Like Clockwork (3 page)

Huddled in the woods, shivering and trying
not to sneeze, she could see Boston kneeling over it, his hand reaching down,
trying to pull the eye from the socket.

“Gentlemen,” it said, in that flat, low
voice, still trying to kick.

“Fuck!” Boston said. “It’s really in there.”

“Think it must be clamped from the inside,”
Misfit said. Boston went over to the opposite side of the thicket and came back
with a long stick.

“Good luck,” Misfit snickered. He hammered
a hand down on the thing’s chest. “Fuck! Stop squirming! Jesus!”

Boston stuck the stick into the eye socket
and pried.

“Please ... ” the thing said. Boston put
all his weight into it. “Gentlemen. Please.”

The stick snapped and Boston toppled into
the mud. “Ahhhhh
shit!
” he yelled. Misfit and Creeper snickered, and adjusted
their grip as the thing tried to kick out from underneath them again.

Boston got to his feet, grabbing the broken
stick and whacking the thing over and over again. “Fucking son of a whore!” He
kicked it and the thing gonged. “My fucking jeans! Son of a fucking whore!” He
kicked it again.

“Jesus,” Misfit said, getting up. “Calm
down, man.”

The thing finally made its escape, kicking
out from beneath Creeper and turning onto its belly, making for the woods. But
it was rusty, and slow, grabbing with its hands into the mud and pulling itself
along.

“My fucking
jeans,
” said Boston.

Evie bit her lip, and held her nose to
stifle a sneeze. From here, under the bushes, Boston looked as far from a
“Gentleman” as one could be.

“Yeah, run you piece of shit.” Boston
chased after the thing, still on its hands and knees. He kicked it in the back,
sending it sprawling into the mud once more. Misfits grabbed Boston’s right
arm, Creeper his left, and they held him back as he aimed another kick in the
air above it.

“Ease up, man,” Misfit said. Boston
struggled for a moment, watching the thing grope through the mud. The calliope
music had warbled up again, but it sounded slow, running down. “Ease up,”
Misfit said again. The rain had started to fall once more. “You good?”  he asked
after a moment.

“Yeah,” Boston nodded. He sniffed, and
fixed his hair. “Fuck it,” he said at last.

Creeper let go. “There’s like a thousand
bucks in that thing, easy.”

“Ahh, fuck it,” Misfit said, letting go as
well. “You can’t get it out now.” Boston looked towards the dark side of the
clearing where the robot had crawled.

“Got tools in my truck,” Creeper said.

Boston rounded on him. “Yeah, where’s your
truck, asshole?”

“Oh. Right.”

Boston gave one last look into the dark,
and sighed. “C’mon then.” He turned and headed back towards the bus stop.

“Fuckin’ thousand bucks,” Evie heard Creeper
say as they thrashed through the bushes. “Maybe more.”

“Get it in the morning,” said Misfit say as
they walked off. “Might still be here. Like, no one’s gotten it yet, y’know?”

“Yeah,” she heard Boston say, defeated, as
they got further and further away. Still she waited, very sober now, but no
less afraid as the rain fell. She waited until she heard the hiss of the bus,
their brutish laughter cut off by the bus doors as they closed and took them
mercifully away.

She got to her feet and walked across the
clearing towards the sound of that carousel playing, run down and painfully
pealing out note by note.

“Hey,” she said, softly, gently. “Hey.”

It was under a tree, leaning, huddled
against it, staring out into the clearing. She took a tentative step towards it
and the carousel stopped.

“Has this thing done wrong?” it said.

“You didn’t,” was all Evie could think of
saying. She moved closer, her voice as soothing as she could make it. “You didn’t.”

It looked back at the clearing once more. “Once
there was applause,” it said.

Then, in that blaring nasally European
voice, it blared, “Ladies! Gentlemen! Children of all ages!” Silent then, it
continued to look out towards the clearing. “They used to admire it. This
thing.”

“I know,” Evie said.

She couldn’t leave it here overnight.
Boston would sober up, she knew, but a thousand bucks (maybe more) was a
thousand bucks, clear. She had a feeling that, because of his jeans, because of
the way Creeper and Misfit had laughed at him, and of course, because of the
money, he would be back tomorrow. “I know,” she said again, and reached down to
touch the metal bands that ran along the top of the thing’s head. That was when
it flinched. Actually
flinched
from her touch, and that was all it took
to make her bite her lip to keep from crying. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “Hey.
It’s okay.”

“It once performed,” the thing said. “In
the circus.”

“I saw.”

It swiveled its head to look at her, little
copper eyes clicking. “This thing is quite old now,” it said. And she smiled a
little, even as a stupid tear fell down her cheek.
Fuck it
, she thought.
The fucking thing flinched.

“You still did very well.” She put her
hands around the things arm, pulling. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here,
okay?”

It got to its feet. “Thank you, yes. It has
gotten quite wet. It will rust.”

“You’re pretty rusty already.”

“Ah, yes,” it said, looking down at itself.
“Pity.”

“C’mon” Evie said, and was it limping a
little? Or was that only the old waterlogged legs? “Let’s get you home.”

*****

A press against her chest the next morning,
Evie moaned, pushing against Lancelot as he purred and made muffins on the
blanket. The rain was still pattering against the window, but it was one of
those rains that seems to fall from a clear sky – the sun was bright against
her eyelids. She groaned and groped for her glasses, and as she turned she
noticed that she was damp. The sheets were damp, and the pillow.

Well. This dress is officially ruined
, she thought, her head beginning to pound.
Damn.
She got up
with a sigh, and stumbled through the piles of clothes on the floor to the
“clean” pile, and pulled out one of her old ratty nightshirts, one of her
Saturday shirts – a faded neon pink Jem and the Holograms shirt which she
hadn’t worried about growing out of since Junior High.
One of the benefits
of arrested development.

She smirked as she slid it over her head.
The
benefits of drinking too much coffee
.
Sorry, Mom.
At least she could
call herself “petite.” She dried her hair with a shirt from the “slightly
dirty” pile and stumbled through the small hallway towards the kitchen, with a
rueful kick of her ballet slippers outside the bedroom door, drying and covered
in caked mud. Lancelot followed, running to keep up as best he could while
trying to rub against her ankle at the same time to say, “Good morning. I
missed you.”

“Oh, Lancelot, honey,” she said to him as
he mrrowed and tripped over her foot. “Mommy needs to warm up a bit before you
get some lovin’. Go pester your brother. Go find – ”

She saw it out of the corner of her eye and
her breath caught for a moment, that quick flash of knowing a stranger was in
the room with her, before the memory came back of walking home with it, of how
she had stopped a number of times, beginning to shiver, until it had picked her
up and carried her the rest of the way.

The sunlight was yawning through the bay
window. Parcifal was lounging in it, not knowing or not caring that she was up.
The light caught the bands of copper, making them glow softly, and the sounds
that came from it blended perfectly with the hum of the fridge, the huffing of
the A/C. It emitted a low but ever-present whirring as gyroscopes and cogs and
gears and any number of things she couldn’t see turned over and clicked inside
it. It was staring straight across the room from where it stood in the corner,
and nothing about it seemed to move but what was inside it, whirring.

“Good Morning,” it said, just as she was
wondering if it was turned off, or sleeping.

“How long have you been there?” she asked,
walking past it to the little open kitchen, drying her hair into an auburn
frizz, before throwing the shirt back into the living room.

“Miss told it to stay here,” it said, its
eyes following her into the kitchen before returning to look at the opposite
corner.

“All night?” she asked, fumbling for the
filters.

“Miss did not say.”

“Oh. Right.” She finally found the coffee,
and yawned as she put the pot on. “Did you … did you want to move?”

There was a moment of whirring and clicking
in the silence. “Yes,” it said, in that flat tone, finally. “It is rather
rusty.” Another whirring silence. “But it is no longer wet.” And yet it didn’t
move. It seemed to wait.

“Well, that’s one of us.” She sighed,
watching the coffee as it splurted into the pot. She looked up at it, and the
eyes roved to meet hers, then went back to looking at the corner. It
straightened up, and shifted on the spot where it stood; the gears creaking in
it sounded suspiciously like a sigh.

“Don’t suppose you want some coffee, huh?”

It clicked. Its eyes turned to look at her.
It even seemed like it
blinked
. She could swear it had, despite the lack
of eyelids; she knew a blink when she saw one.

Also, it must have been a play of light,
but she could swear it had smirked at her – a strangely sad smirk with that
immovable open gap of a mouth. It was a passing thought, but still she felt it.

“Sorry,” she said, and even blushed a
little. “Stupid question.” Still it stared at her, and she really
could
feel that smirk, even as it straightened its back again with a slight creak
that cut through her hangover like a saw. “Sit
down
then,” she snapped.
“Jesus.”

“Here?” it said.

Smart-ass,
she
thought, even though she knew that was impossible. Or well, thought it was.

“No. On the couch. Sit on the couch, if you
want. Jesus.” She poured herself a cup and cursed as it splashed up and scalded
her hand. She had been awake for only a few minutes, and the thing was already
on her nerves somehow. However, it waited. She glared at it. It clicked back at
her, and yeah, it was smirking somewhere in there alright. She sighed. “Would
you care to have a seat?” she said thinly.

“Please, yes.”

Yes, this was definitely sass. Having
sassed and been sassed many times before she knew that tone, and whether it was
all gears and flat-voiced or not, the thing was sassing her now. It creaked its
rusty legs and walked to the couch, sitting with another stretch of metal that
grated and sounded like a sigh.

 “This thing thanks you,” it said. The
gears creaked as it looked around the room, though she was sure he had spent
enough time looking at it already.
All night standing. Jesus
, she
thought. “Miss has a very lovely home,” it said. “It was very kind of you to
invite it in. Very kind.”

She knew she hadn’t. Not really. She’d been
half asleep in its arms, and barely remembered telling it to stay in the living
room while she staggered to bed. She was about to say something, something
cutting, to put it back in its place, when it leaned against the sofa and
jerked, quickly upright again, as if wincing.

“Are you … are you alright?” The image of
Boston kicking it in the back as scrabbled away rose in her mind. “From … from
last night, I mean.” The thing swiveled its head almost all the way around to
look at her, and was silent for a moment, except for those whirs and clicks.

“It is not supposed to feel pain,” it said
at last. “It is quite sound.”

“But still,” she said, looking at it
closely.
The way it had sprawled into the mud, the way it flinched as she
leaned down to touch it.
“Still.”

“Miss need not worry,” it said. “It is not
supposed to feel pain. Nothing has been harmed.” The head swiveled back to face
the wall again, and he was all secret whirls and clicks once more.

Evie sipped her coffee.

“Is Miss alright?” he said, still staring
at the wall.

“Evie. I … my name is Evie.”

“Ah,” he said. The head turned to look at
her once more. “Is Miss Evie alright?”

“Evie has a headache.” She sipped her
coffee and looked at those copper balls staring back at her. “Evie might have
caught a cold. But Evie is fine. I’m fine.”

“Good,” it said, and swiveled again. “That
is good.” She stared at the back of its head, the crushed beer can stuck inside
it, thinking about how the barbarians had crashed into the clearing and found
It
,
and not her. There was graffiti on its back as well. Some wit had scrawled
Bite
me
in black.

Had it stared at her after its
performance? Had it been looking to see if she was safe?