Girl Parts (11 page)

“It’s not about sex, David. It’s about achieving something
real,
” Dr. Roger said.

“Sex
is
real.”

“You’re too young,” said his father. “We weren’t going to buy you a blow-up doll.”

“Didn’t you find yourself forming an emotional bond?”

“No.”

His friends were more sympathetic.

“I can believe the bitch cheated on you,” Artie said.

“Let her go back to New Hampshire or wherever,” said Clay.

“I’m going back to blondes,” David said, finishing the last Miller and tossing the can into the woods.

“
There’s
our old Sun God.” Clay smacked him on the shoulder. “Glad to have you back.”

He was glad to be back. He’d be gladder when they finally came and hauled her stuff away.

“You have no idea where she might have gone?” said the Sakora representative.

“No clue,” said David. The rep stood there in his suit, staring at David with small gray eyes, waiting for more. When David didn’t look up, he finally turned and left.

The only time he felt bad was at night. He woke up, thinking of her, and turned on all the lights. He turned on the computer, the stereo, everything. He wondered where she was and lay there wondering until the sun rose and the sky turned crimson.

He shut the shades. He never wanted to see that color again.

Drizzle pattered on the generator’s steel casing. Thaddeus lay on his back in the mud, flashlight in his teeth, looking up at the fried transistors. Somewhere in the woods a crow cawed.

“Is it hopeless?” Charlie asked.

“She’s busted real good.” Thaddeus was putting on his hillbilly mechanic routine. “Lightning cooked her insides like a backyard pig roast.”

The thought of roasted pig made Charlie’s stomach twist. With no power all night and all morning, they’d had nothing to eat but cold cereal. He’d kill for some microwaved chicken wings.

“Can you fix it?”

Thaddeus slipped his flashlight into his breast pocket. “We’ll need to go downtown this afternoon and pick up new transistors.”

They went back into the darkened house. Half-finished board games and incomplete jigsaw puzzles littered the carpet and the scuffed coffee table. Several dog-eared books with busted spines splayed on the threadbare sofa. Thaddeus dropped into his armchair, then leaped up, rubbing his backside. He extracted an ancient Rubik’s Cube from under the cushion — this one much easier to complete since half the colored stickers had peeled off.

The weather had stranded them indoors. Charlie’s Saturday bike rides and tromps through the woods would be replaced by hours of numbing silence in the living room with his father, who was just as happy nose-deep in a botany textbook as crouched in a bush. Charlie sat on the floor by the coffee table and arranged a few pieces of the
Mona Lisa,
snapping a section of her hair into place. The famous smile was missing, and Charlie suspected the pieces had been lost since he was in diapers.

“So, what are you doing today?” Thaddeus asked.

“I was thinking of hanging out with some of my friends this afternoon.”

This was a lie, of course, but Charlie wanted Thaddeus to think he was being more social.

“Oh, really? Like who?”

“Guys from school.”

“Well, that’s new. I’m glad to hear it.”

Thaddeus selected an old copy of
Botanica
from a pile.

“Does that mean I can stop going to counseling?”

Thaddeus peered over his magazine. “Hey, buddy, I know you don’t want to go. But the school thinks it’s best, and frankly, I’m inclined to agree. Even if the doctor did prescribe that ridiculous toy.”

He meant the Sakora doll. Like a good patient, Charlie had shown his father the catalog. But at first Thaddeus hadn’t found it as silly as Charlie expected. Instead he flipped through the shiny pages, pulling at his beard. He even did some research (deigning to use the computers at the town library) and found a few things they didn’t put in the catalog — about how these Companions were a limited release, currently being tested on the market in Japan and New England (over the past year in Shrewsbury and Worcester, Massachusetts), how the FDA had been on the fence until Sakora agreed to remove the “girl parts.” Holding hands and kissing were fine, but the US government balked at underage boys having intercourse with machines.

In the end Thaddeus said the whole thing was crazy, much to Charlie’s relief.
Girls
were hard enough to fathom,
let alone ones built to order. As a trade-off he had to have a “check-in” with Dr. Roger every two weeks, a compromise Charlie could live with.

“You know you can always talk to me,” Thaddeus said. “But I know there are some things that aren’t easy to talk to your dad about, you know?”

Charlie fiddled with an errant puzzle piece. “Like what?”

“Well. Like girls, maybe? You know, real ones?”

“Thanks.”
But no thanks,
Charlie thought. It would be a long time before he could hear the word
date
and not smell soy sauce.

“Listen, I know you don’t want to be cooped up all day. Why don’t you ride into town and get the parts we need?”

“The shop won’t open till ten.”

“Well, get some coffee downtown. Something hot to eat. Here.” He produced a wad of tattered bills. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

“I’ll try. Thanks, Dad.”

Thaddeus parented the way he studied: with careful, loving, detached observation. Food and water, plenty of good sunlight, and the occasional support to help the stalks climb.

Charlie rode the mile and a half south toward the end of the lake where their little street met Horizon Road, the spokes of his new wheel flashing. The roads were slick and black, littered with fallen pine needles. He passed the occasional car, mostly cleaning ladies and landscapers driving
to work at the lake houses. Occasionally a housewife in an expensive minivan zipped past in the other direction, onboard televisions blinking away to entertain her kids.

Westtown boasted a historic district preserved to look like the set of
Leave It to Beaver.
The modern coffee shops, Internet cafés, and Apple store all had regulation wooden storefronts, hanging signs, and whitewashed benches out front.

Inside Land’s Lunch Counter it was warm, the air filled with the smell of comfort food and the soothing metallic clink of silverware. Charlie sat beneath the black-and-white picture of the Hollywood sign, taken in 1932, when it read
HOLLYWOODLAND
. The waitress (Peg, according to her name tag) wore skull-shaped earrings. She brought Charlie a floppy fried-egg sandwich and a coffee.

He was halfway through his second cup when a gust of wind coursed through and a trio of girls breezed in. (
Breeze,
Charlie thought. Wasn’t that how beautiful girls got everywhere? On tinkling little zephyrs.) They sat across the aisle — Saint Mary’s girls, by the look of them. They had long, straight hair and pastel tops, like paper dolls from the same set. Two wore red robin brooches. He’d seen those before but couldn’t remember where. Maybe in a play, he thought, scratching a phantom itch on his shoulder. They laughed and chatted, hands flitting, completely ignoring him, even when he dropped his change, as if a soundproof barrier separated one half of the diner from the other. He
finished his coffee. It was suddenly too warm, and he couldn’t stand that grumbling radio.

He jogged across the street to the tech shop. The skinny clerk found a pair of transistors in the back, so old the price sticker had worn off. He estimated their worth —“Like, two bucks?”— and Charlie tucked the little box with its crumpled corners into his jacket.

On the ride home, it began to sprinkle. Icy drops stung his face and hands. At the fork, Charlie bore left, deciding to circle the lake. He thought about the girls in the diner. He thought about his dad. He thought about the leaves floating on the surface of the puddles, too insubstantial even to sink.

Charlie pedaled past the big houses, up to Cliff Road, which followed the ledge that rose around the northern tip of the lake. His legs burned as he made his way slowly up the incline. One foot down, then the other. The old gears strained and squealed. The black water shimmered in the rain.

He was about thirty yards from the tip of the lake when he saw it — a flash of crimson amid the gray. At first he thought it must be someone stopping to enjoy the view, but as Charlie drew close he could see she was on the wrong side of the guardrail, standing on the lip of rock. A jumper.

Charlie stopped pedaling. She was young, his age maybe, some overdramatic rich girl who didn’t get a pony for her sweet sixteenth. The wind caught her hair and tossed it like a candle flame. Her dress fluttered.

“Hey,” he called. His voice came back to him, made flat by the rocks and water.
Hey!

The girl looked up, her eyes dead and distant. Charlie climbed off his bike, letting it fall.

“Wait a second!” The echo came back.
Wait a second!

His sneakers slapped the wet pavement. He could feel his heart in his throat, and behind his eyes. His breath came thin and hard, like steel.
Oh, God, don’t let her jump. Please don’t let her jump.

“Wait!”
Wait!

She looked down at the water. He was fifty paces away. Twenty. He reached for her as she tipped forward, arms at her sides. His fingers clutched the black silk of her dress. For a beat her weight pulled against the silk and she was suspended above the drop. And then Charlie’s feet slipped, and she tumbled forward. He held tight to her. His thighs bumped the guardrail, and then he was following her over, his feet leaving the ground. The ledge came away and the water rose up, sparkling like smashed glass.

And they fell.

Initiating emergency shutdown.

Please wait. . . .

David!

Connection to home server lost.

LikeSoComeUpToMyRoomLike
Light
DavidRight
yellow

Files corrupted.

Please wait. . . .

YellowBlackgrassnighttreeDavidYellowRedBlue

AI reinitiating.

blueJacketredlight
isShecAge
dawnbirdpapercrimson . . .

Rose.

Booting up senses, diagnostic.

Reboot complete.

Rose felt the icy water all over. She swallowed it, breathed it in. It worked its way into her nose and eyes. Her eyes were open, but all she saw was blackness.

For the first time, she heard nothing.

Darkness and silence.

A hand grabbed her wrist and began to pull.

Charlie pushed up toward the light. It was amazing — the force of life, to the urge to stay living. He burst through the surface, holding her wrist tightly with both hands, and pulled her up, up. She was awkward and so heavy, and he felt himself sinking. But somehow he would make it to shore with her on his back, her arms wrapped around his neck.

The room was empty. Rose was alone in the room. Rose was alone.

David had just gone. She was naked, mouth open, breath coming in shallow quivers. The arrow in her mind, unbending, pointed to where David had stood, where now a yellow wedge shone beneath the door. She didn’t know how long she stared before her hands began to move. They gathered her dress and sheathed her in its dark silk. She burst into the hallway, bumping a kissing couple, and ran to the hall window, throwing herself against the glass. David’s Nightbird was pulling away, onto the driveway and into the night.

“She’s drunk,” the boy said.

“Dean, be nice.”

Rose rushed past them and down into the throng. Her vision was blurring, turning red.
Wrong,
her mind told her. She pushed through the crowd. People stared.
Forbidden.
She was outside, tripping into the mud.

“Whoa, you OK?” someone asked.

Go back.
The voice pursued her down the driveway, hammering her temples, turning the world — the world without David — into a smoldering inferno. No more tiny halos. The sky was red, the night burned.

A car’s headlights blinded her. A horn blared. She stumbled into the woods, wiping at her eyes. She was lost. Her arrow spun, searching for her boy, but couldn’t find him. And every moment away from him was
wrong.

She felt as if her head would explode. Her mind wrestled with the impossible tangle. She was made for David; she was not made for David. She must
return to him.
She must
please him.
To be with him displeased him. She was impossible; life impossible.

She didn’t know how long she wandered. Dawn came with horrible glaring sunlight. How had she ever thought it pretty? She wished for dark clouds. And it was then she came through the brush and saw the still black water and made a choice, her first real choice: to jump.

“Dad! Dad!”

Charlie guided her back into Thaddeus’s lab. His father was nowhere in sight. He laid her gently on the couch. There were blankets in the closet. He wrapped her
up, letting the water soak into the musty fabric. Charlie checked the thermostat. Dead. The power was still out.