Maxey's not like that. She's wary of life in general. Much of it turned out to be not a whole lot of fun.
She's out of work and her best friend's Joene.
That says it all.
A server, wide smile, spotlessly white apron, gestures them to a booth with two couches facing across a table.
“Madison told me,” Joene says. “Private seating for everyone.” She smiles up at the server. “A cinnamon ice coffee, extra cream.”
Maxey freezes for two seconds, then remembers she'd picked out a beverage from the menu at home, to minimize anxiety. “Mint tea, no honey.”
“Coming right up.”
The server brings them their drinks and then hands them a second menu. “These are the rules. You have a conversation, you rate them with the button there, you move on to the next person. Rinse, repeat. Got it?”
Maxey nods. Two buttons flash on the table in front of her. Was the server helpful (green) / unhelpful (red). Maxey may have nodded, but she realizes she has no clue what is going to happen next. She presses red.
The server winces and moves away.
“Did you press red?” Joene says. “Never do that, you don't want that poor server's pay or tips to get docked?”
Maxey feels terrible. “I thought I was supposed to be honest.”
Wincing at Joene's eyeroll, the whole café seems to tilt and twist. Maxey closes her eyes. When she opens them, another person is sitting across from her. There's a joint between the two halves of the table. It continues up into the wall and ceiling of the mini booth. Did everything actually revolve?
Her mint tea is gone, just vanished.
The other person across her coughs. “Hi there, I'm Trent.”
Maxey frowns at him. “What just happened here? Have you done this before?”
Trent shakes his head. “Some free advice: It's better to smile and to introduce yourself next time.”
He presses a button.
Again, that sickening lurch and a stabbing pain in her temple.
Maxey realizes she's just been rated when a red minus 1 starts to pulse in the corner of her eye. What kind of therapy is this? Descended from the rats-in-a-maze-kind, let's shock them if they get it wrong?
She forces herself to smile as the next candidate slots in across the table. “Hi, I'm Maxey! How are you doing?”
“Kathy. And this is terrible. I wish I'd never started this,” the girl says with tears in her eyes.
“I know,” Maxey says. “Let me help.” She smiles again, more naturally, and pushes the green button. Kathy flushes in relief and gives Maxey a good rating as well. The girl and her couch revolve away.
Okay, that wasn't so hard. But what is this supposed to teach her? Empathy in thirty seconds?
Next. Another guy. Maxey's anxiety freezes up her face. She knows this isn't a good smile, but she has to try anyway.
“Hi, I'm Maxey,” she says. “How are you doing?”
“Jeff. Let's just give each other a green and get on with it, okay?”
“Sure.”
Maxey presses the green button. An arrow of pain in her temple tells her Jeff has not reciprocated. Does he think this is a game he can win on points? Or maybe he's right and cooperation is not to her advantage. This thought makes her head ache, in a different place than the pain of her two minuses pulsing at the edge of her vision.
Another person slides into view. Maxey repeats her words and gives a green rating. This is what she can do. She's been foolish enough to step inside, but she shouldn't succumb to fear and anger. She can at least be kind.
And kind she is, encounter after encounter. There are so many people sitting across from her that she feels nothing anymore, no embarrassment and anxiety, and truth be told, no kindness either. But she will fake it.
The next encounter is a guy who lunges at her over the table and squeezes her throat until the world shrinks and darkens.
“Give me a green or I'll kill you.”
To Maxey's immense surprise, her right hand slaps the red button instead. Threatening her, is he? She doesn't care anymore. As the idiot yells at the spike of pain in his head and revolves away, she changes her mind.
No more Ms. Nice Maxey. She will repay rudeness with red, kindness with green. Time she stands up for herself.
Joene slides into view. Maxey almost doesn't recognize her. Joene has aged years, it seems, her face is wan and lined with tiredness and defeat.
Maxey reaches out and grasps Joene's hand. “Oh my god! You're still here! I thought you got out long ago.”
Joene cries. “What was I thinking getting us in here? I bet those mean bitches lied about what happened to them. We'll never get out. We'll die here. Or we're already dead.”
Maxey is reminded that the mean bitches did get out. “What else did they say? How did they get out?”
Joene cries and shakes her head. She seems lost here.
For Maxey being lost isn't new. She's been there her whole life. Joene's presence strengthens her, and she starts thinking again. The Revolving Couch is a machine. It doesn't have infinite capacity. People have come out before. That means there's a victory condition, a way to get this to stop, get out.
What could it be?
Niceness hasn't worked for her. She has five red minuses pulsing in her eye. Tit for tat? She has read somewhere that is what computers do. She's been doing that for a while, with no change. People aren't computers. Honesty?
But then, if she is honest, would she give Joene a green button? She knows, really, that Joene isn't that nice. It's only that the two of them are on the bottom of the pecking order and so have been thrown together. Loyalty versus honesty? Loyalty wins out. Green for Joene, then honesty for everyone else.
Joene disappears, still sniveling.
One of the red minuses in Maxey's vision winks out.
She'll take that as a good sign.
Five encounters later, an empty seat wheels into place across from her. A plasticized card sits on the table. “Barista wanted. Apply yes/no?”
Maxey needs a job. But more time in this horrible place, hell no. Her hand hovers over the red button. Wait. Job hours are finite. You can quit a job. This is an improvement over encounters from which there is no escape. This is the escape.
She slams down on the green button.
