25
Because it was so tall, the Simple Tower was designed to sway in the wind. On the roof Ava could feel it, as though she were on a boat. She hugged herself against the chill. The sky had drained of color and the wind bit at her face.
Mat was sitting in a Husky Camping Chair, facing away from her. She knew it was him from his hair, which blew violently in unpredictable directions.
“Mat,” she said.
He stood quickly and turned to face her, hugging himself for warmth; he wore only a denim jacket over his crisp white T-shirt. He’d wrapped his hand up in his scarf and held it close to his chest. It was bleeding. “Ava,” he said, “you should go back inside.”
“What happened to you?” Ava said, rushing toward him.
“It’s nothing,” he said, but Ava noticed the broken pane of glass on the south stairwell door.
“Mat! Did you—”
“I punched through it. It was stupid. I’m fine. No—I’m not fine. How can she do this to us?” His face was red.
She dragged another Husky Camping Chair beside him and sat. Red Hook’s warehouses and two-story homes were tiny and flat, the quiet pattern of sloping silver and tar-black roofs blended into the broader texture of Brooklyn. Across the river, tall ships in the seaport bobbed at their moorings, their flags chopping in the wind.
“Just go,” Mat said. “I don’t want you getting in any more trouble because of me.”
Ava smoothed his back, a maternal-feeling gesture she didn’t recognize from herself. “No,” she said. “I want to be here.”
Mat rested his head on her shoulder. “I really lost it in there,” he said. “I called Judith an asshat.”
“Asshat, wow,” Ava said. “That’s worse than me. I’m impressed. What’d she say?” She continued rubbing circles on his back.
“She said, ‘Those two nouns together are illogical.’”
Ava couldn’t help but laugh. It sounded like something that she would say—or would have said, before Mat.
“I don’t want to go to Gambier,” Mat said. He buried his face against her, and she held him there. His cheek was rough against her palm.
“I’m sure there’s a way to appeal the transfer,” she said. “Surely they can’t just demand that you move to Gambier.” You could quit was what she wanted to say, though she knew it was wrong, that she was being selfish, that the move would mean a promotion for him. Just quit and be with me.
“It’s not out of nowhere, though,” Mat said. “They’re onto our relationship. She said that one of us would have to relocate but that there weren’t any engineering roles in Gambier. And I know a People threat when I hear one—either I go to Gambier or one of us gets fired. Judith said it was standard practice now. Apparently I signed something agreeing to this possibility when I was hired. I’m so bad with forms, there were so many of them, I didn’t read the fine print. I’m such an idiot.”
“Fucking Judith!” Ava said. “Why does she care about this so much?” Ava herself could quit, but then what? She knew no one. She’d allowed all her professional and social relationships to dissolve. The idea of “networking” horrified her.
A news helicopter thundered overhead, the sound beating against her eardrums as it passed above them before floating over the main STÄDA parking lot. Employees had leaked onto the lot with their hands clamped over their ears.
“What now?” Mat said.
“The Vandals,” Ava said. “They took over the PA system and jumbo screens. Put a bizarre quote on repeat.”
“Well, I guess that’s one thing I have to look forward to in Gambier,” Mat said, resting his head back on her shoulder. “No teenagers are going to pour wood chips into my gas tank and hijack the PA system.”
Ava hated the mention of Gambier, that Mat had clearly already begun the work of imagining himself there. “So you’ve decided already,” she said. “You’re going.”
“Well,” he said.
“I don’t want to hear.” She felt a hole in her heart—a hole that had been there all along, since the accident, but that she had not acknowledged, not until Mat had filled it. And now that he was going, the emptiness was wider and darker.
“I don’t want you to go,” Ava said, lifting her head and staring straight ahead. “I love you.”
“You what?” Mat said. “I can’t hear you over the helicopter.”
“I love you,” Ava said.
“Sorry,” Mat said. “I couldn’t make that out. Did you say . . . you glove me?”
“Stop,” Ava said.
“Did you say . . . you dove me? The wind is a little loud.” He nudged a knuckle into her rib. She stared straight ahead, fighting back a smile.
“You shove me? That’s really not cool. Don’t shove me.”
“I said I love you!”
“Oh!” Mat shouted. “You love me. Is that right?” He cupped his ear.
“Yes,” Ava said, staring at the parking lot. “That’s right.”
“Well, good,” Mat said, bringing an arm around her and pulling her tightly to him. “Because I love you too. Which means it’s settled. We love each other. And you know what that means?” He smothered her cheek in kisses.
“Yes,” Ava said. “I do. You’ll move to Gambier, we’ll slowly but methodically lose touch. You’ll begin to talk about things and people I can’t relate to. Every person who has ever been attracted to a man will fall in love with you. We’ll agree to speak every day, but every day will turn into every other day, then every week, and so on. This will trigger a cycle of resentment and guilt. We’ll let things continue this way until our bond becomes warped and tenuous enough that eventually we detach completely, with no hope of repair. And I’ll be heartbroken forever.” She watched a second news helicopter bumble clumsily over the parking lot.
“Ava,” Mat said, “we are not a shittily built household item. Give us more credit than that!”
“No,” Ava said, wiping a tear away from her cheek with the back of her hand. She turned to face him. “I’m an engineer. I understand how things break down. I’d rather call it now than watch it fail in slow motion.”
“That’s bullshit,” Mat said. “That is not how love works.” His eyes shone.
“It’s the truth, actually,” Ava said. “We both know it.” Her heart felt like a stone. The news helicopters hovered over the parking lot, her colleagues collected in their shadows. “I didn’t ask you to come here and do this to me,” she said.
“You haven’t even thought about it,” Mat said. “You’re being irrational.”
“I have a lot of flaws,” Ava said, “but being irrational isn’t one of them.”
“Ava, please! You can’t just—”
“Please stop,” she said. “You’ll make it worse.”
She allowed herself to study his beautiful face—to take it in, up close, one last time. Mat wiped a tear from his cheek with the crook of his elbow.
It was fine. The loss of Mat would be just another loss in a series of losses. She would forge a path forward, as she always had. She would focus on designing boxes, as she always had. She would begin the work of forgetting, as she always had. She pushed herself up, dusted off her hands, and left him sitting there.
Part two
26
Spring arrived early that year. By mid-March the magnolia trees lining Ava’s block had unfolded, tulips reached for the sun optimistically, and the ivy in Fort Greene Park seduced dogs with delicate white flowers that they peed on. There was, Ava noticed, an influx of puppies in the neighborhood, and during her early-morning walks they eagerly bumped noses with Brutus.
The Stoned Fruit had opened an ice cream window, and an eternal line of people happily waited for scoops of CBD-infused sorbet. Everyone around Ava was sneezing more, laughing more, and wearing short sleeves. By all accounts, the dramatic relief from a grim winter should have made Ava feel better.
Instead it all felt like an insult.
She was lonely. I feel like a hollowed
-out shell, she wrote to her SHRNK.
How about a vacation? her SHRNK suggested.
But Ava had no use for a vacation. Unstructured time was the opposite of what she needed. What she needed was a task list so long that she couldn’t see what was on the other side of it.
This feeling—that the more tasks she had to occupy herself, the better—lent itself well to her new, horrible morning routine, which involved taking two unreliable and underserviced train lines. Her connecting train was often delayed or too packed to enter, and sometimes it skipped Ava’s stop for reasons that were not clear. The commute could take up to three units if anything fell out of alignment. It reminded her of the days when she was too proud to ask Mat for a ride. She could take a Swyft, but there was something punishing and therefore appropriate about the obstacle course that was her commute. The mundane annoyance of the transfers eclipsed what had gutted her: Mat was gone.
What is he doing at this very moment? she found herself wondering as she held a warm pole on the train one morning. She’d deleted Mat’s number and installed on each of her devices Just Don’t software, which prevented her from contacting him.
She transferred onto a southbound train and stood across from a multipanel ad for the Very Nice Box. The campaign would run for six more weeks. It was a direct result of Mat’s “Yes, And” meeting. You’re a minimalist. With things. We get it, the ad read in STÄDA’s signature font. In each panel of the ad, the lid of the Very Nice Box was open, revealing something outlandish inside. A live sheep. A 12-volt car. A pile of brandless lollipops. A potted tree. Under each image: Get Yourself a Very Nice Box.
The Very Nice Box had done extraordinarily well, and was even set to outpace the Cozy Nesting Tables in sales. Ava liked to think that its success came from the ingenious design and not the marketing, but she wasn’t sure. She stared at the ads. Awesome, awesome, she could remember Mat saying at the “Yes, And” meeting.
The Very Nice Box ads were sandwiched between ads for products that she remembered from Mat’s apartment. There was Pop, the hygienic toothbrush with a replaceable head, and Remy, the jersey cotton sheets whose new ads featured snoozing animals. Even Good Guys had revved up their campaign, with comic-strip-looking ads featuring plainclothes superheroes.
Mat’s replacement was a woman named Helen Gross, who had come to STÄDA as the new head of product after a decade with a well-regarded commercial lighting company. Judith had handpicked Helen for the job, and it showed. Helen Gross was humorless and quiet. She had no charisma and wore her hair in a low, bushy ponytail. A shiny, pale mole lay beside her nose. She wore white ribbed turtlenecks that made Ava itch when she looked at them. In an introductory meeting, she squeaked her name onto the whiteboard in the Imagination Room. The letters were small and slanted and the marker had almost dried out, so everyone had to lean forward and squint. She did not make small talk with her Marketing team, let alone with any other team, and she’d canceled all future “Yes, And” meetings, opting instead for data-driven campaigns managed and written by AI. She brought a bagged lunch to work, which she ate alone in the Imagination Room while reviewing spreadsheets on her laptop.
“Had a dream this office was fun for, like, three weeks,” Ava had overheard Owen Lloyd say while filling a glass with Wellness Water. It was the day after Helen Gross had officially started working at STÄDA. He was talking to one of the Marketing interns. “Wish I had never woken up.”
Ava couldn’t help but agree with Owen. Helen had tasked Ava with a series of dull, unchallenging assignments, which sucked the joy from her work. Floor 12 had a sad, deflated feeling now that Mat was gone. It was as though they had all woken up from an incredible party and were being forced to pick up each piece of confetti by hand.
It was, Ava knew, her own fault. If only she hadn’t gotten involved with him. If only she’d kept her life small, controlled, and quiet.
As she rode the train, Ava allowed herself to cycle through the questions that had been turning in her head for months: What had Mat eaten for breakfast? What did his apartment look like? How was his commute? Did he listen to Thirty-Minute Machine in his car, without her? Was he listening to Thirty-Minute Machine with someone else? Were there attractive people in Gambier, Ohio? Had she been too harsh with him on the roof of the Simple Tower? Was he trying to get in touch with her? Should she—
The doors slid open and she joined a line of STÄDA employees as they made their way up the underground stairs and onto the sidewalk that led to the Simple Tower. There had been so many new hires over the past six months that they had to walk in two single-file lines to the entrance. Ahead of them, the half-complete Vision Tower shot up, with green scaffolding surrounding it and a crew of workers in hardhats buzzing around productively. On one of the panels Ava could make out the words Imagine a garden here in spray paint.
It had been satisfying to watch the Vision Tower’s construction, which supplied a reliable if fleeting distraction from Ava’s loneliness. Today she watched a crane lower a palette of stacked bricks. The load was vacuum-sealed, and the blocks created a subtle grid in the plastic. The massive bundle carved its way through the air with the ease of a whale gliding through water.
At the Simple Tower, three new key-card scanning stations with built-in hand sanitizer dispensers had been constructed to accommodate the influx of employees. Two elevator banks had been added to the lobby. A newly installed LCD screen near the elevators informed employees that Floor 6, which had previously housed the Customer Bliss Center, would now boast the new frozen yogurt bar, serving dozens of flavors of frozen yogurt and hundreds of toppings. The announcement featured a photo of several STÄDA employees dressed head-to-toe in their colors, beaming with cups that overflowed with gummy bears and chocolate crumbles. The frozen yogurt bar had been Mat’s idea, one of the many additions that he wouldn’t get to see himself.
Thanks to Ava.
The advertisement vanished and a new slide appeared, a photograph of an androgynous blond teenager in a hoodie, looking bored, blowing a pink bubble of gum, and holding up a rendering of a stepladder that read, I’M ENGINEERING A BETTER FUTURE. THANKS, STäDA!
The announcement soon transitioned into a 3D rendering of the Vision Tower. According to the simulation, once complete, the Vision Tower would release thick white vapor from the roof, which would form the word STÄDA in an environmentally friendly cloud that would hang in the sky during business hours.
Ava held her bagged lunch as she squeezed into an elevator, keeping her head bent.
The news of Ava and Mat’s relationship had spread quickly around Floor 12 in the weeks after his transfer, and Ava had felt like an exhibit at the zoo. Eventually her colleagues moved on, so she was surprised to overhear two floppy-haired engineers discussing it again in the elevator. Maybe he’s just one of those guys who likes average-looking women because it makes him seem more attractive by comparison.
Ava’s cheeks burned.
Or he likes smart girls. I think she’s supposed to be, like, crazy smart. Like savant level or something.
And she ended it?
The elevator opened onto Floor 3, and a trio of Spirit staffers crammed inside.
He didn’t really say in the episode. But I heard he broke up with her.
“Guys.” It was Jaime’s voice. “Give it a rest.”
I heard it was the other way around.
Wait, this is for sure the same girl whose ex-boyfriend died in a car crash a while back?
I heard it was her girlfriend.
She’s gay?
And the whole family.
The whole family’s gay?
No, the whole family died. It was before we started working here.
Damn. That sucks for her.
Jaime spun around. “I said, give it a rest!”
Ava met his eye as the doors opened on Floor 12. “Oh, Ava,” he said. Oh, shit, she heard one of the Spirit staffers say. I think that was . . .
She made her way to her desk and
soothed herself by googling Mat. She allowed herself to do this once a week, for no more than half a unit. But there hadn’t been anything new. The last piece of news she had seen was in a STÄDA newsletter announcing his reassignment. The newsletter included a photo of Mat with a small group of people outside the new Gambier offices. He towered over everyone else in the group and palmed a basketball. They all wore the same shirt, which read, in STÄDA’s font, COOLER, SMARTER, GAMBIER. Ava hated this shirt. According to the newsletter, the group comprised the heads of various start-ups who had come together to get STÄDA’s Gambier campus up and running. There were women on either side of Mat, which Ava tried to ignore.
The photo must have been taken only a few days after she had broken up with him. Mat had spent hours trying to reason with her—he believed they could make it work despite the distance—and she had been so upset about the transfer that she could only say no. No, it would never work. No, she didn’t want to try. Finally he’d left for Gambier and gotten this dorky shirt and posed for this photo, and although he was smiling, he looked lost and sad, which made Ava feel satisfied.
“I’m sorry about that,” Jaime said. He’d shown up abruptly at her desk, and Ava quickly closed out of the window. It was the first time he had spoken to her in months. That was her fault; she had removed two legs from a three-legged stool: they used to eat together on Mondays; they used to debrief on the latest episode of Hotspot; they used to avoid the subject of Andie. And now there was nothing to keep the friendship standing. “It’s okay,” she said.
“No, it’s not. Those guys have no idea what they’re talking about.”
Ava looked up at him. He was wearing a tight grapefruit-colored T-shirt and the UV-light-filtering tortoiseshell glasses from the Self-Care Fair. She had to admit they looked good on him. “It’s really okay,” she said. “But thanks for saying something in there.”
The Very Nice Box Page 16