Duplex by Kathryn Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

belonging to the girl’s parents. Her parents had no need for jokers, since they played bridge, not poker. The cards were beautiful, with gold rims.
    I’ve heard of them, someone said. Those cards were even more beautiful than the horses.
    There used to be lots of beautiful cards, said someone else. Then the fairies got loose.
    Listen to me, Janice said. Leave the fairies out of this. Do you hear?
    Pinkie had belonged to Mary, she said. Everyone knew the story of how the sight of her blood on the sidewalk had moved Eddie to tears. The stain was still there—you just had to know where to look for it. Mary used to think of Eddie as Blue Boy, with his dark hair and soft lips and studiously downcast expression. She thought of Pinkie as herself, even though she would never have dreamed of wearing a hat that had to be tied with pink ribbons. To see her now you’d never know she’d been one of the ugly girls.
    There’s no such thing as an ugly girl, someone said. My mom told me.
    No one bothered to disagree, the idea was so stupid.
    At first they didn’t notice, they were too busy trading, Janice said. Ever since the wind blew their dresses away the girls were just in their underwear; most of them had on bras, even if they didn’t need them. The robots moved closer.
    The girl had gotten a little drunk from the cocktail. She was sitting on the floor of the scow when her dance partner reached across the cards piled between her spread legs and slid his finger up under the crotch of her panties. It was cool, his finger, being made of titanium, and he used it to stroke her, first on the outside, running it over her pubic hair until she began to moan, and then sliding it inside her. She’d done this to herself but she’d never had it done to her.
    Everyone knows what I’m talking about, right? said Janice. Once you start you can’t stop, isn’t that so? Just try stopping and see where it gets you.
    Now all the girls were lying on the floor with their knees pointing to the ceiling and their legs spread. Everything was going fine as long as the robots kept using their fingers. Give me the card, said the girl’s dance partner. The robots had based their plan on information they’d read in a book somewhere: “Rooted fast she’ll turn to flame and change her form but keep her love the same.”
    Give me the card, the girl’s dance partner said again, sliding his finger in deeper. The card, or I’ll stop. There was one big pile with all sorts of cards in it. There was a fruit basket, a parrot in a cage, a red rose, a white rose, a bridge over a river, a black Lab, a golden Lab, the Mona Lisa, a kitten, a tree, another bridge, a robin, a pear, the Potato Eaters. All of this was being offered for Pinkie. To make the pair with Blue Boy, who was being kept hidden away in the drinks cabinet.
    Take it, the girl said. The robot took this to mean the transaction was complete. It lowered itself into her.
    What happened next was too horrible to describe. Naturally the girl hadn’t changed form the way the robot thought she would—none of the girls had changed form. The information the robots based their plan on was poetry, which they are incapable of understanding.
    Janice poked me hard between the ribs.
    You think that hurts? she said when I began to cry. That’s nothing compared to what it felt like. Nothing. You can’t even begin to imagine. Supposedly the sound the girls made was so loud no one could sleep. It wasn’t like being torn to pieces, because pieces are big. It was like having the smallest parts of your body like the corpuscles and peptides and nuclei and follicles rip loose from one another, every single one of them. The parts were so small they were practically invisible and all different colors, the main ones being red and yellow and blue. They were gorgeous if you didn’t know what they were. There was nothing left of the girls. Nothing for the doctors to replace with new parts, nothing.
    The robots washed