by Amanda Heger
Yeah right. But if other Cupids were having similar troubles, maybe Eliza wasn’t the problem. Maybe she could talk with them, bring the issue to the regional Cosmic Council, and get everything straightened out. She’d get the Johansens back together, return Charleston to his daily probiotics schedule, and end up a hero in the process. “Are you hearing anything about problems with enchantments?” she asked.
“Such as?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Side effects, non-matches, enchantments wearing off before the moon cycle ends?” Eliza mumbled that last part as quickly as possible, and for a second, she could have sworn the curls at the front of Mrs. Washmoore’s head slithered. But the Fury put her glasses back on her nose and shuffled over to the librarian’s desk.
“Oh my. No, nothing like that. I have to say that sounds like a very unique situation.”
The coffee Eliza had downed soured in her stomach. She couldn’t get any firmer confirmation than that. She was the problem, plain and simple. “Well, you know, if you hear anything…”
“Of course, dear. If you want, I’d be happy to do some research. I doubt we have anything here, but I might be able to request an interlibrary loan. The Southern California branch has a much greater selection. Probably because they’re so close to Hollywood. You know how those Tinseltown types are; plastic surgery and enchantments are their main sources of entertainment.”
“An interlibrary loan would be great,” Eliza said.
“It may take a few days. These things often do.”
In a few days, Herman & Herman would probably be buried under a stack of lawsuits, but what did she have to lose? “That’ll be fine. Thank you, Mrs. Washmoore.”
Eliza pulled out one of the books Jake had left, expecting the librarian to disappear back into her tube.
“You know, dear…” Mrs. Washmoore lumbered over to Eliza’s table and hovered over her shoulder, one hand lightly brushing her arm before falling away. “I think you should be careful. If the other Cupids get wind of your side effects, who knows that will happen? They aren’t always a level-headed bunch.”
Eliza’s eyes widened. Her body temperature flashed between hot and cold. Had all the stress of the last month thrown her body into early menopause? For the gods’ sake, she hadn’t even hit thirty yet.
“Like Jake said, it’s just a research project,” she muttered.
“Well, don’t let your little research project get in the way of his goals. My nephew has been wanting a spot on the Cosmic Council for as long as I can remember. Being connected with something untoward could ruin his chances. And I’d hate to see him fail because of a few out-of-control hormones.”
Goose bumps sprang up along Eliza’s arms, and confusion slid into the space between them. Why did she suddenly feel so poorly? Had she remembered to get her flu shot? “I would never want Jake to fail. At anything…”
Mrs. Washmoore looked at Eliza over the rim of her glasses. “Then we’re in agreement.”
“We are?” Eliza shook her head to clear it, but she only succeeded in flinging sweat across her face. “I mean, we are.”
“Excellent. Just be sure to end things between the two of you before it’s too late. Heartbreaks are such nasty inconveniences.”
End things? “Mrs. Washmoore, I think there’s been a misunderstanding—”
The librarian clamped a hand on Eliza’s shoulder. She almost swore the smell of rotten eggs and garbage filled her nostrils, and the room seemed to burst into a million invisible flames. Then, as quickly as it had come on, the feeling was gone. Her body returned to normal, nonmenopausal temperatures. All she could smell were old books and Mrs. Washmoore’s rose hip perfume. Her mind, however, was still whirling.
Eliza swallowed hard and watched the librarian shuffle back to her spot on top of the tube. “Wait. Please. What do you—”
“I’ll call you when your books are ready.”
Whoosh.
Eliza looked at the empty spot where the Fury had stood and then at the doors Jake had disappeared through. Had she just agreed to end things with Jake? And more importantly, was Mrs. Washmoore right? When all this came out, would his reputation be irreparably damaged? Was being with Eliza ruining his life?
* * *
“You sure you don’t mind?” Jake asked.
“I’m sure.” Eliza stared out at the minuscule Herman & Herman parking lot and tapped on the books on her lap. “I’m just going to read through these and see if anything rings a bell. Besides, my mother will probably stroke out if she doesn’t have someone to answer the phones today.”
“If you’re sure. Because I can call in. This whole Department delivery thing is just a temp job for me. If I get fired—”
“Go. I’m fine. I promise.” Eliza crossed her arms. “I’ll call you if anything changes.”
“Dinner tonight?”
“Let me see if my dad needs anything. I’ve been neglecting my daughterly chauffeur duties.” She pushed open the car door and put one foot on the pavement, hoping Jake didn’t see through her lie. Her dad had been cleared to drive himself back and forth to his various appointments days ago. “I’ll see you later.”
“Eliza…” His eyes narrowed until they crinkled around the edges.
It was adorable. And she hated him for it.
“What?” she demanded.
He laid a hand on her forearm. “Are you brushing me off? Is this because of that whole capital-L Love thing I said the other day, because—”
At the mere mention of their earlier conversation—at their heartfelt confessions and shared secrets—the despair and turmoil she’d been holding back since they left the Agora spilled from her lips.
“Not everything is about you, okay?” she said.
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Just go. Please.”
But as soon as he’d pulled out of the lot, Eliza regretted her words. She pushed her way into Herman & Herman and flopped down behind the desk. She’d call him later and apologize. Explain that she was stressed and tired and overwhelmed. In the meantime, what she really needed was a quiet afternoon of reading and thinking to get her head straight. Her mother was scheduled to be at appointments all afternoon. Whether they were with clients or her “friend” Weston Presley was to be determined. But either way, it would give Eliza some time to—
The bells over the front door sounded.
“Eliza—ooof. Come on, work with me. Eliza, are you here?” Helen’s voice rounded the corner before she did.
Oh gods.
She looked up to find a puffy-eyed Helen and a dead-eyed Jake Jacque.
“Helen. Hi.”
“I need your help. Jacque and I are having trouble again. I tried to call, but—”
Jacque’s head began spinning slowly. “Error 89. Error 89.” His mouth moved a smidge off base from the syllables.
“Oh no. Not this again. Why are you doing this to me, Jacque?” Helen rubbed her eyes. “Haven’t I always been good to you?”
Eliza watched in horror as the robot’s head spun like something out of The Exorcist. “Helen—”
“He started doing this yesterday when I put him on personal assistant mode. I switched him to virtual assistant to make it stop, but…” She held Jacque out toward Eliza. “Please help.”
The rational part of her brain reminded Eliza that she could not enchant inanimate objects. But the other part of Eliza—the part that felt as frazzled and desperate as Helen looked, the part that worried her problems were keeping Jake from achieving everything he’d ever wanted—begged her to at least try to fix this. Even if it seemed completely unfixable.
“This way,” Eliza yelled over the continual chant of “Error 89. Error 89.” Somewhere in the noise, a phone rang, but she ignored it. Instead, Eliza hauled Jacque toward her brother’s empty office and hoisted him onto the desk.
The Mandroid weighed less than she would have guessed, given all his capabilities. “Does he have an off button?”
“I’ll switch him to gaming assistant mode. That’s all he’s good for anymore.” Helen stripped off Jacque’s shirt and turned the knob. His head stopped whirring, and the silence—except for Helen’s quiet sniffles—was sweet relief.
“Would you like a glass of water?” Eliza asked.
Helen gave a half nod, half sob. “Yes, please.”
“I’ll be right back.” Eliza jogged out to the water cooler, filled a cup, and grabbed a fresh box of tissues from behind the receptionist’s desk. If Helen’s last visit was any indication, Eliza would probably need a few more, but this would be a start. She stepped toward the office and paused.
Music blared from the other side of the door, punctuated by an occasional sob from Helen. Eliza knew she’d heard it before. The melody made her think of cotton candy and summer nights. But she couldn’t quite place it. “Helen—” she said as she pushed open the door.
Jacque lay shirtless across her brother’s desk, his pants around his knees. The flap in his abdomen had been lifted, and beneath it, the touch screen was lit with all variety of white ovals. The music poured from his mouth. Helen sat between his legs like a kid with a pocket full of quarters at an arcade. She gripped his manhood (or was it Mandroidhood?) with one hand and used his testicles as buttons with the other.
“Just a minute.” Helen sniffed. She jerked Jacque’s penis up, down, and to the right, never letting her gaze fall from the screen in his chest. “I have to make it to a save point.”
Eliza pressed the door closed with her back and tried not to keep her eyes from falling out of her head. A better person would turn away—this seemed like a weirdly intimate moment, after all—but then again, if Helen wanted her to fix Jacque, it wouldn’t hurt to know all his functions. “His penis is a joystick?” Eliza asked. “I mean, a literal joystick. Not a euphemistic one.”
“It’s more responsive than the touch screen. Besides, this is the only joy he brings me anymore. Sometimes I want to rip it off, just to be done with it. But then I wouldn’t be able to play Egg Salad Saga anymore.”
“Oh.”
Finally, the music rose to a crescendo, and the sound of coins clanking took its place. “Yes, highest score yet,” Helen said, still gripping Jacque’s penis.
Eliza couldn’t help but notice that it stood at full attention. Maybe the Mandroid had conquered his old problem and found a new one. “Helen, what’s going on?”
Jacque’s mouth moved in answer, but it wasn’t his stilted robot voice that came out.
If your sex life’s as squalid
As month-old egg salad,
Don’t let Fates conspire
To thwart your desire.
Let Van Love write your love ballad.
“You have to listen to the ads to get more coins,” Helen explained. She pulled the flap on Jacque’s abdomen, and with that, his penis also deflated. Apparently he still had the erectile dysfunction issue. Or maybe it was more like erectile malfunction? Eliza shook the thoughts from her mind. She didn’t have time for internal debate about the proper terminology for Jacque’s penile malware. Instead, she needed the time and brain space to figure out what was happening. “Helen, how long have you been playing this game?”
She shrugged. “Probably since about eight thirty.”
“You just downloaded it today?”
“Oh.” Helen’s chuckle held a hint of embarrassment. “No. I’ve been playing it for a while now. I had a free download code and decided to give it a shot.”
“Where did you get the download code?”
“A friend of mine in a Mandroid forum gave it to me.”
Eliza forced herself not to think too much about the contents of such a forum. But if she couldn’t sleep tonight, she was definitely logging on to see what kind of stuff people posted. She was only (well, sort of) human after all. “Is that where you read about the Mandroids being invented by a Cupid?”
Helen nodded. “Man-A-Call. It’s a company based in Tokyo. I know because I called their headquarters to complain. Three times. Not that it did me any good.”
Tokyo… Her father’s drug-induced ramblings about techno-Cupids…
Eliza leaned closer to Jacque, inspecting him for any sign of, well, anything that would fit these puzzle pieces together. “Did you download the game before or after Jacque started having his problems?”
Helen tapped a finger on her chin. “Let’s see. I had a dentist appointment on the thirty-first. Everything worked great then. I remember because…” She shook her head. “Anyway, I downloaded the game the next day.” She counted silently on her fingers. “Three times a day for a while, then just once.” Finally, she looked back up at Eliza. “He lost his mojo about two and a half weeks after I downloaded the game.”
Eliza pressed her fingertips into the groove between her eyebrows. Yolanda had said Eddie played a game and was always trying to get her to join. They’d broken up before the end of the moon cycle. Helen downloaded this game, and Jacque had begun malfunctioning. Even Mitch Johansen had mentioned something about getting a triple egg bonus at the cruise ship casino. “What about those ads?”
“What about them? Like I said, you get more coins if you listen.”
“Yeah, but is it always the same ad or different ones?”
“Mostly different ads for the same guy. Always with the limericks.”
Vic. He’d said big changes were coming. Big technological changes that would make him a lot of money. Eliza’s pulse picked up.
What if Vic somehow created a game that messed up people’s hormones, a game that made people start falling in and out of love faster than normal? Relationships would disintegrate. Everyone would be looking for something new and better or, like Helen, they’d be desperate to get the old thing to work again. And who would they call? The Cupid whose advertisements they’d heard on repeat for weeks and months.
Holy Hades. This was huge.
Of course, Vic had taken out ad space on just about every medium available. Maybe it was nothing.
“How about we give Jacque a, uh, reboot, and see if that helps?” Eliza pressed her fingertips together in a miniature prayer. She never thought she’d be begging Eros for help fluffing a robot, but she needed to get Helen out of here so she could think.
“Thank you.” Helen said. “I knew you’d help.”
“I can’t promise anything. Just like last time.”
“I know. But I have faith in you.” Helen looked up at her with admiration in her eyes. “You’re the best Cupid in town, Eliza.”
Eliza stifled a wry laugh. If only poor Helen knew. “You ready?”
“As ready as anyone can be in this type of situation.”
That’s saying a lot.
“Okay, where’s his on-off button?” Eliza searched the area around his two—well, technically he had three, but one was much further south—knobs.
“Oh. It’s right under his joystick.” Helen lifted Jacque’s testicles. A small black button sat where the sun surely didn’t shine. “There.”
Every time Eliza thought her life couldn’t get weirder… “Why don’t you go ahead and give it a push?”
“I’ve tried. I think he needs a Cupid’s touch.”
Eliza’s face must have betrayed her horror, because Helen’s chin began to quiver.
“Okay, okay. I’m going to push it.” She braced herself.
Helen leaned over and stroked Jacque’s face. “Come back to us, Jacque.”
Eliza pressed the button, and—as a bonus, last-ditch effort—she grabbed her brother’s stapler and knocked the Mandroid in the fluids reservoir.
Jacque’s eyes blinked. His mouth moved. No error message to be heard.
“Okay, I’m going to switch him to o
ne of his other modes,” Eliza said. Outside, the bells over the door chimed. “Have a seat,” she called out. “Someone will be with you in a moment.”
Helen wrapped her long, slim fingers around Jacque’s penis, as serious as someone about to perform brain surgery. “I’m ready.”
Eliza turned the knob.
Nothing. Not even a switch. “Error 89. Error 89. Error 89.”
“No,” Helen whimpered.
“Shhhh.” Eliza glanced at the door and patted her on the back. “I’m so sorry. I really don’t know what else to do.”
“Why did I spend so much money on this stupid thing? Just because I was lonely? Ha!” Helen raised her head and looked up at Eliza with sadness in her eyes. “I’m such a loser.”
“You aren’t,” Eliza said. “We all make bad purchases from time to time. It’s—”
“Please don’t.” Helen wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’m a loser. A loser with no friends and a glorified iPad.”
Quite frankly, Eliza would rather have had an iPad. “Helen, please—”
The office door swung wide open, and Eliza’s mother stood on the other side, wide-eyed and openmouthed.
“Eliza, what are you… Good gods, is that Jake?” A hideous shade of green hiked up her mother’s cheeks.
“His name is Jacque,” Helen said. “Or it was. Thanks for trying, Eliza.” She tossed Jacque over her shoulder and gave Eliza a sad smile before shuffling out of the office.
Her mother cleared her throat. “Care to explain?”
“I can’t.” At least, she couldn’t explain yet.
But if techno-Cupids were real and they made Mandroids and those Mandroids could be enchanted, couldn’t they also create a video game that reversed enchantments? And if anyone would use such a thing to cash in on other people’s pain, it would be Vic Van Love.
She grabbed Elijah’s phone and dialed, ignoring her mother’s stare.
“You’ve reached Mitch Johansen. Please leave me a message, and I’ll call you back soon.”
“Hi, Mr. Johansen. This is Eliza Herman. Can you call me back when you have a moment?” She hung up to find her mother still in the doorway.
