+J.M.J.+
The Shadows Between the Neon
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
I warned you this might carry over past Halloween; count this in the same class as the horror movies that are still running on the cable stations. WARNING: character death in this chapter; I did try to avoid it, but the killer decided to go after one of my creations. I hate it when that happens.
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I
VII October 30, 2159
Heading for the town homepage, Rouge City, USA
!!Tonight!!
The 20th Annual Rouge City Danse Macabre
Costume parade, 17.30 down Main Boulevarde
Dancing on Main Plaza, 18.30 to 5.30, October 31st
Be there or be scared!
Op-ed section, Rouge City Broadsheet
Jack the Ripper 2159Cecie Martin, guest columnist
I have a shirt that reads, "I Survived the Rouge City Chainsaw Massacree". This isn't just a cheesy souvenir I keep as a closet tourist of Sin City, USA. I really survived it, along with a friend of mine. Some of you may remember the incident: four years ago, about this time of year, a religious fanatic who belonged to a lunatic fringe Bible cult went on a Mechacidal rampage in the streets of the city, armed with a chainsaw, mowing down dozens of lover Mechas, injuring several people and delivering eventually fatal wounds to one man.
The recent spate of Mecha killings has begun to feel like a slow replay of that incident. Or is this some high-tech version of the most famous, and still unsolved, serial killings of all time, the infamous Jack the Ripper slayings? Both cases have more similarities than differences: the victims are members of the oldest profession, they were all stabbed and brutally torn open with parts of their bodies removed and taken, presumably by the killer. Many theories still float about as to the identity of the killers in both cases. Too much time has probably passed to solve the 19th century case, but this case is continuing to unfold even as you read this. Who has chosen to repeat history using the 23rd century's answer to Victorian England's scapegoats? Who is killing these Mechas? A disgruntled customer? An angered spouse? A rigorist member of the anti-vice league? I don't judge the person who is doing this: they might be insane and unaware of what they are doing. I pass no judgment on the victims, either; they know nothing better than what they have been programmed to do. For whatever less than innocent uses people make of these beings, some are nevertheless capable of innocent comradeship. Don't let anyone say that these killings are God's way of ridding the world of a moral pest; someone may have been saying the same thing about the victims of Jack the Ripper.
But why hate Mechas? Whoever you are, wherever you are, I ask you to please stop these pointless acts of violence. If you are acting in retribution, remember that retribution belongs only to whatever Higher Power you acknowledge. Your actions against your titanium and silicon brethren will profit you nothing. Justice will have its due, but please turn yourself over to the proper authorities before you slay an Orga by mistake and thus bring a worse term of prosecution on your head. Is all this violence worth a death sentence?…
At 15.30, Cecie went down to the Lower Deck with her costume neatly folded in her new satchel. She checked her email and uploaded a few files at Chatters, but she didn't stick around for long.
She logged out and headed straight for the Langiers, watching the shadows between the pilings. No sign of Vincenzi and his cronies; so maybe they had worked out their plans for nipping over to Camden for some handouts. She'd been across the Delaware during the height of trick or treating and she'd seen the kinds of things people gave out. Candy was passé these days: most folks gave out packets of dried fruit or sugar-free gum or bags of mini rice cakes. And toothbrushes: a couple years back, in a town called Haddonfield she'd seen one kid dressed like a pirate rummaging in his treat bag, fishing out toothbrushes and dropping them down a storm drain.
Bernie opened the door when she knocked. "Have you had supper?" Phila called from the kitchen as the two girls went in.
"No, not yet, and I didn't have much for lunch," Cecie said.
"Oh, trying to get that proper goth pallor?" Frank teased.
"Maybe," Cecie said with a mysterious little smile.
A moment later, the doorbell rang.
"Trick or treaters already, and it isn't even Halloween night?" Frank asked.
"Nah, we don't do trick or treating here," Kip said, working at the eye of a jack o' lantern with a kitchen knife. "Not many kids in this city, and the few there are go over to Camden or down to Philadelphia."
"Good idea, the kids would get stuff in their sacks to rival the razor blades and rat poison that supposedly turned up in someone's Halloween candy," Frank said.
"Yet another urban legend that gets slanted at us," Cecie groaned, going for the door.
She opened it to find a treat on the step, Joe leaning with one hand against the doorpost.
"Hey, Joe, whaddya know—what brings you here?" she asked, stepping aside to let him in.
"I saw you come this way, and since my perambulations with Julien at my heels led me hither, I came by to see if by chance you still had need of an escort to the Danse Macabre?
"Or," he added, his voice growing colder by several degrees, "have you chosen another to do the honors?"
"No, I haven't." she took his hands in both of hers. "Come on in."
"Hey there, Joe, great costume!" Frank cried. "Yah look like a Hollywood gigolo."
Joe took this jibe with a bantering smile. ""You know I always dress thusly."
"It's like when I was in high school. The only day I was dressed right was Halloween," Cecie said. "One year when I went through a haunted house, and as I was standing in line, this guy behind me asks if I worked there. I had to disappoint him that I didn't."
"I could see that happening," Kip said.
"The only safe time of year to be a goth," Frank added.
"It's so nice to be a goth at Halloween,
You just blend right into every spooky scene," Cecie sang, grinning.
Joe watched Kip at work putting the finishing touches on the jack o' lantern. "What, may I be so bold as to ask, is the purpose of hollowing out this vegetable and cutting a mask face into the side?"
"The simple explanation is to scare away the evil spirits and to light the good spirits on their journey toward their eternal rest," Cecie said.
"But it can serve just as well as a spooky decoration," Kip said. "Speaking of evil spirits, any more news on the Mecha murders?"
"Nothing yet," Frank said, stretching his back. "I hope we have a reprieve for a while or that Burnstead catches the sick son of a gun. These late nights are killing me, but Hal's thriving on 'em."
"I imagine," Cecie said.
"I suppose there's no way of peeking into the future to see what's coming, except for peeking into a crystal ball or something," Kip said. "And that's risky to say the least."
"I've got a little Gypsy in me from waaaaayy back," Cecie said. "I don't have a whole lot in psychic ability, but I've seen a few things coming a mile off. Against Peter's better wishes, I learned a couple tricks of divination, though I only use them for a laugh or to plot a story."
"What do you mean?" Frank asked.
"I really shouldn't fool much with this, since it is a superstition to say the least," Cecie said. "But I learned how to tell fortunes from a deck of playing cards."
"If that's so," Kip set aside his almost finished jack o' lantern and took a deck of playing cards out of the dresser. He handed it to Cecie. "Let's see how you do."
"If Phila heard us," Cecie demurred.
"Oh, hang Phila by her thumbs," Frank grumbled.
Joe, sitting beside her on the couch, leaned in closer to Cecie. "Show us what lies in the shadows," he said, in a voice just above a whisper.
Cecie took the pack from Kip, took out the cards and shuffled them. She cut the deck, then shuffled one half.
"Since Frank egged me on, he's the first to get disappointed,' she said.
The top card was the Queen of Hearts. "There's a woman you love," she said.
"Oh, I've got her," Frank grinned.
The next cards were the five and eight of diamonds. "You'll have growing success at your work."
"Maybe they'll keep you at the Broadsheet," Kip suggested.
Next came the King of Spades. "But there's trouble ahead…a man will bring you suffering." The ace of spades. "It gets worse, there's a death in the future."
"Maybe this wasn't a good idea," Kip said.
"Aw, it's just craziness," Frank said.
She reshuffled the whole deck. "And since Joe devastated my resolve, he's next." She cut the deck and took the left half. First card was the King of Hearts.
"That goes without saying," Joe said, with a graceful shrug.
The King of diamonds, then the Queen of spades. "Someone is making a deal, and it's not a very beneficial one, either." Joe's face became puzzled, but he shrugged this off.
The Queen of Hearts. "There's a woman who loves you."
"There are so very many."
The King of spades. "There's trouble coming through a man, bad trouble."
The jack of hearts. "There's something about a young man, or a boy."
The ace of hearts. "You'll discover real love."
The ace of spades. She passed that one over, hopefully before Joe saw it. The queen of diamonds and the ten of clubs. "But a woman with money will step in and change your luck."
Bernie came in at that moment. "What's going on in here?" she asked.
"Madame Zecie was reading the future as it appears in the cards," Frank insinuated.
"Well, someone isn't going to get their supper if they don't cut it out," Bernie said.
"We were joking around; it's like when I used to read the horoscope for a laugh. Remember the goofy stuff I'd come up with? 'You will meet your true love in front of a Louis XIV mirror'," Cecie said in an airy voice.
"Mine were always something stupid like, 'You will meet your future spouse in a grove of jasmine and jojoba bushes'," Frank added.
"Did you?" Cecie asked impishly.
"No, we met near his grandfather's rhubarb patch," Bernie said.
Phila and Bernie had made chicken soup and biscuits, not heavy, but satisfying. Afterward, the Langiers got ready in their room, and the Sweitzes in theirs, what had been Irene's room, while Cecie got ready in the washroom, Joe waiting for her outside the closed door.
"I really wanted us to get decked out as a biker dude and his chick," Kip said, coming out. "But Phila wouldn't hear of it." Instead, he was wearing a metal colander on his head with some coat hanger wire sticking out of it like antennas. A silver-painted cardboard box covered with knobs and dials encased his torso; under that he wore a gray shirt and gray pants tucked into huge, ugly gray boots.
Phila came out dressed as an angel in a long white gown with a silver tinsel halo and wings made of glittery white gauze stretched over wire.
"You don't exactly match," Cecie said. "What are you supposed to be, Kip, an air compressor?"
"You're close: I'm supposed to be a 1950s robot," Kip said.
Joe looked Kip up and down, walking around him. His lips gathered in a smugly amused smirk. Putting his head on one side and looking at Kip from under lowered lids, he said, "You are a robot? You look more like a metal box than anything else. You certainly look nothing like me."
Cecie couldn't resist chuckling, which got Joe laughing as well.
"Well, the 1950s couldn't get the cars of the future right, let alone the robots of the future," Kip shrugged.
At this point, Bernie came out wearing a violet flapper dress under a very fake looking raccoon coat, with a cloche hat on her head. Frank followed her out clad in his trench coat over a rumpled gray suit typical of the 1930s, a brown fedora on his head with a paper press pass stunk in the bad, a pad of paper and a pencil sticking out of his breast pocket.
"Now what are you?" Cecie asked.
"I'm the Heroic Reporter, you know, like the stock character from the 1930s movies," Frank said.
"Kinda like going as yourself, only different," Cecie noted.
"I suggested it: he couldn't come up with a thing, but then I found this outfit in a costume shop, so we decided to go as a couple," Bernie said.
"We've even got the 1930s gigolo to add to the landscape," Frank said. He looked at Cecie. "My goodness, what are you? Morgana le Fay?"
"Cecie, couldn't you find some other costume?" Phila said.
"Oh, I found a LOT of other costumes, but they all left me cold one way or another," Cecie said.
"But it's so thin, you'll freeze," Phila argued.
"I've got one of those thermal shirts on, you know the ones they came out with that they based on the same technology that went into the heating system in Mecha dermis," Cecie said. "I wore it under my jersey on the way down and I barely needed my trench coat."
Joe knelt deeply before her. "Cast your spell over any man, but save your most powerful magic for me. I am already bewitched by the haunting beauty of your form. But why hide your face behind a mask? Is it so horrifying that its sight would turn men to stone, or is its beauty so blinding it would drive all men mad?"
"Rise, young wight who is neither of flesh nor blood nor bone, or perchance I may turn you into a man of flesh and blood," Cecie said, lifting Joe to his feet.
The parade had just started to line up as the six of them reached Main Plaza. Kip walked along stiff-legged, his boots clanking "realistically"; Joe held his head a little higher and added an extra swing to his gait. They got into line, but the swirling crowd separated Cecie and Joe from the Langiers and the Sweitzes.
"And the ignorant call my species 'buckets of bolts' by way of a pejorative," Joe snipped.
"Don't let that get to your processors, Joe," Cecie said, nudging him.
The crowd swirled about them: witches and wizards, ghosts and ghouls, skeletons and devils of both sexes, milkmaids and farmboys, Robin Hoods and Maid Marians; Cinderellas and other fairy tale princesses swept by on the arms of their handsome princes, though she spotted one guy with the mask of a boar, possibly meant to be "Beauty and the Beast".
Cecie spotted one couple possibly meant to be Adam and Eve sporting little more than some fake greenery and carrying apples, and a few others even less savory. She caught herself glancing away into doorways, half hoping to spot Julien.
Music from ancient horror movies played over loudspeakers, flooding the streets with eerie melodies and vibrations. Searchlights played on the night sky. Weird purple and white holographs flitted overhead, bats and ghosts and ghouls.
But the revelers were not the only ones on the streets. At every corner there seemed to be a security guard waiting. Cecie spotted a few men in the uniforms of the Philadelphia and the Camden police. She spotted Burnstead walking the street inconspicuously, as if he were any other sightseer come to see the country's wildest costume party.
Much of the neon lighting had been dimmed for the evening, ideal for the ghouls to hide in the shadows to lunge out and startle the unsuspecting, Cecie thought…Or for discreet encounters…or for the nemesis to lurk, watching for another hapless victim.
She hadn't seen Hal yet this evening, to her relief. She smiled to herself: Hal looked so bad, someone who didn't know better was likely to say something like "Wow, great mask! Where'd yah get it?"
A short guy in a ghoul mask and precious little else except some strategically place duck tape lunged out at Cecie with a roar. She shrank against Joe as if for protection. Joe shook one fist at the ghoul.
"Be gone with you!" he cried. The ghoul snarled at them and slunk away.
"You were not truly frightened," Joe noted.
"I just wanted to give you a chance to play the noble cavalier," Cecie said, twining her arm through his, stroking the smooth satin of his sleeve. Even through his clothes, she could feel his body responding, warming to hers.
The parade wound slowly toward West Square, toward the landside of town. The crowd wheeled slowly around the fountain there, heading back toward Main Plaza. Cecie kept one eye on the shadows beyond the gothic candelabras that lined the route.
The path led them back to Main Plaza, where already, a dance band had set up, playing a revised version of the famous piece "Danse Macabre".
Joe swung Cecie around in a twirl. She smiled into his eyes as they flashed past and she caught his other hand in hers.
He drew her to him, into the depths of the crowd, and lead her through the steps of a quick waltz.
A murder in a crowded public place in the middle of a celebration: yes, that would keep the case hopping. And let Burnstead, that gumshoe, pick out the killer in a throng of masked and costumed revelers…
The streets lay strangely silent that night. Orange and purple lights glowed in windows he passed, the colors of a celebration of terror known as Halloween.
The boss could not have chosen a better time of year in which to plan these killings…
Cecie leaned her head against Joe's neck as they slow-danced to an old chestnut called "Witchcraft" till she realized Joe was actually leaning his head against her neck as she nestled in close.
"You are an enchantress," he declared, his lips close to her neck. He caressed the side of her throat. She parted her lips in a gentle sigh, which ended as a gasp/
He nipped her neck ever so gently, with a hint that he could bite harder if she so desired.
"You think you're a vampire, eh?" she said, but something was missing from her usual bantering tone.
"Rather, I am a vampire in reverse. Rather than drain the life from you," he replied, "I serve to make you feel more alive than ever before." He released her with one hand and let her loose form him in a slow twirl. She reached out for him with her free hand; he took it and drew her back, leaning over her in a low dip. She nearly fell over backwards from the wash of pheromones flooding her nostrils.
Everything went dark. The music stopped. Low cries of query and consternation rose around her. If she hadn't heard these, she would have thought she'd fainted in Joe's arms.
He drew her upright and led her through the crowd, away from the plaza, down a side street, to a doorway.
"You still desire me though your tongue protests otherwise," he said, holding her hands.
"How do you know? How can you tell?" she asked.
"I read the item of yours in this morning's Broadsheet: only a lover of Mechas could have written such passionate words."
"I did what I could; I was just hoping to stem the tide of death. I hope I appealed to whatever sense of human dignity the killer may have."
"If it is Jay, he has little left: he has been degraded far worse than I ever have. And if it is Halloran McGeever, he has no notion of dignity: it has been stripped from him as it has been stripped from my species."
"You almost make me feel sorry for Hal, if he is the killer."
"Rather, you should feel sorry for your own soul as well. You have endured a great deal of pressure from within and without these past few days." He caressed her neckline, touching the topmost layer of her skin as lightly as a feather, as if a ghost of a caress brushed her skin. She trembled under his touch. "Let me relieve your soul of its exhaustion. Drink deeply of me, but only if you so desire."
He reached out and tilted her face toward his neck, bringing her lips into contact with his synthetic flesh, but not quite touching it. She had the power to choose.
She hesitated. She wanted to oblige him, and accept his offer, so innocently rendered, but she didn't want to waffle on her principles either.
Or, she could pay him back for being such a pest these two weeks.
She was just reaching out, closing the gap between them, her lips curled back from her teeth to nip him, when she heard odd music over the music from the plaza. She looked over his shoulder to the street.
A tall lean figure danced by itself in the dark. Weird carnival music played from somewhere nearby, awkward and whooshing, the notes eerily all wrong, the tempo hitting strange offbeats. Even his dance was graceless, a parody of Joe's elegant glide.
Cecie pulled Joe deeper into the shadows of the doorway.
"What is it, Cecie?" he asked. "Has a rival come to spirit me away?"
"No, don't look: I think it's Jay."
A small figure she guessed was Julien's skittered from the thick of the crowd on the plaza. He paused, watching the dancer and tried to match steps with him.
"Hey, Joe, what do you know—I have never seen you dance so ill," Julien teased.
"What you don't know is that I'm not Joe," the other replied. The scant light flashed on something metal the stranger drew from an inner pocket. Before Julien could dart away, the stranger's hand leapt out, snatching the front of his shirt.
Cecie's cry choked in her throat. She heard dermis tearing with a noisy surrussuss. Julien screamed, writhing as the blade tore into his chest so hard the point came out between his shoulder blades.
Julien's fists flew out; he hit the stranger in the eye, kicked him in the belly. The other let go of him so suddenly Julien fell from his grasp. The small Mecha hit the pavement feet first and tried to run.
The knife plunged again, slashing across the back of Julien's neck.
The lights came up. Julien lay sprawled on the pavement, alone. Cecie ran up to him.
"Julien!" she cried, kneeling. He pulled himself into her lap and lay still, his head against her breast. She held him, ignoring the hydraulic and lubricant fluids draining from his body.
He had been torn horribly, a Y shaped gash across his torso. Through the gash she could see that some of his ribs had separated from the metal breastbone, uncovering the metallic viscerae underneath: memory chips, power supply, his heartbeat simulator, the little valve in his chest still worked, the mechanism fluttering wildly.
"Mam'zelle Martin," he said, his voice synthesizer already fuzzed with static. "Take shelter in Joe's arms."
Joe knelt beside them both, his hand on Cecie's shoulder.
"Julien, I'm sorry," she said. A tear fell from her eye to Julien's synthetic flesh, cutting the slick of lubricants. The Mecha's lips moved, but his voice box had shorted out. She lip-read the words "shadows…neon…death…love."
Joe laid a finger on Julien's lips. The little Mecha seemed to take the hint. Cecie put Joe's hand aside and leaned down to kiss Julien's mouth. The lips yielded to her touch. Then she felt them grow cold. The oily taste of lubricant tainted them. She withdrew, trying not to tremble.
A crowd had begun to gather around them. Cecie heard voices: "Who's down, an Orga?"—"No, it's a Mecha."—"What sort?"—"Oh, it's one of them, it's just a gigolo."
Julien's head didn't move, but his body had grown cold. His face froze into a mask, his lower jaw sagged in what looked like a silent cry. His waxy features made her think of an antique doll: she swore if she tipped his head back his eyes would roll shut.
She reached down and touched his eyelids. The silicon skin felt rubbery, like a ghoulish Halloween mask; she pulled down his eyelids as far as they would go, trying to close them.
She wanted to make some noble speech to Joe about how she wouldn't let Julien's death go unavenged, how they, she and he together, would stand up to the killer on Julien's behalf. But her writer's knack failed her; she looked up at Joe, choking on a lump of mucus in her throat.
Joe put his arm about her shoulders, angling her head against his chest; with his other hand, he touched the top of Julien's head. Cecie's shoulders trembled and she burrowed her face into his shoulder. A tear rolled down her cheek, onto the slick satin of Joe's lapel, and rolled down it to fall, like a drop of rain, onto Julien's hair.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord! she prayed. May he rest in peace… there had to be an Elysium for these creatures, these wronged creations. Something like Julien, so full of pluck and nerves, or like Joe, so charming and so strangely innocent, had to survive; they couldn't just die and be forgotten by the One Who made the ones who made them.
"Cecie, we lost you in the crowd; I hope you weren't coupling with that Mecha," Phila said, trying to push through the crowd. A small, dark Mecha in a flimsy gypsy costume stepped aside for her.
"Cecie! What's all over your dress?" Phila stared down at her dress, then at Julien's still form. "What happened?"
"He died in my arms," Cecie said, simply, despite the tears choking her.
Bernie stepped through in Phila's footsteps. She jumped back when she saw Julien's torn body.
"Oh no!" she cried and darted back into the tick of the crowd.
Hal approached next, armed with his camera, flicking his media pass before the eyes of the security guards that had pushed back the bystanders. Frank was at his heels, taking his pocket scriber and his own media pass from inside his costume.
Cecie eyed Hal, trying not to wrinkle her nostrils or glare at him.
"What have you got to stare at? Y' know I look like this all the time," Hal grinned at her. He snapped a picture of the body, but Cecie noticed something lacksidasical about the angle at which he held the camera.
"Come away from all this, Cecie," Joe said, tugging her arm slightly.
Other people pulled at her arms. She looked up.
Burnstead, several guards and a couple techs surrounded her.
"Miss Martin, did you see anything?" Burnstead asked her.
She nodded, too choked to voice her reply. Joe helped her up and supported her, or else she would have slid to the ground.
"We both saw who killed Julien: it was a Mecha who looks like me," Joe said, speaking for her.
"Did he have a badly sealed gash across his left cheek?" Burnstead asked.
Cecie nodded, yes. "He had this very mark," Joe confirmed.
"Take her home, Joe, take care of her," Burnstead said.
Cecie limply let Joe take her by the arm and lead her along the crowded street, one arm around her back, his hand under her arm. The throng parted before them as they moved along. She clung to him with both hands. Her tears started to fall then, flowing from both corners of her eyes, streaming from her nose, the way they had almost ten years before when the Amherst police had come to the door of her family's house.
"Mrs. Martin, we're very sorry to tell you this, but your husband Declan…"
The way they had fallen when the hospice nurse had to peel her from her mother's bedside…
A third death that wasn't really a death at all. But perhaps it wouldn't be that way. Perhaps Natterson could patch up Julien. But no, the damage was probably too extensive.
She'd seen his heartbeat simulator working valiantly, struggling, failing. She staggered, her mouth souring with bile. Joe righted her; she would not be sick, she insisted with herself. She let him lead her into the Graceley, up the stairs to her room.
She dropped her smart key trying to unlock the door; Joe picked it up and unlocked the door, opening it and guiding her into the room.
Joe closed the door behind them. He started to lead her to the sofa, but she shrugged his hand from her arm.
She went into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. She took off her gown and tossed it into the bathtub, then she shucked her shirt underneath and took down her bathrobe, hanging on the back of the door.
As she pulled it on and tied the sash at her waist, her stomach lurched inside her. She ran to the toilet and knelt, retching until her mouth went sour and sore.
She hadn't closed the door all the way. It opened softly.
Joe entered and knelt beside her. He closed the lid of the toilet and sat her down on it. With one hand he pressed the flush switch, with the other he reached for a towel hanging on a bar in the wall. He offered it to her and helped her wash her face.
He filled the molded plastic tumbler on the sink from the faucet, and knelt to offer it to her. She took the cup from him, rinsed out her mouth, then drank the rest and set the cup on the sink as she stood up.
"How often have you had to help a nauseous woman?" she asked.
"On an average two times per week."
"That's a lot."
"It is not much, given the number of customers I have."
He led her to the front room. She let him lead her to the couch and help her to lie down, on her side.
Before she could object, he lay down beside her, facing her, just inches away, his eyes looking into hers, calm, untroubled, and yet concerned.
She smiled faintly, yet the smile trembled. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force back the tears, yet they streamed out of their own accord.
He drew himself closer to her, guiding her head to his chest, his elbow under her head to support it, her brow close to his heartbeat (she trembled at the memory of Julien's split chest).
Joe ran a practiced but tender hand over her hair. "Yes, weep for Julien; few shall weep for him save his customers, in secret," he whispered close to her ear, her head under his. "Did you learn to like him? Does that explain you coldness toward me? Had you begun to prefer his company to mine?"
"No, I didn't prefer him over you. He was less to me than you are: he wasn't even a friend yet, though he made me laugh a little."
"Only a little?"
"Not like you. You're my only beloved one."
She let her tears loose even more torrentially after that admission, till her tears soaked the lapel of his jacket. He took no notice of the dampness: he'd probably had dozens of women weep in his arms before. He didn't shush her or try to get her to pull herself together. He stroked her hair gently, letting her grieve. She found herself wondering if Joe had the capacity to genuinely care for another, would he grieve if they were parted? What had Julien's death done to him, if anything? Perhaps, unbeknown to them both, changes were starting in him, deep inside him, in places his awareness could not access. He had it in him to care for another, she knew he did, even if he didn't know or couldn't articulate it. When he could show it remained to be seen.
A simulation was better than nothing: Hal's coldly smug indifference, Bernie's hysterics, Phila's reproaches…only Burnstead and Joe had really showed her much concern.
She sensed a low murmur deep within Joe's chest, above the soundless hum of his components, a melody slow and sustained, sweetly melancholy, which she recognized as the "Humming Chorus" from Madame Butterfly. She nestled against him, closing her eyes. Her chest jerked once in a while, but that soon ceased, soothed by the humming in her ear and Joe's heartbeat against her shoulder.
She didn't remember dozing off, but she awoke deep in the night to find she lay in her bed, the sheets and covers tucked up to her chin, her robe untouched.
The smart lamp on the night table beside the bed glowed on its lowest setting. Beside it lay a single folded piece of paper. She sat up, picked it up, unfolded it and read it.
Even on this night of tragedy, a customer has called for me by name and so I must leave your side. Would that I could linger with you to comfort your soul!
"From ghouls and ghosts and long-legged beasts
And things that go 'bump!' in the night
May your God protect you."
Your 'only beloved one',
JoeShe held the note a long time, then slipped it under her pillow. A love note from Joe…
One more out of the way. He'd have a ready supply now, perhaps even a new housing untainted by damaged circuitry…
To be continued…
Literary Easter Eggs:
Toothbrushes—I've heard about people giving these out, especially at these large "Safe Trick or Treating" parties in large cities; I imagine some people in some areas have latched onto the idea, but there is a logical outcome to this (and yes, the kid in the pirate costume jettisoning the extra toothbrushes is Martin in a brief cameo)
"Great costume!"—This was inspired by a Halloween card I gave someone a few years ago, with two penguins on the front, one saying to the other, "What do you mean 'Great costume!'? We're penguins, you dork!" Also, art imitated life: the story Cecie tells about being mistaken for a haunted house volunteer actually happened to me at the Livingston Street Terror, when I showed up dressed entirely in black with a black scarf around my head
Kip's costume—I was going to dress like this for this Halloween, but I figured Joe wouldn't speak to me for a month afterward. Maybe next year.