The Klone and I (10 page)

I made waffles and bacon for everyone, since we had a “guest,” and Sam had gobbled up all of his before Charlotte even left her room. She appeared late, as usual, straightening the much-too-short skirt she was wearing and fiddling with her hair. She was wearing a necklace that looked like a stop sign but said
SEXY
, and my favorite pair of high heels. And I sent her back to change into the Adida3 she usually wore to school.

By the time she got back, she was even later, inhaled half a waffle, and informed me that eating bacon was sick. I nodded and picked up the paper, with a quick glance at my watch. It wasn't my day to drive them to school, and the mother who was scheduled to do it was almost always late. She already was, and as I shook my head over it and picked up the business section, I felt as though an odd, almost otherworldly presence had just entered the room. Unable to resist the forces around me, and sensing him before I saw him, I looked up. My eyes were instantly met with a vision that nearly defied description. For once, Sam was stunned into silence, and Charlotte whispered in awe, ‘Too cool.” It was too something definitely. I'm not entirely sure “cool” was the right word. “Hot” might have been more like it.

The Klone, as he called himself, was wearing a one-piece leopard spandex jumpsuit, with a skintight T-shirt in an almost electric hot pink, with matching shoes. He had on sunglasses and a heavy gold necklace, and on his fingers he wore at least six enormous diamond rings. And as the sun streamed in on him, he looked as though he were going to explode in a million particles of blinding light, rather like a kaleidoscope enhanced by LSD. He was definitely “too cool.”

“Bright in here, isn't it?” he said pleasantly, as he sat down at the table with a broad smile. All
I could do was stare at him. The outfit was beyond belief.

“I think it's just you,” I said, wondering if the khakis and conservative blue shirts had just been a ruse. Maybe this was the real him. If not, it was certainly an intriguing joke. But maybe he had just worn the conservative clothes to pull me in. In either case, this was sick, and I knew it.

“ Anything special in the paper?” he asked comfortably, digging into his waffles and bacon, and pouring about an inch of maple syrup all over his plate, while Sam watched with glee and fascination.

“Would you like the fashion section?” I asked, as Sam warned him that all that sugar would rot his teeth.

“I hate the dentist,” he said amiably. “Don't you?”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, “a lot. We go to a really mean dentist. He makes me use fluoride, and he gives me shots.”

“Then you shouldn't go, Sam. Life is too short to do things you don't like to do.” Sam nodded, in complete agreement, as I put the paper down slowly and glared at them both.

“Life is too long to spend it without teeth.” Peter's comment did not amuse me, nor did the look in Charlotte's eye when she asked him admiringly where he got the suit.

“It's Versace, Charlie. He's the only designer I wear. Do you like it?”

“More than life itself,” I volunteered for her, and then mercifully, the doorman called on the house phone. The car pool was downstairs to take them. ‘Time for school!” I rushed everyone out the door, closed it, and then turned to look at him. “What exactly are you trying to do? Cause a revolution here? They're children. They don't know you're just kidding … and Peter … that outfit …” I didn't know how to say it, but it wasn't going to be easy keeping Charlotte in anything even remotely respectable, if he kept wearing little numbers like this one.

“It's terrific, isn't it?” He grinned, and I sat down and groaned helplessly, and then looked up at him again. But he looked so sweet and so vulnerable, he actually looked hurt at the thought that I disapproved.

“Yes, it is terrific.” What the hell, he was brilliant, I loved him, he was great in bed, and the kids had left for school. What harm could it do if I played the game with him? If only for a day or two. He couldn't keep it up forever. No one could. Sooner or later, he'd get tired of teasing me, and he'd have to go back to the khakis and the Gucci shoes. But I was secretly longing for the days when Charlotte called him a dork because
he was so conservative. The little leopard spandex number was certainly anything but.

But as I looked at him, he grinned mischievously, and pulled me out of my chair. “Come on, Steph … let's go back to bed.”

“I have a million things to do today, and I haven't finished the paper,” I said sternly, as though that would dissuade him. Ever since Roger left, I had promised myself I would wear makeup every day, and keep abreast of the news.

“It's all the same crap that happens every day, every week,” he assured me, unmoved. “People killing each other, people dying, guys making home runs and touchdowns, stock prices going up and down like yo-yos. So what? Who cares?”

“I do,” I laughed at him. He looked so ridiculous in that outfit, particularly with the huge gold chain around his neck. He looked like the Ghost of Christmas Past gone Hollywood. “And so do you, unless all that spandex has gone to your head. You can't suddenly stop caring about the real world, just because you're playing a joke on me. The outfit is one thing … the rest is something else.”

“It certainly is,” he said, ignoring me completely, as he scooped me up in his arms like a Barbie doll and marched back to my room, where I had already diligently made my bed. He pulled it open with one hand, as his rings flashed in the
sunlight, and deposited me lovingly on my Pratesi sheets. And without hesitating for a moment, he began to undress. Very conveniently, the leopard body suit had a concealed zipper, and in less than a second, he had unzipped it, and pulled it off, right over his electric pink shoes. And then he stood there in a leopard satin G-string, his hot pink T-shirt, and the matching shoes. “Now talk to me about the stock market,” he said, as he slipped off the shoes and the necklace, and joined me in my king-size bed.

“I thought we were going to the Met,” I said breathlessly, as he began to undress me, but as he kissed me I found I was too overwhelmed by him to object. “Do you think we should …” I whispered weakly. It was broad daylight, I was the mother of two children. What was I doing with a man in a leopard satin G-string, making love to him while they were at school? But as the G-string disappeared like so much dental floss, along with my blue jeans and pink lace undies, my objections seemed to vanish into thin air.

He was extraordinarily athletic, and even more sensual than he had been before. And then as I lay gasping in the throes of passion, he whispered in my ear.

“There's something I want to show you,” he said hoarsely, clearly as overcome with desire as he made me feel. I should have been afraid of
him then, I should have sensed something wrong about him right at the beginning, in Paris, but it was too late to remember any of that now. He owned me as he held me close to him, my body one with his, as he rolled me slowly over and over and over. And the next moment, as we seemed to catapult into the air, all the air in my lungs was sucked out of me, as we somersaulted in midair, still coupled, did a neat little pirouette of sorts, and wound up artfully, almost gracefully, with me lying on top of him, on the floor. I couldn't believe he'd done it, had no idea how he had managed it, and not hurt me or himself. He was laughing and I was smiling, as he explained it to me. “It's called a double flip, Steph … it's my specialty…. Do you like it?”

“I love it.” I didn't even mind the fact that somewhere mid-maneuver, his castaway little leopard G-string had somehow caught on my left ear.

“I managed a triple once … but I didn't want to hurt you. I thought we should start slow at the beginning … and work up to a triple … even a quadruple…. It adds something very special to a beautiful moment between two people, don't you think?”

“I do.” I was still more than a little breathless, and amazed we hadn't hurt each other. But he was unharmed and unruffled as he lifted me
gently back onto the bed, and tried it again. We actually achieved a triple, sometime early that afternoon. We never made it to the exhibit of Old Masters at the Met, but by then I didn't care. I was living in Nirvana somewhere, suspended in a world of his creation, my body the instrument he played like a Stradivarius, or something very delicate and precious. And as we sank into the bathtub together afterward, all I could do was close my eyes and dream. I was so pleasantly exhausted, so sated and well loved, that I didn't hear the phone ring, and when I did, I didn't care.

“Steph … sweetheart …” he whispered, as I drifted slowly to earth again, and looked at him. “You should answer the phone. It might be the kids.”

“What kids?”

“Yours.”

I couldn't have remembered their names at that point if he asked me, but I knew I should answer the phone. But he had cast a spell on me so powerful, he was all I could think of. Him, the triple flip.

“Hi, there.” A familiar voice sounded buoyant, and hearing him so energetic and alive, I winced. I looked straight at Peter in the tub across from me, and wondered how he did it. If it was a recording of his voice, the timing was very good. He was playing the phone game with me, but this
time I knew I would catch him at his own game. I had figured out that morning that the way he did it was by having such an ordinary conversation with me that my answers would be entirely predictable. And I would never realize it was a recording, and not a real person on the phone, talking to me.

“Hello, Peter.” I played the game with a wink and a broad grin.

“How are you, Steph?”

“Pretty sexy,” was my answer, instead of “fine.”

“What does that mean?” he asked. Another standard response to anything I might have said.

“I'm just lying here in the bathtub. We've been making love all afternoon.” There was a moment's pause, which made me smile. He had obviously left a space in the recording, which was clever of him.

“He's bionic, Steph. He's not real. He's entirely man-made, synthetic from head to toe, and he doesn't mean a thing he says. And whatever he does, it's strictly a mechanical performance.” From my experience, that made him fairly typical of his breed. Nothing unusual about that, or about what Peter was saying to me.

“We just did a triple flip.” Try producing a standard response to that. The conversation was
slipping rapidly away from what Peter might have expected when he made the tape.

“He wasn't supposed to do that, Steph. He was just supposed to keep you entertained till I got back. That isn't what we programmed him for at this end. It sounds like things are getting out of control there.” He sounded worried and I grinned. The joke was on him now.

“I'd say things are very much ‘out of control’ at this end.”

“You're making me jealous, Steph. You sound as though you think he's real.” He didn't sound pleased about it. In fact, he sounded almost sad, which unnerved me.

Touching vastly impressive parts of him gently with my foot beneath the water in the tub, I nodded with a mischievous grin. “I believe he is real.”

“Well, he's not. We programmed him for that ridiculous little stunt, just for the hell of it, but I told him not to try it. He could hurt someone. Besides, I never expected him to do that with you.” This was not the standard answer I expected, and listening to Peter at the other end, I frowned.

“What did you just say?” I asked, feeling nervous suddenly, and staring at Paul in the tub with me, as he closed his eyes innocently, and looked as though he was drifting off to sleep. Maybe he
was a ventriloquist, or, if nothing else, psychotic. A sociopath at the very least. But how could this be? This didn't seem like a recording I was talking to, it sounded much too real and much too worried.

“I said, he wasn't supposed to do any of that with you. I thought he'd just hang around with you and the kids, and amuse you. Besides, I told him not to try the double flip, or the triple, with you, or anyone, on this trip. The damn fool even talked about wanting to try a quadruple, in the tryouts. Steph, if he even looks like he's going to do that, get out of bed immediately or he'll hurt you. But it doesn't make me happy to know he's fully operative. He was only supposed to be partially operative with you.”

There had been nothing “partial” about what we'd been doing, and I felt suddenly immensely guilty. What's more, it really did sound like Peter on the phone and not a recording after all.

“Peter? Is that you?” And then, by sheer reflex, I prodded Paul nervously with my foot, and he woke up with a start and started talking to me at the same time. This was no trick. Unless he was feeding me magic mushrooms, and I had hallucinated the entire afternoon.

“Of course it's me,” he said, sounding a little tense. “Look, Steph, I'm glad you're happy. I
wanted you to have fun with him. But not quite as much fun as I think you're having. He's not real at least. Just think of him as a giant toy, a kind of talking blow-up doll to keep you amused while I'm out of town.” He was trying to be sensible and fair about it. After all, he had unleashed Paul on me.

“Peter,” I was starting to feel sick again, and my head was beginning to reel. “I don't understand this. I don't know what happened … I thought it was a joke … that he was you.”

“He is. They cloned me. Actually he's a hybrid of sorts, a clone tempered by bionics. It's something very new I wanted to share with you. He's nearly perfect, except for a few minor kinks. Look, just enjoy him. Take him to parties. Let him play with the kids.” Was he kidding? Was it possible? How could he do this to me? Was he insane? Worse yet, was I? If not yet, I knew I would be soon. Paul was a clone “tempered by bionics”? Maybe these were all dreams as the result of a major head injury from the double flip. It was beginning to seem that way to me.

“What about me? How could you do this to me? I don't love him, I love you.”

“I love you too. And you're not supposed to love him. He's just supposed to keep you company, while I'm away. But not quite as much company as he seems to be keeping.

“Where are you going to have him sleep now?” With all I'd said to him, it was obvious where he'd been sleeping up till then.