+J.M.J.+

One of THOSE in Our Midst!

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

Remember the corn-sorting job I mentioned last time? Well, it kinda fell through because of the drought we've been having and because of our wonderful bobbling economy...well, when life sends you lemons, make lemonade and make enough to share with others, hence: Chapter 4! It's a little quiet, like the last two, but one of the most important players arrives in it, and things start to change in Cecie and Joe's relationship.

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I. Also, I don't own the lyrics to Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" (I first heard the song on the canned music at the grocery store I worked in last year, and it always put me in mind of some tall, dark, mysterious-looking fellow...little did I know...), or the mildly modified excerpt from Petronius's Satyricon.

Chapter IV

...Beautiful Stranger

Sunday morning, Cecie got up earlier even than the Connellys: she had to give Joe a quick explanation of the Catholic Mass. She'd avoided going to daily Mass at St. Edith Stein's Parish all last week only because she hadn't had the time to brief him until now. He accepted it without much fuss.

She didn't sit with the Connellys either, but stayed in a pew up the back, with Joe at her side, just to keep out of the range of everyone's stares. But even this backfired: Winifred Bax sat in the pew directly across the aisle from them, and more than once, Cecie caught the older woman eyeing Joe from over the top of her prayerbook.

She thought she had explicitly told Joe not to follow her up to the altar for Communion, but he accompanied her anyway, though he held back once she reached the altar rail. He stood behind her as she knelt down; the priest, Father Kunstler, glanced up at him slightly puzzled at first, but then realization passed over the older priest's face. He raised the small Host he held in his fingertips and with it, made a gracious Sign of the Cross in Joe's direction. Cecie tried not to smile, knowing the looks of shock and disapproval Peter and Georgette and not a few others would cast in her direction.

After Mass, while the Connellys lingered over their prayers, Cecie made the circuit of the statues along the ambulatory around the main body of the chapel, Joe at her side.

She paused at the statue of St. Jude and lit a candle: getting the Connellys to tolerate Joe had been an impossible case and she needed all the help she could get.

She lingered at the statue of St. Cecilia also. Joe eyed the nameplate on the base of the statue, then leaned over to Cecie.

"You were named for this ...saint?" he asked in a low whisper.

"Yes, she's the patron of music; she's said to have invented the pipe organ."

"And so she gave a glorious-voiced gift to your faith."

She paused before the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. Joe gazed up at the image with a warm look of tenderness. As Cecie started to move away, he leaned over and laid a lingering kiss on the foot of the image. Cecie smiled at him.

"You know, if you were human, you'd make a good Catholic," Cecie said to him as they stepped outside.

"I am human in form," he countered.

"True, but you lack that one thing that really separates our species: a soul."

He stood in front of her. "How do you know for certain that I do? You have said yourself that with your God, all things are possible. If He could become human, could He not, if He so wished, give this gift of a soul to one of my kind?"

"I don't see it happening, but who knows?"

The Connellys had come out and mingled with the crowd in the courtyard. The three old ladies Cecie had overheard in the market, Mildred, Clara, and Winifred, had gathered close by the privet hedges that framed the dooryard; their friend Samantha Covey had joined them.

"Have you seen the nice-looking young man Cecilia Martin brought with her?" Mildred asked.

"No, I didn't even know she was seeing anybody," said Samantha.

"Well, she is now," Mildred replied.

"God bless her! Have you met him?"

"Not personally, but he's absolutely gorgeous! I'd like to know where she met him."

"Oh, she probably met him through her work; most people do these days," Clara said.

"I wonder what he does for work," Mildred put in.

"Oh, he's probably a writer or an artist or something like that. She always used to hang about with people like that," Winifred said. "But with the kind of figure he has, I'll bet he's a dancer."

Joe bent his head, listening to this conversation with rapt attention. At length, he turned to Cecie with a puckish smile. "The venerable ladies of your community find me an object of curiosity."

"Well, just don't go near them. I don't want them to find out what you are, or I'd never hear the end of it and I might not be able to show my face around town again."

She found Peter introducing Frank and Kip to Diocletian and his wife. Allison Diocletian was a small, thin woman with mousy brown hair and a pretty, quiet face already starting to show care lines about her eyes and mouth even though she was hardly past her mid-thirties.

"I think I've read some of your magazine articles," Diocletian was saying to Frank. "You've got a good eye for details."

"My editors wish I didn't," Frank replied. "Then they wouldn't have to keep cutting my copy down to size."

Peter glanced toward Cecie and Joe as they approached the group. "Oh, here they are now. Shay, Allie, you know Cecie, but she's brought along her-ahem-young, er, gentleman friend Joe."

"We've already met," Diocletian said, pushing his hands deeper into the pockets of his jacket.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Allison said, offering her hand to Joe.

Joe took it graciously and turned it over, palm down. "The pleasure is, I assure you, all mine, Allison," he said. He leaned over her hand and kissed the back of it.

Diocletian reached out and pulled his wife's hand out of Joe's hand. Allison looked away, her lip trembling slightly. Joe regarded this gesture with blank bewilderment.

Sarah had watched the whole exchange from the rose garden: the brief, polite chatting between Uncle Peter and Mr. Diocletian, then Cecie and Joe coming along and Uncle Peter somewhat hesitantly introducing Joe to the couple. Mr. Diocletian regarded the poor fellow with the same sort of cold pomposity he showed toward everyone else. She'd always seen Mr. Diocletian as a handsome man, but next to Joe he looked middle-aged, sagging, worn out before his time by his own arrogance.

She noticed something a little odd about the way Mrs. Diocletian looked up at Joe as he leaned over her hand, almost the way the princess might look upon the handsome knight her father had forbidden her to consort with. In some ways, Joe was a knight, but the steel was all on the inside.

But why should she be looking at Joe anyway, least of all like...that? She was married to Diocletian; they had two sons. She had a family. She didn't need to look at him with that sort of, well, longing in her eye.

Sarah almost felt relieved when Diocletian pulled his wife's hand out of Joe's, but then she almost cried out in objection. Did he have to do it so brusquely? Noting the blank look of dismay in the Mecha's eyes, she nearly bolted from the garden to comfort him. But if she did, how would he take it? Would that set off something in him that she'd rather not see?

She went deeper into the rose garden to get away from this scene.

She found Frank and Bernie coming up the cross-path. They walked across the grass close to the church wall. Bernie had her hands behind her back, and she kept them there as Frank paused and turned toward her. He leaned one hand against the wall behind her as he stood before her. They spoke in voices too low for Sarah to hear. Frank looked so much nicer now that he'd trimmed back his whiskers into a neat chin beard, what Cecie had called a "Van dyke".

She heard someone coming; she ducked behind a bush.

Peter had sent Cecie to find Bernie and Frank, who had strayed off somewhere into the garden; this gave her a chance to show the gardens to Joe.

As they strayed along the path, Cecie paused before a bush covered with salmon-pink roses with golden centers; she carefully drew one down to her level to smell it. Joe studied one blossom intently, then delicately caressed its petals with a touch as light as butterfly's. She watched this gesture; he must have sensed her eyes on him: he turned back to her.

"Perhaps something is awry in your world when a mere machine possesses a more delicate touch than a man's touch," he observed. He raised his finger away from the petals; the bloom hardly moved under this retreating movement.

"If you mean Diocletian, you probably have more sense of romance in your little finger than he has in his whole person," she said.

"His wife has about her the look of a woman who has not known real love for too many years of nights in succession."

"We used to say in the store that Diocletian wasn't born like the rest of us Orga: we said he was grown in a vat and he came out adult-size. They've got a couple of kids, but I don't think they made them the old-fashioned way. None of us-not even Carton Jacobi, who had the dirtiest mind-could imagine Diocletian, y' know, getting cozy with Allison."

"If I possessed this gift to envision the impossible, even I could not see that man doing for her what I could do for her, much less with the same quality and attention." He had that gleam of anticipated conquest in his eye.

"Now get that out of your processor, or I'll gouge it out myself."

He smiled astutely at her. "You know that you could do me no harm, no more than the next woman could."

"You win," she muttered, shaking her head.

At length, they came upon Frank and Bernie, behind a large bush covered with white blossoms with red hearts. Frank had his hand under Bernie's chin, tilting her face up to his. He lowered his eyelids as he lowered his face to hers; Bernie turned her face away slightly as he tried to kiss her lips, and he ended up kissing her cheek near the corner of her mouth.

"Uh, I don't mean to intrude, but are you two practicing for the wedding?" Cecie asked. Bernie broke from Frank's touch.

"Well, if we were, one of us just had a little lapse, probably just jitters," Frank said. To Bernie he added, "We'll get this cleared up Saturday, right?"

"Yeah, it was just jitters, after all," Bernie said, smiling nervously.

"Peter's looking for you, and we're trying to find Sarah as well," Cecie said. She glanced at Joe out of the corner of her eye; he seemed oddly curious about some of the bushes.

Frank looked around. He stepped in among the bushes and came out, leading Sarah by the hand.

"Now how long were you there?" he asked with a teasing lilt.

"Just a few minutes," Sarah said. "Please don't tell Uncle Peter, or I'll get a three hour lecture from him."

"I wouldn't wish anyone to be subject to that treatment, except maybe my worst enemy," Frank said.

The five of them walked back to where Peter and Georgette waited for them.

"I'd advise you to keep away from that friend of Cecie Martin's," Diocletian said to his wife as they drove to pick up their sons at Allison's mother's house.

"He seemed a little odd, but he seems perfectly harmless," she said.

"That's the whole point: he isn't harmless."

"No?"

"He's one of those."

"One of what?"

"Don't be naïve. He's a sex-Mecha."

"Really? I couldn't tell."

"Didn't you see how glossy the thing's skin was? And that none-too-intelligent look in its eye? Why the designers call it an artificial intelligence slays me. The artificial part is understood, but what's so intelligent about them?"

"They call them artificial intelligences because they have an awareness something like ours, sort of, even though they're machines."

Diocletian wagged his head impatiently. "Yeah, well, they can't do anything we already couldn't do just as well, if not better, especially that."

Allison didn't argue. After thirteen years of marriage to Shay, she knew better than to argue, that shay had to have the last word no matter what, and she didn't want to start a fight, not with the boys coming home; had to show them smiling faces.

The radio played an old song by a singer called Madonna:

"Haven't we met?

You're some kind of beautiful stranger.

You could be good for me;

I've had the taste for danger.

"If I'm smart, then I'll run away,

But I'm not, so I guess I'll stay.

Heaven forbid,

I fell in love with a beautiful stranger.

"I looked into you eyes

And my world came tumbling down.

You're the devil in disguise,

That's why I'm singing this song.

"To know you is to love you

You're everywhere I go

And everybody knows...."

Sarah seemed unusually quiet even for her for the rest of the day, and she kept her eyes averted from Joe every time she got within eyeshot of him.

"Is there anything you need to talk about?" Cecie asked her at bedtime.

"Well, there was something personal I kinda wanted to ask you."

"Ask away: the worst I can do is refuse to answer it."

"When did...I mean, how old were you when you...first liked...I mean, had a crush on a guy?"

Cecie hid a smile in her hand. "You'll laugh if I tell you."

"No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't be cruel."

"I wouldn't mind it even if you did. I was five years old."

"Five?! That's young."

"Tell me about it. I was in kindergarten, and I got it bad for this one boy, Jerry Stang, even though he acted like I didn't exist. All the other girls thought I was weird."

"I would think so. I baby-sat out neighbor's little girl; she's starting first grade next month, and she hates boys like anything. She hates anything male so bad, she thinks if you insist loud enough and long enough that an animal is a girl, that makes it so."

"And then ten years from now she'll be all over the boys.

"I wish! But I don't see it happening.

"So when was your first real crush?"

"It's really hard to say: I always thought the boys were more interesting than the girls. All through high school, I had more guy friends than girl friends. Phila and Bernie were the only real girl friends I ever had and they were really more like sisters."

"So who did you like next after Jerry?"

"Let's see...I had the usual crushes on movie actors and singers, but I didn't have a real crush on anyone again until I was thirteen and this handsome fellow who went to Mass at St. Edith's, Richard...Nackert? Nackert...anyway, he got married, and I was mortified afterward. As soon as I saw the first wedding banns published, I felt like I'd caught some dread disease.

"So...who is it?"

"Who's what?'

"Who's the object of your emotions? Is it Kip?"

"Of course not, he's nice but he's nothing to look at."

"Is it Frank?"

"He's too wacky."

"Is it Stephen?"

"No, he's too nice, I want someone sorta wicked, but not."

"Don't tell me it's Diocletian."

"NO! He's so nasty even his mother would be afraid of him."

Cecie tried not to lower her eyelids fiendishly. "I bet I know."

Sarah looked at her face. "Of course not! If Uncle Peter found out, he'd thrash me"

Cecie shrugged. "Suit yourself, but it doesn't take a mind reader to figure it out."

"Well, if that's what they'd come up with, they'd better clean their mind-reading equipment."

Sarah tried to think of other things as she fell asleep, but all she could think of as she dozed off was Frank trying to kiss Bernie on the lips, and of Joe gazing at her through the bushes...

She found herself walking through another garden in the night, though it looked not so much like a garden as it resembled a long corridor roofed in glass with crystal walls, like some sort of greenhouse. Clumps of brightly-colored flowers blazed out from the darkness around her, then she realized the brilliance came not form the hues of the blossoms, but from the blooms themselves. They glowed in the night like incandescent clouds or like colored lights seen through a fog.

In the shadows between two clumps of flowers-lights of rose and azure blue, she made out an indistinct figure, dressed in iridescent black garments that shimmered in the darkness, catching and reflecting the colored lights around him. She tried to approach him; she reached out to touch the hem of his garment.

He turned to her slowly; then he escaped, capering into the darkness and the mist of light like a gazelle, laughing gentle mockery back to her.

She ran in his direction, following the light patter of his footsteps; she saw his form only when the lights gleamed off his sheening garments.

He paused and stood poised as if he would let her draw nigh. She came nearly to within arm's reach of him, when he turned and leapt away again. One hand swept back, as if beckoning her to pursue.

As she followed him, the crystal corridor made several sudden turns and she nearly lost sight of him among the luminous blossoms. But he reappeared, posed against the glow, a slender shadow backlit.

But when she drew close, he leapt lightly aside. She gave chase, more determined than ever that this time she would come close enough to take hold of him.

He seemed to sense her determination: he zig-zagged before her, following a parabolic course, often hiding behind or amongst the blossoms, only to reappear farther away.

At length, they came to a high wall of bushes bearing flame-colored blossoms picked out with purple. He had to stop here: he could go no farther.

But instead he flung himself in a long leap at the bush. He broke through, scattering petals and sending them cascading to the ground like shards of stained glass. An avenue opened up for her to follow.

She stepped through the opening in the bush into a kind of conservatory at the end of the corridor. A group of silver statues gleaming in the light from the bush stood here in various graceful poses, like classical statues worked in metal. She could not see her stranger.

But no, he reclined in the lap of one statue, his head supported by its outstretched hand, as if it embraced him. He arose slowly and turned to her...

She woke up when Cecie stumbled on a corner of the air mattress.

"Hey, I was having a nice dream," Sarah muttered, pulling the covers over her head.

"Sorry," Cecie said.

That day, Kip, Frank, Mat, and Ferde set to work mowing the long front lawn, while Alice, Georgette, Ellen, Phila and Bernie went to the caterer's in Amherst to try some samples and place their order. Stephen and Sarah had gone for a walk in the woods Cecie ducked out of the dining room with Joe immediately after breakfast, to avoid getting roped into going with them. Now they sat in a nook in the attic, she on an old couch, her scriber in her lap, he on a pile of cushions at her feet.

"You're lucky you don't have to eat," she informed him.

"Some people have told me this causes me to miss out on one of life's greatest pleasures. Why then do you say this?"

"I'm saying it because Amherst has the worst caterer anywhere: you won't be missing out on a pleasure, you'll be avoiding a major stomach cramp."

"Why then do they go to this trouble?"

"Georgette knows the woman who runs the place, so she can get a good deal, plus, she didn't want Chartrice to feel left out or passed over."

"But if this Chartrice's culinary fruits fail to delight the palate, why then does she maintain business?"

Cecie almost said 'Your guess is as good as mine', but she realized that didn't quite fit. "That's a good question," she said, instead.

She wrote for a long time, but the cozy warmth of the attic and the sunlight shining through the one window made her drowsy. She set her scriber aside on a box and settled back against the arm of the sofa.

She'd made the mistake of closing her eyes. She awoke hearing rain on the roof, but she sensed something else: someone had removed her glasses, her head felt higher than it had been and the angle had changed. Plus she could hear the soft, soundless drone of some sort of inner mechanisms very close to her ear. She looked up.

Joe looked down at her, upside down. She realized she lay with her head in his lap; he must have crept up beside her as she slept and gently rearranged her. She sat up so quickly, she nearly bumped her head on his chin. She turned to him, eyes flashing.

"Don't let me catch you doing that again," she snapped, too harshly.

"You stirred in your sleep many times. Your head moved most restlessly, so I meant only to offer you a place to rest it."

"I know you meant well," she patted his shoulder reassuringly. "But it's just... that was a little too much for me."

She looked out at the rain falling, running down the glass in rivulets. "I guess the fellas had to abandon the lawn mowing." She picked up her scriber and headed downstairs, Joe at her side. He offered to carry her scriber for her; she relented at length.

Frank stood in the dining room toweling his damp hair when they came down.

"Ugh!" Kip cried, coming from the bathroom, clearly already changed into dry clothes. "The sky just opened up over our heads."

"No more cuttin' grass today," Mat said, sitting on the floor. He eyed Cecie and Joe. "Where were you two pixies all this time?"

"High and dry in the attic," Cecie said. "Did Sarah and Stephen get back?"

"They should be back soon if they made a run for it," Ferde said, coming downstairs behind them.

Even as he spoke, the back door banged open and closed.

"Ooh! Brrr! Ow! That is cold!!" Sarah yelped, coming into the dining room. She'd already kicked off her shoes, now she peeled off her socks. She started tugging at her slip, but then she looked up in Joe's direction.

His eyes had turned toward her, but he quickly averted them.

Sarah's face went red; she dashed for the bathroom and banged the door shut behind her.

"Uh, Sarah, it's me Cecie; you want me to got get some dry clothes for you?"

"I completely forgot!" Sarah wailed.

"Calm down and keep your shirt on, uh, not literally."

Cecie ran upstairs and grabbed the first of Sarah's clothes she could find: a peasant blouse and blue jeans, and ran downstairs. She tapped on the door.

"It's Cecie with your stuff."

The door popped open a crack; Sarah stuck her hand out, grabbed the clothes and tugged them inside. She snapped the door shut.

"You better not harbor any intentions toward my daughter," Ferde was saying to Joe.

"I am not permitted to approach anyone who has not attained the age of consent," Joe replied matter of factly.

"It's a good thing. But if she was older now, I'd rather see her with something like you than a lot of the goons out there."

"Don't encourage him, Ferde," Cecie said.

"Yeah, and don't let Peter hear about this, either," Kip added.

Sarah emerged from the bathroom, dressed, but she kept her eyes averted from everyone as she stalked upstairs.

Stephen came in at the back door, taking down his umbrella.

"I guess you drowned rats need some tea," Cecie said, heading into the kitchen. She filled the kettle and set it on the stove to boil. She got down seven mugs from the cupboard and took down the box of tea bags.

Once the water had boiled, she filled the mugs and added a shot of cooking sherry to six of the mugs, making sure not to put any in the mismatched mug.

The rain kept pouring down. Frank updated his diary in the living room, watching for the girls to get back. Cecie scanned the bookshelves, as familiar as they were to her.

"I mean not to sound querulous, but do the Connellys possess any books that do not deal with the spiritual?" Joe asked from the armchair where he sat, with his long legs slung gracefully over one arm.

"Believe it or not, they do, they just don't keep them in the living room," Cecie said.

"I don't mean to sound critical of my soon-to-be in-laws, but that's one thing I find a little annoying. I mean, what's wrong with having a few books around that aren't exactly cosmology?" Frank said.

"At least you won't have to live here, the way I did for five years," Cecie said.

Frank did a double take; even Joe looked at her quizzically. "You mean you lived here with these people?" Frank asked.

"My mother was in and out of the hospital with cancer the last five years of her life, so I stayed here all that time."

"How did you stand it?" Frank asked. "I could imagine going to live in a place like Rouge City after living here, just to see if my lower nature was still intact."

"Perhaps this led you to remove yourself to Rouge City, and why you sought out the company afforded by something like me," Joe insinuated.

"Neither of you ever had to see them at their worst. When Phila was in grade school, they wouldn't let her play with any kid they knew had two rabbits in the same cage together."

"Now that's really extreme! I mean, that was how my folks taught me about reproduction," Frank said.

"They would begrudge their daughter the knowledge even of nature?" Joe asked, condescendingly.

"They even got after me because I started early," Cecie said, selecting a volume of Dante, the only thing she could find that was not explicitly theological.

"You can tell us about it; we both know about women," Frank said.

"I started wearing bras when I was twelve, and they begrudged me for that. They were sure I was going to develop a voluptuous figure, on account of the fact that I never dressed as conservatively as Phila and Bernie did."

"You don't dress that daringly," Frank said. "And anyone who says your figure is voluptuous is either generous or perverse." He darted a glance at Joe. "Or he's a lover-Mecha."

"I will not deny Cecie possesses many attractive facets to her appearance," Joe said innocently.

"So how'd they, y' know, teach Phila and Bernie the birds 'n the bees?" Frank asked.

"How do ornithology and apiculture come into the discussion?" Joe asked. Cecie detected an odd little lilt to his voice, as if he were making a joke.

"They might as well have taught them that," Cecie said. "I think they waited till the last minute, y' know, told them about their cycle like a week before they had their first period, and then after that they'd get suspicious about any guy that happened to be looking in Phila or Bernie's direction."

"What about Stephen?" Frank asked.

"I don't know. He went to a boys' school in Albany, so they had less control over what he got exposed to there."

Joe rose from his chair and graciously let Cecie sit down. "And doubtlessly," he said, seating himself on the floor beside her, "They have not taught him how to please a woman and delight her heart."

"I'm afraid not. I actually tried to start a relationship with him after I got out of college. I had to let him go: he kept treating me like a sister, and then he went into the seminary." She slung her legs over the opposite arm of the chair.

Frank looked askance at Joe. "Maybe in that case, it's just as well Joe ain't staying up in the men's dormitory," he said.

"Let's not go there," Cecie said.

"In which case," Joe said, clearly ignoring Frank's remark, "What then have they told their daughters about, as you, Cecie, call it, the other half of the equation?"

"Not much, either. Peter gave me this big lecture about pornography when I was seventeen, because I'd hung up a print of Leonardo da Vinci's Viritruvian Man in my room."

"That's the sketch of the guy in the circle with his arms and legs spread in an X, right?" Frank asked.

"Yeah."

"Man, that's really nuts, going after classical art. What about the naked baby Jesus paintings, or the ones with Mary nursing the Christ Child?"

"They don't think much of them, I'm afraid."

Frank looked out the front window. "Uh oh, better cut the conversation. Here come the girls. I hope they didn't choose creamed spinach for the vegetable. I hate creamed spinach."

"I like spinach, but not the creamed variety," Cecie said.

"I just hate the stuff, makes my whole inside lock up. Yicchh!"

"Anything you call edible would cause my insides to lock up as well. Perhaps to some degree, our similarities do not cease beyond appearances and experience," Joe remarked.

The back door opened. At length, Phila and Bernie came into the living room. Phila had her arms about Bernie, who looked more than a little green. Frank got up from the couch and helped Bernie lie down on it.

"You okay, Bern?" he asked.

"Something didn't agree with me," Bernie groaned.

"It must have been the curried shrimp," Phila said.

"Was it creamed spinach," Frank said, straight faced.

"No, it was the jambalaya rice," Bernie said, insistent.

"Even those who can eat find their own comestibles impossible to digest," Joe remarked.

"Oh, shut up, Joe!" Bernie moaned, covering her ears.

The rain stopped that evening. A strong, cold wind blew all night long, so that by morning, when the sun came up, the grass had dried.

"Now we can finish tackling that lawn," Kip said.

Frank pushed the old-fashioned push mower while Kip, Ferde, and Stephen raked up the clippings. Mat doggedly pushed the wheelbarrow behind them; from time to time, they scooped the windrows of cut grass into the barrow.

"Why doesn't Peter at least keep some sheep to keep the grass short in this hay field?" Mat groused.

"Trouble with sheep is they chew the grass right down to the roots and kill it," Stephen said.

"How'd you know that?" Ferde asked.

"I took care of sheep when I was in the seminary."

"Teaching you to take care of one kind of flock to prepare you for another, eh?" Ferde observed.

"It turned out I wasn't suited for either."

"Well, if sheep are out, why doesn't Peter get a gardener Mecha?" Mat suggested.

"Peter wouldn't hear of it," Stephen said. "He doesn't take much stock in Mecha."

"So it isn't just Joe, it's the whole kit 'n caboodle?"

"He just wants to make sure we stay busy," Stephen said.

Mat mopped the back of his neck. "He's sure succeeded in that."

They finished mowing the lawn just after noon, which left them much of the day free.

After lunch, Frank found the kickball in the walled garden and brought it down to the Bowling Green, where he kicked it around for a while, solo, with the base of a rock for a goal post.

Mat came along a little while later. "Hey, want some company?"

"Sure," Frank said, kicking the ball to him.

Kip came up from the water garden. "Don't let Georgette know, but I just submerged a plastic case of birch beer in the lily pond to cool," he said.

"Birch beer? Why not the real thing?" Mat asked.

"Gotta keep clear heads for tonight: Boys' Night Out," Kip said.

"Yeah, the closest thing you'll have to a bachelor party," Ferde said, joining them.

"Ooh! Any chance at some, er, exotic entertainment?" Mat asked.

"Not if Peter can help it," Ferde said.

"We really don't need it anyway," Frank said, bouncing the ball off his knees.

"I sure don't," Kip said, grinning and taking Frank's side. "I ain't desertin' the guy who pushed my car."

"Ingrate!" Mat sneered, making a mock disgusted face. "I didn't know we were doing teams."

"Guess we are now," Ferde said, taking Mat's side.

They scrimmaged for a while, mostly just kicking the ball back and forth to each other, but Frank kept up a crazy mock commentary the whole time.

"Sweitz passes the ball to Langier; Langier makes a wild shot. Connelly tries to intercept it and it's another goal for our side!"

Cecie and Stephen came down the walk and over the bridge. She paused at the edge of the field and watched in silence.

"Hey, Frank! Or is it Howard Cosell?" she called. "If you're gonna commentate, you better come up with some names of those teams."

"How about you come down and join us? Maybe that'll help me come up with something," Frank said, deflecting the ball with his elbow.

"Why not?" Cecie said, jumping into the fray on Frank and Kip's side. "You need a goalie anyway."

"Family loyalty," Stephen said, getting behind Ferde.

"And Mat Langier has the ball, he's kicking it down toward the...but Martin deflects it! She's kicked it in a free shot straight down to the other team's goal! And it's another point for the...Rouge City Rascals!"

"If you're the Rouge City Rascals, who 're we?" Mat hollered back, kicking the ball for the other goal, the space between Frank's wadded up flannel shirt on the grass and a cardboard box.

"Kip Langier intercepts the ball, and that's gonna hurt the...Westhillston Wackies."

"Hey! Watch it!" Ferde yelled. The ball whizzed past his head.

"That sounds like a better name to me," Cecie called.

"What does?"

"The Westhillston Watchits."

"Yeah, 'cause they better watch it, or else we'll whack them," Kip said, booting the ball with the side of his foot.

"And whoever wins has to pay for the losing team's drinks," Cecie said.

"Huh?" Frank asked. The ball sailed past him toward the arbitrary goal.

"Guess the Rascals are closer to having their drinks paid for!" Ferde teased.

Cecie kicked the ball in another straight shot.

"Hey, now we're gonna have to pay!" Frank yelled.

Mat booted the ball across the green. Kip ran after it, but tripped and flat on his face. The ball rolled past Cecie somehow. She spiked it across the field. Ferde and Stephen slammed into each other trying to block the ball, which rolled out of bounds.

Mat swatted the ball down toward the goal. Cecie tried to deflect it, but it went between her ankles.

"Hey, penalty, Martin! You're trying to make us lose!" Frank yelled.

"That's the point," she said.

"Why?

"Then we don't get stuck with their bill: I don't drink," Cecie said.

"Wow," Frank said in amazement, but he didn't stay this way for long. Kip passed the ball to him; Frank swiped it toward the Watchits' goal, but not hard enough to score.

"Hey! This isn't ethical!" Stephen cried.

"Who thought up that dumb rule anyway?" Ferde demanded.

"We used to do it in college," Cecie called.

The Watchits retaliated by kicking the ball around among themselves, barely concealed grins on their faces.

"I think your rule just backfired, Cecie," Kip said.

It looked that way until Mat kicked the ball so hard it rolled into the pond.

"Oops," Mat said.

"I guess that's the end of that," Frank said.

"Who won?" Ferde asked.

"I think you scored higher, so you get to pay for our drinks," Kip said. "Birch beer anyone?"

"Sure," Stephen said.

They found Joe sitting perched on the railing of the footbridge.

"Now how long have you been sitting there?" Cecie asked him.

"I have sat here since you divided your numbers into factions, twenty-three minutes and twelve seconds ago," he replied.

Kip fished the pack of birch beer out of the water and booted the ball out onto the lawn.

"So how did the World Chess Championship go?" Kip asked, divvying up the cans among the flesh-and-blood humans.

"I have maintained my winning streak over your dear mother Irene, though she nearly came ahead of me," Joe said.

"You know, you must be the only person who's ever consistently beaten my mother: she used to run circles around my dad's playing skills. How many games have you played her?"

Joe bent his head thoughtfully. "We have challenged each other to thirty-six games in the course of six days."

"Not bad. Where'd you learn that?" Ferde asked.

"I don't know; it's just something I do," Joe replied matter of factly.

"You gotta remember," Cecie said, "One of Joe's ancestors was Deep Blue, the computer AI that beat Gary Kasparov back in the 20th century."

"Yeah, but who knew they'd come up with this," Ferde said, jabbing his forefinger at Joe. "Which came first, the intelligence or the body?"

"They improved virtual AIs in the early 21st century, then they found ways to load a personality into a metal body robot. Then gradually they modified the design of the external appearance, devised the silicon dermis and modified the skeleton, till we have beings like our Joe."

"But you must admit to yourselves, the who is much, much greater than the sum of his parts," Joe said proudly, by way of conclusion.

"The sum of his parts? We're still in uppity mode, I see," Frank observed.

"His winning streak must have gone to his head-sorry, processors," Stephen said.

"You may use the term head," Joe said, otherwise ignoring the comment. He eyed the soda can quizzically.

"Hey, stop ogling that soda can, fiberhead," Kip teased. "You know you can't have a sip."

Joe looked at Kip, chin lifted slightly. "I cannot, but I may whiff its aroma," he said. "And I beg to differ with your calling me a fiber head."

Cecie lifted the can to a level with her face. Joe leaned his face close to it, lowered his eyelids and flared his nostrils.

He leaned away, a fascinated smile curving his lips. "It has a sweet smell, yet this aroma possesses an unusual tang," he observed. "It scents sweeter than any birch flowers, and it is free of any trace of alcohol. I smelt carbonation bubbles."

"I didn't think birch flowers smelled like anything," Stephen said.

"They have a scent, but it is a dry smell," Joe said.

"How does he know that?" Ferde asked, incredulous.

"He's got sensors that make our Jacobson's organ look like a joke," Cecie said. "That way he can pick up a woman's pheromones a mile away and tell if she's uninterested or lonely, or if she's looking for some comfort."

Mat regarded Joe sidewise. "Wonder what would happen if we pushed him off the railing into the water?"

Joe's face went blank. He got off the railing and sat down on the deck of the bridge, at Cecie's feet. Her foot edged closer to him.

"If you did, or could in light of recent changes, he'd sink like a rock, and I'd dive in after him, but he'd climb out first-rescuing me, no less-and then we'd really have to put up with his indignation."

"Aw, we can put up with that, can't we, fellas?" Mat said.

"Not me," Ferde said.

"Are you sure he's waterproof?" Stephen asked.

"As waterproof as any of you: certain scenarios require it of me," Joe replied, innocently.

"Aw, guess a good dunk wouldn't short him out for a while. Nuts!" Mat muttered.

"It's a bachelor party, so why are you going?" Sarah asked Cecie, who stood in front of her mirror, running a comb through her hair.

"Well, I never did hang out with the girls much, like I said," Cecie said. "I knew on guy who told me I was more like one of the guys, but he didn't mind that in the least. He kinda like me for it."

"I still don't get it."

"We're all different: some of us are more feminine, others are, well, more mannish. I'm one of the latter: I always said the boys did more interesting, exciting stuff than the girls."

"So is that why you're going to a bachelor party?"

"It's really not that, it's just the guys going out for supper and a few drinks, maybe some innocent horsing around."

"I still don't get it: you didn't go with Phila and Bernie to their wedding showers."

"I wasn't invited: Frank and Kip invited me to come along tonight."

"Whatever," Sarah grumbled.

As she came downstairs, Cecie overheard Peter talking in the dining room, clearly giving a few last minute instructions to his son and most likely, his prospective sons-in-law.

"No more than one drink per hour, and don't let any girls catch your eye," Peter said.

"What if Phila and Bernie should drop in and try to catch our eyes?" Frank asked, clearly trying not to sound smart-alecky.

"All right, don't let any strange girls catch your eyes," Peter said. "And above all, if you see any, stay away from any sex-Mechas."

"We're only going to Hodge's; I doubt any of those are likely to come out of the woodwork," Stephen said.

At that exact moment, Joe stepped out of the shadows near the foot of the stairs and stood before her, back-lit by the diffused light from the dining room doorway. He tilted his head toward the voice. For a brief moment, he looked as if he might turn away from her. He looked up at her, clearly trying to read her face.

She answered his unspoken query by stepping down the last steps to his side.

"So you would disregard Peter's sage advice?" Joe asked ironically.

"Of course," she said in a low voice. "Just your being here shows I'm disregarding it."

She took his proffered arm and let him lead her into the dining room.

Peter's eyes went from Cecie's face to Joe's and back to Cecie's. "So you're going in his company?"

"Yes, I am."

Peter looked Joe up and down. "Make sure he remembers he's with you."

Cecie gently increased her hold on Joe's arm.

"Mr. Connelly, I assure you that I shall not abandon Cecie. Such conduct is not worthy of a gentleman, even one such as I. Perhaps you have mistaken some elements of my gallantry for flightiness, but such is not the case."

Peter was speechless at this polite affront, but only for the moment. He reached into the pocket of his pants and held something out to Kip. "Just remember to be back by 23.00."

"We'll be home before then," Kip promised, taking the keys.

"God bless you, and take care of the car," Georgette added.

Frank kept a straight face until they got outside.

"Whoa, are those REALLY the keys to the Buick?" he asked, staring at Kip's pocket.

"These are them," Kip said.

"Man, he must really trust you even if you come from Rouge City," Cecie said.

"We kinda need it if we're all gonna cram into one car," Stephen said. "Unless some of us don't mind sitting in each other's laps."

Cecie darted a glance at Joe, whose smile betrayed he approved of the idea.

Hodge's was a small pub-style restaurant near the center of town; if Norman Rockwell ever painted a bar, he would have used Hodge's for the model: clean, moderately well-lit, posters on the walls of old farm equipment, sporting events and old movies, a few high stools with well-worn leather seats along the bar, several booths in the back.

The seven of them got a booth at the back. There wasn't quite room for Joe, so Leelee the waitress got an extra chair for hi, which he deftly turned back to front.

"Whoa, Cecie! I guess the rumor going around is true!" Leelee said, looking Joe up and down a second time.

"What's the rumor?" Cecie asked.

"Folks have been saying you brought one of those along. I almost thought he was a regular meathead human for a minute. He's a beauty."

"Don't let Joe hear you say that," Frank warned. "Or the compliments will go right to his processors and we'll have to put up with his uppitiness."

"Okay, then I'll just act like Mr. Too-Big-for-his-Artificially-Intelligent-Britches isn't here," Leelee said, trying to keep a straight face.

Joe took this with a look of elegant impishness. "The very fact that you deny my presence serves as proof that I indeed exist."

"You don't stop, do you," Cecie groaned.

A few of the more curious patrons in the pub peered over in their direction. Several women surreptitiously ogled Joe; he returned their gazes genteelly.

"So I guess tomorrow is the real day of reckoning for you two boys," Ferde said some minutes later, gesturing at Kip and Frank with his fork.

"If you mean the Wasserman test, yeah," Kip said, trying not to shudder.

Frank kept his attention focused on his salad. "If either of us is likely to have trouble, it's me," he said at length.

"Why? I thought you said you've been clean for three years and you've been vaccinated," Ferde said.

"You never can tell when something else might have come along that's just lying dormant," Frank said.

"While we're kinda on the subject, and so's Kip and Frank won't be grinding their teeth instead of their eats, can I ask you a personal question, Joe?" Mat ventured.

"You may ask it. If it intrudes upon matters beyond my ability to answer or which were taken into confidence, I can only refuse to answer," Joe replied.

Mat edged closer to Joe. "Well, uh, with, y' know, the problems with, uh, nasty illnesses, how do you keep from turning into a carrier even if you can't, like, actually catch them?"

Joe processed this a long time. "I shall try to answer this query in as delicate terms as possible. We lover-Mechas contain a disinfecting system which destroys any microbes that may come into contact with our dermis and so prevent transmission to another Orga."

"'Sall I wanted to know," Mat said.

"Wonders never cease: the folks that built your types had a lot of foresight," Ferde said.

"At least he kept the explanation clean," Stephen said.

"If you wish for me to elaborate, I can do so," Joe added innocently.

"That won't be necessary," Cecie quickly put in.

"Fancy hearing that from you when you're the one who calls him your friend," Ferde said. "You actually HAVE principles, not that I'd hold it against you. To hear Pete say it, you'd think y' didn't."

"He thinks I don't because I moved to You-Know-Where."

"He was only concerned that you might be led astray," Stephen defended. "I mean, think of how may people go there for...you know."

"True, but I didn't go there for 'you know'. I went there because I'd found the mother lode of moral dilemmas."

Mat and Ferde started guffawing; Mat laughed so hard, a mouthful of beer blew out through his nostrils. Stephen looked mildly horrified; Frank cocked an intrigued eye at her, clearly waiting for elaboration. Joe's face took on a mysteriously proud look.

"Morality isn't the same as virtue. Virtue is the habitual practice of morally good acts, while vice is, of course, the habitual practice of morally bad acts. Morality is what happens when virtue and vice, or different levels of vice or human weakness bump heads. I see a lot of that happen in Rouge City."

"I'd imagine you'd see a lot of vice triumphant," Stephen said.

"It might look like that on the surface, but sometimes you have to lose yourself in order to find yourself," Cecie said.

"That stands to reason if you give it a little thought," Kip put in. "I mean, where I live on the Lower Deck, I see a lot of people coming and going. Sometimes I see the same ones before and after they've been topside. Contrary to popular notion, a lot of people come away from Rouge City very shaken. Some of them are more wounded than before, but that might not be such a bad thing in many ways."

"You often have to lance the scab to purge the wound, so the pus and the infected gack can evacuate and help the wound heal, even if you do it the wrong way," Cecie said.

"But what about the people who are irretrievably lost?" Stephen said.

"No one's irretrievably lost this side of life," Cecie countered. "Like I just said, sometimes you have to lose your way in order to find it again."

"But the characters in your stories are such...sinners! If you didn't have some resolution to the plot, it would look as if you were glorifying their crimes," Stephen returned, trying not to splutter.

Frank eyed Stephen oddly. "Is that you Stephen talking or is this just Stephen repeating stuff your father's said?"

Stephen cracked a sheepish grin, his pale face turning sunset-hued. "Well, one of the counselors at the seminary told me I needed to readjust my conscience, so I guess that's one way of describing what ails me."

"Francois Mauriac and Walker Percy used similar techniques of shedding light on moral dilemmas. You can't bring light into the shadowy places of the human psyche unless you dare to penetrate those same little dark corners. And Walker Percy wasn't ashamed to use, where no other word would do, the kind of four-letter words that often roar out of those little black holes: he wasn't ashamed to tell it like it is, but you came away enlightened, chastened even. I think if he were alive today, he would find a place like Rouge city as much of a fountain of inspiration as he did with his native New Orleans, pre-deluge."

"But your style gets so immodest that way," Stephen said.

"There's a difference between immodesty and frankness," Cecie said. "Immodesty intends to put out a 'come-hither', but frankness tells it like it is. In other words..." She got up and struck a mock oratorical pose:

"'Then why in heaven's name

Must every nagging prude

Of'-er-Peter Connelly's 'ilk cry shame

Denounce my work as lewd,

Damning with a look

My guileless, simple art

This simple modern book?

To prudes I now assert

My purity of speech

Such candor in my pen

As will not stoop to teach.

I write of living men,

The things they say and do

Of every human act

Admitted to be true.

Then where's the shame in that

If lovers should enjoy

The pleasures of the night

Whereby each girl and boy

Experience delight?'"

The people in the booths nearby had been listening. As she concluded and started to sit down again they started whistling and applauding. She got up and bowed with ironic dignity, pretending to stumble off her chair as she sat down again.

"Mmm, nothing like a few lines of Petronius," Frank growled with fake lascivious delight.

"The Satyricon was as raunchy as I ever got in my reading," Cecie admitted. "Even the classics can be downright unabashed in presenting human nature at it's reechiest: Ovid's Metamorphoses, anything by Aristophanes, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dante's Divine Comedy, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones; Shakespeare's plays are full of all sorts of clever little double entendres."

"Sounds like you're in good company," Ferde declared.

Joe had been listening to all this in attentive silence, but now his attention had strayed to a spot off to his left. Cecie followed his gaze.

Allison Diocletian sat at a table with a few of her girlfriends, chattering among themselves.

"Hey, what's Mrs. Seamus Diocletian doing here by her lone self?" asked Frank. "I mean, if HE knew she was in a place like this..."

"No, she waits up for him here while he's at the Knights of Columbus for a meeting," Cecie said. "It's almost nine, so he should be in any minute now, unless he got talking with someone afterwards."

One of Allison's friends got up and went to the jukebox in the far corner. She dropped a coin into the slot and pressed a couple selector buttons.

An ancient song by Madonna played.

"If I'm smart, then I'll run away

But I'm not, so I guess I'll stay.

Haven't you heard?

I fell in love with a beautiful stranger

"I looked into your face.

My heart was dancing all over the place.

I'd like to change my point of view,

If I could just forget about you.

"To love you is to be part of you

I've paid for you with tears

And swallowed all my pride..."

Cecie passed her hand across Joe's line of sight and moved her hand back to her face. His eyes swung to follow her movement, his head tracking a second after it. He gave her an almost pouting "why did you do that?" look.

Not a moment too soon: Allison had turned to look in Joe's direction. At the same moment, Diocletian walked into the pub, clad in a black suit, carrying his topcoat over his arm.

Joe regarded Cecie with something like innocent confusion. "She gazed at me; I felt her gaze on me. I sought only to return the favor," he said, utterly without guile.

Diocletian sat down with his back to them, blocking Allison from their view. Joe tried to peer around him to glimpse Allison, but Cecie touched Joe's arm.

"Hey, Joe, just remember I'm the lady you walked in with."

He gave her a reassuring wink. "How could I forget?"

To be continued...

Literary Easter Eggs:

St. Edith Stein Parish-No such church, but I amalgamated three different churches I frequent: St. Francis of Assisi Parish (the general atmosphere; it looks like a mildly modernized version of the Norman Rockwell little white church on the hill), St. Joseph the Worker's Shrine (the statues along the ambulatory) and Holy Trinity in Boston (the rose garden).

The Petronius quote-I picked up a copy of the Satyricon at my town's library's book swap while I was drafting one of the earlier chapters of this, and the book opened of itself to this little verse, which I pounced upon. Also, there is another cross-reference at play here: I couldn't help thinking of the part in Meredith Wilson's musical The Music Man where the town gossips are whining about the "dirty books" in the River City public library; they even have a crazy little chant of a song about their plight ("Picka-Little-Talka-Little").

"just remember I'm the lady you walked in with"-Lifted this line from the song "Luck, Be a Lady Tonight". I think I was playing back a few Frank Sinatra songs in my head at the time, and this was one of them. Lyric rewrite is not mine; I think Lena Horne sang it this way (I like old music!).