Girl Parts Page 9

“That’s me.”

  And so they met. Again.

  Charlie pulled a sweatshirt over his damp torso. The dry clothes felt good. His skin was chapped and red, as if burned by the cold. Water drummed in the shower. Charlie tugged on heavy socks and tried not to picture the movements of the beautiful naked girl suggested by the changing pitch of ringing droplets.

  Her dress lay in a knot by the bathroom door, reminding him of the black leathery seaweed that lined stony beaches. She’d worn no shoes, and her feet and knees had been caked with mud, as if she’d been wandering the woods for days. A half-crazed refugee from a gala event.

  Flashlight in his teeth, Charlie shimmied under the generator with the cobwebs and old hornets’ nests. He popped out the old transistors, the glass brown and smudged, and replaced them. He crawled back out and flipped the flat switch at the back. There was a noise like something heavy dropping inside the metal casing, and the fan began to sputter and turn. A few cartoonish wheezes, and the generator was pumping again. The lights in the house came on, and he could hear the furnace turn over in the basement.

  Charlie threw his hands in the air like a prizefighter.

  Rose was in the living room, wrapped in a towel.

  “Oh,” Charlie said, averting his eyes. She was awfully curvy, and that towel wasn’t much cover. “Sorry.”

  She wore Thaddeus’s ancient Sony headphones, the thick cord corkscrewing to the stereo.

  “These are wonderful!” she shouted. “You can’t hear anything but the music!”

  Charlie turned down the volume. “Yeah. They’re pretty retro.”

  She removed the phones and ran her fingers along the book spines.

  “What are these?”

  “Those are my dad’s,” Charlie said. “Well, some of them are my dad’s technical books. He loves them, but they’re a little dry for me.”

  The shower had completely revived her. Her cheeks were pink. She was pink all over. Her eyes were sparkling, though slightly unfocused. Her bare foot tapped the carpet.

  She took down a book and opened it sideways, like a laptop, her brow lifting in wonder. She turned the spine so the text was readable, and jabbed the page with her finger. She scowled and jabbed again.

  “What’s wrong with this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The links don’t work.”

  “There aren’t links. It’s a book.”

  She dropped it to the floor.

  “What’s that?” she pointed.

  “A coffee grinder.”

  “And that?”

  “A La-Z-Boy.”

  “And that?”

  “A toaster oven. You don’t have one at your house?”

  “No, ours was different. Ours . . .” The word hung on her lips. Her toe stopped tapping. She teetered once and dropped to her knees.

  Charlie crouched beside her. “Rose! Are you OK?”

  “Ours,” she said, blinking.

  “Whose?”

  The clouds cleared from her eyes, passing as quickly as a summer shower. She grasped his sweatshirt, a smile breaking across her face. “Do you have beer?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Or cigarettes? I want to try them.”

  “Uh, no,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Damn.” She bit her lip. “Damn. Shit. Fuck. I like swearing.”

  Charlie examined her eyes. If she was concussed, one pupil would be larger than the other. “Are you OK?”

  She stared into the middle distance, not seeing him. “I can do whatever I want! I’m disconnected.” She tapped her temple. “And malfunctioning. I’ll probably shut down automatically in a few moments.”

  “Rose, you need to go to the hospital.” Charlie got to his feet. “You’re concussed.”

  “That’s not what I want,” she said. Her eyes searched. “I only want to do what I want.”

  “Uh-huh. . . .” Charlie backed toward the phone. “Just stay there. I’m going to call an ambulance.”

  Rose stood with purpose. She grabbed his belt.

  “Have you ever done this?”

  “W-what?”

  She kissed him.

  In a lifetime of kisses, some must be better than others, and the odds are low — for any of us — that the first will be the best. But few have had a better first kiss than Charlie Nuvola.

  He sank into her lips, like an ocean of silk. The smell of her skin, the warmth of her breath, the damp strands of hair that tickled his brow. He felt her breasts beneath the towel, the arc of her hips, the smooth warm pressure of her leg between his knees. Charlie fell apart and dissolved inside her. They were a solution of hair and breath and skin and terry cloth. He floated and dipped and re-formed with every sweep of her tongue, and just as his body completed its transformation from water to fire to lightning to sound, she pulled away.

  His lips refused to form words. They’d found a new purpose.

  “No sparks,” she said.

  Charlie shook his head, apology in his eyes.

  She smiled. “No, no. That’s a good thing.”

  She kissed him again, opening her mouth. Rose felt him shudder under her touch. She took her time, enjoying herself, experimenting. Her lips lingered on his as she pulled away again, her eyes closed happily. She hugged herself, lost in her own enjoyment.

  Charlie shivered. He’d gone numb. “I . . . think I need to sit down.” He steadied himself against the bookcase, his thoughts clumping like dough in a bowl. “I thought . . . you . . . uh, I thought you and David were . . .”

  The smile dropped from her lips. “David?”

  Her eyes tightened, as if facing a too-bright light. Rose fell to the couch and began to sob. Charlie stared, dumbstruck.

  That was how Thaddeus found them when he came home.

  Rose perched on Charlie’s bed. He’d given her a sweatshirt and some of his old jeans to wear. The cuffs bunched around her feet. Her skin still prickled with cold, despite the hot shower, and her neck and shoulders ached. But all Rose noticed was the silence. No voice in her head.

  The jump had, as she’d known it would, severed her link to Sakora. The break had wreaked havoc with her physiology. Her emotional center was destabilized. Joy one moment, despair the next, reeling in freedom, then crushed by loss. She was alone, cut off, no sense of what to do, what anything meant, or even who she was. Her body was desperate for touch, yet repelled. She was hot and cold, exhausted but restless.

  In other words, heartbroken.

  She looked around and saw objects she didn’t recognize. Pictures of strange places, a model skeleton of an unidentifiable creature. But when she sent her questions, no answers came back. No one told her to cover up after her shower. No one said she shouldn’t sit on a strange boy’s bed. Rose was free. But rather than relief, she felt alone. Until now she’d been connected to something, and for better or worse that connection was all she knew. Now she was on her own.

  Her feelings were like . . . water, just before it boils.

  “I think my dad’s chill now,” Charlie said, coming into the room. “That took some explaining.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That you’re a friend who’s going through a bad breakup.” Charlie stood at his desk, afraid to come closer. “That’s right, isn’t it? You broke up with David?”

  She nodded.

  “So is that why you . . . ?”

  “Why I what?”

  Charlie cleared his throat. “Why you tried to kill yourself?”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” Her eyes ached, as if straining in a glare. She was grateful for the quiet, dark room, and for quiet, dark Charlie. He was so different from David. “But I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”

  “Well, I don’t think throwing yourself in the lake is the answer.”

  “I don’t have a better one.”

  “What happened?”

  “He left me.”

  Charlie scuffed the carpet with his toe, leaving a
track. “That’s the worst thing a person can do.”

  Rose looked up. “Is it? I thought it might be.”

  “Maybe you could find someone else?”

  Rose shook her head. “I’m not . . . maybe some girls can change like that. But I can’t. I’m not like them. I’m not normal.”

  They were silent a moment. It was raining, and the trees shivered silently in the window.

  Charlie said, “Listen, I had someone tell me I was . . . not normal. I know how that feels. It feels like a door closing.”

  She nodded. “Yes, it is like that.”

  “And you feel totally alone. Cut off from everything.”

  Rose leaned forward, her hair falling in a curtain around her face. “Yes. Cut off.”

  She stared at him so intently, Charlie had to look away.

  “I’m sorry I kissed you. I was confused.”

  “That’s fine,” he said too quickly. “I got that.”

  “It’s a malfunction.”

  Charlie sucked in through his teeth. “You keep saying that. You know that’s not right, don’t you? I really think you might need a doctor.”

  Rose blushed. “I don’t need a doctor. I’m . . . a Companion.”

  The word bounced in his brain, off an old definition that didn’t fit. She didn’t mean truest pal.

  “You . . . you’re joking.”

  She shook her head.

  Charlie stared. The tension in his body evaporated. His shoulders slackened. He took a careful step forward. Her pale skin looked soft, seemed warm. He wanted to touch her — for science — but stopped himself. “Can I . . . ?”

  “I suppose if I could still shock you, I would have already.” Rose blushed.

  He took her arm gingerly. He squeezed her fingertips, rubbed his thumbs up her forearm. Her skin felt real, soft and pliant. Even the rigid structures beneath felt like real bones. And yet there was something wrong. He felt hard bumps at regular intervals, and knots of what seemed like wiring at her joints. Where her ears connected to her skull there was a tiny seam, and even her hair itself grew from her scalp in a grid, like a doll’s. But only under close scrutiny did she appear to be anything but perfectly human.

  Charlie was stunned by the careful, loving detail Rose’s creators had put into her features, right down to minute imperfections. Especially the dark oval on the edge of her right palm — a mole. Her skin seemed to be warming as he touched it, and when he looked up, he saw that her eyes were closed. The planes of her face were calm, her lips slightly parted.

  Charlie dropped her hand.

  Her eyes opened in surprise. Rose breathed lightly, as if startled. Charlie stood. “You’re . . . impressive.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “It’s really unbelievable,” he said, staring. “When I saw the catalog, I had no idea.”

  “Catalog?”

  “The Sakora catalog. I got one from this therapist at school.”

  Rose’s eyes widened. “Oh. So you must be disassociated, too.”

  Charlie looked away. “Well. Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So does that mean you have a Companion?”

  “No,” Charlie said, his ears burning. “We . . . I thought it was kind of silly.”

  “Silly?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of crude, don’t you think? Electric shocks?”

  “Well, it’s not all about electric shocks.” Rose fiddled with the sweatshirt’s drawstrings. “It’s very complex, the relationship that develops. It requires time and patience and an involved understanding.” Her features darkened. “You know, it’s not like . . . flipping on a light switch.”

  “So what, you just have some system to tell you how to be in love?” Charlie shook his head. “It’s like training a dog. You’d have to be an idiot to —”

  Rose stood. “Excuse me, David is not an idiot.”

  Her tone startled him, but he quickly regained himself. A real girl talking to him that way would have destroyed him. “Well, you’re treating him like one, expecting him to learn by punishment and reward.”

  “We were”— she choked on the word —“are in love.”

  “Regulated lust is not love.”

  “Why should you know any better? Have you ever been in love?”

  Her knowing tone stung him. “I thought you things were supposed to be pleasant.”

  “Not to you.”

  “Oh, right. Because I’m not your assignment.”

  “If you were, I’d still think you’re rude.” She stood, hands balled into fists.

  “But you’d have to say you love me.” Charlie pointed. “And that would be a lie.”

  “A lie? Then what do you call this?”

  “An argument!”

  “Well, it’s very interesting!”

  They faced off in stormy silence, stunned. They’d exploded so suddenly. The air crackled. Her full lips parted, her breathing excited. Charlie had to tear his eyes away.

  At last Rose shook herself, ran her hands through her hair, and cleared her throat.

  “Thank you for the clothes, Charlie. Good-bye.”

  “Where are you going?”

  She brushed past him into the hall. “Back to David. I’m sure after a night to think about it, he’s realized his actions were hurtful.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder, eyes like flaming arrows. “That’s a difference of opinion.” She grabbed her jacket.

  “Fine, go,” Charlie said. “You were starting to get annoying, anyway.”

  “And you, Charlie, are a sour jelly bean.”

  Around the south side of the lake, cutting through the back lawn toward the house, she returned like a homing pigeon. The damp grass squished beneath her sneakers as she approached the line of privet bushes masking the property fence. Someone was speaking on the other side. Rose approached a small gap in the foliage and peered through. Mr. and Mrs. Sun were standing on the back patio. With them was a man in a suit with gray wispy hair. Their voices were low, conspiratorial.

  “Has this ever happened before?” Mrs. Sun asked.

  “Unfortunately I can’t divulge that information, but I can say that incompatibility is not entirely unprecedented. Our screening process is thorough, but some clients simply aren’t suited for the program.”

  “Our son wasn’t suited for your program?” Mr. Sun crossed his arms. “Sounds like your program doesn’t work, period.”

  “As you were informed, we are still in the trial stages.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Again, I can offer a replacement. . . .”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Mrs. Sun said. “I don’t think David’s ready for that.”

  “In which case your money will be refunded as soon as we recover the unit.”

  “Uh-uh,” Mr. Sun said. “I want my money back now.”

  “Sir, the unit is under your charge, and as your contract clearly states —”

  “Listen, forget the money,” Mrs. Sun said. “What will happen to her — it — when you recover it?”

  The man with the wispy hair took a breath. “She’ll be decommissioned.”

  Rose swallowed.

  “You can’t . . . reassign her?”

  “Babe, who cares?” Mr. Sun said. “Let them sell it for scrap.”

  “I can’t help it. She — it was so lifelike.”

  Quietly, Rose retreated through the trees, toward the road. By the time she reached the pavement, she was running.

  Charlie opened the door. Rose had pulled up the hood to hide her face. Her hands were stuffed in her pockets, and she was trembling.

  “Can I, uh . . . can I stay here?” Her eyes searched his pleadingly.

  Charlie swallowed. “Sure,” he said, stepping aside. “Come on in.”

  That evening, Rose sat on a plastic lawn chair and stared across the lake. A glass house lit up the western bank — David’s house. The bright yellow lights overwhelmed the stars, but the
moon was visible. It was nearly full, a twin orb of light, though paler. Rose remembered reading on the Internet that the sun made the moon glow, and that one side was always dark, hidden in shadow. Tonight, she imagined it was the light from David’s house that lit the moon’s bright side, making it shine like a silver platter.

  She wondered what he was doing. It was eight o’clock. Usually at eight on a Saturday they’d watch a movie. Maybe he was on the computer. Or out driving. She could think of dozens of things he might be doing. It was easy to imagine a new life for David. But not for herself. She knew him so well, and herself not at all.

  Charlie was reading on the couch when she burst into the living room. He sat up, alarmed.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m going to call him.”

  She grabbed the phone. She’d dialed the first three digits before Charlie’s finger came down on the receiver, breaking the connection.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Rose, if you call him, they’ll come and find you.”

  “But what if . . . ?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “That’s sweet of you,” she said, cradling the phone.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And also annoying.”

  Rose went back to her lawn chair. A moment later she heard the screen door clatter shut. Charlie sat in the damp grass beside her, his dark curls trembling in the breeze. The wind rippled the surface of the lake, leaving its imprint like shadows.

  “He’s the whole universe,” she said. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “There’s more to the universe than David Sun, trust me.”

  “But he’s . . .” Rose struggled to form the concept. “He’s my whole universe, even if he’s not everyone else’s.” She stared longingly across the lake. She wanted to swim across or jump from the shore and soar to his window. “I wish someone would tell me what to do.”

  Charlie sighed. “It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to decide for yourself now.”

  “But I need him.”

  “You just think you do. You don’t need anybody.”

  The water gurgled on the bank. The trees rustled. Rose tore her eyes from the lake long enough to examine Charlie’s dark profile.

  “Don’t you need anybody?”

  “No.”