Lisa Lebduska

Sidekick

Haley Barrow lies on her bed at dawn, exhausted. All night long she’s been rescuing kittens, dodging laser blasts in her favorite stiletto boots. Her capacity for selfless daring knows no bounds. Safe at last from the spotted arms of their alien abductors, the kittens mew gratitude between laps of warm milk, oblivious to the depth of danger they have escaped. Haley kisses each of their fluffy, innocent heads, whispers goodbye, and then closes the laptop. She wishes she could stay, if not forever, then for a very long time.

Schrodinger has been watching her from the window with disdain, his snaggle tooth glinting in the Christmas lights still framing the window. Haley is debating whether she should risk picking him up for a cuddle when a text from Cazimi punctures her indecision with all the force and clarity of Gabriel's trumpet: Job!!!

Haley pushes up against the pillows, skittering Oreo crumbs like fleas across the sheets. She has already played the job hunting game her college's Career Services laid out for her, a tidy hopscotch aimed at landing her the prize of a coffee-stained cubicle and seven days at the New Hampshire shore every year. She won the privilege of being no one to anyone for forty hours a week until she was restructured out. In a fit of rebellion, she’d created Resc Mew. But the video game had not earned a penny. She has about a month of savings remaining, and when it runs out, she’ll have to return to her parents’ tired brick colonial and teach yoga somewhere.

Like a desperate alien dog, she forces herself to type, What kind of job?

Cazimi replies, Pedi.cure yourself!! Study up on feet. Come now!! Even for the wild roulette of Cazimi's mind, this response makes no sense. Haley sends a string of question marks.

Cazimi fires back: You can do this! Land this job or go home to your parents and start fixing aching backs by teaching hairy guys how to do bridge poses. She punctuates with an ape emoji.

Haley does not want to abandon hope that Resc Mew will turn a profit. She has already pledged to donate half its earnings to the no-kill shelter in Williamsburg. But Cazimi's arrow has hit its mark, guided by her understanding of Haley's dwindling, frightful options.

Haley shakes the crumbs from her quilt and looks at the Christmas lights, their wires tacked on with return address labels, losing their grip, one by one. How long would they last? A few more labels come unstuck, releasing the string of lights into Schrodinger’s litter box, where they fall with a muted thud.

Haley texts again: What's the job? Where is it?

Cazimi responds with a map, dropping a pin to the old shoe factory on Fourth Avenue. Trust me, she texts, and then like the Sphinx, falls silent. There’s no point in asking about the job again because Cazimi takes a fling-yourself- off-a-cliff approach to life, chiding Haley for posing "deadly interrogatives." She is also probably picking up egg sandwiches and coffee for a crew and figuring out where she can get a dozen trained tarantulas by yesterday. Haley knows that she is in some ways another project for Cazimi, a fact that alternately comforts her and fills her with dread.  There would be no more words from Cazimi, only the pin on the map winking up at Haley with its ruby eye, daring her to follow, as if it knew what she had once been. In college, she had been the only female member of the Gamers Club, the one who organized the protest for more bandwidth, the one who set up gaming competitions against the faculty, the one that all the nerdy guys not-so-secretly crushed on.

Haley paints her toenails with fresh Scarlet Woman and scrunches her hair into brown waves. The mirror does not offer the reassuring filters of her phone, so she does not linger. Her sharp blue eyes are pretty enough, but there isn’t much she can do about her long jaw. She reminds herself that her complexion, at least, is clear and rosy.

"Wish me luck," she says to Schrodinger, who scowls at the heap of lights in his litter box.

"It's just a decoration," she adds, shaking the litter off and tossing them into the corner. "I'm doing this for our own good. Dad's allergic to cats, so if I have to move back, you end up in the garage," she says, giving him a half-hearted pat on the head, then pulling away just in time to evade his bite.

Haley sprints towards the old shoe factory with as much power as her drying pedicure will allow. It feels good to run toward something, for once. She does not understand why Cazimi told her to learn about feet, but she pulls out her phone and searches for facts about them anyway, relieved to focus on a task that distracts her from the anxiety rising in her stomach. In college, her pre-med roommate, a champion memorizer, chanted anatomy lessons, which strikes Haley as the best option for what she must now do. As her phone dishes up foot trivia, she shouts it, like a boot camp recruit: "Twenty-six bones! 100 muscles! 250,000 sweat glands! Largest was 18.5 inches, possessed by Robert Wadlow! Average person walks 115,000 miles in their lifetime!" No one looks at her because in Brooklyn someone is always yelling about something. By the time she reaches the shoe factory, she will be ready for podiatry Jeopardy.

She is surprised at how liberating it feels to run and shout, air on her face, flip flops slapping pavement, jumping puddles and wads of chewed gum, pushing words from her lungs with such force that the hooded men who usually hand her strip club flyers do not even try.

She tucks away this yelling as a strategy for the next time she goes to Grand Central. But for now, she is scrolling, reading, shouting, and memorizing a train of connections that she will pursue down to the very last facts about hammer toe.

Sweaty and breathless, she reaches the old shoe factory, a low brick building that takes up the entire block. Cazimi is pacing outside, talking into her headset, her face framed by a thick rope of black hair that arches across her head like a guardian snake. In her neon tank top and billowing striped linen pants, she looks like a genie. She had renamed herself, discarding "Emma" as if it had been a burner phone, right after they met as seniors three years ago. In all that time Haley has never seen her entirely unplugged. Talking to Cazimi was a conversational three-way with her and her screen, as Cazimi tapped, scowled, and smiled. Haley does not take it personally because she is in almost the same place, connected, sometimes tethered, to a world far more insistent and bright than the one that set the rules her body must obey. She wishes she could behave like Cazimi did, bending the real and virtual worlds to her will, and not caring what either thought of her.

"I'm ready to talk bunions," Haley announces between gasps.

Cazimi yanks out an earbud, grabs Haley’s arm, and pulls her into the old factory, which smells of leather and machine oil, mixed with fruity vanilla scents of vape. Sunlight angles through long, dusty windows onto a worn wooden floor where immigrants once sewed leather into shoes for fashionable ladies. Rusty radiators and piles of crumpled coffee cups ring the room. Haley has visited Cazimi at her other jobs, and she recognizes the trappings of a shoot immediately. Three women sit on metal chairs vaping and typing into their laptops at a table. In front of them are cameras, lights, monitors; to the side a craft table loaded with juice boxes and trays of withered fruit.  Haley cannot imagine what her role in all this might be. She had anticipated a cramped office covered with posters warning about the dangers of stilettos and a Cazimi story about a chatty guy on the subway who might have been a perv but turned out to be a podiatrist looking for a web designer.

Cazimi drops from her cattle auction voice into a whisper as she nods towards the three women. "They’re in a rush, so you have to be fast. Here's your story: You’ve been taking ballet since you were four. You once did an entire puppet show using only your feet. Everything about the foot--No, make that everything about the HUMAN foot-- fascinates you. But you’re not a fetishist. You don’t want to come across as a potential legal liability. No, change that. Just say you’re a foot actor, plain and simple."

Haley looks down at her glistening toes. "Foot actor? I thought I was interviewing for a job doing web design for a podiatrist."

"Well, it’s not that. This is much more exciting." Cazimi glances around the room, spots extension cords scattered across the floor, pulls electrical tape from her pocket, and begins taping them down. The guardian snake does not budge.

Haley bends next to her and, in between rips of the tape, tries to back out of the audition without sounding ungrateful: "I don't know about this. The last thing I acted in was my cousin’s video, ‘Wizard Harry Is Really a Girl, but Don't Tell You-Know-Who.’ I played a goblin. My parents left early."

Cazimi looks at Haley as though they are about to miss the last spaceship off an exploding planet Earth. "It’s a job, Haley! A job that won't involve listening to people complain about their knees. We don’t have time for soul searching. The director and her assistants need to hire someone now. There are five hundred actresses out there who would shave off their eyebrows for this gig."

The shock of what Cazimi is asking her to do, combined with Cazimi’s urgency, pushes Haley into a kitchen-sink confessional spin: "I flunked out of ballet. Karl never even rubbed my feet. I have no idea what I'm doing."

Cazimi puts down the tape and shakes Haley’s shoulders. "Stop that! Everyone embellishes. Politicians. Actors. Everyone pads. Bra, butt, Botox, resume, what’s the difference?" She turns and murmurs something into her headpiece.

"I’m not a politician. I want to be honest. Is that so weird?" Haley fiddles with the strap on her tank top. She knows Cazimi will not give up. Cazimi never gives up.

"It’s not like you’re lying about your experience as a heart surgeon."

"I don’t have a clue about acting and neither does my foot."

"You can do this, Haley. I'm positive. They don’t really need an actor. They need a Foot."

"A giant foot?" Haley imagines wearing an oversized costume, a football mascot wobbling under the weight of the top as she searches for an eyehole between its nostrils. This idea appeals to her. She would be out in the open and yet hidden, a live avatar freed from every conceivable worry about how she was being judged.

Cazimi quickly shatters her fantasy. "Of course not! This isn't a half-time show. You're going to play a regular-size, but disembodied Foot." Cazimi says this as if it is painfully obvious and then types something into her phone.

Haley feels as if Cazimi is creating a trail, breadcrumb by breadcrumb, until Haley finds herself in an oven. "Is this a sandal commercial?"

"No. Much better than that! This is the pilot for a potentially blockbusting hit! A quirky adventure series about a skateboarder named Chaz. She’s a reluctant detective with an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time and a talent for escaping close calls, often by using her skateboard."

"Where does the foot come in?"

"Foot (capital ‘F’!) is a magical creature that Chaz’s great grandmother, a sorcerer, willed to her. Foot is her secret companion."

"And they’re casting this now?"

"The actress who played Foot got canned. She got a little too chummy with the director’s boyfriend. That’s where you come in."

"I just hold my foot out in front of the camera?"

"Foot hops around, spies on bad people, and gives Chaz advice."

"The foot talks?"

"Not in so many words. Foot wiggles its toes. It has its own sign language."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"You’re creative! You’ll invent. Remember when I had Covid? You put tinfoil on your big toe to look like an astronaut and sang Space Oddity to cheer me up?"

"Cazimi, I had five shots of tequila. It was the pandemic."  She does not want to tell Cazimi that she misses those days, when even the smallest gesture of physicality felt heroic. She could go out on the roof every night, bang potlids to celebrate the essential workers, then slip back to the blue glow of her laptop and the comforting crunch of popcorn. No one expected anything other than survival. The world, except for Cazimi, who sailed around the city on her e-bike. She resents this ease of Cazimi’s, which flowed into her assumption that Haley was the designated follower in this friendship.

"Doesn’t matter. Deep down, you have the truth of Foot. You’re savvy and witty and incredibly loyal. As soon as that other actress got canned, I thought of you."

"I can’t do this."

"Would you rather head to suburbia and life with Jennifer and Mike perfecting your pickle ball? After, of course, you’ve shipped Schrodinger to the Gallows."

"I’m just trying to be real. For once."

"Five hundred bucks a day. That buys a lot of real."

"For how long?"

"Hard to say. If the pilot’s picked up, and your character takes off, could be awhile." Cazimi hands her a peppermint scented wipe. "Run this over your feet.”

Haley gingerly presses the wipe across her toes, taking care not to smudge her polish. The gesture makes her feel as if she is bathing in public, though she realizes no one is even glancing in her direction. She straightens up and wiggles her toes, which are tingling from the peppermint oil. "I probably shouldn’t ask, but what are you doing here?"

"Same as always. Whatever they need. In two years, I'll have enough saved up for Melbourne and can kiss it all goodbye. For today, I'm finding them the perfect Foot." Haley wondered if that was Cazimi’s secret to being so relaxed: she ran away after the party. Haley was the one who collected empties.

Haley looks down at her feet, which appear especially misshapen now that she is about to subject them to the scrutiny of cameras. The big toe veers off to the left and the middle toe--was it called that?-- sticks up way too high, like a steeple, and her pinky toe is a little sausage, like a bloated leech. The one body part that she has never obsessed over is about to become the source of new indignities.

Cazimi is not about to let go. "They’re desperate. They’ve already paid for this space and the crew. You’re skipping the line. You don’t even need to send them head shots. You just—"

Haley interrupted. "Wouldn’t I need to send them a foot shot?" She laughs.

Cazimi whips off her hat and slaps her thigh with it in mock laughter. "You’re hilarious. Next time I try to get you a job I’ll look for something in stand up."

Haley looks at her friend. "Tell me honestly, Cazimi. Is this for me or for you?" Most of the time, Cazimi’s attentions felt well-intended, nurturing, but now Cazimi clearly had something to gain, and Haley wanted her to acknowledge that, rather than making her feel like a charity case.

"Can't it be both?" Cazimi asks, shifting a bit, suddenly off kilter. 

"Haley Barrow," one of the women calls out. "I'm Grace, the casting director. We’re excited to see what you’ve prepared - before we begin, do you have any questions, thoughts, concerns?"

Haley glances at Cazimi and gulps. "I went with red. Is that all right?" she says, pointing her foot forward.

Grace peers at Haley over her glasses. "Great choice. Take off your sandals and roll up your pant legs. We're filming this screen test to get a sense of your foot on camera. You'll be reading with Doug, who plays villain Ted Cassidy. My assistants and I will give you emotions to convey. As your character breakdown mentions, Foot is the savvy, magical sidekick to our daring skateboard detective. Foot doesn’t speak, of course."

"Of course," Haley says, feeling a death stare shooting from Cazimi.

Grace continues, "But It can be very expressive. Sometimes, Foot’s emotions get the better of It. How tall are you?"

"Five-foot-six."

"Excellent. Doug is five-ten, despite what his publicist claims. For many of the scenes, you'll be placing your foot on the other actors' shoulders. In this scene Ted Cassidy, who is Chaz’s nemesis, is trying to take control of the city by getting everyone addicted to his video game."

Cazimi whispers, "Right up your alley!"

Grace gestures at the stage, which now has a chair on it. "We need you to sit on that chair and when Doug enters, place your foot on his shoulder. You're going to have a conversation with him." She retreats to a rickety-looking director's chair, where she watches a monitor.

Haley pads up the stairs to the stage and sits obediently on the chair until Doug appears. He's trim, in an olive army jacket that hangs on his broad shoulders, and worn, tight jeans with a tee shirt neatly tucked in. His face is pockmarked and his nose just off center, as if it once broke and wasn't set. He's thirty-ish, with his hair shorn close, and she's trying to remember if she's seen him playing a ranch hand or maybe a soldier in a recent western.

Haley stands up to greet him. "Nice to meet you." Doug extends his hand, and she shakes it gently, surprised at its softness– the relaxed velvet of an investment banker, not the leather of a cowboy.

Haley sits back on the hard vinyl chair, several feet behind Doug, and places her bare foot on his shoulder. Facing her sole towards the camera, she experiments with a series of flexes, rotations and scrunches so her foot appears to be chatting. Doug stands patiently under the motion and then tenderly moves her foot an inch farther out on his shoulder. She curls her toes briefly, as if in thanks.

Doug turns to her foot and says, "You have the most marvelous minty toes!" She imagines his comment is aimed at putting her at ease, but his mouth is almost grazing her ankles. This stranger is close enough to kiss the sole of her foot, and she is supposed to pretend that this is normal. No wonder Cazimi thrived here.

Grace calls out, "Haley, you're listening to Ted's evil remarks and as you listen, you're thinking about what you can do to thwart his evil plan. Ready? Action!" She slaps her hands together, simulating a clapperboard.

Doug turns his head and speaks to the camera. "The senator's daughter is so hooked on Blasto, she'll do anything to keep playing. Now she'll know addiction from the inside." He smiles ruefully. Warm gentle puffs of his breath land on Haley's toes. It has been months since her skin has been touched by a human, and then it was a gloved doctor. For a moment, she loses herself in the sensation of physical closeness.  She has a sudden impulse to stroke the side of Doug's face with her foot. She shakes herself into focus, forcing her toes into a tight crunch to suggest that Foot is concentrating.

Grace calls out, "Imagine you don't like what he's saying, and you're going to tell him off."

Haley pinches her big toe to the middle one, an awkward move that triggers the beginning of a charley horse.

"That’s more of a chef’s kiss. We’ll have to work on that," Grace says. The women lean into one another, whispering and pointing at their tablets. Haley feels perspiration gathering between her toes.

"Doug, pick up with Scene 2."

Doug, as Ted, lets out a wicked laugh, "She's lost all interest in the world! I’ve got the entire police force playing day and night, too. They don’t even know where their guns are!" Haley fans out her toes in surprise and then scrunches them back up.

Grace calls out, "Great, Haley! Now conjure up sad and see where it takes you." Haley shuts her eyes, and thinks, Karl left me when I needed him most and dumped his angry cat on me. New York is sinking. I have no job. Her toes curl tighter and tighter until her foot is a miserable crescent. Doug shifts slightly under the movement but holds his position, exhaling softly against her sole. Resting on his shoulder, her foot falls and rises in synch, riding the wave of his breaths.

Doug turns. "I feel your sadness, Foot. Come with me. You'll be more than a sidekick. We'll do things you've never done." His breaths caress her toes. He grazes the arch of her foot with his mouth, and she wonders what it would feel like to press her tongue into the cleft of his chin. Suddenly, as if it had a mind of its own, her foot arches back, and her toes spread wide on Doug's shoulder. He tilts his head toward her foot and smiles.

"Fabulous. Very nice, Haley," Grace calls out. "Let's take ten."

Doug gingerly lifts Haley's foot from his shoulder and cradles the heel in his hands. "That was wonderful," he says, turning to face her. She is slumped in the chair with her legs splayed out, and she pushes herself up as he places her foot on the ground. A stirring just under her navel takes over the awkwardness of the moment.

"Thank you."

"Earthy. Sexy. When we start the actual filming, you'll need to make sure that your foot doesn't block my light. Twist a bit more," he adds.

"Oh, all right, of course, yes. I'm new to this," she says, dropping her voice.

"You're doing a great job," he says, still smiling. His teeth are straight and the color of bone china, not at all the teeth of a villain.

Haley bends forward to massage her calves. She feels him watching and stands up, arching her back and closing her eyes.

Suddenly, Cazimi is next to her, whispering in her ear. "Go for it, you vixen!"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know. The chemistry between you two is insane! Don't overthink, just do," she says.

Doug, who has been chatting with Grace, calls out, "Let's see if there's anything edible over there, shall we?" He gestures to the craft table. Cazimi vanishes.

"Great," Haley says, and realizes as they approach the table, that the crew is watching them, in an offhand way, picking up snack bars between sidelong glances. She has fantasized about what it would be like to have a one-night stand with someone she liked, but not via a dating app, which to her has always felt like shopping for a dog, or, worse, being a dog that was shopped for. In college, she avoided drunken hook-ups, where people crashed into each other, then shrugged it off on the beer, proud of all they had forgotten. Haley wants something adult. She wants to grab his hair, scream his name, and in the morning eat toast with jam before walking away with her sober self.

Doug pokes through the snack packages until he finds a bag of pretzel nuggets and then plucks a red energy drink from a large metal bowl. "The body is such an amazing creation, isn't it?" He holds his hand out and wiggles his fingers as if he is seeing them for the first time. They're slender, sensitive-looking, expressive. She is not sure if he believes what he is saying, or if it is one of his favorite lines. She decides that it doesn't matter.

The charley horse is still hovering at the arch of her foot, whispering like a cricket conscience, and if it hits, it will ruin everything. Still holding Doug's intense gaze, Haley gingerly lifts her foot and rotates her ankle, as if she, too, is contemplating the wonders of the human body. "Yes, it is. When I was designing my video game I thought about the body a lot–how the characters would move, whether they would wave their hands when they jumped, that sort of thing."

Doug nods. "I'm going to tell the writers that Ted should declare, 'Our bodies are given to us, and we must repay that gift by using them to their fullest, piercing, inking and loving in all our freedom!’"

She wishes he would switch to another subject, as every word hits her like a spray of ice water. She had been filling in all the blanks about him, a gentle, strong, artistic man, and if he continues talking, he will spoil her fantasy, so she says, "Yes, well, I wish Foot could interrupt Ted with, 'so long as one has control over one’s body.' But I don't know how my toes could say that."

"Seduction doesn't need words. Ted could say, 'Sometimes people lose control. It's the ultimate expression of freedom.''"

"Or, if they’re women, control is taken from them."

Doug stops and looks down at her, as if they are meeting for the first time. His lips have thinned, and his jaw tightens as a flash of anger crosses his face. "Or, if they’re men, they’re conscripted. Made to shoot, stab, slither on their bellies in the mud while bombs fall all around them. Ever think of that?"

"One doesn't cancel the other out," Haley says. "They're both wrong. Ever think of that?" She is surprised at how angry she is becoming, and how fast the conversation has turned, and realizes everything was all right until he heard her.

Doug touches her shoulder lightly and says, "We should do something about that."

Grace calls them back. "OK, places. Haley, for now, don't position your foot on his shoulder. We want to see the top of your feet, so you're just going to stand. In this next scene, Ted has become more menacing. He's announced his plan to murder Chaz, and he's confident that he can convince you to betray your friend."

One of the assistants, a woman in her twenties whose hair is piled into a tower that has a pair of scissors sticking out of it, takes over. "Anger! Show us a really pissed-off Foot." Haley digs her heel into the stage, flexes her sole toward the assistant, and then slaps her foot down five times, surprised at how easy it is. "Oh yes, again!"

Haley glances at Doug and complies, wincing as pain shoots into the ball of her foot. Doug looks shocked, then pleased as she continues to pound. With his back to the assistant, he mouths to her, "Go for it."

Haley flexes her toes and slaps her foot on the stage with the fury of a cage match fighter. She begins stamping with a rhythm, imagining a stadium packed with fans. She gives a final slam that reverberates across the entire stage.

Grace shouts, "Cut!" The women look at one another and nod. Doug leans over to her and whispers, "You are wild." Her blood is vibrating, coursing as if it wants to escape.

"We have just one more for you, Haley. You're doing great. The chemistry between you is so intense, we'd like to see what would happen if Foot and Ted kissed. You'll need to go back to the chair."

Haley returns to the chair and extends her leg towards Doug, who places her heel on his shoulder with a gentle stroke of her calf. He's facing her, his back to the camera, as he murmurs, "Seduce me, Haley. Then we can talk about whose body is in control." Grace calls out, "OK, Haley. Show us what you have. Move in for a kiss." She claps her hands together and shouts, "Action!"

Haley slides down in the chair and Doug turns in profile to the camera and licks his lips. She angles her big toe closer to his face, her heart pounding, as she considers what she must do. Cazimi will probably never forgive her, but she is sure of what she wants. She bends her big toe towards the middle one, stretches, and in a flash grabs Doug's nose before quickly releasing it. He reddens and yelps, smacking her foot from his shoulder. The crew erupts into laughter, whooping and applauding. A few phones come out.

"Cut!" Grace shouts. "That was brilliant, Haley. Hilarious! Wonderful way to be in the moment. OK, people, we’re done for the day. We’ve found ourselves a new Foot. Nice work, Cazimi!”

Cazimi looks up at Haley on the stage, blows her a kiss, and takes a deep bow. Doug salutes Grace, leans over to Haley and says quietly, "You'll regret this."

In the days that followed, a photo emerged on the internet. Known as Nose Tweaking, it shot to meme status in a matter of hours, used as a response to everything from being fired via email to breaking up over text. Doug had been blasted all over the universe, along with Haley’s foot, but she had remained in the viral shadows. She did not want to be attacked or celebrated for asserting herself. She would leave that to Cazimi.

Cazimi delighted in sending her favorites to Haley. When she took off for Australia, Haley did not miss her, and only clicked obligatory responses to the endless stream of koalas and barechested firefighters that filled her feed. Long after they learned that the pilot would not be picked up, Cazimi continued sending the Doug memes, where they popped up like needles from her phone. Haley could never bring herself to laugh. She saw only the hurt that welled in Doug’s eyes, the betrayed look that the photo did not capture, a kitten who had lost all hope of salvation.

END

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Lisa Lebduska teaches expository writing at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where she also directs the College Writing program. Her work has appeared in such journals as Cleaver and The Forge, among others. She is working on Resc Mew.