Chapter Sixteen
Sara delayed going to work in the morning. She and Foster had talked until late. He acknowledged that he had sometimes felt excluded from her business life, and she acknowledged that she felt guilty about giving so much time to something that could be seen as an unproductive hobby. They lingered over breakfast, sensing a new companionship.
It was after nine when she let herself into her building. She had left the previous night without even waiting for the power to be restored. Alice had assured her that the robot had been hit by the police gunfire, and would soon be found; and that it had abandoned the vital evidence, the mannequin; but just in case, she’d provided protection outside their apartment overnight. Now, in daylight, all of yesterday’s events seemed strange and dream-like: the wild, rampaging robot with its obscure, malevolent goals was hard to place in perspective; even the ghetto, benefitting from a few stray beams of morning sunlight, looked less threatening now that it had spewed forth its worst demons and failed to shake the solidity of the normal world.
She was nervous, however, as she entered the shop, knowing the trail of damage she would find within. She looked first at her eighteenth century wedding dress, but it seemed okay, an untouched flower in a wasteland of debris. The counter was a mess, cut almost in two, one half sagging. Broken glass from the window and dust covered most of the carpet. The acrid smell of burnt plastics lingered.
How the hell did we survive?
She made her way dutifully around the remains of the counter and through the still-open door to the warehouse. She feared extensive damage here, as the robot had plowed its way through her racks of dresses, but it wasn’t as bad as she thought: it must have vaulted the racks as it moved around the warehouse. What caught her eye immediately was a gleam of light from the loading bay doors. One of them seemed not quite flush with the frame. Surely not again?
She walked around the racks towards the doors, gripped by a new sense of alarm. Her watchful eye picked up a large bundle of dresses on the floor between two of the racks. She froze and then approached the bundle cautiously. There was something not right about it: it had some elements of human shape, being over six feet long, but the dresses, whose colors and designs she recognized, were piled up in disfiguring lumps.
She noticed a brownish-red patch, not part of a dress design, low down on the nearest of these lumps. She inched a little closer. Blood? In which case, was she standing next to a...?
A corpse.
She felt suddenly faint and reached out for the dress rack beside her. She closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Foster says it’s okay not to be tough and strong all the time, she told herself. Ha. Right now, she was going to be tough and strong, whatever the hell it took.
She forced herself forward and knelt down beside the lumpy object. The brownish-red patch looked more than ever like dried blood. Taking a final deep breath, she reached out and began pulling away the dresses. There were several layers. Beneath was more red, clothing of some kind. A uniform. Therefore a body. A man. She gritted her teeth and pulled the last coverings from the head. A face came into view. She recoiled at the clear sight of death and sat back on her haunches, letting her hands float away, palm up, and then settle on her cheeks. She was transfixed by the face, which she seemed to recognize. It was multi-racial, well-made, almost handsome. Youthful and innocent. The eyes were closed, and turned slightly away from her, the head held comfortably by the knot of dress material beneath. For a moment she thought that she was mistaken, that life might return, the eyelids flutter and open: she reached out and touched the skin of his cheek with the tips of her fingers; it was cold. She drew her hand away with a little sigh.
She knew instinctively who it must be. Dolly’s brother. The villain of the ghetto. Her tormentor and oppressor. A man who, like Dolly, looked incapable of wicked acts. And who was clearly a threat no more.
Her heart rate began to subside. She felt tears gathering. She stood up, wiped the tears away, and called Alice.
When Sara’s Ford pulled up outside the address she had chosen, she sat for a moment staring out of the window. The brick home, on the gently-sloping street, had once been a part of a moderately prosperous middle class neighborhood: yet in spite of the tidy front yard, and the paint on the wood-framed porch, the long years of under-investment were apparent; missing tiles on the windowsills, cracks in the icy concrete driveway, mismatched repairs to the shingles.
A couple of mixed-race teenagers, slouching down the street and staring at her car, brought her close to panic. She waited, head down, half-expecting them to stop and jeer, pull her from her car, steal her purse, steal her car. They passed without a murmur, and she shook her head furiously, telling the ghost of her mother, the medium of all the alarmist propaganda, to shut up. People lived here without fighting and dying. Well, mostly.
With an effort she opened the door, told her car to lock and wait, and after a quick look up and down the street, walked to the porch of the home. She didn’t see camera eyes or a communicator screen, so she knocked on the door. After a moment she knocked again.
The door opened and she saw, hanging back in the hallway, a middle-aged woman with a penumbra of curly black hair, standing quietly, as though without energy. Her gaze was blank, distracted.
Sara drew breath, held herself steady. “Mrs. Rawlings?” she said.
The woman seemed to focus on her for the first time. Her eyes moved up and down, settled at last on her face. She gave a brief nod.
“I am... I am the owner of the building where... where your son...”
The woman became more still, her expression more intense, but she showed no surprise. “Yeah. I know who you are.”
Sara struggled for the right words. “I expect you think that I had something to do with his... with his very sad death... and it’s true there is a connection, which I can explain, but... I had no idea...”
Mrs. Rawlings held her gaze another moment and then seemed to collapse very slightly, bringing her hands together in front of her stomach and letting her eyes fall towards Sara’s boots.
“I was hoping I could talk with you,” Sara went on, as gently as she could. “And especially with Dolly. Maybe you know she worked for me for a few days, and we really... Well, I really came to like your daughter, Mrs. Rawlings. I know all this is a huge shock, but I hope she can still see me as someone who, someone who cares about her. I want to try and explain to her what happened, why I had to do what I did, defend myself...”
Mrs. Rawlings raised her head and seemed, with an effort, to stiffen and bring herself back to the moment. “I know what my son was doing, and I know why he and the gang had to do them things. I didn’t necessarily figure on talking with y’all about the whys and the wherefores, but since you’re here... y’all can come in.”
She stepped back and Sara followed her inside.
“Dolly!” Mrs. Rawlings called out. “Somebody here want to see you.”
Sara followed Mrs. Rawlings into a family room with worn but comfortable-looking soft furnishings. Sara didn’t sit down but turned to watch for Dolly.
“They reckon this robot they was using,” Mrs. Rawlings said, head raised defensively, “Fatboy, they called it... they reckon it must have carried my son from the lockup all the way to your place, maybe to get him out of the cold. Tried to save his life. Killed him instead, ‘cause he didn’t need to die if he didn’t lost all that blood... So it ain’t your fault, him dying... And about you going to the cops... I understand why you had to do that... everyone got to look out for himself or herself... but maybe Dolly don’t see it so simple...”
Mrs. Rawlings expression had become so determined, and fixed, that Sara stopped herself from moving towards her, her instinctive empathy not yet appropriate.
“Thank you for understanding,” she said quietly. “I, for my part, understand... I think... how tough it is to live when everybody in the city is determined to keep you down. Dolly... Dolly never told me about her lif
e here, because of course she couldn’t... she had to pretend... but I’ve been trying to make sense of it and I believe that the cops, and the custodial robots, and the lack of jobs... make it very very...” She broke off, not sure how to phrase these new and difficult ideas.
“Can I ask you something, Mrs. Rawlings?” she said. “Will this tragic business with your son... will it mean that the court requires you to wear custodial robots? It’s one of the things that’s been worrying me. What it means for your children. Are you all going to wind up with custodial robots just because you’re family?”
Mrs. Rawlings looked at her for a long time and then shook her head. “KR dying... maybe that was enough... even for them.”
There was the squeak of shoes. Sara turned quickly. Dolly’s distress, written on her face and in the way she moved, was much more apparent than it was in her mother, although Sara guessed that the mother’s grief went deeper. Dolly looked hard at her, doubt, guilt, defensiveness visible, then her eyes flickered away.
Sara took a step towards her, half raised a hand. “Dolly, you know I couldn’t warn you, or talk to you. This cop came along and told me who you were, a man I didn’t like by the way, and I’m not absolutely sorry that he’s dead... But I had to believe him, and then it just seemed I had to take action. I had to defend myself, because Mattie was dead and I just didn’t know what was going to happen to the rest of us. I had to take a stand. I’m sorry, but it was my life, my business... But I’m so sorry. About your brother. About the way it all worked out. I’m so sorry...”
Dolly held herself still and straight, head bent, shoulders turned forwards, as though pulling her feelings back into herself. “I don’t blame you... None of us blame you... I know I tricked you... It’s how we live... I just wanted to grab the chance. I was fooling myself, of course. You’re not going to forget that I tricked you. But I just wanted that chance... And now I kind of helped to get my brother killed.” She was struggling with tears.
Sara moved closer. “Surely nobody could blame you for that.”
“None of us is blaming her,” Mrs. Rawlings said. “You can believe that. Dolly takes things hard and personal.”
Sara said, “Dolly, what I really want is to somehow get through this and get you back working for me.”
Dolly raised her eyes, blinking in disbelief.
“I know that may take a little time,” Sara went on. “You’ve got a lot of grief to cope with, maybe cops and so on giving you trouble, so maybe we can meet in a few days, talk some more. But what I really want you to understand is that I enjoy having you in my shop, and you’re really good at it, so please... think about it.”
Dolly stared at her. She seemed too overwhelmed to do anything but give a little nod.
Sara decided it was too soon to hug, so she turned back to her mother. “Do you know what happened to Fatboy?”
Mrs. Rawlings started slightly, as though her thoughts had drifted. She took a quick breath, made a face. “Fatboy still out there,” she said. “That thing never give up.”
Fatboy Page 9