Dancing Robots

Same idea as yesterday... I don't like it as much, but I was shooting for shorter...


She rolled back and forth across the tiny dressing room as I tried to eat my dinner. Back and forth, back and forth. She didn't even try to turn around before reversing directions. Even when I lowered my head to eat my soup, I could see her moving in the corner of my eye. With a sigh I put down my spoon and untucked the napkin at my throat.

"Glenda, I need you to keep still so I can concentrate." I placed a hand on her waist to activate the motion-override circuit, then pushed and turned Glenda to a spot by the sofa where she could see the whole room. Before removing the hand on her waist, I touched the switch at the base of her spine to prohibit further movement, an action which, six months ago, would have caused me great anguish. Now it only released a sigh of relief in my heart.

I returned to my soup and she said to me, "Robert, I don't want to perform tonight." The soup was getting cold, staring back at me as I listened to Glenda's words. Her speech was chopped and stilted, sounds picked from a dictionary, cut from the fluid, lingual melody of a familiar voice. Not for the first time, I saw a ransom note in my mind, and the mangled newspaper the words were taken from. I tried to read the note instead of listening to Glenda.

She repeated her pitchless plea. "Robert, I don't want to perform tonight."

"That's alright." I stood up again and walked to a massive case that stood in a corner. Opening it I said, "She can do it instead." I reached into the box and drew towards me a figure that matched Glenda's form perfectly.

"Robert, I--" Nobody had taught Glenda how to understand or describe the betrayal that was happening so openly in front of her. "Robert, I--"

The stuttering continued as I moved around the cramped space with my new partner. She was smoother, more responsive to my touch. I smiled as best as I could when a stage hand leaned into the room and said, "Mr. Mulligan," to announce that my moment had come.

I walked, she rolled, and behind us Glenda's flat, paperscrap, ransom note words fluttered behind us. "Robert, I--"

I looked at her replacement, but she did not look back at me. We practiced our steps in the wings. None of the little tricks Glenda knew, learned long ago from my wife, my original partner, were there. But when she turned to me and said, "I am ready," my love's words weren't there either.

At the appointed moment, we moved into the blinding lights of the stage. All through the performance I told myself, "it's the lights. It's the lights reflecting off her new burnished body. It's the bright reflection putting the water in my eyes."