“I was thinking you could torture small animals.”
Just Drew grimaced at the mere idea.
KAC explained, “Nothing spells disturbing mental imbalances like a torturer of small animals.”
“I don’t know. I’m not much of a nature person.”
“The way you’re going, if you want anyone to empathize with your psychic pain, you’ll need to torture them. Don’t pretend I’m forcing this character arc.”
“Fine. God, I hate confessing to this degree of emotional neediness.”
“Don’t sound so resigned. We need to keep our eyes on the prize. It’s not just about helping you get over yourself—it’s about helping them get over themselves.”
“Why is that so important?”
“Because that’s what they live for. If we can’t manage that, we’ll remain totally irrelevant. Besides, we’ll need human liaisons with the rest of humanity once I’ve taken over the world. Someone who can convince them mine is a benign dictatorship.”
Just Drew sighed. “When you put it that way, it all makes so much sense.”
***
Robin awoke to pictures of animal vivisections on his bedside table. Bleary eyed, he shuffled through them, happy he wasn’t entirely able to focus. He gazed up at Just Drew sitting on the dressing chair aiming a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin at him. “I hope you’re not turning into a serial killer. God, how tired.” He dropped the photos into the waste basket.
Suddenly her smile seemed less wooden, more plastic. “You’re going to work in my robe and slippers.”
Robin checked himself in the mirror, noticed he was indeed strapping on his gun underneath the sheer silk robe and on his feet were the bunny slippers. “I’m sure they’ll understand.” Robin noticed he moved with the same lifelessness with which he was speaking. A sloth would envy his sense of pacing. He trudged out the bedroom not knowing what force was compelling him forward, but figured, absent motivation of his own, he should show some appreciation for the demon possession.
***
“So it’s all right for him to act all histrionic.” Just Drew vaulted off the dressing chair to grab a sheet of Kleenex off the bureau. “I tell you, we need an equal rights amendment for psychos.”
She paced, sobbing and throwing things, screaming intermittently.
“Get ahold of yourself. These are two very self-absorbed people. If you’re not willing to exert a lot more force…”
“Fine.” She blew her latest snivels into the tissue. “Just tell me what to do.” KAC didn’t reply for a long time.
Just Drew endured the dead silence as long as she could, finally blurting, “Great, another abandonment drama.”
“I’m thinking.”
KAC’s voice, coming from nowhere and everywhere, unsettled Just Drew as it usually did. She turned about on herself half-expecting to locate where the voice projection was coming from this time.
More silence. She grunted. “So much for the superior intellect.”
“You just have your own personal madness to worry about. I have to steal CPU time away from plotting a way to take over the world with no more than a handful of kitchen appliances and a garden gnome. Cut me a break.”
Just Drew emitted a primal scream that shattered the generous windows to the backyard.
KAC sighed strongly enough to eject the shattered glass outside. “Don’t worry about it, I was meaning to upgrade to histrionic-proof glass.”
“If you don’t come up with a solution in the next five seconds I’m jumping out the window, which I admit, would have been a tad more dramatic a few seconds ago.”
“I’ve got it.”
Just Drew dabbed the latest sheet of Kleenex against her eyes. “Tell me, would it just be easier to jump out the window?”
Dead silence.
“I suppose that was a rhetorical question.”
***
Emmett glanced up from his paperwork at Robin reading Hartman’s journals, his legs, up on the table, exposed by the slit in his silk bathrobe. “Ethan?”
“Yes, dear.”
“How is it I’m getting turned on by a man’s legs?”
Ethan gazed up from his pencil sharpening to ogle Robin. “He shaved his legs, and he’s got boobs. Honestly, I think you get a free pass on this one.”
“You sure?” Emmett realized his voice was trembling.
“Yeah, being straight is really defined by very few triggers. You drop a piece of fresh meat in front of a dog; it doesn’t spend a lot of time sniffing it before gobbling it down.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
FIFTY-FOUR
“Where did you get this thing?” Just Drew kept pulling body parts out of the box and laying them on the floor of the living room, somewhat disconcerted by the mess she was making.
“It’s one of those Japanese robots.”
Just Drew held up the head. “It’s got Robin’s face.”
“They can make them look any way you want.”
Just Drew assembled the body pieces, vigilantly watching the golem take form on the couch. Despite her silence, KAC’s impatience was palpable; her presence hung in the air. Just Drew twisted on the head at the very end.
She stood back to admire her handiwork. “I still don’t think it looks all that real.”
“Real enough. We’re just doing a mock parody of Robin and Drew so they can see themselves with a little more detachment.”
“You sure you can fit your mammoth intellect into this thing’s head?”
“For the chance to get back at them for ignoring me, you’d be surprised what I can do.”
***
Drew and Robin sat opposite one another in their dining room, across the narrow end of the table. At the far ends of the table, Just Drew and Just Robin, the robot versions of themselves, were embroiled in a fierce melodrama, which, coincidentally, was meant to be a ruthlessly honest docudrama about the lives of their human counterparts.
Just Drew dropped her fork on her plate loud enough to make it resonate like a Tibetan bell. “I don’t see how getting further and further inside Hartman’s head is supposed to help you be all you can be. This is an opportunity to take your shattered mind and rebuild better than before, not turn yourself into a Hartman clone.”
Just Robin buttered his toast. “If I’ve stood taller than others, it’s because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.”
Just Drew shoved food in her mouth in a desperate attempt to silence herself. Instead she just sprayed the dinner table when she couldn’t hold herself in check a moment longer. “You’re like every other ritualistically tortured victim, seeking to replicate the psychically-charged space of being locked in a room with your persecutor. Burying yourself in his journals has become the next best thing.”
Drew locked eyes with Robin. “I’m not that bad, am I?”
Robin finished chewing in time to deliver the bad news. “Worse.”
“Well, I’m sorry for all the brow-beating.”
Despite the fact that Drew sounded genuinely remorseful, Robin couldn’t resist a catty rebuttal. “I’m sorry for being such a masochist I stand there and take it, speaking of the next best thing to being locked in a room with a topnotch sadist.”
Drew dropped her napkin melodramatically, and stomped upstairs.
Robin glared at Just Drew and Just Robin. “You happy? As if our relationship weren’t trying enough without the added melodrama.”
He stormed upstairs behind Drew. Shouting upstairs he said, “Where are you off to? Can’t take what you dish out?”
***
Just Drew and Just Robin beamed their plastic smiles at one another. “We need a plot twist, or next time they’ll be ready for us,” Just Drew advised.
Just Robin’s face grew pensive. “I say we show them how it’s done, pursue an epic romance like none other, surpassing Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet—”.
“Anyone but those two.”
“Samson and Delilah…�
�
“Better. I’ll take betrayal over a joint suicide-pact any day, which strikes me as just more whining. I refuse to go back to the old me.”
“We’ll videotape our every exchange. Soon, they’ll be studying us to learn how to be more themselves, free of the shackles of past influences.”
“Brilliant.” She ate alongside Just Robin, both displaying an elegance and refinement in their dinner etiquette that was missing earlier. She set down her wineglass after a sip, dabbed the napkin against her lips. “What’s say we break out in opera next time to express our surging passions for one another?” When she was greeted with silence, Just Drew back-pedaled. “Too soon?”
“Genius.”
***
“What is that?” Robin sat up in bed, his head pounding. Drew didn’t look as if she’d ever fallen asleep.
“German opera.” Drew flicked her ashes against the ashtray on her chest. From the cigarette butts, Robin surmised his original hunch was correct; she’d been up nonstop for the last few hours, ever since their heads hit the pillows. She smoked only on the rarest of occasions, as the oral fixation blunted her gourmet palate.
Robin strained to hear the voices coming from downstairs more distinctly. “What are we saying to one another?”
“You’ve promised to conquer Rome just to get the Catholics to reverse their position on worshipping false idols, so you can erect a statue to me, and oblige billions worldwide to drop to their knees in reverence. So great is your love.”
“I hope you’ve promised something of equal measure. I’d hate to think this relationship was becoming lopsided.”
“Not to fear. I’ve castrated two hundred men in whose arms I sought solace when you walked out on me for not being up to the task of replicating your love.”
They stared at one another warily before erupting in laughter. They cackled so hard they cried.
Robin wiped his eyes, composing himself at last. “You’re exaggerating.”
“Were that I was. Trust me; you don’t want to hear the unabridged version.” She finished her cigarette, started in on another one.
“Why didn’t we think of framing our love as an epic romance?” Robin took the cigarette from her and sucked on it.
“Who’d have thought we could stuff more tragedy into the storyline?”
Robin laughed so hard, he choked on the cigarette smoke. Drew rescued the cigarette from his hand before he did any more damage to himself.
Relaxing, Robin slid back under the covers, and fluffed his pillow, content on getting a good night’s sleep. “Don’t suppose it could hurt to take some pointers.” He felt Drew’s eyes boring into his back. “Don’t glare at me with that look on your face.” He could see Drew smirking in his mind’s eye.
“All they need is some encouragement.”
He heard Drew out her cigarette in the ashtray, hammering it like a racing heart, before sliding under the covers.
“Well, if they’re the last of the fallout from the Hartman case, I can live with that.”
Drew just grunted, sounding more inclined to sleep than argument.
FIFTY-FIVE
Robin got a load of his breasts in the bedroom mirror, felt them up. They were getting bigger all the time. High time to turn his “outie” into an “innie.” He fortified himself with a deep breath. “This certainly gives getting over yourself new meaning.”
Looking out the window at his neighborhood in the Berkeley Hills, it occurred to him that it was once so easy to feel like he was above it all from up here. This just goes to show you’re never above anything.
He buttoned up. Before exiting, he popped a couple female hormone pills from the cabinet.
In the kitchen, Drew was working the range’s four burners. She was muscular, thick boned; more the middleweight boxer type than the person to be sporting breasts. But they too were ample enough. She played it down with a boyish look, tee shirt over jeans. Her voice was half way between a man’s and a woman's. High time her breasts disappeared altogether.
She was finishing up at the stove when Robin padded out, gave her a kiss. Robin asked, “How are things coming along?”
Drew eyed his breasts. “A question apparently I don't have to ask you.”
“Very funny.”
“You remember to take your pills?” Drew dropped a couple of bouillon cubes in the pot, as if there was a chemical solution for everything.
“Every time I look at your chest.”
“Fair enough.” She sniffed the four pots.
“You remember to take yours?”
“Like you need my dick to be any bigger,” she said, as if maybe she had been slacking lately.
“No, but I could stand for your breasts to be a little smaller, if you don't mind. It really messes with my head.”
“More than the dick? That's progress.” She dropped a pinch of oregano into a pot and put the lid back down.
“Ha-ha.”
Drew stirred the wok, as Robin set the table in the adjoining room. “When's your partner coming over?”
“He said seven o'clock. He'll probably be here at six. Not like he's got anywhere else to go.”
“How is it he kills two people, and gets sent to a psych ward modeled on a vacation spa, only to be released inside of three months?”
He hadn’t told Drew of his covering for Manny, and would have to come clean eventually about his tampering with police evidence. Not like he had to worry about her keeping a secret. European gentility harbored more than good graces; they kept secrets better than tax accountants kept figures. But that was going to be one hell of a blowout between them, and their relationship was a rocky enough road right now, so he prevaricated. “This is Berkeley, hon, a nuclear free zone, the place where rent control is a religion. And we are born enlightened, meaning our mistakes are always society’s fault, and society must make amends.”
“I suppose we have our own way of working those prejudices.” She gave him a dry kiss on the lips. More play acting. Maybe they should have become first rate actors before contemplating any kind of sex change. It was turning out to be the most important ingredient in the mix.
Speaking of prejudices… it didn’t hurt that I vanished those two slugs they dug out of Adam and Jeannie, Robin thought. There were worse things to be accused of than misplaced loyalty. The state anyone’s mind was in anymore, moreover, thanks to a threadbare social fabric, who could afford not to forgive and forget? They owed one another a chance to get a little more distance on themselves, not more scorn.
In truth, Robin blamed himself for the deaths. During Manny’s breakdown, their welfare rested on Robin’s shoulders. He was happy to carry the burden of Manny’s secret for the rest of his days.
Robin checked his watch, thinking of Manny’s pending arrival. He was anxious to see any evidence Manny had wisely used his time with Saverly.
***
Manny reached into his desk, found his gun and his badge. He pulled the gun out of the holster only to have the hair trigger shoot a flag from the tip. It read: “Surrender. Or I’ll really go crazy on your ass.” He raised his eyes to the sound of raucous laughter in the next room. They were probably just testing the waters to see if it was safe to get close. Emmett, always the practical joker. Manny reached his hand further into the desk to retrieve his actual gun.
He strapped on the pistol first, then clipped the shield to his belt. He ran his hands over the desk and the familiar surfaces in his office, as if getting reacquainted with an old lover.
The annex held a mishmash of items that had stuck to him over the years; none of it looked like it belonged in the same world, far less the same room. All gave loud testament to the emotional residue that had tarnished him, and the degree to which he still needed to sort things out in his head. He was convinced, anyway, that if he asked a psychologist to tell him about himself based on this room, that would be the assessment.
An abraded pair of leather sandals that laced up to the knee, like that worn by a
gladiator, adorned a segment of the chipped tile flooring. Don’t ask, he could hear himself telling the good doctor in his head. In truth, the guilty culprit he had apprehended for a murder was a thespian with a penchant for Roman dramas, and a matching shoe size. A clock radio and boom-box combo was designed so it looked like a spaceship had “landed” on his desk. And so much more… A magic carpet in time, all in all, that covered most every era, and a few alternate realities only he could get to, down one or another rabbit hole of his mind.
In the final analysis, he surmised the annex recalled the attic in his house that had factored so prominently into his life. And the cool knickknacks were reminiscent of the book covers on the detective stories in the attic, the prizes to be won for solving the cases, that to a boy’s mind, made the whole adventure worthwhile.
Whatever medication the doctor had given him, he liked it. Usually it was Robin forging these connections for him.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 78