Robot-on-human crime was literally nonexistent. The only people who were harmed in any way were criminals who were apprehended by sanctioned robocops only after having committed a crime. Apprehension could come in the form of being physically detained, or through the use of deadly force. The former was the ideal scenario but if innocent people were in danger, such as in a hostage situation perhaps, the robocop was equipped, and legally sanctioned, to make the difficult choice of using deadly force in order to serve the public trust. Candy had a robocop in her office right now—
Candy!
Rory wanted to hear about his blind date with her. Which meant Danny had to stop daydreaming about robots and get on the road in order to make it to Santa Monica by 1:00.
Danny swigged the last of his orange juice and handed the glass to Howard. “You be the judge. If there’s something weird with the shuttle, have them call me. Otherwise we’ll talk later. I need to hurry.”
“Very good, sir.” Howard began washing the glass in the sink, turning the glass rapidly under the water while keeping his red eyes fixed on Danny. “Enjoy your lunch.”
“Thanks, buddy. And keep your head out of the freezer.” Danny headed for the garage. “At least until Floyd gets back!” If Floyd wanted to assist Howard with the refrigeration experiment, that was fine, but Danny didn’t want to be responsible for Floyd coming home and finding his one-of-a-kind robot bent over with its head in the freezer, deactivated. Repairs for such an event would surely be astronomical, were they even possible.
Danny entered the garage and found it empty. Trying not to panic, he ran to the garage door and peered through one of the windows: his convertible was there in the driveway, where he’d apparently left it.
The exertion caught up with him and his head pounded. He could feel every artery and vein in his head stretching with each blood-pumping beat of his heart. Damn Rory and his Monday night football celebrations. And the requisite pitcher after pitcher of beer.
Danny began to think about Harley as he made his way through the side door of the garage and out to his convertible. Did she really want to go flying with him? Tonight? The way his head was throbbing, he was not about to get behind the controls of anything that couldn’t pilot itself with one hundred-percent automation. And his Viper Jet did not qualify. Its autopilot was quite good, but it was designed for in-flight use only, not take-offs and landings or traffic or terrain avoidance. The fact that those tasks remained in the hands of the pilot was precisely what made flying so much fun. If Harley—
Danny rounded the corner of his garage and stopped. Something was on the windshield of his car. It appeared to be . . . a white envelope.
He walked to the driver’s side, lifted the wiper blade, and removed the envelope—which it indeed was—from the glass. There was simply a bold letter D on the front, albeit penned in a stylish cursive handwriting.
Danny carefully tore it open and peered inside: something small and black and shiny, a fabric of some kind. He removed it and held it up. The object unfolded and he immediately recognized them: panties. Specifically, a black thong. A sexy one. As if a thong of any color could be anything but sexy.
Suddenly aware that he was standing in his driveway in broad daylight and holding a pair of panties before his eyes, he quickly lowered his hand. A cursory glance over both shoulders revealed that he was alone; no neighbors in sight.
Danny peered into the envelope and removed a slip of paper. He unfolded it carefully.
D,
I trust our next date shall be every bit as thrilling as our first two. Until then, here’s something to remember me by.
C
Danny detected a sweet, spicy scent. He brought the note to his nose and smelled it. But it didn’t seem to be the source. He smelled the envelope; also strong, yet— He looked over his shoulder again and waited for a red hatchback with four teenaged boys in it to pass by.
He brought the thong to his nose and inhaled.
He nearly keeled over for the heavenly aroma. He inhaled again and again, breathing deeply. He pressed the silky black fabric to his nose and mouth, and realized how odd he must have appeared standing there with his eyes closed, sniffing a pair of knickers.
Honestly, he didn’t much care.
Images of Candy were flooding his mind. Her long legs and blond hair and big green eyes. The way she fed him a bite of her fruit salad, and then ate from the same fork. The way he’d put his arm around her while she slept during the subway ride back from Palm Springs. The smell of her hair.
He was getting an erection.
Danny shoved the thong into his pants pocket and climbed into his car. He placed the envelope and note carefully within the center console, and fired up the engine, enjoying the roar of the motor and its dual exhaust. Both sounds were completely artificial of course, being that his vehicle was electric. The motor and exhaust options were aftermarket add-ons, and perhaps a bit sophomoric, but Danny enjoyed them nonetheless. They made him nostalgic, though he knew not for what. That, it seemed, was the very problem with nostalgia.
Danny’s fingers danced over the navigation screen while the car’s motorized top retracted. Within seconds he was on his way to Santa Monica.
~
The cool ocean breeze greeted Danny as his car brought him onto the aptly named Ocean Avenue, and he inhaled deeply, smelling the salt in the air. Not as powerful or as intoxicating as the scented panties in his pocket, but pleasant nonetheless.
Santa Monica was a few degrees cooler than Hollywood and Danny wondered again if he ought to live here instead of there.
Green grass ran the length of Ocean Avenue, forming a long, narrow park. Beyond the park was a cliff, below which was the Pacific Coast Highway, the beach, and the vast blue ocean. In the distance was the Sport Fishing Pier and the big Ferris wheel.
Palm trees grew tall into the blue sky, towering above the smaller oak trees providing shade to the people enjoying the park: bike riders, dog walkers, roller skaters, and joggers.
People lounged on the grass, some in the shade, others in the sun. There was a lot of bare skin; young, fit people exercising and working on their sun tans, as well as equally-fit senior citizens and retirees playing tackle football or volleyball, or reading via their contact lenses, or simply parked in their folding chairs, watching the parade of flesh and endless stream of expensive cars glide quietly down the street. The past decade’s many exciting breakthroughs in anti-aging therapy and cancer-preventing superfoods allowed people to enjoy long periods of time under the California sun without fear or worry of its unwanted side effects. And given the mean age and activity level of those present, to say nothing of their abundant piercings and tattoos, it seemed seventy was the new forty.
Danny relished the warm sun on his face. Maybe he would move out to the beach. He could work from anywhere, after all. Such a move would put him closer to the airport, closer to his airplane. Although the once-legendary Los Angeles freeway logjam had been greatly improved (infrequent multi-car pile-ups aside, given that they occurred less than once a month), it was still a twenty- to thirty-minute trek from his Hollywood home to the Santa Monica airport.
The pleasant voice of his car’s navigation system brought his attention back to his journey. “You have arrived; Fourteen-eighty-three Ocean Avenue.”
A long white Rolls Royce glided away from the curb and Danny maneuvered quickly into the available space.
The beautiful lines of Canary Tower projected high into the sky one short block away. Danny proceeded on foot.
He crossed Broadway and found Rory waiting for him outside the long row of doors marking the entrance to Canary Tower. Rory leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest, watching the people going by. Especially, Danny noticed, two women wearing bikinis and carrying surfboards, with turned-down wetsuits covering their lower bodies. One of the women handed Rory a business card and a pen, then turned and headed down the sidewalk with her friend.
Danny stopped beside
Rory. “What was that about?”
“She gave me her number.” Rory held up one of his business cards, the back of which contained hand-written digits.
“How’d you get her number?”
“Beats the shit out of me. I was just standing here, waiting for you, when they walked by. She smiled, so I smiled back. She stopped and asked if I wanted to go to a party later.”
“What did you say?”
“I said yes. Surfer girls are hot.” Rory turned and admired the two women now crossing the street.
Rory at last turned to Danny. “You hungover?”
“Yep.”
“Can you eat?”
“I think so.”
“Follow me.”
They walked two blocks to a beachfront cantina bearing a prominent sign. “The Hangover Hut?”
“Damn straight.”
Danny followed Rory into the restaurant and onto the patio. They found an empty table at the rail, where Rory promptly resumed his spectating of women in minimal clothing.
Danny picked up a menu and began to study it. “You going to look at the menu?”
“Nope. I know what I want. I come here all the time.” Rory literally turned in his chair, his mouth open, in order to watch a buxom, tanned, well-oiled-and-shiny woman in a leopard bikini stroll by, followed closely by a gleaming chrome-silver robot walking a large white husky with the telltale red eyes of a robo-dog. The scent of the woman’s coconut suntan oil filled the air.
“I suddenly need a pina colada,” said Rory. “Whaddya say? A little hair of the dog for my main man over here, the king of purple tequila?”
Danny looked up from his menu. “King of purple tequila?”
“Clearly you do not recall doing shot after shot after shot of purple tequila off of Harley’s breasts and stomach and lower back last night. Not to mention the beer.”
Danny tried to remember, tried to access his memory the way a robot might. But he drew a blank.
Rory smiled. “You don’t remember putting a shot of purple tequila between Harley’s breasts and then picking it up with just your mouth?”
Danny merely stared at Rory.
“You do not remember Harley putting a shot of purple tequila between her breasts and then bending over you and pouring it into your mouth?”
Danny’s face was a blank.
“You don’t remember everyone watching? By that point, nobody gave a shit about the game.”
Danny’s memory was as blank as his face.
“You don’t remember us dumping you in your car last night when the pub closed? Clearly you do not remember. Harley probably doesn’t either. We went back to her place last night but I left early this morning before she was up. She didn’t come in to work today.”
“Can she do that?”
“Sure. Her grandfather owns the company. She practically runs the joint. Someday, she will run it completely.”
“Canary Cherrolet is her grandfather?”
“On her mother’s side. Her dad was some bigwig roboticist guy back in the day. He’s dead now. But apparently he taught Harley everything he knew. She’s a party girl and a real looker, but she’s no dummy.”
A waitress in a short white skirt and a matching white bikini top approached the table. “Good afternoon, Rory.”
“Good afternoon, Sharon.”
“You boys need a drink?”
“Two pina coladas, one for me and one for my main man Danny. For lunch, I’ll have a Deep-Fried Big Kahuna Burger.” Rory smiled and added, “Because I have a big kahuna.”
“You certainly do,” said Sharon. She turned to Danny.
“I’ll have the spinach salad with salmon.”
“A salad!” Rory exclaimed. “Are you the same man who licked salt off a woman’s breasts a mere eighteen hours ago? Where are your balls? Real men eat meat. Men like John Wayne and Earnest Hemingway, and Clint Eastwood, who didn’t get to be one-hundred-and-seventeen years old by eating salad. I’m so tired of all this veggie hippie shit.”
“Anything else?” Sharon asked.
“Just the salad,” said Danny.
“Bullshit. You’re hungover because you’re massively dehydrated. You need calories.” Rory turned to Sharon. “Bring us one order of the Deep-Fried Pizza Squares, and two orders of the Deep-Fried Candy Bar Sampler for dessert. And bring Danny a basket of sweet-potato fries along with his testicles – er, I mean his salad.”
Sharon tapped a final note on her digital pad and left the table. She returned a few minutes later with the pina coladas.
“So, Rory,” she began, placing Rory’s drink on the table, “how come you never called? The invitation still stands, you know.”
“I know.”
Sharon placed Danny’s pina colada on the table. “Rory’s afraid of being with two women at the same time. He’s old fashioned that way. Isn’t it sweet?”
“It’s very sweet,” said Danny.
“So where’s Harley?” Sharon asked. “I figured she’d be with you.”
“I dunno, she wasn’t in her office this morning. But you might ask this guy, the king of the Purple Tequila.”
Sharon nodded. “I’ll bring you both another pina colada. On me.” Sharon smiled and departed.
“Cheers,” said Rory.
“Cheers.” Danny bumped his glass and they drank.
“Before we get too wasted, I have two questions for you,” said Rory. “Question one: how was your blind date the other night?”
“It was great.” Danny couldn’t help but grin. He glanced down at the small hump inside his pocket. His grin broadened into a wide smile.
“I should say so,” said Rory. “You like her?”
“I think so, yes. I think we had a connection.”
“And she likes you?”
Danny surreptitiously withdrew the black thong from his pocket. “She left these”–he let them dangle from his fingers–“in an envelope on my windshield.”
Rory’s eyes widened and he grabbed for the thong.
Danny snatched it away. He balled it up into his hand, out of sight.
“Is that . . .?” Rory pointed at midair where the thong had been.
Danny nodded.
“That must’ve been one hell of a first date.”
“Actually we had two dates. But we had shuttle trouble on the second date so we had to cut it short. But I’m fairly confident she wants to go out again.”
“Who is she? Tell me about her.”
The waitress brought their food. Rory seized his burger with both hands and took two large bites, his teeth crunching through the crispy outer shell. He poured ketchup on the sweet potato fries and pushed the basket toward Danny. “You need carbs to rehydrate.” Speaking around his mouthful of Big Kahuna, it sounded like “You deeb arbs do ee high dray.”
Danny took a long fry. “Well, she’s tall. She’s blond. She’s gorgeous. And she’s smart. And funny.”
Rory swigged more pina colada. “Nice tits?”
“They’re perfect. Not that I’ve seen actually them.”
“Yet.” Rory held up his pina colada and they toasted once more. “What does she do?”
“She’s a psychologist.”
“Uh-oh.”
“What’s uh-oh?”
“Chicks who go into mental health professions often do so because they’re trying to figure themselves out. But it also means they tend to be really wild in bed. It’s a double-edged sword.”
“She did ask if I wanted our second date to be a trip to Las Vegas to get married.”
“You just proved my point.” Rory took another huge bite of his burger. “Either it’s love at first sight because you two are fated to be together forever, because you’re soul mates, or she’s completely fuckin’ nuts. Take Harley, for example. You do remember Harley, right? The woman you met last night?”
“Yes, I remember her.”
“Harley is crazy. She rides motorcycles, does triathlons, gets up at five a.m. and goes to the
gym, this morning notwithstanding, apparently. She likes to go shopping for expensive lingerie, which she then wears under her clothes to a football game. She likes guy stuff, but she’ll also throw you down and blindfold you and ride you until your dick falls off. One of her fantasies is to go skydiving naked and have sex during free-fall. She’s crazy.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Which brings me to the second question: what do you think of Harley?”
“I don’t really know her all that well. She seemed nice enough last night. Though I don’t remember anything after the first quarter. I know we talked about motorcycles and airplanes. She wants me to take her flying tonight. It’s a full moon and she wants to go to Catalina.”
“You going to take her up?”
“I don’t know. I said I would. I mean, I think I agreed to go up tonight. I can’t remember.”
Rory fished a business card out of his back pocket. He handed it to Danny. “Here’s her number. She made me promise that I would give it to you.”
“I don’t know if I should call her. We had a blast last night. Apparently. But that was before I found scented panties on my windshield.”
“Scented? What do they smell like? Are they dirty panties? Can I smell them?”
“No, you may not.”
“Can I buy them from you?”
“No, you may not.”
“I’ll give you five hundred dollars.”
“No.”
“Any man who refuses to accept five hundred bucks for a pair of dirty panties must be in love.”
“We’re not in love. We just met. And her panties aren’t dirty. They’re clean and lovely.”
“So what’s Miss-Clean-and-Lovely’s name?”
“Candy Calvin.”
Rory choked on his burger. He began coughing and quickly drank the last of his pina colada. Choking, he grabbed Danny’s pina colada and drank. A blob of whipped cream rested on the tip of his nose.
“You okay?”
Rory nodded vehemently. “That’s a very, uh, sexy name.”
“It is, isn’t it? God broke the mold after he made her.” Danny found Rory staring at him. “You have whipped cream on your nose.”
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