Act Fourteen - Scene 7: Mind Games

‘It is amazing how fickle human beings really are. Roger rarely asks me anything, and it is almost never about a case, yet he broke that conviction and asked me to come along with him this time. For once, I feel wanted.’

    Roger’s first case since the incident had arrived earlier that day. He was dressing, looking himself over in the mirror and prowling, practicing swinging his newly healed arm and looking his impeccably boring business front that eluded calmness and familiarity to the people of Paradigm City when I entered the room.

    He stops in his tracks. I pause to look at him on my way to the closet with some of his clean clothes hanging on hangers suspended over my shoulder.

    He turns away, not as quickly as before, and that fact alone caused some elation within me. “Aren’t you going to get ready?” he asks me in his formal ‘do this for me whether you want to or not,’ voice and I hang the clothes carefully in order.

    “Get ready?”

    “I thought you would be accompanying me on this trip,” he says, buttoning up the cuffs of his white shirt to busy his hands and draw his eyes away from mine in the mirror as I straighten his closet.

    “Would you like me to?” I pause, and wait for his response.

    He hesitates a step between fear of showing weakness, a sad turn of events for I never will see him that way and if I could it would not be at this time, and some unidentifiable emotion I first noticed when he took my hand after his nightmares several days ago and urged me to stay flashes across his face as he looks up. I believe now he realizes what I meant to do that evening, and is extra cautious around me because of it.

    “It’s not entirely necessary.”

    My heart sinks, if I do have one, and I can feel my expression changing.

    “But I would like you to come along anyway.”

    One ritual broken.

    I never ask her to come along unless it is something that will be dangerous enough that I feel the necessity of her presence to protect my objective or myself. I’ve never brought her along just because she is herself. But then I never saw her as anything more than an android before either.

    “So…?” I ask, hopeful that my voice doesn’t sound as desperate as I think it does.

    “I will accompany you, Roger.” Her voice is still devoid of emotion, but I can see it in her eyes… she is pleased that I asked her to come.

    I look into the mirror again and straighten my tie.

    “Are you not yet ready?”

    I look over and see that she has finished with hanging up the clothes and is staring at me. “Shouldn’t you… change?” I reply.

    I look down at my clothes and nod slowly before turning and leaving the room. As I get to my own I strip off the apron in disgust. Whatever possessed me to wear the thing I do not know. I toss it to the bed and begin to roll down my sleeves. I only rolled them up because I was doing laundry. I bleach his white shirts; it is one of the rules. I don’t think Roger minds white. He wears a white shirt every day underneath all that black.

    As for me… I try to follow his rules, but I could not find a dress that I liked in all black… one that was modest enough for me to wear around the house and clean in, or else it was dark purple. As it is I ended up with black only slightly rust tinged. I believe this dress is older than it looks. I would much rather wear something else. I have another outfit that I have been meaning to try out in front of him… but the idea of defying his wishes keeps me timidly in my matronly outfit.

    Oh well, I can admire it myself. Perhaps I will wear it to dinner sometime so that he can grow accustomed to it before I leave the house in it. I straighten my skirt and notice that the hem is wearing.

    Once too many times being yanked in the wind I suppose. I’ll fix it when we return.

    Roger looks pleased as I enter the room with the coat he gave me over one arm. I am glad. His small smile is a nice reward. If he would smile at me like that again I would wear it every day… but now it is time to go.

    She must notice the look on my face. I can’t wipe the small smile off of my lips fast enough for it to escape her notice. Her eyes are very sharp and it oftentimes gives her face a look of concentration when she first enters a room. Stunning.

    “It shouldn’t take too long, Norman.”

    “I’ll have your dinner prepared at the usual time, then, sir.”

    “All right.” Norman turns to go about the business of the house, leaving the two of us alone as we step into the elevator. I slip my arms into my coat and prepare to leave the elevator. She stands still.

    “Dorothy… I…”

    She looks up at me with innocent curiosity.

    “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you lately.”

    I turn my eyes forward, expecting an indolent retort, but she does not respond other than a quiet, “I forgive you.” That is puzzling. She has more spirit than that, usually.

    “And I keep having…”

    “Your nightmares are personal. I do not wish to pry in something that you wish private. I apologize for meddling in your affairs.”

    I turn and find that now she is the one staring through the wall in front of us.

    I reach over and touch her hand. She turns her head towards me.

    “Thank you for saving me from them,” I say and the doors open before us. For a long moment we simply stand there, and then I reach forward and open the door. “After you,” I say and she steals a look at me from the corner of her eye before moving forward.

    Smiling I move forward.

    She pauses at the door to put on her coat. She gets her left arm in, and then fumbles with the other sleeve, and I take the opportunity to see how much she’s grown towards acting human. Then the gentleman in me gets the better of the part that enjoys seeing her less than perfect and I step forward, my hand holding the offending sleeve still for her arm.

    “Thank you,” she murmurs as I pull it up over her shoulders gently. It fits nicely. Nicer than I thought it would. “You’re welcome,” I reply, stepping forward and exiting into the garage.

    Sliding down into my seat behind the wheel of the Griffon that is a normal sight on the streets of Paradigm City, I contemplate her figure as she settles into the seat on her side without much movement other than to place her hands in her lap.

    The car favors her side lightly, but that is understandable. She does bear the weight of almost one and a half times her size of metal inside her. I wonder what it feels like to be her. As usual, wondering about her opens the floodgates of thought. To know your internal ‘organs’ and how they function, to feel things and know that they are mortal. A firm prop in the floodgates now, sometimes, I think I could think about her for hours if left unchecked. I wonder how she deals with that…

    “Roger, you should start the car if we are going to leave.”

    Her voice, like a knife, snaps the doorstop in half and the floodwaters are closed off to me again for a time. I start the Griffon and the car purrs to life under the gentle turn of the keys. The car moves gracefully with the barest touch of my foot to the pedal.

    It is good that some things remain the same.

    This sudden attraction… no, I cannot be attracted to her. Just because she’s pretty… smart… she’s still a machine! No matter how much she’s progressed she will never be human, Roger Smith!

    “I have never seen this part of the city before, Roger,” her voice is soft, calming.

    A set of nightmares should not produce this reaction. Just because she saved me from them… she didn’t even say anything about them. Perhaps her face in the moonlight was just another hallucination, her kindness a mere apparition by a fevered mind. What then of this feeling?

    But I could not feel so at ease with her if it were merely pretend. And the hand I grasped the other night was real, no matter what else. And the body next to mine, synthetic or not was warm next to me when I woke up. The hair was hers; the hands pressed gently against my chest were hers, even the thigh under my hand as I touched it tentatively.

    All of it was real.

    For that night at least, all of it was real.

    He just kept driving. I tried to ask him about the area, but I soon realized he was not listening to me. I stopped asking questions after that. And then he pulled up here, at this house. It seems like it should be familiar, this house, but I cannot understand why.

    “Roger, this is not the proper address.”

    Suddenly he comes to life again.

    “Oh,” he says quickly, shifting gears in his giant car and moving us on.

    There is something familiar about that house. I should not remember it, I have not been there that I can recall. The car moves on, he leaves the area. Why does that feel so familiar?

    “So we’ll check with the girl first?” I nod. “Try to be a little more down to earth with her, Roger.”

    Is that jealousy I hear? We get out and I seal up the car before following Dorothy into the building. The woman at the small reception desk smiles at us kindly. “Have you come for a portrait?”

    “Uh, no, we’ve come to meet Miss Dorland.”

    “You must be the man that Mister Dorland hired to retrieve the figurines then.”

    “That I am, Miss…”

    “Misses Peterson, at your service,” she makes a small note in the book in front of her. I look around as she comes out from behind the counter. “I’ll take your coats, and your jacket, Mr. Smith.”

    “Uh…”

    “Such a finely tailored jacket would surely get paint on it, and Miss Hope does not use much black paint,” the woman adds in an aside to Dorothy, “she isn’t partial to seeing it on others.”

    I see a bemused look on Dorothy’s fate.

    “Misses Peterson, who’s there?” that must be her voice.

    “The man your father hired to find the statuettes, and a young lady.”

    “Send them up.”

    “It appears you’re forced to break your own rules, Roger,” Dorothy says with the hint of a smile on her face. Lousy girl. I take off my gloves and put them in my coat pocket before following her up the stairs to the small first floor studio.

    The room, for all practical purposes, is a wreck. On one wall are hanging, unframed, pictures so lifelike they appear to be photographs, some in rigid style, others more fluid. Along the floor are various canvases with varying degrees of completion. A sturdy, but older looking, couch lies against the wall lined with windows next to a desk stacked in papers and littered with paint tubes. Three easels are in various places around the room, and a small path leads to an open area against one wall that has a large gray area painted on it, various chairs set close by. The path also leads to the couch, where a pillow and blanket are strewn.

    No one is in the room, but the young lady, dark hair pulled back from her face by a messier braid than what the picture held, looks at the area with the single chair in the open space. Her canvas is green, the gray wall not looking its color, and the chair takes shape as she adds a few final touches.

    “My name is Roger Smith, Miss Dorland, and this is Dorothy Waynewright. Your father…”

    “So he calls himself,” she says crossly, finally turning cold eyes to take in the interlopers. “You,” she points at Dorothy, “sit.”

    She looks at me briefly before complying with the demand, sinking down slowly to keep it in one piece. “Fold your hands in your lap and turn your chin towards the Negotiator.”

    “How did you-?”

    “Despite the beliefs of certain people I am neither unaware of the current events in the city, nor am I stupid. Please turn your chin towards me a little bit more, Dorothy.”

    “So you know why I came.”

    “Father hired you to get back my birthday present. I do hope you find them.”

    “Can you tell me a little about the statuettes, Miss Dorland?”

    “If you don’t start calling me Hope we’re going to have a problem. Now… they were each made of ebony inset with silver and ivory.”

    “Why not gold?”

    “Because.” She reaches to a table behind her, while still watching Dorothy breathe carefully, and finally steals a glance at the paints to choose the right one. Ivory white. “They were six inches in height, there were twenty-two to represent the major arcana. Each had a different name. If you would like a list of them… I have one on my desk.”

    “Uh…”

    She rolls her eyes and takes three steps, yanking a paper off the top of one of the stacks and moves back to her chosen easel with practiced ease. “Step carefully.”

    “Might I inquire how you are so ready for these questions?”

    “Two reasons,” she hands him back the paper. “The plausible one is that the Military police already came by, it was yesterday, and they wanted to know the same you do. If you could get a copy of that to Major Dastun so he’ll stop breathing down my neck, I’d be grateful. Now turn the other way about an inch.” Dorothy is sitting almost motionless, but obeys the command, again.

    “I see.”

    “You want to know the other reason.”

    “Why do I have the feeling you aren’t going to tell me?”

    “I don’t know, but for whatever reason, you’re right.”

    It is amusing to see the look on Roger’s face as she answers the questions he’s thinking. “Well then… why are you painting Dorothy?”

    “She wants me to.”

    He looks at me oddly. “Dorothy?”

    How can she read my mind? “Yes, Roger?”

    “You want her to?”

    “She is a wonderful artist, Roger. I think she was waiting for us.”

    He glances at the canvas, no doubt looking at the picture she’s doing. She spares him a brief glance before turning back to me. “Whoever made you knew what they were doing.”

    “I believe he did,” I respond. She is blunt, very to the point. Perhaps that is what comes of knowing the outcome to every situation as she indeed seems to. Roger mutters something too low for her ears, but I catch it easily. I wonder what he means by calling her a ‘mind-reader’. She smiles at me, a warm, friendly smile that not many people give me, considering my stature and dress.

    “Sorry to interrupt,” Roger says after a moment, “but we’ve got to be going.”

    We are supposed to go to the crime scene next. “I do not think Major Dastun will allow me onto the scene as readily as you alone, Roger.”

    “I know,” he says with a tone implying he had been debating the same point. Hope continues to paint, and then she sets down her pallet, grabbing a piece of lead from the table with her most used paints. “So, Miss Hope, what do you think?”

    “It will be fine for Dorothy to stay, if she wishes it.”

    “I do.”

    “Well then,” Roger says with the disbelief still an undertone in his voice, “I’ll come back and pick you up. If there’s anything else you can think of, Miss Hope, please don’t hesitate to call,” he hands her a card, which she sets aside without much thought. He looks at me for a long moment, and then at the lights in the room, as thought they make me look different.

    “I’ll be back for you, ok Dorothy?”

    I nod. It isn’t as though I expected otherwise. If you didn’t come back for me I would walk home. It isn’t as far as it could be. “Good bye, Roger.”

    He leaves, I hear the door downstairs and I return my eyes to Hope.

    “You should really tell him.”

***