+J.M.J.+

One of Those in our Midst!

Chapter II: Under the Roof

Author's Note:

This is basically a quiet chapter, but more of the significant players show up; Spielberg himself described "A.I." as being, in some ways, three films in one: first part, a basic domestic drama; second part, a road picture, and third, the straight sci-fi. Chapter I of this was the road trip story, while this chapter is mostly a domestic drama-comedy cum house party.

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I.

A half-hour later, they pushed the cruiser into the Connelly's driveway, which curved up to the house, a large, square-built Georgian affair of brick and stucco surrounded by stately old elms and oaks which still dripped water from the rain.

The front light went on, and Peter, Phila's dad and Bernie's guardian, came out. He paused for a moment on the steps, then came down the walkway across the lawn to meet them. He was of middle-stature and average Irish-American good looks, with bushy red-brown hair only just starting to yield to gray though he was well into his fifties.

"What happened to your car?" he called, pronouncing it cah.

"The fuel cell conked out," Kip called back.

"How far did you have to push it?"

"Oh, only half a mile," Kip said.

"Half a mile?! It felt like two miles," Frank groused.

Peter preceded them to the carriage shed-garage at the head of the drive and opened the door for the cruiser. They pushed it inside.

"How are our girls?" Frank asked.

"They're doing well; one of the girls in the parish, Stephine Lock had a shower for them tonight, so they should be back soon. Cecie, did they make you push? Catholic men don't do that."

"No, I wanted to help."

The driver's door slid open and Joe climbed out of the front.

"Oh, is this your brother, Frank? You never mentioned him," Peter said.

Frank and Joe eyed each other and smiled, Frank with embarrassment, Joe with amusement giving way to something else.

"He's not my brother, he's, uh…"

"He's that good friend of mine I said I might bring along," Cecie intervened, quickly introducing them. Joe extended his hand to Peter with polite deference; Peter stared at it, looked at Joe's face and looked at Cecie.

"He's…oh no, Cecie, how could you bring one of them here?! He's dangerous."

"He is not; he wouldn't hurt a fly."

"But he's—it's—one of those."

"This, if I may be so bold as to speak up in my own behalf, merely wishes to make his acquaintance with you like a proper gentleman," Joe replied, with an icy edge to his voice.

Peter finally let himself shake hands, but Cecie saw a note of disgust in the gesture; once released, Joe's hand swung back behind his thigh almost as if he would wipe it on his trouser leg.

In the meantime, Georgette, Peter's wife, had come out and joined them on the graveled drive; she was an ordinary-looking French-Irish-looking woman, past her young womanhood, but likeable-looking in a matronly way. "Oh, thank God! you got here safely; I was about to start my third rosary," she said. "Here's our young men, safe and sound." She hugged Kip and Frank in a motherly way, though Frank tried to bear hug her. She turned to Cecie and hugged her. "It's great to have you back here in Massachusetts."

"It's great to be back to see how the old place is holding up. And to see you of course."

Georgette turned to Joe, but she stopped short in front of him. "Oh, you must be Cecie's young man," she said.

"You might call me a man in form," Joe replied, smiling.

Georgette took a cautious step back from him as Cecie introduced the two of them; she put out her hand to shake his, but he took her hand, turned it over gracefully and, bowing over it, kissed it.

She retracted her hand a little too quickly. "That's sweet of you, uh, I mean, you don't see that anymore, except, uh, in antique movies."

Joe beamed on her. "You will find the antique and the modern nicely blended in me."

"Hmm, maybe I should try that trick," Frank said.

Peter helped Kip and Frank carry the bags up to the house. Despite Peter's covert look of disdain, Cecie insisted on carrying her bags herself, which Joe graciously helped her carry as he followed her up to her old room at the top of the house.

"This was my room when I lived here during my late teens, when my mother wasn't well," Cecie said, opening the door. Joe pushed it open and held it as she entered.

"So this marked the first of your ivory towers?" he asked.

"I guess you'd have to call it that."

The antique furniture had been dusted but not rearranged; the air had staled, but Cecie rectified this by opening the window. Joe came to her side and looked out with her, into the garden below.

"And the view must have supplied you much inspiration," he observed, looking back to her.

She glanced down at the damp, shadowed trees and bushes and the heavier shadow that was the roof of the carriage shed in the dusk below; he could see in the dark better than she could.

"It probably did, when I was writing light fantasy in my late teens."

"Shall I help you to unpack?"

"Well, thanks, but I think I can handle it," she said.

"In which case, shall I merely provide moral support?"

"Sure."

She'd put most of her things away in the chest of drawers and the closet when someone knocked at the door.

"Come in?"

The door opened a crack and Georgette put her head in, her eyes cast to the floor. "Cecie, could I talk to you out here for a minute in private?"

"Sure. Hey, Joe, could you stay put till I get back?"

"Of course."

Georgette led Cecie down the hallway a ways. "You didn't tell us you were bringing one of those along."

"Like I tell everyone who doesn't know him well: there's more to Joe than just that."

"Does he—it—sleep?"

"No, but he goes into a quiet mode when he knows he isn't needed, just to conserve some energy."

"He shouldn't stay in your room in any case. We won't have you doing anything you shouldn't."

"He won't touch me unless I let him."

"That's just it: you might give in to the temptation."

"That's very unlikely."

"We don't want you to harm yourself morally."

"If it will make you feel any better, I'll tell him he'll have to stay downstairs. But I won't have any of you bothering him, am I clear?"

"It wouldn't be safe for me or the girls to bother him anyway."

"He's perfectly safe, he's safer than most flesh and blood men."

"Maybe you should break it to him gently. Why don't the both of you come down and have some of the gingerbread muffins we got."

"That's another thing: he doesn't eat either, though he'll come down with me."

"He doesn't eat, he doesn't sleep, yet he does…that. That's so strange."

"It's a strange world we live in." Georgette glanced toward the open door and retreated downstairs. Cecie went back to finish unpacking.

She found Joe scanning the titles of the old books on the built-in shelves set into one wall of the room. Since they stood lower than his eye-level, he had to stoop down gracefully to see them. He turned his face to her and straightened up as she entered.

"She does not know if she enjoys my presence or not," he observed.

"I don't think she does either; I'd like to think there's one part of her that likes you in spite of herself."

He smiled insinuatingly. "Perhaps I could do well to help her make her decision, yes or no."

"Peter would have your processors if you did."

He looked away, processing that. "In which case, I would do well to maintain a respectable distance from her."

Was that a malaprop, a malfunction or just word play? Cecie wondered.

They went downstairs to the dining room, a half-formal, half-home-like room with mahogany furniture and a layer of clutter on any flat horizontal surfaces. Phila and Bernie had just come in laden with what Kip was playfully calling "loot": placemats and knife sets and can openers, which Georgette examined. But Cecie was surprised to see Stephen, Phila's older brother; not only had he come home, but he wore a plain white shirt and gray pants, instead of the old-fashioned coat-style cassock she'd seen him wearing last time.

"Hi, Stephen."

"Hello, Cecie."

"You're back from the seminary?"

"I'm out. I hadn't had a seizure in years, but I had a bad spell recently. So the Society of St. John let me go."

"That's too bad when you were doing so well."

"It's better that it happened now, when I'd only made first professions than later, after I was ordained. It's easier to laicize now than then."

"So what are you doing now?"

"Besides helping with the wedding preparations, I'm looking for a teaching job nearby."

"Steppin, could you help us get the rest of the stuff out of the car?" Phila asked her brother.

"Sure, Pillah," he said, following her and Frank out. Phila glanced back on the way out, as if she were checking to see if she wasn't followed.

"Your friends have unusual alternate names," Joe observed.

"They're what I used to call them when I was a little kid," Bernie explained, coming in from another room, not looking directly at Joe.

"You look well and as beautiful as always, I trust you have been doing the same?" he asked, looking at her.

"I've been busy," she said and started out.

"So is the loft over the barn—I mean the bahn—gonna be the men's dormitory?" Frank asked, coming in with what looked like a rolled-up damask table runner, which he placed on the table. "Hey, here's my girl." He bear-hugged her around the waist, lifting her clear of the floor as she hugged him around the neck with one arm. He leaned his face to her ear whispering; her eyes widened and she slapped him. Peter eyed them with mild disapproval but he relaxed it somewhat as Frank set her down, giving Peter a not-so innocent smile worthy of Joe.

"Yes, Peter's aim isn't what it used to be, in case he heard you roaming about where you shouldn't," Georgette said.

"And, Cecie, your friend will have to sleep—I mean, stay up there with them. Is that clear?" Peter said.

Joe turned his gaze to Peter. "Mr. Connelly, may I be so bold as to make a small request? If you must speak in reference to matters pertaining to me, you would do well to speak directly to me."

Peter looked at Cecie, then at Joe. "All right, I hope you understand why you'll have to stay in the loft over the barn with the others."

Joe cocked his head processing. "You believe I have less than honorable intentions toward Cecie and your daughters."

"I'm taking your nature into consideration."

"Perhaps you would do well to consider that I will not approach any of them unless they themselves first give voice to their desires to me and of me."

"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to adhere to our standards as long as you're here."

"Joe, don't try arguing with him," Cecie said.

Joe turned his face away in what looked like irritated resignation. "As you so insist."

Cecie didn't like the idea of Joe being banished to the loft over the carriage shed-garage. But her window looked into the unshaded dormer window on one side. As she sat looking out at the night later on, when they had all retired for the night, she saw a tall, dark figure pass by in the opposite window. No, it looked like Frank.

"I cannot understand what it is about me that obliges Mr. and Mrs. Connelly to banish me out here," Joe said to no one in particular, as he seated himself on the floor where he might be out of the way, in the angle created by the wall below the dormer and the dresser. He could see out of the window across to a lit window slightly above the level of the carriage shed. A shadow that reminded him of Cecie's form passed across the light, but at that distance, he could not tell. His visual receptors had been built specific for his specific function, which required close work, not distance.

"Yeah, it bites, but we gotta respect their wishes," Frank said, unrolling his bedroll on the floor under the window. "Look at it this way: we're all in the same boat: even Stephen has to sleep out here, all the time since he was in his teens, and he lives here!"

"Is that so?" Kip asked Stephen, unfolding a bulky Army cot at the foot of Stephen's narrow bed.

"It was really my decision. I was afraid Bernie would tempt me; we all get a little over-zealous with our self-discipline when we're young."

"Golly, and I thought I was the only one who went through weird scruples at that age!" Kip said. "But I suppose I had more reason to be scrupulous, all things considered."

"Yeah, that kind of environment's liable to make you either scrupulous or sick to death of that side of human nature," Frank observed. He looked at Joe. "I suppose you're really gonna go into uppity mode when Kip and I finally get into the house ourselves, once we've tied the knot with our respective brides."

"Hey, Steve, could we borrow your door key and make a few copies?" Kip asked.

"I don't think we should; Peter might not like that at all."

"Aw, we aren't gonna use 'em for…y'know," Frank said.

"I don't think it's a good idea."

"Stephen, may I ask a question regarding the topography of the house?" Joe asked.

"Well, I suppose…"

"Whose window is that, the one with the light above our level?"

"Oh, you'll be glad to know it's Cecie's window."

"Thank you." He turned his gaze to the window. "So close I sit, and yet she lies so far away."

"Mind if I ask you a personal question, Joe?" Frank asked.

"You may, I do not mind."

"How many women have you actually serviced?"

Joe lowered his head, his brows furrowed slightly with processing. "Three thousand, one hundred twelve."

"Ouch!" Stephen groaned.

"That's a low number if you've been at this for four years," Frank observed.

"I have many regulars."

"Has it always been women?"

"Frank, don't go there," Stephen said.

Joe ignored this. "No, and yet I cannot disclose this information. I gave my word, and a Mecha cannot got back on it."

"Ooh, is it safe for you to be up here with these impressionable young men?" Kip twitted.

"We're all comfortable with our masculinity, right?" Frank asked the other two.

"That goes without saying," Kip grinned.

"I almost didn't go into the seminary because a girl in the parish wanted to start going out with me," Stephen said.

"And may I ask what caused you to decide otherwise?" Joe asked.

"Peter didn't think it was a good idea."

Joe grew strangely silent after this. He turned back to the window.

At breakfast (after daily Mass at eight at St. Edith Stein's), Stephen made a small request to his father. "Could you let Joe stay here in the house? It's a little cramped up in the loft with the three of us, let alone four of us."

"Yeah, every time someone got up in the night, for some strange reason, they stepped on Joe's foot," Kip said.

"No offense, Joe," Frank said, already on his second cup of coffee, "but if I heard that scream of yours one more time, I was gonna scream myself. I don't mean this as an insult, but you sound like a girl when you scream."

"Oh, that explains the awful screams I thought I heard," Cecie said, putting gooseberry jam on her toast

"I beg to differ with you, Mr. Sweitz. I have been given a light voice, so therefore, my cry of pain would lie in the upper regions of an already high-pitched range," Joe replied primly. He sat beside Cecie, slightly away from the table, his chair backwards, but seated "side-saddle" at Peter's insistence. In a effort to help Joe blend in a little, Frank had loaned him a dark green flannel button-down shirt and a pair of khaki trousers; not surprisingly, they looked better on Joe than they did on Frank.

"He still can't stay in the same room with Cecie, if that's what any of you are thinking," Peter said. He eyed Joe. "Especially you, that is if you think."

"It is probable that I may think more efficiently than you."

"Uh, oh, someone rebooted on the wrong side of the start-up disk," Cecie teased.

"I suppose he can stay in the living room," Georgette offered.

Joe's façade of icy derision melted. "I would greatly appreciate such treatment. Thank you."

When Georgette and her daughters went out to order the wedding flowers, Cecie tagged along, with Joe accompanying her. She'd promised this would be the first stop on the grand tour of Westhillston.

At the florist shop, Bernie wanted to add a hint of color to the altarpieces, but Phila insisted they had to be all white.

"It'll look like black and white in the vids," Bernie insisted.

"What color are the bridesmaids' dresses?" Cecie asked.

"Lilac and silver brocade; I designed them," Phila said.

"In that case, you could add a few lavender powder roses to the altarpieces," the lady florist suggested.

While the others conferred, Cecie let herself wander through the shop, Joe at her heels. Except for the soft white noise emanating from his torso, he moved soundlessly among the sample plants and arrangements of dried and artificial flowers.

On one wall, in copper wire basket on a golden bracket entwined with fake ivy, Cecie spotted a sheaf of silver roses. She stretched her face up to them and sniffed at them out of habit. To her amazement, they smelled sweetly as real roses.

Joe looked at her with amused incredulity. "Do they smell of anything?"

"Whoa, yes. They smell just like real roses."

He leaned over to them and flared his nostrils delicately. He looked at her.

"They speak of a Turing test in regard to my kind. But this is the first time an artificial flower passed it on some level."

"And it fooled an artificial intelligence no less."

He eyed the flowers with a gentle sneer. "At least I do not look so artificial."

"Hey, Phila, did you say the bridesmaids' dresses were lilac and silver?"

"Yes, have you found something else?"

"Yeah, these silver roses."

Georgette and the girls came over. "My goodness! They are beautiful, but do they smell like anything?"

"They're a new kind of flower, the Argent Cavalier. They never fade, never lose their color, never lose their scent. They're ideal for preservation," the florist told them.

"The bridesmaids could wear headpieces with lilac and white roses and carry nosegays of those and some lilacs," Phila said.

"And perhaps the ushers and the men of the wedding party could wear a single Argent Cavalier as a boutonniere," the florist suggested. She eyed Joe with mild curiosity.

"We'll take them," Phila said.

Bernie looked at them suspiciously. "They're beautiful but they're weird."

Georgette and her girls went back to the house, but Cecie led Joe along Main Street, showing off the Norman Rockwell-esque bookstore she'd haunted, the stationary store, the antique store, the café where she'd read some of her early poetry, the thrift store where she bought a lot of her clothes, and the grocery store where she'd worked as a bakery clerk before she went on to college.

She led him inside, out of the warm sun. "I still have a few friends and enemies I think you should meet."

She led the way down the aisles, watching for a familiar ugly face. Ah, there it was…

A small man in his late twenties, clad in a dark blue simulcotton shirt jacket stood perched on two stacked up milk crates, restocking cereal and humming tunelessly under his breath.

"Y' need cookies, Carton?" she asked. The small man turned a swarthy, too-thin face to her.

"Hey, Cecie! Y' got some for me?" he grinned, which did nothing to make his face any less hideous.

"Not today, sorry."

"I heard you were coming home this week. How yah been?"

"I'm doing well, considering the Connellys."

"Oh yeah, I don't know why they even talk to me, you know how they are. If you've had anything sexual occur, even just lookin' at someone in the past thirty days, you're poison." He eyed Joe. "How'd you ever get away with bringing him along?"

She quickly introduced Joe to Carton, who could hardly keep from staring at her companion.

"Golly, is he one of them?" he said in an awe-struck voice.

"If you mean am I a Mecha? Yes, I am. And if you further meant am I a lover-model, the answer again is yes."

"Whoa, how is something, I mean someone like you holding up with them tight-a-- Connellys? Oops, sorry, Cecie."

"Forget it, Jack, when you've lived in an NC-17 city for as long as I have, you don't notice that."

"They marginally tolerate my presence in their midst. I adjust myself accordingly."

"So I see you've come up in the world. You get that promotion?" she asked.

"Yeah, chief grocery clerk, only difference between this and front end supervisor is that I'm out of Diocletian's immediate line of sight more often. But that don't get me out from under his thumb."

"The whole store is under his thumb," she said. "Hey, you mean that expletive deleted deleteding deleted is STILL here?"

"He'll be here till he's too senile to bit any more, like the last guy."

"I'll have to go say hello to him, from a safe distance."

"I better get cracking before he starts cracking the whip, an' I don't mean over my head." To Joe he added, "And uh, if you ever want a change of pace with work, how 'bout you and me switching for a day?"

Joe smiled astutely. "I am not optimized for your task, and you would lack the endurance and flexibility for mine."

"Nuts! Oh well, couldn't hurt to ask, eh?"

She led Joe along the perimeter of the store. They lingered in the produce section, where she got some kiwi and ugli fruits.

"If your employer employed such ungenial and even cruel measures, no wonder you left this place of employ," Joe said, taking her shopping basket.

"Aw, some of it was just joshing with Carton, helping him vent."

"Was he a former admirer of yours? He gazed upon you as if he were."

"He admired me, but I certainly didn't admire him. He'd dated and ditched every girl in the store except me. I wasn't interested after the third girl came to weep on my shoulder in the space of two months, after which he had the audacity to peek up my skirt when I was on a stepladder."

"Small wonder you lacked mutual interest! No gentleman does that if he wishes to win a lady's heart."

In the meat department, they came upon a tall, broad-shouldered man clad in an official-looking maroon suit jacket, who stood with his back to them, as if he guarded the case of cooler-case of soy dogs he stood beside.

"'Yer not the boss of me'," Cecie sang under her breath.

"Yer not the boss of me.

You may be the boss of you

But yer not the boss of me!"

She cleared her throat as she stood behind him. "The bakery's all clear, Mr. Diocletian."

He turned to them a handsome but unsmiling face.

"Oh, you're back in town, Cecilia?"

"Yes, I got here last night, drove up with Kip Langier and Frank Sweitz and my friend Joe here." She quickly introduced them.

Diocletian stuck his hands into his pockets, refusing to accept Joe's politely offered hand. He narrowed his indeterminate tan-khaki-hazel-murky green eyes at the Mecha. "And you brought this thing along. Go pay for your stuff and take that thing out of here. If you ever come here again with it, you'll have to leave it outside, or I will personally put it out for you. I can't have him seducing customers."

"He's less likely to find customers of his own as long as he's with me," she said.

"Whatever, just don't let me see that thing in here again." With that, he turned away from them.

"What a rude man," Joe commented, loud enough for Diocletian to hear as they walked away. "He lacks manners so terribly that he deserves to find his wife in the arms of something like me."

With an oddly innocent smile, he added, "Or, for that matter, she deserves me."

A part of Cecie half-heartedly agreed. "Just do as I do with him: stay out of his way."

But she could see why Diocletian had objected to Joe's presence: a few young mothers with whining preschoolers and screaming toddlers in shopping carts looked at him with barely veiled curiosity. The cashier, a woman named Denise, whom Cecie knew had divorced her husband just for something to do, kept eyeing Joe so much she almost rang the same item up twice. And she overheard some old ladies on the way out exclaiming among themselves.

"Is that Cecilia Martin?" asked Mildred Swank.

"It looks like her—oh, yes it is," said Clara Purvey.

"That isn't Bernadette's fiancé, is it?" asked Winifred Bax, whom Cecie knew was addicted to interactive soap operas.

"No, he's different-looking, better-groomed," Clara said. "Frank's a handsome scruff."

"Well, if I didn't have my glasses on, I don't think I'd think it was his twin brother," Mildred said.

"Maybe he's the long-lost twin brother Frank never knew about," Winifred crooned.

"Winnie, be sensible: the government keeps better record of all births now, so he'd know from public records if he had a twin or not," Clara said.

"Oh, it would just be more romantic that way."

Cecie stopped listening to this and turned to Joe: he had his head cocked, listening with something like barely concealed pleasure.

"I can understand why many of the townsfolk have found a fount of curiosity in me," Joe remarked as they walked home, he gallantly carrying the bag.

"What makes you say that?" Cecie asked.

He glanced at a metal body service droid trimming bushes at the side of the road. "I have seen very few Mechas in this town, certainly none like me."

"Massachusetts doesn't take much stock in lover-models like you, except maybe in the cities: New Boston, Lowell, Amherst. Our politicians may be liberal, but our people are still fairly conservative."

"Why do they not take much stock in my class?"

"Probably just plain Yankee thriftiness; what you have to pay a lot for may not be worth bothering with, and that may include your services, in theory."

"Then they lack an appreciation of the finer things in life."

"Quite the contrary: we had one of the first major symphony orchestras in the country, as well as one of the first major art museums, which were salvaged when the Atlantic started to rise, and taken to Worcester. The city was even renamed New Boston, so they could still call it the Boston Symphony Orchestra."

"But they lack an appreciation of one of man's finest works of art, made in his image."

They walked the mile back to the house. When they came in, Stephen was on the phone, calling rental places for chairs and tables for the reception, to be held in the back garden.

As Cecie stopped in the kitchen to store her fruit in the refrigerator, she found Kip arranging a tray for his mother, whom the Connellys had put in the back bedroom.

"How is she now?" she asked.

"Mum's awake and a lot perkier than she was last night. I think she finally got over the stress of the trip up here. She wants to see you."

"May I accompany you?" Joe asked innocently.

"Sure, she'd love to see a handsome face in her room for a change.

Irene was sitting up in bed, reading a magazine with a page magnifier when they came in. She looked up; her faded violet eyes smiled first as her face broke into a warm smile that quickly became a demurely kittenish grin: her eye was on Joe.

Kip had his mom's well-built frame; despite her frailty and the way age had pared her down, she had clearly been a sturdy-shouldered woman in her prime. Her hair had kept some of its red-gold color, which had paled to the color of iced tea.

"So the four of you made it up here with each of you in one piece. You, Cecie, and your young friend, it's good to see you both here. If Phila didn't clearly need my boy to crack that ice around her animal spirit, I'd almost like to see you marry my Kip; your writing would bring a little culture into his life. But his choice is probably better."

"I'm afraid I'd make a plaguey housewife: my landlord is always after me for not keeping my rooms like an operating room," Cecie said.

"Housework's a major part of it, but only boring and perfectionistic women let it dominate. Just keep the place livable, I always say. Y' gotta play with the kids while y' got 'em."

 Her eye went back to Joe. "And it's especially good to see you: my eyes may be weak, but they aren't so bad they can't enjoy one of God's subcreations."

"Should they hear you, the Connellys would not agree with you; but who are they?" he said.

"Yeah, who are they?" She turned back to Cecie as Kip gave her the tray. "So have you managed to get yourself into the wedding party, Cecie?"

"I don't think I'd fit in: I'm too tall."

"Nonsense! It would break up the monotony." She darted a glance at Joe. "You want to snub those Connellys' noses, don't you?"

"It might not go over too well. Besides, I had dress made up special for this."

"Hopefully better than the lilac and silver things they're inflicting on the bridesmaids. Philomena showed me the design, and I told her it was nice but it was too heavy for late summer. But what about yours?"

"I can't say much because it's a surprise. But I'll let this much out: it won't be too heavy."

"Good, don't want you fainting in the middle of the ceremony. You might knock someone down if you fell. Most weddings always have some girl faint from emotion; you wouldn't do that: you're too levelheaded for that. But heat exhaustion you don't mess with."

"And even should she faint, she would have my arms to fall into," Joe put in.

"No better pair to fall into," Irene said, grinning. "How are you finding Massachusetts, young wight?"

"I find the landscape exquisitely simple, yet some of the inhabitants thereof require polishing of their behavior and manners."

"We met my old boss, who snubbed Joe," Cecie explained.

"Is that the Diocletian idiot Connelly brought here the first night? You weren't here of course, but Peter had this repulsive, self-possessed young whippersnapper. What's his first name? Shayford? Shaymuck?"

"Seamus," Cecie replied.

Irene rolled her eyes. "Perfect name for an Irish galloot."

"Mo-ther!" Kip snapped, grinning.

"He's the kind that give us a bad name, so let an old woman have the luxury of giving him his proper name." Then to Joe she added, "Should you ever cross his path again, don't let him forget he could find his wife eating out of the palm of your hand if he doesn't play his cards right by her."

"Now you're getting improper, mother."

"Speaking of improper: if Peter's so worried about our young friend corrupting his daughters, let him stay here with me. I'll keep him out of trouble and I'm too old to do more than admire him."

"I wouldn't want to inconvenience you," Cecie said.

"Nonsense, we'd be good for each other. The young and the old always are good for each other, even when they're different species."

"If it brings you comfort, I would gladly be your companion, Mrs. Langier," Joe said. "And if it does your eyes good, you may look at me some more."

Later, as Kip took away the tray and Cecie had gone to check her e-mail, Irene patted the covers beside her. "You sit here, young fellow, and tell me about your intrigues."

"They're quite a pair," Cecie said to Kip as she helped him with the dishes afterward.

"And it just might be the icebreaker the Connellys need, if they could see she won't come to harm with him."

Supper was late because Peter came home late after picking up the next wave of family members: his brother Ferde, his wife Alice and their daughters Elizabeth and Sarah.

"Just make sure your Mecha stays away from Sarah especially," Georgette warned Cecie as she set the table. "She's only thirteen."

"Right now he's been keeping Irene company: she's been playing chess with him. Besides, Joe's programmed to filter out anyone below the age of consent."

"Well, in case he should somehow forget, don't leave him alone with her."

"He can't forget: he's better at remembering things than us, unless he has a memory wipe."

At dinner, the table was a little more crowded, but Cecie didn't mind. Sarah had complained of nausea from the hyperjet flight from Nova Angeles, so she had stayed in her room—Cecie's room, actually—which meant one less chair at the table that night.

Kip arranged another tray for his mother, which Joe graciously offered to carry to her.

"The thing's making itself useful," Frank noted. "I heard from Irene he caused a bit of a stir at the store."

"Hopefully not much of one," Peter cut in.

"Oh, you know how folks here in town are: newcomers always cause some flutter of curiosity," Cecie said.

"So what do you do for work?" Ferde asked Joe, who sat as usual beside Cecie on a turned around chair.

Joe smiled with mischievous innocence. "I must remind you that, per order Peter Connelly, my function must not be spoken about when there are ladies present."

"Oops, sorry. I keep forgetting."

Bernie sat unusually close to Frank that evening, as if she were trying to sit in his lap. They kept bumping elbows as they ate.

"Are you trying to eat out of my plate?" Frank asked her.

"No, I just want to be near you," Bernie said.

"Well, remember, don't get too close, save that for after the wedding," Peter corrected.

Later, as Bernie helped Cecie clear the table, she kept her eyes carefully averted from Joe, who hovered in Cecie's shadow.

After supper, after Georgette and Alice washed the dishes, they gathered in the living room for an old-fashioned chitchat.

Somehow, Cecie and Bernie ended up sitting side by side in the middle of one of the long couches, with Frank and Joe flanking them respectively.

"No offense, but those two fellows look almost like a set of matching bookends," Ferde said. "If you weren't of completely different makes, I'd think you were long lost twin brothers."

"Like, which one's the fiberhead—sorry, Joe," Frank corrected himself when he saw the look of amused disdain on Joe's swarthy face.

Later, as she was heading upstairs with him at her side, Cecie confronted Joe about this. "What's gotten into you? You've been acting very hoity-toity."

"At times your friends simply do not know how to handle the delicacies of dealing with my kind," he replied stiffly.

"I'll admit Frank can get a little fresh and Ferde can be crude at times, but they mean well."

"They would do better if they could learn to respect the sensibilities of another kind."

"You're doing it again. Can't you hear yourself talking?"

"Of course I can hear my own speech. That of course is as it should be, always proper; but many of your friends need to polish their speech in my regard."

"All right, you can vent to me, but no more getting prissy with other people, C-3PO."

"C-3PO? I beg to differ with you, Cecilia. Now you have given way to the same sort of speech."

She turned and stood in front of him, toe to toe, looking him in the face. "I'd like to know where your uppity switch is so I can shut it off."

He said nothing to this, but he looked away from her, his lower lip delicately thrust out.

"Is that supposed to be your way of beating me to the off switch?"

"No. If you cannot appreciate the pleasures of my company, I shall not speak."

"Listen, Joe. If you don't soft pedal the sarcasm, I will have you shipped back to Rouge City in an orange crate."

A ripple of self-concern passed over his face and it resumed its default expression. She knew she couldn't expect an apology from him, but at least he'd stopped being so starchy. For now.

She opened her door and peered in. The light was on; Sarah, a small thin girl with long wavy dark brown hair, sat curled up reading a book on the air mattress at the foot of Cecie's bed.

"Well, I guess I'd better say good night."

"Should you want me in the night, you have only to come down to the living room to find me."

"You know I won't. Good night, Joe."

"Good night, Cecie. Perhaps you shall dream of me."

She let him kiss her on the forehead, then she pushed open the door and went in, closing the door behind her.

She turned to Sarah, who sat gazing toward the door. The book she held had sunk into her lap.

"Hi, Sarah."

"Was that your gentleman friend?"

"No, that was just Joe; he's only a friend, though he is a gentleman."

"How can you be just friends with someone who looks like that?"

"Well, he's not exactly human, not a flesh and blood human."

"You mean he's one of those? How romantic!"

Cecie came closer and knelt down on the floor beside Sarah. "What's that book you're reading?"

Sarah turned it over. "Lavender Siddon's Lifewater; it's about a young princess who is visited at night by a dark stranger who might be a water spirit. You might like it."

"I've tried reading Lavender Siddons before, but I've never been able to read any of her books straight through."

"Why? They're all splendid in their own ways."

"The style struck me as a bit too flowery and honey-laden."

Sarah wrinkled her nose. "Oh that's because you write that dry stuff for grown-ups. I wish you'd write more fantasy like you used to; you wrote better then. You were almost as good as Lavender Siddons."

"Everyone's different. Everyone writes with a different voice and not everything appeals to everyone at every age. When you get to be as old as I am, you might find the stuff I've written not to be as dry as you thought. Have you read any of my stories?"

Sarah looked to the door. "Don't tell Uncle Peter."

"You have my word of honor."

"Swear by the sun and the moon and the Dog Star?"

"I swear."

"Good, then my soul is safe."

"You sound a little like Lavender Siddon already," Cecie said with a gently teasing smile.

Next morning, Wednesday, after Mass and breakfast, Peter had Ferde, Stephen, Kip and Frank start trimming the bushes along the edge of the yard, especially around the big lawn at the foot of the garden. Frank, in an effort to decrease the visual similarities between him and Joe had neglected to shave. Bernie chided him for it at first.

"You look scruffy!" she said following him out to the tool shed.

"I'll shave for the wedding, I promise," Frank wheedled.

"Well, okay," she said, eyeing him with suspicion.

"It's only me saying it, but the stubble makes you look a little like that early 21st century actor Guy Pearce," Cecie said. She had gone down to get some air in the garden and now she was heading back up to the deck at the back of the house.

"Really? Most people say I look like some British actor from the same time period. I can't think of his name," he said. He winked at Bernie. "Watch out, Bern, your friend is flirting with me."

"Hardly," Cecie said, going up the path to the house.

Sarah had finished the Siddon book the night before, now she came down to the back deck with one of her favorites. She found Cecie already there sitting in the shade, writing something on her scriber, her "friend" Joe sitting on the decking beside her chair in an odd way, almost like a statue: one knee drawn up, his arm resting gracefully on it. As Sarah approached, his eyes moved toward her and he turned his head to her. He stood up.

Cecie looked up. "Hi, Sarah."

"Hello, Cecie, you working on something?"

"Just writing in my diary for now. I also found an old story I never finished, so I thought now would be a good time to work on it."

"Oh? Why now?"

"It's a bit complicated, but basically it's about a fourteen year old boy who falls in love with his cousin when she comes back to town when she gets married."

"Oh, I could see why, I mean, with the wedding plans and all."

"What's that book you got there?"

"The Princess Bride. I guess that's an appropriate story, too."

"Mmm, one of my favorites."

"Really? I didn't think you like fantasy any more."

"I don't hate it, I just don't like it when the style gets overwrought."

Sarah had been trying not to look at Joe, but she felt him looking at her.

"You have not greeted me," he said at length. Was that a gentle note of reproach in his soft voice? She looked up at him.

"You don't have to stand," she said.

"I was about to proffer you a chair."

"Thanks, but that's okay, uh, why exactly did you stand up when I got here."

He looked at her with an almost teasing smile. "Is it not the proper thing for a gentleman to do when a lady enters a room, even if it is a room without walls, even if she is a very young lady, and even if the gentleman is not really what many consider human?"

"Well, yeah, I guess, but I've only read about someone doing that in books. Thanks." He sat down again only when she had sat down on the wicker sofa opposite Cecie.

She read for a while, but Joe's steady gaze got to her. Why build something that looked that gorgeous and that human and behaved like a prince if you didn't let it blink? She closed her book and got up to explore the garden.

Cecie glanced down at Joe, who sat looking down the slope where Sarah had disappeared.

"You don't have to stay here, you have as much of a run of the place as I do—except the proscripted places."

"Which being the ladies' boudoirs," he replied.

The garden was one of the few things the Connellys really splurged on. A flagstone path lead down to a trimmed tunnel of yew trees which in turn lead to a walled garden with a fountain in the center and a cast iron love seat set in an alcove overhung with climbing lateroses and flanked with stone urns of Aunt Georgette's new miniature hydrangea they called Blue Fairy. Sarah used to imagine the moonlight trysts in the novels she read taking place in a garden like this. A short flight of steps lead down to a small water garden with a Japanese footbridge over a lily pond, which you crossed to get to the big lawn Peter called the Bowling Green even though no one ever bowled there. The menfolk were at work here trimming back the bushes, so she went back to the walled garden.

She read a few more pages, but she felt restless and tired at the same time and the strong breeze kept blowing her hair into her face. Mama had told her this feeling was just a normal part of growing up, that all it meant was she was changing inside. She hated feeling like this. She set the book aside and looked for something else.

She spotted a thick-skinned dark blue playground ball under one of the bushes. She got up and dug it out.

She played "catch with God" for a while, throwing the ball straight up into the air as high as she could and catching it when it fell back to her. Cecie had invented the game years before when Sarah was little; "He always throws it back," she'd said. She was really big for this game, but as far as she was concerned, if you were too old for a little innocent fun, you were just too old, like Peter's friend Mr. Diocletian.

Somehow the breeze caught the ball and blew it off course. She ran to catch it; she'd catch it in a completely different way if it broke one of Aunt Georgette's plants.

The ball fell with a splash into the fountain and bobbed up to the surface. She sat on the basin and reached for it, but her arm wasn't long enough. She tried to find a stick so she could slink it back to her, but she couldn't find any. She sat down on the edge of the basin, trying not to cry as she gazed down at the water. The fountain trickling sounded like the voices of tiny water sprites giggling at her misfortune.

A dark reflection moved over the water, a shadow fell over the white graveled bottom. She looked up, thinking it might be Frank come up from below. She looked up.

Joe sat beside her on the lip of the basin, his unblinking eyes studying her face.

"You seem troubled, Miss Sarah. May I ask what troubles you?"

"I was playing with a ball and it fell into the fountain. I can't reach it 'cause my arm's too short and Mama told me not to get too messed up 'cause we got fittings this afternoon."

He smiled at her gently, reassuringly. "Have no fear, milady, I shall fetch it for you."

With that, he leaned out over the water and, extending one graceful arm, he caught the ball with one hand. He turned back to her and, with a graceful bow, handed the ball back to her.

"Thanks, Thank you," she said, reaching out to take it.

He looked up at her as she did so.

Their eyes looked into each other's, golden brown looking into green. He looked at her with a gentle blank look touched with something like curiosity. She smiled at him nervously. He smiled back with…what? Friendliness? Innocent interest? Or was it that look the princess saw looking at her when she looked into the face of the dark prince?

She looked away. "I better go back to the house," she mumbled. She stuffed the ball under the bench and hurried, stumbling, back toward the house.

She barely saw Cecie as she hurried into the house.

Sarah's face glowed bright pink with what looked like embarrassment as she came up the steps. She blundered across the decking and ran into the house, banging the door shut behind her.

A moment or two later, Joe mounted the steps, carrying Sarah's book, which he set on the table.

"Something happened out there," Cecie said, looking up from the datascriber.

"Yes, something very beautiful yet very strange has occurred." He described the incident in the walled garden.

"She let herself grow so bewildered, she forgot this," he caressed the book.

"She probably realized what you really are. She's at an awkward age, too. Too old for child's play, too young for adult work."

"And too young for love," he added.

"She's only capable of feeling emotions right now. She can't do anything more."

"And among those emotions is fear. That was fear in her face before she grew embarrassed."

"Not terror-fear; just 'Oh-what's-that?' fear. There's a difference."

"She has nothing to fear from me either way. On account of her age, I may not and cannot approach her."

"She doesn't realize that. To her you're like the rest of the adult male human population: fascinating yet fearsome. Add to this the fact that you are a different kind of human, and it compounds the matter."

"She can rest assured I cannot and may not touch so much as a hair of her head. I will have to assure her."

"No, just treat her with the same kind of deference you've been using around her. I don't want her getting any kind of weird ideas about the other half of the equation."

Joe had no appropriate response to this. He eyed the book on the table with interest. Glancing up to the door, he picked it up and opened it.

Cecie and her friend cam in for lunch just after Kip and Frank and Stephen and Ferde came in. Frank looked less like Cecie's friend than ever: leaves and twigs stuck out of his hair.

"I thought I'd go for the 'wild man from Borneo' look," he said.

"You'd better comb that stuff out outside; I don't want you to get ticks from that stuff," Georgette said. "Besides, don't you have a fitting this afternoon?"

"Whoops! Slipped my mind," Frank said, going out.

Sarah had been calmly making a soynut butter sandwich in the kitchen when she heard an odd noise, somewhat like a computer tower nearby. She looked up.

First she saw her book held in someone's shapely hands. Then she looked up into the face of Joe the robot.

"You left this outside," he said.

"Uh, thanks."

"You are quite welcome, Miss Sarah."

She took it from him: her hand brushed his fingertips. Something like warmth crept up her hand and up her arm. She dropped her sandwich on the floor; she felt her face start to burn. She fled up to Cecie's room.

"What could I have done to elicit such behavior?" Joe asked Cecie.

To be continued…

Afterword:

Kubrick aficionados, I am not really trying to make this a Lolita crossover; I unwittingly crossbred this with a gender-bent version of an unfinished short novel, "The Guest at Cana", a coming-of-age story about a fourteen-year old boy who becomes infatuated with his older cousin on the eve of her wedding. If anything, there may be a mild homage to Jim Henson's Labyrinth going on here, with Sarah as a parallel to the young Jennifer Connelly character, and Joe as a hemi-demi-semi-stand in for the Goblin King.

Literary Easter Eggs:

Gingerbread muffins—Fake product placement! I wish you all lived in the Boston, Massachusetts area so you could try the best gingerbread muffins with cream cheese icing in the world, courtesy of the Gingerbread Construction Company of Woburn, MA.

Argent Cavalier roses—This is a veiled reference to the symbolic silver rose that appears as a love-token in Richard Strauss's high comic opera Der Rosenkavalier, but this also leads back to "A.I.": the famous waltz melody from the opera was used in the soundtrack of the film, at the beginning of the Rouge City sequence (it also plays over the main menu of the second disc on the DVD).

Carton Jacobi and Seamus Diocletian—At the risk of being accused of a Mary Sue, these are thinly disguised versions of a former co-worker and a former boss of mine, respectively. Some things in Cecie's story are autobiographical after a fashion, but Cecie Martin and I are very different people: she's a lot more self-sufficient and a little tougher than me. The real "Carton" was a philanderer, and if this story were a film version, you could cast Brendan Gleeson (aka. "Lord Johnson-Johnson" to us Mecha-huggers) as Diocletian.

"You may look at me some more"—an outright thievery from Lewis Padgett's hysterical short story "The Proud Robot", which also stars an uppity robot named Joe…a nuts and bolts one, I should add.

Worcester—pronounced "Wooster".

Frank's disheveled appearance—Got the idea for this image after reading an article on Jude Law in a recent issue of Vogue magazine, which featured a photo of our boy unshaven. Much as I'm obsessed, I think he looks better without the five o'clock shadow.