The Face Shop

1

Wallace Browning was a rather pathetic man. He was twenty four and disappointing. The year was 1937 and everyone was becoming doctors, except for Wallace, who worked as a dishwasher at an old burger joint called “Patty’s Smokehouse” on the edge of town (which was bound to go out of business, soon.) Even his hair, a brown mess that flopped over his eyes, was useless. He was thin and incredibly average. His lips were chapped and pursed in a constant scowl. Surely no girl would ever think of kissing him.

His mother had really believed he would be something someday. His father, on the other hand, suggested they start over. In school, Wallace hadn’t been a difficult student. He also hadn’t been a particularly good one either. One semester he had missed several days because of a nasty flu, and it had never shown up in his attendance.

Despite having such a pointless existence, Wallace had the desperate need to better himself. Things just never seemed to work out, however, and he was getting tired of it. He brushed his teeth in the morning, stared at the shell of a man in the mirror, and wished it were not himself.

That was why when he heard the rumour, Wallace became very interested.

It was a hazy Thursday afternoon in Montreal and sunlight was flooding through the dirty, smudged windows of the Smokehouse. A group of college students came in wearing bright clothes, sweat misting their foreheads. Patty (a fat woman with a blotched apron, curly red hair and a voice that sounded like gravel) took their order of four quarter-pounders, then disappeared to the kitchen to make it.

The students sat down in a moth-eaten booth. Wallace, who had been forced to watch the door for any more customers, was coincidentally in the perfect place to listen to their conversation.

“Rough place, this is.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Pop says give her two more years and she’ll be a goner.”

“I can see it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a roach in my burger.”

The conversation continued as such, and Wallace didn’t disagree with any of it. (Though it made him a little pissed off that they were saying it all with him obviously right there.)

After a while, their voices lowered, and Wallace had to almost strain to hear them.

“Did you hear about the new shop in town?”

“What new shop?”

“People are calling it the Face Shop.”

“Why’s that, Tommy?”

“The guy who owns it, they’re sayin’ he can give you a new face. For five to ten dollars, you live someone else’s life. For five to ten dollars.”

At that moment, Patty swung open the doors to the kitchen with her large frame and slapped their order down on the table with an ugly grunt. The students said nothing else about the Face Shop. When they left, Wallace washed their dishes in the silence of the black and white checkered kitchen, thinking strange thoughts to himself.

2

Wallace lived a good distance from the Smokehouse in a cramped apartment up on Bishop Ave. To get to it, he had to walk through Mainstreet and take an abrupt left at the third set of lights. It was at the second set of lights, however, that he came across something he had never seen there before.

The alley was damp with old rain and shrouded in a soft darkness. What little stars there were above could scarcely be seen. Tin roofs curled in from both sides like fingers. A white coffee cup, weathered and unreadable, was decomposing in the dirt. At the far end of the alley, a wooden sign swung gently on its hinges.

The Face Shop.

Somewhere, a deserted dog howled.

Wallace stood at the head of the alley, bathed in the yellow of the streetlamps. He slowly turned to face the sign. He didn’t have to worry about getting home late; it wasn’t like anybody was waiting for him there, or cared if he made it home at all.

The door to the Face Shop was green and the paint had begun to peel. There was a sticker in the window of a quote by Oscar Wilde, though it had faded tremendously. He pulled on the handle and stepped inside. (Ding!)

To Wallace’s utter amazement, faces upon faces decorated the walls. Each one stared at him with a certain hollowness. They ranged from pale and dead looking, to youthful and childlike. Some had an eternal expression of sadness. Others watched him pass through the shop with tremendous joy. He stopped before the front desk, which was decorated in quirky things like gel pens and postcards.

Behind the desk stood a man no younger than forty. He was abnormally tall, and towered over Wallace in a god-like manner. Lines crinkled at his mouth and the corners of his eyes, which were completely lightless, as he smiled. He wore an old fishing hat, and had adjusted it slightly as Wallace came in. The clerk’s hands were large, thick and covered in old papercuts.

“Welcome!” He beamed at Wallace. “To my pride and joy. The Face Shop. For five to ten dollars, good sir, I can give you a new face. A whole new life! For five to ten dollars. You look like you need a restart. I can supply you with one. Just pick a face, and you can live their entire life. For only five to ten dollars!”

Wallace quietly thanked the man and turned back to the shelves of faces. They were all watching him. They all seemed to be whispering to him. He heard their voices, creeping from their dead mouths. Pick me pick me pick me pick me…

One seemed to call out to him in particular. He had to stand on his toes to hesitantly touch its leathery skin. Removing it from the shelf as if it may break, he returned to the clerk and set the face on the table.

“A wise choice.” Said the clerk, considering its flesh with his wide hands and a gaze as dark as the alley. “A good story to live, this one. That will be eight dollars, sir.”

Wallace put the money on the counter. The clerk placed the face in a brown bag and gave it to him. Quickly thanking the clerk, Wallace stumbled out of the Face Shop and hurried home.

3

A week later, Wallace returned to the alley a few blocks down from Bishop Ave. He walked inside the Face Shop as if he were seeing an old friend. Never before had he felt so happy.

“It was wonderful.” He told the clerk upon entering. “I was in the heart of Saudi Arabia. There was a desert as far and deep as the sky. It was so hot, you could see the empty shells of scorpions. I was there for days, wandering about the sand dunes, absolutely lost. Brown cacti, green cacti, yellow cacti scoured the landscape. And at night, the desert was brought to life by the stars. Creatures came out of their burrows in search for food. The sand could have been water, it reflected the heavens so perfectly. Eventually, when I thought for sure death hovering over me, I saw the shimmering mirage of a camel on the horizon. I started toward it, gasping. My tongue had swollen and was making it hard to breathe. The camel was real, and walking it with a twisted rope was a man dressed in long robes of white. He helped me on the sweaty back of the camel and led me to safety. He gave me a pouch of wine and we sat by a blistering fire as he told me the stories of his people. Then, he admitted that his village was in great turmoil. A neighbouring rebellion was ransacking their supplies, and he was charged with the great mission of finding a new home—a haven—in the desert.

“I promised him that, since he was so kind to me, I would help him find it. Together we set out in search of this holy place. We learned the secrets of the desert. We saw things children dream of. After half a year, we came across a watering hole surrounded by thickets of trees. It was the haven we’d sought so hard for.” Wallace grinned. “It was an amazing life.”

The clerk gave an all-knowing smile and leaned back in his seat. “Care for another one, then? Five to ten dollars.”

So Wallace bought another. And another. His apartment was crowded with hollow eyes. Years passed, and with every dead-end job he found himself returning to the Face Shop. Each time, he would place a new face on the counter and tell the clerk of the life he had lived.

“My name was unknown to me. I was born in a cove of forest in the middle of a harsh and brutal winter, and left there. The sun was pale and grey; I was encased in the comfort of a snowbank. A hunter found me, just as the wolves were starting to circle in. He took me to his lodge and raised me as his own.”

“I was a lord and owned my own castle. Women in flowing blue dresses fed me grapes out of ceramic bowls. Salt hung in the air like fog and the ocean yawned at me every morning. I was to be married to a Cuban princess who didn’t want me, and I didn’t want her either.”

It was the year 1990. Wallace’s hair had started to turn white.

“I painted masterpieces in Venice, overlooking a green canal of which lovers paddled through in slender canoes all hours of the day. I illustrated their blushing faces with watery acrylics and sold them on the street for far cheaper than what they were worth. A passing stranger recognized my talent and hired me to paint his portrait for exactly two million dollars. It was the turning point of my career.”

It was the year 1998. Wallace had to walk to the Face Shop with a cane.

“I ventured through the swiss alps with three of my closest friends. We set up tents and watched the goats through our binoculars. The sun bore down on us like a scolding mother. Poppies were in season, however, and we picked them without a care in the world.”

It was the year 2005. The door to the Face Shop was far more weathered than it had been the first time he wandered down the alley. Wallace stepped inside, chose a face, then silently placed it on the counter. He did not tell the clerk of the lives he had recently lived. He hadn’t done so in quite a long time. Something had come to his attention, not so long ago. He had become a withered, bitter, rather unremarkable old man, and it was too late to do anything about it. His life would never be as great as the faces he wore.

Miserably, Wallace Browning took the paper bag from the clerk and left the bookstore.