The Package

When he came home that day Eugene found a long box in the hallway. He dragged it into the living room. It was of a size that might contain a guitar, or some longer instrument. A white label on the lid stated: "Contents: Self-assembly woman".

He got out a steak knife and slit the brown tape at the edges. Inside were a number of pieces separately wrapped in brown paper. He took one up and picked at the wrapping. No bubble plastic, just layers and layers of thick pulpy paper. The object inside looked like nothing he had ever seen before. He unwrapped several and laid them out. There was nothing much that resembled a woman. A few stubby tubes and bulbous shapes with snap-connectors embedded. The colour was a pleasant skin tone except for the roughened grey ends.

Eugene took the largest section and felt the weight of it in his hand. It was a lower leg without doubt. It felt complete in itself, something you might like to keep beside you on the couch and pat every so often. By now he was beginning to believe the box contained exactly what it stated on the lid: a self-assembly woman. His curiosity aroused at last, he rummaged through the box for an instruction sheet. "Lucky for me it's not a kitchen cabinet," he thought. The results of his DIY project some months previously had been laughable.

Brown paper now littered the floor of the room. When he had filled several plastic bags (he had no black sacks) he realised he had not yet eaten. Impatient at being distracted by such a blatant gimmick, he set about preparing his evening meal.

Later in the evening he searched for the torso. It was not as easy to identify as he expected - just one oblong lump among the others, not even as heavy as the thighs. When he had attached the arms and legs he had something resembling a human body. But it was unsatisfactory. The skin was too even in tone. The surface had an unpleasant putty-like resistance. All in all, it was no more realistic than a plain shop dummy. In a way he was glad that it was so.

Now the work began. He tried to get the body, or what pieces he had already assembled, to sit up in a natural position. She seemed seemed heavier than in the box. The limbs put up a leaden resistance. He took her arm and made her wave, bending the elbow repeatedly. Next he tried to get one hand to rest casually on the arm of the couch. It was useless, he felt like he'd never seen a human before, didn't know what angle the elbow should be, what way the legs should cross. He might as well have been given oil paints and asked to make a portrait.

At eleven at night he left it there, limbs jutting at odd angles. To get even one finger to rest in a life-like position seemed impossible. "Goodnight lady," he said ironically.

He had spent many evenings shaping her fingers to rest just so, then reshaping them into a fist. The arms moved less stiffly now; he could change smoothly from hand-under-the-chin to offering-to-shake-hands. When he exercised her through a motion it would become easier and smoother, until at last he could simply give a nudge in the right direction. But the skin was still wrong. It had a flat monotonous sheen to it. When grasped it bore the imprint for too long. She was a doll stuffed with wet plaster and rags. He rubbed and massaged each arm. Gripped her like she was suffering from frostbite. Caught each finger and counted little piggies. Took her wrist and moved it in circles, like playing with a puppy's paw. And with no more thought to it, cupped her breasts, feeling them take form under his palms. He worked his way down, delineating the ribs beneath the skin, urging the life-heat to emerge. The flesh tightened and warmed beneath his guiding hands. Each resilience encountered, each curve under his fingers seemed almost right, familiar, but not quite there yet, until he slowly shaped it. He lay behind her, stretched out arm alongside arm, leg alongside leg, wishing form to borrow from form. Stroking and clutching each curve until at moments it seemed perfect.

A blemish. No, a speckled bruise on her underarm. Terrified, he turned it to the light. Gently rubbed it, sprang up, ransacked his cabinets for skin cream. No, antiseptic, diluted in five parts warm water. Cold or hot? It didn't say.

He stopped, poured the mixture down the sink, washing his hands with the last of it, finally realising there's nothing much can be done with a bruise except to leave it be. The body lay crooked where he had left it. He straightened it to a sitting position and thought about throwing a blanket over it, to keep her warm perhaps, or because it pained him in the gut, like it pained him one time he saw a run-over dog at the side of the road.

One large round piece remained among the papers. The wrapping had been torn and awkwardly scrunched together again. It was high time, that was all, he reassured himself, nothing more to be thought about it. High time. The box could not be left there for ever cluttering up the room. Working swiftly, he steadied the head against his chest and pressed it onto her torso, in a trembling panic thinking it would never find the right position, hearing the obscene creak of cartilage, a slippery weakness under his palm. Then whispering in her ear, hugging her close, he ran his fingers along the join, wishing the nodular line away, rocking her, promising her he would make it go away. He held her firmly, not daring to let go, urging strength into her. The flesh must respond to his warmth and his wishes, it must heal where no harm has been done. Held her so long his own neck became stiff and pained him, and he couldn't help but stretch himself.

She was pretty, like a woman sketched in a children's storybook. Pretty in a generic way. She did not make him nervous with her head on. He was just so glad that she had not turned out deformed. She looked neither like a doll nor a stranger. Each time he saw her he wanted to smile.

Even so she was little use for anything except sitting with arms folded, staring ever more sharply right and left. The exercises continued; methodically every evening, arranging her in a dozen different postures, bending and unbending a thousand times. He began to wonder if it would not have been easier to get a girlfriend in the usual way. If he had wanted one badly enough, he would have had one by now, instead of having one imposed on him, as it were. All his time was disappearing, hours every evening, and he had nothing to show for it.

"I got a package through the post," he announced to his workmates. It was a Friday night drink. "This thing in kit form." His friends often talked about their construction projects, cars or kitchen extensions.

"What is it, some cabinets again?" They laughed.

"No."

"What is it then?"

He should have foreseen this question and had his answer prepared. But it had been a long time since he'd been out talking with people.

"It's a kind of a hobby thing. Like a model boat."

Fran and Duncan nodded. "That can swallow up all your spare time."

"You're right there," agreed Eugene, "the hours just fly by."

"Did it come by courier?" asked Fran.

"I don't know, why?"

"How were you at home to take the delivery?"

"It was there when I got home. The landlord has a key."

"Eugene." Fran looked at him in distaste. "You can't let him walk into your house whenever he wants. You have to stand up for yourself. God's sake."

Eugene maintained a dignified silence. His affairs were of no concern to other people. Fran had no right to make personal attacks just because they had gone to school together many years before.

"So when will it be ready to sail?" Fran resumed in a normal tone.

"Another month at least. It's going fairly slow."

"Take your time at it. If those cabinets you made were a ship, I tell you, they'd be sitting at the bottom of the ocean by now." They all laughed. Fran had a sharp local wit. "It'll be a definite case of 'God bless all who sail in her' with this ship."

"Give it a chance," said Duncan, "sure we'll be round with the champagne to launch her."

"Indeed. I'll let you know. Any cause for celebration. How is your own ferry workers' dispute going?"

"The problem is, they're presenting their case with all this workers' rights guff. If they dressed up their argument as a business proposal, they'd be fine."

"That's it," agreed Fran, "No-one wants to hear a diehard socialist."

"Exactly. Even to call it 'a workers' dispute' is to turn people off. It's a re-negotiation of their contract. They're making a mistake by putting up the banners."

"Would you look at this - " Fran tipped his head towards Eugene. "Eyeing up the lounge girl he is." The girl placed bottles and glasses one by one on her tray. There was much to be learnt from her movements.

"No," protested Eugene, "I just thought for a second I knew her."

"Where would you know someone like that?"

"Go on, admit it, you were eyeing her up. The slinky black dress."

"That's just the uniform."

"Go on, admit it. Sure aren't we all looking at her?"

Some time later, maybe several weeks. He had forgotten what the room had been like without her there, or what he used to do through the long evenings. The exercises had become a chore, but that evening when he ran his hands across her neck and breasts he noticed a rim of dust on his fingertips. He backed off, horrified. The ugly secret exposed: she was just an object. He got her into the bath and splashed up a foam. "You have to begin to do things for yourself," he told her. "What more can I do? Do you want me to shake you?" Her skin bloomed pink among the white suds.

"Can't you see I shouldn't be doing this?" he said as he patted dry between her legs. He held her hand, just the four fingers, and helped her back to the settee. She slumped there, alarmingly naked. A sense of emergency gripped him.

The taxi took him to the late night shopping centre. A bit of a rush, he admitted to the driver. He filled a basket with camisoles and slips, brassieres and sweaters. There was no embarrassment at the checkout; he was too preoccupied for that. Too much time had slipped past, it could never be regained. She lad lain naked for weeks - it shamed him now, what she might think of him. His mind played over the image of her draped along the couch, retrospective desire swelling in him. A new fear seeded and grew as he sat silently in the back of the taxi, a thin lacy strap dangling from the bag clutched in his hands.

On one knee he knelt before her, guiding a slim foot into the underwear. Faced once again with the practicalities of muscle movements, the nervous desire he experienced in the cab evaporated. Now he could move quickly and decisively. She was easy to dress, Genevieve, wherever her name came from.

"Goodnight Genevieve" he said, and kissed her. She closed her eyes and slept.

"You're looking good today," he told her every evening from then on. Things were different now she was dressed.

"You're looking good today," she replied.

And so he talked his way through every day, beginning with the bus-stop and the traffic, the river that runs through the city and the people who buy take-away coffee to bring up to the office. There are five different types of coffee, he explained, cappuccino and latte, espresso and americano.

"We can go out right now, you can see for yourself," he said. She turned her face away.

"And have them all laugh at me?" she said.

"They don't know you. But we'll go out when you want to. You'll get bored here soon enough."

"I like it here," she said, "and anyway, I know a lot about what's going on outside. In here it's fine. Why would I want to look at people I don't know walking up and down a street?"

But when he came back some hours later she was unaccountably livid.

"How can you live in this mess," she said. He looked about him. It was the same as always. Cleaner, in fact, because she had straightened the items on the table and sorted his letters - indifferent as to whether they were bills or fast-food leaflets - into neat piles.

"What mess?" he said following her eyes. And then he saw the scrunched up papers pressed between the settee and the display cupboard. She had gathered them up from the floor, but hadn't dared to throw them out.

"I'll get rid of that," he said, began to pull the brown papers out.

"You don't have to do it right now." She had shrunk to the corner of the settee. He pushed the papers back and stood a chair in front of the gap.

"The coffees are not so important," he said, "I made it sound boring last time. I'll try again."

"What am I to talk to them about?" It was not a complaint. She was excited about meeting his friends for the first time. A hum emanated from her all evening. Partly it was a tune winding in and out of song, partly the incessant small noises an anxious person makes. "What if they ask me if I prefer Beethoven or Wagner? I haven't listened to any Wagner."

"They won't ask you that."

"What if they ask me about places in the city that I don't know? I only know about six streets in the centre."

"Just give a silly answer, make them laugh."

"You won't leave me on my own and start talking to them about me? They'll be looking at me . . ."

"I won't leave you on your own. Whenever you want to leave just give me a sign and we'll go straight away."

"Why aren't you putting on good clothes? They are your best friends. You should show them some respect."

"You're right," he laughed and chose a yellow casual shirt he had not had occasion to wear.

"I'd like to bring them a present. Flowers would look silly, wouldn't they? Maybe some chocolates. Tell me about them again. Fran and Duncan. Fran the civil engineer. They are important people, your friends? What about the friends that they have, do they become your friends too?"

"Sometimes they do. After a couple of years or so."

"Years? And will your friends become my friends too? I mean not in years, but soon."

"Yes, definitely."

The taxi driver responded readily to her chat. She was still talking about friends. It was an important topic to her. But the taxi driver was charmed. Once a week for close friends, three or four times a year for what you might call acquaintances. Now that's a word that should be used more. Generally they had a few pints, but someone that you only meet in the pub is never a true friend. The driver was certain on this point. To be a friend with someone you had to have relied on each other for something. Or worked together on some dodgy business. I'm unusual, the driver averred, catching her eye in the rear-view mirror, in that all my friends do totally different things. Usually if one schoolfriend becomes, say, a solicitor, he loses touch with all the ordinary pals left lower on the scale.

"That's horrible," she said.

"Horrible, yeah. But that's not the way it is with me."

As he held the car door open for Genevieve, the driver gave Eugene a wry smile: you like them that way, don't you.

The pub was dim inside and milling with people. He had wanted to suggest a restaurant for this first meeting, but hadn't dared. It would have made too much of the occasion. It would only have made Genevieve more nervous, he told himself. As it was she had fretted for hours. He hoped she wasn't dressed too stylishly for this place. The boots she had chosen were tall with silver eyeholes. He was a down-to-earth person, and hated pretensions of all kinds.

"Genevieve, this is Duncan, Fran." He clapped his hands together. "Let's move to a table." And about-turned to hunt one down.

"See," said Genevieve with a large wink, "he makes you all to follow." Duncan and Fran laughed at the cryptic comment. "So you are Fran? Eugene said you were a wit. I hope you're not planning to give me lessons." They were in loud guffaws by the time they reached the table.

"Me and the lads are just getting to know each other," she explained. "I tried my elephant joke on them."

"And it worked," said Duncan. "Jeez Eugene, you've been keeping this one hidden away.

"Eugene doesn't like to share me,' she said.

"But what's your opinion on this?" said Fran.

"I am going to have an opinion on everything." They laughed knowingly, eyes flitting from the girl to Eugene, watching to gauge his reaction. This quick wit and forwardness amazed him. He was too surprised to feel anything like jealousy.

Confidence grew that there would be no catastrophic breakdown in her behaviour. True, she asked the waitress if they could meet the next day. And at one point she lost interest in Eugene and his friends, as though they had nothing to do with her, and started talking to people at the next table.

"Where do you come from, hey, Genevieve?" Fran asked, drawing her back. She sighed.

"I had a feeling you in particular would ask that." More laughs. "So I prepared an answer for you. - Am I doing well Eugene?"

"You're doing very well," he said blandly.

"I'm from a place you don't want to go to."

"And where's that?" said Fran.

"Not telling," she said in a bored voice.

"Eugene," he said ignoring her, "tell us where your lady friend is from." Fran had had enough of the joke.

"Ask her."

"Well I'm asking you. Where is she from?"

"If she wanted you to know she'd tell you."

"Don't start this mystery crap. It doesn't suit you. So we're waiting."

Eugene did not want to spoil the atmosphere by being irrationally stubborn.

"She's from Croyden. She moved there from Russia with her parents when she eight."

"Ah, I thought I saw a touch of the Kremlin in your features."

"That must be where your absurdist jokes comes from," ventured Duncan. Good humour was restored. Genevieve remained the focus of attention, but the conversation managed to veer away from her a couple of times. Fran was getting involved in politics at local level and had new experiences to relate.

A moment of frankness broke through when Eugene and Duncan were at the urinals.

"She's a very genuine person. How did you get a girl like that?" His eyes betrayed a disarming envy.

"Oh, just by being polite."

They laughed heartily.

"You impressed them," said Eugene, "you were the star of the night."

"It's easy to play the fool."

"No, Duncan said you were a very genuine person."

"He said that? There's still something I don't like about him. 'Girls only want a rich guy', he says to me. There's a reason no girl would go out with him."

"I thought you were getting on well with them. You laughed with them all night. And now you suddenly turn against them?"

"Don't you notice the way they are? Do you not see? Fran only meets you so he can show his power to control you." She began to cry bitterly. "How can you stand to meet them week after week?"

"We don't have to meet them again."

"And when I look at Duncan I can see it's only a matter of chance that he's not a rapist or killer. Things could have turned out completely differently for him."

"They're my friends," he said, "I've known them all my life."

"They are nothing people."

The strangeness, the ruthlessness of this judgement made his heart beat tight and shallow. A few months before he had held her in the first evenings fearful she might slide into pieces. She was close to nothing herself. She could be dismantled again into a nothing person and no-one would know. She might not even object - the subject had not been brought up.

"Leave them alone," he said.

"You should find better friends."

"We don't have to meet them again," he said. "They're just basically decent people."

She lay in bed beside him, curled against him like she would burrow into him. He could not sleep; a motor was running inside. There was one point on which his experience bore more weight than her lacerating insight. His years - quiet though they had been - must count for something.

"Genevieve," he nudged her awake. He did not feel bad about this: she had done the same often enough to him. "You are too harsh on them."

"I don't want to think of them," she said.

"Everybody's like that," he whispered. "You just haven't met enough people."

"It's not so."

"They're no better or worse than me."

"How can you say that, after what you've done?"

He sat up on one elbow. "What have I done?" he asked. He felt something extraordinary had happened during the nights when he first held her. Something which he should know because nobody else ever would.

"Nothing," she said quickly, embarrassed. He too fell silent, touched by the silliness, the shamefulness of that cardboard box, pieces wrapped in paper, the resilience of fleshy parts.