People between Things
She was greeted by things. Glossy cans of cherry coca-cola, puffy chip bags, decadent loaves of bread snug in their plastic bags. An endless abundance of fast-moving consumer goods spread across narrowly spaced metal shelves and refrigerators with see-through doors, towering over her like mighty pine trees in a forest. It was as if they were just waking up from their nighttime slumber, quiet in the misty blue light of an October Friday’s early morning. “Good morning, things”, she whispered, pushing a light switch in the corner, where two naked concrete walls met. The fluorescent overhead lights went on with a whir, painting the warehouse in its usual, daytime colors.
*
At quarter to ten, a new order showed up on the screen of her scanner. Annie L., read the first line of text, the customer’s name. She checked the address, too, and recognized the street name, immediately placing it in a fancy newly built neighborhood nearby. A jungle of concrete painted in solid colors, sliding glass doors and lampposts covered in fake designer rust. About a kilometer away from the little warehouse, but worlds apart.
Scanner in one hand, handle of a small shopping cart in another, she walked quickly through the narrow aisles, collecting Annie L.’s order. Wholegrain bagels, shelf 3-A. She grabbed it, scanned it, placed it into a paper bag within the cart. Cream cheese with chive, shelf 9-G. Grabbing, scanning, on she went. Oven-bake croissants, 12-D. A can of blueberry-flavored kombucha, 23-B. Finally, a jar of strawberry jam, 53-E. She reached the end of the maze of shelves then, where on her left there was a container with a pile of empty thermal bags, on the right a row of spacious shelves that the delivery drivers picked the orders up from, and in front a wide doorway, the gloomy industrial street outside obscured by thick plastic curtains. Sliding the now full paper bag into one of the thermal bags, she wondered what would happen to the groceries after they passed onto the other side of those plastic curtains, the kind of life they’ll come into.
Annie L. will, no doubt, be wearing a silky bathrobe over her pajamas when she opens the door of her apartment in the picture-perfect highrise building and takes the paper bag from the delivery driver’s hand. She is on the clock, but it’s a work-from-home day, for her and her husband of three years both, so they decided to take it easy: cuddling in bed until it’s almost time for their first online meetings, and sharing a nice little brunch. After enjoying their cream cheese bagels and croissants with jam, they will get back to work. Annie will sit at her desk in the living room, creating something, maybe not very important, but fun, like the lush, thirst-inducing purple bubbles on the can of kombucha sitting open beside her laptop. Nowhere to rush, nothing to worry about. Everything figured out.
*
Her coworkers were still inbounding the stock from the morning’s shipment, the warehouse buzzing with the sounds of tape coming off cardboard, plastic crates being collapsed, roll containers lugged over the concrete floor. Pushing the plastic curtain aside, she came out onto the parking lot in front of the warehouse, where delivery bicycles and scooters were parked, and the drivers chatted to each other while waiting for their next trip. She sat down on one of two shabby plastic chairs, lit up a cigarette, and took her phone out of her pocket. One by one, she dismissed notifications: Tinder inviting her to sign up for premium, an item she had saved on Vinted got sold, a WhatsApp message from someone named Jens reading: Hey, can we talk? (her thumb hovering over this one for a bit before swiping it off), an email with the subject line Your Application Update.
Taking a shaky, shallow drag of her cigarette, she opened the email. Thank you for applying for the position of Assistant Designer. Unfortunately, we will not be moving forward with it at this time… She breathed out the smoke, closed the email app and opened LinkedIn instead, giving the feed a quick scroll. Dear Network… What I learned from starting my own business at twenty… Happy to announce that I am starting my new position at… She opened her own profile. Her picture stared at her from the top of the page, a corporate Mona Lisa – three-quarter view on a neutral gray background, complete with the green #OPENTOWORK frame. Below the photo, her full name, Nuala Rosenthal, and even lower, the tagline: Recent graduate of MA Design Cultures.
Cigarette now dangling loosely between her lips, she tapped on the tagline and deleted the word “Recent”. Just as she was about to type it back out, a rustle of plastic curtains interrupted her. “The phone’s ringing”, said her scrawny coworker who had just emerged from inside the warehouse. Stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray, Nuala got up from the chair and quickly walked inside, past shelves fifty through seventy, to a cheap IKEA desk with a PC setup and a landline phone, the latter now ringing.
“Hello, how may I help you?”, she said into the receiver in her well-rehearsed, professionally servile tone.
“Hello, I’d like to request a replacement for a damaged item I received in my order”, a cold feminine voice replied from the other side of the line.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Your name, please?”
“Annie Lamar.”
Nuala was silent for a moment, her left hand frozen just above the computer mouse, gaze directed firmly at the list of recently completed orders displayed on the PC screen. She knew instantly which one to click on. “Alright… And what seems to be the issue?”
“The kombucha can”, Annie L. sounded impatient. “It has a dent.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. How many items got soaked?”
“Soaked?.. None, of course”, something about the way in which Annie enunciated her words made Nuala feel small, like she was a schoolchild scolded by an overly strict teacher. “The kombucha can is dented. I told you that already.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t see what the issue is here”, she was now frowning, the artificial politeness fading away from her voice. “If the kombucha is still drinkable, why would you need another?”
Annie gave a sigh so blatantly performative it prompted Nuala to roll her eyes. “Listen, lady. I paid for a new, un-dented can of kombucha, and that is what I will get.”
Letting go of the computer mouse, Nuala lifted her hand in exasperation. “Look, you paid for the kombucha, not for the can. If you can still drink it, then nothing’s wrong with–”
“Unbelievable!”, Annie yelled, cutting her off. “Your only job– Literally, the only thing you have to do in your life is to make sure these products arrive safely at my door, and you can’t even do that right!”
“Oh, fuck off!”, Nuala shakily shouted back. “You know nothing about my life! I– I do many things! Just because you have some cushy corporate job and all the time in the world to fight with me about some stupid kombucha can doesn’t make you better than me!”
“No, you fuck off! My time is very expensive, you should feel so lucky that I’d spend it on fighting with you! Get me that kombucha right now or you’ll regret every decision you made in that pathetic little life of yours!”
Nuala drew a deep breath. Her voice still raised, she said: “Okay. You know what? Fine! I’ll get you your fucking kombucha. Actually– I’ll deliver it to you myself! So you better come up with the balls to say all this to my face, you asshole!”
She ended the call then, slotting the landline phone back into its base with such force that the entire desk shuddered, and turned around. Her coworker, the same scrawny one, stood by fridge 55 with a crate full of cauliflower heads in his arms, staring at her, mouth agape. By the pick-up shelves, two delivery drivers in branded winter jackets, one of them with a thermal bag in hand, were also still. The silence in the warehouse was awkwardly deafening.
“What are you guys looking at? Get back to work”, her voice cracked slightly. “You”, she pointed at the empty-handed driver just as he was about to walk away, “Go take your break now. And give me the key to your scooter.”
*
Just as she had imagined, Annie’s apartment was on the eighth floor of a beautiful high-rise building with green walls, so new that the entrance hall still smelled like varnish. Nuala marched out of the elevator and down the hallway, towards a door with the number that she was looking for, a paper bag with one can of kombucha inside swinging lightly beside her knee. Firmly, she pressed the doorbell button.
She heard steps, and a key being turned in the keyhole. Then, the door opened.
“Hello”, Nuala said sternly. She expected her fury to explode right away, for all the mean words to boil over and sizzle like water hitting a hot stove, but nothing followed the greeting.
Instead, she just stared into the eyes of the woman on the other side of the threshold. They were angry, surrounded by deep dark circles. Her dark hair lay tangled atop her shoulders, and the bathrobe she wore was not a cute, cozy kind that Nuala had imagined; it looked droopy and unclean, like it had been worn for many hours and days in a row.
“Hi,” Annie L. responded, just as sternly, arms crossed over her chest.
Nuala was silent. The anger, although still bubbling, would not flow. She glanced inside Annie’s apartment, at the edge of the hallway where peach walls met the glossy laminate of the floor. There was a minimalistic shoe rack there, the gaps between the four pairs of women’s shoes weirdly large, like the rack used to hold more shoes not too long ago. Just behind the shoe rack, a wide black suitcase stood upright on its four wheels. Nuala looked at the suitcase for a moment longer. There was something off-putting about it, a looming sense of unease emanating from its black polyester skin.
Slowly but surely, the boil of Nuala’s anger began to subside.
“Just so you know, that– That wasn’t cool. Speaking to me like that”, she said.
“Well, you weren’t exactly that nice either.”
“Yeah… Sorry.” Nuala stopped in her tracks – that word was the last thing she had expected to utter. After a few seconds’ silence, she added: “I feel like you sort of deserved it though, to be honest. Who calls a stranger pathetic? Also, the kombucha… Sorry, I just think it’s a very first-world kind of problem, you know. Here it is, anyway.”
She handed the paper bag to Annie.
“Thanks. And I’m sorry too,” Annie raised her eyebrows lightly then, as if she also said something she did not intend. It was a small, sincere gesture, nothing like her overexaggerated sigh on the phone earlier. “For the bullshit complaint, and for implying that your life– That you are, well, less-than. I am just going through… Some things. I feel like I might have been taking it out on you.”
Nuala looked towards the black suitcase once more. “That’s alright. For what it’s worth, I think I myself feel that I am less-than.”
The two women stood in silence for a little while, Nuala staring at her shoelaces, Annie picking at her nails.
“Well, I guess I better get going then”, said Nuala. “Again, I’m sorry for… All of it.”
“Me too. Have a good day, okay?”
“Yeah… You too. Enjoy your kombucha.”
Their eyes met again. For one fleeting moment, they were both smiling, gently, warmly, like they knew something about each other that nobody else in the world did.