+J.M.J.+
One of Those in Our Midst!
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
I had some minor delays in getting this out, because I hadn't finished the chapter and I was trying to get the next installment of "Zenon Eyes: Eyes of Truth" out to you (I hope you're all doing well juggling my stuff). I'm trying to get as much stuff as possible out this week, since I will be starting a Real Job next week; okay, it's inspecting fresh-picked corn (pronounced "cohn") for the farm where my dad works, but at least it's gonna bring me some money, so I can FINALLY see Road to Perdition (I don't drive, so I have to rely on buses to get out of town, and this might take some figuring out of bus schedules and trying to get them to click with the movie times, plus the fare just Went Up.). Plus, it's been beastly hot and humid, and I live on the second floor, so it's been too warm to type lately; I even started wishing I'd set this story in winter, instead of late summer. Please, Lord, let me get a chapter of this, another chapter of my Truman Show fiction (If you're reading this, fom4life, have you read it???), and maybe a couple other things out this week! Another quiet chapter, but there's a surprise in it that even I didn't see coming.
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I. I don't own the quote from The Princess Bride (the novel, not the movie), either, which belongs to William Goldman.
Chapter III: Princess Brides, Enchanting Ladies…
After lunch, Phila prevailed upon Cecie to go with the girls to the bridal shop. Frank and Kip and Stephen had shanghaied Joe and brought him along to the formal attire shop in Amherst for a fitting, though Frank kept insisting they only had to make two orders in his size.
"I really didn't have to come along," Cecie said, as Georgette led them into the shop.
"Oh, it's just part of the female side of the pre-wedding ritual; you used always talk about how life is supposed to be more like a ritual than a rat race," Phila said.
The other bridesmaids met them in the shop: Terez Bax, Margi Donne, and Bernie's best friend since junior high school, Priscilla Machan.
"So who exactly is the maid of honor?" Cecie asked, while Alice and Sarah were in the fitting room with Miss Amarinta, the seamstress.
"We were going to ask you," said Phila.
Cecie felt her cheeks grow warm. "Oh, no, I really couldn't. I've already ordered another dress."
"You can wear that one then," Georgette said.
"I don't know if I could; the colors won't match your scheme."
"Why, what colors are they?" asked Terez.
"Black and silver, I designed the dress myself after a pattern, and I had a friend back home make it up for me; it should come by UPS any time soon."
"Goth colors—oops, sorry," said Priscilla.
"Aw, no problem; I'm the one who calls myself a goth."
"So is it true that you've brought along a special someone?" Terez asked. "My grandmother was gushing about how she saw you in the market with him."
"Well, he's someone special, but he's not a special someone, if you know what I mean. "We're just good friends, Joe and I."
The white louvered doors of the fitting room opened. Sarah glided out as if she treaded on a carpet of flowers. The lilac silk bridesmaid's dress she wore looked exquisite, with an Empire waist encircled with a sash of silver satin and a soft gray chiffon overlay on the skirts, and long sleeves with a high collar. Irene had spoken the truth: it looked a little too warm to be practical even this late in the season.
"Isn't it beautiful?" she gasped, tears in her eyes. "I feel just like a princess."
"And you look like one, too," Margi said.
"A princess bride?" Sarah asked, hopefully.
"More like a princess bridesmaid," Georgette said, trying not to sound too practical.
"She couldn't be a princess bride in lilac; she'd wear white if she were a virgin," Bernie said, a little too hastily.
"My first grown up dress," Sarah sighed.
As the others took their turns in the fitting room, Cecie turned to Phila. "Be honest with me: do you really want me to be the maid of honor?"
"We couldn't think of anyone better; you've always been like an older sister to us. If it hadn't been for you, we wouldn't be getting married."
"Me?"
"Yes. You helped us when we got stuck in Rouge City; I might never have met Kip and Bernie might never have learned the nerve to be friendly toward a young ma. She and Frank might not be together if you hadn't helped us out."
"If Joe heard you say this, he'd be taking credit for Bernie loosening up." She nearly added, 'In some ways, all this couldn't be happening now without his part in the comedy,' but she knew better.
"Really, Cecie, he had nothing to do with it."
"You may be right, but the All Mighty sure likes to some really odd means to continue the ritual of life."
"But, honestly, would He really make use of…something like Joe?"
Cecie shrugged and smiled mysteriously. "He just might."
Sarah couldn't stop chattering about the bridesmaids dresses all the way home. Cecie, who sat next to her in the cruiser, bore it patiently.
They found the menfolk had already returned ahead of them, and had collected on the deck, waiting for the heat of the day to pass so they could go back to clearing brush—those who were optimized for clearing brush, that is.
Joe sat slightly to one side of the group, on the decking, his face bearing an oddly triumphant little smile.
"Now what's with the cat that ate the canary smile?" Cecie asked him.
He glanced at Frank first, then he said, "Bernadette's intended one could tell the reason to you much better than I could."
Ferde poked Frank, grinning wickedly. "Go on, tell 'em, tell 'em."
"I thought getting a fitting for Joe's tux would be simple, right? Use the same exact measurements, right? No such luck. Okay, we got the same arm and leg measurements, but come to find out Joe has a thirty-five chest and a thirty-four waist."
"And Frank's got a thirty-six and a thirty-seven respectively," Ferde cut in. He poked Frank irreverently on the waist. "Guess you better go cut some more brush and work off that puppy fat."
"Oh get going!" Frank grumbled. "I'm not gonna hear the end of this, am I?"
"I'm afraid not," Kip said with amused sympathy.
"The discrepancy of sizes stems from out different natures," Joe stated, matter of factly. "You have natural imperfection and an average build, whereas, they designed me with the proportions of a man with perhaps one percent body fat—"
"And two hundred percent vanity. If you don't cut the self-importance, Mecha, I am so gonna find the off switch for your mouth," Frank interrupted.
Joe said nothing more, but the smirk did not leave his face.
"Maybe Miss Amarinta can make up another dress in Cecie's size in time for the wedding," Peter said at supper that evening.
"Dear, the maid of honor has to wear a dress of a contrasting color," Georgette said.
"Well, what color is the dress you had made up?" Peter asked, looking at Cecie.
"It's black and silver, I had it made up from a pattern I modified slightly," Cecie said.
"I suppose those colors will contrast with the lilac and silver," Peter said, with mild suspicion. His eye rested on Joe, who for the evening had resumed his usual black and silver garments, minus his jacket.
"Isn't it bad luck to wear black to a wedding, or for a woman in the wedding party to wear black?" asked Alice.
"Oh, that's just silliness," Georgette said.
"It's also superstition; there's no such thing as luck," Peter said. "There's only Providence."
"I think there's a German proverb that says luck is the penname of Providence," Cecie said. "But wasn't there someone in the parish who put black dresses on the bridesmaids?"
"It was Shay Diocletian's sister in law," Georgette recalled.
"You didn't choose the black and silver to match with the colors your friend wears?" Sarah asked Cecie later, as they both got ready for bed.
"No, I just chose 'em 'cause I like 'em and because I thought they'd look different. You know how everyone wears pastels and stuff like that to weddings; I thought I'd dare to be different."
"I still think you chose them 'cause Joe wears them."
Cecie leaned over the foot of her bed. "Do I detect a little infatuation with the green-eyed beauty?"
"Maybe you're infatuated," Sarah said, dodgy-voiced.
Cecie took this astutely. "Nah, you'd know if I was infatuated. I certainly wouldn't be up here, that's for sure."
"You mind if I read fort a while?" Sarah asked.
"No, go ahead. I was about to ask you if you minded if I wrote for a while."
"Sure. A late night now and then won't hurt me."
"I won't keep you up long; your mother might not like it if I kept you up too late."
Cecie worked for a while on the story she'd picked up, no easy matter at first since she had to retrace the thread of the plot. One good point in creating unforgettable characters: they could "help" you pick up your story where you had to leave off.
At 22.30, she set aside her scriber, took off her glasses and leaned over the foot of the bed. "Is this too late for you?" Cecie asked.
Sarah lay on her side trying to keep her book propped up, her eyes blinking to stay open. "No," she said sleepily. "I could read another page or two."
"Well, it's time I put out the light for my sake, if not yours," Cecie said, not buying Sarah's excuse, but not letting on that she didn't. She got up and shut off the light, then edged around Sarah's pallet bed, back to bed.
Sarah lay trying to keep awake, listening to the night sounds, the crickets chirping, the twitter of a sleepy bird, the whir of the fan, the swish of the curtains as a breeze flowed in through the open window, fanning her face, carrying the scent of flowers
Her mind got to wondering and wandering. This was the kind of night the dark prince came to hold tryst with the maiden, in a moonlight-silvered glade deep in the palace garden, away from the her father's prying eyes.
She stirred on the mattress, feeling its area. Cecie breathed quietly, peacefully. How could she sleep so soundly on a night like this? Because she had found someone? Did she ever know the kind of pain Sarah felt needling her heart?
She let her eyes close, wishing the breeze that touched her face was the caress of an admirer.
Wind washed through her imagination, stirring her cascaded hair as she lay on a stone bench in a clump of flowering bushes bearing jasmine-scented blossoms.
The shadows seemed to move and sway. A dark figure separated itself from the deeper shades and approached where she lay. The wind stirred the ground-sweeping black cloak it wore. The heavy draperies blew aside. A pair of gleaming silver-feathered wings unfurled from the folds, forming a hood over the stranger's head, shading it from view as the figure drew nigh—
She jolted awake. Daylight was just breaking over the tree tops framed in the square of window. She turned over and pulled the covers over her head, wishing the darkness might linger and that she might see the face of the dark stranger with the bright wings…
At breakfast, Georgette tried to make old-fashioned toaster waffles, but the toaster refused to work. She popped it down, but the waffles refused to pop up. It wouldn't toast either, it simply wouldn't even warm up.
"Well, at least it isn't burning the waffles," Stephen said, optimistically, fiddling with the dials.
"Trouble is, I'd like to get something solid inside of me before I get out there," Frank said, eying the coffeepot a third time. "Make that solid and edible."
"Yeah, let's have breakfast while its still cool so we won't have to work out there in the heat," Ferde said. He looked at Joe. "Maybe you could pull your weight for a change; heat don't bother you, right?"
Joe turned up his nose at this suggestion. "If you require assistance, you ought then to hire a service droid. As I have stated before and will now restate, I am not optimized for such labor."
"Cecie, your friend is a real pain in the butt," Ferde said.
"I beg to differ with so uncouth a statement," Joe retorted.
"I wonder if the toaster caught the uppity bug from Joe," Stephen suggested.
"Hey, Joe, I thought I told you not to play along when the toaster started winking its LED at you," Frank twitted.
Joe received this remark with a smirk of sardonic amusement. "Even a smart toaster such as that could neither appreciate nor understand that of which I am capable."
Cecie examined the outlet. The plate over the socket hung slightly awry; only one prong of the plug made contact inside the socket: the other prong had gotten stuck in the gap between the socket and the plate. She pulled out the plug, straightened the plate and thrust the plug into the socket. After a second or two, the toaster warmed up and the heat wiring glowed orange.
"Someone put the plug in wrong," she said.
"In which case, it had utterly nothing to do with me," Joe added, vindicated.
"I still think Mr. Uppity Mecha had something to do with it," Ferde said, as Georgette took the waffles from the toaster and put them on a plate to hand them to Frank. Bernie, her eyes averted, loaded up the toaster.
Cecie eyed Joe. "I've got a hypothesis worth testing. Joe didn't start acting uppity until he went for the auburn mode. Maybe," she tapped his elbow, which got him to look right at her. "Maybe you should go back to basic black and we'll see what happens."
"Yeah, you'd have to be as blind as a post not to see the differences between us now," Frank said around a mouthful.
"At your insistence," Joe said. He focused on his reflection on the side of a stainless steel pot hanging from a rack on the wall, bent his head, and shook it slightly. His hair darkened to its default shade.
He looked up, chin lifted at a cocky angle.
"Satisfied now?"
"It didn't work," Bernie groaned.
That afternoon, Phila and Bernie went to another bridal shower, while Cecie and Sarah stayed put at home, in her room, the one writing, the other reading.
"You gonna let me read your story when its done?" Sarah asked.
"Maybe. I thought you said my recent stuff was dry and boring?"
"Maybe this one won't be, it's about a young person, right?"
"It has to do with a kid in his early teens."
"It might help me grow."
Sometime later, Cecie went downstairs to get herself another seltzer mimosa; Phila and Bernie were in the kitchen mixing lemonade. Cecie went to take a peek into Irene's room, where she found the older lady taking a nap, with Joe sitting beside her pillow, his hand laid on her head in a gesture of tender protection.
On her way back, Cecie glanced out the kitchen window to see a UPS vancruiser pull up in the driveway.
"I'll get it," she said, heading for the back door and opening it.
A young but non-descript UPS man stood under the overhang, out of the sun, with a large flat box at his feet and a data pad in his hand.
'Is there a Cecie Martin here?" he asked.
"That would be me," she said.
He held out the datapad. "Sign here, please?" She signed and he handed her the package.
"It's come," she said, grinning to Phila and Bernie as she passed through the kitchen.
"What's come?" Phila asked.
"My gown," Cecie replied and headed upstairs.
Sarah sat on the foot of Cecie's bed, drawing, when the door opened and Cecie came in with a large flat box.
"It's here," Cecie declared.
"Your dress?"
"Yess," Cecie said, opening the box. She kicked off her shoes.
"Ooooh! Put it on! Put it on!"
"Okay, now close your eyes." Sarah shut her eyes, but she couldn't help cracking one open as Cecie pulled off her tee shirt and pants, just to look enviously at Cecie's narrow waist from the back. She squinched her eyes shut; Uncle Peter would not approve.
After several minutes, Cecie said, "Okay, you can look now."
Sarah opened her eyes. Cecie stood before her clad in a waltz-length gown with wide silver satin skirts and a black bodice trimmed with silver. The neckline was scooped out, not so low that you saw anything you shouldn't except a smooth patch of white skin like a clear sheet of white metal.
"Wow, that's really nice…but you show."
"Not much, just enough to get Peter foaming at the mouth and turn a few heads, but not enough to be improper."
"Where'd you get it?"
"I found a pattern online and I dithered with it a little to make it somewhat reminiscent of the dress worn by the mysterious lady in the famous painting Madame X."
"Oh," Sarah said with confused wonder. "I never saw that one."
"I'll find you a picture of it online. It caused quite a stir when the artist, a fellow named Sargent, showed it in a gallery in England back in the 1880s."
"If it looked something like this, I bet it did. You look like an enchantress. But…what about your glasses?"
"I'm getting contacts for the wedding day. Add a few finishing touches: a few Argent Cavalier roses in my hair, my silver choker."
"You'll look utterly bewitching. Are you gonna show this dress to anyone?"
Cecie had unhooked the back. "Not today, not till the wedding day. I'm keeping it a surprise for everyone."
"Even Joe?"
"Especially Joe."
"If only he were human, you'd utterly bewitch him!"
Cecie's face turned slightly pink. "I might bewitch him anyway. Now not a word about this dress to anybody."
"I swear by the sun and the moon and the Dog Star!"
"Okay, Lavender."
They had two extra places at the table at supper: Kip's aunt Ellen (His late father's baby sister) and her son Mat. Joe had to relinquish his chair beside Cecie, but he contented himself with sitting on the floor beside her.
"You're taking this well, fiberhead," Frank commented.
"If a lady should have need of the chair I have occupied, I give it to her with all honor due to her sex," Joe replied. He glanced up at Ellen, who sat in the place he had occupied; she pretended not to notice him, but when he turned away to gaze on Cecie, she looked down at him out of the corner of her eye.
"Maybe your hypothesis was right, Cecie," Kip hinted.
Mat kept glancing from one side of the table to the other, from Joe to Frank and back again. "Mind if I say somethin'?" he asked.
"If you're in the habit of making improper jokes, I suggest you curb it," Peter said.
"All I was gonna say is, it's good Frank and Joe are at other sides of the table an' Frank's been holding off on the razor, or I'd think I was seein' double," Mat said.
Cecie had an odd feeling this wasn't exactly what Mat intended to say. His eyes had been dancing too much and he'd glanced impishly at Bernie a couple times. Bernie sat demurely beside frank, not looking up from her plate.
In the middle of that night, Cecie awoke to a clap of thunder. Lightning flashed in the window, around the edges of the drawn shade. She got up and put on her robe. She leaned over Sarah to check her; the younger girl lay sleeping unconcernedly. Cecie went downstairs to the living room to ride out the storm.
The room lay in velvety darkness. Dim light showed in the French windows opening onto the deck. Lightning flashed, flooding the panes, glinting off Joe's calm face as he stood just inside the doorframe. The light gleamed weirdly off his irises. They seemed to glow for a few seconds after the lightning passed. She switched on the room light.
He turned toward her. "Has the storm's fury disturbed your slumber?"
"I'm afraid so, in more ways than one. Sarah's sleeping like a stone; storms don't bother her: she thinks they're romantic."
"And what of you? What do you think of a thunderstorm?"
"They're exciting and majestic during the day, but at night they're a little too scary. Too much noise and the light's too bright, so I can't sleep and every time I try to go back to sleep, I can't.
"But what do you think of thunderstorms?"
He gazed out the window as another flash lit up the grid panes of glass. He bent his head, processing.
"They possess a strange, raw beauty all their own, more to be respected and feared than delighted in."
"I suppose your kind must regard lightning with a kind of religious awe."
His face went slightly blank for a moment. "I do not think we could. We Mecha barely enter into the natural, much less the supernatural. You worship the One Who made you; if we were to worship anything, it might be your kind; but you have been very fickle gods."
"Am I? If I were—which I'm not—I'd try to be just."
"No, you are steadfast. Were I programmed to reverence anything, I would devote myself to some being like you."
"Thanks," she said, blushing.
She lingered downstairs until the storm abated. Joe insisted on escorting her back upstairs. At her door, he suddenly got down on his knees and kissed her foot and the hem of her robe.
"Don't do that!" she hissed in earnest, trying not to laugh.
He smiled up at her mysteriously. He rose only when she opened the door and went in.
The rain still fell the next morning, a Friday, not as heavy as it had last night, but enough to put a damper on things.
"Well, we're not trimming brush today," Frank observed at breakfast.
Phila brought in the paper, damp but legible. Cecie unfolded it and scanned it.
"Did the storm wake you up last night?" Alice asked Sarah.
Sarah looked up from her cornflakes. "There was a storm last night?" she asked. "Darn, I missed it."
"I guess that means no," Kip said.
"Anything new in the news?" Phila asked Cecie.
"Watch out, I'm one of those weird types who read the entertainment news first, see what my critics are saying about the stories I put up online recently," Cecie replied.
"Any good movies?" Kip asked.
"Any clean movies?" Georgette put in.
"Today's a good movie day," Frank said.
"The Zoetrope is showing the Lord of the Rings, all three films back to back, uncut, with two one hour intermissions today," Cecie announced.
"Really? I haven't seen that," Bernie said.
"Is it decent?" Georgette asked.
"It's squeaky clean," Cecie said. "If you can put up with swordfights and scary-looking things, it's great."
"One of my favorites," Sarah said. "Can I go if they're going, Mom?"
"Do you think you can handle it all at once?" Alice asked.
"I was gonna do it with the DVDs one time but I never had enough time."
"Is it a go?" Cecie asked.
"Oh yes!" Sarah said right away.
"Sounds great to me," said Kip.
"I've been meaning to see in and we've got nothing better to do," Frank said. "Bern?"
"Well, as long as it doesn't get too creepy," Bernie said.
"I'll hold you hand so you won't get scared, how's that sound?" Frank said.
"Since Kip is going, I'm going," Phila said
"Darn, I forgot my bow and arrow," Mat grumbled.
"Oh, are you one of that type of LOTR movie nut? We did that in college," Cecie said.
"Did what?" asked Phila.
"Dress up like characters from the movie, bring bows and arrows and shoot 'em at the screen every time one of the bad guys or some nasty creature showed up. But one time we kinda got in trouble, because someone hit the screen for real and the arrow got stuck in the middle of the picture. Try watching a movie with something stuck to the screen, without laughing."
"I've been wanting to see it to compare it with the book," Stephen said.
"Joe?" He had been unusually quiet all that morning.
"Where you go, I shall go with you," he said.
They didn't have any bows and arrows, but Mat compensated by turning a straw into a blowgun and firing candy at the screen every time an Orc or a Ring wraith hove into view.
Cecie glanced at some of the others from time to time. She thought she saw Bernie holding Frank's hand for an entirely different reason during Arwen and Aragorn's tender moments.
Joe watched with unusually wrapt attention for him. For someone with an utterly logical mind, who lacked the capacity to believe in the unseen and untouchable and the fantastic, he betrayed something that almost defied his nature. What went on above those green eyes?
"Okay," said Cecie on the way out. "The big question is: which Lord of the Rings character is each of us?"
"My pressshhhusssssss," Mat hissed in a creaky voice, rubbing his hands together. "Mine! Mine! All mine!"
"All right, Gollum," Kip said, grinning. "I'm definitely a hobbit, Merry or Pippin, but probably not Frodo."
"I think you're a lot like Sam," Phila said.
"Which would make you Rosie Cotton.
"With the beard, you're starting to look a lot like Aragorn," Bernie said to Frank.
"I'm Viggio Mortensen now," Frank groaned. "Not a bad comparison. I didn't know I was the uncrowned heir to Gondor."
"And you, Cecie, would be Arwen Undomiel if you would grow out your hair," Joe said to Cecie almost shyly.
"Or she could be Gandalf, since she brought us all together today," Kip suggested.
"Fool of a Took!" Cecie growled, dropping her voice an octave, and sounding not entirely unlike Ian McKellan. But she smiled.
"Well, if I'm Aragorn, that makes Bernie Arwen," Frank said.
"I'm not that pretty," Bernie countered.
"Maybe you're more like Eowyn," Cecie suggested.
"I'm terrible with a sword."
"No, but you're a strong person. Another thought crossed her mind, but she put it aside. "What about you, Stephen?"
"I'm kinda like Boromir: I'm strong but I have a weak spot, and I got knocked out of the running."
"At least you didn't get arrows shot into you by Orcs," Frank said.
"What about me?" Sarah asked.
"You could be a very young Galadriel," Cecie said.
"A very apt analogy: she has a superior knowledge of the fantastic realm," Joe said.
"Gee, uh, thanks." Sarah had been looking askance at Joe, but she looked away.
"You were saying something else?" Cecie asked.
"Oh, I was gonna say Joe might be Legolas, but I changed my mind."
"That makes not an entirely inappropriate analogy," Joe said, smiling, "I take it as a compliment."
"What makes you agree with that?" Cecie asked him.
"You could spell it out better than I. And were I to say it I would again be accused of being vain."
"Oh, because he's beautiful and he's not exactly human." Joe replied to this only with a smile of satisfaction.
"He even looks a little like Orlando Bloom," Bernie murmured.
"What was that?" Frank asked.
"Nothing, I'm just tired."
Saturday presented itself as a quietly eventful day. Phila and Bernie went to a couple more wedding showers, back to back, at different friends' houses. Kip, Frank, Stephen, Mat, Ferde, and Peter trimmed the bushes and cleared the rest of the garden in preparation for having the dance floor and the tent set up on the Bowling Green.
Sarah tried re-reading the Lord of the Rings, but she soon gave up and went back to The Princess Bride. "The book's a lot slower than the movie," she admitted to Cecie.
"Yeah, Peter Jackson did such a good job with it I sometimes feel as if I'm uttering blasphemy against Tolkien, or should I say Venerable J.R.R. Tolkien, when I say Jackson improved on him slightly."
"Venerable J.R.R. Tolkien? Are you foolin'?"
"Dead serious. Pope Pius the XXI just declared him a Venerable."
To get back in the mood, Sarah went down to the yew tunnel to read, sitting between the spread roots of the largest tree.
After a while, she heard movement, someone's light step on the moss under the trees.
"'When I left you', he whispered, 'You were already more beautiful than anything I dared dream. In our years apart, my imaginings did their best to improve on your perfection. At nights your face was forever behind my eyes. and now I see that that vision who kept me company in my loneliness was a hag compared to the beauty now before me'." said a gentle man's voice nearby.
She looked up. Joe sat perched as graceful and poised as an elf, in the crotch of the tree opposite where she sat.
She looked down at the page under her finger. Her nail lay against the very passage he had quoted.
"How did you…have you read this book?" she asked.
"I must confess to you that I read its pages the other day when you left it behind in the garden."
"Have you got a photographic memory or something?" she asked.
"Not only do I have a photographic memory, but I also possess a complete recall."
"So read the whole book and you remember the whole thing?"
"Each word lies tucked in my memory."
"Okay, so what did you think about it?"
He tilted his head slightly. "I find your kind's creative ability a rare and remarkable gift, and the creations you have wrought by this gift never fail to reinforce this admiration. This one especially stands out."
"You liked it?"
"I could say that I did. Would, however, that it had a stronger ending."
"Yeah, that's the only thing I don't like about it either. It kinda trails off, but at least Buttercup and Westley get back together."
"Perhaps the most glorious love is that of separated lovers reunited after much time and peril is past."
"I wouldn't know, I'm only thirteen."
"And you have never known love?"
"No, of course not; I mean, besides my parents' love, but that's a different kind."
He nodded gently, a slow gesture, raising his head and lowering it once. "And yet someday you will know what love is, if time and destiny and life deal gently with you."
Cecie came up from the lower garden, with a basket of wildflowers under her arm. "The gang was gonna whack these all off, but I beat 'em to them. Hey, Joe, where'd you go?"
Joe looked at her with an odd, ironical smirk of a smile. "That is not my epigram."
"Then it's a new one."
He leapt gracefully from his perch and approached Cecie. She let him take her basket as he accompanied her back to the house.
Kip arranged a lunch tray for his mother, complete with a bud vase of small flowers from Cecie's bouquet. As he finished, he heard a soft white noise at his side, more felt than heard.
He looked up to find Joe at his elbow, smiling innocently.
"Hey, Joe, whaddya know?"
"Might I take from your shoulders the burden of carrying that tray to your dear mother's chamber?"
"I think I can handle it, but thanks anyway."
"Do you not need to conserve your energy so that you might finish freshening the garden?"
"This won't tire me, I'm strong."
"If you so insist, but may I accompany you to her bedside?"
"You win. Do you always get your way with everyone?"
"Not everyone, no, not everyone has yielded to my sweet persuasions."
Cecie watched this from the dining room, where she and Bernie were sweeping the floor. She thought she heard Bernie breathe a sigh of relief, when Joe disappeared from sight into the back bedroom.
"Are you all right, Bern?"
"Oh? Uh, I'm fine." She trembled.
Cecie looked straight at her. The flush on Bernie's face had nothing to do with her labors or the warmth of the day. "You're not being honest with me."
"Can you come up to my room after we're finished here?"
"Of course."
After they emptied the dustpans into the trash can in the kitchen and put the brooms away in the closet, Bernie led Cecie upstairs and down the hallway to her room at the far end. She shut the door behind them and latched it.
"So what's the big secret?" Cecie asked, perched on the brass footboard of the bed. "Have you been sneaking out to meet Frank in the garden and make out in the yew tunnel?"
"Cecie! No, it's not that."
"Okay, You've found out what a good kisser Joe is and you've been tying yourself in knots trying not to test drive the rest of him."
Bernie drew in a long breath. "You're very close."
"Uh oh. Go ahead: spill it. I can empathize because I've been there."
"I know I can't tell you who to keep company with, but I really wish you hadn't brought him along. I mean, I look at him and sometimes I'm back in that courtyard garden in that nightclub in Rouge City, sitting just inches from him on a loveseat; he's just kissed me on both cheeks and he's just about to kiss me on the mouth. So I start wanting Frank more than I already do."
"Well, the wedding's a week from today. Think you can make it through seven more nights of maidenhood?"
"I don't know. Are you sure Joe isn't possessed or something?"
"I won't deny the spirit of fornication makes use of him, but he's utterly unaware of it. Of himself, he has fewer demons than us Orgas. He knows little better than his function, but he knows enough to stay within the lines, even when he tests 'em. He knows what 'no' means."
"Is there any way you can send him back to Rouge City?"
"For starters, I'm not going to send him back. If I told him he had to go back, that would really send him into uppity mode, auburn hair or default black.
"Well, just tell him to stay away from me, not to even look at me, at least until after the wedding, if not for good."
"I'll see what I can do. But think of it this way: these are just feelings you're having. Don't take them seriously and they'll go away by themselves. If you keep swatting at them, they'll just thrive and fatten on the attention. Don't take them seriously and they'll starve. This isn't word-spinning; this is experience talking."
"So how do you handle him?"
"I remind myself that he's just my friend, even if he goes into admiration mode. It's not like I haven't been tempted. I have it in me to go all the way, to give him the signal and get it on with him. If I didn't, I'd have something wrong with me. It ain't easy having these feelings, but I get by. Sometimes my will breaks down, but I just pull myself together and keep going the way I'd been going before I hit the bump."
"But you said your will breaks down."
"So? I just admit to the All Mighty through His minister that I blew it, then I just go on as before. You know what they say, 'Virtue isn't virtue until it's been tested'."
"I guess it's always getting tested every time you're with Joe, uh, you know what I mean."
"You know I never did keep normal company. Least of all was the LOTR bows and arrows club in college."
"Weren't there worse people?"
"Depended on how you looked at them. There was the little guy, the actor who moonlighted as an escort. Then there was the computer hacker; they're not as crooked as the media makes them out to be: they're good friends to have when your laptop or your scriber goes on the fritz."
"But Joe has to be the worst. I mean: he isn't even human."
"Well, at least he's with me for the next two weeks, and I'll do my best to keep him out of trouble. Not to say he hasn't been up to his usual gallantries."
"He certainly likes Irene."
"She likes him, so he's responding in kind to her encouragement."
"She shouldn't encourage him.'
"She's not encouraging encouraging him, if you know what I mean."
"I guess I've said all I can say about this. Just don't let Peter know that I ever had anything to do with Joe, or that I still get feelings for him…it…whatever."
"As Sarah would say, by the sun and the moon and the Dog Star, your secret lies safe in my bosom."
"Thanks, Cecie."
"Anything to help."
Bernie opened the door and let Cecie go out first.
As they started up the hallway, a tall dark figure swung out of an alcove near Bernie's door. Joe stood before them, a barely veiled grin on his swarthy face.
"You silicon sneak," Cecie growled.
"Oh, NO!" Bernie cried. She rushed backing to her room. She slammed the door; Cecie heard her lock it.
Joe gazed toward the closed door with a self-satisfied smile.
"You heard everything we said," Cecie snarled.
"I heard all I need to know to answer a query I had processed: Does she still want my attentions? How sweet it is to know she wants me still!"
Afterword:
I hope I can keep writing after I start working again. I don't want to leave you all in the lurch. In the meantime, for those of you who belong to the "A.I." fanfiction mailing list on Yahoo! (If you don't belong, I urge you to sign up), I might post a crude time line for this story to give you a taste of things to come and to keep you all in suspense.
Literary Easter Eggs:
Luck is the penname of Providence—I know I've heard this proverb somewhere, but I couldn't tell you if it was German or whatever. Anyone know?
Sarah's dream—Special thanks for this scene goes to one of S|K's exquisite "A.I." fan art pencil drawings on Laurie E. Smith's site (I cannot say which one, or it would spoil the effect), to Edward Gorey's dementedly delightful Gothic animation sequence for the opening credits of PBS's Mystery!, and to the prose poetry of Ray Bradbury and Tanith Lee.
Uppity toaster—This actually happened to me (for the same reason, no less!) as I was drafting part of this chapter; some of the dialogue lines are based on stuff I was saying to and about the toaster (No, I did not call it Joe).
"Lord Of The Rings"—This got into the story in honor of the release of the DVD (which I got free from Blockbuster Video) of LOTR, and as a tip of the hat to the person on the "A.I." Fanfiction mailing list on Yahoo! who proposed an LOTR/"A.I." crossover: "Joe and Legolas in the same paragraph…::drool::" Also, the bows and arrows prank came from a hysterical but now sadly defunct list of "Things to do when you watch LOTR". Lastly, the arrow in the screen was inspired by one time there was a huge splotch of what looked like fruit punch on the movie screen (And we were watching Insomnia; not a wholly appropriate blotch to have on the screen during the opening montage.
