Like Clockwork (5 page)

“A week,” he said,
and clicked for a moment. “Miss Evie, forgive this thing, but, what day is it?”

“Saturday,” she said. “You’ve got until
Sunday to find this Stephen guy.” Shit. She’d just gone and given him one more
day.

“Ah,” he said. There was a long pause.
“And. Forgive it, but ... what year is it?” She stared at him, and yet somehow
she wasn’t surprised. There had been weeds and vines growing up all around him
in that clearing.

“It’s ... it’s 2012,” she said, softly.

“Ah,” he said. “It ... please forgive. It
had set its clock by Miss Evie’s – ” he gestured, somehow loosely, despite it
being a tight wind of gears and cogs. Something about him seemed quite undone.
“It was ... it did not know how much time had actually passed.” Evie took a
step towards him, her hand reaching out  to touch his shoulder (
its
) and
then dropped again.

“How long have you been out there?”

He looked at her then, those copper eyes
and frozen face hidden, closed.

“Quite some time,” he said. “Quite a long
time.” And that was all.

“Yeah. Well ....” She stepped back. “Right.
One week.”

“Yes, Miss Evie. It thanks you.”

She turned away, digging into her pocket
for the now crushed pack of cigarettes. “Mmmm,” she said, pulling one out and
opening the front door. “I’ll be right back.” She turned to stare at him, but
he was still looking at the space in the hall where she had been. “
Don’t
clean anything.”

“Yes, Miss Evie,” he said, still staring at
that spot, alone in the apartment once more.

She flew down the stairs to the front door,
lighting the cigarette before she even remembered the infuriating “No smoking!
Our children have a right to breathe too!” signs some asshole had plastered all
over the halls of the condo building. She sucked in the smoke, and held it in
until she was outside, puffing and pacing under the awning in the rain. She
looked up at the building, and saw Adam standing at the window. He wasn’t
looking down. He was still, a statue of bronze and copper once more, looking
out across the skyscrapers and condos of False Creek, the blinking lights of
the Science Expo dome as it flickered blue to green to white as the sun set
below a long dark blanket of grey clouds. She had to light another cigarette
because she found, somehow, there was a part of her that was shocked at how
she’d talked to him. Part of her, some weird, weird part of her wanted him to
stay.

It’s not because he’s handsome
... she thought to herself the next day while she sipped her
coffee, watching him. He was sitting at her living room table, pouring over
archives and god knows what else, looking for his Shepherd.

He wasn’t much to look at, at all. His head
was an oval, almost shaped like an egg, really, with those round eyes and
frozen features. To be honest, he looked ... well ... goofy. Built to be cute
and entertain, a circus toy. But then she’d think of how he’d looked standing in
the window the night before, seeing the world that had risen up around him
while he slept. Even as she came back inside after her cigarette, he hadn’t
moved, he’d just stared at the lonely electronic horizon.

Or how he had seen her to bed, standing at the
door to her room with a rusty bow that would have been ridiculous except for his
sonorous and grave “Good Evening, Miss Evie. It thanks you. Until tomorrow.”

Or how his eyes had looked away when she’d
stood in front of him, half naked, changing, furious. Or how he had carried
her. Or –

“If you please, Miss Evie.” Adam said,
looking up from her laptop. “It needs to find a record of its circus.”

Lancelot was sitting on his shoulder, and
from time to time he would reach up with a bronze and copper hand that looked
like it could crush her keyboard or her cat, and absently scritch under Lance’s
little chin.

She got up and went around the table with a
sigh to show him (
again. I mean, she was trying to be patient and all but he
was worse than her mother. How did he NOT understand how Wikipedia worked?
)
how to search once more.

“I honestly don’t think you’ll find him,”
she said, as those copper balls seemed to look at the side of her neck – she
could almost feel them – and then went back to the screen. She stepped closer
to him, close to that whirring and clicking sound until she realized she was
almost
leaning
into him, and stepped back.

“This thing is not worried, Miss Evie. Not
in the least. Shepherd is not the kind who hides.” He gingerly took the mouse
in his oversized sausage-shaped fingers, and scrolled down the page on
Shepherd’s Cavalcade, dissolved in 1902, and said, as if to himself, “He only
changes his name when he gets bored of the old one.”

“That’s not ... that’s not what I meant,”
she said, going back to her coffee and sitting. She leaned across the table and
touched his (
his
) arm gently. “It’s ... Adam .... ” He looked up then,
and then down to her hand. She took it away, quickly, flushing (
Blushing.
Jesus.). “It’s been ... it’s been –” she was an accountant for god’s sake – do
the math – why was it so hard to do the simple math?  “A hundred and – ”

“Thirty years,” Adam said. His eyes were
locked on hers. “One hundred and thirty years, Miss Evie.” He looked away then,
back to the screen. “More or less.”

“How?” She swallowed. “How could anyone
live so long?” She could feel that sad sardonic smirk again, the whirl of his
gears.

“He is alive, Miss Evie. Of that, this
thing would never doubt.”

“Seriously, Adam. Maybe ... maybe you
should give it up. I mean, he’s obviously dead.”

A weird sound came from him then and she
drew back. It sounded like gears grinding a little too tightly together, a
squeaking, rattling noise. It leaned forward against the desk, the noise coming
out of it getting louder, then softer. Lance jumped off his shoulder, and Evie
got to her feet, alarmed as it leaned back, its shoulders shaking, looking at
her. It was the first time she had heard it (
it
) laugh. And when she
thought of it later, she imagined it a dry, pained chuckle.

“Dead,” it said. “That is rich. Shepherd,
dead. No.” It lifted a bronze finger to brush away an invisible tear. “No.
Although this thing is sure that would be a relief to everyone, I’m afraid it
just isn’t so.”

“But ... how?” she asked, drawing back a
little.

“He is Stephen Shepherd,” he said, as if
that explained everything. When she didn’t respond, he went on. “He is ... he
is quite peculiar, Miss Evie. He cannot help but live.” He looked down at the
laptop again, clicking and whirring.

“Maybe ... maybe if you had a picture?”

“Ah,” he said, and shook his rattling head.
“Shepherd had no need for them.”

“Is he ...?” She could believe it, thinking
it; weirder things had happened – were happening, even now. “Is he, what, a ...
a vampire or something?” It
did
sound a little ... well, lame, when it
came out of her mouth, but Adam didn’t laugh.

“No. No not at all. It is ... ” his gears
whirred in what seemed like a sigh. “He is peculiar. Tell me – ” his gears
clicked. “Why does Miss Evie take a photograph?”

“Well. Y’know ... to, umm – ”

“To preserve time,” it said. “To remember ....”

“I suppose so. Sometimes. Yeah.”

“Shepherd is – ” his gears clicked as he (
it?
)
thought; “outside of such things. He does not need to remember how he looked
yesterday. He will look the same tomorrow.”

Evie felt a shiver run up the back of her
neck. “That is so .... ” She sat down, mulling it over.

“Peculiar,” Adam offered. “This thing has
said. Ah. But here ....” He turned the laptop around and that high nasally
voice bellowed out from him: “Behold!” And it was weird, because it seemed as
if it (
he
) was laughing at himself for doing it, for making that
recording of the circus come out of his mouth. Evie leaned in to look at the
photograph on the screen, and there he was, on the internet of all places, in
an archive of old circus photos, sepia-toned and faded: a set of middle aged Siamese
twins, a woman in an old fashioned bathing suit standing in a pool, a grey
haired man with a drooping moustache and goatee, and Adam, standing in the
background. Only the woman in the bathing suit was smiling, but that smile ... it
had a hint of pin-up seductiveness to it, but there was something else in her
eyes that made Evie shudder. The photograph was dated 1901. There were no tags
attached to it, no names on it at all. Evie stared at it for a very long time.

“What happened?” she asked, softly.

“Shepherd abandoned us, and eventually the
money ran out,” Adam said, turning the laptop again and staring at the
photograph. He seemed very far away.

“He abandoned you? But ... ” she thought
about his introduction, in the clearing the night before. “Weren’t you made for
him?”

“He abandoned all of us,” Adam said. He
clicked and whirred. “Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children-of-all-ages tend to walk
away from their treasures once they grow tired of them.” He seemed to sigh
then, his shoulders going down a click. “This thing knows.” He looked at Evie
for a long moment. “Shepherd does not grow bored as quickly as most, but he
does. Besides,” he said, going back to the photo, “there was a cat.”

“A cat?”

“It was a peculiar time,” Adam said. “A
time for such things. It was the circus.”

“I’ll be ... I’ll be right back,” she said.
She needed a cigarette, dammit. This was all too – not weird – weirder than
weird. It was definitely something. Adam scarcely noticed her getting up. He
was looking at the screen again, at a jpeg made from a faded photo of a long
dead era.

“Hello, Sirene,” he said to the screen as
she closed the door.

He was so ... it was all so ....

He would stand there, humming at the fridge
from time to time. Humming
back
to it, really. And she wasn’t sure if it
was like a private joke, or if it was just something he just
did
or ....

The rest of that rainy Sunday day passed
with him looking through history, searching for someone who could not die,
while Evie sat on the sofa, watching him. Sometimes he would look back too, and
she could not say, she could never
tell
what he (
it
) might be
thinking when he did, when his eyes were on her. All she knew was his whirs and
clicks, his cogs and gears and silence. All she knew was that, when he was
looking, she would shift, unconsciously, on the couch, and a part of her wanted
him to keep staring.

That night, as she got up off the sofa, he
rose as well. He was constantly doing that: rising to his feet, all rusty and
creaky, whenever she did. She couldn’t tell whether it was endearing or
annoying.

“If it pleases Miss Evie,” he said,
following her to the hallway that led to her bedroom. “This thing will wake
you. In the morning. At your desired time.”

“Oh,” she said, standing there in the
doorway. “No. It’s ... it’s alright. I ... I’ve got an alarm clock.” Why was
she holding her breath? What could she possibly be thinking? He still stood
there. His eyes went to the floor.

“If it pleases,” he said, “this thing would
be happy to do so.”

Was she blushing? Sweet Jesus.
Was
she? “I ... I .... ” And stammering too. Oh, for the love of – “I would. That
would be ... that would be nice, Adam. I would like that,” she said. She
waited. “Thank you.”

He still stood. He clicked and whirred. “Good
Evening, then, Miss Evie,” he said. “Until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” she said back. He waited.
She stood.

“Right. Night then,” she said. And closed
the door. She waited until she heard the clumping of his feet back into the
living room before she got changed. He had stood there, on the other side of the
closed door, for some time.

She didn’t really sleep much that night.
She lay there, instead, the rain pattering against the window, listening for
the sound of his little clicks and whirs, trying to remember to breathe, trying
to laugh at herself. But somehow, she just couldn’t.

She thought about him all the next day at
work. There was always something over the course of the day that would bring
him back to mind. The chime and clicking door of the Skytrain, the ding of the
elevator at work. All of which, she knew, was foolish. She would grin to
herself at the sound of her own fingers clacking on her keyboard, secretly, but
Jenny caught that grin on her face, much as she tried to hide it, that soft
smile.

“What happened to
you
this weekend?”
Jenny asked from her desk across the way, and Evie caught herself blushing (
blushing
again!
). And Jenny cackled, “Someone got lucky. About time.” But Evie shook
her head, and didn’t say.

“Oh come
on
” Jenny said. “That is
so
unfair. If I hooked up, I’d tell you. Dish, dish.”