Steven Millhauser - We Others - New and Selected Stories

It turned out they did have something, though it wasn’t anything like what I might have expected. I was walking along, going from one aisle to another, the way you do in a place like that, when all of a sudden things stopped. I don’t know how to put it any better than that. The shelves just stopped. I don’t mean I’d come up against a wall. That at least would have been something. I mean there was an emptiness, a darkness. You could see a pretty good way into it, because of the fluorescent lights in the high ceiling above the shelves, but after that came sheer nothing — blackness. About a hundred feet beyond the shelf-ends was a construction fence, and beyond the fence I could make out the top halves of excavators and dump trucks. Between the shelves and fence I saw dirt, rocks, a few sawhorses, an orange hard hat resting on the ground. You had the impression that the place was getting ready to expand, as it eventually did, though even at that time there were rumors of cellars being dug, of lots being marked off, out there beyond where you could see.

I came away from that first visit not knowing what I felt. That in itself was worth thinking about. I’m not much for the big noisy places, all things considered, though I’ll visit them when they’ve got something I want. But this place — this place was so big that it was bigger than big; it was so big that big no longer made any sense. It meant the old words didn’t apply — you needed new ones. You needed new feelings. You couldn’t just know right off what to make of it, as you might have done with another place.

And so I wondered about it, tried to sort it all out, over the next days and weeks. One thing I knew was that I was curious about the cubicles. I liked their style, their air of patiently sitting there waiting for you to step into them. Come on, they said. Come see what I’ve got for you. And I kept remembering the slow ride down into the Under, with the shelves rising up, and the way it all ended in the dark, with a kind of promise of more to come. What I hadn’t liked was the terrible height of all those shelves. I hadn’t liked feeling that I was at the bottom of a place I might never get out of. But what bothered me most, I think, was knowing I would return. That isn’t it, exactly. I didn’t mind knowing that I’d be visiting the cubicles again, or riding back down the escalators. What I minded was that the place itself seemed to know I’d be back. It was very sure of itself, The Next Thing, very aware of its effect on people. That was the main reason I stayed away, longer than was natural, before paying my second visit.

In those days I worked at Sloane & Wilson, in the claims department. At lunch one afternoon, a colleague of mine told us she’d just switched all her shopping to the Under. She’d thought about it, she said, and decided it was the most convenient thing for her to do. A lot of people felt that way, she said. Someone said he didn’t see what was so convenient about it, since the only way you could get down there was through the cubicles. Then someone else said he thought the cubicles were the whole point of the place. When I asked him what he meant by that, he came back with “Oh, you know what I mean,” and wouldn’t say any more.

That was the other reason I stayed away. You couldn’t step out of your house, you couldn’t walk down the sidewalk, without hearing about the place. They really were helpful down there, people said. The Under was always improving, people said. Already the loading platforms were being replaced by something better, new departments were opening every day, carpenters were hammering up a storm, out there in the dark. I listened to the talk, the way you do, but at the same time I didn’t listen, I resisted it. I thought of other things. I knew it wasn’t good to get swept up in all that.

Then one day I returned, there was no reason not to. What I hadn’t expected was a new development on the outside. Covered walkways now stretched from the glass doors deep into the parking lot, as if to meet you and draw you in. The supporting columns were hung with surveillance monitors that showed people walking along, and between the columns, high up near the arched roof, white pots overflowed with pink and yellow flowers. Inside, the cubicles were pretty much as I remembered them, though busier than before. But either the arrangement had changed, or I had come in at a different door, because I’d gone only a short way before I became aware of a broad open space that looked like a park. There were clusters of trees, maples and oaks and some I didn’t recognize, and picnic tables scattered about, and a stream with stones, and here and there you could see food stands with open windows. This was the Food Park, where you could buy a rack of ribs or a plate of pad thai or an ice-cream sundae with chopped walnuts and eat it at a picnic table under a tree, or take a stroll along one of the winding paths, which had places that widened out to make room for a wooden bench. You couldn’t see the cubicles from the Park unless you were near the edges. Families sat eating under the branches of trees, kids were wading in the stream, and there was a relaxed, peaceful air about the place that reminded me of picnics with my parents by the river, under the pines, back in my childhood. You could see right away it was the kind of thing that would attract people, like a shady awning over a sidewalk on a hot summer day. I felt that I wanted to sit down by the side of the stream and rest awhile, like a traveler who has come a long way. Then I forced myself to turn back, before the shade could draw me in, since really I hadn’t come a long way, not a long way at all.

I was startled to find myself back among the cubicles. There they were, one after the other, as far as you could see. As I made my way along, I noticed that many of the panels had small signs hung on them, with slogans like WE NEVER STOP or ALWAYS BETTER, ALWAYS BEST. Not all the signs were like that — some were more restful, like WE WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU or LEAVE YOUR WORRIES WITH US. I began looking for something in between, something that wasn’t trying to convince me of anything, and finally I entered a cubicle with a small sign that said: WELCOME TO THE NEXT THING.

A young man of about thirty, wearing a light sport jacket and plain tie, rose from a table to greet me. He invited me to sit down, on a small couch with soft cushions. Still standing, he explained that The Next Thing took a close interest in the welfare of visitors and wished to serve us in every way possible. Would I care for a cup of coffee? I was, he said, free to ignore what he had to say to me, but he promised it would be worth my while to hear him out. At this point he sat down. He said he hoped I wouldn’t mind if he spoke frankly to me. I told him go ahead, it was fine with me. People, he then said, could be divided into two classes: those who were unhappy with their lives, and those who were happy. The unhappy wanted to be happy, and the happy wanted to be happier, since even the happy had little pockets of discontent that limited their happiness and made them feel incomplete. The Next Thing, he said, was prepared to help both groups achieve their objectives. As he spoke, he looked directly at me, with an energetic and friendly attention, though once or twice he turned his head a little to look off as he searched for a word or paused before a phrase. This habit, I noticed, added a sort of drama to what he was saying, an effect that got stronger when he swung his head back. I saw that he was very good at what he was doing, whatever that was, and as he spoke I asked myself whether I was an unhappy person who wanted to be happy, or a happy person who wanted to be happier, or maybe a person somewhere in between the two, if that was possible.