I’d only been working a week when Daniel started, but I already hated being there. I dealt with customers occasionally, but I resented them, annoyed by the fact that they chose to spend money to keep their ugly, cheap belongings when they could donate them or simply throw them out. I imagined that all of those useless, unused items languishing in row after row of storage lockers weighed heavy on the world, that we were saddling it with too much unnecessary burden. There had to be some kind of physical impact; I worried we would throw the earth off its orbit.
I was going to quit. I practiced the speech I would give to my parents while I sat at reception, staring at the phone and wondering when it would ring. It was a moral stance, I would tell them. Not that I found them or their business immoral (I was grateful for what their entrepreneurship had provided our family), but I didn’t want to willingly participate in the perpetuation of blind consumption. Or something. I chickened out. Greta had also worked at We Store in high school and had emerged unscathed. Finally, to appease myself, I developed a theory. I rationalized that I was entitled to specific amounts of things in my life, that there was a finite limit to love and good fortune. By the same logic, the more I chipped away at the bad stuff, the less I would have to endure in the future. This is how I felt about my boredom at We Store: if I could get it out of the way—the tedium of an office job—there would be more room left in the rest of my life for something more exciting, more vibrant. I tried to derive a kind of pleasure from the mindless work, a satisfaction of paying my dues. I typed letters, I answered phones and felt efficient and purposefully bored.
Then Daniel started working and things got more interesting. He and Greta had been dating for two years, but I knew him only as an extension of my sister. My awareness of him was coloured entirely by his relationship to her and it was strange talking to him at We Store as if he was a real person, not just a character in my sister’s life.
Daniel and I talked a lot because neither of us had much to do. We knew we were only there thanks to nepotism; I doubt Dad would have hired strangers to do our jobs if we left. After the first week of consistent conversation, I was surprised by how much I liked Daniel. He was funny in a way I had never noticed before, and smart.
Daniel took walks whenever there was a lull in his day. He would cut through the field towards the closest strip mall. I would see him sometimes emerge from the tall grass, swatting away mosquitoes, carrying two chocolate Frosties from Wendy’s—one for him, one for me. Everyone else drove to the strip mall. “It’s exercise,” he said.
Daniel also lectured me about art, practice for his future career as an art history professor. He explained chronologically, skipping from Rococo to Romanticism. “It’s not so bad working here,” he once told me. “I’m going through a Cubist phase anyway.”
A large part of my job consisted of printing out and mailing renewal notices. People often lost track of their storage space and treated it as they would a musty basement, forgetting that these spaces were run by people who had their credit card numbers and charged interest. After labelling a new batch of notices, a girl approached my desk and asked for the biggest storage space she could get.
Her name was Maggie and she was different than our usual customers. She was young, about Greta’s age, and pretty. I took her outside to the back where there was a row of small sheds, all of them lined with identical white vinyl siding and shuttered with orange metal doors. From far away they looked like their own little subdivision, uniformly symmetric, little boxes made of ticky-tacky. There was even a row of flowers planted around the edges. Daniel watered them every day. My father advertised them as “cottages,” but I couldn’t bring myself to call them that. I opened the door and showed her the space.
“This is 10×30 feet, enough for a three to four bedroom home. You can fit appliances and like, patio furniture in it.”
"Is there electricity?” she asked.
“Some units have it. It costs extra.”
“It’s perfect,” she breathed. “I’ll take it.”
Maggie returned the next day with a U-Haul. I was curious about what she needed the storage space for. I imagined her as the type who bought around-the-world plane tickets and needed to store her quirky, vintage belongings while she sublet her loft. She had a girlfriend with her and the two of them worked quickly, hauling out boxes and a rolled-up rug. The only item they had trouble with was a couch, dark brown and corduroy. Daniel helped them with that.
I only worked Wednesday to Friday, relieving the regular receptionist so she could spend extra time with her children. When I returned the following Wednesday I was surprised to see Maggie again. She walked across the parking lot with a cup of coffee. I followed her and noticed that she’d gone into her storage shed and closed the door behind her. After sending out a few renewal notices, I went outside and knocked on her door. She opened it a crack. When she saw me, she opened the door wider and I peeked inside. The entire cube looked like a living room. The couch was pushed along the far wall and a coffee table cut the room in half. The rug, blue and white striped, was rolled out underneath.
“Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Do you live here?” I asked.
“Not exactly.”
“You’re not allowed to live here.”
“I know,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m not. Come in. Your name’s April, right? Are you just working here for the summer?”
I didn’t answer. “I’m not sure what you’re doing.” I said instead, my voice stumbling.
“Will you get me in trouble if I tell you?” I shook my head. “I’m a photographer primarily, but this is a conceptual art piece. I’m pretending to live here and I’m documenting it. The couch folds out into a bed, but I’ve only spent the night once. It’s creepy here at night, so I’ve been coming mostly during the day.”
Conceptual art. Daniel hadn’t gotten to that one yet. “What do you mean an art piece? Why?”
“It’s part of my MFA thesis. I’m not allowed to do this, am I?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“It’s just for a month. As long as the owner doesn’t find out, I’ll be fine.”
“He won’t,” I promised, even though she didn’t know the owners were my parents.
“This place is pretty cozy, isn’t it?”
As she pointed out more decorating details, Daniel came to the doorway holding my daily Frosty. Maggie had forgotten to close the door all the way and he saw us when he cut through the field.
“Hi?” He peered into the shed and Maggie suddenly looked nervous.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Daniel’s studying art history. He’ll keep quiet.” I felt important as I reassured her, in on something big. I took the cup out of his hand and spooned up some ice cream.
The next time I saw Maggie she was outside behind the row of sheds setting up a tripod.
“Hey April,” she asked. “Can I take your picture?”
“Me?”
“It would be great if I got photos of the people who work here,” she said. “You don’t have to if you’re not comfortable.”
But I agreed, flattered that she wanted to use me in her thesis. She directed me to look up at the sky. I threw my head back and as I waited for her to take my picture, I noticed how big the sky was out here. There weren’t any tall buildings to block the sky’s hugeness, no houses either. This surprised me the way you’re surprised when you discover something obvious: of course the sky was bigger out here, of course it would be this beautiful. As Maggie fiddled with the camera, I stared at the wisps of clouds and blue sky, its beauty set inside a grid of power lines.
I mentioned the photos to Daniel, and he told me that Maggie had taken his photo too.
“What are you doing in your photo?” I asked.
“Watering the flowers.”
This made me laugh. I wasn’t sure if he was lying.
“I look like the little girl in that Renoir painting.”
“R
enoir?”
“April,” Daniel said. “I have so much to teach you.”
I let him use my computer to find an image of it online. The painting was of a smiling little girl holding a watering can, all dreamy brush strokes and shades of pastel.
“Were you wearing a dress too?” I asked.
Of course,” he said. “Anything for art.”
Later that afternoon things were slow, so when Daniel was about to leave to get Frosties, I decided I’d go with him. I was still feeling high off the photo shoot with Maggie that morning.
Daniel was surprised when I ran up behind him. The walk was longer than I expected and blades of crab grass scratched my ankles.
“I can’t believe you do this every day,” I complained. “It’s so hot out. My head is overheating, feel it.” He placed his palm on the top of my head. I had dark hair and in the summer it soaked up heat if I wasn’t wearing a hat.
“Jesus, you’re burning up.”
I reached up and touched his head too, pressing my fingers into his sandy coloured short hair. It was much cooler than mine. We kept walking and for a few moments he kept his hand on my head, protecting it from the sun.
Daniel and I decided not to tell anyone about Maggie. We knew that if she got in trouble, her whole project would be ruined. He and Greta would sometimes come over for dinner and there would be no talk of art students or photography. Every so often my parents or Greta asked us about work at the warehouse. “It’s not so bad,” I would say and Daniel would agree and then we would smile at each other quickly. I savoured the secret between us, proof of our strengthening bond.
With Maggie spending her days at We Store, work took on a different rhythm. My days of answering the telephone or stuffing envelopes were punctuated not only by the occasional art lecture from Daniel, but by visits with Maggie as well. She was discreet, but often stopped by reception to say hello. She invited me over for a drink once, and after I sat down took a bottle of lemonade out of the bar fridge she’d plugged into the corner of the shed. She had a laptop propped up on the table and would spend hours in there typing. Daniel liked talking to Maggie too, and sometimes I would see them hanging out behind her shed. Occasionally I would join them, but in general we socialized in pairs: me and Daniel, me and Maggie, or Maggie and Daniel.
One day I drove to Wendy’s to buy the Frosties, and I even picked one up for Maggie, whose car I’d seen in the parking lot. It was a hot day and I welcomed the cool blast of air conditioning. When I returned I couldn’t find Daniel, so I knocked on Maggie’s shed first and waited for her to answer. Daniel was there with her, sitting on the couch. “Good timing,” I said, walked in and perched on the edge of the coffee table holding the tray of cups. “It’s so hot in here. I don’t know how you can get any work done. You’ll need this.”
Maggie took her Frosty first. Daniel didn’t look at me when I passed his over.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. “You look weird.”
His cheeks were rosy and sweaty from the heat. Maggie laughed and Daniel smiled at her, but it wasn’t the wry smile he gave me when we joked around at reception; it was more private. There was something about the smile that reminded me of my previous summer. I remembered Phillip and me inside the suffocating storage cubes, the privacy they afforded. We could close the door behind us and it was like we had stepped into a vacuum; no one had any idea where we were or what we were doing. A minute or an hour would pass and nothing would change, not even the shadows.
I walked back to reception and for the first time I wondered if Maggie and Daniel were doing the same thing. It hadn’t occurred to me earlier, and I didn’t think they could be, but I wasn’t sure. When Daniel came by my desk later that afternoon, I was still unsettled.
“Is something going on between you and Maggie?” I asked. It just came out.
“Listen,” he said. “Don’t tell Greta about any of this.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Let me talk to her, okay, April? It’s complicated.” He talked to me like I was a child or a little sister. I felt my eyes well up and I looked down at my keyboard.
“I can’t believe it.” I said.
“Hey,” he said. “It’ll be okay.” He briefly touched the top of my head, like he had that day out in the sun. I hadn’t accompanied him on his walks since then. I was waiting for him to ask me first, as if it would be more appropriate that way, but he never did. I sometimes found myself feeling embarrassed for hoping that he would ask and then for thinking that if I invited myself it could be construed as inappropriate. What was inappropriate about it? I shook his hand away.
Maybe this was the real reason we didn’t talk about Maggie around Greta. It had nothing to do with putting her thesis project in jeopardy or because Daniel and I shared a secret. It was, I suppose, because he had his own secret. I added up the clues: Daniel’s art lectures had tapered off and were sloppy as he meandered through Surrealism. Recently I was the one making the Frosty runs. Daniel no longer had any lulls in his days.
“I have work to do,” I said to him.
I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t noticed anything between Maggie and Daniel sooner. That Daniel could be cheating on Greta was beyond me, not an event I had planned on working into my theory of why I was still there at We Store. Did this count as something bad for me or just for Greta? More for Greta, but I still felt gutted, my cheeks hot with shame or anger, I wasn’t sure which.
I saw the fallacy of my theory. I wasn’t chipping away at my lifetime supply of tedium. I was being cushioned by it. Boredom bred boredom, and even worse, made you accustomed to it. The previous summer I had had Phillip to distract me, and this summer I had Daniel for awhile, but now that I suspected something going on between him and Maggie, all I had was a glaring reminder of my own naivety.
I shut off the computer and went outside for air. I leaned against my car and sipped the remains of the Frosty. It was warm by then, liquefied and sickly syrupy. I faced away from the storage sheds and thought about what I was going to do.
Before I did anything definitive—told Gord about Maggie, told Greta about Daniel, told my parents that I was going to quit—or worse, before I did absolutely nothing, I looked up at the sky, still big, still blue. I could see the moon, its white, craggy outline far off in the horizon. I forgot you could sometimes see the moon in the daytime. It wasn’t a full moon, but it was almost there.
I thought of the animals living out in the field, all those doomed rodents, invisible until they were found dead on the side of the road or smeared on our parking lot. I hoped that they would come out that night in a moonlit stupor and sacrifice themselves so that Daniel would be forced to scrub the guts and hearts and bones from the asphalt in the sweltering, suburban summer heat. If this happened, my theory could possibly be redeemed. I felt good thinking and hoping for it, standing there, my legs burning against the side of my car while I clutched that dripping milkshake.
Day 1: Bought a road atlas and some bad coffee.
Thomas picked Nikki up from the subway station. It was late afternoon and she was standing out front with her sunglasses on, clutching her bags, ready. She threw her things into the back seat of his car and jumped into the front. They’d saved up some money and were going on vacation. Skipping town.
Thomas drove until just before Windsor where they stopped at a Tim Hortons so Nikki could take the wheel. He said he got nervous at the border, that customs officers were nicer to girls anyway. The traffic was bad heading into Detroit and Nikki got nervous on the bridge. She didn’t drive often, and they were so high up, only a frothy brown strip of water separating the two cities below them. When they crossed into Michigan there was construction on the highways and half the time they were forced to drive on the shoulder, on the rumble strips—those grooves on the side of the highway that are there to remind you when you’re veering off course.
They drove until midnight. When they were too tired to go any further, they pulled of
f at the next exit. Piqua, Ohio. The pamphlet Nikki grabbed from the motel lobby advertised only churches, a dozen of them. She hadn’t expected that many for what seemed like a small town, and she took this as a sign that they were in a different country, that this was the kind of thing that separated Canada from the United States. She was so eager to feel far away that she kept grasping at signs that things were different. This was something.
It took ten minutes for the owner of the motel to wake up and when they got their room, they noticed a tiny hole drilled just above the headboard facing the full-length mirror. It reminded Nikki of a news segment she’d seen about motels installing video cameras, filming their customers having sex and then distributing the footage on the Internet. She stuffed a wad of toilet paper into the hole.
Nikki ran out to get her toothbrush from the car and noticed a cornfield backing onto the parking lot. There were little clouds of fireflies darting around in crazy circles. She would’ve gone closer to look at them, but the cornfield looked ominous and huge, darker than the sky, like it could swallow her whole.
In the morning they followed the state line, entered Kentucky, dipped into Indiana. They drove through a county called Little Switzerland that was all lush, rolling hills and A-frame houses. They bought coffee from a general store and drank it in the parking lot. Nikki suggested they just stop here, buy an A-frame and settle forever. They leaned against the car, breathed, squinted at the hills, but didn’t stay.
When they got to Nashville it was dark. Their motel was cornered in-between two highways, one to Memphis and one to Knoxville. They sat on the steps, their backs to the road, and shared a cigarette.
“I’m going to write a poem about this.” Thomas said. He dropped the cigarette. The tip glowed. “And I never write poetry.”
Nikki leaned against him and looked up. “I know what you mean.”
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