When I still lived in the city, I worked as a film critic for a poorly distributed, religiously read magazine and had gained a reputation for being overly critical. Hating everything was my entire personality, another reviewer wrote on their blog. I lived in a one-room apartment where for a design reason that remained unclear the toilet was in the middle of the living room. When a guest used it, I’d step onto the fire escape and listen to cars zing by. New York was thrilling and expensive and I spent most of every day feeling successful for staying alive.
One morning, in what would turn out to be my last month there, I awoke to a voice message from my father. He had sent a package and wanted to know if I’d received it. His usually calm voice was strained and he did not specify what the package contained. Let me know. Received. It must be important, I thought. Throughout the day I checked on breaks from writing a review about a new film that was highly touted for its use of idiosyncratic lighting (“clever but self-congratulatory”) but could not rise above its lackluster performances (“stiff with self-regard”).
My father did not answer his phone and no package arrived. Late in the afternoon, I made spaghetti with packet pesto, keeping the windows open so I could hear a late delivery. On the radio, pundits debated a proposed arms package. Planes flew overhead, filled with packages. Everything was a package.
The phone rang. I hoped it was my father but it was another reviewer calling to see if I’d cover for her that night. She was supposed to see a show near the Navy Yard, in one of the yawning expanses of lots, barbed wire, and distribution centers. I mostly reviewed screeners and streaming television but she said this one had to be in person.
The piece was called The Cab. Her tone implied that I should know what it was and be grateful for the opportunity.
“If this film is so great, why aren’t you taking it?”
“Show,” she said. “Not film. You really haven’t heard about it, Milletti? Have you been out of the country?” She was the kind of person who treated someone poorly while asking for a favor. I admired her to the point of nausea. I loved that she used my last name. Most people did; discreet groups from my life who didn’t know one another; friends from high school, coworkers. I have a kind of expression or way of standing or speaking: People immediately considered me a teammate.
I told her I was as close as one could get to being out of the country while being fully at home. I’d been in bed for the previous few days. She took it to mean I’d been having sex.
“Okay, girl, I see you.” She sounded impressed. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
She laughed as if I was being coy. “I see you.”
One more thing about this person: Her name was Jude Law. Like the actor. That’s not significant, it’s just a detail. Meaning it’s just as significant as anything else.
I’d been bedbound because I’d seen a photo online of my ex at a wedding. He was wearing sunglasses and sitting next to a woman with an elegant neck. I thought about the picture when I soaped myself up in the shower then walked to the food store where I debated what kind of mushrooms would keep their integrity in the wok. I couldn’t remember if he was wearing glasses and whether his hair was long or short so I looked at the photo again, and again was impressed by how little I cared so I crawled into bed and thought about the way his beard glimmered because even the sun favored him. The photo wore on me the way a river pummels stones.
I told Jude Law I’d take the job, anticipating gratitude but she said the tickets would be left at the counter and hung up.
The show took place in a warehouse that had been converted into a theater. After navigating a series of trains, I arrived sweating, gasping, and furious with myself that I had never strong-armed anyone into doing my job while acting aggravated. The warehouse, strung with purple lanterns, seems like a giant reproachful insect. There was no movie signage, yet a line of people stood outside. My curiosity clicked on. At that time, I was susceptible to a desire to be in on things.
Inside was a surprisingly new-looking lobby, awash in carpet. Even the counter was carpeted. It reminded me of the roller-skating rink from my youth. The bumpers and walls and tables were sheathed in plush so no one would get hurt if they fell. It made me sad to think about. In the winter of sixth grade, I skated alone to Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional,” thinking sad thoughts when my father, who’d arrived early to pick me up and had been watching from the side, yelled, “Hurry it up, Milletti, I’m not getting any younger!”
Even my father, who shared it and had given it to me, called me by my last name.
There was a mix-up with my ticket. Jude Law hadn’t spoken to the right person or they’d misplaced it. This seemed to require several clerks to join the original clerk to search and talk. I left them arguing and went to the bathroom, lit by more purple lanterns. A woman standing near the door handed me a paper towel and when I thanked her, said, “I don’t work here.” She wore a vest buttoned over a turtleneck and official-looking joggers.
A text from my father read: did the package arrive?
I texted back: am at work will check when i get home.
He texted a series of emojis that signified being grateful, in love, and horrified.
At the counter more clerks had joined the search for my ticket. One who seemed to command respect from the others announced, “This transaction was improperly handled from the start.”
The original clerk looked panicked. My sympathy for workers battled my desire to go in and sit down. Finally, the respected clerk asked if it would be okay if I waited a few minutes. I told her that was fine, confused as to why it had taken so long to figure out when the answer had been a simple matter of a short delay.
I asked how the reception to the show had been so far.
“This is the first night,” the original clerk said as the respected clerk said, “This is the only night.”
This did not match Jude Law’s attitude of surprised condescension upon my admission that I hadn’t heard of this show. The matter settled, I took my ticket to a curtained wall and an usher emerged and said she would lead me to my cab. It was the vested woman from the bathroom.
“I thought you said you didn’t work here.”
“I said I didn’t work there,” she said, pointing toward the bathrooms.
She held back a section of curtain and I passed into a country-dark vacuous space that felt mammoth. The stark contrast of moving from the lobby to this space made me pause to collect my bearings. I sensed large structures hulking in the darkness and people milling about. My eyes adjusted and I realized they were cabs, larger than any I’d seen, with a few rows of seats inside. The line of them seemed to extend for miles.
“What kind of trick is this?” I asked the woman.
She did not reply but guided me to her vehicle, which had an enormous windshield that shone in errant light. Smaller, diamond-shaped portholes dotted the sides. She slid open the wide door, startling a couple inside, who gathered their belongings. The driver allowed them to pass then gestured for me to take a seat. I chose the back row. I liked to have a buffering distance between me and whatever I was considering. The driver closed the door and lights went up inside the vehicle as if it were a theater. She took her seat up front. A partition between us ascended as she arranged her legs around the steering wheel. I peered out one of the portholes, obscured by city muck, but could no longer see the warehouse. The “cab” lurched forward. The sensation of movement was uncanny. Through the windshield, I could see we were driving through a city I didn’t recognize. The Eiffel Tower. The Space Needle. Paris and Seattle? Explosions fireworked over the horizon. We passed a large power plant I strained to see through the windows.
My pulse quickened. Important, surprising works were rare. “This is very realistic!” I called up to her. She pointed to her ears and shook her head.
She turned onto a road that spiraled up a steep hill. The switchbacks were narrow but I remembered a story about how bus drivers in the Andes mountains knew their roads as if the routes were imprinted in their bodies. I glimpsed sharp cliffs and reminded myself we were still inside a theater. As if to test my conviction, the cab skittered on a patch of loose gravel. She pumped the brake as the back wheel flirted with the treacherous drop-off. I made a noise of shock, an “awl” triggered by real fear. The illusion was whole, the driver did a masterful job of feigning this momentary lapse of control. The cab halted and we took a few long breaths. A hawk screeched above the cab, its call bouncing off the vast space of a canyon. The driver pressed the accelerator and we moved around the curve.
We traveled the road for several minutes as I attempted to figure out our destination. Authentic-feeling desert air crept into the cab. I shook off my sweater, my back dotted with sweat.
We passed a roadside bodega. A man sat outside, smoking. I made a gesture of salutation to him that he, impossibly, returned. Every so often the driver pulled off to the side so another “cab” could pass. I couldn’t deduce how they were executing the lighting, timing, and movement.
“When does the show start?”
She sped toward another sharp curve at the end of the road. The velocity pressed me into my seat, halted my breath. She accelerated. I assumed she’d slow at the last moment in the expert way years of experience had taught her. Instead, she barreled faster toward it. We could not make it around. I cried out.
We launched over the ledge. My stomach lifted. I clutched the arm of the seat, anticipating the drop. But instead of falling we hovered above a valley of terra-cotta homes with lush, complicated gardens. The buoyancy of sudden elevation spread through my stomach as we climbed. My ears popped as we flew over the valley. I had never seen homes as gentle and singular, like those I’d read about in childhood fantasy novels. Owls and turquoise doors and wildflower gardens. Cottages tucked into hollows, laden with moss. A woman wearing a red dress knelt in the middle of a field of cabbages so healthy they seemed sentient. Complex and green. Happiness, I thought, swiping a tear from my cheek. But why would this prompt emotion?
We flew toward an expanse of navy mountains outlined in the dying sun. Their darkness grew as we approached. Homes blinked throughout the foothills, cars snaked up tiny roads. My driver accelerated. Trees and more homes in the ridges. We were near enough to see a lean, muscled girl standing in a driveway. She waved us away, we were too close. Her voice reached us in the cab. “Go back,” she called. Again, my body reacted as if we were going to crash. I yelled, “No!” And, “Hey!” The cabbie ignored me. I covered my eyes. Trees filled the ridges and we slammed against the side.
At impact, the lights came up. The walls of the vehicle had vanished. I found myself in a room of seating arrangements being manned by their own drivers, dressed similarly in vests and joggers, though the cabs were gone. Dazed audience members gathered their belongings. Others arrived. I realized I was in the middle of a structure that had many beginnings. But that wasn’t the whole of it. When people arrived, the cab cars sprang up around them and flew away. I could see landscapes through the departing windshields that were different from the one I’d traveled through. Forests, tropical islands, cityscapes. But this would imply infinite shows. Did the drivers have a route or was it a surprise for them too? The sensation of hitting the mountain coursed through my body. I was only beginning to understand what I had experienced.
I left my section, found the curtained wall, and stumbled across the lobby. Disoriented, I tripped on a fold in the carpet and landed on my knees. The contents of my purse spilled across the floor. Hair ties, coins, and lemon chews launched away from me with force, as if fleeing. I hadn’t realized how many items I’d been carrying. A woman stepped around the items as if I had vomited. I attempted to gather the mess, but items evaded my wide reach. I embraced the ground again and again. A group of formally dressed men approached and asked how much certain items were. They held up my tampons, date book, the banana I carried in case someone went into diabetic shock, the bookmark my ex gave me, my glasses case.
“They’re not for sale.” I shooed them, pain blooming in my forehead. Something about the show had dug a nail into me. I didn’t want to interact. I wanted to go home and get back into bed and after taking five trains that’s what I did. No package had come while I’d been out. I texted my father the package failed to show, which felt appropriately dramatic.
In uneasy dreams a package waited for me to arrive. I was on my way, but I was late.
At sunrise, I did not stay in bed like I had every other morning. I took the stairs to the sidewalk and walked into the middle of the street. Even New York City is quiet and carless at 7:00 a.m. I turned to the east as if it might yield a courier. I turned to the west.
Inside, my phone was ringing. It was my father.
“Never mind,” he said. “Your mother never took it to the post office. We’re taking it later today.”
“What is it?” I said. “What is the package?”
“Your high school tennis trophy. We thought you’d want it. Now that you no longer have a husband. To remind you: you were once at the top of your game.”
“My high school trophy? But that’s not important! Why were you making it sound urgent?”
In the moment that passed I heard a plane climb to cruising altitude.
“Sometimes,” my father said, “I don’t know how to talk to you.”
That afternoon, I wrote and filed a rare positive review (“Inspired soundscape. Terrifyingly real”), but I was coming to the end of something. I’d grown weary of seeking new sentiment for what was normally conventional and routine. The Cab underlined a disappointment I’d been harboring: Every film follows the same beats. I wasn’t overly critical, I only longed for innovation. This desire compounded a feeling that an important central force in the city that once loved me was now indifferent. And how far we all were from the forest. We had approximations of it corralled into parks, but they only proved how far away we were from the actual actual. I realized: they’re tricking us. My clothes felt so heavy I feared I’d collapse. I imagined myself at age ninety on a fire escape, trying to block the sound of flushing.
I moved as north as one can while still being in the city limits, then farther, into the silent, restless woods. I can’t be the first to say it: A forest is a verb. Whether you’re in one seems based on whether you’re somewhere or only on the verge of somewhere. Something regularly shifts out of sight. I like it: I keep moving, too. I am always ever-so-slightly beyond my reach.
When did you cut your hair?
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Excerpted from Exit Zero: Stories by Marie-Helene Bertino. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2025 by Marie-Helene Bertino. “Every Forest, Every Film” was first published by The Stinging Fly. All rights reserved.
