Like Clockwork (6 page)

But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. He was ...
Adam was so ... unique. She finally came to it, hearing the clack and clatter
of keys and the burble of phones all around her, thinking of those little round
eyes on her, and how much she wanted them on her. To notice her. He was
special. He was unexpected, he was different, and she didn’t want to say
anything about him, about how she met him, about what had happened. About what
was happening now – that he was in her apartment right at this very moment,
waiting (
maybe?
) for her to come home, and she was looking at the clock,
waiting to punch out the second it was five so she could get back to him, back
to his whirs and clicks and gentle concern and weirdness. And his eyes. And
those hands. She sat at her desk, eyes half closed, and in her head she could
feel those bronzed fingers along the side of her neck, so powerful and strong,
yet brushing like a feather down to her clavicle, how they would almost seem to
tremble in touching her.

“Miss Evie,” he said. And the voice in her
head was hoarse, barely contained, and she would
stir
against him. “Evie,”
he would say. And his hand would slip down her side slowly, wrapping around her
waist to
grip
it and ....

She was losing her fucking mind. She took
every cigarette break she could, and one more besides. And still she kept
looking at the clock, the agonizing tick of which only made her think of him
more, made time stretch out longer and longer until finally it was five and she
was free and ....

Calm again. On the Skytrain. Smiling at her
own reflection in the window. Looking out into the rain. Was she really that
desperate? Was she so hopeless, that
this
was all it took: his concern,
his attention? Was
this
all she wanted? That a ... a robot, a
machine
could ... could do what? And she’d be happy with that? It was pathetic. It was
ridiculous. It was, let’s be honest here, absolutely insane.

But she held her breath when she opened the
door. She held her breath when she opened the door.

“Good Evening, Miss Evie.” Adam was already
standing. She was falling in love with him. “This thing hopes your day went
well.” She didn’t dare say a word about it. She was scared as hell.

“I need a cigarette,” was all she said. She
turned, and walked out.

“Very well,” she heard behind her as the
door closed in his face.

Under the awning in the rain, not moving, she
wondered what she would do. It was there, alright, inside her, unmistakeable, despite
everything, despite
everything,
it was undeniable. She could feel it,
the rush and soar in her lungs at the idea, just the very idea of –

What? Did he know?
Could
he know?
She didn’t know anything about him at all but, oh god help her, she wanted to.
She wanted to know everything all of a sudden.

And he didn’t know her either. Not the
things that mattered, that could possibly matter. All he knew of her was her
deranged apartment, full of her messes and her failures, and how was that any
way for anything to happen?

Because, “What-could-happen-here?” was a
question she
was
asking herself, and the answer, the end result, wasn’t
clear. Yet the asking made her feel ... everything, made her want to step into
that dark, just to find out, just to know. She looked up at her bay window,
where he was, inside, and she wanted to take that chance. She had to, she
couldn’t help herself, now.

She tossed the cigarette into the gutter,
and there were people walking by, so many people, and lights were going off and
on and there were busses stopping and cars going and none of them knew this
secret, or how wonderful this secret had just started to become to her; none of
them knew what it was doing to her.

She walked back up to the apartment,
nervous. She wasn’t going to pretend she wasn’t, and that made it alright, made
the tumble of stars in her stomach more than alright; it made them sacred,
somehow. Stupid or not, it made them all sacred, whirling in her chest, in her
head, in her spine. She opened the door again.

“Hey,” she said. And she took her chances.
She just ... wasn’t sure exactly where to start. It had been so long, she
wasn’t sure where to begin.

“Miss Evie,” Adam said, and bowed,
slightly.

“Did you – would you care to sit?”

“Sit?”

“Adam, please sit down,” she said, and it
all stuck inside of her, all of it, and she felt so stupid. But she had to. She
had
to know.

“Yes, Miss Evie,” he said, after a moment.
She went to the mock fireplace in the living room and lit a few candles; it
seemed necessary. She came and sat down next to him on the sofa, clenching and
unclenching all of herself, all her secrets inside her chest, her hands folding
over it still, keeping it back, clutching it between the two tight little fists
inside her, all of it so precious and ignored, precious and denied, and she was
trembling slightly, because it felt so much like the real thing. The real big
scary awful goddamn thing. And how did she start? Where did it start? And would
he take it? Take any of her at all? Would he know what she meant? Would he love
her for it?

 Her lips were tight against her teeth,
held closed. She watched him, searched him. That closed silent face that still
felt to her that it watched back, that it saw all. She sighed then, and let it
all go, let the hands in her chest open and out it flew, a little at first, and
then all the way.

“I was seventeen when my father died,” she
started. “And I don’t think I ever knew him. I think he wished I was a boy, and
he didn’t know what to do with me .... ”

And she leapt. She told him the things, the
real things. Not the boys, but the loneliness being with them. Not the job, but
the feeling of failure she had, sitting there at that cubicle, knowing she
could do more, do better, could be more in her life than
this
and yet ...
she told him how she’d felt most of her life.

“It was like ... like I had failed at being
a boy on the day I was born,” she said. “And everything was sort of downhill
from there, no matter how much I tried.”

He didn’t ask her why, why she was telling
him it, or why he needed to know. He didn’t laugh it off. He clicked and ticked
and whirred. And he listened. He asked her how she’d felt when she’d stood at
her father’s funeral, and she said she hadn’t even known what to say in the
eulogy because, hell, all she knew of him was that he seemed to
hate
her
when she started growing up, that he must have hated her for who she was since he
was never around anymore.

Parcifal and Lancelot came out to see, and
even when she was much, much older, she would remember it: by candlelight, a
cat in each of their laps, her giving all of her fractured self, and him
accepting, ticking softly. And when she ran out of words, when the whole world
that was Evie ran out of ways to show itself, he reached out and she turned and
leaned against him, and his arms held her, his bronze arms holding her, and she
could
feel
the tick beneath his bronze chest, and she closed her eyes,
worn out.

“Miss Evie,” he said, and it wasn’t like
she had fantasized that afternoon, at all. “Evie.” It was something so much
better, his arms around her waist, not gripping, but holding her steady. That
was it for the evening, she couldn’t go any further. It was enough. She fell
asleep leaning against him on the couch, while he ticked on and on.

“These were all my dad left me,” she said,
the next night.

He had made her dinner, but (and it
was
a little annoying sometimes how stuffy he was) he had
insisted
she
actually sit down to eat.

She had pulled out the Box, that only one
or two other men had seen, had had the privilege of seeing.

He turned his head, slightly, looking in.

“They’re, umm ... they’re records. Recorded
music,” she said. “He used to collect them. I wasn’t allowed to even breathe on
them when he was alive,” she said, smirking down at them, sadly, nudging the
box towards Adam with her foot.

“But you kept them,” he said.

“Yeah, well. He would put a record on and
just ... just sit there, y’know? Some people, they like having music on in the
background, but he’d just put it on to listen.” Adam nodded. “He had a chair, ”
she said, going back to that old house in her head. “A lay-Z-boy, sort of full
of holes, you know? Old. And it always smelled like his cigarettes. When I was
like, really, really young, before I started, well looking less like a boy I
guess, I would climb into his lap, and he’d let me sit with him, and we’d
listen to them together.”

Adam looked down at the box, then up to
her. “And you listen to them now?” was all he said.

And she felt her spine start to melt a
little, because it seemed like he knew what she was trying to say.

“Sometimes,” she said, softly. “Sometimes.”

He ticked and clicked and after a while
said, “Thank you,” and that was when she knew, when she really, really knew.
Every step was a leap, and every leap was safe.

“Would you like to listen to one?” she
asked.

“Please, yes,” he said.

“I ... umm .... ” She peered into the Box.
“There’s so many.”

“Which is the one you listen to most?” he
asked. Even though there was no tone to that voice, she could feel it, she
swore she could,  how tender he was under that bronze. She knew it.

She pulled it out, smirking. It was so
stupid, but she couldn’t help it. Someone else, she knew, would laugh at her.
Maybe not
at
her, or maybe not out loud, but somewhere inside they would
be chuckling just a bit. But she felt she could trust him, partly because he
was so new to everything, and yet so old at the same time.

“This one,” she said, pulling it out, the
dorky smiling elephant in one corner, the hippie ferns and the awfully dated
logo. “It’s, umm, it’s The Beach Boys. Smiley Smile,” she said.

“The – ”

“They’re a band. I mean, still, I guess. My
dad, he loved Brian Wilson, the umm ... the songwriter.” She turned the album
over and over in her hands. “He liked this one best.” She held it out to him,
and he took it in those oversized copper hands that looked like they could
crush it, and he seemed so afraid of doing so, his little gears creaking and
clicking, and he handed it back to her, his eyes on hers, and she put the
record on.

After, Evie always thought that both of
them knew what was happening, where it was going. Time and distance made thinking
that way inevitable. What happened next was only right, and fitting, and ... perfect.
Like clockwork. She moved the needle to the sixth dark band, drawing the sound
out with such rich, delicate brushes of the diamond tip.

“
I, I love the colorful clothes she
wears,

and the way the sunlight plays upon her
hair ....
”

She lowered her head, to listen, but she
could feel it happening already. In her heart she was already kissing him,
holding him. His hand touched hers, and they were both sitting on the floor,
heads down before the music, Brian Wilson singing in that achingly wistful tone
between “Good Vibrations” and that haunting desire for something that couldn’t
be contained by the waves of an ocean.

And for Adam, it was the first time, she
knew. The first time he had heard this song, ever. So she heard it again for
the first time through his ears, through their moment of nearness, and she was
hearing that longing, that need, for the first time again, as well.

Afterwards, the song would never be the
same. She would no longer be able to hear it like she had when she was young,
sitting on her father’s lap, wondering where he was, why he went away and what
was wrong with her. She would think of it like this, her body falling into
Adam’s body though they were only sitting there, and hadn’t moved yet, that
threshold crossed when his forehead touched hers, a song not of being lost, but
of being found.

At some point, even the song ceased to
matter and it was only the feeling remaining, her breath short and growing
shorter and she knew it was coming. It had all happened to her before, but not
quite like this, the need growing and growing, and it seemed it would keep getting
more painful and would go on and on while someone somewhere was picking up good
vibrations, getting excitations. Her hand wrapped around the back of his head,
and their mouths finally met, and the hunger that melted her spine from the
base of her neck to the small of her back was so warm and marvelous. How long
it went on, she could never say. The kiss was still with her years later. In
her mind she felt his tongue. In her mind their mouths met perfectly and she
moved with him lower to the floor, and the music was gone and the candles were
gone and it was only her body being pulled to him, pulling him, and him, and
him, and him.

“Evie,” he said, later. They were voices in
the dark, then. Warmth pressed to warmth. At some point, they had ended up in her
bed, and that was all so very fine. She mumbled, sleepily, and her hand ran
along the side of his cheek, down his filigree chest. If someone had asked her
if he ticked or clicked or whirred then, she wouldn’t have known. They were
just voices then, and bodies holding one another happy and close in the dark.