The Artificial Wife

by Rachael Eyre

  It lasted for hours. I did my best to shut it out - I remembered the garden, or the window seat at Ms Adelaide’s - but his voice kept intruding. “Fuck me till you hate your cunt!” he screamed.

  Although I listened hard, at no point did I hear her leave. And since these activities have resumed intermittently over the last few days, she must still be in the house somewhere. Unbelievable but true.

  Which puts me in a tenuous position, to say the least. If this woman is my owner’s lover, what happens if she discovers me? What is my purpose? I hardly see how she could be jealous, glorified serf that I am, but I doubt she would like it.

  ***

  Now this is a turn up for the books.

  I was cleaning the glass in the bathroom, wondering if I could get hold of the key to the wolf’s den. I'm positive he must have her in there, however unlikely it sounds. But the last few days he'd pocketed it and taken it with him. “You must allow a man some privacy,” he said when I stared at him.

  I was so absorbed by my reverie, my owner’s face floating in the glass above mine made me start. I gasped and dropped the sponge. Water oozed onto the tiles beneath our feet. I expected him to scold me but he didn't even notice.

  A self conscious cough. “I'm giving a dinner party tomorrow night. A few of my colleagues are coming -”

  “Vivaan?” I asked, not thinking.

  He grimaced. “He will be there, though he may feel slightly out of it. He's hardly an intellectual, is Khatri.”

  I haven't catered for a dinner party before. I expected him to bark a list of impossible demands and leave, as usual, but he loitered.

  “I would like you to attend,” he said. “As my plus one.”

  I was stupefied. I wanted to ask, “What about your woman?” but remembered myself in time; I don't think I'm officially supposed to know about her. I felt as though questions were crawling all over me, but the first to come out was, “What shall I wear?”

  Even he would balk at exhibiting me in my everyday dishcloths. Tapping a long yellow fingernail against his teeth, he said, “I’ll find you something. I want to show you off.”

  Is it wrong to feel excited? Though I can't imagine his university cronies will be an improvement - I picture older, younger, shorter or fatter variations of him. Yet it's a taste of life as lived by other people. The life I used to dream about, Vita at my side.

  ***

  That afternoon and the following morning were taken up with preparations. I'd never seen him so ill at ease. He wandered around the house in his tatty dressing gown, arranging furniture and getting in my way. The tide mark on his green bottle sank ever lower.

  “This is insane,” he said a few times. That or, “Let's call the whole thing off.” He seemed so distressed, I almost pitied him.

  My chores done, I waited in my room. I wished I had a mirror, not for the first time. I have never been able to view myself properly since I moved here, only glimpses snatched as I pass windows, the veebox, buckets of water. It's a worm’s eye view, all forehead or chin. My reflection would be comforting, a reminder I exist.

  He let himself in, that cough again. I wish he'd get it seen to. A dress hung over his arm - a beaded, shimmering haze of a dress. It was like one of the spider webs I pulled from the window, studded with raindrops.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed.

  He shuffled towards me, held the dress out. I think he expected me to undress in front of him, but at last he took the hint and went away. I honestly don't believe he is a lustful man, whatever obscenities he may shout when he's with his lover. His is a different kind of cruelty.

  The dress was fragile and lovely in my hands; I worried I would tear it. I slipped it carefully over my small high breasts, my narrow hips. It was like rediscovering my body, easing it on. It made me hold myself differently, stand with my head raised and my feet apart. I wasn't the drab who crept from shadow to shadow, but a woman who owned every inch of space she occupied.

  “You can look,” I said.

  Turning, he had to snatch at one of the beams. His face twisted as though the sight of me before him in an evening gown caused him pain.

  “What is it? I can take it off -” though I wanted to do no such thing. This dress flattered and moulded itself against me like nothing I had ever worn. The beads cupped my breasts, stroked my thighs.

  “It's not that. You look beautiful.” The first compliment he's paid me - he must have realised how alien it sounded. “It used to be my mother’s, that's all.”

  He wanted to say more, I could tell. Instead he kept patting the back of his head until it grew flat and lank. The clock struck downstairs; this woke him up.

  “Eighteen,” he said. “Come down at nineteen, that's when they'll start arriving.”

  Standing there in his mother’s plumage, I realised how ill prepared I was. “What do I do? What should I talk about?”

  His hand - large, pale, ungainly - groped towards me, chucked me under the chin. “Be there. That's enough.”

  Vivaan: The Dinner Party

  This has been the worst night of my life. The guests have gone, Summer has been banished upstairs in disgrace. Robbie is pacing, his hands clenching and unclenching. I'm trapped on my chair in the corner, draining the last of the wine. I feel physically sick.

  I should have guessed something was up when he invited me. Robbie is a great believer in compartmentalising his life; normally he doesn't allow work colleagues and friends to mix. “You move in very different circles,” he says, the sting intentional. But yesterday he claimed he needed moral support - and idiot that I am, I believed him.

  I left home an hour early, not telling Thao where I was going. Does she wonder about these unexplained absences? Does she think I'm meeting some floozy in a seedy inn? As if. She is, and always has been, all the woman I need. But she would never approve in a million years of what I'm doing.

  My suit and shirt were the same I'd worn to Ms Adelaide’s. I hoped it wouldn't trigger Summer - I still think that day haunts her, however much Robbie might deny it. Not that I expected to see her this evening. If Robbie had any sense, he'd keep her safely tucked out of the way. Academics have been sacked for less.

  It seems that today was opposites day, since it was Summer who invited me in, smiling hesitantly. Her hair flowed down her back, and good grief, she was wearing a perfect hindsight of a dress. She looked gorgeous, but definitely as though she was welcoming you into a harem, not dinner with a bunch of philosophy lecturers. Had Robbie lost his mind?

  “Vivaan! I'm so happy you could come.” Her smiles are always genuine, no matter how fleeting. Anticipating my next question, “He's in the study.”

  “Audra -” What could I say? I'm worried about you? Try not to upset Robbie? Watch out for horny humanities teachers?

  Robbie was already calling, “Khatri, is that you? Give me a hand with this salad dressing.”

  Incongruous though it sounds, he was actually playing with the bowl of salad on his desk. “It smells funny,” he complained. “What do you think?”

  I sniffed the oily yellow paste. “Looks like it’s past its best. - What's the deal with Summer?” As he pretended not to know what I was talking about, “Fine, be like that. Audra.”

  “Oh, that?” he said airily, tipping the salad out of the window. A few pigeons flung themselves at it, only to retreat in disgust. “If she's going to pass as my partner, she needs to get some practice. What better than a soirée?”

  I wanted to point out that eating bowls of salad with crusty old geezers does not a soirée make, but if the pedantry of his speech was any indication, he was on his second bottle of wine. He'd start reciting epic poetry if we were really unlucky. The trouble is, he needs alcohol to lubricate his social gears, but he never gets the dosage right.

  “I don't like it. It's a terrible idea.”

  “You've got to break in a colt before you ride it,” he shrugged.

  I shuddered, wondering how euphemistic this ‘riding’ would be. Tha
nkfully the guests began to turn up.

  The first, Anton Tremaine, I recognised from his work on the History Channel. Fat, self consciously eccentric, wearing a spotted bow tie with striped braces. He's made his name as everyone's favourite pervy uncle, ogling classical nudes until his monocle falls off.

  When Summer showed him into the hall, he wheezed, “Good evening, m’dear! Whoever might you be?”

  I dreaded the answer, but she said calmly, “My name is Audra. I live with Robert.”

  “Do you now? He's kept that quiet, the sly old dog!” All that was missing was a ‘Gobble, gobble.’ Fortunately Robbie pulled him into the study, where he lambasted public transport for the next twenty minutes.

  Two more guests arrived. One was a scruffy, taciturn fellow who looked like he viewed life from the bottom of a glass; I forget his name. Another was his opposite: a tall, bloodless aesthete who might never have seen sunlight. Lemuel Crawley was his name. I gathered that he was the one Robbie was trying to impress; he chuckled at his jokes and kept trying to attract his attention. It was pitiful.

  As the door closed on Summer, Crawley said, “So. A woman.”

  Tremaine mimed honking an invisible pair of breasts. Even the lush went, “Phwooar.”

  “I met her at a school I was visiting.” I marvelled at how Robbie could tell the truth in a way that was nowhere near the truth. “She was one of the teaching assistants. We got talking and it went from there.”

  “How long?” If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn Crawley was jealous. Surely Robbie wasn't that desperate to please him?

  “About a month?”

  “That's awfully quick,” Tremaine said. “Shouldn't you try before you buy?”

  I could hear Summer singing in the kitchen. Her voice was untrained but strangely lovely.

  “She doesn't have anyone,” Robbie said. Again, not a lie. “No family to speak of.”

  “Women and inspiration don't mix,” Crawley drawled. “Have one if you must, but no truly great philosopher ever married.”

  It was a relief when the doorbell went. I'm not the sort of man who lectures his single friends, but there's a difference between enjoying the solitary life and the poisonous views this horrible old poof was coming out with. Even Tremaine’s toothless lechery was better.

  “I'll see who it is,” I said, as Summer didn't seem to have heard. Crossing the hall, counting to ten, I opened the door and my heart sank.

  “Is Dr Percival there?” a young man stammered. He was in his early twenties, brown and badly dressed with an undeniable accent. My invitation stopped looking like an act of generosity and started seeming a deliberate act of patronage.

  “Come on in,” I said. I tried to be sociable - it wasn't this poor chap’s fault - but inside I was seething. He followed, babbling about what an honour it was, he had never been to Dr Percival’s before, he had such interesting ideas.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “I don't think I've had the pleasure.”

  “I'm not at the university.” As a small revenge against Robbie, “I repair robots for a living.”

  Dr Percival was as good as canonised in his eyes. The young man grew tearful as he listed his virtues. Fancy befriending a non entity like myself! I could've put him right, but he was so moved at the thought of this great man mingling with the plebs, I didn't dare.

  As I let us both into the study, Crawley sneered, “Looks like you've got an interpreter, Sanjay!”

  I could have killed him. “I doubt I know enough to be of any use,” I said coldly.

  “Same continent, surely?” he whickered.

  Robbie joined in. Why I didn't just walk out, I don't know. It's a good thing it went completely over poor Sanjay’s head.

  ***

  The evening, already tarnished, steadily worsened. Although the food looked splendid, it turned to ash on our tongues. We all drank to make up for it, and as a consequence grew hot and belligerent. The only one unaffected was the lush, who’d obviously had a skinful before he came out.

  The three savants had a long, and to me, brain meltingly boring debate about the place of philosophy in artificial intelligence. Tremaine slobbered, “These bot girls are alright for a quick one, but give me a real woman any time,” with the lewd gestures he seemed to make every few minutes. Crawley said he was missing the point, they were talking about minds, and the evolution of such. An artificial given a thorough grounding in the arts, philosophy and ethics could prove a very agreeable companion.

  You'd know, I thought scornfully, picturing him at home with a robotic houseboy.

  Robbie asked if anyone had put this into practice. Crawley sipped his wine with invisible lips and said he had his sources. I kicked Robbie’s ankle under the table - the last person he should be telling was this ghoulish gossip.

  “In my country,” Sanjay said mildly, “we believe everything shaped like a human has a human soul. This should apply to your robots, shouldn't it?”

  Crawley patronisingly explained why no, this was not the case. The lush fell forward onto the table, stirring the cloth with his snores. I couldn't have been more grateful for Summer’s reappearance with the soup tureen - at first.

  The soup was the one success of the meal. Summer must have tired of playing the host and got it straight from a tin. It was ripe, filling and delicious - I had tons of the same stuff back home. The academics must have never had tinned soup before, or at least pretended that they hadn't, since they showered her with praise.

  “Pretty and she can cook,” Tremaine boomed. “Percival, this one’s a keeper!”

  Even if you had played the scene in slow motion, I doubt anyone could have made sense of it. One minute you had Summer smiling, the tureen in her hands, everyone nodding their approval. Robbie raised his glass. “To my indispensable Audra.”

  The next, chaos.

  In the post mortem you always get after such incidents, everyone blamed everyone but themselves. Tremaine insisted that Crawley had stuck his foot out and tripped her; though he's an odious human being, that's going too far. Crawley argued that on the contrary, Tremaine had reached up her skirt and goosed her, though wouldn't we have noticed? Sanjay said that she wasn't close enough to either of them, that she was reacting to Robbie’s words when she dropped the tureen. Since he was the injured party and had the least reason to lie, I believe him.

  Whatever the cause, the tureen went spinning through the air, falling too fast for any of us to catch. The soup - still piping hot, remember - crashed over Sanjay’s lap. His hands flew to his groin. It must have been agony.

  If any of us had had the sense to call for a doctor there and then, it might never have happened. The only person to take any form of action was the drunk, who, waking and sizing up the situation immediately, chucked half a bottle of wine over the wounded area. Sanjay whimpered.

  We were still mesmerised. Which is why Summer was able to say, “I can help,” and crawl across the floor. She knelt and proceeded to lap the spilt soup from Sanjay’s genitals like a cat with cream.

  Crawley was the first to react. He yanked Summer away and pinned her ear back. “I thought so. It's a fucking artie.”

  The others expressed shock and outrage, but I was looking at Summer. Her hands were shaking. She raised them to her face, turned them over. Her eyes were terrified, despairing. She let out an anguished scream and fled the room.

  “You bastard!” I cried. I was looking at Crawley, but really I meant Robbie, the puppet master of this mess. “Can't you see she didn't know?”

  “I'm in a lot of pain,” Sanjay reminded us. The drunk, unflappable in a crisis, called for a medivan and guided the patient down the front steps. “Thank you for having me,” the reprobate said, deadpan.

  As soon as he had left, the academics savaged each other. Tremaine said that never in his sixty years had he seen anything so heathenish and unnatural. Crawley sniped that he might have known Robbie couldn't get a real woman. So on, so forth.

  I wandered down
the garden for some fresh air. When I returned half an hour later, they were still at it. Somehow Robbie kept aloof from it all, smoking unconvincingly like he had at uni: stifled coughs, tapping too much of the fag against the glass.

  “I'll throw them out soon,” he said quietly.

  “Aren't you worried what they'll say?”

  He shrugged. “Nobody believes a word Anton says. And if Crawley tries to blackmail, I know a few things he might not want made public.”

  Sanjay and the drunk didn't even factor into his thinking. Maybe he was right: no one would own up to having their cock scalded, then blown by a robot. But I didn't care about them.

  “What are you going to do?” As he remained stubbornly silent, “Don't be hard on her. She didn't mean to.”