Fuck can openers. I didn’t care if I never touched a can opener, or any machine, for the rest of my life.
I shrugged. “Thank you. I never shop for myself. Rowan dresses me.”
And then I immediately felt like a stupid, spoiled piece of shit for saying that.
So Meg said, “Was this morning your Rowan’s day off or something?”
I took a step toward her. “I told you what happened to our clothes.”
“And you’re going to stick to the tiger story?”
“Unfortunately, I have no choice. It’s the truth,” I said.
And I was almost close enough to touch Meg Hatfield’s hand—but what if she pulled away? Nobody would ever pull away from me in the real world, because, after all, I was Cager Messer. And this was the real world now.
I almost did it too. I almost got to touch Meg Hatfield’s hand without her being screened and hired, without Billy Hinman or Rowan Whatever-His-Impossible-Last-Name-Was analyzing my efforts and telling me everything I’d done clumsily.
Jeffrie, red dress, red lipstick, and shiny black hair, appeared in the doorway behind Meg.
I took a deep breath. It smelled like freedom and the real world now.
“I can’t imagine being luckier than I’ve been in this past week,” I said. “Can I just tell you how happy I am to know we’re not alone here with nothing but cogs?”
And Meg said, “Yeah. Well, I’m going to have to find a way in to rewrite who Jeffrie and I are, so one of those messed-up cogs doesn’t try to eat us.”
If I were a cog, I’d want to eat Meg Hatfield.
“I am pretty hungry,” I said, “and Billy’s going to be pissed at me if he gets out of the shower and thinks I ditched him.”
Billy Hinman, Billy Hinman
Meg and Jeffrie waited for me in the hallway, and I went inside my stateroom to see if Billy was dressed to go out for New Year’s Eve, to celebrate with Rowan and the queen of the liquid people, and two actual, living, human girls.
But what I encountered when I got inside informed me that Billy Hinman would be running a little late. And although I tried not to look, I couldn’t help myself from seeing what I saw.
Billy Hinman was naked again, of course, but he was lying on top of my bed, tangled and wrestling with an equally naked Parker, their mouths all over each other. Cog parts pressed and rubbed against human parts. Valet-cog clothing lay scattered everywhere on the floor—socks, shoes, underwear, double-breasted jacket, the little round hat with the gold cords wrapping it. There was moaning and sighing and lots of breathing, grunting, slurping sounds. Hands and fingers clutched and groped.
And I was standing there in a tuxedo, seeing it all.
They didn’t even notice me.
And I’ll admit I was angry, but not at Billy; I’d known him way too long to be mad at him for fooling around with Parker. I was mad because they were on my fucking bed.
“That is so fucking disgusting that you guys are on MY BED,” I said.
They stopped.
Chins turned.
Four watery, drugged-out-looking, yet determined eyes focused on me.
Parker said, “Oops.”
Then the bathroom door opened, and Billy Hinman came out, fully dressed in an even nicer tuxedo than mine—a vintage one from maybe a hundred years ago, with a cream-colored jacket and narrow black lapels, perfectly creased black pants, and an outstanding pale ivory shirt and black bow tie.
So now I was also mad that Billy Hinman looked so goddamned slick, and I wished he’d get food poisoning or diarrhea or something, so I wouldn’t have to endure the girls staring at him all night long.
He said, “Did you say something, Cage?”
I looked at tuxedo Billy. I looked at naked Billy on the bed. I looked at tuxedo Billy again.
I felt like Clarence after he was waylaid in a fake Alsatian-history argument.
Then naked Billy Hinman, who was on top of naked Parker, my valet cog, who was having sex on top of my fucking bed, melted into a soupy goo of blue liquid and puddled like mercury all over the floor in front of my feet, leaving Parker uncovered, naked, and alone.
And fully dressed Billy Hinman said, “Livingston, I presume?”
We stared at Parker, who would have been embarrassed, or at least might have attempted to cover himself, if he were a living human, but that would be like a lawn mower getting embarrassed for having its grass catcher disconnected. Parker was a cog, so he just lay there and looked right back at us, unwavering, and said, “Well, I had an erection. Also, I believed he was you, Billy.”
“I can’t blame you for that. I’d have thought he was me and had sex with him too,” Billy said.
And the puddle on the floor said, “Please don’t tell my mom. We’ve been inside that motherfucking fetus for twenty-five goddamned long human years. It’s been that long since the last time I even jerked off. Give me a break. I’m just a fucking teenager!”
“Yeah. I caught that,” I said.
The blue puddle seeped beneath my bed like a scolded puppy.
“I’m not going to tell your mom, Livingston,” I said. “Get out from under my bed, and pull yourself together.”
Then our door opened. For a moment I panicked, thinking that it would be Meg and Jeffrie coming in to catch naked Parker on my bed, but it was only Rowan, which, in many ways, was kind of worse.
“You look fabulous, Rowan,” I said.
He did, too.
Rowan arched that one eyebrow without saying anything and looked alternately from me to naked Parker on my bed, then to me again.
“Are you still mad at me?” I asked.
Rowan, in his never-wavering Rowan-ness, said, “No, Cager. I simply find myself at a loss for words at the moment. What has gotten into you boys? Your parents don’t employ me to facilitate your degeneration.”
“Okay. Parker, get off my bed and put your clothes back on. Livingston, come out from under there right now, or I’m going to tell your mother everything. It’s New Year’s Eve, I’m hungry, and I plan on drinking some stolen champagne and having a good time.”
I was very mad.
This Was the Tennessee
If Rowan was correct, and Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique had been destroyed in the accident, the restaurant had also somehow been restored to its previous condition in a matter of hours, no doubt as a result of tireless cog laborers.
The miniature sperm whales were back inside the towering aquarium, frolicking alongside the freakishly huge seahorses and other fake things that never existed anywhere. The tables had been pushed outward in order to create a dance floor in the center of the restaurant, and there was a twenty-piece jazz band of cogs playing American swing music from nearly two centuries ago.
It was all an ostentatious waste of space and resources, considering the insignificant number of left-behind human beings anywhere who were still alive to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
But the band was pretty good.
We could have easily all danced on the floor of Billy’s and my stateroom without running the risk of bumping into one another. And thinking about drinking champagne and dancing inside my room with Meg and Jeffrie and Billy made me feel more than a little nervous and excited. And horny.
Queen Dot sat at the head of our long rectangular table, next to her awkwardly quiet, fifty-five-thousand-year-old teenage son, Livingston. I was to the left of Livingston, next to Meg Hatfield, and Billy Hinman sat at the end of the table opposite the queen, next to Jeffrie Cutler, and, finally, there was Rowan, with one empty seat between him and Queen Dot. Our busboy, who was not Milo, but a younger, more angelic-looking cog named Eli, did not reveal his obsessive personality trait right away, which made me suspect it was either horniness or douche-bag know-it-all-ness like Dr. Geneva.
Eli had been instructed to place a bag on the empty seat between Rowan and Queen Dot, so that the queen could collect treats for her other fifty-five-thousand-year-old teenage son, Gweese, who was still servi
ng as a gasket between the giant blue baby head and the lower west docking port on the Tennessee, graciously preventing all of us from choking to death.
Lourdes danced wildly, alone in the middle of the floor, shrieking occasional chants of “Yeee! Yeee! Yeee!” while swinging her arms and kicking her legs as though she were casting out demons or shaking off an assault by fire ants. Her panties, which were highly visible beneath her short, fanning skirt, made no sense to me at all. They had little green shamrocks on them and a command of some type that ordered her audience—me—to KISS ME, I’M IRISH. Still, and I completely despised myself for this because Lourdes was little more than a tin-plated windup doll, she never ceased to arouse certain exploratory urges in me.
Our former busboy, the weeping, depressed Milo, had been promoted to the position of maître d’, on account of Clarence’s face having been eaten by Captain Myron just before the captain’s head came off in the breakdown of the gravity systems the other night.
Nobody wants to look at a goo-dripping maître d’ without a face while you’re having dinner.
Faceless Clarence, now unemployed, was off wandering the decks somewhere, eating other cogs.
Parker, fully clothed, stood away from the table, patiently fulfilling his duties as my valet, and leaning against the corner of the aquarium while conspicuously pawing at his crotch. And Milo, making a valiant effort to subdue his whimpering, waited at the ready with his small maître d’s tablet and pencil to receive our orders. He’d apologized for his not having been fitted yet for a new tux, which he needed because he was entirely missing one of his trouser legs due to the fact that a seahorse had eaten it.
Milo had a colorful Nativity-scene print on his boxer shorts.
Reverend Bingo would approve.
This was the Tennessee.
“Good evening, and Happy New Year’s to you all,” Milo sniffled. “Tonight at Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique, our chefs have prepared the following specials for your consideration.”
Queen Dot raised her hand, cutting Milo’s presentation off, which was probably not a good idea. The boy began sobbing in great convulsive spasms.
“That won’t be necessary!” Queen Dot said.
“I’m not necessary. I shouldn’t even be here. They should have tossed me into the disposal chute with last week’s garbage. Look at me! I must disgust and disappoint you all more deeply than any repulsive experiences you’ve ever had. My life is utterly empty, and I poison everyone who comes in contact with me,” Milo said.
It was quite a downer, considering we were only interested in food and a night of modest fun.
And Queen Dot cut him off again. “Don’t be ridiculous! I would like to order tacos for everyone! Bring the table as many tacos as you can carry! Now run along!”
Queen Dot ordered tacos.
I think the table was perplexed by her selection, because a profound silence fell over us, almost as though we were as mournful as Milo, who twitched and heaved with his suppressed sobs. The band played a number called “Opus One.” Lourdes danced and writhed and shrieked.
Billy Hinman recovered first. “Tacos?”
“Yes! Tacos!” Queen Dot said. “Haven’t you ever had tacos before? Tacos are the best thing in the universe! Believe me, I should know, young man. I’ve been from one end of the galaxy to the other, and I’ve been around for half a million years! What are you? Twelve? Thirteen?”
Billy Hinman cleared his throat. “Um, sixteen. And a half.”
“No matter! I’m half a million! I saw the first Homo sapiens when they were running around naked, throwing their poo, and eating each other. Believe me, tacos were the best things they ever came up with, and it took them over one hundred thousand years to do it! Tacos it shall be! Now run get our food, little man with half his trousers missing.”
This made Milo cry harder. I don’t know why, but I felt bad for him. Maybe it was the throwing-their-poo thing. But Queen Dot was scary. And fucking old, too. Thinking about her force-feeding me tacos was scary. Milo was crying, and his boxers with baby Jesus in Bethlehem and three wise men on them were hanging out of his destroyed pants.
I stood up, patted him between his shoulders, and said, “It’s okay, Milo.”
Then I hugged him, which made him cry so hard, he stopped fake-breathing for a minute, and collapsed into my arms.
“Tacos,” I whispered to him. “Everything will be all right. Just. Get. Tacos.”
Milo sobbed, “Thank you. I don’t deserve your kindness.”
Then he went away with his little pencil and tablet, and his Nativity scene, and I sat down again.
Meg patted my thigh and leaned over to me. “You’re a really nice guy, Cager.”
She left her hand on my leg for at least two extra seconds. Between Lourdes’s panties and that black dress Meg was wearing, I suddenly felt exactly like Parker.
Eli came around the table and spread napkins in each of our laps. When he got to my chair, he groped my balls quite firmly, which startled me.
He said, “Oh. You have an—”
I could have died. I cut him off, nearly choking. “No, dude. Don’t ever grab me there again.”
“The friendly little fucker did that to me, too,” Billy said.
We Dance, and Queen Dot Accounts for Mexican Cuisine and Human Evolution
In our sixteen years on Earth, Billy Hinman and I had probably been to more dinners dressed in tuxedos than most adult human beings had attended in the span of their very average bonk or coder lives.
One of the things I noticed long ago at such functions was that when you sit at a table in a rather large group—as we did on that final New Year’s Eve of all eternity aboard the Tennessee—smaller groups rise up and isolate themselves in private little exchanges.
Maybe human evolution dictated that such divisions would naturally arise.
Thirty wars simply don’t fight themselves, after all.
I. Southeast Table: Meg Hatfield and Cager Messer
Look, Meg Hatfield was the first real human being I ever had the opportunity to interact with on an honest, no-bullshit level. Everyone else in my life—in Billy’s life, too—Charlie Greenwell included, knew who we were and where we came from and treated us with exactly the kind of careful reservation that spoiled pieces of shit like us came to expect.
But Meg was different, and it kind of frightened me. Not in the same way Queen Dot frightened me. After all, Queen Dot was a monster, when you got right down to it.
The thing that scared me most about Meg Hatfield was that she was unpredictable. There was nothing to make up Meg Hatfield’s mind outside of Meg Hatfield’s mind. Down on Earth, in my previous life, I wouldn’t have to wonder how a girl would answer if I asked her to dinner, or if she wanted to dance—which were two things I’d never actually asked a girl in my life. Those things I’d done with Katie St. Romaine had always been arranged ahead of time. There was never any risk or adventure with Katie St. Romaine, and that’s exactly why I never was interested in going to bed with her—as much as I regretted that choice after finding myself marooned with Billy and Rowan on the Tennessee.
Even spoiled pieces of pampered shit don’t want to die ignorant of the promise of love.
But Meg Hatfield put my heart on a one-way elevator and lodged it snugly between my Adam’s apple and collarbones. She could easily say no. She had every right and power to tell me to fuck off. But you know what? I was going to die up here on the Tennessee. There was no going back, no elevator down, no Mother Earth.
The music stopped. The seven of us at our table applauded. Out on the dance floor, Lourdes squealed, “That was the best song I’ve ever heard in my life! I am so happy, I could swallow a trombone sideways! You fill my tuba with creamy flute soup! Wheee! Wheee!”
Her blouse was untucked, her hair looked like a mountain of weeds, and her nylons sagged, but Lourdes was happy.
Lourdes was always so happy.
The bandleader announced the next number, “C
harmaine.”
And even though my hand sweated and shook like I was back in the throes of Woz withdrawal, I said this to her: “I really like the music, Meg. Do you want to dance with me?”
She could have easily said no and made me feel something I had never been prepared to feel. But Meg Hatfield said, “I don’t think I really know how to dance.”
Those stupid etiquette classes actually paid off. I could have kissed Billy Hinman square on the mouth.
I said, “Don’t worry about that. I’ve had lessons. I’ll show you what to do. I promise, it’ll be fun.”
And Meg said, “Okay.”
II. Southwest Table: Jeffrie Cutler and Billy Hinman
“I’ve never seen Meg dance before. Cager’s a good dancer,” Jeffrie said.
“It’s one of the things our parents made us do—learn how to dance and tie bow ties and use a knife and fork properly,” Billy said.
“I never learned any of that.”
Billy said, “Well, the bow-tie part probably doesn’t matter, and the fork-and-knife thing is just stupid. But I could show you some stuff about dancing, and it would be fun, if you want to dance.”
“It looks like they’re having fun,” Jeffrie said.
Billy Hinman placed his napkin on the table, stood, and slid out Jeffrie’s chair for her. He held her hand and walked her out onto the dance floor, where Lourdes shook and jerked to music that had to have been only in her head, and I danced, holding Meg’s hand in mine, with my other arm around her waist.
After all, it had been completely my intent to wait for music like “Charmaine,” which wasn’t too fast to dance to with Meg Hatfield in my arms, and with our bodies touching here and there, softly against each other.
It was perfect for that.
III. The Northern Hemisphere: Queen Dot, Livingston, and Rowan
“The young people seem to be enjoying themselves immensely,” Rowan said.
Queen Dot shifted in her seat and faced Livingston, who kept his eyes down. “Maybe too much. And you haven’t said a word all evening, Livingston. Is something wrong with you?”