Love for the Cold-Blooded. Or

by Alex Gabriel

  In the end, Pat did the one thing his parents and sisters had taught him to never do — not under any circumstances, but most especially not when in trouble and faced with a figure of authority. He told the truth.

  “I’m the night manager.” It came out thin and strained, and Pat tried clearing his throat before going on. It didn’t really help. “I’m not a hooker at all. I never have been. That was a misunderstanding. Mistaken identity kind of thing.”

  “Companion,” Nick said, flatly, and nothing else.

  “Yeah, that, uhm. Look, I mean, you must have wondered. Didn’t you wonder why I was… I didn’t exactly have a lot of experience, you know? It must have been kinda obvious. Not like your usual model clones, and not just because of the hair.”

  “Model clones?” But Nick shook his head impatiently, dismissing the distraction. “I thought it was a game. A role you were assuming for variety’s sake.”

  The stone façade was crumbling around the edges a little. Nick’s voice wasn’t quite as cool and even as it might have been; a vertical wrinkle had appeared between his brows, and when he took in a slow, deep breath, Pat imagined there was something unsteady there, echoing the queasy trembling in Pat’s gut.

  “I thought it was… original. I liked it.”

  Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

  The AI pinged, jarringly piercing. “Mr. Andersen has requested a pizza with truffles, smoked pheasant and quail eggs.” The blandly pleasant voice was oddly disturbing, coming in the middle of the stifling silence. “Delivery is to take place fifteen minutes after the order. We are at twelve minutes. Please confirm.”

  “Cancel the damned pizza,” Nick barked.

  Down in the kitchen, of course, the AI was deaf and couldn’t hear him; Nick must have forgotten. In blissful ignorance of its lord and master’s wishes, the AI started up the grating thrumming it liked to use as a subtle hint that not everything was going smoothly, and someone (read: Pat) had better snap to and take appropriate measures double quick.

  Pat turned towards the interface and poked at the glaring warning flashing there. To be exact he lifted his hand, realized he was clutching a severely mangled slice of pheasant breast, dropped it on the counter, and then proceeded with the poking. He was glad of the distraction, glad of anything that allowed him to look away from the hurt and betrayal dawning in Nick’s eyes. Pat had no idea of how to make a pizza request go away without actually making and delivering a pizza, though, so he only managed to make the AI emit a series of irritated ‘input error’ bleeps.

  Nick shouldered him aside roughly, tapping through the AI’s menus so rapidly Pat completely lost track. When he slapped the interface forcefully for the palm print authorization, Pat jumped. “Do go on, Patrick. You were explaining how you are not a companion, which I should have realized because you suck in bed.”

  Pat flinched back involuntarily, retreating a step. It was more the quietly vicious tone of Nick’s voice than the words themselves, really. Nick had only just said that he’d enjoyed having sex with Pat, after all, regardless (or because?) of Pat’s lack of experience.

  “That’s not what I said,” Pat mumbled. Even he could tell he lacked conviction. “I wasn’t saying that you should have known. I just. I didn’t — I’m not a good actor, okay, I’m a lousy actor all around, and I wasn’t acting. I got pinged that you’d said to send someone up there and I didn’t get that it was code for getting a hooker. Companion. Nobody had told me that. You’d think that little detail would be in the orientation talk for night managers, you know? I mean, Suze did talk a lot but it was kinda hard to concentrate after the first ten minutes of serving heart stuff. If she did mention the hoo- the, the companion code, then she was probably being tastefully indirect or whatever, and that subtle shit never works with me.”

  Fuck, he was starting to babble. That happened sometimes when he got really nervous — all of the intermittent verbal stations shut down, leaving totally unfiltered thoughts tumbling straight from Pat’s brain out of his mouth. People had stopped talking to Pat entirely because of things that had come out of his mouth when he was babbling, which was super unfair because he hadn’t even meant to say them. He just hadn’t been able to stop himself; couldn’t stop himself now. Words kept pouring from him, speeding up until his tongue tripped and he stuttered in his desperate haste to get them all out now, right now, make Nick understand, make Nick stop looking at him like that.

  “So there you were, and you were, like, this unfairly hot freaky dude and suddenly you were taking your clothes off and offering to have sex with me, and seriously, what was I supposed to do? That shit never happens to me! Nobody has ever thought I was fuckable enough to, I mean usually I just strike out a lot, which gets real old I can tell you. So I jumped at the chance, and I’m not proud of it or anything but come on, like you wouldn’t have done the same in my shoes? I had no idea there was any kind of confusion or whatever going on. I’m not actually used to being mistaken for a — a companion. I only realized when I got back to the kitchen and the AI was having vapors all over the place, all ‘oh my gods you didn’t tell me the size of the model clone’s dick what the fuck is wrong with you’. And yeah, then I did make up an escort agency so I could have the money, but the AI was pushing so hard for an account number and all and I just, I — do you even know how much textbooks cost? You don’t, do you, because you never have to worry about that kind of thing. Newsflash, you’re loaded, man. It wasn’t like you were going to miss the cash. You were happy with the, the companionship and I hadn’t meant to impersonate anyone but it had already happened and my computer was busted and I needed a new winter coat so I thought why the hell not I wasn’t hurting anyone!”

  Pat was getting light-headed from lack of air, voice rising higher and higher. He had to stop to catch his breath, panting in shallow little gasps that would have been embarrassing in themselves, if he’d had any energy to spare right now to worry about that kind of thing.

  All the while, Nick just stood there, glaring at Pat as though trying to drill a hole through his skull by means of sheer derision and contempt.

  “It just… happened.” Pat had lost babbling momentum, thank all the gods, but now it felt like all his words were freezing up inside him instead. Everything he wanted to say, all the compelling points and heartfelt pleas, the sincere apologies and irresistible appeals to Nick’s fairness — they were all swelling up in his head uselessly, only coming out in fits and starts, sounding nothing like the way he wanted them to. “And then it just, it just. You asked for me again, and I. It was so easy, you know? So easy. I wanted — I didn’t mean… it was so weird, man. I liked, I mean, the money was great, but that’s not — it was only the bonus. I would have — I wanted to. And so did you. And, and anyway, what would have been the right moment to tell you about the night manager thing? It was always already too late.”

  Not even Pat could make sense of everything he’d spouted, but Nick merely listened in stony silence, lips pressed into a hard, pale line. In the end, Pat forced himself to shut his mouth and stop speaking not because he thought he’d said everything there was to say, but because he was almost shaking with the force of his emotions, and he was out of air again and couldn’t seem to figure out how to breathe normally.

  After Pat fell silent, Nick waited for a while longer, staring at Pat. Eventually, he lifted his eyebrows in wordless query, inclining his head the slightest bit as though inviting Pat to go on and get it all out. Pat swallowed on a throat as dry as parchment. It took him a moment, but then he shook his head once, jerkily. He had no words left right now.

  Nick nodded, still staring at Pat. And then, he turned and walked out without another word.

  Several minutes passed while Pat concentrated on trying not to shatter into tiny razor-sharp pieces all over the expensive tiles.

  Pat finished the pizza for lack of anything better to do. He left it in the oven half a minute too long. It didn’t burn, but the cheese and topping
s were well-browned, far beyond the hint of gold that Nick preferred.

  He ate a slice of Nick’s canceled pizza while he waited for Assistant House Manager Suze to arrive. She’d been grumpy when he got her on the phone, but not nearly as angry as he’d expected. Not nearly as unwilling to rush over as Pat would have been, had he been awakened in the middle of the night by an underling.

  The pheasant was delicious and went quite well with the surprisingly intense taste of the quail eggs. Pat could have done without the truffles, though. Way overrated, in his opinion.

  He forced himself to finish the slice, but packed the rest of the pizza up in the traditional take-away box, slid it into a plastic bag, and stuck it into the dumbwaiter. It didn’t go anywhere, of course. The AI had no instructions on where to send it.

  It must have been raining outside. AHM Suze was brushing a few stray drops of moisture off the shoulders of her coat when she swept around the corner, face pinched in disapproval. “Mr. West, it is far too late to find a replacement night manager for tonight, and probably tomorrow as well. An employee who cannot be relied upon is an employee who drags down the entire team, and who is not fit to —”

  At which point she looked up, caught sight of Pat, and abruptly broke off. She looked taken aback. It was the most unguarded expression Pat had ever seen on her.

  “I’m not feeling well,” Pat said hollowly.

  “So you have said,” said Suze, less sharply than before. She shrugged out of her coat carefully, folding it over one arm while studying Pat. Pat had already been stared at a lot tonight, but couldn’t find the energy to care overmuch. “You are aware, I presume, that employees are expected to give advance notice of any circumstance that might impact their service, so that alternate arrangements can be made.” Fortunately, she didn’t seem to expect an answer, because Pat doubted anything he had to say would have improved the situation.

  “We will talk about this more later.” Suze gave Pat a wide berth as she came further into the room. “Leave now. This is a kitchen, after all.”

  Pat didn’t really think about Suze letting him off uncharacteristically easy until he got home. He was mechanically brushing his teeth when he looked in the mirror, and discovered that his face was caught in a delicate pastel shade halfway between corpse white and chartreuse green.

  It didn’t occur to him until the next morning to check for scales, but he didn’t find any, not even between his toes. By then his color was back to normal, anyway. He’d never shown any signs of taking after his mother, so it wasn’t a surprise. He’d only checked to be thorough — cover all his bases, like.

  He just hadn’t been feeling so good. That was all.

  ~~~~~

  The worst thing was: Pat couldn’t even listen to BadMadRad anymore. He was still in the first flush of fannish passion for the album, and by rights should have been listening to it day and night on endless repeat, developing his own little dance routines for his favorite songs. Instead, every note and clever phrase, every snazzy beat and wicked synthesizer riff reminded Pat of Nick.

  He didn’t get it — none of the songs featured anyone even remotely similar to the man, not even “Fly Boy”, which was about a kid in the worst part of town dreaming of becoming a hoagie some day. Nick had never been that kid. Nick didn’t even like BadMadRad. All he’d done was get the album back for Pat, like he should have in the first place. What gave?

  Yeah, Pat knew exactly what gave, but it would have been nice to pretend.

  It was the weekend, so there weren’t even any classes to distract him from the awful hollowness in his gut. Pat tried to distract himself with music, and failed. He tried to study, but couldn’t concentrate; sharp spikes of loss and fear and guilt and grief kept breaking through. He went swimming and hit the gym after, working out until he was dripping with sweat, the harsh rasp of his breath and the burn of his muscles the only things he could remember. That worked, kind of. At least until his trainer sent him home with firm instructions not to come back the next day, and what had gotten into him, Patrick, if he wanted to work on cutting down his times then this was entirely the wrong way to go about it.

  Exercise was no more than a temporary fix, anyway. Pat was left trembling and exhausted, but still feeling like he’d hunted down every last puppy in the world and kicked them right in the nose. And now all the metaphorical puppies were terrified of him, and even the kittens thought he was an evil puppy-torturing sadist, and Pat hadn’t meant — it just, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t even his fault. It was all just a stupid misunderstanding.

  In the end, Pat booted up his new computer and designed the perfect city to distract himself: his ideal utopia of urban design, as beautiful and lavish as though there were no financial limitations whatsoever, and every resource he could possibly need was readily available. He’d been idly pondering what he would do in that purely hypothetical situation for a long time; every urban planner did, Pat was sure. It was cathartic to put it all down and see how functional and beautiful and wonderful to live in a city could be, in an ideal world.

  Midway through Sunday morning, when Pat was so tired the lines of his utopia were blurring together on the monitor, he cleared a space in the center of the city and added a castle, just because. Then he drew up a wall to close it off from the world, high and thick enough to stand fast against all comers.

  For the first time, Pat understood why someone might want that… their own safe kingdom governed by their wishes only, where nothing mattered but what they wanted, and everyone had to abide by their rules.

  Rules like: Unintentional impersonations don’t count. Also: You can’t be mad at someone for something they never intended to happen the way it did. You can’t be hurt by something that was never meant to hurt you.

  Pat caught a couple of hours of sleep, and then went right back to his design. He was laying down the castle’s moat (full of spikes and muddy water to hide them, and also pretty water lilies and some trout, because trout was delicious — but, hang on, there should totally be a functioning ecosystem in the moat) when Cea came in.

  “Hey, Patpat,” she said. “I got a note from the Andersen Estate acknowledging receipt of our promotional gift, which made me wonder what — Pat?”

  “Yeah,” Pat said absently. He needed to look up models for self-sustaining ecosystems in small bodies of water. Thing was, he didn’t actually have any books on the subject. He’d have to go to the library. But the university’s library wasn’t open during the weekend, and — “There definitely has to be some kind of water exchange, I know that much. And trout are too big, they… wouldn’t they eat too much for such a small system to work in the long term? Probably. Some kind of smaller fish instead, and…”

  Cea didn’t comment, and when Pat looked up, she was gone. He blinked at the door in confusion for a moment, but then realized the best solution for his moat would be to integrate it into the existing ecosystem of a natural stream, and got wrapped up in diverting his river.

  His sister’s existence reasserted itself an unspecified amount of time later, when she plopped down a plastic bag right on top of Pat’s keyboard. He would have protested, but the heavenly scent of Wok Express’s Broccoli Chicken Noodles stopped all his words in his throat as his stomach woke up and started shouting at him.

  “Oh my gods,” Cea said, disgusted. “Wait until I get you a plate and a fork, you barbarian.”

  “Mphm,” said Pat indistinctly, muffled by a mouthful of chicken noodles.

  Turned out Cea had also brought several pints of ice cream, a romantic comedy, and an album by a very loud and angry person who played the guitar and shouted a lot about men and why she was better off without them.

  Zen turned up when they were halfway through the ice cream and the movie (which was better than it had appeared at first — Pat liked the cute awkward android girl way more than the annoying douchey jock she was in love with, though. She was way too good for that jerk). They started up the movie again and lounged around, and e
ventually Zen got out the vodka and limes she’d brought.

  Pat had the best sisters, seriously.

  “I should have known,” Pat told his excellent sisters not all that much later, hardly slurring his words at all. “He broke all of the West Sister Dating Rules! It was as clear as the nose on his face. I mean, like, practically the first thing he said to me was if I wanted to have sex with him. And that was after he’d taken off his clothes.”

  Cea and Zen exchanged glances.

  “I know, I know, but, well. I did. Want to have sex with him. And then he — look, it’s a guy thing. I have low standards and I’m fine with that. But even so I should have known. I mean, he told me to strip and get in bed just like that. That is just not on, right? Though I guess maybe different rules apply with hookers.”

  “Companions, Patpat,” said Cea serenely.

  Zen frowned at Cea, and then at Pat. Then she poured them all another drink, which proved she really was as smart as everyone always said because clearly that was the most constructive course of action here.

  “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that’s like, what? Three rules broken right there? Before the first date or whatever was even over. Meeting. Yeah, let’s go with meeting. Encounter.”

  “Four rules, I’d say,” Zen said, slowly. “After all, this man clearly —”

  But Pat couldn’t stop to hear what she had to say, not now that he was gaining momentum. “There needs to be a new rule. I want to submit a new dating rule to the West sibling committee, because it needs to exist. Never date a guy who doesn’t know where his pizza comes from!”

  Cea and Zen stared at him for a long moment before Zen shrugged and raised her freshly topped-up glass. “Can’t say I’d have thought of that particular rule, but it sounds like good sense to me. Seconded and approved.”