Ken had an early start. “I’ll leave you two to amuse yourselves.” He slapped Alfred’s bum. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Doesn’t leave us with much,” Alfred said. He’d already gone.
“You didn’t want to do that last night, did you?” Boo asked.
“Hmm?”
“It’s okay. I’ll go.”
Alfred hated being alone. There had always been someone to keep him company - Gussy, Ken, Nanny. With the Centre swallowing Ken’s time, what was he going to do all day?
“This probably sounds weird,” he said, “but could you spend time with me? I don’t know anyone in Talos.”
Boo broke into a grin. Alfred imagined the lure of those eyes across a bar and saw why Ken had been snared. “I’d love to.”
Over the next few weeks Boo became a fixture. Alfred wondered if he was a mostly straight man satisfying his curiosity; there was none of the competitive bitchiness, the “Is he, do you think?” conversations he had with other gay men. They talked about everything else. Their families, their careers, politics - the usual stuff.
Boo was only five years younger but it became a running joke. Kid, Alfred called him, baby, joking that while he was earning his colours in the Lila Force, Boo was in the nursery. He had a disarming naivety, a faith in his fellow man that was astonishing in a copper. He’d never had a serious relationship. He even looked young, the seductive eyes clashing with the sweet face.
Through Boo, Alfred learned to love Talos. He taught him the island’s peculiar dialect, full of twists and traps. He’d cook delicacies, confide that while he was in the police like every Boolaky for generations, he wanted to open a bistro. They’d take their bikes out and explore. “Where’s your twin?” Ken asked whenever Alfred came in.
It was on one of these excursions they discovered a bay at the edge of the island. “How come I’ve lived here all these years and never knew this existed?” Boo asked.
“We should grab supplies, make a day of it -”
The words died in Alfred’s throat. They were on an overhang of cliff, admiring the beach. A man had wandered into view, beefy and stark naked.
“What the - ?” Boo nearly fell off his bike.
“Lone exhibitionist?” Even as he said it, men of all ages and physiques were coming out of the woods.
“A nudist beach, here,” Boo babbled. “I mean -”
“More than that,” Alfred said cheerfully, as groans and expletives broke out. “Fancy a look?”
He whipped off his clothes and began the descent. Boo hesitated but desire won. Despite the panorama of lifting flesh, he could only look at Alfred. He took his hand and pulled him down.
“What if somebody asks to join in?”
“I’ll vet him. If he’s any good -”
The rest was lost in an enthusiastic rugby tackle. One of the many ways Boo showed his youth was how he made love. You had to tell him to slow down, take his time.
They were blissfully engaged, Boo moaning and cradling Alfred’s head, when panic rippled across the beach. “Police!”
“Shit!” Boo sat up. “If they catch us, I’m done for.”
Most of the exit points had been cut off. Linking hands, they pelted into the trees, narrowly missing a team of uniformed men with flashlights. They found a stone shelter and ducked inside. The absurdity of their situation hit them. They held each other and howled. The shared moment turned to ardour. Rather than the rough and tumble of earlier, this was slow and sensuous.
“I love you,” Boo whispered as dusk approached.
Alfred had done many things he wasn’t proud of, but using Boo was in the top three. He knew he was being cruel but couldn’t help himself. It was such a tonic being adored. Boo had never been in love before, and he had the honour of being his first.
If Ken had shown any jealousy, he would have ended it. He wondered if that was the true incentive. Bar the odd facetious remark and request to watch, he acted like it was beneath his notice.
“How can you stay with him?” Now that he knew Ken better, Boo loathed him. “If you were mine, I’d shout it from the roof tops.”
Sadly love doesn’t work like that. We ignore the good ones and go for the awkward customers.
Alfred thought enough time had passed that it wouldn’t be an issue. Ken was dead, Boo had recreated herself. He had Josh, their almost relationship. But as she glided into the bar and said, a laugh in her voice, “Welcome to my domain,” he knew that the years apart didn’t make any difference. “Who’s your friend?” she asked.
Introducing his two dearest friends was excruciating. He hoped she’d pick up on the tension, she used to be a cop, but Josh’s non human status served as protective covering. It was so unfair. In her previous incarnation Boo was a work in progress; now she had the body she had always wanted, she was miraculous. Any man would count himself lucky to have her.
“I don’t see myself as gay or straight,” she used to say. “I like people.”
That had never been true. She liked only one man - him. Alfred didn’t know if his nerves could stand it. One unrequited love was enough amongst a group of friends.
They had intended to stay for a few days. Somehow the days became weeks, then a month. Alfred knew what it was. Boo had a talent for making you feel at home: domesticity as provided by an intelligent, sensitive woman who understood exactly what you needed. He wished it could be enough.
He’d grown dozy and ineffectual. Archos demanded to know why he hadn’t made any headway. He expected Josh to ask why they weren’t following their plan, but he was besotted too. His sketchpad bulged with Talos scenes, he was on speaking terms with the locals. He spent his afternoons with Manny the bartender, learning to mix cocktails. Josh idolised him, copying his drawl and quoting his opinions.
It made Alfred jealous. Although “Josh’s room” was as fictitious as other rooms with that title - come bedtime, they’d press together in the soft, sleepy dark - they kept their distance in public. It’d be bad taste, flaunting their relationship at Boo.
There’s a special kind of intimacy that comes with sleeping with someone. Josh would lie tucked against him, head over his heart; Alfred longed to trace the frowning face. Sitting at his desk, writing Dispatches, he swivelled to look at him, felt the familiar tug.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I know it’s crazy. I want nothing more than to look after you. To be at your side by day, worship your body at night. If I can’t have that, I’ll be your friend.”
Josh stirred. “Where are you?”
“Here, dear heart.”
“Will you read me what you’ve written?”
“When it’s finished.”
As he read Josh made suggestions. His advice was always sound. “Come to bed,” he’d say at last.
The tickle of hair, the torment when Josh brushed areas that couldn’t help but respond! He loved him, found him jaw achingly attractive, but put him in certain scenarios and his mind rebelled. He couldn’t picture the artificial going down on him or being bent over a bed. He felt shameful just thinking it.
Josh was the only man he’d wanted to marry. He couldn’t imagine a finer ambition than to win, and keep, his love. When he was volatile, Josh talked him down. When he needed inspiration, he held his hand. Alfred would go anywhere with him, let him do anything. No union was intimate enough for what he wanted.
Reason won. Keeping his hands off was not only sensible, it salvaged his pride. Any sign Josh didn’t feel the same way would break his heart. It could be he had feelings, and had learned to hide them, but far likelier he didn’t care about the love of a disfigured, cantankerous, lecherous old sinner.
“Why do you like it here?” Alfred asked one night, when Josh couldn’t sleep. “There’s nothing to do.”
“It’s the kind of life I’ve always wanted. You, me, a place like this.”
Alfred swallowed. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t like it too, but it’s not practical.”
; “CER wouldn’t like it,” Josh said dully.
There were lots of things CER wouldn’t like. They wouldn’t like how they slept entwined, Josh in the briefest boxers, Alfred in a flamboyant dressing gown. Or that he’d been given a latest model beebo, intended for the artificial. Josh said he liked his old one, and they could call each other wherever they were. The dainty apparatus got lost in his huge mitt; he looked like a gorilla using a calculator. Or the expression that came into Josh’s eyes sometimes. It was a gaze with intent, with heat.
Boo suspected nothing. She’d joke at how inseparable they were - “Here’s your robot buddy,” - but never completed the equation.
One evening Alfred and Boo were sitting on the terrace. Manny had taken the evening off for a fete. Josh, thirsty for local colour, had gone too. They lounged in their rockers, drinking tisanas.
“So.” This was her favourite opening. Alfred wondered if they didn’t have a series of talks but a continuous conversation. “How are you? Still with your beloved tyrant?”
“Ken’s dead.” It came out quieter than he’d intended.
She touched his hand. “I’m sorry. If you are.”
“I was a howling dervish at the time. But honestly, it’s a relief. He was never happy - ”
“How did it happen?”
He recovered the old lie. “Cancer. A few months before Gussy.”
“I wish you’d said. He wasn’t my favourite person, but you must’ve seen something in him. ”
“Everything went crazy. He was my entire world. I didn’t know who I was without him.”
“Do you know now?”
“I’m getting there.”
She yawned, stretched. “Funny how things work out.”
“Hilarious.”
“I mean, there you were, freaked out by bots, and now you have a robot companion. It’s sweet.”
She didn’t mean ‘companion’ in the euphemistic sense. She meant the tidy, efficient sorts who mopped up incontinent grandpas and played board games.
“I’ve got a headache,” he said bluntly. “I need an early night.”
Up in his room, he looked long and hard in the glass. Yes, the blast had left him bedizened with scars and the stroke had taken its toll. But he’d never dreamt that people looked at him and Josh and saw a patient and his carer, a functional and - come out and say it - an invalid.
He must have been sitting in a torpor. The next he knew, Josh had let himself into the room and put his hands on his shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“Josh,” he asked, “do I look old?”
“Of course not, you big lummox.”
Alfred leant into him gratefully. “Thanks. That’s what I needed to hear.”
Alfred had wondered how Boo managed to break even. Yes, the bar had a bohemian charm with its stencilled walls and tinkling lamps, swings instead of stools, but where did it fit in such a deprived area? The drinks menu was stocked with craft ales and fancy cocktails. Kyrans drank to get drunk and didn’t care how they got there.
This was reckoning without Boo’s ingenuity. She knew she wouldn’t appeal to everyone - the town’s old guard remembered who she used to be - and capitalised on the bar’s niche status. She let it out to writers and fortune tellers, beer festivals and jamming sessions. You’d find yourself jostling the unlikeliest characters.
Once a month she held a movie night. It was very low tec: the screen a sheet in the garden, the picture beamed upon it. Josh was disappointed he wouldn’t be needed.
“Tell you what,” Manny said. “I’ll need an extra pair of hands - that movie crowd loves their cocktails. How about it?”
“Really? You’ll let me mix them and everything?”
“Why not?”
Since the Festival of the Dead was that week, the night had a spooky theme. Boo decorated the bar with cut out bats and baked gingerbread bones. The films were classic chillers about ghosts and revenants.
Watching one, Death and the Maiden, Alfred realised he’d seen it before. It was a simple story. A beautiful girl is locked up in a tower. She has no idea how long she has been there. She occupies herself with reading, painting, recalling her former life. She knows time is passing. One night a stranger comes to her. They start talking and hit it off. He visits her every night, learns all about her. She isn’t allowed to see his face and grows agitated when she asks. “If you did, I could never visit again.”
Alfred looked up to see Boo beside him. “Remember this?”
“Our first date.” Come to think of it, it was the only date he’d been on. “A bit melodramatic, isn’t it?”
“It still makes me cry.”
It was a few days after the adventure on the beach. Boo had decided that whatever this thing was between them, he wanted to do it properly. He insisted on paying, both for the tickets and the enormous bucket of popcorn. They both reached for the same piece and ended up holding hands. Alfred remembered Boo’s euphoric grin in the dark.
On the screen, the heroine falls in love with her visitor. She grows paler and thinner, begins to cough. When she brushes her hair at the mirror one morning, it comes away in her hands. She realises she is dying. That night she asks her lover to reassure her. He can’t.
The last day of her life, she is resigned. She writes her story, hoping future generations will find it. This done, she waits for night. As the last chink of light disappears her lover arrives. She steps towards him. “I know who you are. I’m not frightened anymore.”
With the thrilling chord beloved of filmmakers, he moves into the moonlight. Death was traditionally a stern, lovely woman with a bare breast and scythe, but that would never have made it past the censors. This is a male Death, handsome and long haired like a consumptive poet. When he kisses her she closes her eyes. As ‘The End’ scrolls across the screen, she lies dead in his arms.
“Why did you think this was a date movie?”
“You’ve Death’s moves.” Boo wiped away a tear. “Right -” she raised her voice - “we’ll have a break while I set up the next film.” To Alfred, “Freddie, could you check the boys haven’t trashed my bar?”
He pushed his way into the bar, watched the show Manny and Josh were putting on. Manny turned bartending into an art form. He rolled the shaker down one arm, caught it and decanted it. Josh copied him, but somewhere between the toss and the catch the imitation fell apart.
Josh bit his lip. “Ugh, what a mess.”
“Beginner’s bad luck,” Manny shrugged.
He passed behind Josh, ostensibly to fetch a dustpan, but his fingers grazed the artificial’s buttocks. Nobody else noticed. Manny winked as though this was an everyday occurrence and breezed into the passage.
Alfred steamed outside, down the side of the building where Manny was having a smoke. “Do you often do that?”
Manny cupped his hand to shelter the flame. “What’s eating you, Freddie?”
“Don’t ‘Freddie’ me. I never gave you permission. Do you often grope your colleagues?”
“I’m a hands on guy. Josh and I are buds.”
“Do you grope your ‘buds’, then? I can’t believe Josh lets you take liberties.”
“He doesn’t holler when you do it.”
Alfred reeled. All Manny’s affability dropped away.
“Before you get up on your high horse, take a long hard look at yourself, Freddie.” His cigarette had become a dog end in record time. “I’ve more important things to do than fend off a jealous old fag.”
Alfred fumed through the rest of the programme. He refused to accept another drink from Manny, mixing his own. They tasted vile but it was a matter of principle. Boo didn’t sense anything was wrong.
“That was the best yet,” she said. “Thanks for your hard work, boys.”
Josh usually waited for Boo and Manny to finish creaking back and forth before crossing the landing. That night there was no time lag. He joined Alfred on the bed, warm and vital.
“Has something upset you?”
&
nbsp; “Does Manny - touch you?” Alfred might have phrased it more delicately but he wanted facts.
“No more than normal.”
What counted as ‘normal’? “Does he touch you anywhere you don’t like? He obviously fancies you -”
Josh placed his hand over his. “You’ve nothing to worry about. I’m not interested.”
Alfred felt as though a coal was lodged in his throat. “Personally I can never tell. Men have to jump me first. ”
Josh brought his fingers to his lips. “They needn’t do anything so drastic.”
Alfred kissed the palm. “Is this real? Please don’t say I’m imagining it.”
Josh crawled across the bed so he was sitting on his lap. “You know I don’t lie.”
The feel of his bare legs and buttocks against him was so unexpected, so sensual, Alfred gasped. It was a close, sticky night, but it became imperative they touched. He dropped his dressing gown to the floor. He could only make out Josh’s eyes and lips. Josh ran his hands up his back. They cleaved closer together. Josh reached up to stroke his beard –
A tap at the door. “Can I come in?” Boo’s voice asked.
“Go ahead,” Josh answered. Alfred could have screamed with frustration.
Boo blinked at Josh being there. Alfred was sitting with a blanket up to his chin, Josh was practically naked, but she didn’t see. She must think the old crock had had a turn.
“I wanted to say how much I’ve liked having you around. It’s been lonely since - then. My family didn’t want to know, my friends dropped me. Having a good, loyal friend means a lot.”
“Uh, yes.” Alfred was hideously embarrassed.
She brought out the chair beneath the dressing table and sat down. She was wearing a gypsy shawl over a white night gown. She looked younger than forty six and very vulnerable.
“I’ve been thinking. Neither of us are getting any younger. You’ve retired, Gwyn’s past her majority. You used to say being Earl was temporary.”
Love and Robotics Page 25