Corpus Chrome, Inc.

by S. Craig Zahler

  Chapter XII

  Triumphant

  Champ helped Doreen into a cab, kissed her deeply, withdrew, said, “I’ll see you in Texas,” and shut the door. The sensual, uniformly pink-haired businesswoman waved good-bye through the cab’s rear window and was gone.

  For two days and nights, Champ and Doreen had enjoyed each other’s company in a largely physical manner: kissing, nibbling, biting, tasting, engulfing, thrusting, exploding, melting and embracing. Their potential as a couple did not transcend the bedroom, drinks and comedy sheaves, and early on, they had both acknowledged and accepted this limitation.

  Sucking basil udon, the garbage man walked south on a raised sidewalk, glanced at the stone hotel from which he had recently emerged and nodded a salutation.

  Champ felt like a champion.

  During the forty-eight hedonistic hours that he had spent with the lively Texan, he had reclaimed himself. Champ Sappline was no longer the bitter half of a divorced couple, but a handsome and funny stud. His pelvic, thigh, gluteal and abdominal muscles were sore in a fantastic way.

  Champ wondered at the power of flesh over the mind, but the brief contemplation was superseded by the image of Doreen astride him and the feel of her heavy breasts in his welcoming hands.

  * * *

  After discarding the empty spool, the garbage man walked between two upraised stopwalls and double-tapped his lily. “Connect to Dad.”

  “How was she?” asked his father.

  Champ detailed several sexual highlights.

  Eagle chirped.

  Climbing the steps to R.J. the Third’s apartment, the garbage man was ambushed by fifth-floor hostiles. The quartet shoved him against a wall and slapped his face seven times before he was able to carry his red cheeks to safety.

  * * *

  Late the next afternoon, Champ, whose face was still swollen from the assault, and R.J. the Third, clothed in silver, ascended the stairs. The pair stopped upon the fifth-floor landing.

  “This floor is peopled by sneaky cowards!” announced the popinjay. “I put it to you that you have not one bravo courageous enough to approach me or my handsome companion in open, fair combat.” He paused for two seconds. “Here I stand, unopposed. Thou art bested!”

  “Assholes!” Champ added for flavor.

  Three fleximetal doors slid into the ground. From darkened apartments emerged seven enemies: Five younger men in boxer shorts and slippers, and two elders in suits. The septet advanced, wielding open hands with which they intended to administer shoves or slaps or both types of violence.

  Heavy metal music blared.

  Champ, R.J. the Third and the shocked fifth-floor adversaries looked to the hall window, beyond which rose a red fire wagon. Upon the platform of the levitating vehicle stood the re-bodied man, Captain Eagle Sappline, holding two glinting nozzles as if they were six-shooters. The music that poured through the open window grew louder.

  Riffs prophesied doom.

  “For the glory of floor six!” yelled Champ and R.J. the Third, racing to the stairs.

  “Eat it!” advised Eagle, his voice amplified by speakers. White foam splattered surprised faces, filled open mouths and knocked adversaries to the ground. “You’re pitiful!” goaded the mannequin.

  Champ and R.J. the Third reached the sixth floor.

  “Thanks,” the garbage man said via his lily to his father.

  “They deserved it,” replied Eagle. “I’d like to hang out, but I better have Douglas take me back—this is a total violation, doing something like this with a wagon.”

  “I’m sure,” replied Champ.

  R.J. the Third typed in his code, and the fleximetal door sank.

  Eagle said, “See you on Friday at Billiardhaus.”

  “You bet.”

  Champ entered the apartment, went to the common room and waved through the window to Eagle, who was standing at attention upon the fire wagon’s platform. The re-bodied man saluted his son and was carried off.

  Two slovenly sixth-floor shut-ins and the herpetology student patted the garbage man on the back.

  “That was a magnificent plan, Mr. Sappline,” said R.J. the Third. “Accolades and libations shall not be withheld!” Wedged beneath the sofa for fifteen hours, Architect shifted some tonnage and offered a meow of approbation.

  * * *

  In the annals of the intra-building war, this perfectly coordinated attack was recorded as an undisputed victory for floor six.

  Chapter XIII

  It Needs Work

  Lisanne, dressed in a sleeveless amber suit, and Ellenancy, covered by a maroon robe and slippers, entered an elevator within the Corpus Chrome, Incorporated Building. Joining them, Mr. Johnson put his fingertips to a placard and said, “Floor eighty-five.”

  The metal door slid shut and presented a reflection of the mismatched identical twins. Within the mirror image, the mannequin’s chrome plating hosted myriad warped reflections.

  The elevator rose, silent and fluid.

  “How many floors are in this building?” asked Lisanne.

  “One hundred and fifty.”

  Ellenancy opined, “The view from the roof must be lovely.”

  Pleased to hear a positive sentiment emerge from her sister, Lisanne asked Mr. Johnson, “May we go to the top?”

  “The elevators don’t go past floor one hundred and twenty.”

  “How do people access the top thirty floors?” inquired the petite blonde, perplexed.

  “I don’t know.” The shepherd grinned. “That’s one of the mysteries of this place.”

  “What is up there?”

  “Another mystery.” Mr. Johnson chuckled.

  The elevator door slid wide, and the exiting trio entered a hall that had brown carpeting upon its floor, walls and ceiling.

  “The audio room is this way,” said shepherd, motioning with a paddle-like hand for the sisters to precede him.

  The mannequin balked.

  “The rug—” Ellenancy slid her right slipper across the two-centimeter-tall fibers as if it were a razor upon coarse skin. “I’m afraid that I might fall over.”

  “Take off your slippers and use the gelware on your soles,” recommended the shepherd. “That should make it a bit easier for you to get a sense of things.”

  The re-bodied woman stepped out of her slippers, set her bare gelware feet upon the carpet and wobbled. Adjusting her knees, she balanced herself.

  Lisanne picked up the discarded slippers and put an arm around Ellenancy’s back. “In Ordnung?”

  “Ja.”

  The siblings followed the shepherd.

  After her twentieth stride, Ellenancy paused and informed her sister, “I can do this on my own.”

  Lisanne withdrew her supportive arm, and walked up the carpeted hall alongside the mannequin.

  * * *

  Seated upon a plush divan in the middle of a brown and gold room that was embedded with seventy-two perfectly calibrated speakers, the Sisters Breutschen listened to the sequentialist composition entitled “The Dotted Line.” The music was a window, and the anguish that Lisanne had felt when she lost her sister, her best friend and her creative partner to pancreatic cancer was quite visible through its sonic pane. It was a good piece, but the petite blonde loathed listening to it.

  The resurrected object of the dirge remained still, silent and inscrutable as she heard the composition.

  Four minutes after the piano’s final note had dissipated, Ellenancy said simply, “I would like to hear it again.”

  Lisanne whistled a C-sharp and said, “Play: ‘The Dotted Line.’”

  The piece began for a second time, and Lisanne glanced at her sister’s face, which was set in a
neutral expression. As with all works of pure sequentialism (the compositional form that the Sisters Breutschen had originated), “The Dotted Line” was linear music with no concurrent harmonies. A solitary flute played a melody, a lone woman sang inversions of the melody, tympani suggested a theme, a trumpet rebuked the theme—but no two notes ever rang simultaneously. This was the only sequentialist piece that Lisanne had written without Ellenancy’s input, and the grief-stricken woman had interspersed several meaningful gaps of pure silence amongst the lonely melodies.

  The music ended. Two minutes after the last overtone had dissipated, Ellenancy said, “I would like to hear it again.”

  Lisanne was anxious to know her sister’s thoughts on the funereal composition, but she did not inquire after them: Ellenancy would speak when she had drawn her conclusions. The petite blonde whistled and said, “Play: ‘The Dotted Line.’”

  After the siblings had listened to the seventeen-minute composition for the fifth time, Ellenancy said, “I know that this piece is very meaningful to you, but I have several ideas that would improve it.”

  Stunned by the comment, Lisanne said nothing.

  The mannequin swiveled her head toward her sister and widened her irises. “The violin and mandolin sections in the middle—the ones that recall ‘The Line That Connected His Eyes to the Mountaintops’—should modulate away from each other, not together as you currently have them.”

  Lisanne had never been so happy to receive criticism in her entire life. Her eyes glimmering with joyful tears, she said, “I agree. I was never fully satisfied with that part.”

  “I have some melodies in mind already. When you come tomorrow, please bring a violin and a mandolin.”

  * * *

  Tears were pouring from Lisanne’s eyes as she left the Corpus Chrome, Incorporated Building and double-tapped her lily. “Connect to Osa,” she said, walking toward the street to hail a watery cab with her blurry hand.

  “How are you?” asked Osa, her voice warm with concern.

  “Great. I’m great.” Lisanne sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Will you meet me at Tildman’s instead of Bo-Bo Thai?”

  “What’s Tildman’s?”

  “It’s a classical instrument store near Lincoln Center.”

  “Definitely! When?”

  A hungry cab nudged past a box van and two ladybugs, veered around a plasticore canister and bumped into the meter-high curb just beyond Lisanne’s toes. “I shall be there in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll leave now. I can’t wait to hear what happened. I love you.”

  “I love you.” The petite blonde sat in the back of the cab and was gripped by pseudopodia.

  * * *

  “This one looks really nice,” opined Osa, pointing to a lacquered wooden instrument that was held by micron wire inside the store’s central display cylinder.

  “That’s a viola. Ellenancy wants a violin.”

  “Oh.”

  Osa looked a little embarrassed.

  Lisanne took her mate’s hand, squeezed and said, “They look similar,” hoping that the remark did not sound condescending.

  The tall beauty did not make any more suggestions.

  * * *

  The next morning, the petite blonde carried an inflated coddle bag that contained a violin, a bow, and a mandolin through the security gauntlet in the Corpus Chrome, Incorporated Building.

  When Lisanne shook hands with Mr. Johnson, he was wearing an olive tweed suit and the brightest smile that she had ever seen upon his face.

  “She asked for sheaves,” the shepherd enthused, “yesterday, right after you left.”

  “What is she watching?”

  “She isn’t watching anything,” said Mr. Johnson, his smile brightening further. “She pulled up piano screens and has been playing etudes, working on her dexterity.”

  “That is terrific news!”

  “Indeed, indeed, indeed.”

  * * *

  Lisanne walked past the furled polarity curtain and into the oval room within which dwelled Ellenancy.

  “Guten Morgen,” the gift-bearing guest said to her sister. “How are you?”

  “Terrible,” said the re-bodied woman from her chair across the room. Her lenses were focused on two sheaves, which were laid in tandem upon a desk to simulate a piano keyboard. “Everything I play sounds like Abfall, verfluchter Abfall.”

  The re-bodied woman fingered a melody from “The Line That Bisects a Marriage and Unites the Fingertips of Lovers.” Her articulation of the long phrase was stilted and slow, and contained twelve wrong notes.

  “If you say that this sounds good,” Ellenancy warned, “I’ll throw something at you.”

  “Perhaps you should try the melody at fifty-six beats per minute,” suggested Lisanne.

  “It sounds bad enough at this speed—I cannot slow it down more.”

  “Then you should play another melody.” Lisanne pondered some possibilities, sat upon a stool and put the coddle bag on the floor. “Try the second departure from ‘The Line That is Scratched in the Margin of a Holy Text as an Act of Desecration.’”

  “That is not a challenging passage.”

  “Precisely.”

  Ellenancy fingered the slow simple melody, misplaying six of its eighteen notes. “Abfall,” muttered the re-bodied woman. A moment later, she attempted the phrase a second time and did no better.

  “This melody is a good one for you to practice,” stated Lisanne. “You must reorient yourself with simple material—as did Irena after her car accident.”

  “Scheiß.” The mannequin eyed her sister, and looked down at the coddle bag within which the instruments were suspended. “Did you bring the violin and mandolin that I requested?’

  “I did,” said Lisanne.

  “May I have them?”

  “I think you should continue to work with the touch-screens for now.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” warned Ellenancy.

  “I am your older sister.”

  “By eighteen minutes.”

  “I gained two and a half years of seniority while you were away.”

  “Scheiß.”

  “Practice.”

  Lisanne watched the mannequin misplay the simple melody for two hours.

  “That did not sound wretched,” said Ellenancy, after her first correct articulation of the phrase.

  “See if you can play it consistently.”

  The mannequin played the melody correctly three times in a row.

  “Increase the tempo to ninety beats per minute,” said Lisanne.

  Ellenancy activated the metronome, and a green light blinked, clicking as it demarcated time. When she played the eighteen-note melody at this increased tempo, new errors occurred.

  “Slow it down to eighty-two.”

  * * *

  The sun ascended, perambulated across the vault and descended; office buildings ingested, digested and expelled employees; sick people in the geriatric wards of hospitals awakened to another day of agony, suffered, and returned to the domain of slumber, wherein they dreamt of painless halcyons; a dog named Gnaw roused, watched a door, growled, ate a meal, returned to its post, barked, chewed upon a bone and imagined juicy shins; people were divorced and people were married, and twelve unhappy newlyweds endeavored both acts in quick succession.

  A petite blonde woman who was filled with hope cancelled her plans with her mate and instructed her re-bodied sibling.

  For many hours, the Sisters Breutschen saw only the invisible path of those eighteen notes.

  * * *

  At twenty-two forty-five, Mr. Johnson entered the room, yawned and informed the women that their visit must be concluded.r />
  “I’m not tired,” protested Ellenancy.

  “You need to relax your mind and sleep, just like any other person,” stated the shepherd. “Don’t try to do too much too quickly.”

  A frown creased the mannequin’s visage.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” said Lisanne, realizing that she would need to postpone the studio session that she had scheduled with the shriekpunk band Plague Injection.

  “Will you leave the instruments here?” asked Ellenancy.

  “You will play them all night if I do.” Lisanne picked up the coddle bag. “The shepherd said that you need to rest.”

  The mannequin’s frown became an exaggerated, childish pout.

  “You will get to play them soon.” The petite blonde kissed her sister’s cheek and added, “I know that you are dissatisfied with your abilities, but you have improved significantly since this morning.”

  “Indeed, indeed, indeed. You’ll be playing ‘The Line That Bisects a Marriage and Unites the Fingertips of Lovers’ within a week.”

  The Sisters Breutschen looked at the shepherd.

  Mr. Johnson grinned, admitting for the first time, “I’m a fan.”

  * * *

  Inhaling the filtered summer air of Nexus Y, Lisanne suddenly realized that she had not eaten a meal since the previous day. She searched her lily vault for a nearby Nippon stand, located one, leaned against its bamboo counter and ate three bonito-flake rice balls in as many minutes.