The Silver Metal Lover(29)

“I didn’t say you should. You were meant to come upstairs with me.”

“Something else we have to get clear,” he said. “Being locomotive and Verisimulated, I’m also fairly autonomous. If you want me to do something specific, you’ll have to make it more obvious.”

I balked. “What?”

“Try saying: Come upstairs with me. Then I’d leave the piano and follow you.”

“Damn you!” I shouted. I hadn’t meant to, didn’t want to. It didn’t even mean anything, except some basic symptom of what was happening deep inside me somewhere.

And his face grew cold and still, and his eyes were satanic.

“Don’t look at me that way,” I said.

His face cleared, changed. He said, “I told you about that.”

“The thought process switching over. I don’t believe you.”

“I told you about that too.”

“I don’t think you know!” I cried.

“I know about myself.”

“Do you?”

“I have to, to function.”

“My mother ought to love you. It’s so important to know oneself. None of us does. I don’t.”

He looked at me patiently, attentively.

“I have to give you orders,” I said, “to make you do what I want.”

“Not exactly. Instructions, perhaps.”

“What instructions did Egyptia give you when she took you to bed?”

“I already knew what the instructions were.”

“How?”

“How do you think?”

Human. Human.

“Egyptia’s beautiful. Artistically, you’d be able to appreciate that.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m sorry you got stuck with me.”

“You do sound,” he said, “as if you regret it.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll send you back to her. To Clovis.” What was I saying? Why couldn’t I stop? “I don’t need you. I made a mistake.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“You regret failing me. Not making me happy.”

“Yes.”

“You want to make everyone happy?” I screamed. The thunder blazed. The house shook, or was it my pulse? “Who do you think you are? Jesus Christ?”

Lightning. Fire. Drums. I lost the room, and when it came back, he was in front of me. He put his hands lightly on my shoulders.

“You’re going through some personal trauma,” he said. “I can try to help you, if you tell me what it is.”

“It’s you,” I said. “It’s you.”

“There is a school of thought which predicts human beings will react as you’re doing.”

“Egyptia was your first woman,” I announced.

“Egyptia’s a young girl, as you are. And not the first, by any means.”

“Tests? Performance tests? Piano, guitar, voice, bed?”

“Naturally.”

“What’s natural about it?” I pulled away from him.

“Natural from a business point of view,” he said reasonably.

“But there’s something wrong,” I said. “You don’t check out.”

He stood and looked down at me. He was about five feet eleven. The sky was bleeding into darkness behind him, and his hair bleeding into darkness, too. His eyes were two flames, colorless.

“My bedroom is up the stair,” I said. “Follow me.”

I went up, and he came after. We walked into the suite. I pushed the door shut. I walked over to the green auto-chill flagon of white wine, and poured two glasses, then remembered, then took up the second glass anyway and pushed it into his hand.

“You’re wasting it on me,” he said.

“I want to make believe you’re human,” I said.

“I know you do. I’m not.”

“Do it to please me. To make me happ-y.”

He drank, slowly. I drank quickly. I started to float at once. The lightning burst through the blinds, and I didn’t mind it.

“Now,” I said, “come into my bedroom, exclusively designed by my mother to match my personal coloressence chart. And make love to me.”

“No,” he said.

I stood and stared at him.

“No? You can’t say no.”

“My vocabulary is less limited than you seem to think.”

“No—”

“No, because you don’t want me, or your body doesn’t, which is more important.”

“You have to make me happy,” I got out.

“I won’t make you happy by raping you. Even at your own request.”

He put down the glass. He bowed to me from the waist, like a nobleman in an old visual, and went out.

I stood with my mouth open, as the lightning splashed on the blinds, and the thunder faded. He began to play the piano again. It was the silliest thing, the silliest and the most disheartening thing, that could have happened to me. And I knew I deserved it.

I got rather drunk alone in my suite, listening to the piano. Sometimes, when alone, I’d secretively play it—but so badly. He played, fantastically, for an hour. Things I knew, things I didn’t. Classical, futurist, contemporary, extempore. It was like a light on in the Vista, burning even if I couldn’t see it. The day after tomorrow my mother would come home. And there would be trouble to sort out. Trouble large as hills on my horizon. Only today then, and tomorrow, and I’d ruined everything.