03:02
Episode 3: Dog Days Mechanix
Part 2
The semi-rural asphalt of county road nineteen spooled out in a January malaise while California Dreaming played on the car radio. Laurel piloted the car, and to Violet pilot was the correct word. The robot, who looked only fifteen years old, sat behind a steering wheel the size of a hula-hoop and the color of a sun-bleached kiddie-pool. Violet rode shotgun in a seat like a Lay-Z-Boy recliner. The car was a 1968 Ford Galaxie from Laurel’s father’s small collection. There had been many cars like this in Violet’s childhood: black limousines and blue and red and mustard-yellow convertibles, sedans and coups. As a child she had never wondered where the cars came from or to where those had gone. Her father had money and that was explanation enough. Gangster and Mob were just funny words to her then.
It had been two months since she had left the family, since she had ceased to be a soldier for her uncle Carlos. True to the old man’s word no one had come after her. She was safe; for a given value of safe. With distance there came isolation: no help, no jobs and no contact. The Amish had a term; shunned. Violet was shunned, shut out into the cold and there was no forgiveness.
She watched the lifeless countryside scroll by. Despite the wealth of the owners, or more likely because of it, the hillside of Minnetonka Beach remained a forbidding tangle of black-limbed scrub trees and looping vines beneath the remnants of hundred year old forest, with just enough brush cleared from the snowy hilltop to allow a view of Lafayette Bay. The rambling thickets looked impenetrable, almost malevolent in the black massing. Another flash of childhood. Wicked witches and big bad wolves lived in tangled forests. People with powers. Bad people – like her. And now she was in the cold.
She caught her reflection in the window; short cropped blond hair, nose and chin in narrow, flawless Vs of twenty-four. The imperfect reflection snatched away her eyes leaving coal-black holes and she was glad of the omission. There was something in the depths of her pupils; a flash, a swirl, something villainous. She turned towards Laurel just for the color and the girl’s face made Violet smile.
Laurel looked fifteen but Violet knew that was a masquerade just like the straight black hair around her shoulders and the sprinkling of cinnamon freckles across her upturned nose. She was a robot and would look fifteen for as long as she existed. She was ten. Violet knew Laurel told everyone she was eighteen. To her, age was just a number. Life was just a program to be run. The car fit her. Bedecked with the sixty’s chrome-plated optimism in America and the future. She remembered seeing Lois Lane, the long-rumored girlfriend of the big blue boyscout, driving a car like this in Life magazine. This was a good-guy car, a hero’s car, Laurel’s car. Violet shook the idea from her head. She’d keep Laurel from that hero weirdness. She had to.
“You’re sure this guy is legit?” Violet asked.
“Sure. Lynda said so.”
Violet rolled her eyes at her partner’s naivete as well as the mention of T&T’s diminutive representative. What T&T did or who they were did not concern Violet. As with the cars of her youth T&T had money, had the two of them on retainer to be exact, and that was explanation enough. It was no excuse for sloppiness.
“And you checked him out?”
“Well, no,” the robot admitted. “It’s dog sitting. T&T is paying. Besides research sounds dangerously close to a plan and I thought you didn’t do those.”
She shot Violet a snarky grin. Violet stuck out her tongue.
Laurel turned in at a gravel drive that stretched away through the tangle. It wound around a rise that conveniently hid the house from the road. The drive was a mass of pot holes and washboard-ridges, no doubt artfully maintained to dissuade casual visitors, but easily overcome with a state-of-the-art SUV. Laurel’s Galaxie was having fits. Five kidney-torturing minutes later the house came into view. The architect had visited France once, or at least he had seen a postcard. The building resembled nothing so much as two mc-mansions stuck end-to-end with a high-pitched roof plopped on top.
“What does this guy do?” Violet asked.
Laurel tilted her head and squinted slightly as if remembering something. Violet knew she was searching the internet.
“He’s on the board or four banks.”
“So this is where banking lives. I am not impressed.”
“Imagine who you could help with money like this,” said Laurel.
“Yeah. Us for starters. Let’s go get some.”
“No!” Laurel shouted and seemingly realized the gaff and sagged just a little. “I mean, all this money and he uses it to buy dogs and stupid houses.”
“And you would – what? Save the world?”
Laurel’s head bobbed slightly.
“Sweetie, we’ve talked about this. Being a hero doesn’t pay, okay?”
Laurel sucked her teeth, rolled her eyes up to the roof of the car and tightened her mouth.
“What-ever,” she hissed.
They climbed out. Violet walked behind Laurel watching the girl stride to the arched front entryway and further away from herself.
Jeesh. She is such a teenager.
