Leveled

Chapter 1

Tony

I have to puke, but I have no mouth. I have no stomach either. And I’m not really sick in a physical way. So, I guess I don’t have to actually puke, puke.

Maybe I’m just being dramatic, but we keep rocking back and forth.

We’re not jiggling and rattling against the side of the metal toolbox, so the guys and I aren’t in the back of the pickup.

This is more of a slow back and forth, up and down, in a way that’s so inconsistent, I’m sure if I had a digestive system, it would be evacuating itself.

If one of the guys knows where we are, they’re not talking, because they don’t have mouths either. Anyway, if the guys and me could talk, I wouldn’t talk about how the box is moving like a corkscrew. I’d talk about Julia.

I’d tell them about the way she handles me.

When she makes me so perfectly even on both sides, concentrating so hard on getting the bubble between the two black lines.

Sexiest thing in the world. She runs a pencil against my edge and it feels so good when it bumps up against the little lines every sixteenth of an inch.

She puts me down and grabs one of my buddies to finish her work and I feel so proud of being part of her life.

When she got the job to do the garage at the governor’s mansion, I cheered. When she and Tonya had so much work they didn’t sleep for four days, I worried about her. Every time she beats herself up for not doing the job perfectly, I tell her she is perfect. She can’t hear me, but I say it.

She and her partner, Tonya, are finishers.

They go onto construction sites and clean up messes.

If the contractor left something uneven, they make it right.

If there’s a bump where there shouldn’t be or a hole that isn’t filled, they take care of it.

She starts and ends with me. She puts me everywhere.

She marks her punchlist when my bubbles don’t line up.

When she hangs the art, she knows that, in the right hands, I’m as accurate as any twenty-four-inch level.

They also put together furniture and paint, but anyone can do that. Julia specializes in perfection.

I hope she’s okay. I hope whatever this rocking is, it isn’t making her sick.

One of us has been missing. I’m worried about him. Caspian held us all together. Now I feel adrift.

And how is Julia managing without her screwdriver?

What if something is really wrong?

She hasn’t taken any of us out of the box since we started rocking like this. She hasn’t asked me what the angle of the earth is. I want to tell her with my bubbles. I want to feel important to her again.

At least I’m laid nice and flat on the bottom of the box, pressed flush against the side. That’s the best place. Not leaning up against something else so that my bubbles rise to the top. She always puts me back in the box right. Sometimes one of her crew or her partner puts me in cockeyed.

One of the shelves she usually keeps the box on is crooked. That’s not great. Now it’s even worse. The box keeps going up and down like a seesaw. My bubbles keep going up and down and back and forth. I want to be level. I want to be level for her. Now I’m just confused.

Caspian is gone. Everything is upside down. I want to stop rocking and start feeling the edge of her pencil.

And like that, it happens.

The rocking stops. We get banged around. I shift away from the side, which is uncomfortable because I’m not flush to a straight edge, but it means something is changing. I hear her voice and her partner, Tonya. I hear a man. It’s all muddled from inside the box. But they seem cheerful.

The box is opened and a screwdriver is thrown in. It clatters against Lorenzo, and the box is slapped shut.

Shit. It’s just her spare screwdriver. It’s not one of us.

Did she lose Caspian?

My God, that would be terrible.

Wait. There’s another man’s voice? I can kind of remember it.

I try to listen harder, but I don’t have ears. It’s all vibration. I’ve learned how Julia and Tonya sound. Everyone else is a blur. This new man though, his voice feels so familiar. Like a brother.

The toolbox lid opens, and the second man’s voice is close. There’s no barrier between us and the source. I recognize and understand it.

“Hang tight, guys.”

It’s Caspian!

I’m happy he can talk, but… he has a mouth? None of us can reply. We’re just inanimate objects inside an inanimate box.

“She knows who we are,” he continues. “She’s cool with it. And she’s a fucking fox.”

The box slaps closed and we’re hauled away by the handle.

She knows! She’s cool!

And of course she’s a fucking fox. I don’t even have eyes and I know that.

Julia handles her box more carefully now. We don’t go into the storage space. We’re always with her. Caspian comes back for a few hours, then he’s gone again. I hear his voice sometimes. I hear them fucking, and I have to say, when she screams, I shudder with delight. If I had a mouth, I’d smile.

One day, the lid opens. It’s Caspian. He’s taking us all out and talking to us as if we’re still men.

“Enzo, buddy, looking good. Giancarlo. Still sharp.” He lays them on the surface of the counter, then reaches for me. “Tony. Bubbly as ever.”

“Are you talking to the tools?” Julia asks with a toothbrush in her mouth.

“I’m talking to my crew, babe.”

She rolls her eyes and leaves. Caspian lays us out and holds a black rectangle between us and his face. It looks like a phone that I’ve observed from far away. It’s making the same sound a camera makes when it takes pictures.

Julia reappears without the toothbrush.

He swings the rectangle toward her. “Smile.”

“You’re going to make me so sorry I dug that out.”

He takes pictures of her. She swats him away. They laugh. He puts us back in the box before they start fucking.