How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (6 page)

Because the person onstage? That can’t be her.

***

Bree LaRue plays Defense Officer Leandra Nigh, and if you’ve ever seen an episode of
Castaway Planet
, the thing you remember about her is her hair. It’s shiny and blond in a synthetic, display-only kind of way, like the loose curls presented for worship in shampoo commercials. The person onstage has something entirely different on her head. I’m not sure how to describe it. Did they ever make black shag carpeting back in the seventies? It’s like someone cut a circle out of that and made themselves a skull cap.

Abel pokes me, his mouth an O.

“I think it looks kind of good,” whispers Bec.

Bree LaRue is wearing wrinkly jeans and tall black boots and a St. Tropez t-shirt with an orange stain on it. Her eyes are bloodshot. She steps up to the lip of the stage, yanks the mike off the stand, and starts twisting the cord around her wrist.

“Heyyy, kids,” she mutters.

No one breathes.

“So what’s new?”

Silence.

“I got a haircut. Like, obviously.” She ruffles it with one hand. “Certain people aren’t gonna be happy with me, but I say fuck it. You know?
Wigs exist.
”

Worried Guy edges closer to Bree, rubs his thick hands together. “Okay, guys, let’s start with some questions. Who’s got a good one for Miss LaRue?” He turns to her. “Is that okay? If they ask?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

A whisper runs through the audience. Then a red question paddle goes up, slowly, to the left of the stage.

“What’s your favorite color?” some girl says.

Bree LaRue stares at the base of the mike stand. She screws up her mouth and hocks a wad of spit at it.

“Blue,” she says. “That’s as good a color as any, right?”

“Yeah. Definitely‌…‌” The girl’s wearing an electric blue jacket like Leandra Nigh’s. She looks like she wants to disappear. I want to hug her, even though Nigh is like my eighth favorite character on
Castaway Planet
and the person onstage bears zero resemblance to her. I glance at Bec and we shake our heads.

Question paddles pop up faster.

Fiftyish guy in Xaarg hat: “If they killed you off, how would you want your character to die?”

Bree LaRue swigs from her steel sport bottle. “Spontaneous combustion sounds good.”

Pink-haired girl in black halter top: “How are you different from Nigh?”

“Uh, I guess because she’s always an optimist. Even when it’s incredibly,
unbelievably
stupid to be.”

“Who does Nigh belong with: Cadmus or Dutch Jones?”

“Whoever doesn’t dick her over.”

“What’s your favorite episode?”

“Eh. What’s the one where Xaarg sends that swamp monster after us and I almost die?”

Someone yells out, “3-16!”

“Yeah, that one. I got to scream a lot.” She throws back her head and releases an unholy screech, loud enough to chill the collective blood of the Social Media conference two ballrooms over.

Everyone freezes. The guy chatting up Bec breathes
holy shit.

Abel leans close. “Omigod,” he hisses.

“I know.”

“We were there, Bran. We were there when Bree LaRue melted down in Cleveland.
Historic.
” He puts his hot hand on my back and my body goes stiff, like metal bolts are tightening all my joints.

Onstage, Worried Guy’s talking to Bree in the low soothing tone that cops use when someone’s about to jump off a ledge. His hand reaches out for her mike. She snatches it back, squints into the crowd: “More questions! Cough ‘em up, come on! How much did you guys shell out for this?”

“Should I ask?” Abel mutters.

“Just wait.”

“Come on, pry me open, people!” Bree LaRue crows. “I
know
stuff, okay? Tom Shandley has a third nipple! David Darras fucking hates Lenny Bray! The writers stole the whole plot of the season finale from a fanfic writer and didn’t give her credit!”

Someone behind us whispers
career suicide.
I just stare. I can’t close my mouth.

Abel grabs the question paddle.

“Not yet!” I tug his sleeve.

“They might shut her down, Bran.”

Worried Guy points. “Guy in the vest. Go!”

Abel touches his chest. “Me?”

“Yes. Come on.”

“He’s cu-ute.” Bree LaRue stumbles sideways, shielding her eyes with one hand. “Aww, look at his hair. And the chin! He’s like Laurence Olivier, and a cockatoo. Like if they had a baby?”

“Hurry it up,” Worried Guy tells Abel.

Abel clears his throat a million times. Bec leans closer with the camera. His hands quiver, just a little. Stage fright? Unexpected.

Sort of cute.

“Hi Miss LaRue I’m Abel and this is Brandon and we’re here representing the Screw Your Sensors fan vlog at screwyoursensors.blognow.com?”

“Super, honey. Ask the question.”

“Okay, so we’re having this debate with some other fans‌—‌”

“Oh. Perfect.”

“‌—‌and we wanted to ask you.” He takes a deep breath. “That scene in the season finale where they’re trapped in the crystal spider cave and Cadmus is like ‘it’s so quiet in here it could swallow up all your secrets’ and Sim is like ‘yes Captain‌…‌quite’ and then Cadmus puts his hand on his arm and they look at each other and it fades out, do you think they did anything in the cave for real or is it all just fanwank?”

I have this sudden sick vision of losing the bet with the Cadsim girls; Abel’s lips coming at me with a camera pointed at us. I cross my fingers tight.

Bree LaRue cocks her head. “Cadmus and Sim.”

“Yes.”

“Were they‌…‌” She claps her hand to her heart and bats her eyes. “‌…‌
together
.”

A female voice in the crowd goes, “So cute it hurts!”

“I said that once, didn’t I?” Bree LaRue shoots the girl a rueful smile.

“Yeah.”

I scan the crowd. The girl’s wearing a fake sunflower in her hair and a homemade Cadsim shirt, a manip of them holding hands above the words YES, CAPTAIN‌…‌QUITE. Bree LaRue rolls her eyes and makes a jacking-off motion. Abel jabs my ribs.

“You think it would work? Like for real?” Bree scratches the back of her head like she’s trying to make it bleed. “’Cause here’s what I’m thinking would happen, like, it looks good on paper ‘cause they’re both beautiful and everyone loves to see pretty with pretty, but then Sim wouldn’t know what to do like, mechanically or anything, and Cadmus would get bored in five seconds because that’s who he is and guys like that never ever change and one day Sim would be at some stupid convention at some
stupid
hotel and Cadmus would call him up at six a.m. and say hey, you know that girl I said was just a friend? Yeah, well, we’re in Barbados right now drinking rum-frickin’-swizzles in a hammock, and when we get back can I come by and pick up my things? Sorry baby.
You knew this would happen.”

I see this is all about Cash Howard dumping Bree LaRue and I should be sad for her, but I picture him shirtless in a hammock and oh God. Once I was watching his
Husband Hunt
season with Mom, tuning out his dumb words and staring at his abs. They were almost obscenely gorgeous in a soft and classical kind of way, like he’d just touched fingers with God and waltzed off the Sistine ceiling. Mom was knitting pink and blue blankets for the Genesis Pregnancy Center. Her needles stopped clacking and I caught her watching me watch him, and then her ears turned pink and she said
Sweetie, why don’t we watch Cooking with Carlene instead?

“I’m really sorry,” Abel says.

“Aren’t you sweet,” Bree says.

“It sucks. Happened to me once, too.”

She leaps off the stage when he says that. Like literally leaps, the way a jungle cat would, and lands hard on her feet right in front of us. The crowd hushes. She steps closer and brushes her hand across Abel’s cheek. Cameras flash and I start to absorb it: Bree LaRue is twelve inches away from me. She’s a real person, with farm-girl freckles peeping through her face powder and a Band-Aid on one finger.

“Why can’t I just be with a guy like you?” she whispers.

“I’m gay,” says Abel.

“Exactly.”

She smiles sadly. More camera flashes. Then Worried Guy steps down, helps her back onstage. She wobbles when she stands. The spindly heel of her left boot has snapped right off. We glance around and Abel spots the heel on the floor, a few feet in front of us. I grab it and hold it up, but she just gives a shrug and a vague wave:
What’s the point? Hopelessly broken.

“Miss LaRue?” Abel calls.

“Yeah.”

“That was a no‌…‌right? To the Cadsim question?”

“Step back,” Worried Guy says. “She has to go to her room.”

“Yes it was a no, honey. God. Sim is completely asexual.” She’s being escorted out now, limping with dignity like crazy Blanche DuBois in that
Streetcar
play our school did last spring.

Over her shoulder, she adds: “And he’s frickin’
lucky!”

Chapter Six

We settle the Sunseeker at tonight’s free campsite, the parking lot of a 24-hour SavMart a couple miles outside Cleveland. I crank the old generator and Abel whips up Mac-in-a-Minit and canned chicken, crooning
I miss you
s to Kade on speakerphone while he arranges food on paper plates and snips fake parsley sprigs from one of Mom’s wall wreaths. While we scarf down dinner, we upload the Bree LaRue video evidence for the Cadsim girls, with a header that’s maybe more gleeful than necessary: BRANDON & ABEL = 1, CADSIM SHIPPERS = 0, in sparkly purple text.

Then Abel’s like, “Change your shirt. I’ll call the cab.”

“We’re going out?”

“What’d you think we were going to do? Play WordWhap?”

“Where are we going?”

“We have to celebrate. Victory Number One!”

“Isn’t that kind of ghoulish?”

“Uh, no. Trust me, this’ll be the turning point of Bree LaRue’s career. She should thank Cash Howard for making her interesting.” He unzips his bag, chucks a shirt at me. “If they write her off the show she’ll be in some Lars von Trier film within a year. Guaranteed.”

“I was just going to‌—‌”

“Stay here, stagnate, watch
Castaway
on your phone. Forget it.” He pulls on a Blondie t-shirt and zips up his fake python cowboy boots. “We’re gonna stir shit up. You and me.”

I know what he’s up to. I scramble for brilliant excuses. Migraine. Tainted cheese powder.

“Jesus, will you relax?” he says. “I’m putting your boy renaissance on hold. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me.”

I don’t trust him. “Bec, will you come?”

“Nope.” She has her flip-flops kicked off and she’s eating rice crackers and reading
Blankets
again
.
“Too hot. You’re on your own.”

“What if someone breaks in?”

“I’ll blind them with spray cheese.”

I uncrumple the shirt Abel threw me. It’s hot-pepper red with SEX BOMB on the front in army green. The O is a grenade at a jaunty tilt, the sex bomb in mid-hurtle toward its target. It’s so ridiculous I have to smile.

“I wore it the night I met Kade.”

“At that astrophysics lecture, right?”

“Put it
on
.” Abel gives me a shove. “You dress like you want to disappear.”

Don’t do it,
says Father Mike.

What if I did?

That isn’t you. I know you better.

I close my eyes, dig my nails into my palm until it hurts.

“I’ll go,” I say.

But I don’t put on the shirt.

***

The sign on the red door says THE EDGE OF HEAVEN in chipped gold curlicue letters. Underneath is a ragged flyer for the Cleveland OutPride Film Festival, stapled over a mural of two male seraphim doing something distinctly unholy.

I think of Bec white-robed and pink-haired in her punk-angel costume two Halloweens ago; Mom with cat ears stuck in her mess of blonde curls, snapping pics in our front hall.
Closer, you two! How about a hug?

“This okay?” Abel taps the door. “It’s not too cheesy, is it? Guy at the hotel said it was chill.”

“I’ve never been in a bar,” I blurt.

“Seriously?”

“I mean, yeah, I
have
. Just not this kind.”

“I know, right? Poor you. Zero gay bars in Blanton.” Abel sticks his hands in his hair and expertly messes it up. “Whatever; it’s not like Rocky Horror. They don’t harass virgins.”

My face gets hot, but then I realize he means bar virgins, not actual virgins. I make a big show of opening the door. “Shall we?”

Inside, dim rosy light and that sad-sweet smoke machine smell I remember from our freshman-year production of
Godspell
. The bartender is short with a wiry gray mustache and he’s got on one of those cowboy shirts with pearly snaps instead of buttons. White Christmas lights frame the bar in back of him, which is decorated with a dirty rainbow flag, vintage seashore postcards, a little kid’s card that says
I love grampa
in green crayon, and some gold-framed photos that confuse me. Guys dancing shirtless with glow sticks, wagging huge fake penises on parade floats, singing karaoke in sequins and wigs‌—‌should I like this stuff too? Take it seriously? I’m supposed to belong here. I should at least smile and not stand here like an idiot in my flip-flops and cargo shorts.

But you don’t like that stuff, do you?

Abel gets us two brown-bottle beers with a fake ID and we snag a table in the corner, near a red velvet couch where a skinny guy in a tank top is chatting up a hot guy in a suit. The jukebox plays that tinny old song Abel loves about riding on the metro. He cracks our bottles open with his keychain and slides one over.

“It’s Hammerclaw.” He starts tapping at his phone, shoulders perking to the music. “You’ll like. Trust me.”

I check the room for cops and take a sip. The beer tastes different from Dad’s; it’s thick and smoky and makes me think of beef jerky, though it’s probably not supposed to.

“To Bree LaRue.” I lift the bottle.

“To Bree LaRue, and her beautiful bitterness, and the sound of a hundred Cadsim shippers sharpening their pitchforks.” He clears his throat and reads off his phone.
“Bree LaRue’s stupid opinion should be disqualified immediately, as she was clearly under the influence of illegal substances.”