Chapter 6
Two days later, Chloe was back at Perfect Partners. She found Avery already waiting in the too-white office.
“I knew you’d be back,” Avery said with an unreadable smile. “Everyone always comes back.”
She looked Chloe up and down, and Chloe felt self-conscious beneath her gaze.
Okay, yes, she had dressed up a little for her date with Rob, even though he wasn’t real.
Was that a crime? She’d changed after work and was now wearing a high-waisted A-line skirt in soft navy cotton, a tucked-in cream blouse with slightly puffed sleeves, her favorite soft leather ankle boots, and a wide-brimmed felt hat her mother had worn in the seventies.
“This is what I normally look like,” she told Avery, as though she needed to explain the transformation. “I came straight from work last time.”
Avery just handed Chloe the smartwatch.
“You’ll need to wear this for the duration of the trial,” she said, pale eyes locked on Chloe. “If you take it off, it will disrupt our data analysis. You must not take it off, ever.”
Chloe slipped it onto her wrist, and Avery passed her a tablet displaying another digital contract. “More consent forms. Your data will be stored and recorded, ad infinitum,” she said briskly, flicking through the pages. “All standard stuff.”
Avery was all business today. She straightened the shiny white keyboard on her desk and then reached over to point out a paragraph in the contract.
“One clause I should draw your attention to: Perfect Partners cannot be liable for any emotional distress that you, the client, perceive to be the result of participating in our program.”
“Right…,” Chloe said slowly.
“Or any physical injury that occurs as a result of misusing the Galatea Series 762x.”
“Physical injury?” Chloe echoed. She knew she shouldn’t have watched Ex Machina last night. Why were there so few happy robot movies?
“A formality,” Avery said lightly. “Just don’t try and take him apart or stick your finger into anything that hums.” It was hard to tell from Avery’s expression whether this was a joke, but then she clarified, “I jest. You are not going to get electrocuted. What you need to focus on is our success rate. And if anything goes wrong, you just call me.”
“What might go wrong?” Chloe asked. “Could I get hurt?” An image of RoboCop pinning her in a headlock flashed through her mind.
“Absolutely not,” Avery said. “Statistically, Rob is sixty-eight percent safer than a real man. He’s incapable of harming you; in fact he is programmed to protect you.” Avery shifted her face into a broad smile. “So, if you could just sign here and here…and here.”
Chloe’s hand hovered over the contract. She suspected that any situation that entailed a “you can’t sue us if things go wrong” clause and required the contact details of your next of kin probably wasn’t an ideal situation to be signing up for.
Then again, wasn’t modern life full of waivers?
The induction at that gym she’d never gone back to, the updated terms and conditions on Meta, the horoscope app she’d paid ￡7.
99 for only to be told that she was “no good with money.” These days, if you wanted to do anything, you had to sign your life away.
Sensing her hesitation, Avery added, “You’d sign a similar waiver if you hired a Jet Ski. It’s all very standard.” Chloe didn’t think that anything about this was standard, plus she had broken her ankle on a Jet Ski, so it wasn’t the most reassuring example.
“Oh, and before I forget, I have a keepsake for you,” Avery said, reaching into her drawer.
“A little signing-on present, from all of us at Perfect Partners.” Avery handed a silver photo frame across the desk.
Inside was a black-and-white photo of Rob, standing on a rock beside the sea.
He had his hands in his pockets and was staring out into the middle distance, a burst of sea spray rising up behind him like a watery peacock tail.
Inexplicably, he was wearing a tuxedo. It was a ludicrous photo, but it did remind Chloe how ridiculously good-looking Rob was and how impressed all her old friends were going to be.
So, she muted all her reservations and scrawled her digital signature on the screen.
“Treat him like he is real, as much as possible,” Avery instructed. “If you ask him too many technical questions it can distort his feedback loop. It will help you too; you don’t want to ‘other’ him.”
Other him? Chloe was about to ask Avery to expand on that, but then Rob walked through the door. He was dressed in a fitted white shirt and well-cut chinos. He looked like a tall Paul Mescal modeling for Vogue.
“Hi,” he said, locking eyes with Chloe, then shooting her a beaming smile. “It is so wonderful to see you again.”
Chloe smiled. It was impossible not to because he was so lovely and Paul Mescally. Avery pulled a solitary party popper from her drawer, then launched a limp spray of blue, gray, and white streamers across her desk.
“Congratulations. Perfect Partners wishes you every happiness.”
—
Chloe suggested she and Rob go for a walk in Hyde Park.
It was a sunny summer’s day, and the park was a public place—if he went all RoboCop on her, she could scream for help.
Was it concerning that her mind went there?
No—such anxieties weren’t unique to this situation.
She always felt a hum of nerves before meeting someone new.
First dates were held in public places; she never accepted lifts home.
That was just the quiet choreography of dating as a woman: the thrill of possibility, always tempered by a mental checklist of exits and worst-case scenarios.
“I love your outfit,” Rob said, falling into step beside her, pulling her from her thoughts. “If you were a font, I’d say you were American Typewriter today.”
“Thanks,” she said, pleased that he’d noticed. “That’s one of my favorite fonts. I was aiming for Apple Chancery, but close enough.” They smiled at each other, but Chloe checked herself. No doubt he was programmed to like whatever she was wearing, even if it was a potato sack and a balaclava.
“How was work today?” Rob asked as a couple strolled past them with a toddler in a pushchair deeply focused on pulling the arm off a Transformer. They didn’t give Rob a second glance. They couldn’t tell, didn’t suspect he was anything out of the ordinary.
“Listen, Rob, I’m going to be straight with you,” Chloe said, shifting her gaze back to him.
“I’m not looking for a relationship here, okay?
I’m afraid the ‘nonreal’ thing is a bit of a deal-breaker for me.
” Rob’s expression didn’t flicker. “But I have a college reunion in a few weeks, and I don’t want to go alone. I’d like to take you as my plus-one.”
“Okay,” he said, not looking the least bit offended.
“Okay?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Sure,” he said with an easy smile, a dimple tugging at his cheek. “If you want me to go to a reunion with you, I will. Sounds fun.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t mind that I’m just using you? That I’ll send you back when the free trial ends?”
Rob let out a gentle laugh. “No, I don’t mind.”
He tilted his face to the sun and closed his eyes. “Each day is a gift,” he said, then turned to look at her. “But if you want me to be your plus-one, perhaps we should get to know each other first. Let me know what you hope to achieve at this reunion.”
“Achieve?” she echoed, and he nodded, all earnest interest. “Um, to pretend I’m a half-competent adult who has her life together,” she said, shooting him a wry smile.
He smiled back, but his eyes were full of incomprehension.
“There’s this guy,” she said after a beat, her gaze drifting down to the gravel path, as she kicked a small stone.
“Sean. He was my best friend in college. But then…we grew apart, lost touch.” She paused.
It felt weird, talking to Rob about this. “It’s complicated.”
“You want to make Sean jealous?” he asked.
“No,” she said quickly. “That’s not it. He’s moved on, he’s got this whole big life going on.” She picked at the edge of her sleeve. “I guess I’m embarrassed for him to see how small my life is by comparison. I don’t want him to think I’ve got nothing, that I’m full of regrets.”
Rob’s brow creased. “What do you mean, your life is small?”
They’d reached the edge of the Serpentine now, the water glinting with early evening light. There were benches dotted along the side of the lake, some empty, others occupied by people reading, resting, watching the world go by.
“How long have you got?” Chloe said, lips curving into a half smile.
“As long as you need,” he said, reaching for her hand.
She hesitated, just for a second, then let him take it. It felt surprisingly nice. Warm, comforting. Just like a real hand. He gave her an encouraging smile, and she realized she could be honest with him, because she wasn’t trying to impress him.
“Where shall we start? My career? My love life? My finances?”
“Let’s go with your career,” he suggested.
“Okay, well, I took this job as a PA thinking it would lead somewhere. I was promised production and writing experience. But it’s been nearly two years now, and I’m still stuck doing calendar invites and shredding scripts.
” She let out a soft laugh. “Sometimes I think the only reason I haven’t quit is because without this job, I’d have to admit I’ve totally flunked adulting. ”
“That sounds frustrating,” Rob said, his brow creasing in sympathy.
“I gave up on trying to be an actress, now I say I want to be a writer, but I haven’t written anything in years. No idea seems to stick.”
Rob swung her hand back and forth, coaxing a reluctant smile from her.
On the path in front of them sat a cluster of female ducks, sunning themselves on the concrete.
As they approached, the ducks shuffled out of their way, a few slipping into the lake with quiet splashes, barely disturbing the surface.