Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [63]
Fifty or so years ago Arlond Maxen’s father had been following his wife round a store just like this when a very lucrative bulb went off in his head. Maxen had been thinking that he’d do anything at all to make the time pass quicker, and then suddenly realized that he probably wasn’t alone. All these guys, he mused, looking round him at the walking dead, following their women and bored out of their minds: all those wasted man-hours.
He could give them something to do.
So MaxWork was born. A small bench inside every women’s store, with components and half-finished products laid out. You followed your wife or girlfriend into the store, and just picked one of the devices up. In the early days Maxen made sure the kiosks were staffed by eye-candy; after a while it became such a habit that the babes weren’t even necessary. While you trailed around the racks of cloth and leather you did some work on the device; simple, absorbing tasks which anyone could do, picking up from where the last guy had left off. When you left the store you put it back on the bench on the way out, to be picked up by the next boyfriend or husband along. When the devices were finished they were taken away, but there were always new ones to complete.
It was the kind of scheme Howie had been trying to emulate all his life. Perfect, in every way. Relief from tedium for the men, fewer bored sighs for the women to endure—and free labor for the Maxen Corporation, cheaper even than droids. Everybody won, but Cedrif Maxen won most of all. Thirty years later he was the richest man in New Richmond—and now his youngest son had it all.
That’s the history, for those of you who’re interested, but that wasn’t what I was thinking about. Walking into the store had carelessly wiped a cloth across a window blackened and opaque with time. The path of that cloth was still filthy, but just transparent enough to reveal glints on the edges of memories lost in the darkness beyond. I’d tried so hard not to think of any of it. Not even of the horror at the end, just of the times before that Bad things done, and said; things which could never be undone. Not just the bad, either; good and bad memories hurt in different ways, but they hurt just about the same.
At that moment, I would have given anything to walk round a shoe store following Henna’s glee, watching the way her eyes calculated cost, the way her hands reached out to caress and assay, it could never happen, and for a moment I was seized with a distraught desire to go down to 72 and the clothes left in our old apartment; to look at them, touch them, see if I could remember the day when they were bought. To try to take myself back to that day and this time not grunt and yawn, or bury myself in MaxWork, but be there with her and live every minute as it passed. So many minutes, and hours; so many days ignored away. And then suddenly it’s over, and she can never come back, and all that time returns to stay.
At a squeal from the shop door I looked up to see Suej running toward me. It took me a long moment to recognize her. I’d never seen her face looking that happy, and she was wearing different clothes. My cast-offs were gone, and she was wearing a thin summer dress, a subtle print that twisted and changed as she moved. She looked younger, and older; like someone I knew and someone I’d never seen before. Behind her came Nearly, a wry smile on her lips and a different look in her eyes. As Suej thudded into me and wrapped her arms around me I raised an eyebrow at Nearly, and she shrugged.
“Been a good month,” she said.
And then, an afternoon that really felt like summer, though winter was in full force outside. I found I still couldn’t go in the stores, but waited happily enough outside, smoking on benches and standing in doorways, nodding sagely when required. A coat for Suej,