The Parallel Apartments (39 page)

“He's sober and free.”

“He's on parole and drinks beer.”

“He works for IBM now.”

“In the mailroom,” said Archie. “He works literally
in the mailroom.
”

“Do you guys think it's been fifteen minutes?”

“Soon,” said Blaise.

April's stomach was beginning to cramp. More than just her stomach. It felt like her whole middle, lungs to perineum, was starting to fold itself into eighths.

“Can I go ahead and have beans?”

“Can't you wait?”

“Yeah.” April drank down her A&W, but it didn't help the intensifying cramp. She felt a shift in her uterus. That was new. April stood up. “I think my baby moved, for the first time!”

“Let me feel,” said Blaise, with what seemed like suppressed excitement. Blaise held her daughter's hips and pressed an ear to her belly. April noticed that her mother had gray roots: she had evidently begun dyeing her hair after their estrangement. So much had been lost by vice of April's selfishness, hatred, resentment. It might not be fixable.

But maybe it was. She would bring her baby over to her parents' every day. She would arrange playdates for Harry and his new cousin. She would have her people over, cook for them, sing them songs. She would think about, maybe even write about, Bryce. She'd get back in touch with Ryan, bring him over. He'd make a good father. Maybe she could fall in love with him. There were philters and berries and spells for that kind of thing. Maybe they could all live in her parents' house together.
Maybe she'd have another child.

“I don't notice anything yet,” Blaise said. “But it's still a tiny bit early for kicking.”

“I felt something.”

“Maybe you need the potty,” said Archie, eliciting crisp stares from both mother and daughter.

But maybe she did need to go. She excused herself.

Even though it had been recently papered in a vinyly crocus print that April did not hate, the bathroom, historically
her
bathroom, seemed utterly the same—all at once welcoming and repellant, asylum and gaol, vacant and spirited. It had always been the most acoustically secure room in the house, and April had spent a lot of time here.

She sat. She doubled over, winced. Nothing happened. She took off all her clothes, turned on the shower, lay down in the tub, and let the water cool her down. She began to bleed from her vagina. She reached up and grabbed a towel, and screamed into it. The cramping localized, then she experienced what she imagined a contraction to be.

“Okay in there, honey?” said her mother through the door.
Honey.

“Fine, out in a minute, start without me.”

April was certain that her mother was at the door during the entire four minutes that it took to miscarry her baby. A girl.

Montserrat.

XIII

March 2004

Together Marcia Brodsky and Casey prepared to lift Rance off of the low, vast bed in the boudoir where he performed his services, Marcia holding his feet, Casey at the business end. Usually Rance could walk on his knees to the bathtub by himself, but Rance had damaged some critical piece of circuitry while screwing a state senator, deactivating himself. That had been an hour ago.

“Ready?” said Marcia.

“Yeah,” said Casey.

“Okay, one, two, three, lift!”

The naked 110-pound doll, in its unconscious mode, was quite limp. As Marcia and Casey slid him off the bed, he dipped in the middle, hitting his butt on the floor rather hard.

“God, he's not that heavy,” said Marcia. “We're such pussies.”

“What's the big hurry, anyway?” said Casey. “Why can't we just take a night off?”

“Because the tech guy'll be here in less than an hour, and they said
Rance had to be spotless. Plus, tonight there's gonna be nine clients in just twelve hours, our biggest night yet. And I have intelligence that suggests one of them is going to be a
Chronicle
reviewer. We're up for Best Austin Whorehouse.”

“Do you think he's broken?”

“If I busted him I'll—”

“I wouldn't worry,” said Casey. “I assure you he's been pounded much harder than that.”

She let Rance's legs down. “How are we gonna do this?”

“Can't drag him, he might get a rash. Or a tear.”

“We could if you put a tarp or something under him.”

“You have a tarp?”

“Well, how about a shower curtain?”

With this method they got him all the way to the tub, but could not hoist him up and in.

“What now?”

“I hate Senator John Hill. He's never invited back.”

“Why don't you call tech support again?”

Marcia refused to do that. She had immediately called tech support when they realized Rance was not responding to stimuli after his rendezvous with the senator, and she had not liked speaking with Miss Chassen, the damage, malfunction, and tune-up liaison at HoBots, LLC.

“I've only had him a month,” Marcia told Miss Chassen. “He's been great up to now.”

“Have you been mistreating him?”

“No, I have
not.
”

“Our chief tech,” she said, “Mr. C. P. Horn, has chartered a jet at Houston Hobby. He will arrive at your residence within an hour.”

“Wow.”

“Please clean your HoBot before Mr. Horn arrives.”

“Okay.”

“Thoroughly. Mr. Horn won't work on it if there is any gradoo in evidence.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“Okay!”

“Miss Brodsky. Settle down. Do you have time for a quick survey?”

“How l—”

“Two minutes.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Marcia. It wouldn't take long to scrub ole Rance down. If they could get him into the tub.

“Very good. First question: how many events in an average week?”

“Events? You mean like… coituses?”

“And any other form of intimate contact.”

Marcia thought about it. Eleven clients the first week, two the second week, twenty-four the third, twenty-six the last. Word had been getting around. Rance had been programmed to ask each date, after the main event, how they'd heard of the Dollhaus, and more and more were saying “a friend's recommendation” or
“Chronicle
ad” or “My shrink told me to come,” or something other than just a happenstance of internet-hooker-searching, or a direct invitation from Marcia or Casey.

“Fifteen or so, I guess.”
Not including my own personal Rance time.

“My. Sounds like you and Nicaise have a very special bond.”

“
Rance
. Yes.”

Marcia did not elaborate. She did not want to tell Miss Chassen the numbers were so high because she also
sold
events, often to strangers. Though, in all truth, Marcia did love Rance. They engaged four times a week, usually around 5 a.m., after the last client had left for the evening. Rance would groom himself while Marcia put fresh sheets on the bed. They would sleep till eleven, romance again, then get to work for the day.

The other three nights were Casey's.

“Thank you,” said Miss Chassen. “Next question: have you ever used an automatic companion from another manufacturer?”

No, she had not. The internet informed her that there was nothing else like Rance in the world, and there were only a few dozen of him. And, as far she could see, no one else had set up a brothel around their HoBot. She was an industry leader, and would, hopefully, open Dollhaus Too in San Antonio before long.

“On a scale of one to ten, what would you rate his average performance?”

Marcia chuckled. All she could think of was Nigel Tufnel.
These go to eleven.

“Ten, I guess.”

“You must be easy to please.”

“Okay, screw you.”

She hung up and screeched, alarming Casey, as well as Schmidt, her dog, who was tied up outside. Schmidt had shown some aggression toward Rance, which Rance one day returned twofold, scaring and embarrassing Schmidt, who later tried to leap into the house through an open window to enact vengeance upon Rance, but was defeated by a screen.

“What was that for?” Casey said.

“I hate that woman.”

“Why?”

“She was rude.”

“Marcia, do not alienate tech support, for god's sake!”

“Just help me get him into the tub.”

Rance, lying crumpled and gel-like on the floor of the bathroom, gravidly refused to cooperate in his transfer to the tub.

“You know what,” said Marcia, sitting on the floor, examining Rance's head to make sure he'd received no bruises there during his move, “this isn't the first time we've needed help. Muscle. A human forklift. I think I'm gonna hire somebody. Right now.”

“No,” said Casey. “I forbid you. They'd steal your business model, and maybe your business. Then where would you be?”

“Just a minute.”

She stood up and went to her computer, typed a name into Dogpile, and was rewarded with a phone number, which she called.

“Yeah?”

“Porifiro?”

“Who's this?”

“Marcia Brodsky, remember I took pictures of you on your trike last month.”

“Yeah. How you doing? I like those pictures a lot. I'm having one blown up and I'm gonna have a painter paint the Astros in the background.”

“Say, do you need a job?”

“Working for who?”

“Me.”

“Why? I don't look like a man that's got a job?”

“I just figure you spend a lot of time on your trike so you might—”

“Okay, I could use one. Ole Tom Mix caught diabetes and I have to give the little man two shots a day and feed him the most expensive goddam store-bought dog food you buy at the vet.”

“There's a catch: it starts right now.”

“I'll be over there in six minutes.”

Porifiro showed signs of neither disgust nor daunt; he simply picked up Rance, stepped into the tub, put him down gently, and stepped out. When the robot was clean, Porifiro carried him to the boudoir and laid him on the edge of the bed.

The tech guy arrived. He looked like T. S. Eliot, and dragged behind him a wagon of repair crap. He uttered not a single word. He simply waited until Marcia led him into the boudoir, where he went to work on Rance, hanging IVs, setting out palettes of surgical tools, meters of all kinds, vials and syringes, and a laptop. Marcia left him alone and returned to the kitchen, where she sat down with Porifiro and Casey. They looked like they'd been ignoring each other.

“Okay, that was easy,” said Porifiro, declining the hundred-dollar bill Marcia offered him. “That's all I gotta do? Shuttle that floppy doll here and there? What's it pay?”

“Forty dollars per hour.”

“Right on!”

Casey groaned, dramatically, as though he'd just been presented with his mother's head in a Frisbee.

“But only ten hours a week to start,” said Marcia, crunching Casey's toes under the table with the wooden heel of a platform. “And honestly, I don't know what I'm gonna have you do. We've only been in business a month, and we're still figuring stuff out. So maybe I oughta ask, what can you do?”

Porifiro stroked his chin for a moment, and said:

“Well, I can build a good trike. I can bench 310. I have a good collection of baseball cards. I have good people skills. I can really fuck a man up if I get mad enough. I'm a good salesman. I can do eBay, and PowerPoint, and Excel and Word, and all that computer shit. I bodyguard, used to work
with Anthony (Tony) Robbins, no shit. I speak Spanish and Portuguese. And I'm a good dog-man. You have a dog, right? I see him pissing in the side yard sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Marcia said. “Schmidt could use some company. I have to keep him in the yard so he doesn't get at the merchandise.”

“What the hell is it you guys do?”

Marcia told him. Casey remained sullen the entire time. When Porifiro finally left for the night, Casey exploded. “How the fuck do you know that guy?”

“Whoa, Casey—”

“Why are you inviting a total str—”

“He's not, he did some work for me once. I've known him for years. He drives his trike around the neighborhood every day.”

“That's
that guy?
That guy's insane!”

The tech guy came out of the boudoir with his wagon.

“How's Rance?”

“Fixed.”