Every morning was the same.  Ariadne would rise with the sun as it spilled through the glass walls of her bedroom.  She would pull on a turtleneck in her bathroom, the only untransparent room, and pin up her hair.  She would make her bed.  While she had a breakfast of coffee and toast, Ariadne would watch pedestrians and cars sail by through the walls of her kitchen, and she would smile, and wonder how on earth they did it.

The workday would begin soon after.  Ariadne would sit in her modern study and type away at her moderately expensive laptop.  The work was dull, but she didn’t mind.  It was predictable and gorgeously clear.  Ariadne was attempting to combat a young couple’s poor taste in wallpaper when the doorbell rang.

It wasn’t odd for new clients to appear like this.  Her home’s design was not merely cosmetic; its primary purpose was practical.  Most people do not actively search for an interior designer; they wait for the whim to strike.  So the only promotion Ariadne had ever needed was the sign in her front yard.  Her glass walls did the rest, putting her talent on full display.  Her home of course, was striking, although no one really wanted a house like it.  But they loved the idea of it.

It was strange that she didn’t recognize the man standing at her door.  Ariadne made a point of knowing her neighbors. 

The first thing she noticed was that he was unusually handsome.  His eyes were a brilliant blue, the color of the ocean in picture books, and he wore an easy smile.  He looked like he smiled often. 

The second thing she noticed was his car.  It was brilliantly red, vibrantly red, gaudily red.  A sports car, the kind she would have rolled her eyes at if it passed by her window.  But she didn’t do that now; instead, Ariadne thought, I would never be brave enough to drive something like that.  Living in a glass house was one thing; driving a convertible was another.

To her surprise, her hand paused above the door knob; she was hesitant.  He smiled kindly as he waited, like a siren.  Ariadne then remembered that she did not have the luxury of indecision.  He would have already seen her through the glass of her front door.  Ariadne had no choice but to let him in.  So she did.

By the time she got back from dinner, all the heaviness in her stomach had melted away.  Ariadne danced through her home, flipping up light switch after light switch as she made her way through the night-darkened rooms.  She was still smiling; she couldn’t help it.  She was remembering what he’d said at dinner, the story about how he’d broken his nose at his high school prom.  His face had turned red even while telling it.  He had looked so relieved when she laughed.

This was the first time she had gone on a date with a client.  Not the first time she had been asked, no, but the first time she had said yes.  Ariadne had always prided herself on keeping her work and personal lives separate, but he had convinced her otherwise.  She was so glad of that. 

They had at least started by talking about work.  He seemed to know that was where she was most comfortable.  He told her how he had just started a new job, something with advertising.  That’s why he had moved here.  Then they talked about her work.  He said he couldn’t imagine being able to stay in the same job for as long as she had. 

“I’m just too much of a free spirit,” he said.

He was trying to change, though.  That was why he wanted Ariadne to help him design his new home.  “I was just walking by, thinking about all those boxes I have to unpack—”

They both laughed.

“—and, wow!  Your house looked so put-together.  And I saw the sign in your yard, and I thought, there’s someone who knows what they’re doing!”

Ariadne wasn’t sure about that, but was glad that he thought so.

Under her covers, she smiled through the details of him.  The way he’d taken her coat and put it on her shoulders as they left.  The way he had listened to every thing she said, as if he loved every word.  The sweet, incredulous look on his face when she had replied, “No, I’ve never been camping.  No, I’ve never skipped stones…”

“Hi.”

“Hi!  I didn’t think you’d call!”

“I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but I thought—”

“I really enjoyed last night.”

“Me too.  I really enjoyed it.  Sorry, I mean—I had a great time, and—”

“Are you free again next week?”

The sun yawned, pooling into the living room.  Ariadne’s feet dangled off the armrest of her pristine white couch, her legs stretched across his lap.  The remote control in his hand was pointed at the flatscreen TV, as he flipped lazily from cop dramas to baking competitions, occasionally glancing at her to smirk at something.  Ariadne was also flipping aimlessly, searching through a department store catalog for a new coat.  She’d woken up today and decided she didn’t like the dull black color of her old one anymore.

“Which one do you like better?” she asked, turning the magazine towards him.  His eyes scanned the three models, before he replied, “The middle one,” and returned to the TV.  He flipped to a news program.

Ariadne had been hoping he would say the green one, but that was all right.  At least he hadn’t picked the red one; she would have never been able to pull that off.  She clicked her pen and circled the coat.

The TV was playing an old black-and-white drama.  A woman with a bob was starring dolefully at the camera, her lip quivering as she picked at her dress.  A man in a sharp-pressed suit had done her wrong.  Ariadne curled up against his chest, and he put his arm around her.  It was as if she was made to fit perfectly into him.  The unpredictability of life, that thing she had avoided for so long, seemed nonexistent.  Ariadne didn’t think twice about breaking her rules, as she put her feet up on the couch.

“Did you like it?”

“What?”

“The movie.  Did you like it?”

“I dunno, I guess.  You’re going to stay over, right? Ariadne?”

“I guess. Yeah, I can.”

He said he was going to call but he hadn’t.  Ariadne’s pen tapped against the table.  She was trying and failing to focus on work—her email was open in her browser, and her inbox was full, but her hand kept sliding to her phone.

She had offered to place the reservation herself—she realized now she should have insisted on it—but he’d assured her that he knew the best campsites, that a novice like her would get swindled into a second-rate spot.  She had asked why it mattered so much and he had laughed so lovingly at her that she couldn’t help but laugh too. 

That had been two weeks ago.  She was still pestering him about it.  That’s what he had called it, at least—pestering.

She wanted to go so badly, though; the throbbing behind her left eyebrow told her she really needed to go.  Maybe she was working too hard; she had been so distracted that she hadn’t bothered to look for any new clients.  All she had energy for was him and his house.  She was even coming to despise her own home. 

It was the walls.  Ariadne had once prided herself on them, had thought they were so sleek and modern.  Now they made her feel exposed.  She always felt as if someone was watching her, peeking at something she didn’t want to be seen.  She was suddenly starved for privacy, something she had hardly ever considered before.  It was as if she possessed something secret, as if she really did have a life of her own. 

She was tempted to text him, but he would just say she was being obsessive again.  He would be right.

Her phone buzzed, and she accidentally knocked her mouse to the floor.  She ignored the crash, and stared at the screen.  This time, it was what she wanted—exactly what she wanted.  She read his brief message, punctuated with a heart, several times over.  She felt the knots in her stomach unfurl, and she admonished herself for not believing in him.

Ariadne did not reply to any emails that day.  She spent a half hour crafting the most perfect, most apologetic, and most grateful response she could.  And she spent another two hours tapping her pen against the top of her closed laptop.

The air was different here.  He was right.  It wasn’t stuffy, like in her home—he was always complaining about how cramped her house was, how stifling, with its illusion of open space. 

But there was something about the open sky that felt imposing too, stifling in its expanse perhaps, cramped in its infinity.  Ariadne preferred the indoors.

Their tent was perched at the top of the valley, in the foreground of an even taller mountain.  Ariadne stood on the valley’s edge, jutting out from the mountain’s face.  The wind bit at her ears and she pulled her coat tighter.  Although it was nice to look at, the rising sun did not offer much warmth.

She could see him below her, a speck next to a vast lake of crystal.  He had woken up early to go fishing, and told her to meet him whenever she got up.  He said he’d teach her how to skip stones today.

He didn’t know that Ariadne had been up hours before him.  She couldn’t sleep on the uneven ground.  She couldn’t have gotten up either, because his arms were wrapped around her.  So instead, she had stared at the rough orange fabric of the tent’s interior.  Gaudy, she had thought, but safe, he had said.  While he was getting ready, she had shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

The world from above wasn’t as unfamiliar as she had expected.  The campsite was not some untamed wilderness; it was as well-ordered as her street.  The forest was arranged like the walls of a maze: distinct, precise, with a certain beginning and a clear end. 

Looking into the morning sun, Ariadne had a thought, one that everyone has when they see realize just how small and plain the world looks the higher up you climb.

What if I jumped? she thought.

She wouldn’t, of course.  She had no reason to.  She was happy.  She was tied to the world now, as intimate with it as she’d ever been.  He had roped himself to her, sunk a hook into her lip.  He had saved her.

Ariadne was so tired of her thoughts.  Starting down the mountain trail, she pushed her mind towards nicer things.  She made herself wonder if he might like an aquarium in his living room.  Since he liked fishing.  Maybe as an accent wall…or was that just something she would like, that no one else would?

“Honestly,” he’d said, “I don’t know how you can stand to live in that house.  People can see everything you do.  It’s creepy.”

Last night, he had sleepily murmured in her ear, “I really want you to move in with me.”  Her eyes had widened, panicked, but then his arms were around her, and she had felt suffocated and treasured.  Someone like him, thought that she was worth holding tight to.  He loved her so much, that he couldn’t bear to let her go.  Even if he shattered her in the process.

So instead of giving it a second thought, Ariadne had whispered back, “Okay.”  Because he loved her.

She drilled that into her head over and over, to drill herself to the earth.  Without this mantra, how could she know what her head would tell her to do next?  She needed him; she needed him to show her how to cross mountains, and how to skip stones. 

He was just frustrated.  That was all, he said.  Everything was just piling up all at once: work, and her moving in.  Everything.  He said he was sorry.

Ariadne knew all that, but the sting of his words would not fade away.  Maybe the granite that she’d picked for his countertops really did look cheap.  Maybe the shade of the wooden cabinets did clash with the paint.  Maybe she really was shit at her job.

She couldn’t focus.  It was hard to think of him as a client, to separate him into two different people.  She’d parse through paint samples, and only notice the ones as red as his car.  She’d look at floor tiles, and only see the ones blue like his eyes.  Worst of all, she could only see him as she saw him, when what he wanted—what every client wanted—was for his home to reflect who he thought he was.

It had gotten difficult after she had moved in.  Ariadne kept wanting to meld their tastes together, forgetting that no one liked the things that she liked.  As it turned out, Ariadne couldn’t keep her work and personal lives separate.  So she had thought that it would be best if she just picked one.

Then he’d gotten angry—angrier than she had thought possible.  He couldn’t understand why she would do this to him.  Why didn’t she want to finish her job?  She couldn’t just quit—she wasn’t even halfway through!  It wasn’t as if she was busy with any other clients.  He said every word with venom.  He wanted them to hurt.

“You need me,” he’d said, his eyes sparkling and manic.  “So fucking listen.  You don’t have anything; do you know how pathetic that is?  You said you only cared about this.  You said it was important to you.  Well, this is important to me—I’m trying to turn my life around—”

He fell onto his couch, with his head in his hands.  He was sobbing, so Ariadne held his head in her lap, as he said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and “I love you, I love you, I love you.” She knew that. She knew all of that. 

He was right.  The truth tasted like bile, but he was right.  She didn’t have anything without him.  No house, no job, no one.  Ariadne had let him in, and now he was everything.  How romantic.  They were two lost souls, crossing an ocean hand-in-hand.  But neither of them could swim, and both were pulling the other under. 

Ariadne desperately hoped that that wasn’t love.  Or if it was, that they were doing it wrong.

She had been waiting for this day, with dread or anticipation, she couldn’t tell.  He couldn’t stay in one place for long—she’d known that from the start.  From his car.  Red like a tear, the blood that bubbled after lopping off infection. 

His reason for leaving was legitimate; he’d found a new job.  His old job was too stifling—everything here was too stifling.  He’d asked her if she wanted to come with him, to move two states over. 

She heard herself tell him “No,” a scissor-crisp syllable, severing a life-sustaining line.  The funny thing was, she was still alive.

And she didn’t feel dead either.  Maybe that was just the only way she could feel right now.  Maybe this was just the eye of the storm. 

He’d tried to sound disappointed.  And he’d been kind enough to drop her off at a hotel.

His car sailed away, until it was only a faint speck of red.  Another anonymous vehicle following the clear, certain order of a two-way road.  Clear, certain—Ariadne suddenly wanted to drive.

She’d sold her car when she had moved in with him; she hadn’t needed it.  So she rented a gray van.  Ariadne thought her travel was aimless, but some piece of her must have known it wasn’t.  She soon found herself parked in front of what had been her home.  There was still a “For Sale” sign pitched in the manicured lawn, and her realtor expected it to stay.  After all, who would want to live in a glass house? 

Ariadne still liked it, though, even if no one else did.  At the very least, she was charmed by it.  It was trying so very hard to be honest, to be open, to be cool.  Its doors were locked, but it still seemed to cry out, “Just knock on the door, if you like what you see!  I promise I’ll let you in!”

Ariadne strode to the front stoop, and peered in through the door.  What had he seen in it?  It was hard to say, since the house was empty now.  But she could still imagine what it would have been like, peering through the glass walls at the slightly distorted, slightly foggy, orderly inside.  At the illusion of clarity.

She had wondered how people did it, how they lived without knowing what would come next.  Ariadne knew now.  They lived those messy lives because they had to.  There wasn’t any point in figuring the maze out; it would change shape as soon as you thought you had it.  Understanding was just too fragile.  Every well-ordered thing is fragile, and every fragile thing is bound to break. 

Ariadne sat on the gravel pathway.  She picked up a gray stone that decorated the garden, and cupped it in her hand.  She remembered how he had taught her to skip stones, how those heavy things had become bouncing shadows on the water’s surface.

Ariadne pressed the stone to her forehead, enveloping herself in its stillness.  She stood and rippled like water.  The street faded to a buzz.  Everything looked so clear, now that there was nothing left to see.

Ariadne pulled back her arm like he had taught her, pooled her strength like he had taught her.  And she fixed her eyes on where she wanted the stone to land.

She gasped, as it crashed through the wall of the house that was no longer hers.  The glass splintered and cracked, running from its wound like a spider’s web.  For the length of a breath, the wall was a mosaic of twisted lines.  It seemed to tremble, as fresh air coursed through it.  Then it shattered and fell to the earth like snow.