The Very Nice Box

by Eve Gleichman

  “Easy!” Mat said. “Drive to work.”

  But Ava liked one of the potential solutions this time: a small garment bag that could hang beneath the commuter’s desktop, allowing her to air clothes out while concealing the sight and smell of them from desk neighbors. Her thoughts roamed between the sweaty clothes solution and the night she’d had—clothing pulled off, thrown to the floor, Mat’s low voice in her ear, his abrasive cheek against her neck, her whole body taut with desire. They sat for a moment in Mat’s car, watching a line of employees enter the Simple Tower.

  “Okay,” Mat said. “I’m going to try to treat you normally. I’m not going to look at you more than anyone else. I’m not going to speak to you differently. Our S-Chats will be entirely professional. No flirtation whatsoever.”

  “None,” Ava said. “And that should probably start right now. Who knows where Security installed those cameras for the Vandals. They could be anywhere. And Judith probably has access to all of them.”

  “Damn,” Mat said. “You’re right.” He undid his seatbelt and kissed her deeply.

  Ava pulled away from him. “You’re going to get us in trouble.”

  “Sorry,” Mat said. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “You’re not sorry,” she said.

  As they approached the entrance to the Simple Tower, Ava focused on looking normal, a task that became more difficult as her coworkers lined up behind them. She spotted Jaime a few spots behind them in the line and tried to shake the feeling of transparency as he glanced at them. She scanned her key card, and Mat followed behind her. But as soon as he held his barcode to the scanner, an eerie, high-pitched alarm echoed around the enormous lobby.

  “What the . . .” he said. “Is that the neg alarm?”

  By the time Ava looked up, the sprinkler heads had already burst into action, sending water in every direction.

  ATTENTION, the intercom demanded. ATTENTION. FIRE. ATTENTION. FIRE.

  “You’re kidding me,” Ava said.

  The entire population of the tower began to filter out onto the freezing parking lot, starting with Judith. Dread swallowed Ava. She felt that Judith would be able to read her mind; that somehow the sprinkler mishap would help Judith put together the events of the night before. Ava watched her slip a half-eaten orange into a baggie and put it in her raincoat pocket. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she looked up and made eye contact with Ava, then glanced at Mat. Ava turned the other way, her chest tight with panic.

  “Judith knows about us,” she whispered to Mat. Her teeth chattered. “Don’t look.”

  “She does not,” Mat said. “You’re being paranoid.”

  When Ava glanced again, Judith was conversing with a Spirit staffer, who was nodding enthusiastically. Around her, teams huddled in their damp hoodies, hugging themselves for warmth while the fire department arrived and charged into the building.

  “I told you,” Jaime said. He’d appeared beside Ava and Mat. His shirt was dotted with water. “I told you they were good.”

  “Who?” she said.

  “The Vandals,” Jaime said. “Didn’t it happen when one of you swiped? They clearly hacked into the security system and somehow linked it to the sprinkler system. It’s impressive.”

  Ava tried to keep a straight face. “You’re telling me you think a small group of teenagers secretly boobytrapped our lobby sprinklers?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Jaime said sharply. “Wake up, Ava. They’re advanced. More capable than half the college interns we brought in last summer.”

  “Yeah, Ava,” Mat said, elbowing her lightly in the ribs. “Wake up!”

  Ava flicked him away with her hand.

  Jaime stared at both of them. First Ava, then Mat, whom he looked up and down. “Mat,” he said. “Nice shirt.”

  “This?” Mat said, looking down. Ava’s stomach flipped. “Thanks.”

  “You must really like it,” Jaime said. “Feel like I just saw you wearing it yesterday!”

  “Yeah,” Mat said, rocking on his heels. “I really like this brand.”

  Ava focused on a weed growing through a crack in the asphalt.

  The alarm stopped, and a security guard waved the crowd back inside. Jaime gave Ava a hard look before turning to join the line of people filing inside.

  Mat turned abruptly to Ava. “Do we pay the interns?”

  “I think so,” Ava said. “Why?”

  “I think I just had a great idea.” He snapped his fingers and walked to the head of the line, leaving Ava in the parking lot.

  * * *

  That afternoon an email from Mat landed at the top of her inbox.

  Announcing: STÄDA X RED HOOK Community Internship Program

  STÄDA fam,

  Several weeks ago I stepped up to lead the cross-­functional task force dedicated to repairing the relationship between STÄDA and the broader community. First I’d like to thank you for your patience as we took a step back to listen to the community within and outside these walls.

  Today I’m proud to announce SXRH, a community internship program open to all Red Hook residents, regardless of age or educational background. At STÄDA we strive to provide the space, tools, and mentorship that allow potential to flourish, and we don’t think that mission should stop at the gate. Everybody has the right to discover his or her skills and passion, including those who wish us ill. That’s why we’ll be offering this career development program as an optional first measure for any trespasser apprehended on STÄDA property. We believe this will have the secondary benefit of reducing STÄDA’s need to engage with law enforcement. I think we can all agree that this is a huge step forward, and although I recognize that change doesn’t happen overnight, I know we’ll be able to get through this difficult time together.

  Please join me in congratulating Jaime Rojas, who recognized the intellect and potential of these young men and women and who has volunteered to leave the Storage team to lead the internship program, effective immediately.

  Thanks so much, everyone.

  Mat Putnam

  Head of Product

  Yellow/Amarillo :)

  Ava looked around for Jaime and spotted him in the Imagination Room with Mat. The tone of their conversation was inscrutable. After a minute they both stood. Mat extended his hand and Jaime shook it. Jaime left the room and disappeared into an elevator.

  She scanned the email again. Jaime had been upset with her, and now he’d volunteered to leave her team. Her heart sank. She opened an S-Chat to him. Hey, she wrote. Look, I’m sorry if—

  “I can’t believe it didn’t come to me sooner,” Mat said proudly. He had appeared behind Ava’s desk. She quickly closed out of S-Chat. “It’s the perfect idea. Leveraging our excess intellectual capital to do good in the world, all while saving some money on intern stipends.”

  “Do you really think people will be happy about this?” Ava asked.

  “Of course! Instead of getting a record they get college credit.”

  “All right.”

  “You okay?” Mat asked.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. I just feel bad for shutting Jaime down earlier. I think he’s really mad at me.”

  “You do?”

  “Is that crazy?”

  “It’s not crazy,” Mat said, “it’s just not true. It’s your projection of how he feels, so really it’s how you feel. We ask each other this in Good Guys all the time: Is it real or is it how you feel ? It’s usually HYF.” The acronym rhymed with wife.

  Ava tried to wrap her head around this.

  “That probably sounds crazy, right?” He smiled as though he were one step ahead of her. “But with a little practice,” he continued, placing a warm hand on her shoulder, “the way you feel about yourself can become something you can control. Anyway, gotta run to my ten o’clock ‘Yes, And.’ Owen and I are about to go nuts on this Gentle Nightstand campaign.”

  Ava tried to get back to work but was carried away by a riptide of curiosity. She a
ngled her screen slightly away from her neighbor, opened a new tab, and searched for “HYF Good Guys.” The search results were cluttered with advertisements for local chapters and images of men proudly presenting to full audiences, interspersed with professional-looking photos of men looking deeply at peace in their home environments. One man posed with jumper cables slung over a shoulder. Another threw an ecstatic toddler into the air.

  She scanned the page and clicked a video entitled “New here? Good news.” When she hit Play, a pink sunset filled the screen. Orchestral music came through her Peaceful Headphones. As the music swelled, swarms of birds took shape, breaking apart and rejoining as the sunset intensified. “So you’re here,” a man’s voice said. “That’s a very good first step.” She clicked around the labyrinth of jargon. The more she read, the less she understood.

  She opened a new message to her SHRNK.

  Have you heard of Good Guys?

  No, her SHRNK replied. What is Good Guys?

  As far as I can tell, it’s an international self-help group for men who want to “do good” in the world. Mat is a member, and I find it really . . . I don’t know. Weird?

  How so?

  Ava had a hard time articulating the feeling.

  I guess I don’t understand the appeal. It seems a little cultish, and I think it’s a big part of his life. It makes me wonder if we’re too different.

  Sometimes we reject the aspects of our romantic partners we don’t fully understand. That’s a fear-based instinct.

  You think I’m fearful of Good Guys?

  That’s up to you to decide. We can’t share everything with our partners. Instead of running from this part of Mat’s life, who could you be if you asked questions about the group? Why not attend a meeting?

  Ava could think of many reasons why she would not attend a meeting. But then she thought of her work and how much of herself she’d given over to it. Mat didn’t share her passion either. And she’d never gotten the sense that he fully understood it. But he managed to be supportive, and she would do her best to reciprocate. She moved a new email from the Spirit team to her trash folder.

  How are we doing? Please share your feelings about SXRH!

  18

  Over the next few days, Ava and Mat perfected the choreography of their secret. They would arrive to work together. Mat would wait in his car in the parking lot as Ava made her way to Floor 12, the excitement of the romance coursing through her. After half a unit, Mat would arrive. Ava would watch him step out of the elevator, remove his earbuds, swipe away notifications on his watch, take a Zing! Ginger-Turmeric Tonic from the Wellness Kitchen, and walk around the floor saying hello to each team. He’d make his way past Spirit, past Technical, past the Gay Tree, past the projector screens, which played time-lapsed videos of customers assembling Cozy Nesting Tables, and finally to Engineering, where he and Ava would pretend to discuss the Very Nice Box. Finally he’d arrive at Marketing, where he’d sit for a few hours before taking another check-in lap at 2 p.m. It was all part of his ritual, and Ava loved how effortlessly their secret folded into it.

  She remembered his first days at STÄDA, when she would think of ways to leave her desk at the times he was scheduled to come by Engineering. Now she looked forward to seeing him and felt a dull disappointment at his absence when he was off-schedule. She found herself finely tuned to his whereabouts, as if he had become a new cardinal direction.

  There was north, and then there was Mat.

  Even the shape of his name in S-Chat was a unique image, delivering a small wave of joy each time it appeared in the right-hand corner of her screen.

  Her SHRNK had been right: dread was just one side of a two-sided coin. What she felt instead was an excitement so vast and powerful that it shielded her from all negativity, including Jaime’s judgment, which she caught whiffs of from across the floor, but which only proved to her that she had something worthwhile. If her happiness was too much for him to tolerate, then so be it.

  She opened SHRNK to communicate this feeling.

  “Ready to take care, Ave?” Mat had rounded the corner.

  “Yes!” she said quickly. She had forgotten that today was the Self-Care Fair, a program that Mat had organized with the Spirit team as an end-of-year morale-booster for STÄDA employees and their families. He had pitched it enthusiastically as a reward for a year of strenuous labor, and Ava had witnessed Spirit staffers flitting around him for weeks, ironing out the details. According to an email that Ava had only glanced at, each employee was awarded 150,000 S-Points, which translated to $1,500, to spend at the Self-Care Fair, which would take place in the cafeteria.

  “People are so excited,” Mat said, his eyes twinkling. “This is so overdue.”

  “I’ll meet you up there,” Ava said, smiling.

  Mat winked at her and made his way to the elevator bank, where he joined a group of Spirit staffers dressed in their colors. She watched how they all abandoned their conversations and turned to Mat excitedly, and she felt a bolt of pride at his magnetism, as if it were her own.

  The elevator Ava rode was packed with giddy technical writers, all dressed in blue, who seemed oblivious to her presence. A handful of them had brought their children, who wore special color-coded lanyards to match their parents’. “I have been dreaming about my chair massage,” one of them said.

  “I heard there’s a vegan fro-yo booth,” another said.

  “Confirmed!” a third one said, scrolling through his phone. “And apparently a female wizard is giving a talk at noon.”

  “What the fuck. This is amazing. There’s going to be something called a Therapy Forest.”

  “No clue what that is, but I need it in my life. I seriously take back every judgmental thing I ever said about Mat Putnam.”

  Ava stood still in the corner of the elevator, glowing.

  They all stepped out into the cafeteria, which had been fully transformed. Dozens of booths filled the space. Representatives for skin care and supplement companies handed out products to remedy the harmful effects of working in an office, like eye serums for the damage caused by computer screens and charcoal tablets to balance a high-caffeine diet.

  STÄDA employees could sign up for lavender mistings, guided meditation sessions, or color therapy, which featured a small man in a white lab coat who shined colored light on the participant’s closed eyelids. Employees could choose their Personality Test color or one that complemented it.

  As she meandered among the booths, Ava spotted Mat standing with Owen Lloyd at iSight, a company that offered tortoiseshell eyeglasses with amber lenses that filtered out computer light, for 800,000 S-Points. A small child toddled to the booth and grabbed a pair of glasses before Sofia swooped in and pulled them from his grip. “Good taste, buddy!” Mat said, taking them from Sofia and slipping them on. He turned to Ava and called out to her. “Oh, Ava! It’s you! Sorry, I can’t see anything without my glasses!”

  Sofia glanced between Mat and Ava with a look of performative boredom and scooped up the toddler. Besides Jaime, Sofia seemed most aggrieved by Ava’s closeness with Mat. She had taken to placing Marketing schedules for the Very Nice Box on their desks without any niceties, which according to STÄDA’s new Positivity Mandate counted as aggressive behavior.

  I feel like a bad feminist, Ava had recently admitted to her SHRNK.

  Why is that?

  I shouldn’t enjoy competing with Sofia, especially over a man, especially at work. And now that I’m thinking about it, I shouldn’t even be okay with Mat’s attention, because he’s my boss.

  “Shouldn’t” is rarely relevant. Are you okay with Mat’s attention?

  Honestly, I enjoy the secret.

  Sometimes we use secrets to experience the authentic versions of ourselves that we fear will be judged harshly by others.

  It was true: Ava enjoyed the feeling of keeping a secret, holding it like a small globe of light. She observed how happiness prevailed over the dense storm of guilt, stress, and sa
dness below it. The excitement of the crush—the anticipation, the uncertainty, the attraction—reached even the smallest moments of her day.

  She happily pretended to ignore him and walked past him to the next booth: the SHRNK booth. The company had brought the iconic leather armchair from the subway ad, and a man sat in the chair with a foot crossed over his knee. “Hello,” Ava said to the man.

  “Hi!” he said. “Do you know about STÄDA’s partnership with SHRNK?”

  “Yes,” Ava admitted. “I was suspicious at first, but it’s been helpful.”

  “I love hearing that,” the man said. “I’m one of the founders. Theodore Holloway.” He wore a collared shirt beneath a speckled wool sweater, and heavy-framed glasses.

  “You actually look like a shrink,” Ava said.

  He smiled good-naturedly and looked down at his shirt. “Guess I could have picked a different outfit.”

  Mat showed up then, sucking a straw jammed into a dark green smoothie.

  “Hey, man!” Theodore said. “Thanks for having us. So awesome to see this app having a real-life positive impact at STÄDA. We’re loving this partnership.”

  “For sure! Happy to have a hand in any positive change!”

  Theodore clasped Mat’s hand with both of his, shaking e­nthusiastically.

  Mat handed Ava the smoothie. “It’s algae and spinach,” he said. “As you can guess, it tastes horrible. Unfortunately, no take-backs.”

  She walked away, trying her best not to let her happiness show. The smoothie tasted like pureed grass, but she didn’t care. Everything in her world was filtered through a new and happy prism. As she wandered among the booths, Mat tried to capture her attention with various stunts. It was her mission to pay the perfect amount of attention to him.

  She stepped into the Therapy Forest, a dark, misty thicket of deep-green vines and eucalyptus. The floor was damp soil, and the space was big enough for one person only. Speakers obscured by vines played birdsong, and an invisible fan generated a light wind that pushed a faint mist around the area. She remembered something her SHRNK had suggested. Think of relationships like planets. They have their own gravity, which can be grounding if you allow it to be.