Last month, Robert Ladlo was accidentally promoted at work. He’d been standing in the empty head office, glancing around covetously when one of the new employees asked if he’d be taking over for the boss who was away exploring concerns about early onset dementia. Ladlo said yes. When everyone began treating Ladlo as if he were the new boss, it became true.
Ladlo took this stroke of luck as divine right, a fated ascent. Over the next few weeks, he began to stir the pot just to see if anyone would stop him. Once, he spat his gum into the bushes in the courtyard even though a trash can was right beside him. He farted in the elevator, blamed it on a stranger, and everyone believed him. When he autographed a napkin and gave it to a barista, she blushed and said thanks. Ladlo began internalizing that if he acted with enough conviction, people wouldn’t question him or challenge his destiny.
When the old boss returned to announce her official retirement, she assumed that higher-ups had Ladlo filling in. She left him with her blessing as he basked in the slotted sun that streamed through the blinds in his new permanent office.
***
Robert Ladlo brought his rise to autogenic glory home with him and began frequently boasting about his success to his husband, João. But Ladlo’s office-related-pot-stirring soon reached their home too. João’s expression slid from pride down through dubiousness and landed somewhere near disgust when he chatted with Edna, a mutual friend who was also now one of Ladlo’s subordinates.
One evening, the couple idled on their apartment’s balcony, listening to thunder murmur in the distance. João sat unusually far from Ladlo, and eventually, he set down the copy of A História Trágica do Doutor Fausto. He turned to regard his husband.
“Berto,” said João. “I don’t know how else you’ll listen unless I just say it, all of it, right out. First, I am so proud of your hard work. Second. Second, amor, you’re being—and I think a few people would agree with me on this—a big fat jerk. You never used to be like this. What happened?”
Ladlo blinked. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I am not a jerk.”
“I see your new aura. And I’ve talked with our friend, Edna. You have been stirring the pot, no? And for what purpose—to show that you can?”
Ladlo doubled down. “You have to take what you want in this life. You of all people know that. You picked up, left your home country, put yourself through university here, and took. That’s how you conjured success.”
“No, that is where you are wrong. Taking is not the same thing as creating. I built my architecture firm—well, metaphorically. We work from a rented space. Oh, you know what I mean—I created something that wasn’t there before, and I’m still indebted to everyone who helped me get here. Plus, I once experienced this too, this ego. After I designed the national aviary and I got to be a bit of a star at the opening gala, I got—well—a big head and all puffed up. And what I’m sensing around you now is a noxious poison cloud, Berto. I can barely come close. Soon, I worry, it will poison you and its effect will be permanent.”
Ladlo’s expression collapsed. “Do you really see me that way? As a contaminant?”
“Wait here,” said João. He stood and kissed Ladlo on the forehead, coughed, and went inside.
When João returned, he handed Ladlo a wriggling fish. It looked to be a salmon in its spawning phase, but instead of being powered by life, Ladlo saw a 9-volt battery inside its mouth. Ladlo raised an eyebrow at his husband.
“You have to take it to the address printed on the tail. It’s a different experience for everyone, so I cannot say what you should expect, but they’ll tell you what to do.”
“The Warehouse of Contentment,” Ladlo read from the tail. “I take it there and they will cure me of being a big fat jerk and dispel this noxious cloud I have around me?”
“I hope so, amor.”
***
Ladlo’s GPS indicated that the Warehouse of Contentment was that enormous building in the distance, but on the road in front of him was a gate and security booth that prevented him from entering. He slowed the car and pulled up to the window.
It slid open.
“Good evening, I’m The Fisherman. How can I assist you?”
“Fisherperson, you mean,” said Ladlo.
“I haven’t gotten the okay to change my job title yet, but I’m thinking something like Reelcaster, Lineleader, Luredangler, or maybe Chumchucker? Anyway, what can I do you for? Do you have a fish with you?”
The spawning phase salmon lay wriggling on the passenger seat. Ladlo handed it over.
The Fisherman said she’d be right back.
Ladlo saw the back door of the booth open. The Fisherman emerged. She held Ladlo’s fish in one hand and steered a kick-pedal scooter with the other, heading in the direction of the warehouse.
Fifteen minutes later, she returned in the same manner, except instead of holding the fish, she held a small cardboard box.
“Your bosses should look into a more efficient mode of transportation. A golf cart, or a conveyor belt even,” said Ladlo after the Fisherman returned to the window.
“That’s why it’s called fishing, not catching.”
“What?”
The Fisherman didn’t respond. Instead, she opened the box and pulled out a handheld mirror. It was the cheap plastic-backed kind that could be bought at a dollar store. She handed it to Ladlo.
Ladlo took the mirror, looked it over, looked at his reflection, looked it over again. Ladlo asked if it was a magic mirror. The Fisherman laughed, called Ladlo silly, and said that magic doesn’t exist.
“How is this going to fix my problem?” said Ladlo. “And don’t you even want to hear my circumstances?”
“We got them from the fish.”
“It was my husband’s fish.”
“But you brought it here.”
“I—”
“I’m sorry, there is a car waiting behind you. And remember, I’m just The Fisherman, I don’t have any answers to give you.”
Not knowing what else to do, Ladlo pulled forward until the lane U-turned toward the exit, which led him back to the road.
At home, Ladlo showed the mirror to João who looked it over and had no advice to offer other than that Ladlo should carry it with him and wait and see.
***
Later in the workweek, Ladlo was washing his hands when he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He shook the water from his hands and pulled the handheld mirror from his satchel. He held it near the large mirror until he could see himself from several angles. Then he understood how he could unstir the pot.
What he was lacking was self-awareness.
Ladlo tested his theory when the shorter of the two Tonys came into his office. Ladlo held out the mirror to where he could catch his own expression with a sideways glance. After Ladlo explained what he was doing, Short Tony got on with his question. Ladlo noticed that the mirror was reflecting a beam of sunlight down onto Tony’s papers, so he adjusted the beam away. How self-aware of him. And when Ladlo saw that his face was growing harsh and critical in response to Short Tony saying something less than competent, Ladlo knew to change his expression.
Then it hit him: this sort of awareness was too limited. He could see the front of Short Tony’s face, and with the mirror, he could glimpse his own profile, but he could not see Tony’s profile. Surely there would be micro-expressions he was missing. This made him worry he was limiting his access to observation and thus thwarting his capacity for total self-awareness. After work, Ladlo went and bought three more cheap plastic mirrors. They came in neon colors.
***
As he navigated his day-to-day life with two mirrors in each hand, Ladlo understandably ran into some difficulties with doors, utensils, and gestures—and, well—most daily activities. But worse was the continued lack of angles; there were points of view that were still hidden from him.
Determined that self-awareness would be his, Ladlo bought dozens of colorful mirrors and he linked them together using duct tape and wire until what he held became wing-like. Mirrors atop mirrors, all angled in slightly different directions, branching from his two arms and curving toward the front so they enveloped whomever Ladlo was talking to.
When Ladlo met with the head of another department, and several times he bonked and jostled the poor woman with his spread and reflective plastic feathers, he decided to re-work the self-awareness thing again. She was irritated with him; he could see it from a dozen angles. Ladlo also saw that his own face was not apologetic, that is until he and his reflections adjusted their expressions. Still, the whole thing was a nuisance because he had to constantly set down one of the wings to use a pen and he couldn’t use them at all while typing. This caused him both blind spots and exasperation.
Ladlo went into the storage unit below his apartment and found the boxes they had been storing for João’s nephew. From one of the boxes labeled Sports Stuff, Ladlo pulled out a pair of American football shoulder pads. He attached his colorful mirrors to the skeletal plastic. He was so busy sitting on the concrete outside the storage unit, using more tape and wire and other supports, and adjusting the angles of the mirrors, and being so totally focused on being one hundred percent self-aware that it got very late. He finally set the wings aside until morning and went to join his husband in bed, but João was already asleep.
***
Ladlo arrived at work wearing his new wings and as he rode the elevator, he appreciated the metaphor of rising to new heights—perhaps to ultra-cognizance, maybe even enlightenment. He thought that this just might be the peak of self-awareness. He did a tap dance glide out of the elevator and that’s when he was caught. His right wing hadn’t cleared the elevator when the door closed. Some sort of mechanical sensor was completely un-self-aware and utterly unengaged at the exact moment he needed it to sense him.
The elevator began to descend, hailed by someone below and Ladlo let out little yelps of panic. He face-planted with a whump, but then the elevator stopped. His wing was wedged between the inner roof of the elevator and his floor’s floor. Ladlo could neither stand nor wriggle out of the shoulder pads, so he remained there on his belly on the ground.
The intern had seen all this from his desk and was holding out his phone, presumably recording. Soon all of Ladlo’s subordinates gathered and stood looking down at Ladlo.
Ladlo could see every one of their faces in his bent left wing and after he finished yelling and swearing at those faces, he began to cry.
Ladlo saw his former friend Edna make a phone call, but still, no one moved to help him.
He lay there for a long time and then a sob caught in his throat as he heard the stairwell door bang open behind him. It was his husband. In his wing, two dozen Joãos appeared, each of them holding a toolbox. In his head, Ladlo fought hard to find the right words as all of the Joãos began to pry him free.