The group breaks up. Some skate towards Coach, others towards an assistant coach, a few off the ice entirely. Unexpectedly, two skate toward me. Kat and Joe are an ice dance pair making their transition up from the junior to the senior level this season. Kat stops right next to me and taps my arm to get my attention.
“The coach said you’d work with us on the Tango Romantica.”
The Tango Romantica is probably the most difficult of the pattern dances. Every season, the rhythm dance has a different required pattern. This season, it’s the Tango Romantica. Kat and Joe aren’t getting even half credit for it yet in competition. Coach never mentioned anything to me about helping them, but it makes sense. I can skate any of the pattern dances on demand. My timing, by virtue of what I am, is accurate, precise, and reproducible. The pattern I carve on the ice is always deep, round, and clear. I’m not the worst one to fix their tango.
“Sure.”
The full pattern, of course, fills the rink. We’re not doing that yet. We’re breaking it down into pieces and working the key points before we put the pattern back together. Ten feet or so at a time, we progress in a large oval around the rink so that each section of the pattern is danced in its proper place. The other skaters glide out of our way as we glide out of theirs. I partner with each of them so that they have a chance to skate with someone who has the correct timing before they skate with each other. It’s a bit of adjustment on my part to match strides with each of them. It’d be lovely to skate with someone closer to my size one of these days.
They’re both great kids. You have to love anyone who’s game to skate steps 35a to 37b over and over again until they get it right. It involves swinging free legs and 3-turns. It’s a testament to how well they already skate that neither one ever actually falls. Still, when Kat waves her arm on step 35c, it doesn’t yet have that striking, dramatic quality you want from a tango. It’s much more of a windmill-inspired “Please let me stay upright on this 3-turn.” When she grabs his shoulder afterward, her grip is so desperate, more than once, they almost knock each other off-balance. It might have helped if he were skating on the correct circle. I demonstrate, I make suggestions, and they try again. Potential practically glows off their taut, long-limbed bodies.
It’s just a million fiddly little details left to fix. Give them a few months and their Tango Romantica could be the exquisite combination of striking and sinuous that the pattern demands. I wish I could be around to see them skate it to their full potential. Hell, I wish I could help them get there.
The session’s almost over and I’m watching them skate the entire pattern when Coach glides up to me. Her gaze follows them around the ice as does mine. I point out to her whether they’ve hit or missed the pattern’s key points as they skate. Once the dust has settled, they’re still missing key points, but their timing is more accurate and their changes of holds are more secure. It looks like a tango now. Considering it’s only been one session, I’ll take that.
“Not bad,” she says once they’ve finished the pattern. “Do you know what you want to do with them next?”
She’s never asked me that before. Then again, she’s never asked me to do this before either. Until now, my crowning achievement was teaching little kids how to do a 3-turn. I shout some encouragement to Kat and Joe as they, like everyone else, begin to clear the rink.
“Sure.” I pivot to face her. “I have a list of things to fix. It’s a matter of stability and security so they can shift their weight and get on the correct edges. And when they do the helicopter, their arms don’t have to be so perfunctory.”
Coach’s gaze sweeps up and down my body. She nods slowly and I wonder whether I’ve said the wrong thing. The helicopter starts the dance. The partners hold each other close, lift their free leg to the side, and throw open their free arms as they do a double 3-turn. It’s not a key point so it doesn’t affect the pattern’s base value. It is incredibly dramatic, though. It’s the bit of the dance everyone remembers. A really stunning helicopter sets the tone and might get them a better grade of execution.
“You’re a real credit to your kind,” she says finally.
I opt for the non-committal grunt. For now, I’m going to assume she intended to compliment me. It’s obvious from the lack of embarrassment on her face that she doesn’t realize what she said wasn’t actually a compliment.
“I’m sure you make much more working at the warehouse than what I can afford to pay you.” Her gaze is serious. “But would you consider assisting here full-time?”
A few months ago, back when I thought I had a future, I would have been ecstatic. Now, what I find myself thinking is that she clearly has no idea how little the warehouse pays me. When I open my mouth, though, what comes out is:
“Absolutely. It’s all I’ve wanted to do.”
In my defense, this happens to be true. I should probably be worried that it isn’t what I meant to say.
“Great!” She pats my shoulder. “We’ll talk about this more tomorrow.”
She skates away, leaving me alone on the ice. I do one last spread eagle of joy followed by an impromptu single axel. Jumping is a bad idea for me. I’m too tall and way too heavy for this sort of thing. Then again, everyone else has gone already. Who am I going to hurt?
If you’re me, even a single axel needs to be large and fast to get all one-and-a-half revolutions. Still, it’s landed with surprisingly little thud. For a brief moment, I pretend I am Yuzuru Hanyu winning that second Olympic gold.
The rush of joy fades, of course. I leave the ice and change out of my skating gear. My steps are already unsteady and what I need is to recharge.
I leave the rink and I can’t find home. My memory is fine. It’s the world that’s broken. There should be a sun in the sky. Instead, the air is suffused with a golden hour-like glow. Ice stretches out in every direction, even behind me where the rink should have been. I realize I’m wearing figure skates again and, no matter how far I skate, there is more ice. Fuck.
The world grows dark far too quickly. The golden hour light fades to black in a matter of minutes. My internal clock is ticking so erratically though that, for all I know, that may have taken days. I trip on a toepick and fall... into a bed. Huh.
I’M CHARGING SO efficiently I have to be back at Charlie’s. No way there are two beds like this in the world. I’m kind of amazed that there’s even one, that Charlie jury-rigged something specifically for me.
“Where the fuck are my damn slippers, you asshole.” Charlie’s voice is a rusty saw ripping through my chassis.
Hm. Charlie is angry at me about something. He’s really not the overtly emotional type. I don’t remember him ever being angry. Usually when we have a disagreement, the iceberg just stands there and melts passive-aggressively at me.
I open my eyes. Charlie looms over me, his arms folded across his chest. I push myself up to a sit.
“Is there something we need to talk about, Charlie?”
“You.” He stabs a finger into my chest, which would be more intimidating if I weren’t made of metal. “Why haven’t you gotten your battery taken care of? Anyone could have waylaid you and you’d be dead now. You’re lucky I got to you first.”
Oh, that’s right. Charlie senses when souls are about to leave their bodies and where they are. Otherwise, he couldn’t be there in time to lead them to the Underworld. That the myths are true, that there is an underworld, we all have souls, and there are guides should be a bigger deal than he makes it.
“Charlie, relax.” I hold my hands up like I’m surrendering. “My battery’s holding as much charge as it can. I’m fine for now. You don’t need to overreact.”
“I AM NOT OVERREACTING!” Charlie is louder than I have ever heard him and distant thunder echoes his words. “You could be gone from this world any day now. This is precisely the correct level of outrage.”
The temptation to ask why he is so concerned that I stay in this world could pop rivets. To ask, however, would be unkind. Trying to answer wou
ld probably crack the iceberg into shards that plummet into a cold sea. I’m never going to hear the answer, but I can guess. He may guide souls to the Underworld, but he can’t stay there.
“Has it occurred to you that I have no choice? That I have no way to get my battery replaced?”
Charlie’s face screws into peevish puzzlement. He puts his hands on his waist.
“What are you talking about? How hard can it be to find authorized mechanics who still understand your workings?”
“And I can’t afford to pay anyone enough so that they would actually replace my battery in time, even if they could. Given half a chance, random strangers would waylay me on the street if they thought they could get away with it. Why would I let someone who knows how to kill me disconnect my battery? They’ll just reduce me to a machine then sell me.”
“Oh, I see.” His face falls. “Give me a few days. I’m going to need some time to practice. Do you think you can keep yourself alive for a few more days?”
“Practice? For what?”
“I’m going to replace your battery.” For a man who’s never failed to ask for consent, his voice leaves little room for debate. “I just need a few days to work out how I’m going to do it. Is that okay?”
My mouth opens, but it’s a second or two before I can manage any words. He’s literally the only one I trust to do this and he knows it. I could point out that I can’t afford a new battery and the work to install it, but he’s clearly not going to let me pay him. What’s stuck in my mind is the way he seemed to shrink and the fear in his gaze the last time he faced the notion of replacing my battery.
“I can’t ask you to do this for me.”
“Well, technically speaking, you haven’t.” Charlie has recovered his composure. “Now, do you want more life or not?”
Hefting and hauling at a warehouse is a lousy reason to live. At the rink, the kids are great but to the adults I might as well be a particularly clever zamboni. A new battery just delays the inevitable. Then I look at the Charlie who desperately wants me to live and nothing that happens at the warehouse, at the rink, or on the street matters. I want to look at him looking at me for as many more years as I can. More life means more time to work with the skaters at the rink. It means seeing Kat and Joe skate a striking and dramatic Tango Romantica.
“Yes.”
“Good. It’s settled then.” He takes a deep breath. “Hold it together for another three days and we’ll do this.”
Charlie can’t quite iron the fear and shake out of his voice. And, for a moment, I wonder whether it might be kinder to refuse, to let him off this hook.
Working at both the warehouse and the rink on the same charge is a bad idea if I want to stay alive. So no work at the rink until the operation. I’d rather the other way around. Charlie and the rink make my days worth living and Charlie is busy. I know how much energy warehouse work takes, though. Left to my own devices, I could easily deplete my degraded battery at the rink again. The three days lumber by where I eek out an existence like a non-sentient machine. It’s so demoralizing that by the time I’m back at Charlie’s, I am ready to die.
When I show up, Charlie seems ready to kill me, if not intentionally. It’d be literally incorrect to say he looks like death. Try as I might, I can’t see a white cloak, a pointy white hat, or an umbrella. It’s metaphorically correct, though. He’s in his usual T-shirt and cargo pants, but they seem to swallow him. His eyes are bleary and bloodshot. Either he hasn’t been able to sleep for the past few days or he hasn’t tried.
Charlie’s workshop, however, is pristine, as usual. It’s warmly lit and the walls are painted a calm white that leaves nowhere for dirt to hide. The tools he needs are all laid out, I presume, in the order he will need them, on a table that is placed perpendicular to the workbench. I lie prone on the latter and wait.
Charlie is hesitant at first. His hands shake. My chassis vibrates when he pries it open.
“You know, Charlie, you don’t have—”
“Don’t even say it.” Charlie’s voice is grim. “Let’s just do this. As your voltage drops, try your best to stay here. Stay in the workshop.”
I don’t know where he thinks an unpowered me is going to go, but I don’t say anything. The man doesn’t need the distraction. He holds his breath as he disconnects the battery. My voltage plunges and, in that instant, I understand why he told me to stay.
The sudden power loss is not like a battery draining down. The world grows dark and I’m suspended in space. I try to remember how light floods the workroom, how the workbench presses against my chest. And the world does grow bright and I’m lying on a hard surface. Both the light and surface, though, feel austere and cold.
Figure skates are laced to my feet. I scramble to a stand on a vast field of ice. This time, though, I’m not alone. Charlie is standing here, too, in full regalia. The white cloak. The pointy white hat. The umbrella.
“Right now, I am working as quickly as I can. The new battery is a different shape and I need to do some reconstruction inside your chassis first.” Charlie sets down his umbrella and spreads his palms. “Hold this world together. The directed mental processing will keep you sentient and give me time.”
“Dance with me.”
“What?”
“If this is a world held together by my dreams, then you know how to dance.” I hold my hands out. “Dance with me.”
Charlie’s body lifts a few inches into the air. Figure skates replace his boots. He stumbles for a second over his skates’ toepicks before he regains his balance. Hockey skates don’t have toepicks.
“I don’t know how to ice dance.” His brow furrows, then his gaze widens. “Wait, apparently, now I do. Does ‘Tango Romantica’ mean anything to you?”
Strings, piano, and metronomic drums surround us. It was the mandatory music for the Tango Romantica back when ice dance competitions had a compulsory phase. Part of me wishes I were imagining a less obvious music choice, but here we are. Charlie and I clasp into a closed hold, we cross-stroke, then whirl into the helicopter. He swings around with a 3-turn as I put my right hand on his left hip. His left hand covers mine and—
The world flashes. Silence covers us. The ice disappears. And we fall. We tug against each other, each struggling to be the one who hits first if the ice should suddenly reappear. This is stupid since I’m so much heavier than him. Then again, it’s not like I know how much damage a minor god of death can sink. Maybe he really can take the hit better than me.
My back skids across newly imagined ice. Charlie is on top of me, hanging on, his hands gripping my body. We pick ourselves up and keep on with the dance where we left off.
“Don’t stop,” Charlie whispers in my ear. “You can do this.”
The world spins against us. Our bodies weave around each other, switching from one hold to another. The tango drives us and our blades whisper as they carve deep lobes into the ice.
We’re in a close hold and deep in our knees when the world disappears again. I stretch my leg for a cross roll and it never hits the ice. Our bodies flip end over end as we fall.
Days pass before Charlie hits the ice and my chassis slams into his body. The world flickers. The music is faint and its tempo marches unsteadily to the beat of a drunken drummer. Violins waver in and out of tune, stroking the melody in an irregular and inconsistent rhythm.
The ice is soft. I slip and crash when I try to stand. My chassis slams against the ice again and again as my balance fails. Finally, Charlie grabs my torso and steadies me to a stand. He holds my hands and, slowly, we glide across the ice.
I lose my edge. My legs slide out from under me. I fall into Charlie, who catches me as I wrap my arms around him. He picks me up, then gently lowers me onto my feet. I weigh nothing to him.
It’s not even a second before I fall again. This time, the world disappears.
Millennia pass. In the next instant, time begins to move steadily again. My chest and stomach lie against some hard surf
ace that was frozen once but is now merely as cold as an unpowered chassis.
Something’s different, either about me or the world. Maybe both. My body isn’t actually vibrating but it feels like it should be. I can’t shake the idea there’s nothing too heavy for me to lift. Someone has boosted the saturation on the world. The white walls are really a delicate shade of cream and perfectly smooth. The light that fills the room is diffuse, bounced off the ceiling first then scattered. It wraps the tables, the tools, Charlie in this warm glow. I’m sure this will eventually become my new normal and it won’t mean anything anymore, but right now it’s pretty magnificent.
Charlie stares at me. He still looks weirdly shrunken. The expression on his face is so desperate and lost, it makes me want to do anything he asks me to do.
“Where... where are my slippers?” Charlie’s voice is tentative and slippers are obviously the last thing he wants.
I lift up my head to look at him. My head moves way faster than I expect. I almost buck myself off the workbench. And I realize what is different about me now. Charlie, however, furrows his brow and purses his lips.
“Relax, Charlie.” I gingerly slide myself off the workbench and face him. “My effective operating voltage has been degrading for years and you’ve brought it back up to spec. I’ll get the hang of it.”
Charlie seems to grow before my eyes. He pulls himself to his full height. His shoulders relax and broaden. He fill out his T-shirt until, as usual, it’s ever so slightly too small for him. His smile outshines the workroom.
His arms fly out to his sides. He takes a step towards me, then stops.
“Is it okay? I mean, can I?”
Charlie wants a hug. The only thing that makes me think I’m not hallucinating this is that he’s asked by never actually saying what he wants. Still, what he wants is a hug. That’s different.
“Of course.”
I wrap my arms around his torso as he wraps his around mine. We’re both trying not to crush each other. We’re both skirting at the edge of failing.
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