Phoenix came into my workshop on a Tuesday. She was wearing a black dress and shoes that clicked when she walked. She smelled like flowers. I looked at my dirty hands and old flannel shirt and felt small.
She walked around, touching the wood, asking questions. She said I was interesting. She said she liked my rough hands. She said I was different from other men.
I agreed to build her a table, six chairs, and a bookshelf. She came back every week. She brought coffee. She brought cake.
She listened when I talked about the river and my old red truck. She looked at me with soft eyes, and I started to believe I was special. I finished her furniture. She was thrilled.
She invited me to her apartment in the city for dinner. I wore my best flannel shirt. I drove my truck. I felt lucky.
I thought she loved the real me. Her apartment was all white and gold. There were many forks. I didn’t know which one to use.
She helped me and smiled. After dinner, she gave me a gift. It was a dark blue suit. I had never worn one.
She wanted me to try it. The suit felt tight and strange. In the mirror, I didn’t look like me. Phoenix fixed my collar and said I looked like a real man now.
Then she touched my beard. She said it hid my handsome face. She asked me to shave it. I loved my beard.
I had it for years. But she looked at me and said, “Please. ”
I shaved it all off. My face felt cold and pale.
She kissed me. Maybe this was right. But she kept changing things. Beer became wine.
My workshop became old and dirty. My truck became slow and loud. She bought me more suits, new shoes, and a heavy gold watch. She told me how to stand, how to walk, how to laugh.
She said I shouldn’t laugh so loud. I shouldn’t squint. I looked old when I squinted. My friends stopped calling.
I stopped fishing. I stopped going to my workshop. Every morning I looked in the mirror and saw a stranger. Clean, neat, fancy.
I did not see Duncan. One night, at an art show, an old woman looked at me and went pale. She said a name: Julian. She looked terrified.
Phoenix went stiff and pulled me away. She said the old woman was confused. But after that, Phoenix watched everything I did. She corrected the way I tied my tie.
The way I held my glass. The way I laughed. She said I was perfect now. She said I was complete.
She looked at me with love, but I felt cold inside. What was wrong with the old Duncan? Phoenix left for three days for work. I was alone in her apartment.
I wandered into her study. There was a locked drawer. I found the key under a book. Inside were photos.
My heart stopped. They were photos of a man who looked exactly like the new me. Same hair. Same face shape.
Same suit. Same gold watch. The watch I was wearing. I turned a photo over.
The writing said, “Julian, my love, forever. ”
I found a newspaper clipping. Julian died in a car accident two years before I met Phoenix. He was her boyfriend.
Everything clicked. She never loved me. She found a man with a beard and rough hands and she molded me into him. She made me shave.
She made me wear his clothes. She made me talk and walk and laugh the way he did. Every gift was his. I was not her partner.
I was her project. Her way to bring back a dead man. I sat on the floor, holding the photos, feeling my life drain out of me. When Phoenix came back, I was wearing my old flannel shirt.
I hadn’t shaved. I was drinking beer from the bottle. She walked in and stopped. “Duncan?
What are you doing? You need to change. You look disgusting. ”
I didn’t move.
I told her to look in the drawer. I threw the photos at her feet. I asked her who Julian was. Her face went white.
She started to cry. She said she loved me. She said she was helping me. I said she didn’t make me better.
She made me disappear. She killed Duncan. She sobbed that Julian was gone. She just wanted him back.
I told her I was leaving. She begged. She held my arm. She cried that she would change.
But I couldn’t trust her. Every time she kissed me, she was kissing him. I pulled away and walked out the door. Back in my town, I made a fire in the yard.
I threw in the suits, the fancy shoes, the gold watch. I watched it all burn. The next day, I picked up my tools. My hands remembered.
I built a simple table. My beard grew back. I went fishing. I sat by the quiet river.
I said out loud, “I missed my old self, and I finally brought him home. “
