The Way I See It

Summary

Selected Shorts – "The Way I See It"

Date: September 18, 2025
Host: Meg Wolitzer
Podcast: Selected Shorts (Symphony Space)

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Overview

This episode of Selected Shorts explores the theme of perspective—how we see ourselves and others, and how fiction allows us to step into new ways of seeing. Host Meg Wolitzer guides listeners through three short stories performed by renowned actors: a comic-mythic reflection on dating from the perspective of a Cyclops, a moving heist set in a hair salon that examines beauty and self-worth, and a haunting tale of a child’s fear and a family’s attempt to soothe it with technology.

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Key Discussion Points & Story Summaries

1. "You Can Find Love Now" by Ramona Ausubel

Performed by: Amy Ryan & Martin Short
Segment Starts: [02:53]
Theme: Finding oneself through the act of seeking love; self-acceptance; myth and modernity.

Story Breakdown

• Setup: Modern online dating guide reimagined for a Cyclops (a figure from Greek myth), coached through building an online dating profile.
• Narrative Techniques: Call-and-response banter between the Cyclops (Short) and the profile coach (Ryan), blending deadpan dating advice with mythic and comic asides.
• Highlights:
  • Cyclops' self-description mixes monstrous and vulnerable traits, poking fun at dating profile conventions:

    “Find me at cyclops15. Cyclops 1 to 14 were taken.” – Cyclops, [03:26]

  • Admissions about interests and turn-offs are both self-aware and mythically grotesque:

    “I hand sew my own shoes using a needle made from the fang of a wolf. I sleep hot. I want nothing more than a sheet on my bed. Even in winter, even in a cave.” – Cyclops, [03:53]

  • On openness and desire:

    “I like fat girls, old girls, tall girls, tired girls... Girls whose best idea for getting my attention is to send a photo of themselves holding a suggestive popsicle, their fists covered in red.” – Cyclops, [04:15]

  • Cyclops' reflection on family and identity, tying myth to the ordinary (“I teach online English classes, not to get paid, but because I like to feel smarter than someone else... And I teach all the classic books except the Odyssey.” [05:39]), along with longing and a sense of isolation.
• Notable Moment:
  • Dark humor when describing a traumatic visit to the eye doctor:

    “I do not fit in the chair. And I wish I could forget lying on my back on the floor of that darkened room while a small man climbed onto my chest with that sharp point of light. I’m not sorry for what I did to him. Now he can see for himself what it’s like to have one eye.” – Cyclops, [09:02]

• Conclusion: A combination of awkward honesty, myth, and yearning for connection—ends with a pitch for love that is both touching and a little unsettling.

  "Your grandmother will tell you. All the good men are gone. But then, here I am. And I'm ready for you.” – Cyclops, [13:45]

Commentary

Meg Wolitzer:

“A story about trying to see yourself in the best light, whether you’re looking with two small eyeballs or one big one. Still, if you encounter Cyclops on Hinge, you might think twice before you swipe right… he seems to be throwing a few red flags in there.” ([13:50])

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2. "The Weave" by Charles Johnson

Performed by: Arnell Powell
Segment Starts: [15:08]
Theme: Beauty, self-worth, and the social, historical, and economic forces that define them.

Story Breakdown

• Setup: After being unjustly fired, Aisha and her boyfriend Tyrone execute a heist, stealing duffel bags of coveted human hair extensions from a beauty supply shop.
• Narrative Style: Richly detailed, blending noir-caper rhythms with introspection and social critique.

Key Insights & Notable Quotes

• Societal Observation:

  “Permeating every particle in that exchange of desire is a profound historical pain, a hurt based on the lie that the hair one was unlucky enough to be born with can never in this culture be good enough…” ([17:53])

• On Identity and Beauty:

  “I tell her she’s beautiful as she is, but when she peers at television movies or popular magazines… she says with a sense of fatality, ‘I can’t look like that.’” ([20:43])

• The Heist:
  • Practical details as Aisha sneaks into her old workplace, tinged with emotional significance.
• On the Value and Origin of the Hair Extensions:

  “The bags, she says, come from a Buddhist temple near New Delhi where young women shave their heads in an ancient ceremony of sacrifice called taking pabaja… this letting go of things cosmetic and the chimera called the ego is their first step as nuns…” ([29:45])

• Insightful Reflection:

  “You find it rattled to the rest of the world. I didn’t see any of that coming till it arrived.” ([33:21])

• Finale:
  • After their crime, Aisha’s discomfort leads her to burn the stolen hair and turn herself in, paralleling the hair’s original act of self-renunciation.
  • As police arrive, Tyrone proposes to Aisha.

  “She looks vulnerable but not weak, free, and more than enough for herself… her head nods, yes. Yes. Yes.” ([38:56])

Commentary

Meg Wolitzer:

“Setting that story in a salon is a playful choice… in life, you usually want someone who commits a crime to be quickly apprehended, but in fiction, not so much… we tense up when sirens are heard because we already know and like these characters…” ([38:57])

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3. "Blue Light, Red Light" by J. Robert Lennon

Performed by: Fred Hechinger
Segment Starts: [42:58]
Theme: Childhood anxiety, family communication, technology as false comfort.

Story Breakdown

• Setup: A young boy, unsettled after accidentally seeing a violent true crime show, develops compulsive safety rituals to protect his baby sister.
• Parental Response:
  • The parents, worried about his anxiety, purchase “Baby’s Calming Globe,” a device said to monitor danger (blue = safe, red = danger).
  • The father explains:

    “It’s blue now, see, that means the doors and windows are locked and there are no monsters inside or outside. Blue means safe. If anything is wrong… it’ll turn red. You got that?” ([44:47])

• Escalation:
  • The boy is unconvinced, secretly monitors the light, and tries to "test" it—with increasingly dangerous experiments.
  • In a climactic moment, he sets a small fire in the nursery, believing it’s a controlled test. The device stays blue; chaos ensues as half the house is lost to fire.
  • When confronted by his anguished father:

    “It didn’t turn red, I was watching and it didn’t. … It didn’t work.” ([56:55])

• Emotional Impact:
  • The motif of misunderstood intentions and the dangers of indirect communication between children and adults.
• Reflection:
  • Fred Hechinger, backstage commentary:

    “I felt very connected to what Lennon writes at the end... the boy knowing that what he’s saying is not the right thing, but it’s the only thing that he can say in that moment and he just needs to say it over and over and over again. I think that’s a very moving and very real way for this piece to end. I’ve felt that a lot in life.” ([58:19])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Perspective and Self-Acceptance:
  • “I am me and no one else is me. And that is a miracle. I am a miracle.” – Cyclops, [06:48]
• On the Price of Beauty:
  • “For some reason, these sacks of something as common and plentiful as old hair are worth a lot of bank.” – Narrator (Arnell Powell), [22:36]
• On Childhood Anxiety:
  • “It didn’t turn red, I was watching and it didn’t. … It didn’t work.” – The Boy, [56:55]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Theme Setup: [00:52] – [02:52]
• "You Can Find Love Now": [02:53] – [13:50]
• Host Commentary / Transition: [13:50] – [15:08]
• "The Weave": [15:08] – [38:57]
• Host Commentary / Transition: [38:57] – [41:15]
• "Blue Light, Red Light": [42:58] – [58:09]
• Fred Hechinger Backstage Interview: [58:19] – [59:40]
• Host Wrap-Up: [59:40] onward

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Tone and Language

• The episode fluidly combines comic, poignant, and sharply observed moments. It moves from satirical self-effacement in the Cyclops’ confession, to the lyrical and socially engaged narrative of “The Weave,” to the unsettlingly honest and minimalist style of “Blue Light, Red Light.”
• Wolitzer’s commentary maintains an empathetic, playful tone, encouraging listeners to engage with each story both emotionally and intellectually.

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Closing Thoughts

This episode connects the magical with the all-too-real, inviting us to reimagine ourselves, challenge received notions of beauty and danger, and question how we construct the boundaries between safety and risk. Each story offers a new “way of seeing it”—whether through a mythic eye, a stolen weave, or a child’s relentless vigil for monsters in the dark.

Transcript

[Narrator/Storyteller]

Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change.

[Cyclops Character]

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[Commercial Announcer]

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[Meg Wolitzer]

On this selected short stories that help us find new perspectives on ourselves and the world around us. Plus, there's a Cyclops, so you know he's already seeing things just a little differently. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Stay with us. You're listening to selected shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. Stories always offer us new ways of seeing. We begin reading with our standard convictions about ourselves and those around us. And after spending some time in the lives of others, our sight lines are just a little different in this hour of selected shorts, stories about limited viewpoints and larger visions. In one piece, an unusual character drops into the dating pool. In another, a heist gets hairy. And in a third, a child's fears find his family seeking tech support. First, let's hear something from Ramona Ausubel. Her books include the recent novel the Last Animal and the story collection A Wayland. This piece, a quirky take on a famous mythological figure, includes a kind of call and response, so we asked two favorite actors to read it together. Amy Ryan has a long resume of serious work, including Gone Baby, Gone and Lost Girls. So it's easy to forget how funny she can be in series such as Only Murders in the Building, which of course stars the comic supernova Martin Short, who's known for big characters featured on TV shows including SCTV and films such as Father of the Bride. Now here are Amy Ryan and Martin Short together performing Ramona Ausubel's yous Can Find Love. Now.

[Dating Profile Coach]

You are lonely, but you don't have to be. You have so many great qualities. Just think of all the single ladies out there who are waiting to hear from you. Whether you are looking for lasting love or just a little fun, this is the only guide to online dating you'll ever need. Within the hour you'll be on your way to eternal happiness. Let's get started. When creating your username, keep in mind that it should be concise and easy to remember. Make it personal. If you're a dancer, maybe try hip dancer 21.

[Cyclops Character]

Find me at cyclops 15. Cyclops 1 to 14 were taken.

[Dating Profile Coach]

Now choose a tagline that will attract the woman you want. Secret. Do what no one else is doing.

[Cyclops Character]

I'm 8ft tall and I have one giant eye.

[Dating Profile Coach]

What are your interests? Be honest, but enticing.

[Cyclops Character]

I hand sew my own shoes using a needle made from the fang of a wolf. I sleep hot. I want nothing more than a sheet on my bed. Even in winter, even in a cave.

[Dating Profile Coach]

Know who your target is? Where does she live? What does she look like? What hobbies does she have?

[Cyclops Character]

I like fat girls, old girls, tall girls, tired girls. Girls who lack adequate clothing. Girls whose best idea for getting my attention is to send a photo of themselves holding a suggestive popsicle, their fists covered in red. Melt girls in wheelchairs, girls who worked professionally at the Renaissance Fair. You could choose other men. Men who like to think about feet. Men who have thick black hair. Men whose greatest pride is the time they flew to a nearby nation and tried to deplete its stores of alcohol and slept on the beach one night. Wasn't that so fun? And when they woke up, everything had been stolen or lost and they had to walk back to the pastel yellow hotel naked in the early heat of another day in paradise. Everyone has had good times. Everyone has a picture of himself in front of a pinkening sunset with a glass of white wine. Choose them if you want to. Choose me. If you want someone to hold you above his head in the moonlight, bite your wrist until the first rust comes.

[Dating Profile Coach]

Out, tell the ladies a little more about yourself. What's your own unique story?

[Cyclops Character]

Well, the first generation of Cyclops were forgers. The next generation, my generation, was a band of thuggish shepherds living in the grasslands of Sicily. We trapped so called heroes in our caves. We bit into the warm butter of a human leg. But the only one who got famous for it was my brother. We still live under volcanoes, hacking at iron, trying to revive the old tradition. I left home too hot, too old. And I live in Washington State. I like the fog, I like the rain. My volcano is more famous than any of my brother's volcanoes. I never heard from them. They're not on email. I teach online English classes, not to get paid, but because I like to feel smarter than someone else. And I teach all the classic books except the Odyssey. My photos are taken in profile. Maybe there's time to get braver, to embrace my own unique beauty. I subscribe to the magazines that tell me we are all beautiful if only we can learn to tap into our potential. I am me and no one else is me. And that is a miracle. I am a miracle. The downside? My mother has been dead for some hundreds of years so you'll never get to meet her. The upside? My father is the God of the Sea so we can guarantee good weather on our honeymoon cruise. He's shitty at love, my dad. He smells like an over cleaned wound and he won't quit working. Every day and every night, somewhere in one of the world's oceans, my father is striking the surface of the abyss with swords of fire.

[Dating Profile Coach]

Do you smoke? Do you drink? How often do you exercise? Do you support charities that help animals? With an unexpected bonus, would you a donate to a cause you really believe in? Baby, save half and spend the rest c celebrate with your friends and margaritas.

[Cyclops Character]

If you want me to set a trap, I'll set a trap. The first date Picking blueberries in the whitest, cleanest sunlight. Tin pails. I'll bring sandwiches and chilled chardonnay and tell you that we are already the good people we wanted to become. Maybe you'll be generous and keep up the conversation all afternoon. Pretty Karen98 was generous. PrettyKaren98 looked into my eye when we chatted online and laughed at my jokes. But she never answered my messages after our date even though her status was still marked single.

[Dating Profile Coach]

Don't mention your previous relationship history. Leave your emotional baggage packed and in the closet. You are on the market because you are awesome.

[Cyclops Character]

Sorry. Let's try that again. My actual perfect day descending below ground early, full of milk and blood and meat to forge iron. There is no such thing as day or night in the volcano and any sense of time comes from watching the metal change shape. From oar to spear, from o' er to trident, from o' er to thunderbolt. If I am strong that day, the mountains will shake with the strike of my hammer, the heat of my flame. I can't ski and I should be better at basketball than I am. I don't eat vegetables, but my eye is blue and it's pale and it's beautiful. My vision is good, though not great. But understand this. I will never again visit an ophthalmologist or an optometrist or anyone else who claims to be an expert of my organ. I do not Fit in the chair. And I wish I could forget lying on my back on the floor of that darkened room while a small man climbed onto my chest with that sharp point of light. I'm not sorry for what I did to him. Now he can see for himself what it's like to have one eye.

[Dating Profile Coach]

You have almost finished creating a magnetic online dating profile that will attract more women than you ever thought possible. What else do you want the ladies to know? Remember. Be yourself.

[Cyclops Character]

Well, I do remember the old feeling. Sometimes a maiden washes up on my island, tailed or otherwise. The cave is sweating and there are mineral stalks growing from the ceiling. I have no idea what time it is ever. All my wrist and ankle shackles are homemade, struck from iron I myself dug from the earth. The maidens were not as beautiful as the stories tell you. Their hair was salt stringy, and their faces were pruned too long in sea water can unmake any loveliness. Yet I meant to love them. I meant to tend to their wounds. And when I pounded the shackles with my hammer, the person I imagined chaining was my father. I imagined slipping the discs around his watery arms, not to hurt him, but to keep him. But my father never offered himself. Up on my rocky beach. I'd see his big hand out there sometimes swilling the surface of the sea. But he never came close. Maybe he was the one who threw maidens to me, his dear son. His wifeless boy wanting an heir. I will not shackle your slender wrists to the cold walls or gnaw your nails down to the quick with my remaining teeth. I will not leave you hungry while I eat a roast goat at your feet. I've dealt with those issues. Imagine the inverse. I have the softest mattress in the world, made of the comb fur of fawns. Choose me and you'll be choosing warm oil on your hands and cold water in your glass. Meat on your plate from a lamb that suckled on my pinky when it was first born. If I came to your house tonight, where would I find you? The living room? The kitchen? Waiting at the door. I'll call you Aphrodite and smell the sea in your hair and shuck oysters for you from the depths. I'll tell you I've never seen a real goddess until now. Come with me and be adored deep below the earth. While you sleep, I will strike a huge sheet of metal until the shape of your body comes into relief. You never have to take me to meet your friends. You never have to take me anywhere you never even have to see me in the light. Your grandmother will tell you. All the good men are gone. But then, here I am. And I'm ready for you. The end.

[Meg Wolitzer]

That was Martin Short and Amy Ryan Richard Reading youg Can Find Love now by Ramona Ausubel See what Ausubel did there? That's right, a story about trying to see yourself in the best light, whether you're looking with two small eyeballs or one big one. Still, if you encounter Cyclops on hinge, you might think twice before you swipe right. Not because of the single centrally located eyeball. No, no, that's not a deal breaker. But, well, because he seems to be throwing a few red flags in there. Next, let's hear a story from multifaceted writer Charles Johnson. His 27 published books include nonfiction, craft advice, cartoon compendiums, and novels such as Middle Passage, for which he won the National Book Award. This piece revolves around a hair salon, a place where even the wigs lovingly check one another out. But from the first few lines, we know this is not just going to be about hair extensions. Our reader is Arnell Powell, an adaptable actor who has been featured in series including Stranger Things and in films such as Hidden Figures. And now here he is with the Weave by Charles Johnson.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

The Weave Three thieves battered through a wall, crawled close to the floor to dodge motion detectors, and stole six duffel bags filled with human hair extensions from a Chicago beauty supply store. The Chicago Tribune reported Saturday that the hair extensions were worth $230,000. Associated Press news item July 12, 2012 so what feeds this hair machine? Chris Rock Good hair. Aisha is nervous and trying not to sneeze when she steps at four in the morning to the front door of Sassy Hair Salon and Beauty Supplies in the Central District. After all, it was a sneeze that got her fired from the salon two days ago. She has a sore throat and red eyes, but that's all you can see because a ski mask covers the rest of her face as she twists the key into the lock. Her eyes are darting in every direction, up and down the empty street, because we've never done anything like this before. When she worked here, the owner, Francis, gave her a key so she could open and straighten up the shop before the other hairdressers arrived. I told her to make a copy of the key in case one day she might need it. That was two days ago, on September 1st, the start of hay fever season and the second anniversary of the day we started dating. Once inside the door, she has exactly 40 seconds to remember and punch in the four digit code before the alarm security system goes off. Then, to stay clear of the motion detectors, she gets down on the floor of the waiting room in her cut knee jeans and crawls on all fours past the leather reception chairs and modules stacked with copies of Spin Upscale and Jet magazines for the salon's customers to read and just perhaps find on their glossy photoshopped pages the coiffure that is perfect for their mood at the moment. Within a few seconds, Aisha is beyond the reception area and into a space long and wide that is a site for unexpected mystery and wonder that will test the limits of what we think we know, moving deeper into this room where the elusive experience called beauty is manufactured every day from hot combs and cream relaxers, she passes workstations four on each side of her, all of them equipped with swiveling styling chairs and carts covered with appliance holders, spray bottles, and sulfurate shampoo. Holding a tiny flashlight attached to her keyring, she works her way around manicure tables, dryer chairs, and a display case. Wear sexy silky eider down soft wigs, some as thick as a show pony's tail, hang in rows like scalps taken as trophies after a war. Every day the customers at Sassy Hair Salon and the wigs lovingly check each other out, and then, after a long and careful deliberation, the wigs always buy the women unstated. But permeating every particle in that exchange of desire is a profound historical pain, a hurt based on the lie that the hair one was unlucky enough to be born with can never in this culture be good enough, never, beautiful as it is, and must be scorched by scalp scalding chemicals into temporary straightness. Because if that torment is not endured, often from the tender age of even four months old, how can one ever satisfy the unquenchable thirst to be desired or worthy of love? The storage room containing the unusual treasure she seeks is now just feet away, but Aisha stops at the station where she worked just two days ago, her red eyes glazing over with tears caused not by ragweed pollen but by a memory suspended in the darkness. She sees it all again. There she is, wearing her vinyl salon vest, its pockets filled with the tools of her trade. In her chair is an older customer, a heavy, high strung Seattle city councilwoman. The salon was packed that afternoon, steamed by peopled humidity, a ceiling fan shirred air perfumed with the odor of burnt hair. The councilwoman wanted her hair straightened, not a perm for political fundraiser she was hosting that week, but she couldn't or wouldn't sit quietly. She kept gossiping non stop about everybody in city government as well as the do Gabby Douglas wore during the Olympics, blithering away in a kind of voice that carried right through you, that went inside like your ears, didn't have any choice at all and had to soak up the words the way a sponge did water. All of a sudden Aisha sneezed, Her fingers slipped. She burned the old lady's left earlobe. The councilwoman flew from her seat so enraged they had to peel her off the ceiling, shouting about how Aisha didn't know the first thing about doing hair. She demanded that Frances fire her and even took things a step farther, saying in a stroke of scorn that anyone working in a beauty salon should be looking damn good herself and that Aisha didn't. Frances was not a bad person to work for, far from it. And she knew my girlfriend was a first rate cosmetologist. Even so, the owner of Sassy Hair Salon didn't want to lose a city councilwoman who was a twice a month high spending customer able to buy and sell her business twice over. That night, as I was fixing our dinner of top ramen, Aisha quietly came through the door of our apartment, still wearing her salon vest, her eyes burning with tears. She wears her hair in the neat, tight black halo she was born with. Unadorned, simple, honest, uncontrived, as genuinely individual as her lips and nose. To some people she might seem as plain as characters in those old timey plays, Clara and Paddy Chayefsky's Marty or Laura Wingfield in the Glass Menagerie. But Aisha has the warm, dark and rich complexion of Michelle Obama or Angela Bassett, which is, so help me, as gorgeous as gorgeous gets. Nevertheless, sometimes in the morning as she was getting ready for work, I'd catch her struggling to pull a pick through the burls and kinks of her hair with tears in her eyes as she looked in the mirror, tugging hardest at the nape of her neck, that spot called the Kitchen. I tell her she's beautiful as she is, but when she peers at television movies or popular magazines where generic Blue Eyed Barbie dolls with orthodontically perfect teeth, Botox and breast implants prance, pose and promenade through the media, she says with a sense of fatality and resignation, I can't look like that. She knows that whenever she steps out our door, it's guaranteed that a wound awaits her, that someone or something will let her know that her hair and dark skin are not good enough, or tell Aisha her presence is not wanted. All she has to do is walk into a store and be watched with suspicion, or have a cashier slap her change on the counter rather than place it the palm of her outstretched hand. Or maybe read about the rodeo clown named Mike Hayhurst at the Creston Classic Rodeo in California who joked that Playboy is offering Ann Romney $250,000 to pose in that magazine, and the White House is upset about it because National Geographic only offered Michelle Obama $50 to pose for them. Between bouts of blowing her nose loudly into a Kleenex in our tiny studio apartment, she cried that whole day she got fired, saying with a hopeless, plaintive hitch in her voice, what's wrong with me? Rightly or wrongly, she was convinced that she would never find another job during the Great Recession that put everything we wanted to do on hold. Both of us were broke, with bills piling up on the kitchen counter after I got laid off from my part time job as a substitute English teacher at Garfield High School. We were on food stamps and our clothes were from Goodwill. I tried to console her, first with kisses, then caresses, and before the night was over we made roof raising whoopee. Afterwards, and for the thousandth time, I came close to proposing that we get married. But I had a failure of nerve, afraid she'd temporize or say no or that because we were so poor we needed to wait. To be honest, I was never sure if she saw me as Mr. Right or just Mr. Right Now. So what I said to her that night as we lay awake in each other's arms, our fingers intertwined, was getting fired might just be the change in luck we were looking for. Frances was so busy with customers she didn't have time to change the locks or the code for the ADT alarm system. Naturally, Aisha, who never stole anything in her life, was reluctant, but I kept after her until she agreed. Finally, after a few minutes, she enters the density of the storeroom's sooty darkness, her arms outstretched and feeling her way cat footed among cardboard boxes of skin creams, conditioners, balms and oils. She locates the Holy Grail of hair in three pea green duffel bags stacked against a wall of like rugs rolled up for storage. She drags a chair beneath the storeroom window, then starts tossing the bags into the alley as planned. I'm waiting outside near her old Toyota Corolla, dappled with rust, idling behind me. I catch each bag as it comes through the window and throw them onto the back seat. The bags, I discover, weigh next to nothing. Yet for some reason, these sacks of something as common and plentiful as old hair are worth a lot of bank.

[Fred Hechinger (Actor/Narrator)]

Why?

[Narrator/Storyteller]

I don't know. Or why women struggling to pay their rent, poor women forced to choose between food and their winter fuel bill, go into debt, shelling out between 1,000 and 3,000, sometimes as much as $5,000 thousand dollars for a weave with real human hair. It baffled me until I read how some people must feel used things possess special properties. For example, someone on ebay bought Britney Spears used gum for $14,000. Someone else paid $115,000 for a handful of hair from Elvis Presley's pompadour, and his soiled jockey style shorts went on sale in September 2012 for $16,000 at an auction in England. No one, by the way, bought his unwashed skivvies. Another person spent $3,000 for Justin Timberlake's half eaten French toast. So I guess some of those ebay buyers feel closer to the person they admire, maybe even with something of their essence, magically climbing, clinging to the part they purchased. As soon as Aisha slides onto the passenger seat, pulling off her ski mask and drawing short, hard breaths as if she's been running upstairs, my foot lightly applies pressure to the gas pedal and I head for the freeway, my elbow out the window, my fingers curled on the roof of the car. Within 15 minutes we're back at our place. I park the car. We sling the bags over our shoulders, carry them inside to our first floor unit, and stack them on the floor between the kitchenette and the sofa bed we sleep on. Aisha sits down on a bedsheet, still twisted from the night before when we were joined at the growing knocking off her shoes, run down at the heels, rubbing her ankles. She pulls a couple of wigs and a handful of hair extensions from one of the bags. She spreads them on our coffee table, frowning, then sits with her shoulders pulled in as if waiting for the ceiling to cave in. We're gonna be okay, I say. I don't know. Her voice is soft, sinus clogged. Tyrone, I don't feel good about this. I can't stop shaking. We're not burglars. We are now. I open a bottle of Bordeaux we've been saving to celebrate, filling up our only wine glass for her and a large jam jar for myself. I sit down beside her and pick up one of the wigs. Its texture between my fingertips is fluffy. I say, you can Blame Frances. She should have stood up for you. She owes you. What we need to do now is think about our next step, where we can sell this stuff. Her head twitches back in reflex when I reach for one of the wigs and put it on her. Just out of curiosity, you know. Reluctantly, she lets me place it there, and I ask, what's that feel like? A stocking cap? Is it hot? I don't know. It feels. She never tells me how it feels. So I ask another question. What makes this hair so special? Where does it come from? Hands folded in her lap, she sits quietly, and for an instant the wig that pulls her face with obsidian tresses makes her look like someone I don't know. All of a sudden I'm not sure what she might do next, but what she does do, after clearing her throat, is give me the hair raising history and odyssey behind the property we've stolen. The bags, she says, come from a Buddhist temple near New Delhi where young women shave their heads in an ancient ceremony of sacrifice called taking pabaja. They give it up in order to renounce all vanity and this letting go of things cosmetic and the chimera called the ego is their first step as nuns on a path to realizing that the essence of of everything is emptiness. The hair ceremony is one of 84,000 Dharma gates. On the day their heads were shaved, they kneeled in their plain saris there in the temple naos and took 240 vows, the first five of which were no killing, no lying, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no and no drinking of alcohol. They didn't care what happened to their hair after the ceremony, didn't know it would be sewn, stitched, and stapled onto the scalps of other people. But Korean merchants were there. They paid the temple's abbot $10 for each head of fibrous protein. After that, the merchants who controlled this commerce as tightly as the Mafia did gambling, washed the hair clean of lice. From India, where these women cultivated an outward life of simplicity and an inward life free from illusion, the merchants transported their discarded dead hair halfway around the planet, where it was cannibalized as commerce in a $9 billion industry for hair extensions devoted precisely to to keeping women forever enslaved to the eyes of others. As she explains all this, Aisha leaves her wine untasted, and I don't say anything because my brain is stuttering, stalling on the unsyllable thought that if you tug on a single thin strand of hair, which has a lifespan of five and a half years, you find it rattled to the rest of the world. I didn't see any of that coming till it arrived. I lift the jar of wine straight to my lips, empty it, and set it down with a click on the coffee table. When I look back at Aisha, I realize she's smiling into one cheek, as if remembering a delicious secret she can't share with me. That makes me down a second jar of Bordeaux, then a third. I wonder, does the wig she's wearing itch or tingle? Does it feel like touching Justin Timberlake's unfinished French toast? Now the wine bottle is empty. We've got nothing on the empty racks of the refrigerator but a six pack of beer. So I rise from the sofa to get that a little woozy on my feet, careening sideways toward the kitchenette. But my full bladder redirects me toward the cubicle that houses our shower and toilet. I click on the light, close the door, and brace myself with one hand pressed against the wall. Standing there for a few minutes, my eyes closed, I feel rather than hear police siren. My stomach clenches. Coming out of the bathroom, I find the wig she was wearing and the weaves that were on the coffee table burning in a wastebasket. Aisha stands in the middle of the room, her cell phone pressed against her ear. What are you doing? Smoke is stinging my eyes. Who are you talking? Her eyes are quiet. Everything about her seems quiet. When she says 91 1. Why? Because it's the right thing to do. I stare at her in wonder. She's offered us up the way the women did their hair at the temple in New Delhi. I rush to draw water from the kitchen sink to put out the fire. I start throwing open the windows as there comes a loud knock, then pounding at the door behind me. But I can't take my eyes off her. She looks vulnerable but not weak, free, and more than enough for herself. I hear the wood of the door breaking, but as if from a great distance, because suddenly I know and she knows that I understand. She's letting go all of it, the inheritance of hurt, the artificial and the inauthentic, the absurdities of color and caste stained at their roots by vanity and bondage to the body. And in this evanescent moment when even I suddenly feel as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, she has never looked more beautiful and spiritually centered to me. They're shouting in the room now. Rough hands throw me face down on the floor. My wrists are cuffed behind my back. Someone is reciting my Miranda rites. Then I feel myself being lifted to my feet. But I stop midway, resting on my right knee, my voice shaky as I look up at Aisha. Will you marry me? Two policemen lead her toward the shattered door, our first steps toward that American monastery called prison. She half turns, smiling, looking back at me, and her head nods, yes. Yes. Yes.

[Meg Wolitzer]

That was Arnell Powell reading the Weave by Charles Johnson. Setting that story in a salon is a playful choice. While it's a location that implies carefully crafted outward appearances, here it's a place where our impressions of the characters change rapidly. In life, you usually want someone who commits a crime to be quickly apprehended, but in fiction, not so much. Desperately hoping they will get away with it is often part of the reading experience. And that's true here, too, in this story that is part caper, part exploration of injustice. We tense up when sirens are heard because we already know and like these characters. But Johnson blows past our feelings and wishes and gives us and his characters a much more interesting ending when we return, a gripping tale of parents trying to ease a child's fear. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to selected shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide.

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[Meg Wolitzer]

So I always dreamed of having a man cave, but the wife doesn't like it.

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Nice. A cozy retreat, man.

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[Meg Wolitzer]

Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. I'm Meg Wolitzer. In this hour, we're listening to stories about how we see ourselves and how we see other people, too. I mean, really, that's what stories are all about. And the next time you want a different perspective, put on the Selected Shorts podcast or its slightly naughty sister podcast, Too Hot for Radio. We've got stories from around the world with little glimpses into the lives of all kinds of people. Find more [e-mail] or your favorite streaming audio platform. Our final story of the hour is by the clever and creative J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is the author of novels including Broken river and story collections such as See youe in Paradise. In 2021, he published both a novel subdivision and a collection of short stories, Let Me think the Actor Performing Blue Light, Red Light Fred Hechinger has been a part of the extended selected Shorts family for years. Most of you listening will recognize him as the talented actor from series including the White Lotus and movies such as the Woman in the Window. But for many of us who work at Symphony Space in New York, he's Fred, the memorably enthusiastic camper at Arthalia Kids Book Club Summer Camp back when he was a kid. And here he is making his selected shorts debut with J. Robert Lennon's Blue Light, Red Light.

[Fred Hechinger (Actor/Narrator)]

Blue Light, Red Light the boy was five. For some time, his whole life, until recently, he had been an only child. But then there came a baby. The baby was a girl. The boy was initially inclined to dislike the baby, as upon its arrival, it became the center of other people's attention, attention that had once been his alone. But as the months passed, he found himself increasingly compelled by the baby, its face, its small hands and feet, the.

[Fred Hechinger (Interview)]

Way it was willing to stare at.

[Fred Hechinger (Actor/Narrator)]

Him for hours, or what seemed like hours to the boy, for whom time was malleable and uncertain. And so, after long consideration, the boy grew to like the baby. One evening soon after the baby arrived, when the boy couldn't get to sleep, he was permitted to stay up with the mother and the father and watched television. The parents nodded off and a new show came on, a true crime show. The boy watched it. On the show, a criminal had broken into a house and killed a family, including a baby, with a knife and a club. Neighbors, friends and relatives told police that the family had recently experienced problems with a crazy man in their neighborhood. The crazy man was addicted to drugs and had intended to rob the family to buy more drugs, but instead of merely robbing them, he killed them. The police found the man hiding under a bridge in another town, surrounded by the family's possessions. Among the images displayed on the True Crime show, over a soundtrack of ominous music, were photos of the dead family members with their faces blurred, lying on their backs in pools of blood. The boys saw these photos. When the show was over, the boy went to bed. He didn't tell the mother and father what he'd seen. It seemed to the parents that the boy had forgotten the show. But he expressed worry about the baby. He asked the mother and father if they locked the nursery door at night. No, of course not, they said. You should, the boy told them. Well, we can't, said the parents. We're always going in and out of there in the dark. The boy didn't argue. One night, he locked the nursery door from the inside, then pulled it closed before he went to sleep. This made him feel better when the baby cried in the night. The parents couldn't get into the nursery, and the boy heard a lot of shouting. The father eventually got the door open with a screwdriver. The boy was punished the next day. Treats were withheld. He didn't lock the nursery door again. He pondered the crazy man more and more. This was a real person. He had actually killed a baby. The police said they had caught him. But what if the man had escaped? The boy lay awake at night. Sometimes he cried. He would get out of bed and go into the nursery to make sure the baby was still there. One night it wasn't, and he screamed. But the mother had merely taken the baby out of its crib to feed it. The parents were angry at the boy again and punished him again. But the boy didn't care about treats anymore. The boy checked surreptitiously the locks on all the doors in the house before he went to bed each night. He disguised this behavior by explaining that he was looking for a lost toy, which he would then find in his bedroom. Soon he began locking doors during the daytime as well. When the boy remembered that the crazy man on the show had gained entry to the house by climbing through an unlocked window. He found the window lock mechanisms and added those to his security routine. He wasn't tall enough to reach every window lock, but he had a plastic stool that he could carry from window to window for the high ones. It was hard to do all this without being detected. The father said. Who in the hell keeps locking all these goddamn windows? Not me, said the mother. The boy also denied it. Well, can't be Emily, can it? Father said. Emily being the name of the baby. The boy overheard conversations between the parents that he understood were about him and about his fixation on the door and window locks. He was taken to a doctor and asked why he performed this locking behavior. But the boy did not want to tell anyone about the crazy man under the bridge. So he told the doctor that he was afraid of monsters. The doctor wanted to know what the monsters looked Like. And the boy, thinking quickly, said that they looked like the father, except completely covered with hair. The parents did not bring the boy back to the doctor after that. Instead, the four of them, the mother, the father, the boy and the baby, visited a department store at the mall where the parents bought an object in a white cardboard box. In a photo printed on the side of the box, a baby slept peacefully in a crib, while in the foreground a large featureless globe emitted a calming blue light. At home, the father opened the box. The globe was inside. It was made of white plastic and rested on a small white plastic pedestal. But when you plugged it in and turned it on, it glowed blue. The boy could read a little, and he knew from the box that this object was called Baby's Calming Globe. But the boy was to learn that it had another function. That night, the father sat on the floor of the baby's room with the boy. The boy wore his pajamas and the father smelled pleasantly of beer. The father said, what this thing does is it scans the house constantly, making sure everything is safe. It's blue now, see, that means the doors and windows are locked and there are no monsters inside or outside. Blue means safe. If anything is wrong, and believe me, it's really sensitive with top of the line technology, it'll turn red. You got that? As long as this light is blue, everything is fine. And you don't have to check the windows and doors. We only have to worry if it turns red. Okay? The boy said, okay. Father clapped the boy on the shoulder, then told him it was time for bed. When the boy's mother came in to say goodnight, she asked if he felt safer now, and the boy said that he did. Later the boy heard the parents talking in low voices, and then he heard them laughing. And then everything was silent and the boy lay alone, staring into the dark of his bedroom. The boy had lied to his parents. He did not feel safe. In fact, as he understood the situation, the parents had just confirmed with their purchase of baby's common globe, the existence of the very dangers that that had frightened him. That the parents had alerted him to the true nature of the device, indicated that they trusted him to help protect the baby. And now, instead of staying awake to monitor the light, they had gone to sleep. So the boy gathered up his blanket and pillow and stationed himself on the floor in the hallway outside the nursery. Blue light glowed through the crack under the door and the boy could hear the baby turn over and babble in her sleep. In the morning, the boy found himself back in bed, underneath the blanket, his head on the pillow. He leaped out of bed, alarmed. But his family were all fine. Awake and sitting at the breakfast table. They gazed at him with what looked to the boy like disappointment. They didn't mention the previous night's activities. The boy said nothing, just sat down and ate his cereal. The next several nights were the same. The parents went to sleep. The boy reported for duty at the nursery door. Then, at some point, the boy woke up in his own bed. Clearly the parents were moving him there, perhaps when the mother rose to nurse. At times throughout each day, the boy would steal into the nursery to have a look at the light to make sure it hadn't turned red. Sometimes, incredibly, it was switched off and the boy would switch it back on. After a few days. The parents got the message and left the light on all day. The parents unconcern was puzzling, even alarming to the boy. They never seemed to monitor the light themselves, day or night. And when they expressed dismay, it was not at the danger they all faced, but at the boy's preoccupation with the blue light. Buddy, look at it, the father said in evident frustration. It's blue. It's always blue. That means we're safe. The boy nodded as though he understood. Were the parents stupid? Did they believe that the light itself protected them? The boys fears deepened. The parents were incompetent. Weeks passed. The boy's vigil continued. And the parents did less and less to dissuade him from continuing it. Indeed, they seemed resigned to it. Meanwhile, the boy began to wonder by what mechanism exactly the monitor light worked. How could the machine tell the difference between safety and danger? Perhaps it could distinguish a stranger from a family member. Like the mother's phone, which worked only when she looked at it. Or violent motion from ordinary movement. While the father was at work and the mother had the baby in the kitchen, the boy performed experiments. He dressed up in his Darth Vader costume and presented himself to the light. He seized his stuffed Chewbacca and staged a mock fight. He could not trigger the red light. Perhaps baby's calming globe was more sophisticated than the boy had originally believed. And was capable of distinguishing pretend violence from real violence. But this seemed unlikely. The boy was growing concerned that his parents had been deceived. It would be necessary to test the device, to present it not with fake danger, but real danger of a sort that the boy could control. There wasn't much time. It was late summer, not long before school was to begin. The boy formed a plan. He waited until the mother had experienced a sleepless night, rising at all hours to tend to the baby. After a long morning of sitting in the neighbor's weed patch, playing his handheld video game, the boy was served lunch. Then his mother said, I'm going to feed your sister. She went into the living room, slumped on the sofa with the baby, and nursed it. Soon both of them were asleep. The mother sprawled face up with her head thrown back and breasts exposed, and the baby sprawled face down on the mother. The posture reminded the boy of the dead family from the True Crime show. The boy hurried to his room and pulled out from under the bed a cardboard box of old newspapers and wood shavings that he had collected from the shed. From a kitchen drawer, he retrieved the butane lighter his mother used to light the often temperamental oven. He placed the flammable items box on the nursery floor, checked to make sure that baby's calming globe was switched on, and set fire to the shavings and newspaper. The nursery filled with smoke, and now, to the boy's surprise, the flames leaped high into the air and licked at the lacy cloth that covered the baby's changing table. The lacy cloth caught with a gasp and was quickly consumed. The fire then moved to the curtains, which had been made by the mother from a fabric printed with bumblebees. And now the smoke began to pour out the door and into the hallway and. And the flames began to darken the ceiling. Baby's calming globe was still blue. Everything happened fast after this. The fire alarm in the hall emitted a shrill squeal. The mother appeared, holding her blouse closed with one hand and clutching the baby in the other. She screamed, ran down the hall, and returned with a fire extinguisher in place of the baby. But she couldn't seem to get it to work. She told the boy to get out of the house. He obeyed, running out into the yard. And the mother followed seconds later, holding the baby and shouting into her phone. The boy heard her shout at the fire department and then at the father. The nursery window filled with fire. Indeed, it looked as though the house were going to burn down. By the time the fire department arrived, the flames had consumed the nursery, the boys room, and the parents room. Firemen unrolled their hoses and and aimed them at the fire. When the father arrived, it was all over. Half the house was black and smoking, and the corner of the roof was caved in. Sometime later, crouching in the yard in front of the boy, the father said, his teeth clenched, his face red. Why? Why did you do this. And the boy, understanding that he had done something very wrong, but still convinced that there was a larger issue at stake. The issue of the parents deception at the hands of the unscrupulous department store dead. It didn't turn red. I was watching and it didn't. Surely the boy thought the father would react with anger, or at least concern. Instead, he merely appeared confused. It didn't turn red, the boy repeated. It didn't work. He knew that this was not the right thing to say, that it would not make anything better. But it was the only thing he had. So he kept on saying it with increasing desperation and in between sobs, until the father loosened at last his angry grip on the boy's shoulders and took him into his arms.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

Fred Heckinger.

[Meg Wolitzer]

That was J. Robert Lennon's Blue Light Red Light performed by Fred Hechinger. Backstage, Hechinger talked about finding his way into the character.

[Fred Hechinger (Interview)]

I was very moved by how when someone isn't ask questions directly or really address that, even if nothing's wrong, it can feel like so much is. And to me the story pretty deeply captures growing up. You feel that there's something very dark and real that isn't being addressed or discussed with you. And the hesitance or the kind of coyness around any subject can make it a lot harder on a younger person who just wants to figure it out and talk about it. And I think the sort of fear of his sister being harmed stands in also for a lot of fears. I think the perspective of the story is fascinating because it has a third person construction and thus detachment in a sense, but also in its details, seems to really care about the boy. I felt very connected to what Lennon writes at the end of the story. That idea of the boy knowing that what he's saying is not the right thing, but it's the only thing that he can say in that moment and he just needs to say it over and over and over again. I think that's a very moving and very real way for this piece to end. I've felt that a lot in life.

[Fred Hechinger (Actor/Narrator)]

Where you don't quite have the right.

[Fred Hechinger (Interview)]

Thing to say, but it's better to say whatever is on your mind so as to keep working towards whatever that right thing may be.

[Meg Wolitzer]

That was Fred Hechinger backstage at Symphony Space that night at the live show. This story and Fred's great performance were riveting. The audience was thrust back into the state of being anxious kids holding onto ideas that they're convinced are right, even if their far more knowledgeable grown up selves will someday look back on them and see them differently. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Thanks for joining me for Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward, and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Miles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles are recorded by Phil Richards. Our mix engineer for this episode was Me A White. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Deardorf Petersen Group. Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation. This program is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space.

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