When I saw the fidget cube it was love at first sight. The little cube was about an inch on a side. From one face protruded a joystick you could swivel around. Another face had five little rubber knobs—arranged likexf the five on the side of a die—which you could depress individually. Yet another face revealed a spherical cap you could roll around endlessly. Here was a thing made by someone who understood what it was to daydream, what it was to be lost in thoughts so creative as to be incapable of yielding anything whatsoever. I had to have one.

“Where’d you get this wonderful thing?” I asked my colleague James.

“Isn’t it great,” he said. “Did you see this?”

He showed me a face with a thumb-shaped dent.

“They’re nine dollars on Amazon,” he said.




That evening I went online to find one.

Relieves stress and anxiety, the blurb on Amazon read.

I couldn’t find the exact one James had, but there were many cubes to choose from, ranging from what looked like a flimsy version of James’s cube, to a sturdy luxury model that came with its own little bag, presumably so you could travel with it. I clicked on the luxury model. If I was going to fidget, I was going to fidget in style. The model James had was a nice charcoal colour, but the luxury model only came in black, with all the fidgety parts coloured light pink. This was annoying because I’d really wanted a muted, charcoal cube, like James’s. If I was going to take my cube to work to meet his cube, for instance, I wouldn’t want mine to be the garish one. There was another model, not quite as nice as the luxury one, and without a bag, but it came in various colours, including charcoal. I clicked on a charcoal one.

Only 1 left in stock — order soon, the page said.

No need to rush, I thought—it was half past eleven. I opened a separate tab and checked the luxury model again, just to make sure that I wasn’t missing out, but I was sure. The light pink knobs were hideous. The not-so-luxury cube was actually perfect, come to think of it. Satisfied, I added it to my cart.

This item is no longer available, an error message said.

Somewhere was an asshole, up at this hour, browsing for cubes. I could see him lying in bed, smugly clicking away.

“Who are you talking to?” my wife whispered.

“No one. Go back to sleep.”

I found what looked like the model James had, but the cube didn’t seem to be of the same quality. I couldn’t very well buy what looked like the same one, only to have mine fall apart before his did. I looked at the luxury cube again. The pink knobs weren’t so bad when I dimmed my screen. They were more reddish in colour, and the whole thing looked a bit like an executive cube.

I ordered it and went to sleep.

The next afternoon I got an email to say that my order of the Luxury Fidget Cube had been cancelled.

“This is bullshit,” I said to Mia. “I never cancelled the order.”

“Was that what you were doing last night? What did you order?”

“This thing—a stress cube. Never mind. They just cancelled it.”

“Amazon knows everything about you,” she said as she walked away. “Maybe they know that it’s useless to send you a stress cube. They cancelled the order for humane reasons.”

I checked the order. Customer Canceled, it said.

“It’s Amazon!” I called after Mia.

“It’s Amazon,” came the echo from upstairs.

I browsed for fidget cubes, found the Luxury Fidget Cube, dimmed my screen, and proceeded to checkout.

Add-on items ship with orders that contain $25 of items shipped by Amazon, it said on the screen. What in purple blazes was this? I couldn’t even buy the cube by itself? Maybe that’s why my order was cancelled before. I added $29 of TotalBoat teak cleaner and completed the purchase.




At work, James’s cube looked puny compared to the cube I knew I was getting. Even its charcoaly colour didn’t make up for the fact that mine had a fourth combination roller on its one side, and a bag.

“So you ordered one?” James said. “I’d like to compare them. I suspect mine’s a fairly cheap one.”

“Mine’s a little more expensive,” I said, mentally adding the teak cleaner. “It comes on Thursday.”

On Thursday I discovered an email sent on Tuesday to explain that order 113-3058039-2629055 of a Luxury Fidget Cube and TotalBoat Teak Cleaner had been delayed. There was a problem shipping the teak cleaner from the supplier. I could cancel the whole order, or wait.

“Are you getting worked up about a stress cube?” Mia asked when I told her. “Do you know how ridiculous that is?”

“Forget the cube!” I fumed. “Just think about this shit for a second. First someone takes the thing I wanted from under my nose! And now this!”

“It’s a stress cube,” she insisted calmly. “It relieves stress.”

“And anxiety—”

“Ah—”

“And some teak cleaner.”

“Teak cleaner?”

I poured myself a glass of wine.

“I had to add something or the cube wouldn’t come.”

“What?”

“The cube was an add-on item,” I mumbled. “I had to order something else.”

Mia took a slow sip of my wine and gave me a hard stare.

“Are you telling me this cube is so cheap that they don’t even sell it by itself?”

“Not necessarily—”

“Never mind,” she said, waving aside my attempt at an argument. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Wrong?”

“You said that someone had taken what you’d wanted?”

“That was before I saw this one,” I lied. “This is the cube I want.”

“Ok then,” Mia said. “Just relax. It’ll come.”




On the day that Amazon had said it would come, it didn’t come. I checked the mailbox even though I knew that two quarts of teak cleaner would never have fit into it.

“Can you stop?” Mia hissed when I slammed the mail down on the kitchen counter.

She patted my cheek the way she does when she mocks me.

“Relax.”

That night I had a fevered dream in which I’d become an old and bitter man. I sat on a small bench in the park and grumpily poked at pigeons with my walking stick while I complained about my cube that never came. The next day a box sat on the doorstep when I got home.

“Tada!” I called out as I carried it inside.

“I hope that’s it,” Mia said.

I ripped open the box.

“What’s this?”

“Ah!” she purred. “It’s modelling clay I ordered for the kids.”

“Where the fuck is my cube!?”

“Give me that,” she grunted as she pried the clay from my hands.

“And where is my teak cleaner—?”

“You know,” she said, out of breath, “do you remember that time you told me not to rush to my yoga class?”

“It’s not the same,” I insisted. “This is extortion! First I had to buy extra shit I didn’t really want, and now none of it arrives!”

“You’re right,” Mia said calmly. “It’s not the same. This is much, much worse.”

“Exactly!”

“You’re much worse.”

“Look,” I said, calming myself, “I know this is silly. It’s just a little cube after all.”

“Go on—”

“Which is why it should be so simple to deliver it.”

“And—?”

“And now some idiot is fidgeting with it at the Amazon fulfillment center! You know, while they wait for the teak cleaner.”

“Yeah right,” Mia said.

“I can see him clearly,” I went on, “sitting on a box, twiddling my cube. He’s in his twenties, and smug. He’s a cousin of the asshole who bought the other cube!”

“What other cube?” Mia asked as I walked away.




The email from TotalBoat arrived later that night, entitled How was you recent TotalBoat order? I almost snapped my laptop in half but then I remembered how stupid I’d felt after I’d kicked a dent in our dishwasher, many years before.

“How does this work?” I asked Mia. “Total-fucking-boat is the reason my cube isn’t here, and now they want me to time travel and tell them about their teak cleaner.”

“I’d worry about the cube if I were you,” she replied.

The package arrived a week later. By then I’d taken the moral high ground and didn’t want the cube anymore. The teak cleaner would come in handy, I was sure, but the cube had become an add-on. I was embarrassed by my anger, but Mia was still interested.

“This had better be good,” she said as I began to open the box. “You’ve been sulking and swearing ever since you’ve ordered this stupid thing. Let me see.”

“It’s heavy,” I stalled and shook the box.

“That’s the bonus teak cleaner,” Mia nodded.

“It comes with a bag,” I reminded her.

“I don’t care if it comes with a La-Z-Boy. Show me.”

The Luxury Fidget Cube didn’t look very luxurious in person.

“Is this it?” Mia asked as she inspected the cube. “What’s this colour? Intestines?”

“It’s hideous,” I mumbled.

“Nice,” Mia said, reading the labels of the two bottles of teak cleaner. “Part A, and part B.”

“What’s nice about that?”

“They go with part C—the Cube.”

For a fleeting moment I could see myself, sitting on a bench in the park, poking at pigeons.

“Look on the bright side,” Mia said as she patted my cheek. “It comes with a bag.”




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