The Parallel Apartments (22 page)

Marcia ignored him. She'd expected this, and had spent the day preparing to dissert on the matter.

She found the website and handed him the laptop.

“Look for yourself.”

Casey accepted the computer and immediately began to
hmm
and
yeah right
and
oh that's obviously Photoshopped.
Soon, though, he grew quiet, except for an
oh
or
ow
or
ew
or
my.

“See? What do you think about
that
? I've already decided to call him Rance.”

“You're clearly insane.”

“Come
onnn,
Case,” said Marcia, groaning at the ceiling and raking her cheeks with her nails. “Support me. Encourage me. Believe in me for once.”

Marcia snatched her computer away from Casey. She loaded up a DVD and dropped the computer back into his lap.

“Watch
this.
”

A clean, white laboratory. On a large white plastic table is laid out what appears to be a somewhat waxen, anatomically correct doppelgänger of a naked, mid-career Jan Michael Vincent. From stage right a lab technician wearing a clear vinyl clean-room suit over a slingshot bikini emerges. She lifts Jan Michael's head and peels back a flap of scalp, revealing a series of
rheostatic dials. The technician twists a dial and stands back. She produces a remote control equipped with a small joystick, presses a button, and Jan Michael's penis slowly, awesomely, tumesces. The tech presses another button, which appears to adjust the curvature of the top half of the organ.

Then, a sexy male voice-over. It explains that this model's penis has an arc range of 0 to >1.5ϖ radians.

“The spectacular organ,” continues the voice-over, “also has controls that will adjust its helicity, arc length, tone, attitude, locus of projection, and numerous glans:shaft ratios, and let us not forget glist quotient, relative animus, and decency.”

The hour-long video demonstrated many more of the robot's features, to some of which the lab tech, now divorced from her lab-coat swimwear, provided riveting accompaniment.

“It does have some curious appointments,” said Casey, his voice cracking.

“
Rance.
And among Rance's curious appointments is a skeleton made of vulcanized xanthan-gum foam force-formed over Buckyball-fiber rebar. Top-secret, patent pending, light, resilient, indestructible. Better than the human bone.”

“If I were shopping around for such a thing, I would question its hygiene and septicity.”

Marcia was prepared for that.

“He cleans himself and replaces his own replipenis and replirectum and repligullet, though every twenty-five events we have to give him a full gasoline-and-Vulpex wipe-down and run him over to Darque Tan for an ultraviolet bactericidal. Kills everything, including feline HIV.”

“That's a relief.”

“And every five hundred encounters we're supposed to send him back for deep cleansing, but the manual says we can just strap him to the top of the car and run him through the OttoSqueej behind the Mobil station half a dozen times. That's what the manufacturer does. No wax, though.”

“I bet this thing would break down in the middle of a ride, like a Jaguar.”

“He.
Gives you a boner, though, I bet.”

“Is this all about your own sexual needs?” said Casey, picking up a 2,625-page file on Rance's technical specifications that Marcia had spent seven ink cartridges and all of Saturday printing out. “If it is, you are going way too far.”

“This is about honoring Daddy's memory.”“

I'll bet you're thinking,
Oh dear, that didn't come out right.
” She blushed attractively, a sunny carmine. “I just want to pay my debt honestly. And then get rich.” “I think it's about sex. I know you don't want to get pregnant, but there are much cheaper ways to get that deep lovin' feelin' without worries. For instance, tube-tying.”

“I couldn't handle the pain.”

“And persons with strap-ons. And castrati. I know some. They're very focused and obedient.”

“It's not about sex. I'm not interested in sex.” “You've gotta be tired of Schmidt.” “You're a jerk sometimes, you know that?” “Schmidt doesn't have everything,” said Casey. “Does he.” “Why can't you be my friend and say, ‘Go for it, Marsh'?”

“Look. I don't blame you.
I'd
take old Rance for a ride.”

“You can,” said Marcia, jumping up. “As much as you want. Free. Anytime, Casey. Just be my friend and support me.”

Casey appeared to consider the offer of carte-blanche quasi-sex.

“You'll never earn enough.” “Yeah? Look.”

Marcia opened an Excel file populated by dollar signs and large integers. “My plan has no holes. Well, two.” She chuckled at her own joke. After a moment, Casey chuckled, too.

“Come on, Casey. What the hell else have you got to do?”

It was true. Ever since Casey had retired from Dell, at twenty-nine, just before the entire computer industry began to darken with conflict and antitrust and halving salaries, he'd been terrifically bored. He couldn't find anything that thawed the daily, hourly, freezing ennui. Gambling and collecting contemporary art quickly grew old. He couldn't get the hang of alcoholism. Men were dull or cheesy or dim or Republican or smelled. Making things out of clay was messy, and he hated the feeling of slip. Hot-air ballooning was cliquey. Pornography brought him down. Bookbinding was suited only to compulsive simpletons. Stocks were fun until he realized it was gambling. Bicycling hurt. And after he spent forty thousand dollars for a black-market flowering
Pennantia baylisiana,
then promptly parboiled it with water from a hose that had been lying under an August sun all day, he struck gardening from his list of possible avocations.

“Think of it as a job offer,” said Marcia, leading Casey into the unoccupied back bedroom of her rented Windsor Park bungalow, where she imagined the boudoir eventually to be. “Manager, aide-de-camp, adman efforts to be remunerated at 20 percent commission on sales.”

“Sales,” said Casey, looking around the room and then sitting on the only softish object therein: a naked twin bed.

“Services. Whatever. Your job will be to find people who need servicing.”

Marcia sat down on the bed next to her friend. They began to bounce in sync. The bed squawked and
ptoing
ed.

“This bed feels like it's full of elbows.”

“We'd need a really big, really special one,” said Marcia. “A honeymoon-suite bed. And blackout curtains. And flattering, incandescent lighting. Did you know that most people like the lights on? Read that in
Stuff.
”

“You read that crap?”

“Came in the mail, free, one day. It's funny.”

“Personally, I like the lights off. The human fundament is a terrible place, to be neither seen nor heard.”

“And we'll need a mirror on the ceiling.”

“Your landlady'll never let you remodel.”

“Are you kidding? She hasn't been inside this house even once in the five years I've been here. She drives down the alley on Sundays to make sure there's no ivy climbing the shutters. That's all she cares about. Ivy.”

“She clearly cares not for leaky roofs,” said Casey, looking up at the tobacco-spit-colored tidemarks staining the drop ceiling. “This is going to cost a fortune. This entire part of the house will have to be glass-bead blasted and rebuilt.”

“After we get Rance, we'll have about thirty grand left for everything else. It'll be more than enough.”

“Thirty? You mean you're going to get Advanced Rance? What's wrong with Classic? Only a tiny fraction of users will be able to appreciate a love doll that can rim itself. And you'd save fifteen thousand dollars. With which you can buy inch-thick hotel curtains and your eight-hundred-square-foot ceiling mirror.”

“We need Advanced Rance. He doesn't just auto-rim, he can interpret dreams, shudder, and cry ‘Don't stop' in hundreds of languages and dialects, including Nuxalk and Oxyrynchene. And he does
tons
of other incredible shit.
Casey.
”

“Fifteen thousand doesn't sound like much, comparatively, but…”

“I'm getting the best.”

“I just have to repeat, one more time, what I always say when you embark on a new commercial journey,
just
so I don't feel guilty for not saying it the only time you might be listening…”

“W—”

“Cash. Flow. Cash. Flow. Cash. Flow.”

“Don't yell. Your breath smells like Tostitos and preservatives.”

“Marcia, have you learned nothing from your past business fuckups?”

“I learned that the most successful startups have everything they need from the very beginning so they'll have low overhead. A really attractive older guy at S.C.O.R.E. told me that. I can't even think of any overhead we'd have. Light bulbs. Accoutrements. Maybe carpet shampooing or replacement every now and then. You saw my spreadsheet.”

“Exactly my point. You'll hardly have any overhead, so save the cash you'd spend on it for unknowns. Liability insurance will probably eat it all up, anyway, if you can find somebody to insure you. What if his dick breaks or flags or pumps out molecular acid instead of a body-temperature, semen-flavored rice-starch suspension of customizable viscosity?”

“Comprehensive indemnity is available through a few select insurers. But look. Rance will not shoot anything he has not been instructed to shoot. If he does, HoBots LLC flies out a technician and a team of attorneys that same day. If we ever have to send Rance back to the factory, they FedEx SameDay you a replacement. For free, if it's within the first ten years.”

Casey let out a great sigh, which turned into a great growl of reluctant submission.

“If I give in, promise me you'll (1) Accept only cash payment, (2) install a James Bond–quality security system, (3) keep my name out of it.”

“Fine. We can just get a normal security system, though.”

“Are you kidding? Look, one of your main enemies, besides God and the police, will be the Reviewers.”

“What? The Disney movie?”

“No, the gang! The fundamentalists! Don't you read the papers? Watch TV?”

Marcia did not read the paper, and she did not watch TV. Marcia plotted.

“Rance can take care of himself. He's bulletproof and fire-resistant.”

“Rance is not invincible. The Reviewers are.”

“They'll never find out—I'll be careful.”

“Get good security. As a favor to me.”

“Fine.”

“So I'll take the fucking job.”

Casey and Marcia bounced on the edge of the elbowy mattress for a few minutes. Marcia wanted to shriek with excitement, but she knew better than to do that. Casey would seize the moment and use it against her later when he wanted to make some point or other.

“Good. Your first assignment is to design business cards and check ad rates for the back page of the
Chronicle.
”

“What's your job, then?”

“Accounting. Tech support. And customer service.”

“Customer service is Rance's job.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, let's go see him, then.”

Marcia sat next to Rance, who was stretched out on one of the twin beds of her and Casey's room at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. Marguerite La Pucelle, the salesperson-in-chief at HoBots LLC and Rance's custodian during the transaction, sat at the end of the other bed.

Marcia opened her purse to pay Marguerite La Pucelle—$385,000 in cash.

“Nice to see you again,” said Marcia, scrabbling around for the banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

“Yes, yes, you, too. Ah, a great deal of American dollars to carry on an aeroplane, yes?”

“I don't trust banks,” said Marcia, glancing at Rance's long eyelashes. She sneezed.

“À tes souhaits. You are certain you don't wish to play with Nicaise first? Before you pay? How do you say, test drive?” said Marguerite. “I do
recommend. Sometimes there is no… chemistry. You see?”

“I'm sure he'll be fine,” said Marcia, finding the last five grand and putting it on the bedside table. “We've decided to call him Rance.”

“Rance. Very sexy.”

Marcia wasn't sure if Marguerite was making fun of her.

“Do you want to count it?”

Marguerite smiled, shook her head, and began to place the stacks of cash into a classily scuffed Murakami Vuitton.

“Perhaps your companion would like to give Rance an… interview.”

Casey, who was sitting in a chair scrutinizing a laminated card that listed the available TV channels, seemed not to have heard.