Touch

by Courtney Maum

  A strange dream, all that clothing: in real life, Sloane wore the same thing every day. Depending on the weather: wool tunic/cotton tunic, leggings, sandals/boots. Her one concession to flair was the addition of a necklace: usually something weird and huge. The uniform was partly time-saving, partly premeditated: as a trend forecaster, she needed to be sartorially neutral at all costs. Trends were constantly changing; desires were, too. Her adherence to a uniform suggested that she would not.

  Sloane closed her eyes for a moment, tried to breathe the dream out of her skin. It had been long enough, of course, that she knew her dad was truly gone, but back in the early days after his accident, when she’d first arrived in Paris, with the time change and the food changes and the language she hadn’t yet mastered, she spent so many mornings head thick in slow-to-wake confusion, trying to separate the invented from the real. The Aurora job had been a springboard for the rest of her career, but what she’d really used it for was permission to somnambulate. Saying yes to the Paris-based position meant she’d have to board a plane, have to live on the other side of the ocean. Have to—this phrase came up when her sister called her selfish, when her mother cried, Why now? The job opportunity presented itself before her father’s death, this she would always stand by. That the job allowed her to deepen the denial that had become a coping mechanism, this was also true.

  She smoothed her hair back, drew a muted shade of peach across her lips. From the living room, she could hear the peaceful, one-tone voice of the filmed yoga instructor leading Roman through his physical ministrations. Roman wasn’t one for self-practice, or self-anything, really. He liked company, especially the pixelated sort that existed in screens and phones. Sloane used to as well—it was one of the things that had brought them together, their faith in new technology. But there had been so many years of new technology. The sight of humans shuffling with their eyes down on their devices was as dreary to her as the robotic milkers hooked up to cows’ teats. Her waning enthusiasm for electronics was another reason she’d accepted the gig at Mammoth. With all the crazy thinkers and tech heads there, she was hoping—she needed—to have her faith in tech renewed.

  Dressed, she walked back into the living room, her perfume piercing the room that should have been filled with the closeness of his sweat if Roman had had glands that allowed such an indiscretion.

  He stood up in warrior pose, his hands above his head.

  “Good luck,” he said, face shining. “I can’t wait to meet them!”

  Sloane blinked. In their normal life, he would meet her colleagues. He’d work for them, too. Back in Paris, they’d been collaborators. Le duo de choc. She’d brought him onto her projects, and he’d always sought her advice on his lectures and ideas. That they’d been avoiding each other’s opinions—that he had an entire secret book—was something else that needed room under that rug.

  “Don’t forget: dinner at my mother’s,” she said, patting for her keys.

  Roman rose to greet this reminder with a perfect cobra pose.

  • • •

  Out on the street, Sloane contemplated her options. It was a beautiful day: cool, crisp, electric with the promise of things that could go wrong or right. It was rare, a balmy day like this in mid-November, and Sloane wanted to walk to Mammoth’s headquarters in Union Square, but she imagined it would be bad form if she didn’t show up for her first day of work in the company-sponsored driverless car.

  So she swiped left on the M-Car app that would summon her chariot from wherever it was that Anastasia recharged. Sloane liked to imagine the car in a set of imperial stables with gloved stablehands and chandeliers, the peaty scent of draft horses warming the cold air.

  Upscale stable or commonplace garage, it was somewhere close, that much was for certain. Anastasia came purring around the corner in two minutes flat.

  “Good morning, Ms. Jacobsen,” Anastasia chirped once she got in. “Coffee? I have wonderful milk. Or have you already had caffeine?”

  Sloane looked gratefully at the coffee machine retrofitted into the seat divider. What she would sacrifice in terms of health benefits from not walking to work would be gained by not having to frequent the sadomasochistic espresso joints where the employees acted more like glass blowers than baristas.

  She didn’t have to tell Anastasia how she took it—her driver had been apprised of her beverage persuasions and the coffee emerged filled one fourth of the way up, so that she could make it light and sweet. Sloane wasn’t a latte girl. Or rather, she had been until she moved to Paris. Tourists wax poetic about the quality of that city’s espresso, but rarely will you hear someone applaud a French waiter’s way with milk.

  “To the office, then?”

  Sloane was thankful for the hesitancy in Anastasia’s voice. She wanted to believe in a world where all her choices hadn’t been made yet. Where she could say no—she’d much prefer a winter picnic on Coney Island, or demand that Anastasia head northward for an unplanned getaway to Cape Cod. Spontaneity went hand in hand with longevity, this was something her father had taught her, he who was enigmatic to perfection, encrypted to a fault. A lot of good it did him, though. Being surprising.

  “How are you settling in, Ms. Jacobsen? How is the apartment?”

  “You can call me Sloane,” Sloane said, draping a linen napkin across her chest in case the car’s lidar technology caused them to halt in front of a pothole.

  “But the apartment’s beautiful,” she continued, worried she’d been brusque. “It’s just what I wanted. I lived here in college.”

  “Well, it must feel very good to be back, then,” Anastasia replied. “Do you have family here?”

  Sloane winced. Anastasia had been given enough of her file to know how she liked her coffee, but not enough to know that Sloane was something of a drop-out Jacobsen. Not that this is something that would have been in her résumé. She never talked about her dad’s accident when people asked her why she lived in Paris, not even with her friends. At any rate, in her tax bracket, it was assumed she’d have a professional to discuss intimate problems with. It’s incredible how much people want to believe you when you say something is fine.

  “My family’s in Connecticut,” Sloane answered. “So, not far from here.”

  “Oh,” Anastasia said, softer. “You’ve changed your tone of voice.”

  “I’m sorry?” Sloane balked, both astonished—and, deep inside her, touched—that her car’s speech recognition engine had been calibrated to pick up on such nuances in tone.

  “Your voice went down half an octave,” Anastasia offered. “But we don’t have to address that. I have been told by numerous sources that the holidays are a trying time of year.”

  In lieu of a response, Sloane sipped her coffee. She felt defensive, but also eager to talk. The car’s uncanny perceptiveness was tugging at a knot.

  “You know, if you look at the schedule, you’d see we’re going there tonight. To my mother’s.”

  “That’s right!” Anastasia chirped, choosing not to hear the testiness in her voice. “Stamford! The City That Works!”

  “Exactly,” Sloane said, both impressed and disturbed. Sensitive and witty? Maybe she was dating the wrong machine.

  While they idled at a stoplight, Sloane looked out at the passersby, checked in with the dress code of fashionable New York. She already knew what she’d find, of course, but that didn’t keep her heart from dipping when it was proved: military blasé (imitation leather leggings, oversized stone-colored knit T-shirts, military jackets, chunky boots). Marseille, Hong Kong, Sydney, Mumbai, everywhere, the same. The visual response of a world tired—bored, even—of being at war.

  The light turned green and Anastasia was blasted with the horns of people who had actual drivers in their cars. By the time she’d transitioned into first gear, the light had gone yellow again and cars had swerved around them. The commute would not be fast.


  “This really is good coffee,” Sloane accorded, the caffeine unfurling a pleasant brightness in her head.

  “I’ve been told,” Anastasia exclaimed. “They’re prototypes! I believe the mothership is going into coffee capsule production?”

  Sloane raised an eyebrow. Was Anastasia . . . being saucy? Sloane didn’t think that she was imagining it—there had been a note of disapproval in her voice. Mammoth’s holdings had become a bit . . . expansive as of late.

  “May I ask you a question?” continued Anastasia, hesitantly.

  The car’s tone was warm, still. Sloane considered going for it—being friends with her.

  “Yes,” Sloane answered. “Sure.”

  “How does one get into the line of trend work?”

  Sloane laughed, surprised. “Am I the only one you’ve driven?”

  “You’re the only person I’ve ever driven, trend forecaster or not.” Registering Sloane’s shock, Anastasia course corrected. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned that. You know, of course, that the M-Cars are the most acutely manufactured autonomous vehicles in the world.”

  “I do,” Sloane said. “I’m briefed.”

  “I’m afraid I’m nervous,” Anastasia said. “I apologize.”

  “No, it’s okay,” said Sloane, blushing at the humanism of the car’s engineering. “It’s the first time I’ve been in one unaccompanied, myself.”

  The silence was weighted: it appeared that Anastasia was actually waiting for an answer. “I guess the thing is,” Sloane started, with a little cough, “it sort of finds you. I worked in beauty first, at Aurora. They have a trends division in their luxury department. It wasn’t so much colors, really, as textures that we forecast. What kind of sensation people would want on their skin. I guess it comes down to not asking when someone will want something, but why.”

  “That’s so interesting,” said Anastasia, sincerely. “But how on earth would you know if you were good at that or not?”

  Sloane pressed her palm to her cheek, she couldn’t answer quickly. She was frequently asked why she was so successful in her predictions, and the answer never became easier, or clearer. It was like her father always said: Thought is made in the mouth. Other people decided for you, really. Time decided. The world, eventually, proved your premonitions wrong or right.

  Is it like ESP? people asked. Is it like clairvoyance? Can you actually see things that haven’t happened yet?

  The answer was yes, but the answer was no, also. There was a big difference between trend hunters and trend forecasters. Most people thought they wanted to be the latter, when really, they wanted to be the former. Trend hunters traveled the world and the Internet for odd things that might resonate with a larger public. The fact that a lot of hipsters were mixing their own mustards, or that a certain celebrity had been spotted sunbathing on a double-ikat towel from the Okinawa islands . . . Trend hunters gave companies permission to jump onto a trend, but trend forecasters had the ability to tap into something more elusive. They had to convince companies to take a leap of faith toward a trend that might not appear for five more years.

  “I guess if you have trouble concentrating on the present, that’s a sign,” Sloane replied, remembering how she used to drive her sister crazy with the TV watching. The way some girls got with horses or with boys, young Sloane had been with commercials.

  Celebrity endorsements, product-as-superhero—regardless of the genre, during the advertisements, she wouldn’t let her family talk. Everything about those bright interludes seemed loaded with meaning, even the soundtracks. The ludicrously cheerful C chords that greeted an attractive woman as she stretched to meet the day, opened her stainless-steel refrigerator to nourish husband and kids. The saccharine violins that heralded the moment when the hero turned back to the telephone, decided to call his dad.

  Sloane had taken a couple of creative writing courses when she’d been at Barnard. It was fashionable back then to say that talent could be learned: that good writing could come from grit and steady work. Maybe this was true. But instinct? You either had it or you didn’t. Instinct couldn’t be explained without sounding hopelessly woo-woo. Which is exactly what Sloane sounded like when she tried to put forth the whys and hows of forecasting. She did it because she could. She did it because she had an awareness button that was always on, making it nearly impossible to settle into her present with any sense of ease. She always had her ears open, eyes open, for what was coming next. It was like with the swipe prediction. She could try to explain it—had been paid to try to explain it—but the truth was, she just knew.

  God, it had been so long ago. It seemed almost impossible but she’d been in her twenties, as had Dax, who wasn’t yet the head of Mammoth but was clearly headed for big things. It was at the Future Trends conference in Miami in 2005, the first time that she and the future Mammoth CEO had met. Sloane had been tasked to talk about what Millennials wanted, and she’d been feeling uninspired until she had an epiphany involving a cigarette.

  She still smoked back then. Kind of. She lived in France. She tried. She’d been sitting in her hotel room leaning against a window that didn’t open, a Davidoff pinched between two fingers, thinking about the other modern safety precautions that now swaddled the world—gated swimming pools, shoes off in airport security lines, netted trampolines—when it hit her that smoking was also a dangerous thrill, so what would follow it when it was banned? Not what drug or toxin, she wondered, but what gesture? The defiance of bringing a lit cigarette up to one’s lips—in its very irreverence for health, it insisted on one’s youth, and that is what had made it so popular, so cool. So what the hell would replace it in a globalized economy where trendsetters would rather be caught drinking unfairly traded Arabica than puff an e-cigarette?

  Sloane had skipped three industry parties that night to work on her presentation. She’d spent the evening sleepless, waving her hands around, cross-legged on her bed. That electronics would become smaller, this was a given. Everything was becoming brighter, bolder, laptop-sized. What wasn’t certain was which gesture-activated technologies would fuel these future devices. Touch-activation was a certainty, but such woodpecker tapping wasn’t graceful, it didn’t carry cues like smoking did. Alone in her Miami hotel room, she came up with the swipe.

  As elegant as a conductorial movement in front of an orchestra, the swipe contained the fluidity cues of someone who was constantly moving from one point to the next without conveying that one was “stressed” or “rushed.” In short, the swipe did not communicate the nervous pecking that tapping did. Swiping was sensual. Swiping was cool.

  After her lecture at Future Trends, techsters knew that Sloane was on to something that would revolutionize second-stage access space in computing—Daxter Stevens, especially. He’d tried to hire her before she’d even left the stage, but as much as she was buzzing from the force and timeliness of her presentation, she was early into her life in Paris, still building her client base, still in love with France. Daxter’s invitations kept on coming as he scaled the corporate ladder. Although he worked with industry bigwigs, he claimed in his many e-mails that none of the trend forecasters were as sensitive as she was, as sensual as she was, as able to divine the social forces that drove consumers to personal electronics.

  Well, Sloane thought, leaning back against the headrest. His fourth offer had hit her at exactly the right time. She was thirty-nine now and had spent enough time as a native in Paris to be less enamored of it. Mostly, if Sloane thought about it (which she didn’t—Mammoth invites you to consult in New York for six months, you go), but if she did think about it, she took the job to prove something to herself. Sloane was at that age now, some cognitive slowing, some uncommon klutziness. You started second-guessing your neurological soundness. Cancer, tumors, abnormal tissues swimming invisibly in the body’s deep black seas. The premonitions, the instinct that had made Sloane so famous, this year�
�this past year—they weren’t quite as keen. But they were still there. Sloane still had it. Saying yes to Mammoth was a way to reassure herself.

  “I used to have a mother who was really good at guessing movie plots,” Anastasia offered, startling Sloane back into their present.

  “What?” Sloane blurted out, certain she’d heard wrong. She looked around her. They’d been idling for some time.

  “I will repeat it,” said Anastasia. “We have arrived.”

  5

  The Mammoth headquarters spanned an entire block at 19th Street and Sixth Avenue, its ironic lower-cased logo winking from on high. In the equally large lobby, Sloane was offered five different kinds of sparkling water. Mr. Stevens would be down momentarily, she was assured.

  Sloane took a seat on the far end of a white leather sofa near a veritable nursery of succulents and reflected on the last few times she’d seen Daxter Stevens. He was the kind of person who showed up everywhere for a little while. She’d seen him at the São Paulo Art Biennial in 2014—she’d gone to get a feeling of where visual art was moving, he’d gone to acquire paintings for his weekend house. Only a few months earlier, they’d been at the same dinner party in Paris, and she’d seen him again at the Maison&Objet European trade fair that was a de rigueur design event each fall.

  They were contemporaries, colleagues in an abstract sense, but they’d never been friends. Sloane always had the sense that Daxter needed something from her, while simultaneously resenting her because of this same need. He wasn’t necessarily a “nice” guy, but at his level of business, niceness didn’t matter. He had the resources to hire people to be nice for him and a public relation company to wipe up anything unpleasant that he said.