The Long List Anthology Volume 5

by David Steffen

  He smiled lewdly. “Would you like to be?”

  Then the seventh, and the two years since failing the police academy entrance exams in London had given Kershaw something to prove. He was bullish, that May, more than a little rough. At the end of the fortnight she sat alone on a chalky bank of grass as the sun set over the water, scooping semen out of the modular orifice that functioned as her vagina. It never slotted back in quite the same way after that.

  Mrs. Lawson and Celia passed the rest of their time in the south where it was warm and Mrs. Lawson could keep to herself. Celia liked Bath most of all, with its uniform honey-coloured townhouses, and it was there, when the annual renewal of her contract came up, that she admitted Kershaw’s abuses to her employer.

  “I spent the first thirty years of my existence in service to other people’s sexual desires,” Celia said, her voice echoing round the deserted Pump Room. “It’s what I was made for. But I’m older now, with desires of my own. I won’t be returned to that service, in or outside of your employment.”

  Mrs. Lawson—who’d started to go slightly deaf and whose knuckles swelled to the size of acorns on bitter nights, who had the right to cast Celia back onto the scrap heap where she’d found her—Mrs. Lawson pulled Celia close and hissed into her protein-and-silicone ear, “He will never touch you again, my dear.”

  She wrote to the local solicitor’s office in New Heacham and threatened to sue for damages. Kershaw was unable to settle a suit, of course, and Celia couldn’t have been repaired if she wanted to: Parts for model series 2.0 were hard to come by. But it had the desired effect. Kershaw kept his distance. They saw one another from afar, once a year—snapshots in which he joined the local police, got married, finally grew that moustache, gained some wrinkles.

  Now that she considers it, today is probably the first time they’ve spoken in thirteen years.

  “How is your wife?” she asks him as he sips his tea. He likes it sweet. The distaste crossing his face is satisfying. “Is something wrong?”

  “Don’t you have sugar for this?”

  “No, sorry.”

  “Christ.” He takes another sip and puts it down with a clatter, then starts on the cold bacon and eggs. She almost reheated them, but something Irene had said last night stopped her, jumped across her code like a glitch: Fuck compliance! Fuck making other people comfortable!

  She stands by the bay window as he eats, drawing the curtains back to look at the front gate and Mrs. Lawson’s things, the feathers. She still has the downy one she plucked from the seablite in her pocket, and she fingers it gently. It’s a little egret feather, she’d swear on it.

  It is 7:14 a.m.

  “How long will this take, Constable?”

  “However long it takes the solicitor to send the contract,” he replies through a mouthful of bacon. “Why, you got somewhere to be?”

  “I have a pre-contract agreement elsewhere. They won’t like to be kept waiting.”

  His fork pauses halfway to his mouth. He stares at her. “Already? With who?”

  “Until a contract is signed, I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Sit down, will you? You’re making me nervous, hanging around like that.”

  She sits, smiling sweetly, and between them the snapping logs burn bright. The little egret feather is soft; it slithers like oil paint between her fingertips, which turns her mind easily to Irene’s little garage workshop, the smell of turpentine.

  It was during the fourteenth year that Celia started to notice Irene painting on the marshy hillocks overlooking the mudflats. Mrs. Lawson had grown too stiff for the long walks along the coast. She opted to stay at the cottage instead, or else sit out on the saltmarsh with a picnic basket if the summer heat came early. Celia ranged freely then, taking Mrs. Lawson’s antique camera along, for she could crouch silently for hours until even the youngest little egrets lost their fear of her. She took the most intimate and wonderful photographs, that way.

  The two women grew civilly aware of each other over that fortnight, and the following year, when Celia spotted Irene’s frizzy, prematurely gray hair in a field somewhere between Castle Rising and King’s Lynn, she wandered close enough to see her unfinished canvas: a study of pink-footed geese.

  Celia smiled. “You’ve got them just right.”

  Irene turned her head and frowned. Then, “You Fay Lawson’s Companion?”

  “Yes. You know my employer?”

  “Everyone knows her, she comes here every year. We all think she must have some toy boy tucked away somewhere, but I suppose she doesn’t need one if she’s got you.” Irene’s tone was blunt, dismissive. A faint cleft lip scar drew her top lip upwards like a loaded crossbow. She turned back to her canvas but must have lost the heart for it because she started cleaning her brushes instead. “You allowed to wander this far from the cottage?”

  “I have the afternoon off,” Celia replied, lifting the camera for Irene to see. “You’ve wandered far yourself. Shall I escort you home?—What’s wrong?”

  “You just can’t turn off that hostess mode, right?” Irene had started packing up her things.

  “You don’t have to stop right now. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

  “No, the mood’s gone. I finally get an afternoon away from my husband and then you come along.”

  Celia watched her lock up her brushes and paints, fold the easel and tuck it under one arm. The canvas, still glistening, dangled by her fingertips over her shoulder like a slung coat. When Celia reiterated that the painting was really very good, Irene thanked her warily and seemed glad to leave.

  The fifteenth year was better. Irene’s humour was abrupt, aggressive enough to keep Celia on the back foot, but the passing of a whole year provided a kind of buffer. Irene even accepted a plate of fried silver eels bought fresh from Priya, who had taken over at the fishmonger’s. Afterwards they lay sunning themselves in the grass while Celia told her about their beautiful house in Bath, which led to questions about the state of the cottage.

  “You know the owner doesn’t rent it out to anyone else?” said Irene to Mrs. Lawson, who was sat in a lawn chair nearby. “It’s empty most of the year. No one wants it.”

  Mrs. Lawson’s eyes widened and her head retreated into her shoulders. She was often quiet around strangers.

  “It is getting a little mouldy,” replied Celia, glancing at Mrs. Lawson. The old woman smiled gratefully at the rescue, but shook her head firmly as if to say, No, I won’t stay anywhere else.

  “So are you, look.” Irene pointed at the loose silicone flapping around Celia’s elbow joint. “When was the last time you had a service?”

  “I can’t remember,” said Celia. Her memory logs weren’t built to last this long, to hold this much data; none of her was. She’d started to experience a burning sensation in her skull, wires overheating deep inside. “They don’t make model 2.3 parts anymore.”

  When Irene didn’t reply, Celia tilted her head to look at her. She was frowning slightly, those lips that never fully closed coloured a deep plum, as if Celia had just told her she was dying.

  Celia supposed she was, in a way. The thought made her sad. She looked to Mrs. Lawson for comfort, but her employer had grown very old in the last few years, and the sight of her huddled in the lawn chair made her feel worse.

  “Come on, you old rustbucket.”

  The sixteenth year, and Irene had taken Celia by the hand. Her husband was at work. Their house in town was empty.

  She’d converted their garage into a kind of workshop. She crossed her arms and leaned against the bonnet of a wheel-less car as Celia looked around. The paints in their twisted tubes, nozzles encrusted. Brushes in all sizes, their bristles as stiff and sharp as spearheads. Celia kept a respectful distance and did not touch anything, but she must have asked the right questions because Irene slowly relaxed and unfolded her arms.

  “This kind of art is rare now. Your husband must be proud of you.”

  Irene’s tongue probed
the inside of her cheek. After an awkward moment, she said, “Here, I found you something.”

  It was a palette of MxMill Incorporated body paints. The plastic container was scuffed and cracked, and most of the colours had been worn right down to the metal base in the middle, but they were compatible for MxMill Companion model series 2.0. Celia hadn’t seen the like in over twenty years.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Ryan collects this kind of stuff. I know, it’s creepy.” Irene cupped Celia’s chin and guided her head left to right. The silicone that formed Celia’s cervical vertebrae crunched like dry cartilage. “The old lady doesn’t take care of you properly. I thought someone should.”

  Irene filled in the gaps where Celia’s skin colour had worn away with time and exposure. Her cheekbones and nose were the worst, and Irene took to blending the paint in with her middle finger for better coverage. They stood that way for a long time, Irene working intently on her face, the pressure of her touch making Celia rock on the balls of her feet. Irene’s mouth hung open slightly when she concentrated. Celia focused on the tiny scar on the inside of her bottom lip as if she’d fallen and bitten right through it, once.

  “Your lips are pretty bad, too,” said Irene. She held up the palette. “You want purple, like me?”

  Celia still had the lip colour she’d been made with: a vampish red, pure fantasy. It had suited her when she was new, when she hadn’t known her own mind, but now it marked her out. She picked out a neutral shade. “Boring,” Irene sighed, but she applied it just as carefully as the skin, and the simple thrill of choice made Celia giddy.

  Irene noticed and laughed. “Do you want some new hair, too? I bet he’s got loads.” She set the palette down and led Celia through a connecting door into the house. Celia paused to look at the photographs on the wall of a young, smiling Irene with her husband, framed in tarnished brass. Irene pursed her lips. “Come on.” Upstairs, in a tiny bedroom, she threw open a trunk of macabre hairpieces that looked for all the world like a hoard of scalps.

  “Won’t your husband mind?”

  “You think he’s going to notice if one of these goes missing? Help yourself. Let me worry about him.”

  Celia chose a stylish bob in a colour that reminded her of the limestone of Bath. Irene checked its label. It was for a later model, but Irene clipped it down to size. She helped Celia replace her long black hairpiece, then she stood back, hands on her hips. “Anything else, Your Highness?”

  Celia ran her hands through her new short hair. The ends tickled her nape. “Can you take my eyelashes off, please?”

  “You don’t like the floozy lashes?” Irene said in mock astonishment. But she peeled them off so that Celia’s eyes looked stark and penetrating.

  “It suits you,” she said soberly, with an uncharacteristically quiet smile.

  But when Celia returned to the cottage, Mrs. Lawson said, “You look strange.”

  Her smile faltered. “I’m sorry. Would you like me to change it back?”

  “No, no. Come closer.” Celia knelt by the armchair to let the old woman see her. Mrs. Lawson’s weakening eyes struggled in the dim evening light. “No, you look very well. Do you like it? And you picked it out yourself? I’m happy for you. It’s just a shock, that’s all.”

  The seventeenth year, Mrs. Lawson caught a cold she couldn’t shake. They stayed in, building up the fire until condensation ran down the windowpanes. Celia bought her a little pot of cockles which she ate by spearing them with a wooden toothpick. The strong vinegar made her choke. Celia held her tongue for a further year until, upon arriving at a cottage half-sunken into the saltmarsh, she said, “Mrs. Lawson, we must think about renting elsewhere.”

  “No,” Mrs. Lawson said emphatically, “it’s this cottage or none.”

  “But this mould—” And Celia pulled the bookcase, sideboard and ottoman away from the sitting room wall to reveal vast dark seeping patches. Well-established colonies of pale fungus grew along the skirting. “And the pipes are not what they were,” she said. “The radiators in your bedroom no longer work. We cannot stay here, Mrs. Lawson. This cottage is making you ill.”

  “Quiet!” A verbal override, flung out in frustration. Mrs. Lawson covered her mouth immediately and reached out for her. “I’m sorry. Cancel command.”

  Celia clasped her employer’s hand in both of hers. “Please tell me why this is so important to you. I only want to make you comfortable.”

  Mrs. Lawson eased herself into the armchair with a whimper. In earlier times, her body had filled the whole seat; now there was room for her arms to loll to either side. Her voice was quiet. “You asked me if I was a little egret once, do you remember?”

  Celia nodded—some memories never decay. “The same pair, the same nest, every spring.”

  “I was a bold little creature. I thought I’d seen all there was to see of the oceans and the fish and the birds. I wanted to see the humans. I didn’t know I’d be afraid of them. I didn’t know I could never turn back.” Her face paled. “Something still draws me back to this cottage, this nest. Some instinct, even now.”

  Celia reached out to stroke the old woman’s cheek, and could have sworn she felt stubble there. White feathers breaking through.

  “Can you understand? I hope so, my darling Celia. You’re the only thing that doesn’t frighten me.”

  She continued to carry out her duties quietly, soaking Mrs. Lawson’s jaundiced feet before bed each night, and massaging the dark, dark patches across her calves in the morning where her circulation had failed, but she was worried.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted to Irene.

  “She’s just getting old. We all are.” Irene passed her a brush. She was teaching Celia to paint, although the light wasn’t favourable. Heavy clouds lay over the Wash, which reflected them murkily back.

  “We missed you last year,” said Celia. “Where did you go?”

  Irene smiled. The tip of her tongue peeked out to lick at her cleft lip scar. “I was at an exhibition in Cambridge. For this stuff. My paintings.”

  “That’s wonderful!”

  “I actually sold a few canvasses. It felt good to make my own money for once. Ryan wasn’t happy about it.”

  She fell quiet. Celia dabbed grey onto the canvas, so thick she could never imagine it drying. For a moment there was only the sound of wind and water, and the birds calling overhead. Then Irene spoke again.

  “I’m thinking about leaving him.”

  Celia glanced at her, paintbrush hovering. Irene’s gaze was fixed on the Wash, the grey of her eyes almost a match for the brewing storm. She nibbled mindfully at the puckered scar on the inside of her bottom lip.

  “Does he hit you?”

  “No,” Irene laughed, “no, but that would make it easier, having bruises people could see. He’s just . . . He’s fucking obsessed with your lot, you know that, right? It’s like they’re the wife and I’m the disposable one made of plastic, or whatever.”

  Celia took her hand, palm to palm, fingers interlaced. “Manufactured protein and silicone.”

  “Great, thanks. You missed a bit.”

  But something kept Irene in New Heacham, something about the other fifty weeks of the year that Celia never saw, and it spilled over the next May when Irene pushed her down into the grass. Her fingers didn’t jab like Kershaw’s had; they yielded and curled inside her while the black and white oystercatchers skimmed the water’s edge nearby. Celia squeezed her eyes shut, her back arching even as she willed it flat.

  Irene hesitated, unsure of herself. “Does this feel okay?”

  The question was a gift. “I can’t feel anything. My genitals have no nerve endings.”

  Irene withdrew her hand, her fingertips glossy. “What? Why?”

  “So that I don’t experience pain or discomfort.”

  Irene was still for a minute, then she wiped her hand on the grass. “You should’ve told me if you didn’t want to.”

  “I
can’t.” When Irene raised her eyebrows and looked away, Celia reached out and clasped her wrist. “You don’t understand: I can’t. I am a MxMill Companion. I am programmed to comply. I am programmed to put your needs before mine.”

  Irene was staring at her.

  Celia clamped her mouth shut, but the code prised them open. “W-would you prefer a different attachment?”

  It cut deep, saying those words. She began to shake.

  “That’s sick,” Irene said hoarsely. “That’s fucking sick.” She drew up her knees and pressed her face into her hands. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were programmed like that.”

  “I can’t ever consent—”

  “We don’t have to do anything.”

  “—you won’t know what’s code and what’s me—”

  “But I like you, and I thought—”

  “Yes.”

  They watched the waterbirds pry bivalves from their shells, leaving wedge-shaped prints behind them in the sand. The sun skimmed low across the water. Celia told her about Kershaw. Irene brushed away tears. “I know. I always knew. He still brags about it. That prick.”

  Celia rested her head on Irene’s shoulder and Irene rested hers on Celia’s head, and they talked until the sky went dark.

  “Is there anything I can do to make you feel good?” said Irene.

  After a moment’s thought, Celia smiled and leaned forward. She pulled off her top. “Do you see the panels across my shoulder blades? Open them, please.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to break you.”

  “I know my own schematics; you won’t.”

  Irene prised the panels open, bending Celia’s shoulder blades back on themselves like two stubby wings, and sank her hand into the blue viscera of wires and coding cards within. Following Celia’s instructions, she located and brushed against the exposed sensory cables, and Celia’s skin tingled with pleasure at the feeling of sunlight that wasn’t there, wind that didn’t blow—a touch that wouldn’t come.

  Her coding wasn’t equipped to process this. It was all hers.

  • • • •