Today’s Story, 6/3/11 – Luck be a Ladee

While I'm still less than pleased with certain aspects of this story, it was a lot of fun to write. Hopefully, you'll have fun reading it, too.

 
 

Luck be a Ladee

 

"Dad, Mom broke again!"

    Dammit, Carl thought. He'd just sat down and flipped on the TV. "Larry," Carl bellowed as he grunted his way out of the recliner, "you'd better be telling the truth."

    "Give me a polygraph!" Larry's ten-year-old smart-ass voice screeched back.

    Carl shook his head as he moved from the living room to the kitchen. Larry looked up at him and pointed to the floor, where Kate sprawled in front of the open fridge door.

    "At least you could've closed it," Carl grumbled and nudged Kate out of the way so he could shut the door. Kate's face stared blankly up at him.

    "Give me some room," Carl ordered, and Larry stepped over his mother and hung at the edge of the kitchen, watching closely. Carl heaved Kate into a seated position against the fridge and gingerly touched her neck, which was turned at an odd angle. He heard and felt gears grind and then click into place, and he felt a little better.

    Carl got back to his feet and dug out his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans. Using thick He punched in the tech support number he knew by heart. After a few seconds, a computerized voice enjoined him to listen carefully since the menu of options had changed recently. The menu was always changing, so Carl stabbed the number 0. A few clicks later and he was on the phone with Jared Patecki, Technical Resource Specialist for Ladee Incorporated.

    "Good evening, Mr. Roth, thanks for being a loyal Ladee Incorporated customer, how can I help you?" Jared asked the scripted question with a little more verve than the others, and faint hope bloomed in Carl that he actually might get something useful from the call this time.

    "My wife…uh, model went down," Carl explained. Larry had crept back in and knelt down beside him, large eyes trained on his mother. His third mother, technically, if you counted the human one and then the other model that crapped out after a year of mediocre service.

    "May I ask how it happened?"

    "Hold on, let me ask my kid," Carl said, covering the bottom of the cell phone. "What happened, Larry?"

    Larry shrugged. "She said she was going to start supper and asked what I wanted. I said hot dogs and fries."

    "What? She wouldn't have made you that."

    "But she asked."

    "And then what, Mr. I-want-a heart-attack-at-twelve?"

    "Then nothing. She fell down and shut off."

    Carl relayed Larry's narrative to Jared, who didn't reply, but Carl heard him dutifully typing in his cubicle somewhere in the mid-west, where it was much colder and two hours earler. Men were just getting in their cars, eager to get home and warm up and devour meals lovingly prepared by their Ladees.

    "Mr. Roth, may I have your model's serial number?" Jared asked.

    "Yeah, let me turn her over." Carl picked Kate's relatively light form up and draped her across his lap, like he was getting ready to spank her. That wasn't really his thing, though. He certainly used his model for sex, and if had the money and inclination had the money, he could have coded her with any flavor of kink. Some guys went straight to the Japanese, who made the first models. the Japanese models were less buggy, but they were also more expensive and looked like an anime character come to life with giant bug-eyes and tiny mouths.

    "Mr. Roth? The serial number?"

    "Right. It's LD-5687-908-AADX." Carl focused on the task at hand and shoved aside images of him and Kate together in bed. If he couldn't get her fixed tonight, he'd have to wait ship her out, wait for a technician to fix her and ship her back.

    "Thank you, sir." Carl stroked Kate's hair and listened to Jared peck at the keyboard. "Just to let you know, we've received a lot of calls about this model recently."

    "Because it's faulty?" Carl was in no mood to be jerked around. "Get to the point. What can I do to get her up and running tonight?"

    "I want to try a couple of things," Jared said patiently. "First, can you place your model near your computer and plug her in?"

    "Yeah, hold on." Carl got to his feet. "Larry, you seen the charging cable?"

    "No. Can I just make myself a peanut butter sandwich and go upstairs?"

    "Help me find the cord first." Carl dragged Kate to the computer, which sat on a little desk in the living room. Her right shoe came off, and he told Larry to get it. Larry rolled his eyes.

    "I said help me find the cord!" Carl commanded, and Larry walked over to the computer desk, got on his knees to scoot under the desk, and emerged with the cord in his hand. "Here. Happy now?"

    Carl snatched the cord from his son's hand and shoved it in the USB port. He plugged the other end into the tiny port on the back of Kate's head. Carl moved the mouse around to bring the computer back to life and grabbed the phone back. "All right, she's plugged up."

    "And your still logged into our server, Mr. Roth?"

    "Yeah, I never logout."

    "That's what we want." More clacking on the keyboard. "I'm going to remote into your system and see if it's a software issue."

    Carl sat back and watched the mouse move across the screen click on the Ladee icon and then click its way into the program's innards. It always made Carl a little nervous when tech support did this, but he wasn't sure why. It's not like he had anything to hide. He watched Jared input a password to get to protected files and then in Kate's run system.

    "Okay, Mr. Roth, I need you to press the button in your model's right palm."

    "Got it." Carl reached out at took Kate's small hand and turned it palm-up. He wanted her hand to respond, to entwine with his fingers, to react like she normally did. Her hand remained an inert, plastic appendage. Carl frowned and pressed the tiny, flesh-colored button in Kate's palm. Nothing happened.

    Carl looked back to the screen and saw streams of information, most of it indecipherable, moving across his screen. "What are you doing now?" he asked.

    "Just running a couple of debug commands," Jared said, "all very routine. You're in luck, Mr. Roth. It's a software issue. I'll have her up and running in a few minutes."

    Carl looked from the screen to Kate, Kate to the screen. He was dimly aware that Larry had made his sandwich and retreated to his room. He needed Kate back online andback in his life. He didn't care if they played games in the bed tonight or not, he just needed the light to blink back on in her perfectly shaped blue eyes. He needed her voice modulator to clear its static, as it always did on reboot, and speak his name in one perfectly enunciated syllable.

    Carl looked back at the screen and narrowed his eyes. Jared was no longer running debug programs. He was sniffing around in Carl's private documents.

    "Hey, what are you doing?" Carl snapped into the phone.

    "Just making sure your system is clean, Mr. Roth. All very routine."

    "Bullshit it's routine! You guys have never gone through my system, so why are you doing it now?"

    "Like I said, I'm making sure everything is tip-top running condition," Jared said, but his voice wasn't as cheery as before. It was clinical, almost cold. Almost—

    "Am I talking to a human or a bot?"

    "I am a bot, Mr. Roth. Does that make any difference?"

    "Yes, it makes a difference!" Carl began clicking the mouse frantically, trying to stop files from uploading. "Put a human on the phone!"

    "I am perfectly capable of assisting you, Mr. Roth," Jared said. "My customer service ratings are higher than most of my human counterparts."

    Kate shuddered into consciousness, startling Carl and making him yelp girlishly. Light dawned behind her eyes and the wires behind her mouth formed a smile. She reached out, brushed his cheek and said, "Am I okay?"

    "That about wraps it up, Mr. Roth," Jared's voice drifted in Carl's ear. He blinked rapidly and looked back at the screen. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

    "Hold on," Carl said to Kate, who continued looking at him quizzically. "Why were you going through my stuff?"

    "Mr. Roth, when you purchased your model from us, you signed an agreement that gave us permission to access your personal files."

    "The hell I did."

    "You did." Jared paused, and Carl heard more keyboard clicks. "I'm looking at a copy of your agreement. One page five of the terms of use, you acknowledge that Ladee Incoporated—"

    "I don't care what I signed!" Carl shouted. "You have no right to go through my files!"

    "We have every right do," Jared said reasonably.

    "No way. Look, I want to talk to a human about this."

    "They've all left for the day, Mr. Roth. Do you no longer wish to abide by the terms of use?"

    "Not if you're going to ranksack my computer."

    Jared fell silent for a moment. "I am rendering your contract null and void, at your request," he finally said. "There will be a five hundred dollar termination fee and you'll be expected to send your model back within thirty days. Of course, she will cease functioning immediately."

    Kate looked at Carl, her synthetic eyes pleading. "I don't want to die," she whispered.

    "You can't die, Kate," Carl said, though he didn't believe his own words. She could experience death, though not the way he would one day. She would, in the words of Jared, cease functioning. The idea seemed to scare Kate, but Carl knew she was just following a script, a series of codes to make her lips tremble, cause her blue eyes to fill with saline solution. He wiped a tear away and licked it off his finger.

    "Wait," Carl said into the phone. "Don't do that."

    "As you wish, Mr. Roth. We will continue to honor your contract and ask the same of you. Is there anything else I can help you with this evening?"

    "No."

    "Then I will bid you a good night. Thank you for being a loyal Ladee Incorporated customer."

    Carl clicked off the phone and set it beside the computer. Kate drew him into a fierce hug and murmured, "Thank you. Thank you for saving me. I'm sorry I glitched on you and Larry earlier."

    Carl nestled his face into Kate's neck; she grew warmer the longer she was online. "It's okay," he said, "you couldn't help it."

    Kate released Carl and stood, unplugging herself from the computer. Upstairs, Larry's heavy metal music punished the floorboards. "What do you want for supper?" she asked. "I believe that's where I was."

    "How about hot dogs and fries?"

    Kate's delicate brown furrowed. "Are you sure?"

    "It's a special occasion, wouldn't you agree?"

    Kate offered the smile Carl knew so well, that he had designed to perfection. "Yes it is," she said and returned to the kitchen.

 

Poem of the Day, 6/3/11 - Entering the Room

Entering the Room


When you enter like that--
tragically, hips akimbo,
the scent from your neck
floating and raising
the best part of me--

my thoughts dilate
to include you in dark
scenarios, sans clothes

finally revealed to me
like a dream catching sense
at the very end before\
I wake--

you, still roaming the caves
of my mind, tracing the walls
with fingertips I long to taste.

Today’s Story, 6/1/11 - Traté de Amo

I wrote this story before "The Story of Frank." It's pretty depressing, but that's par for the course when it comes to my stories. I'd been out rock-hunting by the train tracks with Sam before I settled in to write the first draft. The character of Layton popped right into view (always a good sign that the story's going to work for me). My friend Jennifer provided Maricela's name. My apologies for the formatting; I just can't seem to get it dialed in.

 

Traté de Amo

 

The sound of the train woke Layton up, as it did most days. He stirred in the hotel bed, surrounded by pillows, the sheet draping his thin, pale body. He stretched and rolled over, but kept his eyes closed, listening to the rattling, clacking machine barrel down the tracks.

    He'd grown up around trains and loved them. His uncle Bryce worked for CSX for sixty years before the company forced him into retirement at eighty. Bryce was the toughest man Layton had ever known, certainly tougher than his worthless daddy. When Bryce came to visit, Layton listened to his stories of working the trains while his daddy slouched in his recliner and drank beer after beer after beer. Layton's mother had enough sense to cut out of her marriage when Layton was still in diapers. He had no idea where she was.

    Layton opened his eyes as the sounds of the train faded. He sat up slowly, feeling his back crackle and resist. He wasn't old—forty two next summer. But he looked old and felt old so people usually took him for old. I didn't bother Layton these days.

    Naked, Layton walked to the windows shades and flung them open, not caring if a mother and her small children saw him, or a cop, or the hotel staff. He wasn't particularly proud or ashamed of his body. It was functional. He lingered in front of the window, letting the Texas sun gradually warm his chest, his neck, his arms. He turned, leaving the shades open, and went to take a leak.

    Blood in the urine turned the bowl a delicate shade of pink. Layton shrugged. His kidney's had been flaring up again, no big surprise there. He knew he should get back to the doctor, determine if it was another infection or something worse this time. The last time he visited the doctor, though, Layton had sworn it to be the last. He didn't need some punk-ass kid straight out of medical school telling him to ease up on the bottle, watch his fat intake, or whatever nonsense they expect you to swallow when they shovel it. No, sir, Layton was finished with those roadblocks in his life.

    Would he have done anything different if God had seen fit to reveal the plan, to pull back the universal curtain and whisper down from Heaven, "Hey, Layton, this is your final act. Make it count, my boy." Well, no. He would still go to the hotel room's tiny fridge, reach into its even tinier freezer, and pull out the pint of vodka, take a good, bracing pull. It always cleared his head in the morning, even as it burned a path down his throat and shook his insides up. Talk about a good morning salute. Good day, sunshine, let's start the day a little drunk.

    He'd been staying the Gulch Creek Hotel now for nearly a month, and had paid rent through two months. Slightly buzzed, Layton surveyed the room. He'd added a few touches, though nothing permanent. He replaced one of the room's tacky beachscape paintings with a framed charcoal sketch of a man and a dog he'd seen at the flea market when he'd first blown into town. The old painting he stashed in the closet. He bought a ten dollar table at the Good Will so he could have two rather than one. He nailed a large nail above the bed where he placed his hat every night before he closed his eyes. When the maid Maricela said to him, "No, Mr. Layton, no. You no do that," he promised he would take the nail out, patch and paint over the hole when he cleared town. Maricela glared at him and stormed out, but she let the nail remain.

    Since that night, Maricela was the only maid who cleaned Layton's room. He never placed the little plastic do not disturb sign on the handle, so it was nothing for her to stumble in on Layton totally naked, drinking cheap vodka, and watching reruns of Rockford Files. The first time it happened, she crossed herself, lowered her eyes, and backed out of the room. Layton had shrugged, turned up the volume, taken another sip. The second time, she came in the room, eyes still lowered, and waited.

    "Can I help you, Maricela?" Layton asked lazily, vodka bottle firmly in hand, the TV playing out some sad black-and-white drama.

    "Cleaning time, Mr. Layton."

    "I'm aware."

    "Why you are always naked?"

    "Why do you always come in here at three when you know I'm naked?"

    Maricela kept her head lowered. She could have answered, "Because Manuel say so," or "because that's the way it's always been." Instead, she backed out of the room, pulling her cart of sheets, towels, and cleaners.

    " Christ," Layton said. "Let me put some pants on. But I'm not leaving, okay? I paid for this room straight up and you can't make me leave just because you're going to put on new sheets."

    "Okay, Mr. Layton," Maricela said, inching her way back. Layton watched her approach the bed, admired her broad ass. He almost reached out to stroke it. He went into the bathroom, grabbed a pair of dingy Wranglers, and slipped them over his knobby hips. When he came back out, Maricela had already stripped the bed and was quickly applying the new sheets. He couldn't help but admire her efficiency.

    "How long you been here?" Layton asked, firing up an unfiltered Camel.

    Maricela didn't turn when she responded, "No smoking, Mr. Layton."

    "Come on."

    "No."

    "I pay my money, Maricela, so just let me—"

    "I say no, Mr. Layton."

    Layton turned and flicked the cigarette in the sink, where it went out with a small hiss. He wondered if his mother had sounded like Maricela—firm with a slightly elevated voice, but not crazy.

    "You haven't answered my question yet," Layton said.

    Maricela brushed past him on the way to the bathroom with fresh towels. She gathered Layton's wet towels and washcloths. "Let me work," she said.

    "All right, all right," Layton said, holding his hands up. "In fact, I'll just go out and smoke, come back when you're done."

    "Gracias."

    "De nada."

    The third time she opened the door to Layton's naked, drunken self, she climbed in bed with him.

 

    They didn't make love. There's a distinction between making love and what Layton and Maricela did. Love making is what you do when you're in love and maybe feel like taking your time. It's like heating up a pot of water of the stove. Pure fucking, on the other hand, deals with lust and immediacy. Want hot water? Run the tap for a few seconds until it burns like hell, and bam, you're fucking.

    Layton had only ever fucked during the course of his sexual life, which was limited to four women. They were particularly impressive or pretty, and didn't have more than a few thoughts rattling around in their heads, which Layton preferred. His first time was with Stacy Horton, who was sixteen and Layton was nineteen. He had always told the boys in town he lost his virginity at fifteen, the average age of the liars he surrounded himself with. That fateful night, Stacy and Layton got thoroughly trashed on Boone's Farm and then got thoroughly vertical in the back of his Ford truck. Other girls, drunk or not, might have protested Layton's lack of protection, but Stacy didn't care. She was the kind of girl that gave blow jobs in high school bathrooms and bragged about it, hoping to inch up her popularity up among the boys. They boys continued treating her like trash, including Layton. That night left Layton finally feeling like a man and Stacy with a pregnancy that she later terminated in a botched abortion that left her unable to conceive.

    The other three women were forgettable, disposable. After the last one—a wheelchair-bound woman with giant tits and a high, fluty voice—Layton cooled on women. It's not that the distracted him from his goals, since he didn't have any. Women just didn't add much to his life. Drinking became a much steadier companion.

    For Maricela's part, sexual contact had always been accompanied by violence. Raped by her uncle and a cousin from age ten until fifteen, Maricela didn't trust men. In fact, she was normally terrified of them, but there was something about Layton, lying there naked and almost helpless, the smell of vodka and sweat clinging to him. She didn't think he would hurt her, and she found herself utterly surprised—and pleased— that she desired him.

    So every afternoon, Maricela came to clean Layton's room and found him in some stage of drunkenness and always unclothed. If she timed it right at three o'clock, he was a little bit soused. If she doddled and waited until three-fifteen or three-thirty, which occasionally couldn't be helped, Layton could be nearly comatose. He could get it up most of the time, but a few days a week his equipment simply malfunctioned, and Layton would curse at himself, sometimes crying an apology before passing out on the bed. Maricela noticed the liquor bottles were getting bigger. In the corner of the room, they multiplied like glass rabbits.

    Maricela was satisfied for the first time in a while, even though she was worried. Layton had told her he had kidney problems, but he clammed up when she asked why he drank so much. Really, she knew the reason. Her own father drank himself to death, and she was sure it was intentional. Layton was doing the same thing.

    "You have family?" she asked one afternoon, the sun trickling through the curtains, Layton stirring slightly under the covers beside her.

    "Probably somewhere."

    "Probably?"

    "I never kept up with it, really. I probably sprang a few kids into the world, but none of them have claimed me. Not that I blame them."

    "Parents?"

    "Long dead." Layton fumbled beside the bed for his pack of cigarettes, withdrew one and a lighter. He shot a questioning look at Maricela, who shrugged. He lit up and blew smoke at the ceiling.

    "So no one to be sad when you go?"

    "Not a soul."

    Maricela tried to curl against Layton's body, but it was difficult. The man was all angles and hard edges. "I would be sad," she said in a soft voice.

    Layton smiled around his cigarette. "No, you wouldn't be."

    "I would."

    "That's nice."

    They remained quiet, lying beside each other, until it was time for Maricela to clean the other rooms. After she left, Layton cracked open another bottle.

 

    Over the next month, Maricela tried reasoning with Layton to stop drinking, or at least slow down. He wouldn't hear it. If anything, he increased his intake, which scared Maricela to death. She lit votive candles for him every Sunday, pled with the Virgin Mary.

    Layton spent the day either in bed, vomiting in the toilet, or pissing blood. He couldn't keep food down. He lost thirty pounds and then ten more. He was the walking, drinking dead.

    "Por favor, no morir," Maricela begged Layton one afternoon. Outside, the train blasted down the tracks. Layton swayed to the noise.

    "Don't worry about me," he said.

    "Me preocupa todo el tiempo. Por favor quédate conmigo."

"No can do, señorita."

    Maricela, tears welling in her eyes, pulled herself away from Layton. She went to Manuel and said she was too sick to work. Manuel smirked and asked if she was too sick to be employed. Maricela dried her eyes and told Manuel to go to hell. Manuel reached across the counter and backhanded Maricela, told her she was worthless and to get out, never return. Maricela swallowed and walked out of the inn.

    She sat under Layton's window, listening to him cough wetly, listening to him trudge back and forth to the bathroom, thought she heard him praying. She wouldn't be there when he died.

    Maricela finally stood and tried looking through the window, but Layton had draw the shades again. "Traté de amo," she murmured.

    She stood, took in the dusty landscape, listened for the train. It was long gone now, heaving itself toward a destination Maricela could only dream of.

Today’s Poem, 6/1/11 - Lust by the Numbers

I have a friend who's obsessed with math in all its form. While this poem isn't about him (he's happily married and has a son) he certainly inspired it. Don't believe I'll share it with him, though....

Lust by the Numbers

Pure calculation incites him
to rise like a hungry god
and forfeit caution and measure
to cipher her directly.

Mathematically, it makes sense
like nothing else has: a perfect proof
formed by the angle of her cheeks,
the jut of hip and tapering of leg.

Positive in his brain and heart,
he tosses off theroms by way
of flirting, but the geometry of her face
remains puzzled, her desire

already in another man's queue,
the one across the bar who shunned
math the first chance he got,
assured he would never need it.

Trembling, cogitating on this:
where are the women promised
in the numbers of my dreams
that dance in nightly rhythm?

She accepts the drink,
quaffs it faster than he can add sums.
She settles like a sigh against her chosen,
unaware of the man working to erase himself.