Jane proffered her hand.
“I’m Jane, and this is Lindsey. So glad you’re here. It’ll be very helpful.”
Jane was five feet six and stood looking Curt right in the eye. He was diminutive, small-boned, thin, probably existed on a diet of Red Bull, PowerBars, and Trista. All these short men made her feel ungainly. Why, after getting taller for all recorded human history, were people now shrinking? Did this mean the human race had reached some kind of tipping point?
“Cool, how’s it going?”
“It’s a bit less efficient without you, but we’ve been doing the best we can,” Jane said crisply.
“Yeah, sorry—I sort of forgot you were coming today.”
“As you can see, we’ve emptied the closet and started sorting.” Jane gestured to the piles. “It would be great if you’d tell us what you had in mind, what your goals are for the reorg.”
“Oh, man, I haven’t thought much about it to be honest. It was my girlfriend who pushed me to hire you, she loves your Instagram, and then Trista booked it and I sort of forgot.” He looked around. “Really, I don’t need any of this stuff. Might as well get rid of all of it.”
Lindsey gasped. “What? Oh my god, really?” She could be so unprofessional.
“Yeah, she’s after me to toss some of this and I want to makeher happy. Some stuff was given to me by old girlfriends, and she one hundred percent wants to see all that go.” He grinned. “Girls always want to do makeovers on nerdy guys, right?”
“I don’t think so,” Jane replied, while imagining what making Curt over would entail.
“Nerd” once meant someone awkward, graceless, oblivious to social cues and basic hygiene, but it had morphed into a humblebrag; identifying as a nerd meant you were too cool to try to be cool. Curt did not look like the stereotype of a nerd. He was wearing jeans, a short-sleeve button-down, and Converse high-tops and had the requisite tattoos on his forearms. Curt looked like a hipster.
If she were the girlfriend, she would first get him to remove the chaotic clusters of tattoos on his forearms. Not easy, but now lasers could do practically anything. She couldn’t tell what the tattoos were: A kanji? A spider? A Lego? He knew how to mask his self-confidence with self-effacement in a borderline charming way, which indicated some degree of emotional intelligence—scarce among men in the tech world. So there was some good raw material to work with.
Women were the real Pygmalions. A man would take what he got, while a woman would see a guy who was an “almost” or a “maybe” and think about how she could overhaul him. It was like buying a fixer-upper home. More than once, Jane had put a lot of time and energy into getting her boyfriend to choose a flattering haircut, find more stylish glasses, get his teeth fixed. This was all external stuff, the easier stuff. Changing troublesome behaviors was more vexing. Perhaps Jane was more attracted to slightly slovenly men not only for the clean-up challenge (she had always had the tidying impulse), but because she felt like she could put her stamp on them in a way that would be impossible with a meticulously groomed metrosexual.
The problem was the fixer-upper men would invariably begin to resent her for all her exhortations. There would be a breakup, and then, adding insult to injury, Jane’s improvements would endure, and the beneficiary would be the guy’s next girlfriend. If overhauling these men was remunerative in some way, like flipping houses, maybe it would be satisfying, but as it had played out, she just felt cheated, which is why from the get-go she had been making a concerted effort to let Teddy be.
Curt took the Rick Owens shirt from Lindsey and turned to Jane. “What do you think of this? Should I try it on?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in a way that might be flirtatious. “I mean, it’s just a black shirt, right?”
Jane began to feel this project could be a big waste of time.
“Curt, it’s probably a good idea to hang on to the pieces that you actually wear. Also eco-friendly, if that’s a thing you care about.”
She was being intentionally provocative. “Eco-friendly” was a gentle way of reminding clients they were rapacious pigs. Now Curt’s expression was impossible to read: he was looking right at Jane, scrutinizing her—or was he looking right through her? Maybe he did want to get rid of it all. What would Marie Kondo do? If none of it sparked any joy, well then—maybe he should do a complete purge. Finally, he spoke.
“I amsogreen, all in on ESG, like one hundred percent to the factor of infinity! Clothes aren’t really my thing, so I’m down with whatever. But how about I show you a place I think could really use some help?”
Jane followed Curt, who was scurrying like an excited child, down a long, bare hallway.
“Get ready!”
He swung open a door, then motioned her into a blindingly white room where rows and rows of brightly colored robot figurines packed shelves like a miniature army. Okay, so Curt did have some actual nerd bonafides.
“Wow. This is quite a collection.”
A useless agglomeration tethered by sentimental attachments. It was Jane’s least favorite kind of organizing task.
“You know how you get imprinted as a kid—well, I was all about Transformers,” Curt said with a boyish grin. “As soon as I was able to, I started buying everything I could. Pro tip: don’t get wasted and go on eBay.”
So that’s what they were. Transformers. What did Transformers transform into? They didn’t turn into humans, did they?
Jane remembered that her brother, John, had one of these action figures when he was a boy and played with it relentlessly. His learning disabilities precluded many activities, and his motor skills were also compromised. He had no friends. Thinking about this made Jane so sad. She grew up loving her brother but also resenting how he monopolized their parents’ attention. Her mother was forever focused on a way to fix him, something that wasn’t possible, while her father struggled with the fantasy of the son he wished they had. It was so hard to make sense of any of it. Jane supposed her parents did the best they could, but their best invariably felt pretty pathetic.
“I’ve seen all kinds of collections, and this one is quite unique.”
Curt’s face lit up.
