would take for her husband to notice.
The Robot Woman was always the last thing she looked at when she came down into the study. It was hidden beneath one of their old curtains: a paisley pattern, one they had received at their wedding. From his side of the family, she remembered.
The woman peeked under the shroud, lifting it as if it might contain some kind of trap. She never pulled it all the way up and never gazed upon the face. She didn't want to see that, not ever. Sometimes, though, she had fitful dreams where she did come face to face with the construction, the mockery of womanhood. But usually she just lifted the curtain and gazed upon a hip or a section of the belly or leg. She never touched it, couldn't bring herself to run her hand along the rivets or flayed sections where metal overlaid metal. The joints seemed so clumsy, the reflective metal seemed too much like the side of an oven or a refrigerator. There was no beauty in the smoothness or the angles of the false woman's limbs. As always, she eventually let the curtain drop and stumbled up the four steps, flicking the light switch absently and stepping back into her realm – as the not-so-secret door slid closed behind her.
The air always smelt better in her house. She had a series of automated scent dispensers plugged into the wall sockets in most rooms, so they would release a burst of vanilla or wild fruits every few minutes. As the door slid silently behind her she closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, enjoying the illusion of being in a wild forest with its wild berries. Of course she had never been in a forest. Even as a girl she was an indoors type, and as one year slipped into the next she became less and less inclined to leave the house or venture far. And now she found herself in a domestic prison – or was it a castle? - protected from having to leave, but trapped in a kind of loop where she woke, prepared meals for a man who always had something to do, some place to destroy, some person to intimidate; and afterward she would clean and clean and clean until she had completed several ineffective laps of the house. She would sometimes watch television or gaze out of the windows, spying on the neighbours who led equally boring lives.
The kitchen suddenly appeared around her and she stopped drifting and put away the duster, turning her attention to the kettle which had been slowly boiling and re-boiling for the past two hours. Her hands gripped the handle and poured hot water into two cups: a matching set from some village at the foot of the Andes, apparently. She dribbled two spoons of coffee into the cups and then thought about adding milk but decided against it.
The television reports had changed tempo, she noticed. Her eyes drifted away from the cups and watched through the doorway as the reporter ducked her head and explosions behind her made the camera shudder. The woman raised her eyebrows and then squinted her eyes to read the scrolling text as it marched under an image of a burning bank building.
….. three hostages remaining inside the building ….. Kalamity King identified ….. demands one million dollars ….. government heroes en route ….. be prepared for an epic showdown …..
She wondered why her husband was demanding money from the city when he was apparently holed up inside a bank. It must have had something to do with pride, she thought, or it could have been part of a much larger, more intricate plan. She knew she would never understand either one, so she let the thought drift into nothingness.
Her eyes shifted back to the cups, but she didn't reach for them.
The television screen suddenly shifted away from the scene of the crime, drawing her attention back for a second only, as it focussed on an advertisement for SANCTION – America's Heroes. The woman recognised the theme song and could have repeated the words but she wasn't really listening. Her eyes returned to the cups, watching the two strands of steam as they twirled upward. She wanted them to merge, to come together, but they just seemed to follow their own path. When the theme song finished she left the cups to cool and went to stand at the door leading into the living room. She rested her head against the frame and watched the familiar poses and serious faces of the superheroes.
There were four of them, she thought, although with all the flashes of colourful capes and chiselled jaws, she wasn't exactly sure. It could have been five. The news report continued and from the multiple views and quick editing it was clear that the news station had sent a team of cameras to cover the situation. Her husband's heist was going to be one of those documentary reports by the looks of it – possibly even one of the ones which ended up winning awards at serious journalism conferences.
She caught a glimpse of him: a flash of red and white costume followed by one of his modified C4 explosives: a clatter-bomb. One of the heroes fell down and didn't seem to be moving, but before the woman could ascertain the damage, the cameras switched and the focus was returned to the battle. She had to admit that her husband looked outmanned. There was a flying hero tossing around lightning bolts, and her husband always did feel uneasy with flyers: said it messed up his battle perceptions and added at least a dozen more layers of complexity to his otherwise perfect planning. But she never talked with him about mathematics and probabilities. That was his thing.
The reporter was now smiling, holding her hair as the air around the scene began to whip up into a storm courtesy of one of the heroes.
"… looks like Kalamity King is nearly contained," she called out over the rising winds. "It's only a matter of time before he runs out of tricks and gets hauled back to Sanctuary-One."
The woman didn't like the way the reporter almost laughed as she predicted the outcome. Her husband always played his cards this way, every time, allowing the heroes to seemingly take the upper hand. She thought that the media would have picked up on the tactic, as certainly a number of heroes had over the years. But her husband was stubborn, although not in an obsessive way, of course, and he always knew best. He never failed to surprise, always ready to pull the latest trick from his sleeve, always waiting for the time to deliver his dastardly clever twist. It was inevitable. Like a knife in the back.
The telephone rang again, right next to her head which made her jump a little. She picked up the receiver, composed herself and then spoke.
"Oliver residence."
Her eyes returned to the television, searching the screen.
"Yes," she said. "You're on television now."
There was a pause.
"I can see that, and … yes, of course. Give me a minute."
The woman walked with the handset to the kitchen drawers and pulled one open while wedging the phone to her ear. She lifted out a box of index cards and returned to the door into the living room.
"I've got it now, dear," she said. "Doctor Spin?"
Her fingers slipped through the cards quickly, her forehead creased a little as she concentrated.
"The first one or the second?"
She frowned.
"Of course. The second one. It has to be, you're right, I should have known that. Yes."
Her fingers plucked out a white card and she turned it in her fingers as she raised it to her face. She hadn't looked back at the television set and now looked out the kitchen window, distracted by the neighbour's dogs.
"Third degree vulnerability to dondodectron compound, not the hydrodectron one, no. The notes here suggest ionising the area once it's sprayed. Maybe use your dandi-ray? Yes, yes… the boom-in-a-box would work too, of course. Is it sunny where you are?"
She wasn't sure why she had asked the question and she already knew the weather was the same as at her house because she had been watching live coverage.
"No reason, sorry. Dondodectron, yes. Have you had lunch yet? I mean, before you started the whole heist thing, did you get a…. yes, sorry to mention it. Yes I am watching, you're doing a fine job."
She could see him on the television screen, standing on top of the building with his cellphone in his hand, cupped to his mask. All of the other villains used internal circuits now, she knew, but somehow her husband just never got around to installing it.
"I was thinking that maybe we could…"
; She stopped and replaced the handset. The dial tone had appeared, the connection cut.
He had probably just been blasted by a solar beam or knocked off the roof by one of those rough necked super strong heroes, but the abrupt end to her call stung. She could feel her face flush with colour, from her neck to her forehead and along the cheeks. Her hand rested against her cheek and felt the warmth there. She closed her eyes and stood for some time in the doorway wondering what to do. Finally she folded her arms across her chest.
She thought about calling him back, and a burning sensation spread down the back of her throat at the idea. But the television now showed him being tackled by the hero with the flag motif, the one who used to be a wrestler. An extreme close-up showed her husband's contorted face: all purple and a little snotty. Strands of saliva or mucus stretched from the wrestler's arm to her husband's nose.
She felt a little angry.
Her feet stumbled into the living room and she sank into the sofa, dislodging the black and white cat again as she did so. It moved to the arm of the sofa and perched there with a gurgling kind of purr. She hated the cat. It was his, of course. She watched it watching her, the eyes unblinking; and she realised that it wasn't a pet and never had been. It was always watching her. Its smell radiated outward and the woman's hands clenched.