by Sarah Archer
Ethan shrank back as if unsure she meant what she said. She nodded at him encouragingly, trying to show more confidence than she felt, then took his hand as he approached, leading him toward the center spotlight. “Ethan, how about you and I chat for a bit instead?”
“Of course, Kelly. What did you want to talk about?” Ethan lowered his voice, though it was still audible to the crowd through her microphone. “Is this part of the plan? I thought you hated audience participation.” The audience laughed. In the wings, Anita was so tense, so ready to jump in and pull the plug, she was practically levitating.
“No, no, let’s just—talk. How are you?”
“At the moment, I’m confused.” The audience laughed again.
“Um—” Kelly looked around wildly for inspiration. “Come on, let’s dance!” She wrapped her arms around a completely befuddled Ethan and swung him around the stage.
“Are you all right? I thought you hated dancing too.”
Kelly ignored him. “He’s an excellent dancer!” she called loudly to the audience. Then she abruptly stopped dancing. “What’s 5,789 times 4,362?”
“25,251,618,” Ethan replied immediately. “But why—”
“When did Andrew Jackson die?”
“June 8th, 1845.”
“What’s my favorite time of year?”
Ethan slowed, looking at her. “November,” he said. “You love cloudy days.”
The audience was stirring, confused. “We get it, your boyfriend’s a catch!” one of them called out, to uneasy laughs. Anita stepped swiftly forward, but Kelly gestured firmly for her to stop, surprising herself with her boldness even more than Anita. She felt sick at what she was about to do, but she was sure. She took a breath and faced the crowd.
“He’s not a catch. Oh, he’s great—intelligent, good-looking, easygoing, funny. He’s the best-read person you’ll ever meet, but he’s not above doing laundry. Everyone who meets him loves him. I love him.” Kelly forced herself to meet Ethan’s eyes. “But a catch would imply he’s someone I found. And that’s not quite true.”
She looked out at the faces of the crowd, glowing palely in the dark auditorium. “Confibot appears to be having a glitch today,” she said. “I made a mistake. But it’s okay; I know that I can still make him everything I’m promising that he is, because I’ve done it before. I have another model here to show you.”
She lifted her hands to Ethan, but froze, unable to do what she needed to. But he caught her eye and gave her the faintest nod, the faintest smile, as if he knew, as if he was giving her permission. Obediently, he turned his back to her. Kelly took a breath and lifted the back of his shirt, the starched cotton faintly warm from his skin. She located his control panel, and before she could stop herself, she flipped the switch. Immediately Ethan powered down—lifeless, still, head bowed stiffly atop his neck like the top arm of a crane, dormant on a work site at night.
The audience gasped. Kelly swiveled Ethan’s back to them, lifting his shirt so they could see the control panel.
An image flashed into Kelly’s mind of her family watching at home, their shocked faces all in a row. Anita shot onstage with the closest thing to gracelessness Kelly had ever seen her display. “I’m sure you can all appreciate my engineer’s eccentric sense of humor,” she assured the investors. “She maintains the purity of her genius by isolating herself from all human society. I promise you, this is not her real pitch.”
But the same investor who had heckled Kelly earlier burst to his feet. “I’ve got to see this!” He pushed his way down the aisle and bounded onstage, examining Ethan closely. Kelly flinched as the man jammed his sausage fingers all over Ethan’s face. “Absolutely unbelievable!” he cried. He strode to Anita, hand out like a blade. “Let’s talk.”
As Anita watched the rest of the crowd trickle from their seats, rushing the stage, she transitioned seamlessly to a silken smile. She had planned this all along. This was all the carefully architected outcome of her calculations, not a coup by some engineer, some cubicle citizen. She grasped the man’s hand. “My pleasure.” In the midst of the turmoil, Kelly noticed Robbie gawping like a gutted fish. She knew that if anyone’s heart was thumping harder than hers in this moment, it might be his.
Kelly’s gaze found Confibot in his chair. In a way, despite being neglected for Ethan, he was the center of all of this. Through her daze, she realized that her project was real now. Confibot was happening. The bold investor fought his way toward her. “Incredible work,” he half shouted over the din. “You have an office model yet?” he joked. “I could use someone who actually spends more time filing than on Snapchat.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Excuse me—” Kelly turned back toward the center of the stage, distracted. In the madness of the throng, she couldn’t see Ethan at all.
twenty-six
• • • • • •
Kelly wasn’t sure if she would ever see Ethan again. But she didn’t dare ask Anita what she had done with him, and barely had the luxury of thinking of him at all during the daytime. Time passed in a vortex of investor meetings, team hirings, budgetary allocations, marketing plans. At first, watching so many other heads come together to get hands-on with her project, her baby, was almost physically wrenching. Nobody else could understand Confibot like she did. What if they screwed it up? They were obviously going to screw it up. But the more Kelly worked with the various experts joining her team, the more she realized that they knew what they were doing. Confibot was growing and changing, becoming something different from what she had expected—different, but bigger and better. Kelly was learning how to cede control. She was pleased with the newfound respect with which Anita, in her own tempered way, began treating her; thrilled to finally have her own office, aka closed door behind which to eat Cheez-Its; and ecstatic at the early glimpses of the ways in which her technology, with the ample funding now coming to it, could change people’s lives. Watching what had started as an ephemeral idea in her own head become a reality, something that would be in people’s homes, improving their quality of life, that would employ countless others in manufacturing and shipping and marketing—the whole thing was magical. She even got a write-up in Wired magazine—not bad, she considered, for someone who was only thirty.
As exhilarating as all the work on Confibot was, it was also exhausting. Every night, when Kelly dropped into bed, the thoughts that she could push to the side during the day came rolling forward: the light in Ethan’s eyes when he had said “I love you,” the trusting way he had turned his back to her right before she had shut him off for good. She knew that she had done the right thing, but she couldn’t shake the sadness that overwhelmed her when she thought of him. She missed him. All she could do was push ahead.
* * *
• • •
Dr. Masden stayed on as a consultant, and Kelly not only got used to working with him, but began to enjoy it. One day when they were preparing for a meeting, shortly after the presentation, Kelly could tell he was holding something back. “What is it?” she asked.
“I just can’t believe that you built a robotic boyfriend,” he burst out. “There’s so much to unpack there.” He put his hands up. “But don’t worry, don’t worry. I won’t analyze you again.”
“It’s okay.” Kelly laughed. “I know it’s a crazy story. Believe it or not, it all started with—”
“Your mother.”
Kelly stared at him. “How did you know?”
He leaned forward. “Kelly, I’m a psychologist. It’s always the mother.”
One hour and six Freudian slips later, Kelly was laughing as he told her a funny story about his own mom.
“So you’ve got family . . . psychoses—or whatever the clinical term is—too.” She shook her head.
“I think the word is ‘issues.’ And I think everyone has them.”
“So if I’m essentially Confibot’s mom, d
oes that mean he’ll have issues with me?”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her with a smile. “I’ll still be around to help when he’s a teenager.”
Kelly rolled her eyes. But having someone around to help—it was kind of nice.
* * *
• • •
Another day at lunch, Kelly sneaked into the lab to get some work done. With all the extra meetings in her days now, she appreciated these pockets of quiet. But just as she rolled a chair up to a computer workstation, Robbie appeared suddenly from behind a rolling rack, brandishing a screwdriver.
“I’m in here,” he announced quite loudly.
Kelly gasped, hand at her chest. “Robbie!”
“I wanted to alert you to my presence to avoid startling you.”
“That ship has sailed,” she muttered.
“And how is Confibot progressing?” he asked, sitting beside her at the counter, his back ramrod straight.
“Pretty well, actually,” she answered. “How’s Brahma?” In spite of Robbie’s own efforts to the contrary, three separate investors had liked Brahma enough to throw some dough his way as well, and the project was on its feet.
“Extraordinary. I can’t tell you what it’s like to be building such world-changing technology.”
“Wow, yeah, I’d love to hear what that’s like sometime,” Kelly replied, trying to keep the sarcasm in her voice at a low volume. Robbie, whether he meant to or not, could push her buttons, jam them and pummel them and wriggle them, more than just about anybody else.
She didn’t say anything more, worried that she wouldn’t have anything nice to say, but Robbie suddenly spoke from the silence. “You did the right thing,” he said. Kelly set down her pliers, looking at him in surprise. “Even though I know you only got rid of Ethan because of me, I believe you’ll be better for it in the long term.” He kept his eyes trained down on his work as he spoke.
Kelly hadn’t been thinking of Robbie when she’d powered Ethan down—honestly, his blackmail had been the furthest thing from her mind when she made her choice. But what would she gain by setting him straight? Why not let him have this? “Well, I’m doing all right,” she replied.
“I do wish you happiness,” he said carefully.
Kelly picked up her tool again with a small smile. “Thanks, Robbie.”
* * *
• • •
Moving on was a bigger problem with Priya than it had been with Robbie. Kelly had tried assiduously to avoid her since their fight, treating her like just another coworker in their sparse interactions. They traded a clipped “Hi” when they passed in the hallways. On occasions when they were forced to share lab time, they passed each other tools without eye contact. And this was a million, bajillion times worse than fighting.
After the bridesmaid dress debacle, Kelly had half expected Priya to shower her with apologies. When no apology came, she took this as proof positive that her conjectures had been correct all along: if Priya didn’t apologize, that meant that she didn’t realize she had been wrong, which meant that she was oblivious of Kelly’s feelings, which meant that their entire friendship had been a ruse. Thinking about it, Kelly smoothed her blouse and refocused on her computer.
Kelly’s ability to distract herself from her own feelings had always been something of a point of pride. And she made a gorgeous, gung-ho effort that Saturday: she put in a full day’s work at home, catching up on TechCrunch, digesting journal articles, and doing a Skype interview for a German news company interested in profiling Confibot. She tried out a new hairstyle that allowed more of her natural wave through. She even pulled out her ultimate distraction weapon, a marathon of old-school Olsen twin movies. But no matter how hard she tried to convince herself that she was totally good without her best friend, a thought kept surfacing, like a body discarded in a river. Maybe the presupposition to her entire argument, that Priya was wrong to jilt her at the fitting in the first place, had been false. Maybe Priya hadn’t apologized because she’d had nothing to apologize for. Yes, she had let Kelly down and, yes, she had said some harsh things, but hadn’t Kelly done the same? Hadn’t Kelly been neglectful of the relationship for a while at that point? It was logical to look at the evidence of all her friendships and to conclude that this friendship would likely fail. But such a conclusion was based on the pattern of Kelly’s own behavior. And if she could change that variable, she could change the equation.
A rencontre at work was clearly not an option, given the avoidance games they were playing. Her texts and calls went unanswered, Priya was mysteriously missing at their usual shared lab times, and she must have been spending an arm and a leg eating lunch out because when Kelly picked up her salad du jour in the cafeteria line, she was never anywhere to be seen. And so Kelly tugged on her big-girl panties and decided that the only way to get her friend’s attention was to do what Priya had been begging for all along: hang out outside of the office. A quick perusal of Priya’s Instagram revealed two things: that she was back with Andre, and that she would be at an open mic night with him that night.
It’s totally fine, Kelly thought as she stood in line backstage at the cigarette-scented club, waiting with the other comics for her turn to go up. Yes, that’s right, Kelly Suttle was doing an open mic night. Most of the other participants were reviewing their notes on their phones or on little scraps of paper, noiselessly rehearsing their routines, but Kelly had something better. She had a straightforward plan. She had already seen Priya and Andre settle at a table, Andre bumping fists with friends in the crowd. All she had to do was get onstage, a platform from which Priya could not avoid or ignore her, spout her apology, and get off. She wouldn’t even have to tell a joke, she consoled herself. She inhaled deeply as she advanced to the front of the line. Time to get this over with.
And then she saw Priya’s long hair flip behind her as she disappeared into the restroom—right before the emcee called out, “Kelly!”
Kelly froze. She couldn’t go up until Priya was back in the audience. She tried to stall, shaking her head furiously at the emcee, but he just laughed and ushered her into the glare of the spotlight, forcing her out. She stared wildly into the packed house. She wasn’t supposed to have to tell any jokes. A joke? What was a joke? Who are words?
“What—what’s black, white, and red all over?” she asked quietly.
“We can’t hear you!” yelled a guy in the audience.
“A newspaper!” she shouted. She tried to bring it back down a notch. “Newspapers, right? Who remembers those?” She stared into the audience for a long minute, hoping that someone would say something helpful, such as “I do!” They did not.
“All right, give it up for Kel—” But Kelly had to stop the emcee. She had to stay up here until Priya was out of the restroom. She thought desperately back to what had made Ethan laugh.
“My sister fell out a window! I mean—no, wait, it’s a joke—” Just in time to hear this, Priya emerged and saw Kelly onstage. She halted, looking as shocked as if she had walked out the door into Oz.
“Priya!” Kelly exclaimed. “I’m sorry! You were right about Ethan, and I should have listened earlier but I freaked out when things didn’t go my way. I’m trying not to do that anymore. It’s been hell not having you around. I want to talk to you. I want to meet Andre. Hi, Andre.” She waved at him. He waved back numbly, very, very confused. “Will you give me a chance? I promise I’ll make more time to hang out together. I’m here, right?”
Priya crossed her arms. “Tell me a joke,” she called out.
Kelly searched. Suddenly she thought back to the model number of a certain vibrating motor she had once witnessed Priya, in one of her self-titled moments of genius, construct in the lab: 3X2D5L. “What are the ingredients of a perfect date night?” she asked. “Three Xs, two Ds, and five Ls.” Priya stood there for a moment. And then she got it. She roared with laughter, bending at the
knees. The rest of the audience was starting to boo, restless, but Kelly didn’t care. She laughed, too, even while the emcee physically guided her from the stage.
“Come here, come here,” Priya gasped weakly, gesturing her forward while grasping her own side. “I’ve missed you, you moron.” And Kelly didn’t even notice the stares of the audience as she made her way toward the waiting arms of her friend.
* * *
• • •
As difficult as it had been to avoid Priya, ignoring Kelly’s entire family was even harder. As the next family dinner loomed on the horizon, her mother’s voicemails and e-mails multiplied, backing up Kelly’s phone like a rest station toilet. The phone had buzzed as she sat in her office, designing facial prototypes for a female Confibot. She had silenced it, irritated at the visions that floated unbidden into her mind of the family ringed around the dinner table, all staring at her. Her amazing, perfect fiancé was a hoax. Her dad sighing and turning his attention to dinner, dryly unsurprised; Gary explaining to her nieces where Ethan went, the girls laughing at their batty aunt; Clara smiling with sweet sympathy, holding Jonathan’s hand; her mom clucking with disappointment, making plans to sell the wedding dress to some other girl at the shop—that dress her mom had worked so hard on . . .
Now Kelly imagined her mom alone in the shop, running a duster over the shelves, straightening bolts of silk, the dress staring at her the whole time, fluttery as a ghost. No matter how much her family had pressured Kelly, even belittled her unintentionally, it hadn’t been fair to lie to them about Ethan, and it wasn’t fair to ignore them now. Kelly knew that her mother did love her. Even if she sometimes showed it the way a two-year-old shows her love for her favorite doll, rendering it bedraggled, crayon-faced, one-armed, and bereft of all will to live. And Kelly did love her family—even if, she mused, she was programmed to, in her own biological way. She knew down inside that they would keep coming back to her no matter what, just like Ethan had done, and that she would do the same.