Poetic Justice (Soft Robotics 2.0)

0.00(distance)

"Grace..." Steve begins and trails off. I hold my breath as I wait. Finally, I hear the scuff of his shoes on the pavement outside my door. I pull my phone from the waistband of my pajama shorts and watch the feed from my security camera. He's walking away.

Then I let out a sigh of my own as he changes his mind and turns around. I stand up and toss Sylvia aside. I'm afraid if I avoid him too long, he'll send Tony. And I don't want to talk to Tony.

"Grace, it's important. If you don't listen to me, you're going to have to listen to Tony. I'm sorry, but I can't stop him from—"

He cuts himself off, because he hears the dragging of the armoire against the carpet on my side of the door. I'm pushing it with both hands, leaning all my weight against it. When I yank the door open, Steve looks surprised.

"Did you have something barricading the door?" he asks.

"There are a bunch of vibrators on my coffee table," I say. "I can't move them because I always lose parts when I move projects. Do you still want to come in?"

"I—yes. Thanks for the warning."

"We can be cool about vibrators. We're adults."

"Sure," Steve says. He tries not to glance around my living room. He fails, and the concern in his expression etches deeper. "Have you been to sleep tonight?"

"Sit down. Do you want something to drink? Wine? Coffee? Water? I think that's all I have. Well, there's some gasoline in my office. Your metabolism might be able to handle that?" Why am I still talking?

"Coffee would be great," he says, because I'm already backing toward the kitchen behind me, so he has to ask for something. I watch him lower onto the sofa. He's two feet away from the vibrators. I turn around to dig the tub of instant coffee from the cabinet.

"Nice place," he says, because he has to say something. The place is just okay. I live on campus in a faculty housing unit. All of my neighbors are other professors and postdocs.

"I couldn't find a place cheap enough to afford in Palo Alto," I say, unscrewing the big plastic lid, scooping the coffee out. "Rent's awful."

He does another sigh and tries again: "I think it's been two years now since I last saw you." He hesitates, because he has to add something else here to be polite. "You look...well."

"Are you trying to sleep with me?" I ask. He's not.

"No," he says. He knows I know he's not.

There's silence except the steady buzz of the ceiling fan (it's actually a little chilly in here; I just work with a lot of fumes, so I keep the air circulating). The coffee isn't brewing yet. I lift myself onto the kitchen counter to sit. My feet dangle. I tap my socked toes together. Steve pops his knuckles. He's tried twice, which means I have to go now: "How have you been?" I ask.

Weak. How's he supposed to answer that interestingly? He says, "I'm surviving. How have you been?" and when he throws the question back at me, he gives me a meaningful, pitying look.

I slump my head against the cabinet behind me. It thuds. I try again: "I saw the stuff about Bucky joining the Avengers. It was in the news last year. Good for you. Um, good for him, I mean. Are you still mad at me about that?"

Bucky is one of Steve's old friends. He was on the run a couple years ago, and I helped Steve look for him. I combed through hours of security footage across Europe. Then, I got distracted and forgot to check a notification on a camera I'd flagged in Prague. Steve could have caught up with him if I'd checked that one.

"I was never mad. You were doing me a favor. You didn't owe me anything." There's a pause. The coffee brews. "I'm sorry, are those the vibrators?"