The Silver Metal Lover

alcoholic scent.

“That’ll keep out the cold,” she said. She saw me. “Well, if it isn’t Blondie. Got the jacket on, I see.” My topcoat was open; this was the woman from the clothing stall. “Didn’t know you were here, or I’d have brought a drop for you.”

“She can share mine,” said Silver, and handed me the mug.

I drank. It was coffine, but it had brandy in it.

“Nice jacket,” said the woman, letting the remnants of the crowd, and any who passed, know where it came from. Obligingly, I slipped off the fur, and let the peacocks shine forth on the market.

“Wonderful value,” I said, loud and clear. “And so warm—”

“A bit too warm,” said the woman. She touched my forehead. “Not too bad, but you ought to get home.”

“My mother used to do that,” I said.

“She ought to be in bed,” the woman said to Silver. She winked. I suddenly knew she and he weren’t in some sexual conspiracy. We all were in it, it included me. So I laughed.

Silver was fastening my fur jacket.

“I’m packing up for the night,” he said.

“I should think so,” she said, “you’ve made enough. But you’re good for business, I’ll say that. And I liked that song. That song about the rose. How does it—?”

He sang it to her as he thrust the money in a thick cloth bag.

“A rose by any other name would get the blame for being what it is—the color of a kiss, the shadow of a flame.”

It was an improvisation. I rested against the golden night, and I added in my own, my very own strange new voice, extending his melody: “A rose may earn another name, so call it love, so call it love I will. And love is like the sea, which changes constantly, and yet is still the same.”

The woman looked at me.

Silver said, “That verse is Jane’s verse.”

“Love is like the sea. I love him,” I said to the woman. The brandy filled my head and the fever my blood.

“Well, love off home,” she said, grinning at us.

We walked out of the market, and he had me under a fold of his cloak, as if I were literally under his wing.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“A mild and minor human disease,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I wanted to be with you.”

“Why did you sing?”

“Did I sing?”

His arm held me.

“You’ve got through some barrier in yourself.”

“I know. Isn’t it ridiculous.”

The walk home went in a moment. Or seemed to. As we went up the cement steps, Silver said, “We’ve got half the rent now. I think we can risk buying doughnuts for breakfast.”

We went into the apartment. I’d left the heater on, and ten candles burning, wasteful and dangerous. But it didn’t matter.

“I’m going to buy silver makeup,” I said. “And make my skin like yours. How silly that will be. Will it annoy you?”

“No.”

I sat on the couch and found I was lying on it. It was strange, I could feel my temperature actually going down. I was leveling, the way a flyer does as it approaches a platform. I knew I wasn’t ill, wouldn’t get ill. I knew everything, would be all right.

Silver’s cloak and the guitar were leaning together against the wall catching candle glints on wood and folds, the way they would in a painting or an artistic photograph. Silver was sitting next to me, looking at me intently.

“I am all right,” I said. “But how nice you care.”

“Don’t forget,” he said, “you’re all that stands between me and Egyptia’s robot storage.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was subconsciously and consciously trying to drive you into feeling human.”

I thought he’d laugh. He didn’t. He looked down at my hand in his. The light seemed to darken, intensify, which perhaps was because some of the candles were burning out.

“I do feel human,” he said at last. “I’m supposed to feel human, in order to act in a human manner. But there are degrees. I know I’m a machine. A machine that behaves like a man, and partly feels like a man, but which doesn’t exactly emote like a man. Except that, probably very unfortunately, I have gained emotional reflexes where you’re concerned.”

“Have you?” I said softly. I believed him. There was no doubt in me. I felt amazingly gentle.

“Viewed logically,” he said, “all that’s happened is that I’m responding to your own response. You react to me in a particular way, an emotive way. And I react to your reaction. I’m simply fulfilling your need, if you like.”

“No, I don’t like. I’m tired of your fulfilling my needs. I want to fulfill yours. What do you need, Silver?”

He raised his eyes and looked at me. His eyes seemed to go a long way back, like sideways seas, horizontal depths…

“You see,” he said, “nobody damn well says ‘What do you need?’ to a bloody robot.”

“There is some law which forbids me to say it?”

“The law of human superiority.”

“You are superior.”

“Not quite. I’m an artifact. A construct. Timeless. Soulless.”

“I love you,” I said.

“And I love you,” he said. He shook his head. He looked tired, but that was my imagination, and the fluttering light. “Not because I can make you happy. If I even can. Not for any sound mechanical pre-programmed reason. I just Goddamn love you.”

“I’m glad,” I whispered.

“You’re crazy.”

“I want,” I said, “to make you happy. You have that need in you. Well, it’s just the same in me.”

“I’m only three years old, remember,” he said. “I have a lot of ground to make up.”

I kissed him. We kissed each other. When we began to make love, it was just the same, just as marvelous as it always was. Except that now I didn’t think, didn’t concentrate on what was happening to me. The wonderful waves of sensation passed over and through me, and I swam in them, but the promise of light I swam toward on the horizon was altered. It wasn’t mine.

I don’t think I’d have presumed, even considered it, unless I’d drunk brandy on an empty stomach and with a slight benign fever, in the aftermath of my mother’s rejection and my public song. It seems rather unbelievable even as I write it down. I know you won’t believe me, even though you know what I’m going to say. If you ever read this, if I ever let you read it.

I don’t want to, won’t describe every action, every murmur. Egyptia would. Read her manuscript—there won’t be one, she pours her life like champagne through your video phone.

Only suddenly, when I no longer even knew for sure, the road or the way, or how I was idiot enough even to dream of it, lulled and almost delirious, and yet far far from myself, out of my body and somehow in his body—all at once I knew. In that instant, he raised himself and stared down at me in a kind of bewilderment. In the veiled, multi-colored light, his face was almost agonized, closing in on itself. And then he lay down on me again, and I felt his body gather itself, tense itself as if to dive through deep waters. His hair was across my eyes, so I shut them, and I tasted the silken taste of his hair in my mouth. I felt what happened