How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

Chapter Ten


I scour the logical places. The costume stand, the makeshift prop museum, the alcove where Castaway Planet blooper reels flicker on a loop. Nothing.

“He’s about six-two, black shirt, yellow rubber watch, white hair that goes like ppfft all over?” I tell the costume-stand lady. She’s filling a display stand with ten-dollar replicas of Sim’s mechanical heart‌—‌slim pods cased in cheap frosted plastic, blinking out of sync with each other. She nods indulgently, like I’m describing an imaginary friend.

“If I see him,” she says, “I’ll tell him you want him.”

I do a fast sweep. The hotel lobby, the indoor pool. The east end of the ballroom, where a dozen girls bicker in a fanfic workshop. I circle back to the Q&A just as the Shandley mob floods out. Bec’s green shirt glints through the crowd. I push through people to get to her.

“Jesus. Where’d you go?” She hooks my arm. I steer us to a calm corner, in front of an artist hand-painting Starsetter nutcrackers.

I grab her shoulders. “Did you see Abel leave?”

“No, I‌—‌”

“You didn’t?”

“I was‌…‌busy.”

“Right. Right.”

“Why are you so frazzled?”

“We should stick together!”

“I’m sure he’s okay.”

“How could he disappear?”

“Brandon, I’m sure he just took a walk. He looked really pissed.”

Dave bounds up with a wide white smile. “You ready?”

“Meet you out there,” Bec says.

“Cool.” He touches her arm. “See ya later, man,” he says to me. I get a half-salute and he lopes away.

“What was that?” I ask.

“I have a date.”

“With him?”

“No, with Shandley. We’re going ballroom dancing.”

“You’re not driving anywhere, right?”

“I don’t know, Dad. Why?”

“He could be a serial killer. How would you know?” I can tell I’m being annoying, the kind of annoying where it feels like I haven’t showered for days and everyone should just stay away. Bec sticks her hands on her hips.

“Are you mad ‘cause Tom Shandley’s a dick? I could’ve told you that.”

“I’m not mad.”

“People are a*sholes sometimes. You can’t let it get to you.”

I sigh. “Please just help me look for Abel?”

“I can’t. On account of the aforementioned date.” She pokes my stomach. “What, you think those Hell Bells people are holding him hostage?”

“Stop.”

“Like, maybe they’ll be tightening the thumbscrews, trying to get him to recant his Cadsim hate, and you’ll burst in like the conquering hero just as‌—‌”

“Quit it!” I shrug off her hand. “I’m serious.”

“Will you lighten up?”

“Don’t even joke about that!”

“Why?”

“Forget it. Forget it. Just go out. Go meet Dave. Have a really awesome time.”

“I will. He’s fun.”

“Maybe you can share a milkshake and buy some ironic t-shirts together.”

“You’re being a jerk.”

I shrug.

She shoves the camera at me.

“Upload the vid yourself,” she says. “When I get back, you better be human again.”

She huffs off down the merch aisle, ducking a juggler by the autograph table and a crying girl in a platinum Leandra Nigh wig. I congratulate myself on my freshly acquired talent for pissing off the few real friends I have. Outside the glass doors, Bec meets up with Dave and he drapes his arm around her like I used to in the halls before our first-period Chem class, my hand trying different positions and grips in the hope that just one might feel natural. They disappear past the thick crowd of travelers in the lobby. She doesn’t look back. Cold clangs in my chest, and my brain calls up Episode 1-7: Captain, if I could experience real love for one day, I believe it would be ‌…‌

Men.

Two men at the action-figure booth. Black trench coats, black hats. Their faces are painted Henchmen-white and they’ve got the red contact lenses and the same cool concentrated stares, like they’re unlocking the dark little room in your brain where you stuff all the thoughts that would make your parents blush.

But what I really notice are the t-shirts.

They’re hidden at first, just thin slices of white underneath the coats. But then the taller guy moves his arm and I see the intricate image on the shirt. It has to be homemade. There’s no official merch with that picture on it, and it looks hand-drawn by someone devoted to detail.

Obsessively, psychotically devoted.

The Hell Bells.

I zip up my vest. Status: High alert. I feel every one of the zipper teeth, the sick uphill click-clack of a roller coaster ready to drop you into blackness. Their white faces tilt together. One of them starts to whisper.

They’re walking my way.

***


I don’t wait. I run for the RV. Through the lobby, down a glass corridor, out the doors and across the hot parking lot. Abel’s face looms in front of me as my sneakers smack the pavement. He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t run from them. He’d walk right up to them and say something bold like What’s your deal? Like Cadmus did to Xaarg in 1-04, like Abel did to Shandley in the Q&A room.

I’m running so hard I can’t stop in time. I smack into the side of the Sunseeker. I gasp in a breath, look behind me. Scan the parking lot.

No one. Empty.

I open the door, slowly. It’s dark and stifling inside, like a confessional on a summer day.

“Abel‌…‌?”

He’s not the one who answers.

Come in, Brandon.

I always hated confession. I would make up sins like swearing and shoplifting gum to hide the real ones: masturbating in the shower, impure thoughts about Luke Perry in those ancient 90210s Bec loves.

Someone important wants to talk to you. Isn’t it time you started listening to Him?

I lock the door, latch all the windows, and pull down the blinds. I thump down in the passenger seat and dial my parents. I don’t know why. It’s not like I can talk to them about this, but I like tapping the familiar pattern of their phone number. They’re not home. Of course. Saturday dinner with the Donnellys. Mom’s curled her hair and brought her shepherd’s pie in a white casserole dish; Dad’s wearing a plaid shortsleeved button-down and his thin hair is wet and carefully combed. They’re drinking red wine and saying the words “Loyola” and “Communications major” a million times, trying to convince everyone they’re still proud of me.

I try Nat next, but who knows where she is. Her cell’s turned off and I get her message: I’ll call you back, maybe, over the anguished background yodels of some girl-punk band I’m not cool enough to listen to. Whatever. I don’t want to talk to her anyway. Last time I asked her for advice she lit a cigarette and said “God is like junior high, Brandon. Graduate already.” Then she told me she was thinking of moving to Kenya with some greasy philosophy major she’d known for five weeks, and possibly getting an ankh tattooed on her shoulder.

Plastic Sim is still in my vest pocket. I fish him out and spread his arms to the sides; trace a slow T across his body‌—‌wrist to wrist, chin to shin. One time when I was eleven or twelve, I was in St. Matt’s alone after serving Sunday Mass, and I sat down in the front pew and stared up at Jesus on the cross. Our Jesus was really realistic. You could count his ribs, trace the subtle definition of his muscles, gauge the strength of his legs just by the synthesis of sinew and bone. I tried to pray a decade of the rosary but the prayers never made me feel much; the thees and hallowed bes were too foreign and too familiar all at once, and God was probably so mad at me he didn’t want to hear it anyway. I ended up dreaming of what sex would feel like, to be so close to a man you could feel his bones with your bones. And then a shadow slanted across the pew, and a warm hand clapped the back of my neck.

“Whatcha thinking about, Brandon?”

Father Mike above me, smiling in black with a white square at his neck, boyish in a blue-and-gold St. Matt’s windbreaker.

My stomach contorted. I weighed the choices: Confess the unconfessable. Lie to a priest.

I did the thing I do best. I ran away.

I ran to the boys’ room and gripped the sink like I’m gripping the sink in the Sunseeker now, blasting cold water and dousing my whole head. It feels fantastic and horrible. When I can’t take it anymore, I shut the water off and stand there like the world’s biggest idiot, my hair dripping puddles on the kitchenette floor.

Outside, in the near distance, gravel crunching under feet.

Here they come.

It’s not Abel. I know his footfall, like a trick-or-treater bounding up a walkway. These steps are heavy, joyless. Sinister.

Four clomps. Five. Six. Coming closer.

A pause.

Then a creak, and the Sunseeker shudders.

They’re on the steps.

We have an Atlanta spy. Plots are thickening.

Someone sits on the step with a thud and I hear a metallic clink that could be lots of things, none of them good. I see the Hell Bells post in my head, that weird “BFC” thing. Bullets From Crazies? Beat Fags Cheerfully?

My hands scrabble for weapons. Not a mop‌—‌stupid. Frying pan‌—‌no. I’ll go bold. There’s no choice.

My heart chugs wildly. I tiptoe close to the door and put my mouth right on the crack. Ragged breathing on the other side. I tighten my throat and set my jaw, shift my feet apart like tough guys in movies who say stuff like this, in exactly this booming rat-a-tat voice: “I’VE GOT A GUN!”

“Auuugh!”

The scream scares me so much I lose my logic, fling the door wide open. Abel’s stumbling away from the Sunseeker, clutching his chest. On the pavement by the steps: his keys and a replica of Cadmus’s ray gun, still spinning where he dropped it.

He gulps in a breath. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“I didn’t know it was you!”

“Who’d you think I was?”

“I don’t know!” The door starts closing on me; I punch it back. “Where were you?”

“Out! Walking! Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, I just‌—‌”

“Oh my God. My heart.”

“I’m sorry‌…‌”

“Forget it. Forget it.” He snatches his stuff up and clomps into the Sunseeker, squeezing past me in the doorway. I haven’t felt this dumb since the Timbrewolves concert when I screwed up the solo on “My Girl.” His eyes are all red and I want to ask him about it, but he catches me searching his face and looks away fast. He yanks the fridge open and stares inside for a long minute. Then he slams the door.

“Why is your hair wet?” he sighs.

“Dumb story.”

“I’m sure. You want to go somewhere?”

“Where?”

He reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a bright yellow flyer. “Some coffeehouse, they’re having a Castaway marathon.”

“Maybe.”

I take the flyer from him and scan it. I wait for Father Mike to weigh in, but there’s nothing much in my head right now, just an ache and a dull gray hum.

“So Kade dumped me.”

I look up. Abel’s wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He doesn’t look at me.

“When?”

“Forty-five minutes ago.” He pumps some gel into his hand and starts punking his hair up. “On Twitter.”

“Oh my God.”

“Whatever. At least he DMed me.”

“I’m sorry. That’s rotten.”

Abel shrugs.

“Why’d he‌—‌”

“Zzt!” He holds up a hand. “Completely expected. Not a huge deal. No questions, no sympathetic looks. Them’s the rules. Okay?”

“I guess, but‌…‌”

“You call a cab. I’ll pay.”

“I saw the spies.”

He stops attacking his hair. “‌…‌What?”

“The Hell Bells spies. I think I saw them.”

“What’d they look like?”

“You know. Menacing.”

“Menacing how? Like‌—‌” He makes a bucktoothed monster face.

“Not exactly.”

“Were they goons?”

“I don’t know what a goon looks like.”

“You’d know one if you saw one.”

“I guess they were.”

“Big dudes?”

“Big enough.”

“They follow you?”

“For a while.”

Abel shakes his head. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Wow.” He leans against the fridge and shudders. “Creepy.”

“I’m not sure we should go out. Maybe it’s too‌—‌”

“No. No, I’m calling the cab right now.”

“But they could be anywhere.”

“I’m not living in fear, Brandon. Screw it. That’s so 1952.”

“Why 1952?”

“I don’t know. Like, Rock Hudson or whatever.” He holds up his phone. “Are you coming or not?”

I fiddle with the zipper pull on my vest.

“We should stick together,” I say. “Stay in crowds.”

He smiles a little.

“Roger that,” he Cadmuses.

“We shouldn’t sit by a window.”

“Heavens no.”

“And also‌—‌”

“‌—‌you should take this off.”

He unzips my SAFE-U vest with the tip of one finger, like Cadmus undid Nigh’s jacket in the Season 1 finale. Then he crosses his thick arms in front of him and pulls his tight black t-shirt up over his head. Crap, crap, crap. My whole body heats up. I’ve never seen a naked torso that wasn’t on a cross, at least not so close up. I don’t know where to look. His belly button. Belly button. Look at the belly button.

He’s holding his shirt out. “This is more you than me.”

“I don’t need to change.”

“Yeah you do.”

He grips the front of my shirt and pulls me closer, makes his voice all low and raspy like Cadmus.

“You’ll want to look sexy for Jesus,” he says, “in case it’s our last night on earth.”