko who photographed flowers and printed them so small, but printed so many that she covered an abandoned wall—of the many that stood in Berlin—and transformed it into a portal glittering in miniscule flower-shaped fairies. There was a guy who fanned himself with a red paper fan, a fan he later gifted me because he liked the way I danced, a fan I keep tucked inside one of my desk drawers. I was someone else then. Almost darkless. A Mateo swinging naked waiting for the sun to rise.

In our closet, I list Sebastián’s dress shirts, nothing too attention seeking, pressed into stiffness by his beloved iron. I list his shoes: brown wingtip oxfords, black simple oxfords, burgundy tassel-loafers, two pairs of dress sneakers—white and indigo—and two pairs of bright running shoes—pink and orange. I wear his brown oxfords, my feet dancing inside them, and I become horny just sensing his feet’s residual warmth. Where I now stand wearing my husband’s shoes, the Smiling Man stands at night. Perhaps he too likes to be close to Sebastián’s things. Last night he said “Feed me” in his small bird-like voice, floated to the foot of our bed, then, with great tenderness, bit our comforter and slid it off us. Sebastián curled into a fetal position but remained asleep, pushing out his little snores. I watched as the man opened his mouth, clasped down on Sebastián’s foot, threw his head back, and swallowed. I reacted then. I couldn’t just sit in bed and do nothing. An eaten Sebastián would leave me! I hurled Sebastián’s alarm clock at the man, but, as expected, it bounced off. The man smiled wider. “Leave him,” I whispered, but, already fed, he disappeared.

Sebastián and I visit three different podiatrists, none of which can tell him how he lost his toe. They say his x-rays show no sign that his toe ever existed. One of the podiatrists suggests a psychiatrist. “Am I crazy?” Sebastián asks as I drive. I tell him he’s not. Once, a few days ago, he did have ten toes.

The week goes by, then two more, and Sebastián relaxes. At least he stops mentioning his toe. Maybe he realizes he doesn’t need all ten of them. Meanwhile, I keep pretending we won’t get eaten, neglecting to dwell on how antsy the Smiling Man is acting. Instead of standing still, he sways. Side to side. Back and forth. Side to side again. He chomps the air too. Scrape, scrape, scrape, as he grinds his teeth.

The first time he did this routine I was twenty-three, and I’d moved in with Andrej, my first love. One morning Andrej showed me a dent where his left nipple used to be. He didn’t fret. We were young. “Maybe it just fell off,” he said. Things like that happened. But after feasting on his nipple, the Smiling Man became antsy, swaying, and, a few months later, he swallowed Andrej whole. I swore I wouldn’t share a bedroom with anyone else ever again. Then Checo appeared, and he was so committed, so serious, so in love with me I couldn’t resist. I was thirty-four. Eleven years had passed, and the Smiling Man seemed less hungry. He hadn’t even eaten any more of me. One morning an apple-sized chunk of Checo’s ass had disappeared, and I decided to fight the man once and for all. I hit him, kicked him, hammered him, tried to poison him. I stabbed, hatcheted and axed him. But he’s squishy and pops back unhurt, like immortal jello. I shifted strategies and tried scolding the Smiling Man, saying he wasn’t allowed to eat any more. I threatened to despise him. Think him the worst companion ever. The Smiling Man only swayed and ground his teeth. Checo would be eaten too, I realized, and so, I warned him. He was the first person I told the Smiling Man existed. I proposed we fight the man together, immediately certain that was the way to do it, together, wielding something magical like the power of love. Checo called me a nutjob. He needed medical help—couldn’t I see a chunk of his ass had vanished?—and all I could do was speak of battling a made-up childhood monster. How could I be so childish, so callous!—Checo didn’t know which was worse. I left him. He’s still somewhere, ass-bitten but alive.

A month after the toe incident, Sebastián comes home from work and lingers inside the hall by the apartment’s entrance. I say, “Hello.”

He doesn’t answer.

“What’s wrong?”

Sebastián’s eyes are puffed pink. His hair wild. There’s an awesome beauty to his bedraggledness. I want to hold the back part of his neck where his hair prickles and kiss him, but he exudes an angry aura that prevents me.

“Undress,” he orders.

I shove my jeans down. I should’ve taken my boots off first because I stumble trying to ram my jeans past my feet. In the meantime, I slip out of my sweater and peel my t-shirt off so that his furious gloom can amuse itself with my bare chest. I drop to the floor, unlace my boots, yank and throw them. I stand up and, naked, spread my arms in a silent ta-da! Sebastián limps toward me as if his foot hurt though I know it doesn’t. Whatever the man eats leaves no trace, including pain.

Sebastián’s face hangs a centimeter away from mine. There’s alcohol in his breath, sweet like jasmine at dusk. When I was a teenager, I sat by my bedroom window letting jasmine waft in as I ran the back of my fingers over my lips—the way I thought a kiss would feel. I want Sebastián to lick the remnants of my eaten ear, but he pinches it instead. He grazes my cheek with his stubble and travels down my body with his nose. He kneels. I get hard. He takes my hand and traces the emptiness where my middle finger should be. He sits on his heels and swivels me around. I gaze past our large windows, eleven floors up, at Mexico City extending far into a glow beyond the horizon. This city where he was born, and I try to convince myself I belong. Sebastián brushes the dip in my calf with his fingers. I imagine a young, hovering version of myself watching us from outside, happy because I’m not alone. How did he use to explain his loneliness? Floaty. Loneliness as being unanchored. I won’t have Sebastián much longer. I’ll leave before he gets eaten.

“What happened to you?” he asks, pinching the skin where my calf used to be. The apartment feels empty in my silence. I get goosebumps. “Tell me.”

“You won’t love me anymore.”

“Please.”

I turn. He’s so sad and scared. My mouth opens before I can stop it. “I’ll show you.”

We wait in bed. Our room devoured in shadows. No one but myself has been able to see the Smiling Man, but now because he wants to, I expect Sebastián will be able to see him too. The man is taking a long time to show up. Sebastián nods off. I’m scared. What kind of bonkers plan is this? If Sebastián sees the Smiling Man, he’ll be terrified. He’ll get rid of me sooner. Won’t even contemplate sticking it out with me to fight the Smiling Man together.

Still, I can hope.

The man finally appears. I elbow Sebastián awake. He yelps.

“You see him?”

Sebastián scuttles next to me, almost on top. “Is it a demon?”

I never regarded the man as evil, only hungry. “He’s the Smiling Man,” I say.

The man’s grin widens.

“Did you summon him?”

“He appears on his own. Ever since I was a kid.”

The man glides closer to the bed. Sebastián thrusts his back against me, nesting his legs on his chest.

“Feed me,” the man says in his twittering voice.

“He’ll eat us!”

“He won’t,” I say. “It’s too soon.” The man didn’t eat Andrej until months after his first bite.

The Smiling Man worms his way into bed and seizes our comforter with his teeth.

“Mateo!” Sebastián howls.

The comforter flies across the room.

“Mateo!”

I jump on the man, slip, and land hard on the floor. He’s slick like a greased-up eel. Sebastián kicks himself farther up the bed. The Smiling Man slithers, his teeth hounding Sebastián’s feet. I hurl myself on the man but skid back onto the floor. Sebastián kicks. Knocks the man’s fedora right off. I believed his hat was an inextricable part of his body. “Yes! Kick him!” I shout, getting back on my feet.

Sebastián attacks again. This time, his foot plunges deep into the man’s head. Stuck.

While Sebastián tugs on his leg to get his foot unstuck, the man’s head morphs into a swallowing mouth, dragging Sebastián inside him. I dig my fingernails into the man, refusing to slip off one more time. I climb him. I bite. Pinch. Squeeze. His organs wriggle underneath like worms inside a lubed up punching bag. Sebastián flails and groans, struggling to drag himself away. He reaches for the headrest with a freakish spasm of his arm. He squeaks a bitter, stabbing note and goes limp.

“No!” I jerk my heft backwards, hauling the man down with me. Something gives within the man, a nook where my arms squeeze without almost any effort. Like colossal seltzer, a bubbling fizzes inside him. The man vomits my now slimy husband. He straightens, lifting me up with him, and whips his body. I fly across the room. The light is knocked out of me. I can’t locate the muscles to get up and continue fighting.

“Mateo.” Sebastian’s voice travels like a spark.

He’s alive! Suddenly it’s simple to locate my bones, my tendons, my muscles, my breath. I bounce back to my feet, primed and ready, but the man has vanished. His fedora lies on the floor, a hat-shaped black-hole.

“You kicked his hat off,” I say.

Squatting on the bed, Sebastián whimpers, color-drained and floppy. “So?”

“I’ve never been able to.”

“He ate me.” He points a quivery finger to his feet. I sit and hoist his gorgeous calves on my lap. He’s missing his other pinky toe and the one toe next to it. He drops his face to his hands and weeps.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I could continue to hug and pet him until his shock and sadness seep away. He would still get eaten. I step down from our bed, walk to the closet, find a duffel bag, and stuff t-shirts, socks, and underwear inside.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving. The man will follow me. You’ll be safe.”

“You’re going to leave me alone?”

“I’ll take him away. He’s always been with me.”

Sebastián wipes his wet face and, with great effort as his soggy noodle limbs won’t help him, he scoots forward to the edge of the bed. “Come here.”

My legs want to go to him, but I restrain them.

“Come. Please.”

I shake my head no.

He breathes in and tries to temper the terror sketched on his face. He still shivers. “You may have seen this thing first,” he says, his voice soft, though more doubtful than he would normally want it to come out. “You may think he’s yours, but he wants me.” Sebastián raises his foot, the left one with the newly eaten toes. “You don’t get to give up.”

“I’m protecting you.”

“You’re being a coward.”

“He’ll eat you.”

Sebastián flings one limp arm toward me. Like he wants me. He could also be shooing me away.

I zip up my bag.

He takes my hand and guides me to him.

“We’ll fight the man,” he says. “I can spare a few more toes if I get to keep you.” I could ask why, but I keep my mouth shut. I snuggle on his slime-covered chest. His nervous heart beats on my ear. Mine is a whole drums section. I wait to catch the moment when our hearts sync up. They don’t. Seems as if they’ll continue skipping in a boundless reach for one another.

–Gerardo Sámano Córdova

Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City living in Brooklyn. He is the author of Monstrilio, winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize, finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and named a Book of the Year by NPR, Elle, Goodreads and others. He holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan and is the current Writer in Residence at Fordham University. Gerardo has also been known to draw little creatures.

The Polar Bear Escaped from the San Diego Zoo

and trudged north for hours alongside a desolate highway. The polar bear hitchhiked and thought it strange that the signal for such a miserable activity was the thumbs-up. Hours later, a rumbling eighteen-wheeler pulled over and sounded its air brake. The polar bear climbed aboard and savored the swirling A/C inside the truck’s cabin. “Marty,” the driver said, extending his hand. “Where you headed?” he asked. “Alaksa,” the polar bear said. “Want to see my birthland.” Marty said he could take him as far as Fresno, but that he wasn’t headed to Alaska. The polar bear nodded. “You never been?” Marty said. “Born and raised at the zoo,” the polar bear answered. Marty pulled out his cell phone and showed the polar bear some videos of Alaska on YouTube. Marty pointed to a Wendy’s chocolate Frosty in the cupholder and told the polar bear it was all his if he wanted it. Marty then put the truck in gear and rumbled away. The polar bear stared through the windshield at the dashed yellow lines on the highway. To the polar bear—they were all pawprints, leading the way home.

–Mathieu Cailler

Mathieu Cailler is the author of seven books: a novel, two short story collections, two volumes of poetry, and two children’s titles. His stories, poems, and essays have been featured in over one hundred publications such as Wigleaf, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Cailler has garnered numerous awards for his writing, including a Pushcart Prize; a Short Story America Prize; and accolades from the Paris, Los Angeles, and New England Book Festivals. Connect with him on social media @writesfromla or visit mathieucailler.com.