It was maybe when I hit the first stair that I realized I’d never been up into her apartment before. I’d been in the workshop in the back a few times, but that was about it. That led me to a thought. Well, a different thought than whether her place was going to be covered with cutesy girl shit. I don’t know if I could respect her if it was. Or maybe I’d respect her more. These are complex emotions we’re dealing with. Maybe she was secretly a metal head. There was also the very real possibility that there was a shrine to me inside, completely with pictures on every flat surface. My smiling face, unaware I was being photographed as I went about my day.
I said it out loud. “We’re climbing stairs but you didn’t look in the workshop.”
She paused on the stairs. Then she sighed. Pretty sure she said a swear word. Marine turned and stared at me for maybe three seconds before throwing her hands up.
“Well? Turn around.”
I’m not sure if I actually gave a longing look to the door behind her, but I feel like I did. Maybe I did. Anyway, I didn’t want her to actually get to the part where she called me stupid since I was still hoping to get her to fix my shit so I turned and headed down.
I waited at the bottom, figuring going into the workshop first wasn’t going to help much. Plus there’s that weird not-my-house feeling about the whole thing. Where you’re not even sure peeing is cool without asking. Not the first time anyway.
Marine got down and pushed through the full-length split curtain that acted as a door. I followed her through. To put it plainly the place was trashed. Marine was by no measure a neat person, but this was above and beyond. The weird part is, nothing was broken or busted. Just… moved and opened. Every drawer was opened and left that way. There were a few shelves full of equipment that had been slid out of place, or at least the fading on the paint seemed to make it look like they were.
“No.”
She ran over to a pair of workbenches along the far wall. Each had a pair of robotic helper hands attached that had been pushed up and away. It was weirdly neat. Maybe systematic was the right word.
“Somebody move those shelves?”
Marine looked away from the desk when I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, somebody moved them.”
Somebody wasn’t really seeming like the right word there. I guess I’m to blame for saying it first. The shelves were covered in parts. Heavy parts. Big, fuck off metal chunks of… robot… stuff. I helped her load up an industrial work torso one time. Onto a bottom shelf. Took us three hours and I sweated a lot and looked entirely uncool but I helped her so she better not have made any sort of mental judgments about any of the sounds I made, I’m serious. There’s war time decorum to be considered in a situation like that. Or… I don’t know. Some strained metaphor. Biting the hand that feeds, maybe? That seems overreaching. Don’t know why, but right at that moment I wondered what slapping a baby feels like. They don’t have bones right? Well, they have soft bones. But it’s got to feel weird. It’s one of those things that not many people can possibly know. Who’d even get away with it? Doctors, maybe. But that’s medical procedure ass slapping. There’s no real leverage going on there. No passion.
I was trying to work out if the weight of a baby’s head being slapped would snap its neck or not when Marine walked by me. She was going fast and I figured maybe I should turn around and follow her.
“Not there?”
She didn’t say anything but I feel like she chuffed like bulls do when they’re about to charge something. I took it as a no.
“Right, so cameras upstairs then?”
Well, certainly the silence couldn’t get any more awkward. Maybe now was a good time to ask about her nipples. That’s a joke. Don’t worry. That was just for you guys. I’m not going to ask her about those. Seeing is believing, right? And I need to believe.
So we got to the door upstairs and she opened it and went in. When she didn’t slam it behind her, I assumed it was as good an invitation as I was going to get. The apartment turned out to be more like a square with a bathroom in the corner. There was a proper room, not just a toilet in the corner. But that was it. Kitchen was against the far wall, such as it was.
Marine was at her computer as I started taking in the scenery. Dirty clothes pile. Mattress straight on the floor. There was a fitted sheet on it though, so points for that. No dishes in the sink, though. That felt like a small betrayal. Who was she trying to impress with her fitted sheets and her clean dishes? No posters either. Except on the wall beside her computer. And even those weren’t posters. It was hard to tell at a distance, looked like mazes or maybe the world’s least exciting museum exhibit ad, but they were electrical diagrams.
“No stuffed animals?”
“Eat shit.”
Fair enough. Not like I can judge. Only stuff I had on my walls was to keep people from realizing how I lived. Well, to keep delivery guys from realizing how I lived. I doubt it worked but the facade provided a crucial psychological shell that allowed me to continue my unconvincing masquerade as a functioning adult.
Marine was clicking around in footage of the four cameras watching the workshop. I didn’t really have anywhere to look so I figured the best thing to do would be to kind of stare at her. Seemed
