A Perfect Machine(8)

The dream ends as Henry walks back into his house, leaving Milo outside in the blistering sun.



* * *



Faye knocked on the door.

No answer.

She knocked harder. Still nothing.

She fretted about whether or not to keep trying this late at night. Decided to forget about knocking again and just open the door with her key.

She’d tried calling the past couple of days, but there’d been no answer, and she’d been run off her feet at the hospital so there’d been no chance to check on Henry in person till now. It wasn’t abnormal for them not to see each other for days at a time, given their abnormal schedules, but after her second or third call attempt, Faye began to worry just a little bit – and that feeling had only grown worse with each passing hour.

She turned the key, pushed gently. The door swung open.

The apartment air was frigid. Faye shivered and pulled the gray scarf tighter around her neck.

She walked in slowly, called out, “Henry, are you home?”

Silence.

She poked her head around a corner, looked in the kitchen which branched off from the living room. Nothing.

The bathroom light shone bright in the relative gloom of the apartment.

“Henry?”

No one in the bathroom. Only one more room in the place.

The bedroom door stood slightly ajar. Faye pushed on it softly, peeking inside. It was hard to make out anything. Shadows layered on shadows. Faye whispered Henry’s name once more as she walked through the door, but her stomach was already sinking. It was so quiet. No hiss from the radiator, and the sound of the refrigerator running didn’t make it to this side of the apartment.

No breathing sounds came from the bed.

“Oh, God,” Faye said, putting a hand to her mouth. “Henry…”

He lay still on the bed. Bundled in blankets. Only his head uncovered. His shoulder-length dark hair, threaded with gray, hung in strings to the sides of his face. Unwashed for days.

For a brief moment, Faye thought maybe he wasn’t dead. His cheeks seemed rosy in the dirty light filtering in through the window from a streetlamp. She moved forward, tentatively put a hand on his forehead. He was warm. Not only warm – burning up. But somehow there was no life in him. No breath. Just a wall of heat, emanating from his body.

She stood like that for a long while, looking down at him, feeling the warmth still coming from his body in waves, as if something inside were generating it. Gears spinning. Clockwork, winding itself up.

Impossible.

“Where have you gone, Henry?” she said, though she didn’t understand why she’d chosen those particular words.

No breath, she thought. He is dead. He must be dead.

Faye quietly left Henry’s apartment, tears just beginning to form in her eyes.



* * *



Later that night, a dark, heavy shape rose from Henry’s bed, moved around the room as if waking from a deep sleep.

Outside Henry’s bedroom window, a single snowflake drifted down, stuck against the pane, melted.

Vanished.

The first of a new storm.





F O U R





“I know this sounds terribly corny, but haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Like, legitimately?”

Henry turned toward the voice. Wow, a girl is talking to me, he thought, cleared his throat, and said, “Uh, hopefully?”

She frowned.

“I just mean that, well, if it keeps us talking, then yes, you’ve seen me somewhere before.”

She grinned a little, maybe blushed just the tiniest bit. “Well, OK. Where was it?”

They were in a shitty little bar downtown. Henry frequented it often to unwind after Runs, and Faye occasionally came in when the loneliness of her apartment became too much to bear.

“Maybe…” Henry began, turning fully toward Faye where she sat on a stool next to his at the bar. “I dunno.” He took a shot in the dark: “Milo’s?”

“Don’t know anyone named Milo,” Faye said.

“Oh.”

“Maybe if we tell each other our names, that might jog something,” Faye said, and smiled.

Henry laughed. “Yeah, that might help. I’m Henry.”

“Faye.”

They shook hands, awkwardly.

“Lovely to meet you, Faye.”

“Likewise. Now, let’s see,” she said, taking a sip from her rum and Coke. “Where do you work? Maybe I saw you there.”

Ha. Where do I work.

“Um, you haven’t seen me at work,” he replied. “Pretty certain.”

Warning bells sounded in Faye’s head at this evasion, but she decided to press on. “OK, well, I’m a nurse. Maybe you were recently hospitalized?” She’d intended it as a joke, but Henry didn’t laugh.

“Actually, that coulda been it. I go there more often than… normal people.” He smiled, and did manage a little chuckle that calmed Faye’s nerves a little.

“Street fights?” she said. “You a big badass?” More joking.

“People shoot me a lot.”

He’d talked like this before to interested women. He found that telling the truth disarmed them, since they always thought he was just joking. The relationships never got much further than this because he kept strange hours and didn’t have much of an interest in pursuing a relationship anyway.