The Very Nice Box

by Eve Gleichman

  Ava thought that was a good way to place the feeling. And she felt the same way. In her profile Rebecca had seemed more composed than she did here, with the thin strap of her tank top slipping down her arm. Ava mentally slid it back in place while Rebecca ordered a complicated cocktail.

  Rebecca was a gallery assistant and talked at length about her daily tasks, none of which she enjoyed. Ordinarily Ava would have been able to get deep into this conversation about the banality of everyday life, but as Rebecca spoke, a fly landed on one of the small frizzy hairs sticking out from the top of her head. It was as if it were stuck there. The fly didn’t flinch at her head movements or hand gestures. Ava was so distracted by the fly that talking to Rebecca felt like communicating with someone several rooms away. Was the fly dead? Had Rebecca used some product that had trapped it there? Should Ava say something?

  “So what do you think?” Rebecca said, rooting her straw through the ice of her empty drink. “Would you be up for that? It’s just a few blocks away.” She signaled for the bartender to close out her bill.

  Ava tried to fit the puzzle pieces together without betraying that she hadn’t absorbed Rebecca’s proposal. “Oh,” she said. “Um—”

  “I totally get it if you’re not into parties,” Rebecca said. “But my friends are super-nice.”

  Ava wasn’t sure if this was an attempt to accelerate or slow a romantic connection. She wrestled with her desire to say no, imagining what her SHRNK might say. Who could you be if you stepped out of your comfort zone?

  She tried to remember the last time she’d been to a party other than STÄDA’s Solstice Party, which was essentially a requirement. “Sure,” she said. “Okay.”

  She followed Rebecca down a cobblestone street, past a crowded restaurant with a rowdy rooftop bar, and through the side door of a three-story building. They climbed the stairs, which were off-level, sloping inward. The angle intensified as they climbed, until finally they were on the top floor, which was so off-balance that Ava felt dizzy.

  Inside, the party was fully under way. The first thing Ava noticed was the humidity, followed by the sound of deep bass that felt like a brick wall in every direction.

  “Come on!” Rebecca yelled. “I want you to meet my friends!” She led Ava through the crowd to a small cluster of people. One of them wore a green velvet turtleneck and braids pulled into a long ponytail. She let out a little scream when she saw Rebecca.

  “Agnes, this is Ava. My Kinder date. Ava, this is Agnes. This is her party.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ava!” Agnes said, giving her a hug. She smelled intensely like vanilla.

  “Thank you,” Ava said, recovering from the hug.

  One of Rebecca’s other friends, a sprightly person wearing a hoodie the color of watermelon, stuck out a hand. “I’m TJ.”

  “Hi,” Ava said, accepting the handshake. She admired the neat bow TJ had tied from the string of the hoodie.

  “Did Rebecca kidnap you? If you need help, just let us know,” TJ said.

  “All right, all right,” Rebecca said happily.

  Ava scanned the room for STÄDA pieces, but the furniture looked older and thrifted. She spotted a first-edition Practical Sofa in the corner, wedged between two off-brand bookshelves. “Nice sofa,” she said to Agnes, straining to be heard over the party. “I have the same one.”

  “Thanks!” Agnes said. “I picked it up at Brooklyn Flea.”

  “It’s a Practical Sofa,” Ava said.

  “Yeah,” Agnes said, looking at Ava as if she’d mentioned that the sky was blue. “I guess it is pretty practical.”

  Ava opted not to elaborate. The party was starting to compress, and she sensed that she was at the center of what would soon become the dance floor. Everybody around her was attractive, each with their own brand of studied carelessness. For a hopeful second she thought she saw Jaime, but it was just a person in a floral T-shirt.

  “You look like you need a drink!” Rebecca said over the noise.

  “What tipped you off?”

  Rebecca said something Ava couldn’t hear. “What?”

  “I said, you’re cute!”

  “Oh!” Ava said. She felt herself blushing. “I’ll get the drinks. What do you want?”

  “Anything!” Rebecca said.

  Ava pushed her way through the living room and into a narrow galley kitchen with peeling linoleum tiles. The counter was covered with six-packs and liquor, which Ava felt an urge to sort. A person with a tight buzz cut and a sleeve of stick-and-poke tattoos sat on the counter next to the sink, talking with a friend who sat on the ledge of the kitchen’s open window. Ava sifted through the beers, looking for something familiar, passively listening to their conversation. She tried to ignore an intrusive thought of the person in the open window falling backward.

  The floor’s tilt was even worse than it had been in the stairwell. Ava wondered if it was safe to live at an angle like this. Suddenly, mercifully, she overheard the word STÄDA, and it felt like a hand pulling her out of a dark, churning sea.

  She looked more closely to see if she recognized the pair of friends, but she didn’t. She caught the eye of the tattooed person, who smiled warmly at her, as if she’d been a part of the conversation all along. “What’s your name?”

  “Ava.”

  “I’m Hen. This is Charlie. They/them for both of us.”

  “She/her. Sorry for listening in. I overheard you talking about STÄDA.”

  “Did you see this?” Hen said, reaching out to show Ava their phone.

  Ava took the phone and swiped through a series of images of phrases in white spray paint on green construction scaffolding. She immediately recognized the Vision Tower in the first image, and the words Imagine a garden here. As she swiped through, she noticed similar photos taken at construction sites all around the city. Imagine affordable housing here. Imagine a library here. “Yeah, kind of,” Ava said, handing the phone back. “I saw the first one. I actually work at STÄDA.”

  “Oh shit, really? I guess I could have guessed,” Hen said, looking her up and down.

  Ava’s cheeks flushed. “What do you mean?”

  “You look like you live in an elevator building. That, and you’re wearing that STÄDA watch that was everywhere like ten years ago.”

  Charlie rolled their eyes. They were lean but muscular, sporting a thick mustache, manicured stubble, and small gold hoop earrings. They hopped down from the windowsill and started fixing a drink. “You live in an elevator building, Hen,” they said.

  “Does it still count if I take the stairs?” They both burst into laughter.

  Charlie handed Ava a drink, which she took and sipped. It was fizzy and tasted like basil.

  “I actually do love that watch, though,” Hen said. “Can I see it?”

  Ava set her drink down and unwound the watch from her wrist, which she ordinarily did only before taking a shower. She handed it to Hen and tried to suppress the thought of them dropping the watch into their drink. Then she pictured Charlie taking the watch and tossing it out the window.

  “It reminds me of a Dieter Rams piece,” Hen said, admiring it as if it were a precious stone. “So what do you think?” They handed back the watch to Ava.

  Maybe it would have been normal for Ava to say she knew the designer of the watch and in fact was wearing the prototype. But how would she continue from there? She was my fiancée, in fact! Unfortunately, she died instantly in a car accident, along with my parents. No, she wasn’t going down that road. She strapped the watch around her wrist and looked at it. “I like it a lot— it’s one of my favorite things I own.”

  Charlie and Hen looked at each other.

  “Of the protests, I mean,” Hen said.

  “Oh,” Ava said, blushing. “I don’t know. We seem to be building a good rapport with the neighborhood. I think things are calming down a little bit.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Charlie said.

  “I guess I mean they—STÄDA. I just design storage
boxes. I don’t really have anything to do with the Vandals.” She sipped from her drink.

  “Did you seriously just call them vandals?” Hen said.

  “Sorry,” Ava said. “I meant protesters.”

  She felt a hand around her waist. It was Rebecca.

  “Ava, there you are,” she said. “I thought you pulled an Irish exit. I see you met Hen and Charlie.”

  “Yes!” Hen said, smiling at Ava. “We were just talking about how Ava thinks it’s possible to be apolitical while working for a cancerous furniture empire.”

  “No,” Ava said, “I just mean—listen, we make affordable Scandinavian home goods. I think the expansion is over-the-top too, obviously, but—”

  “But what? People don’t need affordable Scandinavian home goods. People need community gardens.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Ava said. “I know how STÄDA works, and—”

  “Let me guess,” Hen said sharply. “You’re fighting STÄDA from within STÄDA.”

  “No,” Ava said, “I didn’t say that. I’m not fighting anyone.”

  “And there lies the problem,” Charlie said.

  “Give her a break!” Rebecca said. “So she’s not an activist. So what?”

  “So what?” Charlie and Hen said in unison.

  Ava’s throat had gone dry.

  “Anyway,” Rebecca said, “my song just came on.” She pulled Ava toward the dance floor. She was sweaty, but her hands were cold. Ava couldn’t imagine a touch feeling further from Andie’s, whose hands had been broad and strong and somehow always warm. She thought of Mat’s hands. She remembered the day they met, when he had palmed a basketball and taken it to the backseat of his car. His voice slipped back into her mind: Hey Gloria, hey Roy, thanks so much for having me on—

  “Actually,” Ava shouted over the music, “I should get home. I have a big day tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Rebecca said. “Okay! You sure? Is it because of Hen and Charlie? Did they go too far?”

  “What?”

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “Yes,” Ava lied. “Thank you.” She pulled her hand from Rebecca’s grip and made her way to the entrance. She imagined a marble rolling quickly along the sloped floor.

  * * *

  Brutus curled beside Ava later that night as she lay on her back in her Principled Bed. She closed her eyes, the conversation with Hen and Charlie turning over in her mind. How would Mat have responded to them? She could see him now: One thousand percent agree! That’s why we’re working on smog-free live rooftop gardens within STÄDA’s walls that will be totally accessible to the public! But Mat was gone. It was a familiar, dull ache by now. She opened a new message to her SHRNK.

  Had another bad date.

  What was bad about it?

  It was a disaster. I got into an argument about STÄDA with someone at a party. They think STÄDA’s evil, and that I am too, for working there. Do they expect me to march into a board meeting and demand that they halt the construction?

  Sometimes when we drain the well of anger, we discover something unexpected at the bottom. What would you find if you drained the well?

  Ava thought about it. Sadness, she admitted. I need STÄDA to be good. It’s the last thing I have.

  Is it?

  My family’s gone, Mat’s gone. I can’t even listen to Thirty-Minute Machine because he’s featured on the latest episode.

  And why can’t you? Do you want to?

  It’s too painful. I stopped it as soon as I heard his voice. I don’t even know what he said.

  Ava rested the phone on her chest and rubbed her eyes. Her phone buzzed.

  Who could you be if you disconnected from burdensome feelings—sadness, anger, guilt—and allowed yourself to be present with the things you really want?

  Like what?

  To use your example, the podcast.

  You think I should listen to the episode? Ava perked up at the thought.

  I would never use the word should. I am just suggesting you consider the option of acknowledging your desires.

  Ava turned off her phone. She thought about the question as she drifted off to sleep. Between her thoughts came an image: Mat coming home from work, hanging his jacket on a Supportive Door Hook, kissing Ava on the cheek, putting on a Homey Apron, cooking dinner while Ava poured him a Cheerful Pint of beer.

  31

  Her SHRNK had suggested she “consider the option,” and so Ava did, the next day. She pushed through her workday, pretending to only “consider.” But with her SHRNK’s permission, resisting it felt like a farce, like seeing whether she could hold her hands up in the air all day. She busied herself with tasks—she read through instruction manuals, looked over several prototypes for a new Loving Tissue Box. Finally she released herself from the fake argument she was having with herself.

  She skirted around Engineering, made her way through the Wellness Kitchen, and stepped into an elevator a full two units earlier than usual.

  On a different day she would have felt displaced by the light outside, a too-bright reminder of the change in routine. But this afternoon Ava didn’t have the capacity to experience anything aside from her own impatience, which overrode the long commute home.

  In her apartment, she poured herself a Thoughtful Glass of water, sat on the edge of her Embracing Armchair, connected her Peaceful Headphones to her phone, and pressed Play. Brutus sat at her feet, looking puzzled by her early arrival.

  Mat’s voice was smooth and low and full of energy. She imagined him calling in, pacing around his apartment in Gambier the way he did in some of the “Yes, And” meetings. She could easily envision his bright cheeks, his disheveled hair, his workboots thudding pleasantly on a wood floor.

  “Hey Roy, hey Gloria, thanks so much for having me on. Listen, um, this is pretty unconventional, but I’ve been having a big problem lately, and I’m hoping you can help.”

  “Shoot!” Roy said.

  “Okay. So I’ve been having a really tough time these past couple of months. Like, super-tough.”

  It was as though there were a firm hand around Ava’s heart, and it squeezed as Mat’s voice filled the air. Mat continued.

  “There’s this girl—this woman, I mean—in New York. We had something really great, but she ended things because I had to move away for a big promotion, and I just really miss her, man. I mean, I’ve never felt this way before.”

  Had his voice strained? Was Ava hearing this right? She briefly, irrationally, considered the possibility that the woman he was referring to wasn’t her. It was like muscle memory to assume attention was pointing in a different direction.

  After a moment of dead noise, Gloria Cruz spoke up. “That’s really sweet, Mat. I’m not sure you’re in the right place, though. This is more of an engineering—”

  “No, no, I know—just hear me out. I really think you might be able to help. So, she broke up with me because long-distance communication can be tough. I’m all the way in Ohio, and she’s in New York, and we haven’t spoken. At all. It’s completely impossible to stay in touch without having to fly back to New York, and I really miss the sound of her voice. I wish there were some way to . . .” Mat sighed, and then continued in a small voice. “No, it sounds too impossible . . . It’s a stupid idea. It would never work . . .”

  “We’ve solved some pretty tough problems here before,” Gloria Cruz said cheerfully.“We can always give it a shot. What is it?”

  “Well, I know how this is going to sound. You’re going to think I’m crazy. But—I wish there were some way to communicate instantly across long distances.”

  Ava could sense exactly where this was going. She could hear it in his voice.

  “I wish there was some small device I could use to hear her voice again. It should be small enough to carry in my pocket, so I can check it every hour to see if she has something to say to me. I wouldn’t even have to use my voice all the time! I could even write short messages and send them to her. Or even j
ust hearts and faces blowing kisses and other symbols. I know it sounds crazy, but do you think you could build something like that for me?”

  This was just like him—to steal airwaves just long enough to tell a joke.

  A trace of annoyance colored Roy Stone’s voice like a drop of ink in water. “It sounds like Mat wants us to invent the cell phone,” he said. “I’ll tell you what, bud, if I had built the first cell phone, I’d be a very rich man. Anyway, ha-ha. I think it’s time to move on to other callers with more analog issues. Good luck with your girlfriend, Mat.”

  Ava repeated the word girlfriend to herself, trying to fact-check the term, as if Mat had been the one to say it. She removed her Peaceful Headphones and sat in silence. After a few blank moments, emotion returned like a dead limb coming back to life. She wanted to replay the episode, to hear him say it again: he missed her. She took out her phone and stared at it. It had taken her months to stop expecting to see Mat’s name appear here. She regarded this as progress, but the progress came at a price: she was exhausted. So exhausted that she didn’t stop herself as she swiped through her apps, pressed down firmly on Just Don’t, and tried to delete it.

  Just don’t! a pop-up warned. Ava dismissed it.

  Nope, don’t do it! :-)

  “Come on,” Ava muttered. She tried again to dismiss it.

  Did you know 80 percent of Just Don’t users try to break in when under the influence of drugs, alcohol, and bad ideas? To prove you’re sober, please answer the following questions in under thirty seconds:

  47 x 13?

  611, Ava typed automatically.

  Capital of Maryland?

  Annapolis.

  Platypus: fish or mammal?

  Mammal.

  Spell rhododendron backward.

  nordnedodohr.

  Cool, buddy, I guess! ;-) You’re in.

  32

  The perfect text to Mat would be required to loosen the tight knot of silence between them. Ava considered her options the next morning while she waited for STÄDA’s shipping manager to take her on a tour of STÄDA’s refurbished warehouse. The tour was part of a new shadowing program for STÄDA employees to learn about different parts of the business, and while most of her colleagues groaned about it, Ava was quietly excited.