“I assume you had already listened to it.”
“Listened to what?” Ava said.
“Oh,” Jaime said. “Wait, really?”
“What do you mean, ‘Wait, really’?”
“Have you been listening to Thirty-Minute Machine?”
“No,” Ava said. Now that Mat was gone, she couldn’t bring herself to listen alone.
“Okay,” Jaime said. “Never mind, actually.”
“Did they mention the Very Nice Box? Because Marketing should really let us know anytime . . .”
Jaime hesitated. “No,” he said. “No, it’s not that. It’s a good episode, that’s all.” He forced a smile.
Ava wanted to keep Jaime there as long as she could. She missed him. “Do you want to have lunch today?”
“I can’t,” Jaime said. “I told Sofia I’d eat with her on Mondays.”
“Oh,” Ava said, feeling heat behind her eyes. “Okay, maybe tomorrow.”
“I got pulled into another Diversity Panel tomorrow.”
“Wednesday?”
Jaime examined his clean fingernails. “I’ll need to check . . .”
Ava straightened the photo of Brutus on her desk. “Sofia, really?” she said.
“You could maybe join us,” Jaime said, though the invitation was about as welcoming as a cold wind.
“No thanks,” Ava said.
“Sofia’s really cool,” Jaime said. “What’s your beef with her?”
“First of all, she’s . . . well, you know.”
“What?”
“She’s so . . . straight! She’s like . . . a corporate straight person!”
Jaime looked at her. “Yes,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Ava said. “It’s just that every time I talk to straight women, I feel like there’s a wall of glass between us. Like we’re leading vaguely parallel lives but we will never understand one another. And she’s in Marketing!”
“I seem to remember someone you really liked being the head of Marketing,” Jaime said. “And straight.”
“Yeah, well,” Ava said. “Maybe that’s why he’s out of my life now.”
“Oh, please,” Jaime said. “I just saw you close a browser page with his face on it. Your heartbreak isn’t that subtle.”
Ava stared at her lap. She knew she wasn’t going to find a well of sympathy in Jaime. But a small part of her appreciated that he could see she was hurting. “I wouldn’t wish this feeling on my worst enemy,” she said. “But I know you weren’t a fan of Mat, and we don’t need to talk about it.”
Jaime sighed. “He reminded me of every bro who went to my high school. Guys who looked and sounded exactly like him. They treated me like shit. I mean, just picture it. Nerdy queer kid with a wheely backpack. I was an easy target. So I guess Mat sorta . . . I dunno . . . I thought . . .”
“You thought what?” Ava looked up at him.
“I actually thought he was behind the vandalism.”
“What? Why?”
“Think about it,” Jaime said, and Ava braced herself, as she often did, to get lost in a labyrinth of nonsensical evidence he had collected. “The vandalism pretty much started when Mat got onboarded. I was sure it was him.”
For a moment Ava fantasized about taking this information to Mat. She could just picture the joy and outrage on his face at the insinuation that he had rigged the lobby sprinklers.
“But then when he relegated me to the Vandals task force,” Jaime continued, “I got a firsthand glimpse of how inept he is. And when that Shakespeare quote started playing on the speakers, I knew for sure it wasn’t him. No offense to Mat, but . . .”
“Relegated? I thought you wanted to lead the task force. He said you volunteered.”
“Yeah, well, the email left out one important word. I was volunteered. I mean, he gave me a raise and a title change, but it was pretty clear I had no choice. I’m basically a glorified security guard. I mean, what am I even doing with my life?”
“Can’t you talk to Judith?”
“I tried. She won’t take me off the assignment. Apparently the board is obsessed with STÄDA’s internship program because they get good press and some sort of charitable deduction for it. So I look over the footage and write up reports about how the Vandals skirt around our systems. That part is actually pretty entertaining—they’re really slick. I feel like I’m watching true crime.”
“Have any of them enrolled in Mat’s internship program?”
“Of course not!” Jaime said. “They hate STÄDA. Why would they do underpaid labor for us? Anyway, most of them are teenagers, so we can’t hire them.”
“What about the photo on the lobby screens? Of the blond kid holding up the stepladder?”
“That’s Casey from IT. He looks really young, so the board gave him a bonus to pose for that.”
“Wow,” Ava said. “So it’s a complete sham.”
“Yep. But you better believe ‘youth internship director’ is going on my résumé. Anyway, who’s your worst enemy?”
“What?” Ava said.
“Your worst enemy,” Jaime said. “You said you wouldn’t wish heartbreak on your worst enemy.”
“Oh,” said Ava. “The woman who crashed into my car and killed my entire family.”
“Right,” Jaime said. “Stupid question. Sorry.”
“No stupid questions,” Ava said. “One thousand percent positivity, buddy. Okay?” She did a bad impression of Mat, but it still made Jaime giggle.
“Sorry I judged him,” Jaime said. “I just really missed you, and losing you to some cis het bro was really shitty.”
“Weren’t you just telling me that straight people deserve friendship?”
“Smart, competent straight people, yes,” Jaime said. “Fully vetted straight people.”
“All right,” Ava said, annoyed.
Jaime put his hands up. “Okay, I’m sorry,” he said. “If you loved him, I can bring myself to like him. From afar. As long as you never ditch me like that again. That was really annoying.”
“I’m sorry,” Ava said. “It’s just . . . he was the first person since Andie—”
“You don’t need to explain,” Jaime said. “I get it. And you deserved that happiness. Andie would have wanted that for you.”
The earnestness of the statement made Ava avert her gaze. Jaime squeezed her shoulder. “I missed you, Ava,” he said. “And I’m sorry you’re hurting.”
“Thanks,” Ava said. “I’ve missed you too. Pencil me in for lunch when you have a chance.”
“Fuck it,” Jaime said. “I’ll see if Sofia can swap for a different day. And actually—” He lit up.
“What?”
“There’s a piece of security camera footage I’ve been trying to crack—from the day the Vandals basically launched a Vision Tower DDoS attack on the printers during the Self-Care Fair. Remember that?”
Ava was overcome with the memory of Mat pushing her up against the printer while the rest of Floor 12 was engaged in a guided meditation. She nodded.
“I can’t figure it out, and I am obsessed,” Jaime said. “I need your help. Meet me on Floor 2 at noon?”
Ava wanted to hug him but stopped herself. “I’d love to help,” she said.
She watched as Jaime made his way back to his desk. It had been so long since she’d felt a wave of happiness like this. She slipped her Peaceful Headphones back on and navigated to the latest episode of Thirty-Minute Machine.
“Hey there, Machinists! This is your host, Roy Stone!”
“And I’m Gloria Cruz!”
“Today on the show we’re talking to the chief marketing officer at STÄDA’s iconic new campus in Gambier, Ohio. Mat, you’re on the air!”
Ava’s heart pushed against her chest. Her jaw tightened.
“Hey Gloria, hey Roy, thanks so much for having me on. Listen, uh, this is pretty unconventional, but—”
She stopped the podcast, removed her Peaceful Headphones, and looked around, feeling that
everyone was listening to the episode along with her.
She could not listen. She had lost many things in her life, but she had hung on to her discipline and composure. All of that, she knew, would disintegrate if she pressed Play.
27
So she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t press Play, even though everyone on Floor 12 had apparently listened to the episode and was asking her, in conspicuous glances over the course of that morning, whether she had too. Ava tuned out the whispering, S-Chat dings and murmuring. It reminded her of Mat’s first week at STÄDA, except that time the feeling had been of one giant, mutual contact high. This time it was as though everyone smelled something strange wafting from Ava’s desk. She could ignore the attention. She had years of practice ignoring people, and she would put that practice to use once again.
She met Jaime on Floor 2 at noon, as planned. Floor 2 was a modest, expansive floor, tightly carpeted, with rows of well-organized wooden drawers full of every tool, screw, bolt, and peg necessary to assemble each item in STÄDA’s catalogue. A wall of industrial windows on the far end of the floor provided an interior bird’s-eye view of the shipping warehouse, where STÄDA products were produced, packaged, and shipped to showrooms across the country. Now she saw that Jaime had transformed a corner into his makeshift investigation headquarters. He’d set up three wide monitors on top of a Delightful Folding Table. On a whiteboard he’d tracked dates and times of Vandal activity. He had even developed his own rating system for the complexity of the stunts.
When Jaime saw Ava, he pulled up a Little Desk Chair and called up a grainy video on one of the monitors. “Okay, check this out,” he said. “It’s from the security camera in the northeast hallway, by the printer room.”
Ava took a seat next to him. His excitement was palpable and contagious. The footage provided a grainy fish-eye view of the empty northeast hallway on Floor 12. Through the fuzz of footage, Ava could just make out the team of engineers in the distance, their laptops shut as they joined the officewide meditation. Her cheeks flushed at the memory of the urgency with which Mat had been kissing her.
“Okay, it’s about to happen,” Jaime said, staring at the monitor.
A small shadow appeared and lingered at the bottom of the screen. “Wait for it . . .” Jaime said, and a gloved hand reached up to cover the lens with a sticky note. The video went black.
Ava frowned.
“Crazy, right? Whoever did this knew exactly how to block the camera without being seen by it. This is the first time there’s been any reason to believe they’ve physically been inside the building.”
“That, or it’s an employee, and they’ve been inside the whole time.”
“Right,” Jaime said. “It’s just a head-scratcher. I’ve watched the footage from before and after, and there aren’t any random teenagers running around the floor.”
“Bizarre,” Ava said. She remembered the string of numbers Judith had written on the stack of blueprints in her office. “Didn’t Judith have a lead on this?”
“Not that she shared with me,” Jaime said. “What did she tell you?”
“Nothing,” Ava said, shaking her head. “I don’t think it was anything.”
Jaime’s phone quacked in his pocket. “Oh god, apparently I’m supposed to give an interview for the STÄDA newsletter about how well the internship program is going. This is so stupid. I’ll leave you here to obsess. And Ava?”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t listen to the episode, right?”
“I started it,” Ava admitted. “As soon as I heard his voice, I turned it off.”
Jaime put his hand on top of hers. “Good,” he said. “It’s really not worth listening to. I’m sorry I even brought it up.” He squeezed her hand and left.
Ava sat, alone on the quiet floor, while the footage played in a loop. What had Mat said on the episode that was so interesting to everyone? She forced the question out of her head and focused on the footage. The shadow, the hand reaching up, the screen going dark. She was so entranced that she jumped from her Little Desk Chair when a quiet, nasal voice emerged suddenly.
“It’s Ava, correct?”
She turned to see Helen Gross, who was standing over her. She was small and slightly scoliotic.
“I was just finishing my lunch,” Ava said. “I’m on my way out.”
Helen pursed her lips into something resembling a smile. “Thank you,” she said, looking at her watch. “I need total silence to work. This is apparently the only floor that provides that.”
Ava packed up her lunch while Helen awkwardly stood, waiting. When Ava had first glimpsed Helen Gross, she had experienced a strange feeling of recognition. She tried to remember the various conferences she’d attended over the years—ones that would have included designers and engineers from industrial design companies. It was entirely possible that Helen Gross had attended or even spoken at one of these conferences. Maybe she’d come to STÄDA to give a presentation on lighting.
But what Ava now realized was something much darker: Helen Gross was familiar because she reminded Ava of herself. She could see the loneliness, the rigidity. She remembered how Mat had tried to coax her into the Imagination Room his first week on the job. She could hear her own voice now. I disagree that it will be great. She had been so difficult, so closed off, so cold.
Helen’s eyes bored into her. “Thank you for understanding.”
It was in moments like these that Ava most wanted to disable Just Don’t and text Mat. He would love hearing about Helen Gross, Ava knew. On her way to her desk, she drafted a message. Okay, she wrote, picture me from when you first met me, crossed with Judith, crossed with a cat that was run over in a rainstorm. She allowed herself to look at the text and picture Mat’s reaction before deleting it.
Her phone buzzed. A message from her SHRNK.
Ava, you’ve been quiet lately. How are you feeling?
Bad, Ava wrote.
I’m sorry to hear that. What’s going on?
I’m worried I’m sliding back into the depressing life I had before Mat. I can see the Helen Gross in me clawing its way out.
Who is Helen Gross?
Mat’s replacement. She’s horrible.
And you’re worried you’re like her?
Obsessed with work and solitude? Allergic to fun? Yes, Ava wrote.
Have you fully investigated why your life became consumed with work?
I don’t think an investigation is necessary. Work is the only reliable thing in my life.
Since?
Since some woman plowed into my car and robbed me of my whole life.
What a powerful belief that is.
I don’t know what you mean by belief. It’s just true.
I understand.
Can’t you just tell me what to do? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Just give me an assignment and I’ll do it.
An assignment, her SHRNK repeated.
Yes.
Perhaps we could consider anger. Anger is like a hot ball of fire we throw. Do you know what happens when we throw it?
No.
It burns our target, yes. But it also burns our palm.
Ava rolled her eyes. And?
Who could you be if you found a way out of the anger about the accident?
How?
Perhaps forgiveness would be a good place to start.
How original, Ava wrote.
I didn’t claim it was original, her SHRNK wrote. Usually the best ideas aren’t.
Ava closed the app. The concept of forgiveness was opaque and out of reach, and it felt deeply unfair that the job of seeking it out had fallen to her. What about the driver? Did she have any idea of the damage she’d caused? Or was she walking around oblivious and free? Ava teared up at the idea, her rage alive within her.
28
If she was going to learn forgiveness, Ava would do it on her terms. One unit per day. No more. And she would understand the task on her terms too: if the story of the accident we
re a Sturdy Table, the ability to forgive would be a missing screw. It was her job now to fix it.
She was reluctant to tell Jaime about the project, and when she did, she was sure to emphasize that it was an assignment from her SHRNK. “I’ve been tasked with forgiving the woman who killed my family,” she told him during their next Monday lunch.
“That’s great, Ava,” Jaime said, opening his Humble Lunchbox. “You know, forgiveness has a great effect on our cortisol levels.”
She was relieved he didn’t try to talk to her about the accident, or bring up Andie.
“How about you spend lunch down here with me every day and we can do our research together? I’ll look at Vandal footage and you can become an enlightened being. As long as you can tolerate Sofia joining us sometimes.”
“Fine,” Ava said.
“Just be nice to her. Don’t be all . . . you know, ‘I hate corporate straight women.’”
Ava laughed. “I will try to be nice to her.”
He parked a second Tiny Desk Chair permanently at his workstation on Floor 2 and worked on untangling the Vandal footage quietly beside Ava, while she began exploring the virtual archives of STÄDA’s Self-Care series. The workshops included links to the speakers’ websites. One website instructed her to do a ten-day garlic cleanse to forge a way toward forgiveness. Resentment isn’t wrong, just as a toothache isn’t wrong, offered a website run by a former dentist turned Buddhist who had visited STÄDA the year before. Ava briefly contemplated that metaphor before moving on to a blog offering guided meditations run by a middle-aged woman with frizzled blond hair who sounded like she was on the verge of either crying or screaming. Another site promoted a “branched” approach to forgiveness; she was instructed to consider the smallest negative ramification of the incident and forgive that first. Then she’d work her way back to the source.
She tried to focus on the smallest ramification of the accident and pictured the weeks’ worth of junk mail crammed into her mailbox when she’d returned home from the hospital. But the memory of the mail—none of it important, and most of it with Andie’s name on it—only upset her. And she knew that given her attention to detail, a project like this would take a lifetime.
The Very Nice Box Page 17