Spring Showers Box-set

by Avell Kro

  “She never said that,” says so-called Elizabeth.

  “But I—”

  Sean raises his hand, palm facing me, stopping me cold. He picks up my teacup with my tea in it and downs what’s left in one definitive gulp.

  “Of course we’ll deliver your package, Elizabeth. That’s what we do,” Sean says.

  “I wasn’t certain,” Elizabeth says, sitting again and back to her former not-quite-so-sure-of-herself

  ways. “I’d heard of you but I didn’t know you existed until a few days ago. I thought you were just,

  you know, a myth sort of a thing.”

  “You realize, Elizabeth,” Sean says, “you can’t tell anyone you’ve been here.”

  “I have no one to tell.”

  “It’s on the standard agreement form,” Sean says, pushing the scroll with that very form on it

  across the desk and motioning for her to sign it.

  “Isn’t this just a formality?” Elizabeth says, her nervousness returning.

  “It’s a legally binding contract,” I say from my leaning spot at the pillar, even though Elizabeth was

  talking to Sean, not to me.

  “How can an illegal business have a legally binding contract?” says Elizabeth, suddenly revealing

  herself to be about fifty times cleverer than I’d guessed.

  “You are not engaged in an illegal activity,” Sean says. “You’re merely giving us a package to deliver

  and paying us for our services. What we do with it after that is out of your hands. But your

  relationship with Origin Phase Delivery is governed by this standard agreement form, which every

  client’s required to sign.”

  “It will really go wherever I ask?”

  “As long as it falls within the stated parameters,” Sean says, his suaveness taking on a slight edge.

  Chapter 3

  IN THE PARK, Eli found a bench and sat down. He touched the ridges in the seat. Closed his eyes. The

  bench looked fine, seemed fine—but the sensations were wrong.

  The relief of a moment ago slid away, vanishing as though it had never appeared. What the hell?

  This must be a nervous breakdown. This is the kind of thing everyone knows about but only an

  unlucky few are forced to experience. That must be it. The icy penetrations, the burning blood, the

  utterly wrong sun. Not belonging. An alien from another galaxy.

  “Are you okay, Eli?”

  “What?” Looking down, away from the impossible sun. “Why?”

  “I saw you leave the office and, well, you don’t seem like yourself.”

  “Who are you?” The glaring not-right sun that blocks all vision blocked Eli’s.

  “Eli! It’s Flora. You know—Flora, from the office.”

  “Oh yes, sure.”

  “Flora. The person you eat lunch with on Thursdays. The person you work with. That Flora.”

  “Yes. Of course. Flora. I’m sorry. Nothing seems right today.”

  “You’re just pissed because Josie sold two months already this morning and you won’t be salesman

  of the month like you were last month,” Flora said.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Eli?”

  Staring at the sun, rocking forward on the bench. His broad, overly tall frame sinking into itself.

  The sun’s just wrong and Flora doesn’t look like someone he might work with. What does Flora

  seem like? Who came up with the idea of selling time? Why does the bench feel like this?

  Flora put her hand on Eli’s shoulder and gently shook him, the underside of her sharp metal

  bracelet biting into his shoulder. Two pigeons landed on the bench next to them.

  Eli sat still, staring past Flora.

  “Eli! What happened over the weekend? You’re never like this. Something must have happened.

  What happened?” The tone of her voice scared off the pigeons.

  “I’m not like this? What am I ever like?” What am I ever like? Does the sun always look wrong?

  Flora put her hand on Eli’s damp forehead. “You’re burning up.”

  That must be it—a fever. That explained, that could explain everything. It’s not a nervous breakdown but a physical disease, Eli told himself. It’s something curable. Something

  understandable. Solid.

  Get ahold of yourself.

  “Eli, I’m taking you home. You can’t be here in the park, outside. You need rest and some soup or

  something. Crackers, for the salt. You can’t stay here.”

  Flora’s red hair had a preternatural shine to it, something else that looked completely wrong. Was

  Flora’s hair always that color of red?

  “Flora, I hope you don’t think . . . but . . . was your hair always red?”

  Flora threw her hands on her hips. Was that a familiar gesture?

  “It must be the fever, Eli. You have to get home.”

  “How long have I known you? Wouldn’t I know if your hair was always red?”

  She sighed in exasperation, in desperation. Her hands moved off her hips and onto Eli’s arm,

  encircled it as she tried to pull him up.

  Is this how Death feels? The ice, the burning up, the hand on your arm? Nothing seeming right?

  “I’m taking you home right now. You have a fever.”

  “But did you notice the sun? And your hair. That red.”

  “Eli, my hair’s always been red. Since I was born. Since forever. All the time. Always. Thirty-seven

  years ago, today, and last week.”

  But her asserting something didn’t make it true. Those were just words.

  Since forever. All the time. The words were colder than the icy fear.

  Maybe this was a nervous breakdown brought on by a mysterious fever-fueled disease, a disease

  that made everything seem off. A sort of flu of the innate sense of what’s right.

  They stood then. She could take him home. She still held on to his arm, encouraging him to go with

  her.

  “Thank you, Flora. I’m sure if your hair is red, then it’s red.”

  “Yes, Eli. You don’t look well.”

  “Really. I’m fine.” If having an unheard-of flu that ruined your sense of what was right could be fine.

  As they walked to Flora’s car, toward the back of the too-shiny building that housed Sunbright

  Lifestyles and at least a hundred other unfamiliar, probably wrong-seeming, and no doubt useless

  companies, Eli glanced back, across the street, and saw a tall, slim man in a gray suit. Blond hair,

  perfect posture.

  The man carried a small package and he walked briskly forward, then stopped on the median

  while the light changed. Eli could see his breaths, the rise and fall of his chest. His feet were

  parallel.

  There was nothing special about him. Just another person on the street. Someone you’d never

  notice. Everyman. Any man.

  Flora pulled on Eli’s arm. He’d stopped walking but she was still moving, about to round the

  corner to the parking lot in the back of the building.

  Eli put his hand on Flora’s and turned toward the street. There. That man in the gray suit.

  I know him.

  Finally. Someone recognizable. Someone who was right. Someone not off.

  Prying Flora’s fingers loose, breaking her grip on his arm, and sprinting across the street.

  Finally. Someone he knew.

  Chapter 4

  IN THE BACK office, the comm blares out its obnoxious tone, the one that means someone needs

  Sean now.

  “Excuse me,” Sean says so politely I want to kick something. He unfolds his perfect proportions

  from his chair, calmly nods to Elizabeth, ignores me, and goes to the inner office, the one he shares

  with #2, who isn’t in
yet.

  He’s got a desk back there as well. Sean: two; Selena: zero.

  Sean closes the door partway and I’m left alone with Elizabeth and her package, which she’s

  produced from the depths of her anachronistic purse. She’d done this before Sean stepped away

  but now that it’s just her and me, she’s got her hand resting on top of the package, like I’d take it

  away from her or something, which, if I end up being the courier, I will take it away from her—and

  deliver it, of course.

  I wish I could take it to the future, because frankly I’m sick of the past. Although it’s possible I

  won’t be the courier. The timing might not work out—and timing is everything in this business.

  Elizabeth rhythmically taps the medium fingers of her left hand on top of the package, her right

  hand still gripping her purse and the brochure.

  “No celebrities,” I say.

  “What?”

  “We won’t deliver anything to anyone wel known, no matter when.” Just in case that was what she

  wanted, because it’s what a lot of people want—to send something of theirs to someone Big and

  Important so they’ll be Big and Important. We don’t do that.

  “And you can’t send anything to yourself,” I say. It just simply won’t work, although I have no direct

  evidence that this is true.

  I think of making myself another cup of tea. Elizabeth hasn’t touched hers except to move the cup

  aside to make room for her package, a flat padded envelope, the kind you rarely see anymore.

  The scrol ’s still in front of her, its radiance illuminating the surface of the desk and the sides of her

  package and causing the brilliant red gemstone on the ring on her left hand to glimmer and

  sparkle brilliantly.

  “Because I said you can’t.” Sean’s raised voice leaks out from behind the not-closed door to the

  inner office.

  “You absolutely can not take a day off,” Sean says, “just because . . . For God’s sake, Harv. Get in

  here.”

  Sean pushes his perfectly straight back into the door and closes it with absurd gentleness just as he uses his yelling-but-whispering voice to drive home his message: Get in here.

  I smile at Elizabeth, showing her what an actually reasonable, friendly person I am. Elizabeth’s

  looking all around again, like she’s lost something so minuscule that it could be located anywhere

  at all and she needs to find it immediately.

  I fol ow her roaming gazes, imitating her movements, subconsciously attempting to help her, but

  force myself to stop.

  I’m just about to ask her if she’s read and signed the agreement when the front door opens and #2

  sashays in, her perfect blond hair in its perfect ’40s movie star coif, her retro shoes clicking on the

  wide oak floorboards, her lipstick the usual deep red that matches her deep red polished nails. The

  red’s always a surprise to me, since she looks like she’s stepped out of an antique black-and-white

  movie.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Selena,” #2 says, “good morning.”

  “This is Elizabeth.” I gesture my open hand toward Elizabeth, who, it seems, hasn’t noticed #2 and

  is purposely shunning me. Her looking around has become more pronounced, almost urgent. Her

  fingers are drumming on the package now. Insistent.

  What the hell is she looking for?

  #2 is always so damned kind. She reaches over to Elizabeth’s purse-clutching hand, grasps it in her

  manicured paw, and says, “Elizabeth. So nice of you to stop by,” as though she knows Elizabeth,

  which is the way she talks to everybody, reeling you in.

  If #2 has any Life Problems, they’re unknown to me. She’s the perfect person everyone wishes

  they could be, but no one, except her, is.

  “Is there a guarantee that my package will be delivered?” Elizabeth’s returned to her original

  insistent questioning.

  “The guarantee’s described right here,” #2 says, her voice mellifluous, her gestures like silk floating

  on a cool breeze. You can practically smell spring in the air, even though it’s the dead middle of a

  particularly disgusting summer. The overhead fans are whirring about, churning the hot air into

  moving hot air.

  #2 shows Elizabeth the place on the standard agreement where there’s such convoluted

  mumboing and jumboing that even an experienced judge would be flummoxed, sigh, look resigned,

  sigh again, and sign. I know this only because I delivered a package for such a judge last year.

  Elizabeth looks down to where #2’s pointing on the scroll just as Sean emerges from the back

  office, seeming as though nothing at all has transpired, and just as the front door opens yet again.

  “Spencer!” I say, like I’m glad to see him. If I were in a better mood, I might be. But here it is, ten

  o’clock already—or is it nine?—and I haven’t done my delivery yet, which is why I came in to begin

  with, and I have to get to the shop this afternoon, and Sean drank my tea. Not to mention

  Elizabeth.

  “Is there a bathroom?” says Elizabeth, glancing up from the scroll.

  “In the hall, just to the right there,” says Spencer, pointing. Elizabeth gets up and goes past Spencer

  and into the hallway.

  After she leaves, Spencer sits in one of the client chairs by the door, calmly waiting for Sean to tel

  him what to do. He excels at waiting. Spencer’s like that, such a good worker, so obedient, always

  well groomed.

  Most robots are, although I heard Spencer had to convince Sean to hire him, which must’ve been

  some scene. Too bad I was at the shop that day. Sean’s never hired a robot—well, really, Spencer is

  a humanoid robot, an android, but he prefers robot—before and doesn’t use them for anything at

  all, except for Spencer, that is.

  All this while Sean and #2 are embracing, as always, like the lifelong friends they are. I sit on the

  edge of the desk, watching them and refusing to be jealous or envious or whatever term might

  apply here. After all, I have a life, too. People embrace me, too. Maybe not right at this moment, but

  they do. Perhaps not Sean, but other men.

  “I have something for you,” Sean says to Spencer. He’s talking to him over #2’s shoulder, since

  they’re still locked together in a tremendously friendly hold.

  Spencer stands up, #2 disengages her perfect self from Sean and smooths out the front of her suit,

  and Sean, Spencer, and #2 make for the back office, where the details for all the deliveries are

  arranged.

  The place is a bustling hive of activity, yet now I’m all by myself in a deserted room. So I turn the

  kettle back on. Maybe I can have the cup of tea I’ve so far been deprived of.

  Ten minutes later, I’m sitting at my desk— Sean’s desk—with my feet balanced on the pulled-out

  bottom drawer, finally relaxed, or as relaxed as I can get, but, damn, now I have to go to the

  bathroom. Bodily functions can be so inconvenient.

  I kick the drawer closed, reluctantly stand up, go into the hallway, and push through the heavy oak

  door to the bathroom. It’s empty in here, so I can have any stall I want: my choice of identical toilets

  with identical views of the back of a door while the mysterious goings-on of the human body work

  their way into the depths of the city’s sewer system.

  Perhaps someday I’ll make a delivery to a time when they’ve made going to the bathroom a fun

>   activity. If there is such a time, I might decide to stay there, even though that’s strictly against

  Origin Phase Delivery’s not-short-enough list of rules.

  It’s not until I’m washing my hands at the old-fashioned pedestal sink that I remember that flash of

  red on Elizabeth’s ring . . . and . . . Elizabeth herself. Oh yeah, the client. Didn’t she go to the

  bathroom? Where is she?

  I open all the stall doors, just to make sure, but as I’d thought, I’m the only person in here.

  Out in the hallway, I lean over the banister, looking up and down. Smoothed-over dark walnut,

  marble, and mosaic tiles.

  But no Elizabeth. She can’t have gone back into the office—I would’ve seen her. I go back into the

  bathroom, to triple-check. No one’s here.

  Where the hell is she?

  Chapter 5

  SHE DID ALL that gazing about. Didn’t sign the agreement—or did she?

  I guess she’s lost her nerve. It’s happened before. Never exactly like this, but it has happened. It

  was that sign-the-agreement part she didn’t like. She resisted it. Probably didn’t want to be traced

  back to our illicit business.

  In the office, back in the main room, Sean, #2, and Spencer are having a grand old time, laughing it

  up. Well, not Spencer, really, al-though he is smiling. The day I see Spencer laughing it up, well—I

  look forward to it.

  That’s one of the things I like most about the future—something to look forward to.

  “Did I miss something hilarious?”

  “No, no, no,” #2 says while trying so hard not to laugh she’d spit if she weren’t so perfect, but she is

  bending over, holding her stomach, bracing herself against the edge of the desk, and smiling harder

  than I’ve ever seen her smile.

  “Where’s Elizabeth?” Sean says. He may look like someone who doesn’t care about the business,

  like someone who does this only for amusement because he’s got a pile of assets stocked away

  somewhere, but he is a businessman—and pretty good at it, too, it seems.

  “Gone,” I say.

  “Her package is still here.” Spencer’s quite observant, a quality you’d think would be standard in a

  robot, yet it isn’t. Like anyone else, they seem to see only what they’re programmed to see.