Apotheosis

by Joshua Edward Smith

  “What?”

  “Kidding.”

  Cynthia shook her head. “Oh! Geez. You totally had me there. I’m an idiot.”

  “I doubt that,” he wrote. “I don’t have any plans. I’ll probably read or watch something on Netflix.”

  “Same.”

  “I have an idea,” he wrote. “How about we watch something together?”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. I’m pulling up Netflix now. I’ll see if I can find something I think you’ll like.”

  “Bold move,” she wrote.

  She waited, figuring he was scrolling through the options. Eventually he wrote, “Chocolat.”

  “Oh my God, I love that movie!” she replied. “It’s really on there?”

  “It is.”

  “But it’s a total chick flick. I can’t make you watch that.”

  “Confession time: I like chick flicks,” he wrote.

  “Really? Wow. Okay. So that explains how you made such a good choice.”

  “You get it ready, and then we’ll start it exactly together.”

  “This is exciting! Okay, hang on.” Cynthia turned on her Apple TV and the TV screen lit up. She searched Netflix and found the movie. She pressed play and then immediately paused. “Okay. I’m all set.”

  “3, 2, 1, Go!” he wrote.

  Cynthia started the movie and adjusted her position on the couch to better see the TV. She sipped her wine and left the chat open with Evan. They watched the movie together, commenting back and forth the whole time. It was the best date Cynthia had been on in years.

  SIX

  Alice looked down at the salad she had assembled at the company cafeteria, then over at Cynthia’s salad. “You’re a better salad-maker than I am,” she said.

  Cynthia laughed. “Do you want me to make yours next time?”

  “Yes, please,” Alice replied. “Mine looks like it was made by an angry three-year-old.”

  “I don’t disagree,” Cynthia said.

  “So, how long has this thing been going on now? With the guy online?” Alice asked.

  “Maybe a month? It seems like forever.”

  “When are you going to meet him?”

  “I don’t know,” Cynthia said through her hand, covering her mouth as she talked and ate simultaneously. She swallowed. “Maybe never? We’ve never even talked on the phone. We only chat in Twitter.”

  “That’s it?” Alice looked at her puzzled. “So is this romantic, or what?”

  Cynthia shrugged. “I don’t know,” she sighed. “I mean—I feel really close to him. We talk about everything now. And watching chick flicks together has become kind of our thing. We do it all the time.”

  “Sounds like he’s your girlfriend,” Alice said, smiling.

  “I know, right? It’s totally like that. Like how it used to be with my roommate in college, kind of. It’s just so relaxed and casual.”

  “You kind of suck as a person to live vicariously through,” Alice said. “I was expecting more down and dirty action. Boom chicka bow-wow.”

  Cynthia blushed. “Stop. It’s not like that.”

  “Do you wish it was?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe kind of. But as long as we only do this by text, I just… I don’t know. Sexting has zero appeal to me.”

  “You haven’t sexted with the right guy, then,” Alice said.

  “Really? You have?”

  “Oh yeah. There are guys who can get you that close just by what they write. I have no idea whether they’d measure up in actual bed, but some guys really have a way with words.” Alice lowered her shoulders and then shuddered dramatically.

  “Stop! I can’t believe you do that! I can’t believe you admit you do that!”

  “Pfft. It’s no big scandal. Everybody does it these days. Except you and the mystery man, apparently.”

  Cynthia nodded. “Except us. Maybe I should suggest it.”

  “Yes! Do that! Then tell me all about it!”

  “Nah. That’s not going to happen. I’m pretty happy with things the way they are now. I don’t want to mess them up.”

  “Chicken,” Alice teased.

  Cynthia raised one eyebrow, then turned her attention back to her salad. The two women ate in silence awhile. They finished and sat back in their chairs watching the people come and go. “I really like him,” Cynthia said wistfully.

  “I know,” Alice replied.

  “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I feel like things need to move forward somehow. Like we need to take it to the next level. But I don’t even know what that looks like.”

  “Maybe talking on the phone?”

  “Maybe.” Cynthia liked the idea of hearing his voice, but it also terrified her. She pursed her lips. “Maybe not.”

  ¤

  Cynthia got back to her desk and checked her personal email on her phone. There was a Google alert—a new search result for Evan’s name. She clicked through to read the article. Once again, he had been mentioned in the caption of a paparazzi photo. Cynthia looked at the picture and read the caption. Her stomach dropped.

  “Melanie Wing seen here with her date, Evan Schrodinger. ‘Things are getting pretty serious,’ she told our reporter. ‘We met at the photo shoot for the cover of my next novel.’ Melanie is wearing…” Cynthia stopped reading. She didn’t give a single shit who or what Melanie was wearing. She immediately typed Melanie Wing into Google.

  Cynthia learned that Ms. Wing was a successful romance novelist, early thirties, single, and beautiful. She sat back in her chair. How is that even possible? Things are getting pretty serious? He spends every night with me! She needed to clear her head, so she stood up and headed downstairs to get a coffee from the shop around the corner from her building.

  The fresh air helped, and by the time she was sitting at the outdoor cafe sipping her latte, most of the shock had worn off. Oh my God, I’m such an idiot, she thought. This relationship isn’t real. Like Alice said, he’s just a good friend. How did I let myself get so tangled up in this? It was the dreams that had been her undoing. She realized that now. They created a false sense of intimacy that she felt—and he obviously didn’t—when she chatted with him online. The texting that she perceived as the nadir of a larger emotional attachment, was being perceived by him as the apex.

  Tears formed in Cynthia’s eyes. She was furious with herself for getting things so wrong. And she was sad beyond comprehension. She cried as she sipped her coffee, rolling every conversation of the past few weeks over in her head. Cynthia had fallen in love without realizing it was happening. She was attached to Evan in a way that he obviously was not. God damn it! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

  When the tears stopped and her coffee was gone, she went to the restroom and fixed her makeup. She couldn’t completely conceal the redness in her eyes, but she got herself mostly put back together. If she managed to avoid people for the rest of the day, she thought she could handle it. Seasonal allergies were always a good excuse for red eyes.

  The rest of her day at work was uneventful. She found herself at home, alone, and longing to talk to Evan. But she couldn’t. She went to her Twitter messages and found the option to prevent Evan from contacting her. She needed a clean break and since this was the only way they ever communicated, it seemed particularly easy. Cut him off and don’t look back. She felt a little guilty about doing so without an explanation, but the thought of explaining to him that she had fallen in love was mortifying. No, that wasn’t going to happen. She could go cold turkey. It was only a few weeks ago she even learned he existed. How hard could it be?

  She changed out of her clothes and into a tank top and yoga pants. She pressed play on her VCR and set the TV to show the picture. Her venerable tape whirred to life, and she soon was doing the familiar after-work routine she had recently abandoned. Her body punished her for the lapse. Holding poses was harder than it should have been, and stretches hurt more than they should. She apologized to her muscles, and promised them she woul
d never neglect them for so long again.

  The tape reached the end and her TV went blank. She lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She needed something stronger than wine tonight. She thought there might be some tequila in the cupboard. She worked on finding the willpower to get up to go look.

  ¤

  Cynthia needed a distraction. The next day after work, she walked deliberately over to the Cabinet of Shame. She had coined that term for a cabinet in her old house when she was married and made an explicit decision when she moved to her apartment after the divorce that she should continue the tradition. Cynthia had a habit of starting projects and not finishing them. Sometimes she abandoned a task immediately after getting everything she needed to do it, and sometimes she’d start and then quit halfway through. All those supplies and half-finished endeavors ended up in the Cabinet of Shame.

  She opened the door and stepped back to take it all in. The half-finished birdhouse. The yarn and knitting needles that she purchased, but never bothered to learn how to use. The unopened soap-making kit. The macramé monkey that had started so well and then went so horribly, horribly wrong. It was a terrifying, melted nightmare of a monkey. She laughed out loud when she saw it. She thought perhaps she should hang it up, since it always made her laugh. She pulled it out of the cabinet, examined it more closely and then shoved it back where it had been.

  It was a fun trip down memory lane, but she knew what she was after. She needed a big distraction. Something to keep her busy for weeks, so she could get her mind off the ridiculous online affair she never actually had. She reached over the tragic monkey, to the back of the cabinet and lifted an eighteen-pound rectangular box from the shelf. She heaved it onto the kitchen table. It was time. She was ready. Behold the Lego Death Star.

  This impulse buy had occurred at the end of her divorce. Shortly after everything had been divided up, and all the papers were signed, she noticed that she still had access to her ex-husband’s PayPal account, linked to his checking account. She thought after everything she’d been through, she deserved a consolation prize. A parting gift. And it should be something lavish and expensive and absurd. After searching for days, she stumbled upon the $500 LEGO® Star Wars™ Death Star™ on Amazon and she had to have it.

  She had spent time with her niece working on a Lego set a couple years prior and was struck by how things had changed since she was a kid. Gone were the giant buckets of random blocks you could use to make simple rectangular buildings that all ended up looking like a school designed in 1962. These new sets had detailed instructions. Rules to follow. Tiny exotic pieces in every shape imaginable. It was more akin to the time she spent with her father building model airplanes. Lay all the pieces on a table, inventory carefully, and then follow the step-by-step-by-step instructions to the letter until everything was done just so. Building those airplanes was an activity that prepared her well for a lifetime of building Ikea furniture, such as the Cabinet of Shame.

  Cynthia started to unpack the box and was immediately overwhelmed by the scale of the project. The 4,016 pieces were packed into ten big bags, but each of those bags contained several smaller bags. And some of the smaller bags contained even smaller bags. She was thankful that everything was so well labeled and organized because almost everything in the box was exactly the same color. It had never occurred to her watching the movies how profoundly gray the Death Star was. She spread the bags over her kitchen table and was lost in an endless sea of gray.

  She considered throwing in the towel right then. She could pack these bags back into the box, put the box back in the Cabinet of Shame, and apologize again to Tragic Monkey. But then how would she distract herself from Evan? Fucking Evan fucking that fucking author of books about fucking. Tequila was not a good system. She had learned that lesson first thing in the morning when she had to put on her makeup in the dark because the light hurt too much. No, she would stick with wine. Wine and Legos.

  She pulled out the instructions—a daunting, spiral-bound tome—and cleared a place for it on the table in the endless, gray plastic sea. She started flipping through it searching for the actual instructions. She didn’t want to meet the designer. She didn’t care about the specs of the actual Death Star. She wanted to rip open bag number one and start putting pieces together. Finally, she found the first page with pictures of bricks and arrows and she tore open bag number one—with perhaps a bit more enthusiasm than was warranted, as the pieces went flying everywhere. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  Cynthia spent the next fifteen minutes on her hands and knees finding the contents of bag number one. Fortunately, many of the smallest pieces were in smaller bags, but by the time she had returned everything to the table and checked against the inventory list, she knew she was going to need a lot more wine, and that there were a lot of places in her kitchen that her vacuum was not reaching.

  SEVEN

  Three weeks and more than five hundred assembly steps later, Cynthia got her kitchen table back. She had parted the great, gray sea of plastic and managed not only to finish what she started, but also to build up a bit of a following on Twitter with her daily progress update pictures. The final product was twice the diameter of a basketball—more the size of a beach ball. At about the midpoint of the project she realized that she would eventually finish and need to put the monstrosity somewhere. After considering various options, she finally decided that there was only one place it could go. Now it was time to move it, and she was ready.

  She fetched her step stool from the closet and placed it next to her target. She ensured there was a clear path from the kitchen table, as the last thing she wanted was to trip and smash the fucking thing. She carefully lifted the Death Star from the table and carried it over to the Cabinet of Shame. She stepped carefully onto the first step of the stool, which gave her enough height to place the Empire’s ultimate weapon atop the cabinet.

  Cynthia stepped back and took it in. It wasn’t the ominous presence she expected. With the various Lego action figures spread about, it took on a silly charm. Lego people all looked like toddlers in Halloween costumes to Cynthia. She smiled as she imagined actual toddlers running around a Death Star-themed play land.

  She took a final picture to share on Twitter and then went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of wine. She settled on the couch in her usual place and smiled as she looked at her accomplishment. She wondered if the Germans had a word for when you were simultaneously filled with pride for accomplishing a daunting task, and filled with embarrassment for the thing you accomplished being utterly facile. She suspected they didn’t, since it wasn’t in the German character to do frivolous things. Maybe the Dutch had a word for that. The Dutch always struck her as more the type to embrace frivolity, what with the whole tulip fiasco and all.

  With the picture posted to Twitter, Cynthia wandered through her follower’s timelines in search of entertainment. The likes, retweets, and comments about her accomplishment rolled in on her tweet about the completed Death Star. There was even a like from Evan, although no comment. She felt kind of bad about how things ended. The project had done its job, weaning her from the need to talk to him every night. The heartbreak feeling was still there, but she thought it wasn’t fair for her to have cut off communication without warning that way. She wasn’t ready to talk to him again, but she did go through his timeline and like several tweets, as a peace offering.

  Cynthia put down her phone and went to the shelf where she kept her DVDs. She pulled out Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope. The indulgence of this movie from her youth seemed a perfect way to celebrate her achievement.

  ¤

  Cynthia awoke on the couch, nestled in Evan’s chest, being held gently, but firmly in his arm. She wiped her mouth, embarrassed that she had probably drooled on him.

  “You’re awake,” he said in his deep baritone voice.

  “Barely,” she agreed. “What’d I miss?”

  “Luke got a photon torpedo into the thermal exhaust
vent and blew up the Death Star.”

  Cynthia glanced at her model Death Star atop the Cabinet of Shame. “No he didn’t, it’s still right there,” she replied.

  “Not that one,”

  “I didn’t know there was another. I’m glad mine is okay. I spent weeks of my life and lost countless fingernails making that fucking thing.”

  Evan gave her a squeeze. “We should go to bed,” he suggested.

  “Nah. We should stay right here. Do you have appointments in the morning?”

  “Tomorrow is Saturday, sweetheart. Of course I don’t. I do have a tee time, but I’ll cancel that if you want.”

  Cynthia snuggled in tighter and closed her eyes. “Yes, please. I want you to take me to brunch.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I’ll make it worth your while,” she said, placing her fingers on the inside of his thigh, just above the knee. She was slowly dragging them up when she heard her phone alarm.

  Cynthia opened her eyes. Oh hell, she thought.

  ¤

  Cynthia walked into her supervisor Julia’s office and plopped down into the chair. Julia looked up. “Hey you! How’s it going?”

  “Not bad. I was wondering if I could get some time off.”

  “Sure. Like vacation? PTO?” Julia asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Now. Or as soon as you think is reasonable,” Cynthia replied.

  Julia looked at her, concerned. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” Cynthia replied. “I’m just feeling a little burnt out. I thought some time off would be good.”

  Julia tapped away at her computer for a moment. “It looks like you have three weeks banked. I guess you haven’t taken much time off.”

  “Hmm. That’s probably why I need it,” Cynthia replied with a smile.

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll put in the request. It’ll take a day for I.T. to reroute your email. Will the day after tomorrow work?”

  “That’ll be great.”