by Marc Levy
Julia slipped her phone back into her purse and went for a stroll along the river. When she got home half an hour later, she found an envelope with her name scrawled on it taped to the front door of the building. The note inside said:
I lost a customer due to your delivery. I put the key back where I found it. P.S. It was the eleventh step, not the sixth, seventh, or eighth! Hope you enjoyed your Sunday!
There was no signature.
“Why not just post an invitation to burglars?” she grumbled to herself.
As she climbed the stairs to the second floor, she thought about the delivery, and her curiosity grew with each step. She quickened her pace and fished out the key from under the stairway carpet, annoyed that she would now have to find a new hiding place for it. She swung the door open, flicked on the lights, and stepped into her apartment.
Dead center in the middle of her living room, dominating the entire space, was an enormous wooden packing crate.
“What on earth?” she muttered out loud, abandoning her things on the coffee table.
The shipping label did indeed bear her name and address, just below the word fragile. Julia took cautious steps around the gigantic wooden crate. She pushed against it, but the monstrosity was so heavy she couldn’t budge it an inch. And because she owned neither a hammer nor screwdriver, she couldn’t begin to think how to open the thing.
Since her call to Adam had gone straight to voicemail, she resorted to her usual backup plan: Stanley.
“Hi there. Am I bothering you?”
“Of course not,” replied Stanley sarcastically. “What else would I be doing late on Sunday night, except sitting by the phone waiting for you to call?”
“Please tell me you didn’t have this stupid six-foot-tall box delivered to my house.”
“I don’t have the faintest clue what you’re talking about.”
“Okay then. Had to ask. Next question: How does one open a stupid six-foot-tall box?”
“Depends. What is said box made of?”
“Wood.”
“How about a saw?”
“Gosh, thanks, Stanley. I’ll just grab my saw out of my purse.”
“And what exactly is inside the box, if you don’t mind my inquiring?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I have to be able to open it first. If you’re that curious, hop in a taxi and come give me a hand.”
“I’m in my pj’s, baby-doll.”
“I thought you were on your way out for the night.”
“I’m already in bed!”
“Oh, okay. I’m sorry. I’ll manage by myself.”
“Hold your horses. Does the box have any handles?”
“No.”
“Are there hinges anywhere?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Well, what if it’s a piece of modern art? The Unopenable Box, signed by some famous artist,” Stanley said with a wry chuckle.
Julia’s silence let Stanley know she was in no mood for jokes.
“Have you tried giving it a little nudge? You know, just some oomph! A bit of elbow grease, like when a door gets stuck.”
As Stanley continued spouting ideas, Julia placed a hand against the wood. All it took was the slightest nudge, as Stanley had suggested, in just the right place, and the side of the crate suddenly swung open.
One glance inside and Julia’s heart nearly stopped. Flabbergasted, she dropped the phone.
“Hello? Hello?” Stanley called into the receiver. “Julia! Are you still there?”
Stanley’s voice crackled from the phone at Julia’s feet. Without taking her eyes off the case, she slowly bent down to pick it up.
“Stanley . . . ?” Julia’s voice came out as a croak.
“You scared the shit out of me! Are you all right?”
“I guess . . . sort of.”
“Should I get dressed? Do you need me to come over?”
“No, don’t bother.”
“Did you manage to get it open?”
“Yes,” she said, voice gone numb. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You’re making me a little nervous here, baby-doll . . .”
“Go back to bed, Stanley. Good night.”
Julia hung up before Stanley could say another word.
“Who could have thought up something like this?” she asked, alone in the middle of her apartment.
Inside the crate stood a perfect life-size wax replica of her father, Anthony Walsh. The resemblance was uncanny. If the eyes had been open, it would have seemed completely alive. Julia could barely breathe. A drop of sweat rolled down the back of her neck. She edged closer. The statue was incredible, the color and texture of the skin astonishingly lifelike. The clothes—the shoes, the charcoal-gray suit, and the white cotton shirt—were all identical to those Anthony Walsh had always worn, down to the last detail. She was tempted to touch its cheek or pluck out a hair just to reassure herself that it wasn’t actually him. But Julia and her father had long since lost the habit of any sort of easy, natural physical contact. By the end, there were no hugs or kisses to speak of, and even touching each other’s hands was avoided. The smallest ounce of tenderness in any gesture was strictly out of bounds. It was impossible to bridge the distance that had grown between them over the years, and Julia wasn’t going to start trying now, all alone with this eerie statue.
Julia tried to come to terms with the reality of the bizarre object standing in front of her. Somebody had created a waxwork figure of Anthony Walsh, just like the ones in the museums in Quebec, Paris, and London, but even more realistic. The strange thing facing her was like a carbon copy of her father. Julia wanted to scream.
Studying the figure more closely, she noticed a little piece of paper pinned to its sleeve. A small arrow drawn in blue ink pointed to the breast pocket of the suit jacket. Julia unpinned the note and read the three words scribbled on the back: Turn me on. Even more disconcerting: the note was in her father’s unmistakable handwriting.
Within the breast pocket, the spot normally occupied by her father’s signature silk pocket square, Julia found a small remote control with a white rectangular button in the center.
Julia thought she might faint. This had to be a bad dream. Any minute now, she would wake up and laugh at herself for having believed all this was real. As she’d watched her father’s coffin sink into the ground, she had promised herself that the period of mourning was over. She would never again lament his being gone, not after having spent the past thirty years suffering from the void left by his absence. Her father had all but abandoned her, absent night after night throughout her childhood, and there was no way she would let his ghost come back to haunt her by night as an adult.
Then, the sound of the dumpster clattering on the street below convinced Julia this was no dream at all. She was clearly awake. Standing in front of her was the improbable statue. With eyes clenched shut, it seemed to be just waiting for her to finally reach out and push the button on the remote control . . .
The garbage truck rumbled off down the street. She wished it hadn’t. She could have run to the window and begged the garbagemen to take this nightmare out of her apartment. But the street was silent now.
Her finger gently grazed the button on the remote control, but she couldn’t muster the courage to push it.
She had to get rid of the ghastly thing. It would probably be best if she closed the crate, looked up the address of the shipping company on the label, and called first thing in the morning. She would tell them to come take this monstrosity away and demand the name of the person responsible. Who among her friends could have actually thought up such a prank? Who could be capable of pulling off something so sick and cruel?
Julia opened the window wide and filled her lungs with soft night air.
Outside, the world was just as she had left it. The tables at the Greek restaurant were all stacked up and the neon sign turned off. A woman crossed the intersection, walking her dog. The chocolate Lab darted forward in all di
rections, pulling at its leash and sniffing around the base of streetlamps and walls.
Julia held her breath and felt her grip tighten around the remote. She ran through a list of contacts in her head, and only one name came back to her over and over again—there was only one person she could imagine who would be capable of pulling off something like this. Driven by the anger welling up from the pit of her stomach, Julia spun around, determined to confirm her suspicions.
She pushed the button. There was a click. The statue’s eyelids opened, and its face broke into a broad grin.
Then, as clear as day, with the voice of her deceased father, the strange object opened its mouth and spoke.
“Did you miss me?”
5.
“I’m going to wake up. None of this is even remotely possible. Say it! Tell me I’m not going crazy.”
“Come now, Julia, calm down,” the thing replied with her father’s voice.
The strange figure stepped out of the box and stretched. The accuracy of his movements was astonishing, down to the smallest details of his face.
“You’re not going crazy,” he continued. “Just in a bit of shock. And, given the situation, that’s a perfectly normal reaction.”
“Nothing about this is perfectly normal! You cannot be here. This is impossible!”
“Right you are; ‘I’ can’t be here. But then again, what’s standing before you is not truly ‘me’ at all.”
Julia covered her mouth with her hand, then broke into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
“Wow. I almost bought it, I really did. Reality check: I must be fast asleep right now. I can’t drink white wine. What an idiot! One glass too many, and my imagination gets the better of me,” she continued, pacing around the room. “I have to admit, I’ve had some crazy dreams before, but this one takes the cake!”
“That’s enough now, Julia,” her father commanded gently. “I assure you, you are awake. You’re perfectly lucid.”
“That . . . I highly doubt. ’Cause I’m looking right at you, and I’m talking to you. And you . . . are dead.”
Her father looked at her in silence for a moment, before gently replying, “Yes, Julia. I’m dead.”
She stood frozen, unable to do anything but stare at him, until Anthony put his hand on her shoulder and gestured to the sofa.
“Why don’t you take a seat for a moment and hear me out?”
“No!” she said, pulling away.
“Julia, listen to me. For one minute.”
“But what if I don’t want to? You think you can always have things just the way you want them?”
“No, that ship has sailed. You’re in full control. All you have to do is push that button once more and you’ll turn me right off. But you’ll never get an explanation as to how or why this came to be.”
Julia looked at the remote in her hand, thoughts racing. With all her instincts screaming at her to push the button, she gritted her teeth and sat down, obeying the strange being that so eerily resembled her father.
“Fine. I’m listening,” she muttered.
“I can understand how all this could be a bit . . . disorienting. Frankly, I can’t even recall the last time we were in touch.”
“One year, eight months—”
“That long?”
“And twenty-two days.”
“That’s terribly precise. How can you be so sure?”
“Well, it’s kind of tough to forget your own birthday. Last year, I got a lovely call from your personal assistant, saying that you were running late and we should start dinner without you. Then you never showed.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I do.”
“Anyway, it’s certainly not the question at hand, now is it?”
“I don’t recall asking a question,” Julia replied dryly.
“Let’s see, where to begin . . .”
“Try the beginning. ‘Every story has one.’ Isn’t that one of your little catchphrases? Start there and tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Very well. It started a few years ago when I became a shareholder at a company specializing in cutting-edge technology. A few months in, there was already a serious uptick in revenue, and the value of my shares followed suit. I found myself chairman of the board of directors.”
“So your conglomerate swallowed another fledging company.”
“No, on this occasion, my investment was strictly personal. I was just one of many shareholders, but with a significant stake.”
“And just what was this cutting-edge technology you personally invested in?”
“Androids.”
“What?” Julia exclaimed.
“You heard me. Humanoids, if you prefer.”
“What in the world for?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly reinventing the wheel; they were developing robots in human form to perform the menial tasks people would just as soon pass on doing themselves.”
“Okay. So you’re back from the dead to vacuum my apartment.”
“Shopping, home security, answering phone calls, providing useful information—all this falls under the umbrella of potential functions. But at my behest, the company set about launching a far more ambitious undertaking.”
“Meaning . . . ?”
“Meaning our aim was to provide loved ones with the impossible: a few more days with the dearly departed.”
Julia was taken aback. She was having difficulty processing what he was saying.
Anthony continued: “A few extra days. Postmortem.” He stared at her, eyes full of meaning, waiting for her to catch on.
The moment dragged on in silence. Then, Julia finally exploded, “This is all a gag, right? A big joke!”
“A ‘big joke’ powerful enough to stop you in your tracks, judging by the look on your face when you switched me on,” Anthony responded as he examined his reflection in a mirror on the wall. “Admit it. It’s my spitting image. Close to perfection! Though I have to say, they went a bit overboard with these wrinkles on the brow.”
“You’ve had those wrinkles since I was a kid, so unless they threw in a facelift, I don’t know where they would have gone.”
“Thank you, I think,” replied Anthony with a smile.
Julia rose to inspect the figure more closely. If she truly was looking at a machine, it was undeniably a remarkable piece of work.
“This is ridiculous, not to mention technologically impossible!”
“Ah, and haven’t you accomplished things at your computer in recent days that a year ago you thought were impossible?”
Julia sat at the kitchen table with her head in her hands.
“We invested a great sum of money to achieve this result. And I’m still just the initial prototype! And you, my dear, are our very first client. Nonpaying, of course. It’s my gift,” Anthony added affably.
“A gift? Who in the world would be crazy enough to want a gift like that?”
“How many people say to themselves, in their final moments, ‘If only I had known! I would have listened more. If only I could have told them! If only they knew.’”
Julia just gaped, so Anthony went on. “We’re talking about a massive untapped market here.”
“So right now, am I talking to you or to a machine?”
“One and the same. This machine contains the lion’s share of my memory, as well as my cerebral cortex, all housed within a highly resistant mechanism consisting of millions of microprocessors, equipped with technology that perfectly reproduces human skin tone and texture, and impeccable mobility.”
“But why? For what?” asked Julia, stunned.
“So that we can share a handful of days together, time we never had, precious moments snatched from the jaws of eternity. One last chance for you and me to say all those things we never said.”
Julia paced back and forth across the living room, running crazy theories through her head to try to explain the situation, but every theory fell apart under scrutiny, one af
ter the next. As gut-wrenching as it was to admit, her father’s explanation was the most plausible of all. She went to the kitchen for a glass of water, drank it down in a single gulp, and returned to Anthony’s side.
“Nobody will ever believe me,” she said, breaking the silence.
“I wonder, isn’t that the same little voice in your head you hear when you come up with your stories at work? The very problem you face every time you pick up your pencil and struggle to breathe life into one of your characters? I seem to recall you telling me, when I refused to support your chosen career path, that I was ignorant and had failed to comprehend the raw power of imagination. How many times did you try to explain it to me, why thousands of children would drag their parents into these imaginary worlds that you and your friends invent on your computer screens? And, if memory serves, you were more than happy to remind me of my lack of support the day you received that promotion. You breathed life into a ridiculous Technicolor otter, and you believed in her. Are you telling me now that an impossibility has come to life before your very eyes and you refuse to believe in it, merely on the grounds that it resembles your father and not some imaginary animal? If the answer is yes, by all means, go ahead and push that button!” concluded Anthony, gesturing toward the remote control that Julia had left on the table.
Julia gave him a sarcastic round of applause. Anthony’s face darkened.
“Now, don’t think your insolence will be tolerated just because I’m dead.”
“If one button was all it took to make you shut your trap, I would’ve pushed it a long time ago.”
As her father’s face suffused with rage—an all-too-familiar sight—the moment was interrupted by two short honks from a car outside.
Julia’s heart leaped to her throat. She could hear the gears of Adam’s car grinding as he shifted into reverse. The sound was unmistakable, leaving no doubt: he was parking his car in front of her building right now.