“Be more gentle with yourself.”
“Oh God. Oh God,” I said in despair, and he took me in his arms, and we leaned together, our reflection perfect and still in the acidulous pool.
At last, I said,
“If you don’t want to come with me, I’d understand. It’s more artistic here.”
He said, “What perfume have you got on? It has a beautiful smell.”
“Nothing. I didn’t—nothing.”
“Then it must be you.”
“It can’t be. Human flesh must seem disgusting to you, if you can smell us.”
“Human flesh is extremely seductive. After all, it’s only another form of material.”
“With a jumble of organs underneath.”
“Just another kind of machinery. Sometimes less effective. Biologically more attractive.”
“Ugh,” I said, like the child I am. He laughed.
I looked at him then and said,
“It doesn’t matter, it’s my decision, but I think I sold my soul for you.”
“I see,” he said. “Do you want to buy it back?”
“I only want you.”
His eyes were dark, something to do with the shadows.
“Then I’ll have to try to make it worth your while.”
* * *
“Why is it so awful?” he said to me two hours later, as I stood cringing on the threshold of the slum apartment on Tolerance.
“I suppose I can heat it. By winter, if I’m careful and save money, I can. And I suppose there’s a way to plug up the cracks and the holes.”
“Yes, there is.”
“But it looks so awful. And it smells—”
“There isn’t any smell,” he said.
“Yes there is. Of people being miserable.”
“Be happy then, and it will go.”
I stared at him, distraught. He promptly told me a ridiculous joke and I laughed. The color of the rooms lightened. I remembered the sun coming in after the dream.
“But,” I said, touching the flaking plaster, “I don’t know where to start. Or how.”
“I can see,” he said, “I was an investment.”
We went out again into the city. He led me over walkways, along side streets, into strange cheap food-o-marts and household stores. He, who had no need of food, told me what groceries to buy, and sometimes I even thought of things myself. He found open sheds under arches in the elevated, where cans of glue and planks of wood balanced against unbevelled mirrors. He knew where everything was. The strangest places, all useful.
The day began to go, and we paused at a food stall. I’d asked him to pretend to be human, but my fears had faded. To me, he was. Or at least, for fifty minutes out of every hour he was. But at the stall, hunger surprising me as I devoured the inexpensive greasy tasty food, I ate alone, and began to be concerned about this and other matters.
“The money is low,” he said. “It would be crazy to waste it on fake meals for me.”
“At least, drink some coffine. And it’s cold now. Everyone else has a coat on.” (Even I. I’d rolled my fur jacket all over the couch, and even rubbed loose plaster into it, to be camouflaged.) “Oh, I should have got your clothes from Egyptia.”
He was amused. “We could still get them. Or I could.”
“No!”
“Afraid she’ll drug and abduct me.”
“Yes. Well, can you try to look cold?”
“I can foam at the mouth and throw a fit on the sidewalk if you really want me to.”
“Stop it,” I said, having nearly choked.
Someone came up to the stall beside us, lured by the smoke of frying peppers, onions, bread, beef and mustard.
“God, I’m freezing,” said Silver, clearly, stamping his feet.
The newcomer glanced at him and nodded.
In the dusk, as the speckled stars began to come on with the speckled street lamps of downtown—far fewer than the stars—Silver walked me over a grid of blocks and between high walls, into a market lit by flaring fish-gasoline jets. The light caught him, and turned him to coolest gold. He guided me from pillar to post, his arms already effortlessly loaded with paper bags of planks, glue, solvent, insti-plast, loaves, cartons of dry milk, oranges. Despite these, he looked fabulous, literally of a fable. I couldn’t stop looking at him. I’d forgotten I’d bought him. Everywhere, they looked at him, I wasn’t the only one. And he, mostly not noting it, when he caught their eyes, smiling at them so their faces lit like flares.
“How,” I said, “did you know this market was here?”
“I know where everything is. Every building and back alley of the entire city. It was pre-programmed into me. Partly for convenience during the advertising campaign, partly to be of general service. You are going to find me,” he said, “very useful, lady. God, I’m frozen,” he added as someone went by.
We halted at a clothing stall. There was clothing on the stall, tarnished, gorgeous, permissible. From theatres which had closed their doors. From those second owners who, like the rich ones that had first fallen, had themselves crashed on hard times. My mother would have been repelled at the notion of buying any article another had formerly worn. I don’t think she’d even want to wear anything of mine.
The woman on the stall fell passionately in love with him. She knocked prices in half. There was a sixteenth-century cloak of black-red velvet, destined to be his. She swathed him into it, embracing him as she did so, because he remarked how cold he’d felt before.
“Oh, that hair,” she said to him. “It can’t be natural.”
He said, “Not quite.”
“Suits you,” she said. “And the skin makeup. Here,” she said, suddenly including me. “Look at this. I’ll let you have this for twenty.”
Under the flares, it was warm, summer day heat shot up against the black autumn sky. Far away, the core of the city rose in cliffs of sugar, and the grains of the sugar were lights. The jacket sparkled too. It had green peacocks and bits of mirror—I thought of his jacket, the day I first saw him…
“She can’t afford twenty,” he said to the woman. “Not in cash.”