The Very Nice Box

by Eve Gleichman

  Mat accepted Vince’s handshake with both of his hands in an apparent show of magnanimity. “No worries at all,” he said. “I get hangry too.” He punched his order into the screen, took his ticket, and pulled Ava aside. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have pried. You’re allowed to feel any kind of way about any kind of person in your life. And if the end result is a beautiful box that we can market to the masses, I’m all for it.”

  Ava was suddenly aware of Mat’s enormous hand on her shoulder. “C’mon,” he said. “I ordered you a cheeseburger.”

  “You did?”

  “Unless you want to eat this very tempting-looking . . .” He took her Sensible Bento Box and opened it.

  “Hummus wrap,” she said.

  “Hummus wrap,” he repeated.

  Ava took her lunch back from him. She wasn’t one to waste food. But how long had it been since she’d eaten a cheeseburger? Years? Mat was eyeing a table in the corner of the cafeteria—the sunniest spot in the expansive hall—where a small group of Marketing interns sat, their trays empty except for the crumpled wax paper from their burgers and fries. They were in no rush to get up and were in fact playing a round of cards, despite the fact that the cafeteria was filled to capacity.

  “Guys,” Mat said to them, clapping his hands together once.

  The three men straightened. One wiped his palms on his pants. “We were just heading out,” he said, collecting the cards.

  In under a minute they had vacated the table. One of them returned with a damp napkin to clean off a few residual crumbs, leaving streaks that he buffed away with a dry napkin.

  Was that all it took? Ava wondered, watching the intern work. She knew how this would have gone if she had been alone. She would have glared at the table, hoping that her facial expression would radiate enough irritation to convey to them that they were hogging a desirable table and they would get up with no interaction at all. But here it took one word—guys. Was this what it was like to be a man? Or was this what it was like to be Mat Putnam?

  A Fry Shack worker with bright orange hair placed a tray with two burgers and two orders of fries in front of them. Ava’s mouth watered.

  “I ordered your pickles on the side, just in case,” Mat said, pointing to a short stack of pickle coins. “You never know how people feel about pickles. Very polarizing. Very unpredictable. Personally, I’m extremely pro. I would join a pickle appreciation group.”

  Reflexively, Ava thought of her father. Welcome to the peanut cult. We welcome you with open arms. She pushed the memory away. Light beamed in through the cafeteria’s windows, filling Ava with a surge of optimism. Outside, an enormous crane stood against the vibrant sky where workers had begun building the Vision Tower, and the Buttermilk Channel stretched behind it. She was starving suddenly. She pushed her packed lunch aside. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a cheeseburger,” she said, unwrapping it from its wax paper.

  She took a bite. It tasted incredible. She wished Mat had ordered her two. “I don’t know when the last time was,” she said, patting her mouth with a napkin, “that I ate something this good.”

  “You’re allowed to enjoy your life, you know,” Mat said, taking a bite of his burger. “You’re allowed to eat a cheeseburger when you want to eat a cheeseburger.”

  “I want to eat a cheeseburger,” Ava said. She would not allow herself to be irked by the unsolicited permission. She opened her burger and added the pickles.

  “I see you’re pro pickle,” Mat said.

  She took another bite. She felt a small residual guilt over having left Jaime downstairs, but she would give herself this—this small pleasure. She would allow herself to drop her sad lunch into an Accommodating Garbage Bin. She would allow herself the gift of a well-assembled medium-rare cheeseburger. She would allow herself the coveted position of the corner table of the cafeteria. And she would allow herself to once again feel a small but perceivable joy at the fact that Mat had clearly not wanted to discuss work—he had simply wanted to eat lunch with her.

  11

  In a matter of weeks Mat had transformed the landscape of Floor 12; he’d ordered the installation of a basketball hoop in the middle of the floor, which Marketing used to pitch ideas via an intricate dunking game. He’d out­fitted the west corner of the floor with pool tables and a shuffleboard court. He’d added grass-fed jerky and electrolyte-heavy drinks to the Salty Kitchen. He’d brought a “neg alarm” to the Imagination Room, which anyone could sound upon hearing the words no, but, or can’t. And his latest initiative was a series of weekly “Yes, And” meetings, wherein Marketing associates gathered in a circle around an engineer to build a campaign for the engineer’s design. “It’s a tool I learned at Wharton,” he’d written in a circulated memo about the meetings.

  Can one learn a tool? Ava thought upon receiving the memo. The meeting would amount to Ava’s personal hell, and this week it was her turn to present the Very Nice Box.

  I can’t believe I have to do this, she wrote to her SHRNK.

  I can understand why this activity could be stressful. Who could you be if you allowed yourself to be pleasantly surprised? her SHRNK had responded.

  She refused to discuss the meeting with Mat on the drive to work, lest he try to pitch it to her as an important team-building experience, or talk up Marketing, or preach the virtues of positivity, or explain to Ava why Engineering and Marketing belonged in the same room. They didn’t. Plus there was the rule about not talking about work outside of work.

  But even if she could avoid talking about the meeting, she could not avoid the meeting itself, so at 3 p.m. she made her way to the Encouraging Desk Chair situated in the center of the Imagination Room, which was surrounded by a circle of a dozen empty, identical chairs. Soon those seats were filled by Marketing staffers. Most she didn’t know, but some she recognized; there was Sofia, for one, sitting with one leg crossed tightly over the other, and Vince, the junior Marketing rep from the Fry Shack line. The room was tight with anticipation, and Ava suspected she was alone in her dread.

  Finally Mat arrived, closing the door quietly behind him. His hair was attractively disheveled, and he had tucked his white T-shirt into his jeans. The room went quiet, and although Ava was seated at the center of the circle, everyone’s attention was on Mat.

  She felt dizzy with stress. Mat took a seat, winked at her, and leaned in. “It’s going to be fine,” he whispered. She saw Sofia look up and witness the moment with a raised eyebrow.

  “Folks,” Mat said, clapping his hands together once. He paused to look everyone in the eye. “Welcome to STÄDA’s sixth-ever ‘Yes, And’ meeting. Today we will be learning about the latest Passion Project from STÄDA’s senior engineer Ava Simon.”

  There was a weak smatter of applause.

  “Ava,” Mat said, clasping his hands behind his head and crossing his boots at the ankle. “What can you tell us about the Very Nice Box?”

  “Well,” Ava said. Her voice echoed against the wall of faces, each focused on her. She momentarily forgot what her job was, what product she was discussing, and why she was sitting there. Her mouth felt wired shut. She couldn’t think of any words at all, let alone a series of logical words that would join together to describe the Very Nice Box.

  What had her SHRNK told her to do to calm down? Who could you be if you transported yourself to an ideal environment? her SHRNK had said. Where would that be? The answer to that question at one point had been Home, listening to my parents play music. Then it became Home, with Andie and Brutus. But lately, if she was honest, the answer was Mat’s car, on the way to work, which she had admitted to her SHRNK earlier that morning. She tried to visualize herself in Mat’s car. The taste of slightly cooled milky coffee, the warm cup in her hands, the pleasant deepness of his voice. She took a breath. She had to pull herself out of the well of despair. Imagine a rope, her SHRNK might say. Who could you be if you climbed the rope?

  Mat leaned in again. “You got this,” he said, pla
cing a hand on her shoulder. “You got this, one thousand percent.”

  She climbed the rope. She visualized the Very Nice Box. It was beautiful, with perfect dimensions and an ingenious lid. She took a breath. “I’m finalizing the design for the Very Nice Box, which is a box that can be used in a multitude of ways with other pieces in the Very Nice collection, which we hope to launch next year. We’re spending a lot of time on the most basic component to make sure the line is orthogonal and easy to understand while still being elegant and up to STÄDA’s craftsmanship standards.”

  “But what’s it for?” someone from Marketing said loudly. Ava looked up. It was Owen Lloyd. He wore what Ava now recognized as his signature look: a neon-yellow polo with the collar popped. Ava glanced at his Decent Notebook. At the top of the page he had written Box?

  “It’s a box,” Ava said.

  “You mean box, like . . . box?” Owen said, unsuccessfully suppressing a smile. He glanced at Mat.

  “Obviously not,” Ava said, exasperated.

  “Okay,” Owen said, circling the question mark. “But, like . . . what’s it for?”

  “For objects,” Ava said, containing her impatience. “People put things inside boxes. The Very Nice Box is simply an extra-large box for large things, or even perhaps a large quantity of smaller things.”

  “Maybe if we back up for a moment.” It was Sofia speaking up now, to Ava’s annoyance. She had her own pad of paper out, and a bright red pen, which she rapidly clicked several times. “What makes the Very Nice Box different from, say, the Memorable Archives Box?”

  “Everything,” Ava said. “Everything is different about it. The Memorable Archives Box is for photographs, artwork, and letters. It doesn’t have hinges; the lid slides along a track. And it’s much narrower.”

  “So could you say this is a more refined version of the Purposeful Loose Ends Box?” Sofia said, jotting down something that Ava couldn’t make out. Had she researched every box Ava had ever designed in order to try to bring her down at this meeting?

  “Not exactly,” Ava said, her face heating up. “The Purposeful Loose Ends Box is one-quarter the size of the Very Nice Box and designed to sit on a shelf exclusively.”

  “So this is like a more versatile Sociable Coffee Table,” Sofia said.

  “No,” Ava said. “It’s a box.”

  Sofia closed her eyes for a long moment. “I want to make sure Marketing totally understands how to promote your design. Its purpose appears to be clear to you, but it’s not yet clear to me.”

  “Well—” Ava began.

  The sound of an airhorn pierced the air, startling everybody. “I’m sorry for the neg alarm, but I’m going to pause us right there,” Mat said. “Remember that this is a ‘Yes, And’ meeting, not an ‘Okay, But’ meeting. Let’s activate one thousand percent positivity. I, for one, love the idea of the Very Nice Box. There are tons of useless weird things that I have lying around my apartment. And don’t even get me started on my car.”

  “You know, I actually like that!” a Marketing associate said. She was small, with a swoop of bangs that obscured one eye. “It’s like, everyone has junk, and everyone loves boxes.” Why was it that as soon as Mat backed something, it became not only acceptable but popular?

  “Well, that’s one way to look at it—” Ava began.

  “Yes!” Mat said. “And I think this fills a major, major marketing hole for us. We can one thousand percent market this as the box for minimalists.”

  “Yes!” a Marketing intern chimed in. It was one of the guys who’d left the table in the cafeteria as soon as Mat had arrived. His face was covered in acne scars. “And that’s actually perfect, because minimalists make up such a big portion of our clientele.”

  “Yes!” Mat responded. “And even minimalists can’t help owning a few clunky things, like laundry detergent and dustpans.”

  “Yes,” Owen Lloyd boomed. “And so the Very Nice Box is like . . . a cool minimalist solution for minimalists who fell off the wagon and started buying more stuff even though they tried not to.”

  “Yes!” someone shouted. “And—”

  It went on like this for what felt like six units. Ava had no time to interject, correct, or even agree. She listened as the Marketing team built a campaign around her design. It was strange and oddly exhilarating. They ended the meeting by shouting the word GO!

  “Thank you, Ava,” Mat said, closing the meeting. Everyone left the Imagination Room in high spirits, as though they’d just finished a group workout. “Sofia? Do me a solid and take the lead on sending the summary around in the next hour.”

  Sofia looked up at him as though he’d asked her to dry-clean his T-shirt.

  As Ava walked back to her desk, she felt giddy. Who could you be if you allowed yourself to be pleasantly surprised? her SHRNK had said.

  And she had! She was left with the adrenaline of having been heard. She wouldn’t have expected to enjoy the room’s attention as much as she did, and the enthusiasm around the Very Nice Box was infectious. Who cared if they didn’t appreciate its perfect dimensions? They liked it. Except Sofia, apparently, and that actually made Ava feel better.

  A flurry of S-Chat messages from Mat appeared in the top right corner of her screen.

  I’m so sorry

  That was probably hell for u

  One day I’ll understand what you actually intended for that trunk

  It’s a box! Ava wrote.

  He used the facepalm emoji. You see, it can just be really hard for me to understand things sometimes.

  Ava couldn’t read his tone, so she looked over at him through his glass office doors. He had his feet up on his desk, and he was pretending to read one of his management books (Good Work) upside down. He was trying not to smile, waiting for her to see him.

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the monitor and found herself smiling. She pushed her hair out of her face and brought herself back down.

  As she went about her day, the energy from the meeting followed her. She was feeling decidedly yellow. In the Wellness Kitchen, she poured herself a glass of Wellness Water. It was delicious: pineapple and basil. Whoever came up with the combination should get a Welcome Raise, she thought. Jaime joined her and began fixing himself a Comforting Mug of green tea.

  “Glad it’s over?” he said.

  “Glad what’s over?”

  “The ‘Yes, And’ meeting. I’m guessing being surrounded by, like, twenty Owen Lloyds was your personal hell.”

  “I actually . . . I actually liked it!” Ava said, refilling her glass.

  Jaime looked at her incredulously. “Seriously? You liked the ‘Yes, And’ meeting? Do I know you?”

  “Believe me when I say I’m as surprised as you are,” Ava said. “I just . . . I don’t know, I kind of got swept up in it.”

  “Next thing I know you’ll be color-coding your apps like that psychopath on Hotspot. I mean, can you believe that dude?”

  “I didn’t see it,” Ava said.

  “Seriously? It’s such a good one!”

  Ava saw Mat heading their way, twirling his car keys around his index finger.

  “Actually,” Ava said, “I’ve kind of fallen behind. I don’t think it really does much for me anymore.”

  Jaime looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “It just . . . it’s kind of a depressing show when you think about it.”

  “Ready to blow this popsicle stand?” Mat said, startling Jaime so thoroughly that he spilled some tea on his shirt.

  “Sorry,” Jaime said.

  “Why?” Mat said.

  “I don’t know,” Jaime said. “You scared me.”

  “Then I’m sorry,” Mat said. He handed Jaime a paper towel and grabbed himself a Zing! Ginger-Turmeric Tonic from the refrigerator. “Ready to go, Ave?” he said, twisting the cap.

  Ava watched as Jaime blotted his shirt. “Yes,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  12

  They were approaching her
neighborhood, her street, her apartment. An uninvited thought of Mat inside her apartment crossed Ava’s mind. She had never, since moving in, had a friend over. Not even Jaime. She allowed the possibility to wash over her. It would be very yellow of her, inviting a friend upstairs, spontaneously. The thought excited and terrified her. Not even the building’s super had seen her immaculate kitchen, her minimalist furniture, the cozy alcove where she slept. She’d begun describing the studio to Mat on their drive. “It could pass for a miniature STÄDA showroom,” she said. “I could count the things that aren’t STÄDA on one hand.”

  He pulled alongside the curb and put the car in Park. The prospect of inviting him upstairs hung above her, out of reach. “Thanks,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt. “I should buy a car. I’m sorry this has been such a hassle.”

  “It’s really not a problem,” Mat said. “Actually—”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Never mind. Happy to drive you, that’s all.” His smile was affectionate, but she felt he was hiding something, and she was desperate to know what it was.

  “You can tell me,” she said.

  “I guess I just wanted to say . . .” Mat said, rubbing the back of his head. Her pulse quickened as he hesitated. “I really think your Passion Project is cool. Like, really cool. Not to get all approving-boss on you. I just thought it was really cool, and that you should know that.” The last of the sunlight brought out the blue in his eyes.

  “Oh,” Ava said. “Thanks.” She smiled at him, though she felt a little disappointed by his praise. She knew the Very Nice Box was good. She had no insecurities about the work. She’d been hoping for something else. “Well,” she said. “This is me. STÄDA 2.0. The place where the Very Nice Box was conceived.” As soon as she said it, she wanted to take it back.

  “Could I see it?” Mat said.

  “See the Very Nice Box? Well, no, I haven’t quite worked out the closure, so I don’t think—”