by Sarah Archer
One of Kelly’s fellow engineers turned toward them, leaning hopefully in his chair. “Does that mean I can bring my wife next time?”
“Turn around, Stewart,” Anita shot out without looking back at him. Her eyes were locked firmly on Ethan, critical and analyzing: Was she admiring him? Or was she identifying his familiar constituent parts from her own lab? It was impossible to tell. Kelly only knew that she was definitely having a reaction.
“Kelly?” Anita held out a hand, ushering her back to the table. Kelly had no choice. She took Ethan’s hand and brought him with her.
Kelly assumed her own seat beside Priya (whose face she didn’t dare look at) at the end of the table, then dragged a chair over from an adjacent table, its legs scraping angrily on the slate-tiled floor. She set the chair on the other side of herself, fully outside of their table, then gestured for Ethan to sit, blocking him completely from the view of her coworkers. She propped an elbow on the table and tried to look brightly at everyone as if nothing at all had just happened.
“Kelly, what are you doing?” Anita asked. “He can’t sit there! Here, I’ll just scoot in here and you take this seat …?”
“Ethan.” He answered her unvoiced question as he rose with an apologetic look at Kelly and took the chair directly next to Anita, five down from Kelly. She didn’t know whether to be more panicked at Ethan’s proximity to her boss or bewildered that Anita Riveras had just used the word “scoot.”
Anita smiled at him. “There. Much better. Oh, bring me a chardonnay to start,” she called to a passing waiter who was not theirs.
Kelly couldn’t stop herself now from looking at the shocked faces around the table. When she finally looked at Priya beside her, she nearly burst out laughing, despite her own pumping anxiety. Priya had left the edamame pod she was snacking on half eaten, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide as she stared at Ethan, then at Kelly, and back again. She looked as though her perception of everything that she thought she knew was so thoroughly shaken that she was retreating, baby-like, to some preknowledge place, aware only of vague geometric shapes and temperatures.
“Who is he?” Robbie’s sudden ejaculation shook Kelly’s gaze from Priya. The tips of his ears looked like they had been touched by a hot poker. He made a visible effort to recover himself, clutching his water so hard that his hand squeaked against the condensation on the glass. “I don’t believe we’ve had the good fortune of meeting,” he continued more civilly.
Kelly could feel the trembling in her own hands starting to ease. All of the engineers had been staring at Ethan for several minutes now, and so far, none of them had spotted a thing. Either they were really bad, or she was really good. “This is Ethan,” she said, face red but head held high. “He’s my boyfriend.” Priya shot an edamame seed out of its pod and across the table. Kelly gave her a stifling look, pleading for her silence.
“And what do you do, Ethan?” Anita asked him smoothly.
“Ethan’s an associate professor of astronomy at Stanford,” Kelly interjected, before he could say anything. She knew that she couldn’t leave this up to chance; she had to direct Ethan’s answer.
“Ah.” Anita smiled at him, waving her wineglass. “How refreshing to have someone here from outside the world of robotics.” If only she knew what an insider he was, Kelly reflected wryly. “No AHI shoptalk tonight. What’s the latest from CERN?” She leaned back in her chair, one arm crossed over her chest, the other holding the glass almost coquettishly to her lips, her posture giving the air of settling in for a nice long talk.
Kelly winced. The more Anita questioned him, the more he would have to read things aloud off the internet. If he messed up in front of all of her coworkers, and her boss, if they picked up on the truth about him, she could lose her job. She could lose everything.
“Anita, I’d love to fill you in on some of my research into bilayer modeling,” she interrupted quickly. “Harvard developed this algorithm that can compute a growth pattern—”
“Please, I said no shoptalk,” Anita insisted, taking a rather healthy draft of her drink.
“There’s actually some fascinating research coming together in preparation for the Quark Matter conference,” Ethan began.
“How about those Mets?” Kelly threw in wildly.
Anita looked at Kelly reprovingly. Even Priya broke from her amazed stare at Ethan to cast Kelly a “what are you doing?” glance. Kelly’s cheeks burned.
“Well, the Large Hadron Collider …” Ethan went on. As Kelly took a second scope of the table, she began to see that it was she, not Ethan, who was embarrassing herself. Not only had no one risen to his feet, pointed at Ethan, and shouted “Robot!” but everyone actually seemed impressed by him. They listened as he conversed intelligently about his work. Some of the ladies, and a few of the men, cast him dreamy looks. Several glanced back at Kelly with wrinkled brows, as if recalibrating everything they knew about her in light of this unexpected new connection. She couldn’t believe it. Ethan was passing the test and earning extra credit to boot. She stretched out her tense hands, releasing a long, relaxing sigh.
She nearly released the contents of her bladder in the process. Now that she could trust Ethan not to blow everything, she thought she could break away long enough to chance that trip to the bathroom. She quietly pushed her chair back and hurried away, trying not to listen to the water flowing through the fish tank’s filter as she went.
After Kelly finished, she opened the door of the bathroom stall to find Priya standing two inches away on the other side. Curiosity had entirely unhinged her. “Who the what?” she demanded, her eyes wide. “What the him is he?”
“Him is—he is Ethan,” Kelly said simply. “We’re dating.”
“You did not just say that and then stand there like the words you’re saying make sense.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” Kelly insisted.
“You’re never dating anyone! Then you show up with a Calvin Klein model who hauls ass around town because he’s worried about your priceless little baby feet and you act like it’s no big deal?”
“It isn’t that big of a deal.” Kelly pushed past her to wash her hands. “He’s just a guy. We’re just hanging out.” She carefully avoided meeting Priya’s eyes in the mirror.
“He knew what shoes you wore to work this morning. That sounds like you’re living together.”
“He, um, stayed the night last night.” It wasn’t a lie.
Priya took a deep breath and held up a hand. “One moment.” She walked into a stall, flushed the toilet, and unleashed a shout of “Hell yeah!” that was only partially masked by the ensuing noise. She walked back into the sink area and seamlessly resumed her questioning. “Were you planning on telling me about this guy, I don’t know, sometime before you have grandkids together?”
“Yes, I promise!” Kelly clasped her hands in an unconscious plea. “We met at a coffee shop and just kind of hit it off. It’s still early, but I wanted to make sure it felt right before I jinxed it by talking about him.” She had practiced these words aloud in the car one day just in case this situation should ever arise. She hoped against hope that they sounded natural and unrehearsed now.
“And does it?”
“Does it what?”
“Feel right?”
Kelly stopped. “Yeah. Yeah, it really does.” A grin spread over her face before she could stop it. She was surprised by the warmth of her own voice as she started talking about Ethan. “He’s smart and kind and a gentleman, and when I’m with him, I just feel like—me.” Once the words started coming, it was a relief to get them out. She hadn’t realized how much pressure had been building from not talking about this huge change in her life with anyone—she hadn’t even realized what a huge change it was.
“Wow. Wow.” Priya shook her head wonderingly, half laughing with joy and astonishment. She reached out and hugged her with a little squeal, then stopped with her own sly smile. “I guess I can’t be too mad, though.”
“Remember Andre? That guy I went out with?”
“Um, yeah,” Kelly lied. Priya went out with so many guys, in such rapid succession, that Kelly had fallen into the habit of deleting their names from her brain as soon as she heard them. Her brain storage was perpetually too close to full as it was.
“Well, we’re going on our fourth date tomorrow.”
This was big. Kelly couldn’t remember the last time Priya had gotten past two or three dates with anyone. Priya, too, began chattering as if relieved the floodgates had been pulled.
“So he’s a writer and a comedian, which doesn’t mean he’s a waiter or a barista or anything, like, he actually gets paid to write for this website, so the sort of shit I say that normally scares men off, he just laughs about. I think that’s why it’s going well. He just rolls with it and gets me. I’m not trying to get in over my head, but …”
Priya talked animatedly on as they made their way back toward the table, and Kelly felt a bright spurt of happiness. Here they were, two best friends talking about their promising relationships. But something niggled at the back of her mind. Priya was opening up, being utterly honest about her new relationship. And Kelly couldn’t do the same.
ten
On her own, Kelly didn’t get out much; her world was pretty much her office, her apartment, and the roads between them. She generally felt awkward going out either alone or with others, and found the effort to not be worth the time or the trouble. But with Ethan there, she was discovering that small things became a pleasure. Waiters held her chair out for her at restaurants. Neighbors walking their dogs waved hello as she and Ethan walked down the street. After they listened to her favorite robotics podcast and discussed it at home, she even ventured to bring up the latest episode with a coworker who she knew was a fellow fan.
And maybe the new way the world seemed to be treating Kelly had as much to do with the new way she was carrying herself as it did with the presence beside her of a man who had oodles of presence. Going out into the world with Ethan, she talked more animatedly, moved more expressively. But she gave no notice to any changes in herself. When the sweet older lady behind the counter at the car wash told them what a cute couple they were, she smiled and took his hand. It was remarkable how human his skin was—solid but with give, warm from within, pulsing almost imperceptibly with the vibrations of his inner life. It was a masterful piece of technology. But all Kelly noticed was how nice it felt.
When family dinner rolled around that weekend, Kelly was ready. Not for the raisin tilapia her mom had promised to make, she would never be ready for that, but to introduce them to Ethan. She brushed her hair and tugged on her nicest blouse, but really, Ethan was the one who would be on display. On the drive there, she was unusually free from anxiety. Her coworkers had responded well to Ethan, and at this point, it felt so normal for her to be around him, to talk to him, that she was beginning to forget he wasn’t a normal boyfriend herself.
So when half an hour later, the family was ringed around the table, staring at Ethan in stunned silence, she had no idea how to respond. She had so thoroughly expected Diane to pelt her and her new man with questions that she hadn’t considered how to take the conversational lead. She picked at her fish, feeling somehow responsible for filling the silence. “Pluto and Goofy are both dogs. Why is one a pet and one a friend?” she blurted out.
“Holy cow,” Gary said. “That’s exactly what I was just thinking.”
But the rest of the Suttles weren’t taking the distraction bait. “Where exactly did you meet my daughter, Ethan?” Diane asked. Her voice betrayed nothing, like a Soviet spy’s.
“Didn’t you meet when you were out with Priya?” Clara chimed in.
“Right, at a bar.” Kelly sincerely hoped that Priya and her family would never have occasion to compare stories.
“And what exactly is it you do?” Diane continued.
“I teach,” Ethan answered. “I’m an associate professor of astronomy at Stanford.” Kelly restrained herself from rushing in and rattling off the entire professional history she had concocted.
“Hmm,” was all Diane replied, taking a careful bite of salad. She kept her eyes trained down, throwing out the next question casually. “And do you typically date women?”
“Mom!”
“It’s an honest question. I’m just trying to get to know your new friend.”
Now Kelly saw it. They didn’t believe him. Not that her family didn’t believe that Ethan was human, but they didn’t believe that someone like him would date someone like her. They were waiting for the catch.
“Mom, can you help me with the bread?” she asked suddenly, grabbing the dinner roll off her plate and walking into the kitchen. A bemused Diane followed her in. Once in there, Kelly opened her hand and looked at the roll. What the heck was she supposed to do with this?
“What’s the matter?” her mother asked.
“Why don’t you believe that I could be with Ethan?” Kelly asked hotly.
“I never said that.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
Diane paused for an instant too long.
“I am capable of getting a date on my own, you know!” Kelly exclaimed. Maybe she said it so emphatically because a part of her, in the basement of her brain, was saying that none of this was true. “Just because I blew it with Martin doesn’t mean that no man will ever love me.”
“Of course not, dear,” Diane said soothingly. “But you haven’t brought anyone to family dinner in nearly five years and now you show up with an astronomy professor who looks like a walking fantasy”—gross, Kelly thought—“and ask me not to question it? Without revealing my age, Kelly, I will tell you that I was not born yesterday.”
“He’s just a guy I’m seeing! What is there to question?”
“I want to make sure that he’s not taking advantage of you, dear,” Diane said in a low enough voice for it not to travel to the dining room. “I want to make sure that his intentions are good.”
Kelly stopped. Yes, her family’s skepticism was still insulting. But at least Diane’s heart was in the right place. “He’s good, I promise.”
“All right, then,” Diane said simply. “I trust you.” And they walked back into the dining room. As Kelly slid back into her seat, she wondered if she would now have to eat the bread that had been clenched in her sweaty, distressed fist for the past few minutes.
As they were wrapping up dessert (Diane’s espresso and gingerbread ice cream actually came out well), Kelly got the courage to pipe up again. “I’m starting to build Confibot at work. You know, the robot?” she finished lamely. Her glance flickered to Carl. If anyone in the family would be interested in the nitty-gritty of what she did all day, it should be him. After all, he was an engineer himself. But he just spooned up his ice cream, the pinky of his left hand resting against the notebook of work papers beside him on the table, as if desperate to hold on to his ticket out.
“That’s wonderful, dear,” her mom said. “Oh, Gary, I almost forgot! When I was watching the girls the other day, Emma got a hold of my phone and somehow placed a call to Shanghai. I think we’ve got a little businesswoman on our hands! Can’t you just see her, jet-setting and making deals?” She gazed at Emma, who was waiting patiently for the ice cream that had somehow ended up in her hair to drip down into her mouth.
“Don’t you want to hear more about Kelly’s news?” Ethan asked. The table went silent. Kelly paused and looked at him more incredulously even than the rest of the group did. “I think it’s fascinating.” He smiled warmly at her.
“It is?” Kelly asked.
“Do you even know what Kelly does in her lab?”
“Of course, it’s like the Hall of Presidents,” Diane said.
Kelly had to stop Ethan. If he started sharing his knowledge of what went on in Kelly’s lab, this could quickly go south. “That’s basically it, there’s nothing else really to talk about,” she interjected.
“But it’s much more than that,” Ethan pressed. “The Hall of Presidents is an attraction located in Liberty Square at the Magic Kingdom in the Walt Disney World Resort.” Was he just reading off the Wikipedia articles in his brain? Kelly winced, but before she could do anything, he went on. “Its Audio-Animatronic figures of our nation’s presidents carry out preprogrammed sequences involving voice recordings and choreographed mechanical movements. What Kelly is working on is the development of an android model programmed to follow intricate codes of command and to respond to an infinite variety of variables and stimuli, making it infinitely more complex. Furthermore, Confibot will have the emotional intelligence to navigate charged human interactions, while also being precisely controllable. The implications are authentically society-changing. The Hall of Presidents memorializes people who have shaped our world. What Kelly is doing has the potential to shape it.”
Ethan’s eyes sparkled. The whole table was silent until Emma finally captured her drip of ice cream with a ferocious slurp. Diane looked astounded. “My goodness. I guess you understand what Kelly does on a whole different level than we do, Ethan.” She smiled at him for the first time, and Kelly couldn’t help but grin. “Why don’t you tell us more?”
Once she had warmed up to him, Diane embraced Ethan with a daunting enthusiasm, calling Kelly three times over the next few days to ask how he was, when Kelly was seeing him next, and, Kelly suspected, to verify that he wasn’t a beautiful hallucination she had dreamed up after one too many glasses of wine at dinner. Kelly was so happy at how brilliantly her plan was working that her enthusiasm carried her over to that Thursday evening, when she arrived a full seven minutes early to the boutique where she was meeting her mom and sister to look at bridesmaid shoes. The only time Kelly had ever shown up early to a family event before was her own birth.
