Girl Parts (13 page)

“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.”

He stood, brushed the back of his jeans, and turned to leave. Then he paused, as if he’d forgotten something. “You’re going to ask yourself ‘What if’ a million times.
What if
I did something different?
What if
I
was
different?”

“So what happens after you ask it a million times?”

Charlie was silent for a moment, then said, “You just stop asking. And you start moving on.”

She wanted him to say more, but instead he left, the door sighing shut behind him.

What if he’s out looking for me right now?

That was one
what if,
thought Rose. Only 999,999 more to go.

As Charlie came back inside, the door to his father’s lab opened. Thaddeus’s face appeared in the crack like a rat sticking its nose out of its hole.

“Buddy? Could you come in here a minute?”

The beaker of water, now cold, was still bundled in a blanket at the edge of the couch. Charlie sat down. Thaddeus leaned against the table, arms folded. His face was serious but his eyes soft.

“So. Do her parents know she’s here?”

“Not exactly,” Charlie said. “She’s . . . just going through some stuff.”

“I trust you,” Thaddeus said. “Just be careful. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but that’s a very pretty girl out there. And pretty girls who’ve just had bad breakups can be emotionally . . . just, don’t be a rebound, OK?”

“Come on, Dad,” Charlie got to his feet. “I’m not anyone’s rebound.”

“You sure about that?” he said evenly.

“I’ll be OK.”

“Pretty flowers can be the most deadly.”

“We’re just friends.”

He ruffled Charlie’s hair.

Alone in his room, Charlie wondered if he
was
a rebound. Rose was a machine, of course. A replica was just a replica, no matter how convincing. So he really had nothing to worry about. And besides, he felt comfortable around Rose, proof that she couldn’t be a real person at all. If she were a real person, he wouldn’t like her so much.

The next time Rose heard the screen door rattle, the sun was rising.

Charlie’s flip-flops slapped against the wet grass. He was wearing a tattered bathrobe.

“Is your last name Hilton?” she asked.

“Huh?” His eyes were puffy. He looked down at the name stitched on the robe. “Oh, this. My dad got it at a botanists’ convention in Boston.”

“I see.”

Rose turned back to the lake.

“Have you been out here all night?” There was a thin layer of dew on her arms and legs, but she didn’t seem to mind.

“I’m up to four hundred and seventy-two thousand, six hundred and forty-one.”

“Huh?”

“
What if
s. That’s how many.”

“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “You’re, uh, doing them all at once?”

“Yep.”

“And how do you feel?”

Rose stretched. Pockets of stagnant fluid in her circulatory system popped and crackled.

“It’s pleasant to have a focus.” She looked up. “Thank you for stopping me last night. From calling David.”

“No problem.” Charlie tightened his robe. “I’ll be inside if you need anything.”

“I’ll be here.”

The sun passed over the lake. Charlie brought her a sandwich and a CD player with headphones. When the sun
was high and the clouds burned away, Rose felt as if her ocular sensors would fry from staring too long. Then Charlie brought an old, cobwebbed umbrella and stuck it in the mud by her chair. Bugs ate her untouched sandwich. As the sun neared the opposite shore, he took the umbrella away and lay a shawl over her knees. He never said anything.

At last it grew dark and Rose stirred, her brain exhausted, sputtering with the effort . . .
like Charlie’s generator,
she thought, and smiled to herself.

Inside, Thaddeus was standing at the counter, eating pasta from a turtle-shaped bowl.

“Want some?” he asked, raising a fork of the stringy orange stuff. “I like it cold, but I can pop a pack in the microwave for you.”

“No, thank you.”

“Charlie’s out on his bike. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

“OK.”

“Were you really out there all night?” he asked.

Rose nodded. “Thank you for inviting me into your home,” she said. There was no voice to tell her
Be Polite To Adults,
but she remembered this was expected.

“Charlie tells me you’re getting over a bad breakup.”

Rose nodded again. “Yes, sir.”

“What was his name?”

Rose began to say it, but got no further than the tip of the D. “I . . . I’ve thought about him all I can for one day.”

Charlie’s dad nodded at her over his cold pasta.

“Well, I’m sorry we don’t have a television. Would you like to read a book?” He gestured with his fork to the shelves.

“Yes. Thank you.”

It was a big collection, but paltry compared to everything on David’s computer. Rose decided to read about flowers again.

“Reed’s Flora,”
Thaddeus said. “Are you interested in plants?”

“Oh, I’m interested in everything,” Rose said. “The whole world.”

She noticed a series of photos in a zigzagging frame on the shelf. In one, a smaller, paler version of Charlie stood shirtless with Thaddeus in a mountain of white fluff. They huddled toward each other. In the background was a still, pearly lake.

“We used to do the annual polar-bear dive at Olive Lake,” Thaddeus said. “Have you ever done that? It’s pretty bracing.”

Rose shook her head.

“Who’s this?” she asked, pointing to a dark-haired lady in the neighboring photograph. She was skinny like a small boy and wore large, black-framed glasses.

“That’s Charlie’s mom,” Thaddeus said, rinsing the turtle in the sink. “She left us.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said, touching the glass frame.

Thaddeus shrugged, setting the still-dirty turtle bowl in the drying rack. “Not your fault.”

Charlie’s dad shuffled into the next room, and Rose folded herself into an armchair with two books,
Reed’s Flora
and
Anatomy
by James Ried. First it was
Flora,
where
rose
was nothing like Rose, but grown in the ground and eaten by moths.
Anatomy
was more interesting. In the middle a double diagram showed
female
on the left and
male
on the right, the girl and boy holding hands across the seam. Rose examined her page, and saw nothing missing except a black scribble between the girl’s legs, which she lacked. A line pointing to this spot labeled it
Vagina.
She closed her eyes, marveling that a few dots of hair were what separated her from David. She brought the pages together so the couple kissed. The next page might have been stolen from
Reed’s Flora.
It was a close-up diagram of the
V
-word. Dozens of lines pointed to dozens of parts, connecting them with their proper names. This flower was what he wanted, what she didn’t have. Her hand touched between her legs and felt nothing but an intersection with no connection. There was more. Aching, Rose read on.

The sunset was almost blinding, but Charlie pedaled into the glare, up the hill on the north side of the lake, toward the point where he and Rose fell.

Fell. Falling. Falling in love.