The Very Nice Box

by Eve Gleichman

Ari rolled her eyes and held out the doughnut, and Judith took a bite.

  Ava stared dutifully at her menu, trying to achieve the forced body language of obliviousness until Judith and her daughters were a few yards away. When she looked up, she could have sworn she saw Kendra looking back at them. She shook the image out of her mind.

  “So that’s Judith on the weekend!” Mat whispered excitedly. “She looks way cooler.”

  “Shh,” Ava said.

  “What, are you embarrassed to be seen with me?” Mat said.

  Ava didn’t want to be seen with Mat, because of how it would read, the two of them having breakfast on a Saturday. How many warnings—via email, S-Chat, signage, and trainings—had every STÄDA employee received about appropriate office relationships? The last thing Ava needed was an individual lecture from Judith, who would see this breakfast as unprofessional simply because it was happening on a Saturday morning. But she was wary of hurting Mat’s feelings, so she quickly rearranged her own. “It’s not that I don’t want to be seen with you. I’m just late on submitting my Necessary Self-Review this quarter,” she lied. “I don’t want her to see me and remember.”

  “God, did I ever tell you about what she said about my interview?” Mat said.

  “When would you have told me?” Ava said. But she was intrigued.

  “Okay, you won’t believe this. I showed up to my interview five minutes late. Fast-forward twenty-four hours, I get an email from her that says . . .” Mat pulled out his phone. “It said—here, why don’t you just read this?”

  Ava took his phone and scrolled.

  Dear Mathew,

  If you don’t take your interview seriously, STÄDA won’t have the tools to take you seriously.

  Respect is a two-way street.

  Be on time in the future.

  Best,

  Judith Ball

  Chief People Officer

  Green

  Ava wondered how Mat could face Judith every day. She probably would have refused to accept the job on account of embarrassment. But Mat appeared to be unflappable in ways that were both charming and irritating. Men got to be this way, Ava thought, constantly in the midst of forgiving themselves. Judith’s email had been nothing more than a mosquito briefly whining in his ear.

  She watched Mat as he tucked his phone away and ate, the flakes of his croissant drifting onto his lap, and she tried to puzzle out why exactly he was sitting across from her. And why was she sitting across from him? Something was pulling her in, something beyond his looks. He possessed a kind of charm that Ava had come to recognize in extroverts: he was so unselfconscious that she felt, after only a fraction of a unit, included in his inner circle, as though he’d known her for years.

  On a different day she might have eaten quickly, or tuned him out to rebalance the weekend, searching for a different but equal order of things. Instead she found herself feeling unrushed. Later that afternoon she would call the mechanic, she would arrange a tow, she would separate, wash, and fold her laundry. She would sweep the floor with her Attentive Broom, she would put two or three units of work into the Very Nice Box, she would feed Brutus his dinner, and she would catch up on the latest episode of Thirty-Minute Machine. But before all that she would sit across from Mat Putnam, unwinding a knot of strange, contradictory feelings, she would finish her hemp-seed toast, and she would split the bill with him.

  6

  Andie.

  The slipup at the park had drawn her to the surface of Ava’s consciousness, and she bolted awake at a small hour that night with Andie’s name in her mouth. Her breath was tight and shallow. She could hear her heartbeat as loudly as if she were underwater. She squinted through the dark at Brutus, curled asleep on his Dreamy Dog Bed.

  “Brutus,” Ava whispered. She patted her Comfortable Mattress. She never let him up on her Principled Bed, but she would make an exception this time. Slowly he rose, stretched, ambled toward her.

  Andie.

  Andie had been driving, and Ava had been in the passenger seat. Ava’s father, Ira, shared the backseat with Ava’s mother, Joan. Her parents were discussing hydrangeas. The hydrangeas had done very well that year. Ava’s mother was chalking it up to the fact that they’d started composting. “We make a good team,” she was saying, and in the rearview mirror Ava had watched her mother pat her father’s knee. Her mother composting, her father gardening. Everything they did was well orchestrated and harmonized.

  Andie had proposed to Ava earlier that morning, and they hadn’t told anyone yet. Ava’s chest felt light and full. As if to emphasize the feeling, the day had turned out to be picturesque, and the changing leaves performed the absolute optimism that she felt.

  There had been no ring. Instead Andie had quietly, over the year, used her allotted Passion Project hours to design and fabricate the most perfect wristwatch Ava had ever seen. The diameter of the watch’s face was 35 millimeters, representing the number of months they’d lived together. The hands were silver and ticked against a deep brown background, matched exactly to the color of Brutus’s fur. “Please marry me,” Andie had said, wrapping the band around Ava’s wrist.

  They’d been uncharacteristically late to meet Ava’s parents at the car rental after that—they had business to attend to. “Yes,” Ava had said, and Andie had already begun pulling Ava’s shirt over her head, carrying her to the bed, pinning her arms down against her Comfortable Mattress, using the other hand to tug off Ava’s jeans. Andie’s mouth had been so warm, had tasted like milky black tea, and Ava’s need for her had coursed through her so recklessly that she barely recognized herself.

  So they were late. It didn’t happen often. They would forgive themselves.

  Only later would Karl find the mockups for the watch and ask Ava’s permission to feature it as a STÄDA original. They would call it the Precise Wristwatch. But first it was Ava’s alone, hugging her wrist snugly. It didn’t advertise the engagement—it was private and practical, and Ava loved it.

  They were driving upstate to a farm-to-table restaurant that had been featured in a popular docuseries about the greatest chefs in the world. It was a restaurant so famous that reservations had to be made six months in advance. Everything Andie did was thought out well in advance.

  Andie’s thoughtfulness was what had made her an exceptional engineer. She, like Ava, was part of STÄDA’s original team. Her specialty was clocks and alarms. At home after work she sketched plans for the clocks, and some weekends she worked long hours in their living room to bring her designs to life. Their apartment was furnished with Andie’s designs, many of which went on to become STÄDA bestsellers, like the Exuberant Alarm Clock, STÄDA’s first analog alarm clock, and the Tranquil Clock, which made no noise whatsoever and hung in their kitchen.

  The plan was simple: at the restaurant Ava would announce the engagement to her parents. Maybe she should have felt nervous, but she felt the opposite—certain. Certain of Andie, of a life together, of her own happiness.

  Before leaving the city, her father had insisted on stopping at a Nuts ’bout Nuts cart. It was one of his favorite things about the city: the roasted sidewalk peanuts. Ava didn’t like the way they tasted—burned, with a bitter aftertaste. But they did smell incredible, and whenever she passed a cart, she thought of her boisterous, affectionate father. The smell of cinnamon had overwhelmed the car, and she had turned around in her seat to take a handful, allowing for the possibility that they would taste good.

  “Oooh,” her father teased. “The Nuts ’bout Nuts skeptic is suddenly changing her tune!”

  “Jury’s still out,” Ava said.

  “Well, don’t let me stop you,” her father said, shuffling some peanuts from the paper bag into her palm. “Join the peanut cult. We welcome you with open arms. Andie?”

  “I’m good,” Andie said, shifting into a new lane. “You can keep those all for yourself, Mr. Simon.”

  Ava’s mother giggled for no clear reason. She seemed to have her own crush on Andie, and
would send her emails with links to articles that had vague connections to clocks or engineers.

  “I’m an engineer too, you know,” Ava had once said. “You can CC me on those.”

  “But Andie actually responds to my emails!” her mother had said. Ava suspected her mother was trying to fill in for Andie’s mother, who had died when Andie was in high school. And she sensed that Andie welcomed the emailed links and the underlying message they conveyed, because she always responded, often in full paragraphs, and would sometimes email Ava’s mother links to articles about jazz and gardening.

  Ava ate a sticky, coated peanut out of her palm. It tasted the same as always—burned and too sweet, then bitter. “I don’t understand you guys. Can I return these for a refund?” she said, twisting again in her seat. The highway trailed behind them in the rear window.

  “For my daughter?” Ava’s father said, holding out his hand. “Anything!” Her fingertips brushed his palm.

  When she turned back around, something assaulted her eyes—a sharp current of light that she had to blink away. A powerful chill spread through her. She felt the hairs on her arms stand as though pulled by static, and she knew that something was deeply, irrevocably wrong.

  Andie yanked the wheel to the left. It was here that Ava’s memory began to curl at the edges.

  If only they had been on time to the car rental. They would have pulled onto the highway earlier. Even five minutes earlier. Even one minute. Even a few seconds. The hindsight was relentless. It was the worst part. Ava was used to fixing problems. She was used to seeing the problem, ideally before it showed itself, but sometimes it happened after the box had been built, the instructions written.

  Even in those cases there was time to go back.

  Her pillow was warm and damp against her cheek.

  Brutus had nosed under her Reassuring Comforter, wriggled his warm body against her, and sighed. She pulled him closer. And she fell back asleep so quickly that the next day the disruption felt like only a wisp of a dream, something that would evaporate completely by the time she made her coffee.

  7

  Ava had no interest in revisiting the unwelcome feeling that had settled over the rest of her weekend: that something about Mat had disturbed the order of her life. Again and again her mind drifted to the dog run, the Stoned Fruit, the passenger seat of his small red car.

  Her own car had been towed, her laundry was finished, Brutus had been walked, her lunch for the next day was prepared, and she had three free units before bed to relax. She sat on her Practical Sofa with Brutus and began streaming Hotspot. The contestant this week was a short, tanned man with a purple faux hawk. As he began a deep dive into his potential date’s latest Internet search terms, Ava’s phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.

  Need a ride tomorrow? This is Mat btw!

  She felt lightheaded. He had included two dog emojis.

  I’ll take a Swyft, but thanks for the offer. She wasn’t going to show up to work with him; she could imagine the look of horror on Jaime’s face if they stepped out of the elevator together with matching coffee cups from the Stoned Fruit. She mentally rehearsed how she would casually describe her weekend to Jaime during their standing lunch. Of all the various ways she might spin it, her favorite option was not to mention Mat at all, a conclusion that would help her sleep a full eighteen units that night.

  * * *

  At work the next morning Ava spent three units working on the Very Nice Box, but her work was slow. She couldn’t stop looking around Floor 12 for signs of Mat, who had arrived soon after Ava and booked the Imagination Room for a meeting with Owen Lloyd that had lasted all morning. All she could hear of the meeting was Owen Lloyd’s frequent explosive laughter. She doubted how much work they were actually getting done.

  For their lunch, Jaime had reserved her favorite side room on Floor 2—the Test Floor, where STÄDA prototypes were assembled. The side room was dim, with soft matte navy walls and minimal furnishing—just two Collaborative Lounge Chairs and a Cozy Nesting Table—offering relief from the open-plan overstimulation.

  “You totally disappeared on Friday!” Jaime said, opening his Humble Lunchbox. “I had no one to process the news of our new one-thousand-percent bro-boss with.”

  “Sorry,” Ava said. “I had to leave. It was too much.”

  “I totally get it,” Jaime said. He unveiled a tidy row of sushi. “What’s his deal, do you think? I feel like he’s secretly a serial killer.”

  “Actually,” Ava said, clearing her throat, “he gave me a ride home on Friday.”

  “He what?”

  “I know,” Ava said, glancing around. “Some Vandals messed with my engine, so he offered me a ride home.”

  “What does he drive?”

  “A little red sports car.”

  “Oh my god!” Jaime said, laughing. “I saw that car in the parking lot and wondered! I cannot imagine you in that vehicle.”

  “It was pretty uncomfortable,” Ava said. She had committed to dodging the full truth. Jaime didn’t need to know about the dog park or breakfast; he’d only hound her for more details. She felt retroactively embarrassed that she’d been roped into the plan, let alone that she hadn’t had a terrible time.

  “Can I try to guess three objects from his car?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, let’s see. Some type of . . . unused exercise equipment?”

  “There was a basketball.”

  “Garbage.”

  “That’s very generic and obvious, but I’ll give it to you.”

  “Like . . . eight thousand packs of gum.”

  “Mints,” Ava said. “You’re weirdly good at this.”

  “What can I say?” Jaime shrugged. “I’m an excellent judge of character. Which reminds me, did you watch Hotspot?”

  “Yes. What’s your take?”

  “First of all, we need to talk about that one guy’s most-used emojis. Football, squatting monkey, diamond ring? Major red flag!”

  “The emojis bothered me less than the number of alarms he had set. There was basically one alarm every fifteen minutes for all twenty-four hours of the day,” Ava said.

  “And the recent searches! He actually chose that guy knowing that he had to look up the word parliament.”

  “Maybe he was looking up how to spell it?”

  “Somehow that’s worse,” Jaime said. “What do you think Andie would find most terrible? Maybe that the Stocks app was one of his main four?”

  Ava’s body tensed at the mention of Andie. They never spoke about her. “Maybe . . .” she started, but she couldn’t bring herself to speculate further. She pulled out her phone and saw a missed call and voicemail from the mechanic. She was glad for the excuse to change the subject. “Sorry, Jaime,” she said. “I need to take care of this.”

  Ava listened to the voicemail as she made her way back to her desk. There was practiced sympathy in the mechanic’s voice. Sorry to say, the car’s, ah, totaled. Engine’s full of, ah . . . sand, I want to say. Or sawdust. Anyway, looks like someone really didn’t want you, ah, driving. She deleted the voicemail and opened a new window that contained notes for her Necessary Self-­Review: Diligent and prompt. Significant process on Passion Project. Accepted new company mantras without audible complaint. Perfect attendance. Donated sick days. The words blurred together as the reality of the voicemail set in. The car was totaled. Ava still had the registration with her parents’ names on it.

  Her phone chirped with a message from her SHRNK.

  Good morning, Ava. How are you today?

  She tried to swipe the message away but saw only the option to tap a smiling or a frowning emoji. She found a tiny X and tapped it.

  Here’s a free piece of advice before you go, Ava: you can always ask for help.

  She closed her eyes and thought about logging the incident with Security. But then what? What would they do? She opened an S-Chat window to Mat. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say, and she edited the
message so many times that it began to lose all meaning.

  Good morning. My car is totaled. If there’s a chance you could give me a ride home, I would appreciate it.

  In the few seconds after she hit Send, her stomach tightened. She considered telling him she’d meant to send the message to someone else. Had she? She glanced around the room, then back at her screen. She minimized the window, then maximized it, then started to write Never mind, but she saw a text bubble from Mat appear and disappear.

  She wanted to leave her desk, walk out the door, and never return.

  But then his ellipses appeared again. 1000% as long as u need. Got u!

  She read it several times: 1000%. What was wrong with him? Why did he have to take the longest route to convey the least amount of meaning? He could have just said yes, one of the simplest, most widely understood words in the English language.

  But beneath her annoyance was a quiet excitement at his offer. As long as you need. She tried to justify the feeling to herself, to reason that the favor would save her hundreds of dollars a month that she would otherwise lose to Swyft and she wouldn’t have to encounter a new driver—and new headache-inducing air freshener—every day.

  She knew this wasn’t the full story, though. After all, she could easily afford the Swyft rides, and she had practice ignoring strangers—STÄDA had hired dozens of people whom she’d successfully avoided over the past year. The truth was that she was compelled to ride with Mat in the same way that she’d been compelled to sit with him at a weed-themed café. It was a feeling that had no clear logic attached to it, and so it both intrigued and bothered her. She reluctantly opened SHRNK.

  Am I insane to want to be in a car with my boss?

  I’ve heard more unusual things in my line of work. How does being with your boss make you feel?

  Ava couldn’t exactly name the feeling. I feel repelled by who he is and attracted to HOW he is . . .

  What is the difference between who he is and how he is?