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  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.

  “Evie,” he said, and her eyes closed, just to hear the way she felt him say her name. “What happens to us now?”

  “Shhhh,” she said, and held him close. She wanted him to stay. That was her prayer, to whoever might be around them, working through them in the dark, whatever gods and goddesses that were, it was all she wanted. Please. She thought to them all, if they were listening, and her eyes were wet, though she didn’t want to know that, then; she just wanted to stay happy for once.

  Please let him stay. Please, just for him to stay and stay. With me.

  But it didn’t last. It couldn’t. They didn’t even make it until Sunday.

  In the end, it all became just another story, a stupid story about the stupid things Evie did. Every time she told it, she felt better. Colder, but better. Harder, but better. More together and better. She left out the machine part. She would leave out a lot of the details, actually, because (let’s be honest here) she felt so stupid about all of it. So foolish, and such a sucker.

  “It was just a movie,” she would tell people. “It was a stupid fucking movie.” The thing was, she kept telling the story. She kept going through it, reliving it. The whole ridiculous, stupid thing, how she had managed to get all wrapped up over this guy in one week. Dumbest fucking thing ever.

  But at the time. At the time, though ....

  It seemed so harmless. It was Saturday night, and he had never seen a movie with her. So she rented it because, well, she thought he might like it. It was a fucking kids move, for Christ’s sake. What harm was it going to do? What kid didn’t like Pinocchio?

  Apparently, Adam. Adam didn’t like it one bit.

  He sat under her legs, she leaning against the side of the sofa eating the popcorn he’d made, and she could tell he didn’t like it. But he watched, and from time to time his eyes clicked to her, and then clicked back to the screen in front of him.

  She could feel it. She could feel him going away already. The way his back was so stiff. The way his hand, which at the start of the movie had been resting, stroking against her thigh (which had been slowly turning her on and she wondered if she’d be able to make it through to the credits) had gone still. And the movie didn’t stop. The stupid fucking kids movie played on and on and on.

  No, they didn’t make it until Sunday. They didn’t even make it to the end. When Pinocchio and Gepetto washed up on the shore, saved from the whale, and Pinocchio was wonder of wonders, miraculously was –

  Adam got up, her feet thrown to the floor.

  “Adam?” she said, but he was walking away, thudding into the bedroom. He closed the door. There was a crash.

  “Adam!” she yelled, and followed him, and behind her that Disney fucking music swelled as Pinocchio woke to discover he was finally and truly –

  “A real boy?” Adam was a tower of furious whirls and clicks. Her bedstand was on the floor, all the little figurines broken.

  “Adam! What the fuck?”

  “A real boy?” he said again, and somehow he had recorded that voice, because it was Pinocchio coming out of him, mocking her. “A real boy?” it said again.

  “Adam, what the hell? What’s wrong with you?” Already she was shutting down, closing off, closing up. This was another threshold crossed, the last – no one broke things or threw things in her house. Not anymore. That was a rule she’d made looong before she met his ass in the woods.

  Not anymore.

  “It was a fucking movie.”

  “Was it?” Adam said, and stepped towards her, and she drew back, but she wasn’t going to be frightened. Not by it. “Was it?”

  “Adam – ”

  “A real boy?” he chanted. “A real boy?”

  “Adam!” she yelled. And the silence that followed tore them away from one another.

  “You need to leave,” she said. And he was an it again, and Evie was not going to be hurt. Or scared. That was her rule. Not anymore.

  “Evie ....”

  “Now,” she said, and she was shaking, but firm, and she meant it. And it knew.

  “Evie,” it said. “I’m sorry.” It was the only time, she would think later, that Adam had used the word “I,” and that would undo her. But only later.

  At the time, she only said, “Get out,” and he went.

  She heard him walk through the living room, heard him open the front door. She bit her lip to keep from calling him back. Not anymore, that tough Evie voice said to her, the one that now kept her safe from men-like-him. Not anymore. He closed the front door behind him and he was gone, and it was only then that she started crying. For being stupid, for wanting to believe. For him and for her and everything else besides.

  She would dry her eyes later, and work on being happy that he was gone. ‘He had been so weird,’ she would say in telling people the story of ‘The Bad Boyfriend,’ or ‘The Tale of the Fling.’ She should have known it was never going to work. She could never tell what he’d been thinking. She didn’t even think he cared about her, about anything. Honestly, she didn’t even know him that well. He was a pompous jerk.

  And they would nod and say, “Yeah.” And Adam the Jerk grew and grew.

  But what she didn’t say, what she didn’t tell ....

  Three months after he was gone, in the fall, Evie had a message on her phone. It was short. It was simple. It was three sentences, and when she heard it, she found herself on the floor of her kitchen crying and shaking and wishing only for him to be there with her, holding her. Because in those three sentences, interspersed with whirs and clicks, she heard the clearing. She heard the woods where she found him, how she’d met him, and the key. The key. The fucking key.

  She saw it then, as she hadn’t seen it the first time, under his foot. Under his foot in the mud and she knew he hadn’t been abandoned there, hadn’t been lost or left behind. In her mind’s eye she could see it, the truth of it with heartbreaking clarity, how he must have pulled the key from his own chest and stood atop it, waited until he had wound down and out and away, until Evie found him and brought him back to life.

  She saw him out
there somewhere now, in a world that could take him apart if it wanted to, and she was here, and everything was all wrong. All wrong. And maybe it couldn’t be fixed. Maybe nothing could ever be fixed. And she cried and she cried.

  “Come home,” she said to the empty apartment, in a voice made low by weeping. “Come home.”

  She would never tell anyone how a robot, a machine had made her cry so much. She did not open that box, play that song for anyone after, ever. Once, and once only was enough, more than enough for anyone.

  ###

  About the Author

  Poet, Playwright, Producer, Director, Gravedigger, Hotline Psychic (no really) Line Cook, Writer Patrick de Moss lives in the Vancouver area with his wife, Tanya who did a marvelous job of the cover for this story, outdoing herself (and him) in the process. He shares his life with her, two very large (but friendly) dogs and two cats, his ghosts, his reveries, and his memories.

  Connect with me Online

  Drop me a line at [email protected]. I’ll write back whenever I can.

  Also, stay tuned - somehow I ended up getting the idea of making a website for all this madness. Hope to see you there. Cheers.