Touch

by Courtney Maum

  “I told you it was dangerous to move back so close to your family,” he yelled, once the restaurant door slammed behind them, rife with a naked anger she rarely saw. “These thoughts would never have occurred to you in Paris. It’s like you are insane.”

  “I’m the insane one?” Sloane cried. “Me?” She thought of Roman organizing his body into his smelly catsuits, prepaying the gin and sodas he drank at his online fetish clubs in Bitcoins . . . a man whose virtual life was more actualized than his real one, but she was the freak.

  “This isn’t something you actually want, darling,” he said, almost clucking. “Think of all the humans. Think of all the mouths. This is understandable.” He made another attempt to reach for her, “But it is going to pass.”

  “Well, of course I don’t want children!” she yelled. “I don’t know why I said that!” It was horrible, more horrible than the confession, to realize this was a lie.

  “I don’t have anything left to say to you if you’re like this,” Roman said, coolly alarmed. “But I will be here for you when you come back to the ground.”

  And then he turned abruptly and returned to the restaurant, leaving Sloane to gulp back all of the things she’d left unsaid.

  She walked quickly away from diners gaping through the window at her, feasting off of Scotch eggs housed in individual cast-iron skillets like something slain. The cold stung her eyes, her nose ran, and she had a sudden urge to burrow into the woolen, tree-sap smell of her father’s favorite sweater. The tears that came were salt and they were human. And there were no empathy bots around to wipe them away.

  Sloane slowed her step to get purchase on her stupid touch screen with her freezing hands. She swiped but her fingertip was too cold, or the screen was too cold, everything was out of service, closed for business, come back another time. Sloane closed her eyes and with all of the wishes left inside her, she summoned the only thing that could save her at that moment: her loyal, driverless car.

  22

  That night, Sloane slept the stone sleep of the shocked: bone-deep and cold-numbed. Waking in a stupor, her body all but molded to the Memory Foam mattress, she remembered the same flu-like slumbering from the first week after her father’s death. She slept until one, two p.m. every day following the funeral, her sister finally forcing her door open: Sloanie, what the fuck!?

  They had been so active, Leila and her mother. Ordering boxes, shoveling the snow out of the driveway, brewing decaf for the people who came by, and by, and by. But Sloane wanted to avoid it: the internal reckonings, the social customs that would have required that she get up and face the world. She just kept on sleeping, deeply comforted by the fact that there was no amount of weeping or dishwashing or casserole eating that could make her father less dead. And her sister—despite her tears, her anger—couldn’t convince her otherwise.

  But today, she couldn’t sleep—she needed to go to work. Go to work and see whether she still had a job.

  And if she did, by some great possibility that she currently didn’t feel, could she still do it? Did she even want to? March into a future filled with robots who were manufactured to be kind to you when no one else could be bothered, cyborgs who rewarded you with direct eye contact? Were these really products that she wanted to shepherd into the world?

  And why in the fuck had she announced to a table of adversaries that she wanted kids? Yes, okay. Dax had made an asshole comment, but he hadn’t been far off—the holidays made her emotional. Thanksgiving, which she barely ever celebrated because she was usually in Europe, followed by the fifteenth of December, the anniversary of her father’s death, followed by Christmas—what a pileup. So maybe she did want to be more connected to her family. Maybe she could allow that she was starting to identify some regrets. But to go from that to children? She was just mature enough not to blame it on the wine.

  Sloane got dressed, slowly—ignored the pinging of text messages that she hadn’t checked. There might be one from Jin, but still she didn’t look—what was the point of bringing him into this? Of even contemplating being happy? Dax thought Roman was a mad genius, and his article was publishing that day. She’d soon see who else thought that human tenderness was going the woolly mammoth way.

  • • •

  Sloane arrived early to the office—buzzed Deidre up. Deidre arrived with more suggestions from the box outside her office, to add to the ones that Sloane already had on her desk. There were a lot of little notes. Looking at them made Sloane want to fold up inside herself.

  “Deidre,” Sloane said, with the pinched look of someone who had swallowed something foul, “Dax is going to want to see me. Or rather, I’d like to see him. Or—when he gets in, could you just ask him if he’d be willing to come up?”

  “Of course,” Deidre said, kindly. Extra kindly, because she didn’t ask Sloane what the subject was. “Is everything all right?”

  Sloane just smiled. She was tired. A leftover, bloated tired because she’d slept so deeply, allowed herself to float away from her reality on a bed of useless dreams.

  “Have you read any of them?” Sloane asked, gesturing toward the notes that she’d brought in.

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t dare.” Deidre flushed. “Are you finding them helpful?”

  Sloane nodded absently. “I am, and I’m not. They’re making me think about things I didn’t intend . . .” She shook herself to clarity. “Anyway, thank you for bringing them up.”

  When her office door closed, Sloane picked up the furry Peruvian llama her father had once gifted her, glossy lima beans in the woven saddle pouches. Funny that they’d never sprouted in all the time she’d had it. Not enough water. Not enough sun.

  Resigned now to what she felt would be a battery of notes proving that Roman was right about people’s readiness for post-sexuality, Sloane stuck her hand inside the box and pulled a tuft of suggestions out.

  Sometimes I go to the hair salon just to get my head touched.

  I wish I had better handwriting. But it hurts my hand.

  I once rented a dog.

  Sloane felt her heart cave like something eroding. The number of times she’d thought how wonderful it would be to have a big, sloppy dog, too. Something that would register delight each time it saw you, a wet-eyed, speechless friend. But then she’d think about her travel schedule, and Roman who hated fur—or who, rather, liked their furniture and didn’t want it covered in fur. And the fact that she would need to walk and care for it, and Paris was so dirty, and what did Sloane know about taking care of anything living, much less a giant dog?

  She’d wanted one for her mother, though, after her dad died. In fact, Sloane had spent a lot of time sitting comfortably in her Paris apartment deliberating what widows in their sixties should be doing after a spouse’s death. Selling the family home was one idea, getting something smaller (a condo near her sister’s?) and a weekend place with access to the ocean where Margaret could start up with her landscape paintings again. The paintings that had been more fluid and less fussy than the miniature ones she busied herself with now.

  She’d shared some of these ideas with Leila back when they were still talking on the phone, notably the pet one (an Australian shepherd had been her personal choice), as well as her conviction that the house should go on the market.

  Her sister quickly pierced the bubble she was living in.

  “We’ve put his things in boxes,” Leila had responded. “I’ve thrown away his razors. I spent an entire morning deciding what to do with his shampoo. You don’t have any fucking idea, Sloane. You’re the most selfish person I’ll ever know.”

  This had stuck, and it had hurt. It was the “ever know” that had burred into her with its wordy spikes. Sloane wasn’t the most selfish person her sister knew at the time she had said it, she was the most selfish person that Leila would ever allow herself to know.

  People made mistakes. In her heart, she’d kn
own that she had left her beloved sister all alone to pick up the pieces, to look after their mother, to work through her own grief. Why? Because Sloane was sure she was her father’s favorite? That she was hurting more than them? She had been young and egocentric and selfish and ludicrously naïve. What did she know about her father’s love? What did she really know?

  Trying to distance herself from the shameful memory, she reached in for more notes.

  I think what I want right now more than anything is to be undetectable. To not have anyone know where I am and also to not know where I am. There aren’t many places left where you can disappear.

  Going undetected, getting lost, being confused—after last night’s horrendous dinner, it sounded great to disappear. But it was hard to do now. So difficult, in fact, it made her think of the work of a Brooklyn artist who went by the name of CV Dazzle who designed makeup and hairstyle systems to keep face-detection algorithms from recognizing a face as a face.

  But very few people were willing to walk around with a checkered pattern on their nose bridge, or a splotch of black paint on their cheeks. Really, one of the only ways left to disappear—at least existentially—was by falling in love. With new love, everything was uncharted and thrilling and strange. Which is why she felt in the pit of her stomach that Roman’s article was wrong about the future. In a world where everything was monitored, navigated, tracked, human beings would want—would need—to get lost in someone else.

  Sloane was about to reach for another note when there was a knock on her door. It was the announcement of a presence, not a request.

  Dax walked in holding up a yellow piece of paper like a time-out flag.

  “I was going to put this in the box,” he said, sweeping his eyes across her office, stopping at the suggestion box on her desk. He flapped the paper flag at her. “But you have it.”

  Sloane stood. “Would you mind closing the door?”

  Dax looked momentarily bemused, and then annoyed at the superiority in her tone. It seemed somewhat incredible, but it came to her completely—she wasn’t going to be fired. He didn’t even seem upset.

  “So, I wanted to talk about last night, obviously,” she said, inviting him to sit.

  “Yes,” said Dax, a twist of smile still on his face. “Let’s.”

  “So, this isn’t something I would usually discuss with a boss, given . . . well, laws, but it feels important that I clarify that I don’t want kids.”

  Dax held both his hands up. “It’s really not my business.”

  “Nothing’s changed with me,” she repeated.

  “Let’s just let it go.”

  Sloane fell silent. The ease with which he seemed to accept the prior night’s upheaval was disconcerting, to say the least. Then she remembered the piece of paper in his hand. She only had to glance at it for him to spring to action.

  “It’s for the box,” he said with a grin, “but read it! I’ll read it! Came to me last night. Here.” He opened up the piece of paper and showed it to her. She read a single word: Two.

  “Two,” he repeated, pitching the note toward the ones she’d already opened. “Two in-house consultants. I want to bring Roman in as a trend forecaster, too.”

  Sloane blinked her eyes at him, repeatedly, disbelief across her face.

  “Daxter,” she managed, her head shaking. “What?”

  “I mean, I should have thought of this from the beginning. A man. A woman. I mean, it’s so perfect. Roman’s article—he forwarded it to me by the way, it’s brilliant—is so clearly antireproduction. No penetrative sex, no critters. And so if you disagree with him, and it sounds like you disagree with him, then you tout your thing.” He smiled hugely. “People can choose sides.”

  “My . . . thing,” she said, the shock building into anger. “My thing. So . . . this is going to be, what, like a public divorce court? There is . . . excuse my French, Dax, but there is no fucking way.”

  “Listen, I get it! I really do. If my wife announced that she was going on a sex hiatus it’d be a problem for me, too. But that’s exactly it. This is professional. Roman is the embodiment of antireproductive sex. So what’s next? Will people want the touchy-feely substitutes of your empathy bots, or the titillating safeness of neo-sexuality? People will be looking to you two to find out!”

  Furious, Sloane stood up from her desk and walked over to the window, her hands balled into fists to hide their shaking. To think that the next day the streets would be filled with whacky, blow-up floats. Thanksgiving. People using the good silver.

  “Is there any part of you that’s listening to what you’re asking me?” she asked, whipping around. “How is this, how is this . . .” She faltered, seeing the question she didn’t need to ask him: it would mean press coverage, sales. But she wasn’t going to do it. She wasn’t going to let Daxter force her into the corporate equivalent of a reality TV show just so Mammoth could sell a bunch of updated electronics to people who already had six versions of the thing. Not only did his request show a gaping lack of respect for what had transpired between her and Roman, it wasn’t how she worked. She couldn’t function in such a public pressure cooker, couldn’t have her premonitions ticked off in “yes” or “no” boxes on a scale like this.

  “Don’t say anything now,” Dax said, rapping his knuckles on her desk. “I get that it’s an awkward time. But you two have already done so much work together. But Roman’s on board.”

  Sloane brought her hand to her temple, dumbstruck. Of course, he’d already brought him on.

  “And what if I say no?”

  Daxter shrugged, unmoved. “Why would you? Can you think of a better opportunity to prove him wrong?”

  Sloane actually had to swallow there was so much bile coming up. She knew exactly what would happen if she walked away from the Mammoth job: nothing. Absolutely nothing. Roman would take her position, trend forecaster or not, and ReProduction would turn into a giant marketplace of intelligent second skins and cyber dongs.

  Dax got up to let himself out. She cursed herself for not being able to find the words to stop him.

  “Jimbo!” he said, stepping backward in surprise as he pulled the door open. “’Bout knocked you over. How’s it going, kiddo?”

  “It’s going well,” Jin said, lowering his hand reluctantly to answer Dax’s fist bump. Sloane watched the scene unfolding, anger kaleidoscoping into more anger, surprise, a little softness—but no, the anger still. She hadn’t been allowed the final word.

  “No hard feelings about the color props, yeah?” Dax asked, shifting his attention from Jin to her. “No hard feelings, Sloane?”

  Sloane pursed her lips to keep her fury from spilling outward when she looked at Jin. “We’ll follow up,” Dax said, clapping Jin on the shoulder. “Good talk.” It was unclear whether this comment was intended for Jin or her.

  Sloane stayed by the window, embarrassed that Jin was there to see her broken pieces. She didn’t want to be in New York City for the stupid floats. Bloated, lifeless, painted smiles mocking the world outside her teeth.

  She listened to her door close.

  “Whoa,” said Jin, softly. “You okay?”

  She felt his presence near her before she heard his steps. He stopped, put something on her desk. She kept her back turned.

  “So, Dax killed volcanic red,” Jin said, his tone cautious. “That’s one of the reasons I came up. You didn’t answer my—” He paused. Sloane wondered if he was contemplating whether or not to touch her, put his arms around her. She knew that he wouldn’t, but she found herself hoping that she’d be surprised.

  “Sloane, what’s going on?” The disappointed shush of him settling into a chair.

  She turned around, indignant. Who was he to just sit down? Who was he—was anyone—to act like this was just another day, just another life, not the year in which she completely fell apart?

 
But then she was facing him, and his eyes looked earnest in an intelligent way, and he had on another goofy outfit, and she had a glimpse of what her life would be like with her guard down.

  “Well,” she said, feeling her mind flood. “Roman’s publishing an article about the end of penetrative sex, so Dax made us all have dinner together, and now Dax is bringing him on as a trend forecaster as well—which, I have to mention, he isn’t—and he’s rejiggering the whole ReProduction conference as a game of dueling guitars, and if—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Jin, putting his laptop on top of the color propositions he’d already placed on her desk. “Hey. Hey.” He reached across the pile and stilled her hands with his. The warmth of his skin made her breath catch. “One thing at a time. When’s this article coming out?”

  “Today.” She pulled her hands away. “Or maybe it already has. I don’t know, has the earth shook?” She looked around the room. Her chest felt like there was an animal growing inside of it.

  “Okay. But you—he’s not living with you right now?”

  Sloane shook her head.

  “Are you going somewhere for Thanksgiving?” Jin asked, leaning back. “Will you be with good people?”

  Sloane brightened at the naïveté of the question. Would that it were that simple! She pictured herself writing a note for her own suggestion box. I want a family. Dropping it in. Having it come true.

  “I’m on a plane tonight,” he said, extending his hand across the table again when she didn’t answer. “Seattle. Thanksgiving. My dad lives there.”

  “Oh?” She was disappointed—she hadn’t hoped for anything, and now she couldn’t. He would be too far away. She looked at his open hand. Put hers back in his.

  A flicker of a smile dashed across his face.

  “You?” he asked, threading his thumb across her palm.

  Sloane shook her head, trying not to think how weird and wrong and pleasant this workday touching was. “I’m not—I thought I had plans, but I don’t, really. My family life is—” She scratched her eye with her free hand, wanting suddenly to pull her fingers away from his again. It was too intimate, this talking. It wasn’t what she did. “We haven’t really gotten to the get-to-know-my-shit part, have we? Dead dad—” She shrugged. “Bad child,” she added, thumb pointed toward herself.