The Urbanization of James Trumbull

Approximately two months before his retirement, James Trumbull discovered that a village had been built on his left elbow. He was in the shower, and his fingers encountered what he initially believed to be a rough patch of skin. When he examined it more closely, though, he discovered several farmhouses, a church, and a diminutive village green. There was even a post office with a miniature red sign and a mailbox by the curb.

Alarmed, and more than a little disgusted, James slapped his hand down hard upon the village. It hurt, but no more than slapping a sunburn. When he lifted his hand, the church spire was askew, the farmhouses’ slate roofs were cracked, and the village green was a smear of mud. That, he hoped, would be the end of that.

~

James’s doctor studied the settlement with curiosity.

The villagers had proven themselves industrious. They had rebuilt. They had expanded. When a public house had opened near a freckle on James’s bicep, he’d decided to visit his doctor.

“How do I get rid of it?” he asked.

“Is it uncomfortable?”

“No,” James conceded. “But it’s unsightly.”

“I think it’s quite picturesque.”

“Can you do anything about it?”

James’s doctor shrugged. “I think it’s totally benign.”

James put his shirt back on, disgruntled.

“I wouldn’t travel until we know more, though,” his doctor added. “Just in case.”

James was retiring in two weeks. He and his wife had always planned on taking a big European vacation to mark the occasion. She’d died five years previously, but James had still planned on taking the trip. It was a way of honoring her.

“Just in case,” his doctor repeated.

~

“Do you believe this?” James asked his daughter when they met up that Saturday for lunch. He rolled up his sleeve to show her. A petrol station had opened in the crook of his elbow.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think it makes you look kind of distinguished.”

~

The date of James’s retirement came. They threw him a party at work, which was nice, but James didn’t know many employees these days. They all seemed very young. He went home early but still felt like he’d overindulged for several days afterward.

He made arrangements to postpone his European vacation with a sense of great resentment.

The settlement on his arm had now expanded into a small town. The village green had been replaced with a more robust market square. Cul-de-sacs curled around his triceps. Shops ran down the inside of his forearm. He thought he saw the early stages of a big box store being built near his wrist. When he wore his reading glasses, he could see the town’s inhabitants walking on the streets and barbecuing in their gardens.

He decided he hated each and every one of them.

~

In lieu of Europe, James visited Blackpool. He moped along the seafront and scoffed at the famous lights.

Several days in, while taking cover from a summer rain shower, he met Fiona in a gift shop. She was an American divorcee, and she seemed keen on devouring every British pub meal and man put in front of her. She and James struck up a conversation and arranged to meet for dinner.

James, who had been wearing a raincoat during their initial meeting, selected a long-sleeved shirt for the dinner date. Fiona even complimented him on it over their fish and chips. She held his hand as they walked by the amusement park. James supposed the lights weren’t so bad after all.

The weather had taken a turn for the better. Feeling warmer in Fiona’s presence, James, unthinking, rolled up his sleeves.

“What’s that?” Fiona pointed at a patch of middle-income housing.

James blanched. “My doctor says it’s totally benign,” he managed, hastily rolling his sleeves back down.

Shortly afterward, Fiona announced she needed to leave and call her son in California. James didn’t see her in Blackpool again.

~

“I don’t even recognize myself when I look in the mirror,” James said.

“Tell me about it.”

James’s father had been an athletic man for most of his life. Now 92, he had spent the last five years slowly shrinking until he seemed dwarfed by the recliner that was propped in front of his TV.

“My retirement was supposed to be my reward,” James said. Several satellite villages had appeared across his chest that morning. “I was supposed to be on the vacation of a lifetime.”

“Do you remember that vacation we took to Norfolk when you were little?” his father said. “There was a theme park with a lazy river ride.”

James nodded grumpily.

“You and the other kids were splashing all around in every direction. And the older children were trying to race around, seeing how fast they could do laps.”

“And you and mum just floated along.” James said, finally with something resembling a nostalgic smile.

“Because you can’t fight the current forever,” his father said. “So just learn to enjoy the ride.”

~

The town on James’s arm grew. It subsumed the satellite villages. They formed small communities within the larger urban area, each with their own rhythms and nightlife. Streetlamps illuminated his body at night. Low-income housing was being built near his pubis.

It was time, James decided, to consult a specialist.

~

“Hmm,” Dr Reynolds said, examining a swimming pool on James’s pectoral.

“Ah.” She palpated a shoulder blade. “Did you know there's a football field back here?”

He hadn’t. His own back had become foreign territory.

“Good news,” she said, when she was done. “There’s a cream that can help.”

~

Waiting for his new prescription in Dr Reynold’s dedicated pharmacy, James met Stephanie for the first time. She was roughly his age, her gray hair still worn long. He could see a train station poking out from beneath the sleeve of her blouse, and a line of smokestacks running up the side of her neck.

“That’s pretty,” she said, pointing to the church on his elbow.

“Oh,” he said awkwardly. “Thank you.”

“For me,” she said without being asked, “it was all industrial at first. That’s what brought me here. But now there’s a rather grand park on my left buttock and I quite like it.”

James stuttered. He blushed. Then Stephanie blushed. “Oh!” she said. “I didn’t…” and she dissolved into giggles.

“I just meant,” she said, when she had gathered herself, “that I don’t know whether to keep going with the treatment anymore. Maybe I should just accept who I am now?”

James took a longer time collecting his prescription than was strictly necessary, and before he left the pharmacy, he collected Stephanie’s phone number too.

~

The cream was, to James’s delight, rapidly effective. Within days, much of the cheaper housing on his torso showed signs of structural damage. A number of shops displayed foreclosure signs. After a week, whole neighborhoods were abandoned, and windows were boarded up in many of the poorer parts of his body. He was briefly concerned about an area of tents and makeshift housing that appeared near his armpit, but Dr Reynolds assured him this would be transient.

And yet, satisfied as he was, when he lay in bed at night, many of his streetlamps extinguished or flickering, he couldn’t help but think about the tiny lives affected by his actions. Were there people in that town who worried about their mortgages, their children, their property values? Were their dreams being spoiled by his actions? Was life not working out quite how any of them had planned?

~

James took Stephanie out for dinner.

“I see the treatment is taking,” she said pointing to his short sleeves and exposed arms.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “I’d really given up on finding anyone.” Then he realized what he’d said. “Finding anything,” he said quickly.

She blushed, and he thought about the park on her left buttock.

~

She invited him back to her house that night. They were older she said, and beautiful moments were more precious now, and she wasn’t interested in wasting them.

They drank wine in her living room, and then went upstairs to her bedroom.

She took off her clothes and lay on her bed, and he saw all of her then. He saw the city that covered her skin, with the high rises on her breasts, the streets deep as canyons, and the theater district arrayed around her navel, its streets spider-webbing out across her belly. He saw the dense knots of traffic that teemed over her clavicles.

And he looked away. Just for a moment, but for a moment too long. And when he looked back there was shame in her eyes. He apologized again and again as she got dressed but what could he really say?

That night, as he lay alone in his own bed and looked down at his own body, littered with the ruins of so many broken homes, he wondered what he was becoming.

~

“Andrew and I need to move,” his daughter told him that Saturday. “Rent hike.”

James considered the neighborhood that his daughter and son-in-law lived in. “Really? Why?”

“Gentrification.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s when there are more Starbucks in your neighborhood than McDonalds.”

James looked down at his own body. He'd noticed more fast-food restaurants opening up and the more picturesque bistros shutting down. A food truck was operating in the neighborhood of his right pectoral.

“Will you be ok?”

She shrugged. She looked stressed. He reached out and squeezed her hand.

“It’s bad timing,” she said. “But we can’t turn back the clock, can we?”

~

James’s father passed away a few weeks later. It was a stroke—he was told—quite sudden, and probably causing very little pain.

“Oh,” he was told his father had said, “off I go.” And then he had gone.

Somewhat to James’s own surprise, he invited Stephanie to the funeral. Even more surprising to him, she said yes. As the priest rumbled through the ceremonies, she squeezed his hand.

“He looked peaceful,” she said looking at photos with him afterward.

“He was,” James said. “Or . . . he was at peace more than he was at war.”

“I’ve stopped seeing Dr Reynolds,” Stephanie said. “I decided I’d rather just . . . be myself.”

James nodded. “You look peaceful.”

"Well,” Stephanie said, "I hope you look that way one day too.”

~

When everyone had gone home, James went up to his bedroom, stripped naked, and stood before a full-length mirror.

Much of the city had been abandoned. His body was starting to reclaim the ruins, architecture overwhelmed by rough skin and tufts of body hair.

The collection of tents and cardboard houses in his armpit had not faded away, however. If anything, it had grown. An urban blight stretched to his nipple and around his back.

In some places, the settlement did still stand proudly. A much-loved town hall had proven a bastion of resistance and was providing soup to long queues of the town’s remaining populace. The church was still present on his elbow.

He looked at himself, and he thought of Stephanie, and her openness, and her lack of fear. He thought of his daughter, looking for a home, and fighting to look on the bright side of everything. And he thought of his father, and his gentle acceptance of the world, and everything it contained.

He picked at a spot where the houses were almost completely collapsed. Architecture flaked away beneath his nail, miniscule bricks and beams falling onto the carpet. The skin beneath looked old, pale, and thin.

Quite quietly, but with his whole body shaking, James began to cry.

~

Shortly after the funeral, James called Dr Reynolds and told her he would not be fulfilling his next prescription.

Shortly after that, he invited Stephanie out for dinner again. It took some encouragement, but she agreed. They both wore short sleeves, and while she didn’t invite him home afterward, she did agree to meet him again.

Then, shortly after that, James met his daughter for lunch, and for the first time in a long time, she told him he looked relaxed.

And quite a long time after that, James asked Stephanie if she would like to go on a European vacation with him, and she said, yes.

~

“What is it exactly you’re taking a vacation from?” James’s daughter asked him.

He was in a deck chair in his back garden, soaking in the sun.

“You,” he said, grinning.

She rolled her eyes.

The town was now a city. Light reflected from the glass and steel skyscrapers that marked the financial district growing on his shoulders. A commuter town had appeared on his right calf, with a train line curling up over his thigh and around the curve of his buttock. A park had been constructed across his belly, with a pond, and a wooded area, and several dog parks.

“So,” his daughter said. “Paris first?”

“That’s the plan.”

“And then where?

James shrugged. “Wherever the current takes me.”