My mind turned back to the locked metal box that I kept up on the top shelf in my closet, next to the shoe boxes filled with receipts and hardcopies of old tax return forms. I eyed my birthday present and realized that it would never fit in my strongbox. No way.
I fervently hoped that she wouldn’t want me to plug it in before she left. I didn’t know if I had the guts to do it. Mara was looking at me funny. I could tell she was beginning to suspect the truth, that her gift had horrified me. I brightened up reflexively.
“Hey, Hon, this is going to be really great-” I picked the box up, handling it gingerly, the way you would a run-over terrier.
“I’ll just put it in my room.” I pushed my lips into a smile and walked into my bedroom. Mara followed me, making me groan inwardly. I set the obscenity on the bed stand, turning it to face the bed. Then Mara reached past me and plugged it in. I flinched and blinked, as if a foul odor had found my nostrils.
“Power failure detected,” the mouth spoke in a perfect imitation of Mara reading aloud from a dictionary.
“Linking to home system… Link complete.”
It was a high-tech horror. I hated it.
“Isn’t that great, Will?” Mara asked, flashing me with eyes that spoke of smooth thighs and soft kisses. Mara had me on a sex-leash, she charmed me with every movement of her body. I knew it, and hated it, but felt helpless. She was the most attractive girl that I had ever dated. During the last few weeks we had become a steady thing. It was no longer a question of who we were going to see each night, it was just a question of what the two of us would do together. A man could lose his senses over a girl like Mara. To make sure that I never did, I kept my pictures of her in my strongbox, along with pictures of the others I had dated in the past. Just to be sure. I had never told Mara about it, of course, as she wouldn’t have understood.
“It sure is, babe.” Maybe I could sleep on the couch tonight, away from the thing.
“Don’t forget the reunion tomorrow, Will,” Mara reminded me. Nagged me.
My face went hard, like stone, the way it does when I find dog crap stuck to my shoe or when a waitress takes too long with another customer. Fortunately, her back was turned.
“Why don’t you write down the time and the address, so you won’t forget?” Mara suggested. Her voice was soft and innocent, but there was the hard edge of control there, I could hear it. Mara had a beautiful woman’s natural expertise at manipulation. I watched as my traitorous hand picked up a pencil and wrote down the words that she dictated to me. I felt like a secretary. When I had finished, I turned to face her with a pasted-on smile.
Awaiting further instructions. Yes sir. Screw you, sir.
“Now you aren’t going to forget this like you always do, are you Will?” Mara teased me. The yellow number two pencil in my fist snapped. It did it all by itself. It just broke, I swear it. Fortunately, Mara had begun fingering the monstrosity she had given me and didn’t notice the broken pencil or the surprised look on my face. I slipped the snapped pencil into the back pocket of my jeans.
“Let’s play net-music on it for a minute,” she prompted, sitting on the bed and looking at me expectantly. She put her hands into her lap and neatly meshed her fingers. Each nail was carefully painted with a light orange polish. Naturally, we would have to try out the gift she had given me. The only gift she had given me. An expensive gift. Naturally. I felt out of control around Mara, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t understand women. One did not snub your honey’s birthday gift, no matter what one thought of it. Especially, yes especially when that gift was really an image of said girlfriend. You might as well complain about a holo-portrait of her that she had had digitized.
Sure, if you spent half your paycheck on the wrong type of perfume for her you might well find yourself in the exchange line at the mall, with nothing but a frown and a roll of the eyes for a thank-you. But things didn’t work that way when Mara bought a repulsive electronic image of herself and gave it to me. Not for me, they didn’t. Most women were bitches, and Mara was no exception. That’s why I kept the pictures, safe and cool, in my closet with the others. Encased in green metal with a silvery lock of stainless steel.
Approaching the object of my distaste, I knelt before it and lightly ran my finger down the tuning sensor. A liquid amber glow followed my fingerpad as the digital tuning indicator swept across the scale of stations. I watched the mouth buzz its lips together, the white noise of static emanating from it. Each time I passed over a station, the lips twitched and loosed a brief snatch of music or a few words of an announcer. I paused to hear a brief snippet of a newscast concerning the Mexican police-action, which had bogged down only 65 miles north of Mexico City’s outlying slums. A Texas senator begged the congress for justice and two more armor divisions, amid shouts of outrage from the more liberal-minded committee members. I listened for a moment without interest, nothing had changed for weeks and my birth date had already been passed by for the year by the New Plan draft board. I slid my finger more quickly, rippling through the signals, finally leaving it on the hits-only station.
I thumbed the volume control and the room filled with digital-stereo sound. A popular tune called Forget the Alamo from the latest album of the Tazers erupted out of the device. The instrumentals and backup vocals came from the secondary speakers in the thing’s base while Mara’s lovely simulacrum mouth sung the lead.
“What sound!” exclaimed Mara.
I watched Mara’s, or rather the thing’s, mouth form the words and sing with human tonal quality. My stomach curdled like month-old milk. Every move of the mouth and twitch of the cheeks were exacting copies of Mara’s mannerisms and physical traits. Unbidden, my head was punctured by the thought of Mara’s disembodied head being crammed in that box and forced to sing by computer-controlled electronic pulses jolting down her nerves to the muscles in her cheeks, jaw and tongue. I didn’t even like the Tazers.
But apparently the sight and sound of the whole thing had gotten to Mara in a different way. I felt her soft arms clasp around my neck as she leaned forward and began to lightly kiss my neck. The artificial, fruity smell of her shampoo filled my sinuses. Her hot breath blew over my left ear. I looked down over her shoulder and eyed the smooth swell of her rear in those tight, exquisitely faded jeans. But for once I wasn’t in the mood.
“Mara, babe, let’s not start anything now. You’ve got to go to class tonight,” I could hardly believe my ears, but I just couldn’t start making out in front of that thing.
Mara, if anything, was more surprised than I. “Yeah,” she said with a small, shocked and nonplussed sniff. She sat back, straightened her clothing and arched her fine brown eyebrows at me. “Right-school. Sure.”
I felt guilty immediately, but relieved. I didn’t want that thing… watching us. I stood up and so did she. She eyed me strangely, as if I had grown a beard overnight or taken on some other odd characteristic. She glanced briefly at her watch and then straightened the sleeves on her white polyester-and-cotton blend blouse. Mara was unused to rejection in any form. For just a moment, a feeling of exhilaration passed over me as I realized I had denied her something. Then it was gone and, hating myself, I moved to kiss up to her, slipping my arms around her.
She softened immediately. It felt nice. “I do need to go to class,” she said in a quiet voice. Her eyes met mine, then dropped. I kissed her.
Mara’s duplicate mouth spat a split-second of static.
I glanced at it, my upper lip curling by itself. I decided not to let the monster ruin my date with Mara. I turned away from the thing and kissed Mara again. My girl melted in my arms. A rush of red heat passed over my forehead, making my skin burn.