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One hundred and eighty-seven dollars. Not much for some people, but for Jack it meant months of grinding gigs, foregoing pub night with his friends, and abstaining from streaming movies. He did a budget, and estimated that it would take three months to save that much. Three months if no unexpected expenses arrived on his doorstep. But Jack had learned to expect unexpected expenses, because that’s the way life was. You could not know what it might be—that was the unexpected part—but you could be sure that before long, some expenses would inevitably come calling.
One hundred and eighty-seven dollars. It had been six months since making the budget and he was still short of his goal.
In response to the situation, Jack did what he always did, what he needed to do: he sat down, opened one of the several freelancing platforms he was registered on, and searched for his next gig. But rather than watch him do that, let us look at his apartment. A bachelor suite that is hardly worthy describing. The bathroom had a toilet and shower—no bathtub. There was a kitchen and a living room, but with no clear boundary between them they were effectively a single, not very large room. There was a small wooden table just large enough to accommodate two plates if both wings were raised, and beside it, two mismatched kitchen chairs. The living room had a flat screen television, very old with dozens of dead pixels. There was a single futon that Jack slept on, but currently folded up into a comfy chair. Though he lived alone, Jack stripped his bed every morning and converted it into a chair, not wanting his living room to look like a bedroom throughout the day. And there was a large sofa, too big for his cramped apartment really. It had been a hassle getting it in the elevator and then a nightmare getting it through the apartment door. But it was long and deep and comfortable—the kind of sofa Jack imagined a family of four or five might have, and for that reason he liked it.
Jack struggled to get by. His situation had nothing to do with lack of effort: he worked hard. Or at least he worked hard when he was able to find work, but the economic system was what it was, and on top of that, bad luck had pulled the rug out from under him more than once.
However, you should not make the mistake of thinking that luck always runs bad. As Jack looked through job postings, he learned that the sewage treatment marshes in the county to the north were dying—bad luck for the people downstream, but good luck for Jack. The freelancing platform showed new gigs for environmental engineers, bioremediation troubleshooters, artificial aquatic ecosystem ecologists, and sewage crisis PR specialists. Jack studied bioremediation engineering in college, and since then he had worked a couple of short-term manual labor jobs at the old oxidation ponds in another town and gotten good reviews from the supervisor. So now, he prepared a bid and set his daily rate at twenty percent lower than he thought it should be. Then he lowered his rate a bit more and clicked Submit.
Twelve years earlier, college recruiters had presented Jack and his parents with statistics showing that ninety-two percent of their bioremediation engineering graduates had full-time work in the field within two years. What the recruiters did not know was that their statistics were out of date. Municipal authorities at sewage treatment facilities across the country had started downsizing, replacing permanent staff with contract workers and automated systems. By the time Jack graduated, the trickle of layoffs had become a flood and he found himself in a job market in which the supply of engineers more experienced than him far exceeded the meagre demand. But now, six years after graduating, he landed his first proper contract in his field: two weeks of work, and at a rate of pay higher than he ever got teaching high school science modules or counselling troubled youth!
It was the busiest two weeks he had had in a long time. He already had a recurring gig for the social engineering department of his own county’s police department—two to three evenings a week mediating between youth street gangs—and he kept that. He was also on call as a plumber’s assistant for emergency night duties, and got called in twice. By the end of the two weeks, he had helped bring the sewage marshes back to life, prevented a gang war, and brought the toilets in the men’s restroom at Walmart back up to peak efficiency. He was exhausted, but his bank account was two-hundred and twenty dollars in the black.
He logged into Gradgrind, this time as a client rather than as a freelancer, and did a search. As the first screen of profiles appeared, he saw that the prices were scattered across a wide range, from ultradeluxe to suspiciously cheap. He sorted the listings by price, scrolled past a few of the most inexpensive, and then began sifting through the profiles, scrutinizing the bios, client reviews, photos, and statistics. There was an option to search without seeing profile pics—an option created for people who wanted not to be influenced by their own biases, but he guessed that no one ever used it. Then, as he scrolled, he saw the profile he remembered from six months earlier. It was her: the same photo, same description, and the same price—one hundred eighty-seven dollars for a five-hour session. One thing had changed. Six months ago she had two reviews; now she had three, with an average rating of 4.67 stars. She was obviously not as experienced as some of the others in the category, but she was in Jack’s price range. More importantly, studying her profile he got a warm, hopeful, yearning kind of feeling.
“Why don’t you just hire a proper sex worker?” his buddy Anton asked. “It’s actually a better deal.”
“I don’t want a sex worker. I want a wife.”
He tried to explain, but Anton refused to understand. Not that it mattered. Jack’s heart was set on hiring a wife for the evening. So he placed the order, and once the freelancer confirmed his security background check, she accepted the job and they set a date. In the four days he had to prepare, Jack cleaned his apartment, bought two fifty-cent air fresheners, and double-checked the business hours of the ice cream place beside the park. During those four days he also had some gig work that helped keep his mind occupied: one night shift, two days, and three evenings—youth counselling, superstore plumbing emergency response, and as a test subject for medical research into nanotech antihistamines. Then on the day of the appointment, on his way home from a tiring afternoon at the allergy lab, his eyes itchy and his sinuses congested, he stopped to do something he seldom did: he bought fresh vegetables. And he still had enough money left over that they could stream a movie after dinner—he decided he would play that one by ear.
He got home with twenty minutes to spare, brushed his teeth, set out the food they would cook, checked the time, started to brush his teeth again, and then checked the time once more. Then he sat down and forced himself to try to meditate. A few minutes later, his intercom sounded. He buzzed her in, sat down for a few seconds, but then thought better of it and stood up again. He opened his apartment door and waited for her there in the doorway. Before long he began to wonder if she had gotten off on the wrong floor or if the elevator had gotten stuck. But then the bell chimed, the doors opened, and she stepped out into the corridor. When she got close enough for Jack to get a good look at her, he was not disappointed. It’s not that she was stunningly beautiful, exceptionally sexy, or magnificently glamorous. She was none of those things, but she was pretty with bright eyes and a warm smile. They shook hands and he invited her in.
First, she explained, they needed to review the ground rules, and she drew his attention to the safety protocols that freelance wives used. “Not that I’m worried that you’re a creep,” she said apologetically. “But these precautions are there are for those rare occasions.”
“It’s okay—I totally understand. So ‘Brenda’—your stage name or whatever you call it—that’s part of the safety protocols?”
“That’s right. For safety and privacy, Gradgrind insists that freelance spouses don’t use their real name. But that’s an opportunity for you. We can call me whatever you like.”
“That’s okay. Brenda is fine.”
She raised her brows for a moment then smiled. “Gee, that’s a first. But okay: Brenda it is. Now, I suggest that you try not to think of this as a date. We call it a ‘marriage slice’.”
She laid out the style options for the evening, and he chose “Honest marriage slice experience”. The “Full immersion role play” style seemed too artificial to him—he wanted to be free to ask her about herself, her real self, and to be able to be himself. He wanted a marriage partner vibe while still being completely real, rather than playing pretend.
“So what would you like to do first?” she asked, as she swiped away the paperwork and put her tablet away.
“We could cook dinner together?”
“Perfect.”
As they cooked, she got him talking about his work—his works—all the different kinds of freelancing he did. At one point he worried that he was boring her, but she seemed genuinely interested. As they ate, he was so stuffed up he could barely taste the food, but he hardly noticed, being absorbed in listening to “Brenda”. He asked her what she did in her free time, and when she answered, he asked for more details. She was surprised that he was interested in her “boring hobbies”, but it was easy for Jack to seem interested—because he actually was. The content of the conversation was typical first date fare, but to Jack, somehow the tone, the feeling of it all, was comfortably relaxed and familiar, the way he imagined it might be between two people married ten years and still very much in love.
As they started washing dishes, she described one of her pastimes. It was a project she participated in at her neighborhood community center: a team of volunteers who regularly engaged in internet pixie dusting. “It’s the opposite of trolling,” she explained. “Some of the others in the group specialize in finding issues and memes and to post about, and I mostly wordsmith the posts.”
“So you’re a writer?”
“Well, yeah. Sort of. I also . . . Never mind.”
She seemed embarrassed. “What?” he asked. “What were you going to say?”
“Well, I also write stories,” she muttered. “They’re probably not very good. I don’t know. It’s just something I like to do.”
He put down the plate he was drying and looked at her. “What kind of stories?”
“Mostly mysteries. Sometimes I try to be more, you know, ‘literary’, and write about emotional or ethical dilemmas, but mostly mysteries.”
“That’s great! So, like, short stories?”
“Mostly. But I even wrote a screenplay once, just for fun.”
“Have you ever tried to do that professionally? The screenplays, I mean.”
“Oh, no no. AIs have been doing all the screenwriting in Hollywood at least since the twenties.”
“Oh, right. I didn’t think of that. I guess that’s ‘cause I like old movies. There was more of a human touch back then maybe.”
“So what about you? Do you have any hobbies?”
“No, not really. I don’t get time. Or when I have time, I’m usually too tired.” What he did not say was, “. . . or too broke.”
“Your work then. Tell me more about that. What was your most interesting gig ever?”
“That’s easy. I was Governor of Minnesota for ten days.”
“You certainly have a wide-ranging set of skills.”
“Not really. I got that one based on my experience with adolescents and my training in sewage treatment.”
“That makes sense. But I bet your profile picture helped too. When I saw it, I thought, ‘He looks like a young, successful politician.’ But I don’t think it suits you, actually. You’re more handsome than your profile picture. More handsome and more real than a politician. That photo doesn’t do you justice. Oh, don’t blush—it’s true. Anyway, tell me more. Governor: that’s a big responsibility.”
“Not as much as you might think. They don’t let you decide anything important. That’s why they switched it from being an elected position to part of the gig economy. Basically, I was mediating state representatives and—”
She sneezed. A cute, demure, dignified sneeze.
“Bless you. The state legislature was in deadlock and I—”
She sneezed again. “Excuse me.”
On the third sneeze, Jack realized that he had not changed his clothes after returning home from an afternoon being subjected to allergy experiments. He decided that the best thing would be for both of them to get out in the open air, so he suggested they leave the rest of the dishes and go for a walk.
Her sneezing subsided by the time they reached the park, and the conversation continued. It felt free and natural. It felt good. He did not mind her runny nose, and luckily he had a whole packet of tissues that the lab had given him, but now he was worried that she would not have any fun. He suggested ice cream, but she said dairy would make her sinuses worse.
I’ve ruined everything, he thought. Why didn’t I shower and change clothes when I got home?
But still she carried on, skillfully and professionally putting him at ease. Her smile continued to disarm him and she even responded to his dry humor, sometimes laughing, sometimes playing along with her own dry wit. He wished he had met her in real life rather than as client and freelancer. But he halted that train of thought. She’s just doing her job, he told himself. I don’t even know her real name. Don’t get carried away, Jack.
When they got back to his apartment, she asked if he wanted them to finish the dishes or do some other housework together.
“Umm. Not really.”
“Okay . . .” She looked down shyly. “Would you like to have sex?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“No! I mean I don’t mean ‘suppose’. I mean ‘yes’. Definitely yes. What I mean is—”
She gently turned her palms upward and slowly raised them and then just as slowly let them drift down again—the international gesture for “take a deep breath”.
He did. “What I mean is, yes, let’s definitely do that. But we’ve got some time. Why don’t we sit and watch a movie together first?”
She smiled at that, and this time the smile lingered. He picked a movie—an old romantic comedy from back in the days when the screenplays were written by humans. His sofa had deep seats, and about fifteen minutes into the movie, she told him to lean back into the shoulder of the sofa and then she turned her back and reclined into him. With a bit of shimmying they found a comfortable position and they stayed like that for the rest of the movie, her nose still running, him completely congested and forced to breathe through his mouth. Like that, exhausted from back-to-back shifts and thoroughly contented to have Brenda in his arms, he floated off to sleep.
When Jack awoke, the movie was over, long over, and Brenda (not her real name) was gone. He became angry with himself, angry that he had foolishly fallen asleep and wasted half the evening. He worried too that she might have interpreted his falling asleep as a sign of indifference or disrespect. He went to bed, replaying the evening in his mind, warmed by how good it was, but also scolding himself for having forgotten to gulp an energy drink when he got home from work, or to change his pollen-infused shirt. When he got up the next morning, the anger and the worry had faded, replaced by a strange, achy mix of feelings he could not make sense of. Before heading off to his gig for the day, he logged into Gradgrind and messaged an apology to her. Then he gave her a five-star review. He had to edit his written comments several times before they fit within the allotted space. Then the moment he hit Submit, a new notification popped up: she had already written a client review of him and now that his review of her was submitted, hers was released and public. She had given him a five-star client review accompanied by three words: “A real gentleman”.
In the weeks that followed, the uncharacteristic flurry of work subsided back to its usual sporadic level. When he was not too busy at work or too tired from work, he thought about “Brenda”. It felt wrong that he did not know her real name, and he was lonely, more lonely than ever. Yet somehow he did not regret that evening or the one hundred and eighty-seven dollars. He knew that he would meet someone, that he had a sea of love waiting to be let loose. So whenever Anton told him that the gang was going to the pub, he tried to go along if he had a few spare dollars, which was not often, and to meet people. For a while he also tried a dating site, and even met someone he found through the site for coffee, but he and the woman did not hit it off. Then money got tight again and he suspended his subscription.
One time, Anton set him up with a blind date. Not quite a date, because it was just meeting up at the pub with the gang, but both Jack and the woman had been prepped beforehand: “I think you’ll like this person.” Jack longed for it to be true. But the conversation was awkward and superficial and nothing like his evening with Brenda. Before long, both Jack and the woman had run out of that things to say.
Anton called him the next day and tried to be helpful. “Neuromatch,” he said. “If that doesn’t work for you, I don’t know what will.”
“I barely have enough money to even go out on a date—I don’t want to waste it on another dating site.”
“Neuromatch is different. You don’t fill out some long questionnaire and then they calculate your compatibility. People aren’t honest on those questionnaires. No, for Neuromatch you have go into their lab and they do gaze estimation with your eye movements and quantum entanglement MRI as they ask you questions and expose you to different sounds and images and stuff. This one is science, man! They use heavy duty science to find out who you really are, and who the other lonely hearts are, and then they can find you a real match.”
Jack was skeptical, but he looked it up. He researched and read reviews. It all seemed to be above board and potentially more effective than other dating sites. He decided that he wanted to try. He checked the cost. It was more than two months of Fridays at the pub, more than a single evening with a freelance wife. No matter, he decided—he would just have to save up again. He set a goal that by Christmas he would salt away enough money to sign up for Neuromatch, and then he scoured the job sites and freelancing platforms. When he did get gigs, whether plumbing, or youth counselling, or sewage bioremediation, he remembered Brenda (not her real name) and how professional she was as a wife. In the same way, he tried to be a consummate professional, to give every assignment his utmost. But work was sporadic, and saving was impossible when he was barely able to pay his rent. When a nearby town hired him to stabilize the activated sludge ecosystem at its treatment ponds, he got the job done in half the time they expected and he showed them what had gone wrong so they could prevent the problem from returning. And then, because the work was done, they ended his contract early. Finally, he decided that he needed to add some additional lines of work to his repertoire, and tried to think of what he could do.
The answer came to him: freelance husband. The going rate for husbands was less than a third of what it was for wives, and he would have to price himself low until he had some experience, but he had to try something, and he thought maybe he could be good at it. When he created a new profile in Gradgrind, he decided not to use his “young politician” profile picture and instead found a photo from three years earlier when he had a beard. He did not look any younger in the photo, and he hoped the beard might make him look more “husbandy” to potential clients. Then he waited while Gradgrind ran background checks and screened him. Two days later when he was approved, he chose a pseudonym and began watching for postings from potential clients and applied to every one he saw, even the postings he guessed he had no chance of getting. In that time, gigs in his usual fields continued to come in from time to time, enough to let him pay his rent and buy food, but he saved next to nothing. By the middle of December he knew he was not going to be able to give himself the Christmas present of a Neuromatch membership.
And then, to his surprise, he landed his first husband gig. The client was a woman in her late twenties who wanted an evening of hanging out at home, cooking a meal together, going for a walk if it was not too cold, and maybe streaming a movie or playing some cards together. Her profile picture was hidden—apparently the option to hide profile pictures worked both ways and this woman wanted not to see or be seen until the day of their actual meeting. They agreed on December twenty-third. Jack prepared by watching educational shorts on active listening, on body language, and, just in case she was shy, on tricks for getting people to open up. Then, on the morning of the gig, he messaged the client one last question. “Do you want me to pick up some fresh vegetables or something for us to cook?”
She quickly replied. “Thanks but don’t worry. I’ll take care of that.”
Nevertheless, that evening, on the way to the client’s place, he did stop to buy a small tub of quality ice cream. If he had been wise, he would not have done that. It was not required: after all, he was the freelancer and she was the client—she should be the one to pay for niceties like ice cream. More importantly, he could not really afford it. But he thought it would be a nice touch, and whoever this client was, he wanted to give her an experience as memorable as what Brenda—not her real name—had given him.
The magi, as you know, were wise men who brought gifts to the Christ-child on the first Christmas. What is not widely known is that two of the three wise men were independent contractors—temp workers rather than regular magi. Most of the magi could not be bothered to make the long, arduous journey, so the task was delegated to poorly paid freelancers. But though their status in the eyes of the accredited, full-time magi was low, that was not an indicator of their actual wisdom or their worthiness to receive blessings. Because although they knew the gifts they brought were inadequate, those gifts were offered as a representation of what was in their hearts, and in return they received the blessing of meeting the Promised One in person.
Jack had not undertaken a long journey to go and pay homage to the newly born Christ, or brought a gift of gold or frankincense, but he did give of himself. He kept hope alive inside him, he persevered in his daily grind, and he had committed himself on this day to give this new client his best. By now, you may have guessed what happened. When the client opened her door, Jack’s mind was surprised, but his heart was not—he was both surprised and not surprised to see that it was Brenda. Like the magi, Brenda (not her real name) had also persevered, given of herself, and nurtured hope. In these days, these two are the magi, for they were ready to truly give and, for that, in return they were blessed with the gift of each other, the gift of love. And of all gifts, this is the greatest.
This story is dedicated to O. Henry, my wife, and the various clients over the years who gave me five-star reviews.