Xandri kicked the door closed behind her and toed off her shoes. Her feet were on fire.
She had to stop working nights. It wasn't as bad as it could be - The Golden Clam never kept her later than half two, and Gomez sometimes didn't get free of the casino until five - but it was exhausting, and she hated night work. She could feel the rhythms of her body skewing already. She was sick of feeling drunk-tired and groggy during the day, and sick of missing the best of the sun. The only good thing about Mars Vegas was the weather, and she wasn't even getting the chance to enjoy it.
Maybe she should talk to Gomie. Maybe it was time to move.
She turned on the radio and flopped onto the couch, dangling her feet over the arm on the opposite side.
She could rest her eyes. Just for a second. Just before she jumped in the shower. She didn't want to go to sleep next to Gomie smelling of clam.
She yawned, letting the song wash over her.
"If I don't get some shelter, oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away . . ."
One little nap. It couldn't hurt. Gomez wouldn't be back for hours anyway.
BANG. BANG, BANG, BANG.
Xandri jolted awake. There was a noise like a golf club hitting her front door, the blows raining down over and over.
She groaned.
"Alright! I'm coming!"
The hammering stopped abruptly, and Xandri sighed.
"You know," she said peevishly, as she opened the door, "I was trying to get some shut eye. You know. Sleep? Ever heard of it?"
"Eh." The robot on her doorstep shrugged. "It's overrated."
Sometimes Xandri thought she had the worst neighbor on Mars.
For one thing, she was pretty sure he was on something. She'd seen him drink, the way robots needed to to function, but he looked permanently rusty and out of it. Really out of it. It was one thing not to know what day of the week it was - that was pretty common on Mars - but this guy couldn't remember what year it was, most of the time. He veered between treating her like his best buddy and struggling to remember her name. He would disappear for weeks on end, and then show up in the middle of the night and try to force his way into the wrong apartment.
Last time he'd broken his key in their lock. Xandri had had to wait hours for the super to come out and fix it. She'd missed a shift, and the robot hadn't even apologized. He had showed up later with a box of half-cold pizza . . . but the pizza had been disgusting and he'd clearly stolen it, which kind of negated the gesture in Xandri's eyes.
Still, he could be fun sometimes. There was something brazen about him. He said the craziest things. And he was obviously lonely. The more he pretended not to be, the more obvious it was.
He eyed her up and down.
"See, if you didn't want to talk to me," he said - in a tone that almost sounded reasonable - "you wouldn't have opened the door."
"Maybe. Or maybe I opened it so I could yell at you to go away."
The robot snorted.
"You wouldn't do that. Not to your favorite neighbor, me . . . Flexo."
Xandri smiled, despite herself. Gomez had once joked that Flexo was all flex and no follow through. Now she couldn't hear the name without thinking of the joke.
Gomie could be funny like that, in private. Maybe one day she could get him to the point where he felt confident enough to crack jokes in front of people.
Flexo was still waiting for her response.
"I bet you don't even remember my name," Xandri pointed out.
"Sure I do, neighborino."
Xandri raised an eyebrow, waiting.
"Xanax," the robot guessed. "Can-Can. Zsa Zsa Gabor. Stop me if I'm close."
"Xandri. You should know that. You've lived next door for like, three months. You're a terrible neighbor."
The robot grinned.
"That's what all my neighbors say. But deep down, you can't resist my swarthy Latin charm."
"Latin?"
The robot rapped his carapace.
"Made in México, baby."
Xandri couldn't help herself. She laughed.
"You know, if you weren't a robot, I'd think you were really flirting with me."
"If you weren't a human, I might be." Flexo winked at her, then shrugged. "Nah, I tried the human thing. It wasn't half bad. Fleshy. And nasty. I'd do it again, if there weren't any sexy fembots around. But it's not a patch on some fine robot lovin', if you know what I mean."
"I don't."
"That's because you're tiny and made of meat. Also, you're married to a dweeb."
"A dweeb with four hands," Xandri shot back. "I have no complaints." She dragged a hand over her face. "Ack. I can't believe I just said that!"
"Too late! You did it. I'll remember it forever."
The robot's expression clouded.
"No, I won't," he muttered. He looked frustrated, suddenly.
Maybe if you stopped frying your processors with electricity you'd remember, Xandri almost said. She was almost sure the robot was jacking on. It was about the only thing robots could do, to get high. But he didn't seem happy about it, and maybe it wasn't fair of her to judge.
So she bit her tongue.
"What did you come round here for, anyway?" she asked, as lightly as she could.
The robot shook himself.
"We need to go out," he declared. "You need to come for a drink with me, Xanax. Now."
"It's the middle of the night. And I'm tired. I'm not going to some dive bar with you, Flexo."
"You have to," the robot insisted.
Xandri yawned.
"Maybe tomorrow. When Gomie's home. I'm beat tonight."
"But . . ." Flexo looked panicked. "You have to come! Right now!"
"No, I don't." Xandri went to shut the door. "Night, Flexo."
There was a clang as the robot thrust his foot cup into the gap, to prevent the door closing.
"No, wait! I . . . I need you," he said desperately. "I have . . . problems. Lady problems. Girl trouble! Yeah, that's right. And I need you, because you're a . . . girl . . . and I need your . . ."
He seemed to be running out of steam.
"Advice?" Xandri suggested.
The robot nodded in violent agreement.
"Yeah," he said hurriedly. "That's it. I need your lady wisdom, and if you don't give it to me, I might jump in front of a train or something. You don't know. I could do anything, if you don't come out with me right now and save me."
Xandri sighed.
He was kind of pathetic. And if she kept it to just one drink, she could still be home before Gomez was.
She yielded.
"Okay. But just one drink," she insisted. "And that's it!"
Flexo drank a lot, for a robot who always looked so sober. He'd downed a whole tray of tequila, in the time it took Xandri's Bloody Mary to reach the table.
She pulled out the celery stick, eying him over the rim of her glass. He seemed a lot more relaxed now that they were away from the apartment.
"So what did you want to talk about?" she asked.
The bar was empty apart from them and some old guy, a Native Martian, snoring into his bowl of peanuts at the table in the opposite corner.
It was quiet, aside from the music crackling through on the jukebox.
"Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried, in my way, to be free . . ."
Flexo stared at it. Then stared down at his drink.
Anywhere but at her, actually.
Xandri frowned.
"Hey," she said. "Are you okay?"
Flexo put down his drink. He was looking at the bar as if he'd never seen it before. As if he suddenly had no idea what he was doing there, or what had happened in his life to lead him to this point. Xandri knew that look. Anyone who had ever tended bar on Mars knew that look.
She had never seen it on a robot before, but she knew what it meant. And she'd said the three words that always set it off, in a Vegas drunk.
He started to cry.
Xandri hadn't known robots could cry. But apparently they could. Flexo was bawling; doubled over the table, great wracking sobs shaking his frame.
It reminded her of the way Fry had used to cry, all those months ago. Orphaned and lonely, as if his world had broken so badly he couldn't imagine how to repair it.
Flexo cried for an hour.
There was nothing Xandri could do but wait it out. She sat beside the robot, sipping her slowly-warming drink, and shook her head at the bartender when he started to look concerned. About halfway through she reached out to pat Flexo's hand. He grabbed back with a crushing grip and didn't let go for twenty minutes.
But eventually he wound down.
Xandri ordered him a beer, and watched as he gulped it in silence.
"So," she said at last. "You, um . . . you want to tell me what happened? I can listen, if you want to talk about it."
Flexo sniffed.
"I had this whole story worked out," he said limply. "About this union scab named Angelyne, and how she did me wrong and left me for my twin brother. Because of his superior skills at bending. And love making. You'd still buy that, right?"
"Not really," Xandri admitted.
There was a long silence.
"Why don't you tell me what really happened?" Xandri said gently. "It can't be that bad."
"I can't."
Xandri smiled a little.
"Because then you'd have to kill me?"
Flexo just shrugged, and drained his drink.
"There's this kid," he said suddenly.
"Kid?"
"This human kid."
"Okay."
"She was my buddy's."
"What happened to him?"
Flexo gave another spasmodic shrug, his gaze dropping to the floor.
"What happens to all you humans."
He drew one metal finger across his throat, in a screech of sparks, and reached for another drink.
"Oh." Xandri swallowed. "I'm sorry."
Flexo shrugged again.
"So, this kid," he said awkwardly. "I sorta took her. And I tried to . . ."
He grimaced.
"Look after her?"
"Yeah. That. But I wasn't good at it." He scowled. "It's not my fault! You humans are complicated. You always need something. Food, and water, and . . . I don't know. Emotions. I wasn't good at that stuff. And maybe I . . ."
He trailed off, squirming.
"Hurt her?" Xandri guessed.
"Only her feelings!" the robot protested. "I didn't know it would matter! I thought she'd karate kick me in the face and forgive me. Like all girls do."
"Huh?"
"Isn't that how girls process their feelings?"
Xandri stared at him and tried to figure out if he was joking.
He didn't seem to be.
"Um. No."
"Now you tell me." The robot chipped at the tabletop with one metal thumb. "She hates me," he said glumly. "Everyone hates me. If you knew the real me, you'd hate me too."
Xandri considered him.
"Why? What did you do?"
The robot shrugged.
"What I was supposed to," he mumbled.
Xandri frowned.
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
The robot said nothing. Just chipped at the tabletop again.
"How do you make a human stop hating you?" he said suddenly.
"It depends. What did you -"
"I tried everything," Flexo burst out, steamrollering over her response. "Except hitting. She's too small and puny. But I tried everything else! I tried yelling. I tried bringing her presents. I tried taking off for a while and letting her stew. I tried threats. I tried bribes. I tried making her laugh." He made a gesture of frustration. "Classic human stuff. But she's like a rock. I don't know what else I can do."
Xandri gaped at him.
"You're a terrible parent," she said at last. "No wonder she's mad at you."
The robot blinked at her.
"I don't get it."
"What you just described is, like . . . a 101 of what not to do with kids. I mean, it would be pretty terrible for adults too, but . . . she's a kid! Kids have different needs."
Flexo gave a sanguine nod.
"Right. Diapers."
"No! Emotional needs! They need to feel safe. They need to have boundaries. They need to know they can come to you with their problems. That kind of thing."
The robot mulled this over.
"What if it doesn't work?"
"Huh?"
"What if you give her boundaries" - he made a boxing-in motion with his hands - "and all that happens is she gets mad at you? What if you try and fix her problems, and she just gets mad at you for how you did it?"
"Well . . . sometimes that happens too, I guess. With kids. They get mad at you for sending them to their room, or telling their teachers some other kid is picking on them. But if you did it for the right reasons, then normally they get older and they thank you for it. If you're a good parent. But you can't yell at them! Or avoid them. That's terrible parenting."
The robot stared at her, totally at sea.
"You don't even have kids," he pointed out. "Why should I listen to you? I analyzed all the human parents I know, and they all did all the stuff you say is bad parenting."
He began ticking the offenses off on his fingers.
"Yelling and ignoring, check. Buying her love with ponies, check. Dumping the kid on someone else, check. If that's such bad parenting, then how come all those kids grew up and still love their parents?"
Xandri sighed.
"It's a human thing. It's complicated. Bad parents aren't always bad people. And sometimes, when you're a kid, you love them anyway. Even if they are. But I bet all those kids you mentioned have issues. The yelling and ignoring kid is probably an attention seeker, and the pony girl is probably a snob, and I bet the abandoned kid doesn't trust anyone."
Flexo seemed to panic.
"So you're saying I could be screwing this kid up, and I don't even know it?"
"Um . . . probably. Sorry."
"Then how do I fix her?"
"I don't know," Xandri said patiently. "I don't know what's wrong with her. You haven't told me. And I've never met her."
"Oh. Yeah."
"But I can give you some advice."
"You can?"
The hope on the robot's face was . . . pretty touching, actually.
"Yeah," Xandri said carefully. She patted his hand. "If you hurt her, say sorry. And mean it."
"And then she'll forgive me? And love me again?"
"Maybe not. But she'll know you care. That matters."
There was a long moment of quiet.
"I don't know how I got stuck caring about so many humans," the robot muttered eventually. "You're all tiny and fleshy and all you do is die. All of you. If I was smart, I wouldn't get attached to any of you. I'd be aloof and above it all, like a god. A god of beer, and blackjack! Yeah."
Xandri took a bite of her celery stick.
"I don't know," she said, over the crunch. "That sounds depressing. You'd just drift through life, all alone."
There was another silence, even longer this time.
"Yeah," the robot said at last. "Like drifting through eternity, with barely any swag."
"Um. I guess." Xandri finished her drink. "Come on," she said. "You can walk me home."
It was well past sunrise as they left the bar. The last remnants of the night were being chased away by the morning sun.
Gomez had to be home already, and was probably worried sick - if exhaustion hadn't got the better of him. Sometimes he just tipped right over and fell asleep on the couch, when he got in from a night shift. For his sake, Xandri hoped it had been one of those nights.
Flexo was trying to drag her to the 24 hour casino, and her feet ached by now. All she wanted was to go home and curl up next to Gomez, wherever he was.
She stopped.
Flexo's momentum carried him on ahead of her, gesticulating wildly about hookers and blackjack and swag.
It took him a minute to notice he'd left her behind.
"What's your problem?"
"I . . . I don't know."
"There's an alley, if you gotta take a leak." Flexo looked proud of himself. "See? Human needs. I know all about 'em." He nodded sagely. "You could go behind those trash cans."
"No."
"What? I won't look. Oh. Are you shy? I can do sound effects, if it helps. Thundering waterfall. Dripping pipes. Logs dropping in a river."
"Ew! Gross. Don't do that."
Xandri shut her eyes, trying to block out the sound of the robot's voice.
There was a feeling of unease in the pit of her stomach. A greasy, unsettled feeling.
Something was wrong.
She walked into the alley. To the bum passed out in the shadows.
He was hunched over, unconscious. Curled small by his pain. As Xandri drew closer the smell grew stronger - the sour, rusted-iron smell of drying blood.
She knew the minute she touched his shoulder. Before he fell back, before she saw his face or recognized the broken glasses and the dirtied casino uniform.
"Go -"
Her scream was smothered by Flexo's hand. Her teeth chipped against the metal of his fingers as he cut off her air, killing the sound.
He looked around frantically, scanning their surroundings, and lowered his hand when he felt her go quiet.
"He's not dead," he said, gripping her shoulders. "Get it? He's supposed to be dead."
Xandri nodded slowly, unable to tear her gaze away from Gomez. The shape of his fingers, twisted back on themselves. The empty, bloodied hollows of his eye sockets. It was horrible. It made her want to be sick. But the horror paled beside the tiny, shallow motion of his breathing. The proof that he was still alive.
Not dead. Not dead.
It was all she could think. It was all she could see.
"Help him," she whispered to Flexo, going limp in his grip. "Please. You have to help him."
Tears spilled down her cheeks. She couldn't stop them. Silent tears. The worst kind, the useless kind.
The robot sighed.
"Humans," he muttered, in that old, weary tone. "What do you think I'm doing?"