Oval Read online

  Advance Praise for Oval

  “A fascinating near-future exploration of relationships, sustainability, and power. An extraordinarily accomplished debut novel.”

  —JEFF VANDERMEER, author of Borne and Annihilation

  “So good, so dark, so funny, so cruelly smart about where we are and where we’re going. This book is a petri dish growing a new strain of heartbreak. I’m sick with love for it.”

  —SHELLEY JACKSON, author of Riddance and Half Life

  “With wit and precision, Elvia Wilk pinpoints the moment when neoliberalism metastasizes into something far more sinister.”

  —TOM McCARTHY, author of Satin Island and Remainder

  “J. G. Ballard meets William Gibson meets Jeff VanderMeer. Oval is an up-to-the-minute story about the twilight zones of corporate design, aesthetics, pharmacy, and bioengineering, where there’s nothing consultants won’t break in the quest for ‘innovation.’ What could possibly go wrong? Find out in Elvia Wilk’s crisp and stylish debut book.”

  —McKENZIE WARK, author of Molecular Red and A Hacker Manifesto

  “Everything is work—mourning, clubbing, reading your partner’s moods. And everything is a scam—plants that become buildings, jobs that become consultancies, apps that become jobs. With astonishing emotional accuracy, Oval records what it feels like to hover between two poles.”

  —SASHA FRERE-JONES

  “Wonderfully clever and beguiling. The circle may be absolute, but the oval remains restless and bursts with potential.”

  —CHLOE ARIDJIS, author of Sea Monsters and Book of Clouds

  “As a social comedy of modern relationships and gentrifying Berlin, Elvia Wilk’s debut is exquisitely funny and exquisitely well observed. But it also has something weirder spliced into its DNA: fragments of the future that transform this story into a fabulous biopunk hybrid that’s not quite like anything else I’ve ever read.”

  —NED BEAUMAN, author of Madness Is Better Than Defeat and The Teleportation Accident

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2019 by Elvia Wilk

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Wilk, Elvia, author.

  Title: Oval / Elvia Wilk.

  Description: New York : Soft Skull, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018045888 | ISBN 9781593764050 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Science fiction. | Dystopias.

  Classification: LCC PS3623.I5452 O93 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045888

  Cover design & art direction by salu.io

  Book design by Jordan Koluch

  Published by Soft Skull Press

  1140 Broadway, Suite 704

  New York, NY 10001

  www.softskull.com

  Soft Skull titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West

  Phone: 866-400-5351

  Printed in the United States of America

  10987654321

  FOR MY FRIENDS

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Acknowledgments

  PART ONE

  I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, “Please—a little less love, and a little more common decency.”

  —KURT VONNEGUT

  1

  AFTER DEATH, BUREAUCRACY TAKES THE WHEEL. FUNERAL arrangements, bank account closures, insurance payouts. Unpaid taxes. Unforgiven debts. For some, the cascade of paperwork adds an unbearable layer of responsibility. For others, the onslaught helps to smother the grief. Louis, Anja decided, was clearly the latter.

  The bureaucracy was all he could talk about. The only information he sent her way while he was gone came as a series of text messages describing the string of post-death logistics. He was at the lawyer’s office again. He was packing boxes. Then he was buying more Sprite and crackers for the retirees. Emoji, emoji. Blaming the time difference, he never found a moment to talk on the phone.

  The last time she had heard his voice was when he had called two weeks before from the departure lounge at Brandenburg to tell her the news. His mom, dead. His voice had sounded so unconcerned she had asked if he was joking. Apparently, he had booked a flight back to the U.S., left work, and headed straight for the airport, all before calling his girlfriend. Anja was sure he was in shock. She was the one who broke down crying when he called.

  He hadn’t told her he was coming back to Berlin until he was already at the airport at the opposite end in Indianapolis. Just a one-line text message listing his arrival time, with hearts planted between the numbers.

  Anja was waiting for him when his plane landed in the early afternoon. Arrivals, with its faceted glass ceiling, felt like a cramped greenhouse or the inside of an empty perfume bottle with foul mist trapped inside. Around her, families regrouped, Erasmus students came home from semesters abroad, one-night partiers without any luggage searched for the bus that would drop them off nearest the door of the club.

  Anja was startled by how awful Louis looked when he emerged from the crowd. His physical appearance was at odds with the nonchalance of those text messages; he looked miserable. He didn’t make any jokes to apologize for his condition, just hugged her weakly, took her hand, and followed her to the taxi stand.

  In the back seat of the cab he leaned his head on her shoulder and showed her a fruit-flinging game on an iPad he said he’d inherited. The tablet seemed to be the only new thing he’d come home with.

  The driver dropped them off at the base of the mountain with an apology: it was too muddy for him to go any farther. The cable car that should have been waiting to carry them up was still languishing lifelessly in the dirt by the path, where it had been since they moved in. Anja helped Louis haul his carry-on up the sloping path, lifting it over the bigger rocks and puddles. By the time they made it to the house, they were both soaked with sweat, the underarms of Anja’s gray Lycra top marked with salt arcs.

  “Like the shore of the Dead Sea,” she said.

  Louis, winded, bent over his knees. “Buns of steel,” he said, as he always did when they reached the top. The familiar refrain didn’t reassure her. It made her uneasy. An echo across an uncanny valley.

  While Anja dug around for her keys, Louis wiped his fingers across the damp wood grain of the front door. “She’s sweating, too,” he said.

  The house had gained a female pronoun early in their inhabitation. Something to do with a made-for-TV movie Louis had seen as a kid, about a smart-house that went haywire.

  Anja nodded. “She has been all week.” The interior was so humid that condensation had gathered on every surface, and now the untreated wood was engorged. “The window frames are too swollen,” she said. “I haven’t been able to open the windows to let the moisture out.”

  He laughed. “Menopause? But she’s so young.”

  Anja unlocked the door and heaved it open with her hip. “No, just vindictive. She’s sad that you left.”
>
  It was too hot to sleep, and Anja woke up before it was bright outside, rolling over to find Louis sprawled out on his stomach. He was naked, cuddling the tablet in the crook of his arm and jabbing at zombies floating across the screen. She got out of bed, wiped her face with a towel bunched on the dresser, and found a T-shirt, feeling her way down the hall while pulling the shirt over her head. The porous floor was cool and slippery; she steadied herself with a palm on the wall.

  In the kitchen, she knelt under the sink and pulled out the main monitoring system. It was supposed to transmit real-time home-climate statistics wirelessly to the unattractive tech watches they’d been given, but the metal casing of the drawer blocked the signal. They’d debated removing the drawer front completely to let the signal through, but Anja, imagining in-house tornadoes, had decided they shouldn’t fiddle with it themselves. The contract they’d signed before move-in had been very clear about tampering. Eventually, they’d given up wearing the watches and given up talking about it too.

  She peered at the dim readout for a few moments and sighed, slamming the drawer back into place, then padded back down the hall, nearly slipping before reaching the bedroom archway.

  She posed in the arch with one hip jutting out, a Carrie Bradshaw move she had once postured as a joke that had by now lost its original template and become a reflex. “The monitor says there’s too much waste under the flooring, and the rate of composition is too high. It’s hot in here, but the floor feels cold to me. Shouldn’t we feel the heat coming up?”

  He laughed, still tapping his pet screen. “Too much waste? You’ve been here without me for two weeks.”

  “I haven’t had any internal plumbing problems. All is running smoothly.” She ran her hand over the side of one hip.

  “Cheeky.” He pressed the round button on the tablet and slid it under the pillow beneath his head, twisting his neck toward her. “So if we can’t blame your digestion?”

  She nodded. “I’ll call Howard in a few hours.” She climbed into bed beside him. The top sheet, IKEA blue, was damp with sweat in two oblong patches: hips and shoulders. Avoiding her own imprint, she rolled halfway onto him.

  He scrutinized her face. She scrutinized back. He looked like sweet, normal Louis. She frowned.

  “Is everything okay with you?” he asked.

  “What?” She was supposed to be the one asking that question. She pulled her face a few centimeters back. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You seemed not fine yesterday.” She paused to allow it to slip from observation to evaluation. He nodded. That was a good sign. Self-awareness.

  “I was just exhausted,” he said, shrugging beneath her. That was not a good sign. “Hey,” he protested. “Don’t give me that look.”

  “I’m not giving you a look.”

  “You are, a little.”

  “It’s just hot rays of love.”

  “Okay, but don’t burn me.”

  She searched his face for traces of yesterday’s sadness. Yesterday had been Sunday. The day his mom usually called.

  “I can’t go back to sleep,” he said. “I’m too jet-lagged.” He gestured toward the shower. “Should we start the day?”

  She sat up beside him, pulling up her knees to avoid the sweat stains. “I never understand what it means when you say that. We don’t start the day.”

  “Who starts it?”

  “It just starts. The sun, the cosmic rotation.”

  “My day starts in me.” He pointed to his stomach. “Internal rotation, the cosmos inside.” He got up and stepped toward the bathroom, grinning.

  “Gross,” said Anja. She laughed. “Living in this house has made us too comfortable talking about our shit.”

  At eight a.m. Howard didn’t pick up his phone, so she sent him an email, which he responded to immediately. No, he wouldn’t be available to talk until eleven, but why didn’t she stop by his place instead of going straight to work? He had to talk to her about something work-related anyway. In the meantime, he’d send someone by to check on the house’s perspiration situation. He signed his email “cheers,” the sarcasm level of which she couldn’t decipher.

  She and Louis drank smoothies at the kitchen counter. The kitchen, though the most over-the-top room in the house, flaunting its utilities and abilities, was also by far the loveliest. The light filtering in through the strip of windows lining two east-facing walls cast enough brightness for them to forgo artificial lighting in the space for most of the day, and the recycled-plastic-and-something countertops successfully reflected the rays with minimum glare but maximum illumination, as they were designed to do.

  “Won’t they let you take some more time off?” Anja refilled Louis’s smoothie. He had fallen asleep again after his shower and woken up in another time zone, distant and disengaged. Jet lag—soul delay.

  “Of course. They keep saying I should take another week, but what else am I supposed to do with my time?”

  “I don’t know. Sleep? Process? Take a break?”

  “I need distraction. And it’s really busy there right now. Big project coming up.”

  “Are you sure?” She reached out and hugged the back of his neck with her hand.

  “I’m seriously fine.” He took the hand. “All I need is to get back to small talk, logistics, menial tasks.”

  She smiled. “A typical day in the creative industries.”

  “A unique privilege. The manual labor of the elite.”

  She moved the smoothie machine into the sink and turned on the water to rinse it. The water came out of the tap in irregular spurts.

  “Have you ever done real manual labor?”

  “Sure.” He wiped the rim of the glass with his finger and licked it. “I did construction one summer in San Francisco. During grad school.”

  “Ever feel like going back to it?”

  “All the time. I could quit my idealistic job and fix this sustainable mess we live in. Do something practical. Become a stay-at-home environmentalist.”

  “I’d be the breadwinner? But I don’t make enough money.”

  “You’d have to tap into that trust fun.”

  She banged on the tap in case it was clogged. It wasn’t. The water slowed to a trickle. “It’s not fun. See how people like you are always bringing it up?”

  She glanced at him across the island. He seemed calmed by the familiar banter. She had learned to play this game expertly over time, the game of endlessly countering and counter-countering and punning, a uniquely American mechanical spiral of conversation whose pleasure was purely semantic and whose meaning was always secondary to the way it was said.

  Louis needed a regular dose of banter, and she had, over the course of their bonding phase while she learned to play, unexpectedly learned to need it too. At the beginning, she had been typically European about it, considering it shallow small talk, but she became convinced over time that it was not only harmless but constituted an important kind of meta-content. Chatting didn’t negate an emotional bond; it reinforced it. Her English had become a flawless porcelain veneer in the process.

  He stood up and palmed her face, so she could rest her cheek in his hand. “At least you know I don’t love you only for your money, since you never spend any of it.”

  She rolled her eyes. This old joke had run the full course from provocation > slightly offensive but funny > actually offensive from overuse > permissible > endearing relic of relationship past. Was resorting to old inside jokes a good thing?

  “Howard asked me to go straight to his place instead of going to work this morning,” she said.

  “Weird. Do you think I should come with? Is it about house stuff?”

  “I’m sure it’s fine. He probably just wants to ask me to pleeeease stop complaining,” she said, affecting a British accent.

  Louis left the house buoyantly, leaving Anja still hunched over her half-finished smoothie, inspecting the avocado chunks that had sunk to the bottom, feeling nauseat
ed. She told herself not to obsess over his behavior. And yet he seemed so unthinkably normal that it was surely an abnormality. There was not a trace of grief left in him today. The sallow face of yesterday was gone, instead he looked slightly puffy, pink and fresh. It was indecent, almost offensive. All those nights awake and worrying about him, loyally depressed, wallowing on his behalf. Repeatedly calling her own parents just to check that they were alive. It was obvious she was appropriating something, and it had to stop.

  Then she thought, fuck griefmantra.com and supportcycle.net—there was such a thing as a wrong way to deal with emotions. Assuming it could only be posturing, was posturing normality in fact a very bad sign? Should she be prepared for some crazy shit on the horizon? Or could he really be exactly like before, as he seemed on the surface? What was before?

  Once, in the Before, at a dinner party, Louis had retold a story he’d read in The New Yorker. The article was an exposé on Russian prisons in what was known as the “Black Zone,” a lawless section of the penitentiary where there was little supervision from above, and the prisoners were basically left to govern themselves. In the Black Zone, rigid customs had developed that newcomers had to learn if they didn’t want to get knifed. Most of the customs had originally been created for practical reasons, but by now they’d become arbitrary rules whose only function was to enforce a sense of social cohesion. For example, there was one major taboo against throwing away crusts of moldy bread. Back in the early years of the Black Zone, when food had been scarce, it was necessary to conserve every morsel. Today, a healthy black market supplied champagne and caviar to the inmates—and yet the taboo against wasting bread remained. Throwing away rotten food marked the newcomer as an outsider, someone who didn’t understand the history of want and deprivation from which the rules had evolved. With regards to bread, explained Louis, the culture of the Black Zone was a culture of inclusion via conservation.