The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  When we get to the alley, where Jack has a well-lit loading dock, I see what is definitely a bullet hole in the back of Kitty's jacket.

  "Kitty," I say, "are you all right?"

  She says, "Of course I am."

  "You do not wish to go to the hospital?"

  "I will go to the hospital if that is something you enjoy."

  "No," I say, "the last three times I go to the hospital, I do not enjoy it at all."

  I cannot help putting my finger into the hole in her jacket. I feel a bullet at the bottom, but it is mashed flat against Kitty's back. When I pick at the slug with my fingernail, it comes loose and falls down elsewhere.

  Kitty giggles. "That tickles." Now my finger feels nothing but Kitty, to which I do not object, but it is a cause for astonishment.

  "Kitty," I say, "you are the first doll I meet who is bulletproof."

  "You do not mind, do you?"

  "It is a fine way to be. I often wish it for myself. However, I now suspect you have secrets."

  I wait for an answer, and am still waiting when Jack Fogarty runs out into the alley to join us. He says, "That guy is dead, but his blood is green. He is a spaceman!"

  I say I am shocked to hear it.

  Jack hands me a sawbuck and says, "Can you take him away before G-men arrive?"

  I say, "Yes, but I will have to borrow a trash can."

  So five minutes later, Kitty and I drive off with a third spaceman in the back. I do not know how many bullets this spaceman contains, but the citizens in Fogarty's are most generous with lead. The spaceman repays them with green blood all over, so Mr. J. Edgar Hoover will not have trouble finding something to interest him. However, Jack Fogarty does not ask me for a clean sweep with all the trimmings, and for a sawbuck, he does not get one. Besides, my truck is full and I have other things on my mind. After a few minutes of driving, I say, "Kitty, are you from Jupiter?"

  She says, "No."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes." She takes a deep breath. "I come from far beyond Jupiter."

  "Oh." I am not aware there is much beyond Jupiter, but I only read the Sports section. "Are the spacemen trying to kill you?"

  "They do not wish to kill me, they only wish to find me. I think they are searching for me by process of elimination. If they go into an establishment like Madame Rosa's and they shoot every doll they see, I am the one who does not fall down."

  "That is a waste of good dolls," I say. "They ought to find a better way to recognize you."

  "They cannot," Kitty says. "I change. The longer I stay with you, the more I will become what you want most in a doll. I will get smaller here or larger there. My voice will go up or down. My hair will grow or shrink, and maybe change color. That is how I am built."

  "Built?" I say. "By who?"

  "Other spacepeople, long ago. They are extremely smart spacepeople, and they build themselves servants for this and that, such as perfect cooks and bellhops and gardeners."

  "So you are a perfect cupcake doll?"

  "Yes," says Kitty. "If you offer me cupcakes, I turn into the doll you wish for. Even if you are a spaceman with three heads. I will grow three heads myself, and they will all be cute."

  "Do you like having that many noggins?"

  "I am not a perfect cupcake doll unless I love the work. So I do. I want cupcakes day and night. This leads to trouble, because many men want me to become theirs alone, which is the one thing I cannot do, no matter how much a guy wishes it. I am a cupcake doll, not an ever-loving wife."

  I am sad to hear that. An hour with Kitty can fill a guy with daydreams. I never picture myself as the man in Man-and-Wife, but I often imagine having a steady doll who asks, "How goes the clean-up business?" when I get home at three in the morning. Ever since I meet Kitty, I want her to be the one who asks that question, all smiling and happy to see me.

  But I guess this will not work out.

  I tell Kitty, "Of course you cannot be an ever-loving wife. Only a complete loogan dreams the wrong type of dreams about cupcake dolls."

  "The universe is full of loogans," she says. "A few years ago, a rich and powerful spaceman locks me up to keep me all for himself. After a while, I start hurting so bad it is like I am starving to death. I cry oceans of tears and even try to kill myself, but I cannot find a way to do it, for my body is as tough as a bank vault. Eventually, the other perfect servants help me escape, and we all come to Earth where we think the evil spaceman will not follow. Earth is a type of nature preserve where the rules say that spacemen cannot come, and secret park rangers keep watch for anyone who does not belong."

  I say, "But you are not human yourself. These rangers do not kick you out?"

  Kitty says, "I change to look human. So do my servant friends. The rangers say it is jake for us to be here, as long as we blend in. But the spaceman who wants me back is nothing like human and cannot change his looks, so he has to stay away. Years go by, and all of us perfect servants settle down one place or another. I move around, meeting guys and so forth, until suddenly in Chicago, a spaceman shoots up the establishment where I work. I barely escape in time. It seems the evil spaceman has found a way past the rangers. He builds machines which look like humans and use human weapons, so the rangers decide these machines are O.K. Now it is only a matter of time before the spaceman imprisons me again."

  She starts to cry just like a human doll. I stop the truck and say, "There, there," and one thing and another, but I do not think any man alive knows how to deal with persons of a female nature in such situations. When a doll cries, it is about something very small or very big, and both ways, a guy is out of his depth.

  This evil spaceman who chases Kitty clearly has a cupboard full of green fedoras. We never see more than one fedora guy at a time, so maybe that is all the spaceman can handle, like a driver who can only sit behind one steering wheel, even when he owns a lot of trucks. But if fedora guys keep coming, and if a single spaceman can ventilate many citizens before he himself is scratched, it is a game with loaded dice that Kitty will eventually lose.

  "What can I do?" she says with tears rolling down her face. "I cannot help it if this spaceman is crazy for me."

  Maybe the spaceman cannot help it either. I look at Kitty's face and even though it is soggy with tears, I might chase her a long way myself. But I say, "What about the other perfect servants? Is one of them maybe a perfect soldier or bodyguard who can protect you?"

  "I do not know where the others are." Kitty cries some more. "The way I am built, I care more about cupcakes than friends. Furthermore, many guys I meet do not like dolls with brains, so when I change to suit them, I become empty-headed. A guy says, 'You think too much, let us just have fun,' and then it is a month later, I do not remember a thing, and I am speaking Chinese." She bawls, "I lose track of my friends long ago."

  I say, "Then I will be your friend. Do not cry." She stops crying as fast as if I turn off a faucet. I say, "Smile," and she smiles so brightly, it is like she has never shed a tear in her life, even though her cheeks are still drippy. I think of other things I can tell her to do, and she will likely perform those actions too, and once again I feel as sad as a sack, although this time it is for Kitty, not me. She is a book everyone gets to write in except herself.

  I say, "I will think of some way to fix everything. First, however, we must dump the trash. It will soon be morning, and we do not wish to be seen with a truck full of spacemen."

  I drive to my favorite place for dumping articles that citizens no longer want. It is a factory in the Bronx which goes bust in the Crash, and goes nowhere else since. It has pigeons in the rafters and rats under the floor, but it also has a furnace which can burn this and that, especially since I know someone in the gas company who will keep the pipes piping even if nobody pays the bills.

  This furnace is a key to my business success. There is no better way to clean things off the map, unless maybe you drop them into Mount Vesuvius, which is not handy to Greater New York. The only ba
d thing about this furnace is that it lies quite some distance from the factory's loading ramp, so if you have weighty objects you wish to burn, you face a lot of heavy lifting. I have to drag the trash cans one by one across the floor, and it turns out that guys with wires in their stomachs are no lighter than guys with the usual stuffing.

  Kitty says, "I can help you." This proves Kitty is not a real human doll, because I never know a beautiful doll who offers to do a man's work. For all I know, if I wish Kitty to be as strong as a streetcar she will change to please me, but I tell her I am doing just fine, for I am not one of those guys who expects dolls to fetch and carry. Towards the end, after lugging three spacemen the length of the floor and several other trash cans full of this and that covered in green blood, I find myself thinking I will let Kitty help just a bit if she offers again. But she just follows beside me, saying what a good job I do and how I have big strong muscles. My muscles appreciate the compliment, but they also appreciate when everything is finally in the furnace. I am just about to start the gas when I see a red glow at the opposite end of the factory. I recognize it as the glow of a spaceman's hands.

  I say, "I loathe and despise those spacemen."

  My Roscoe is out of bullets, and anyway, I have established that six shots are not enough to bring a spaceman to grief. This puts Kitty and me in a pickle. More specifically, I am in one type of pickle and Kitty is in another, for the spaceman will likely shoot me dead and then he will kidnap Kitty to live in a harem. Fortunately, the factory is more dark than somewhat because no one has paid the electricity bills since 1929, so there are several years' worth of shadows which might be thick enough to let Kitty and me sneak away.

  I take her hand and we edge towards a side door. I wish most sincerely that Kitty makes no sound, and with Kitty, wishes work. She is as silent as a cat, and maybe she can also see in the dark, because she nudges me away from tripping over objects on the floor. I think maybe we are going to get away safely.

  Then we are lit by the glow of the spaceman's hands, and his equalizer says, "Oh no you are not." I get hit in the leg, which is a better place than many, but it still interferes with a guy's forward progress. I fall, thinking how appropriate it is that people call bullets "hot lead," for the hole where I am shot is as heated as a griddle, or perhaps that is just the blood.

  Kitty tries to pick me up as if she is going to carry me across a wedding threshold, which is entirely the wrong way around because guys ought to be the ones who do the lifting. As soon as I think that, Kitty up and drops me, which is none too comfortable, especially on top of being shot. Lying there on the floor, I realize that my thoughts stop her from holding my weight. If I think it is not right for her to be strong, she goes weak.

  As I watch the glow of the spaceman coming near, I wrestle with the notion of a doll taking care of a tough situation. It does not feel right. However, with the spaceman getting closer to point-blank range, I decide a courteous guy will let dolls do him favors because dolls like to feel useful. "Kitty," I say, "you are bulletproof. Bop him."

  In the spaceman's red light, Kitty smiles wider than ever I see. Then she whirls across the floor faster than a greyhound after the rabbit, and she spins on one foot, whipping out the other at the spaceman's noggin. He shoots her several times, but none of the bullets take. The next thing you know, Kitty has kicked the spaceman's head clear off his body and the head flies across the room with black wires dangling from the neck. I do not know if it is just an accident, but the head, green fedora and all, sails straight into the furnace as if that is what Kitty aims for.

  "Now that," Kitty says, "is a clean sweep with all the trimmings."

  "Kitty," I say, "why do you not do that to the other spacemen?"

  "Because no man wants me to. Guys have views on many things that dolls ought not to do, and kicking off noggins is high on the list."

  I have to admit she is right. "However," I say, "I myself do not mind if you kick off a spaceman's noggin. In fact, I insist you do it whenever you can." I give her a big smile. "So there, I have solved your problem. If you clobber the spacemen each time they show up, you will never be captured."

  "You still do not understand," says Kitty. "What if this spaceman shoots you in the heart instead of the leg? Once you are dead, the only guy I see is the spaceman, who does not want me to kick off his noggin. He wants me to go home with him. So that is what I will do, even though I will regret it. I am built to please guys, and if there is only one guy in the room, I do what he says."

  "Oh." Then if the spacemen keep coming, someday they will succeed in mowing down everyone in Kitty's vicinity. Kitty will have to say, "Oh yes, I will enjoy going back to Jupiter," because she cannot help herself.

  "Your life is a raw deal," I tell her. "The people who build you stack the deck most unfairly."

  "But they build me so that I do not mind. Almost always I am happy. How many dolls can say that?"

  Now that the spaceman is dead, his red glow is gone and there is no light for me to see Kitty's face. I wonder if she is truly as happy as she says. I cannot tell, for I am not built to read people's feelings in the dark. But Kitty is. She whispers, "Do not be sad for me. I cannot stand it when guys are sad. Please let me cheer you up."

  "No," I say. "No." Then, because I do not wish to hurt her feelings, I say, "It is hard for a guy to be cheerful with a bullet in his leg."

  "Oh, I can fix that," Kitty says. "A perfect cupcake doll can play nurse."

  In the dark I cannot see how she gets out the bullet, but I think it is just as well. It is one thing to imagine Kitty's fingers turning into doctor tools, and another thing if I actually see it happen. I lie back and try to keep my mind off her fingers, and the pain, and this and that. After a while I say, "The spacemen keep finding where you are."

  Kitty says, "I know."

  "But you say they cannot find you exactly. They have to shoot other dolls to see which one is you."

  "The spacemen can narrow down my location, but they cannot pinpoint it."

  "Why not?"

  "I do not know."

  "Kitty," I say, "I want you to become smart. Like a scientist. Like a bloodhound. Figure out how the spacemen keep tracking you down, and what we can do about it."

  She says nothing for a long time. I hear cloth rip as Kitty tears a swatch off some part of her clothing to make a bandage. It is too dark to see which part of which article of clothing, which is a shame. She ties the bandage around my leg, then says, "When the evil spaceman first locks me up, he puts something on me like a radio transmitter. I know he does this, and when my friends help me escape, they take the transmitter away. But now I think he puts a second tracker on me too. He knows we will spot the radio, so then we will not look for…" She stops. "It is hard to explain in English. Let us say he puts germs on me. The germs make perfume that the spacemen can detect. If I am close to other people, the perfume clouds around us all, so it is hard to tell me from everyone else. However, most of the germs stay on my skin, which is how the spacemen keep tracking me down."

  "So you need to clean off these germs?"

  "Yes. But I do not know how."

  "Neither do I. However, I have a friend who is a professor of cleanology. If you have germs, he can wash them off."

  "It may be harder than you think. Spacemen know tricks that Earth people do not."

  "Carl knows tricks too. He works at Macy's."

  I do not say it, but Kitty is not so different from a sink or a frying pan that someone has dirtied. I do not know what she is made of because when I hold her hand, she feels like a normal doll, except better. However, a bulletproof doll will not be hurt if Carl scrubs her with bleach and other stinkeroo chemicals. At least it is worth a try.

  Before we go, Kitty puts the latest spaceman into the furnace. I turn the heat up as high as it goes, which is plenty high enough to melt an equalizer and reduce human bodies to cinders. I think it will do the same for spacemen, so I set the furnace's timer to cook for seven hour
s. In the meantime we head for Macy's, and whatever Kitty does to patch my leg is a success, for I can hobble along no worse than Madame a Gimp, and it only hurts as bad as a burning match through my thigh, not a blowtorch. Still, I let Kitty help me walk, because who does not wish an arm around the waist from the most beautiful doll north of the south pole? After I try a couple of times to work the truck's clutch, I even let her drive.

  We reach Macy's without meeting spacemen, for it seems they only appear if we stay in one place too long. Although the sky is brightening over Queens, none of Macy's day staff will arrive for another hour, and the night watchman knows me. He says we can find Carl in Gentlemen's Hats. I say, "As long as Carl is not in a green fedora."

  Carl is polishing the mirrors, which is the type of thing he does when everything is already perfect. "Carl," I say, "this is Kitty. You must give her a bath." I say that because it will be humorous to see Carl blush, but when he turns to look at us, he goes white instead of red. It is like he sees a ghost, then becomes one himself. I always suspect Carl is uncomfortable around persons of a female nature, especially ones like Kitty, with everything and then some. "Do not worry, Carl," I say, "I cannot explain the situation, but this is all part of the job at Madame Rosa's. The last and final trimming." I lean in and whisper, "Think of Kitty as a store mannequin who needs cleaning. She is pretty but tough, and covered with germs from Jupiter. Use your best chemicals. She can take it."

  Carl says nothing and I think he will need more persuading. But Kitty takes his arm and says, "Let us go someplace private. We will talk." They head for the dressing rooms in Gentlemen's Apparel, although I do not know if she is leading Carl or he is leading her.

  I cannot say how long they are gone, but long enough for me to try on several dozen hats, including green fedoras which do not look good on me, and anyway, after the ruckus in Fogarty's, green fedoras may not be popular on Broadway. The time that Kitty and Carl are gone is also long enough for me to worry about another spaceman showing up, which will be inconvenient from a clean-up point of view. In Jack Fogarty's, .38-caliber fireworks are only a matter of gossip. In Macy's, they are news, and you cannot clean up news. Besides, I am still out of bullets. I am wondering if Macy's has a tommy gun department, when finally Kitty and Carl return.