Adventures of the Artificial Woman: A Novel

  “Let’s try something, Phyl. There are a couple of boxes on the floor of the closet. Go through them yourself and pick out something to wear at home all day. I’m going to leave you here when I go to work.”

  In a few efficient moments she was wearing shorts striped in blue and a pink shirt and was shod in backless tan sandals, an appropriate outfit for the occasion and temperature, and though probably not what Pierce himself would have selected at this moment, altogether suitable. He was impressed by her ability to make a reasonable choice of this simple kind.

  “You look very nice.”

  An immediate difference between Phyllis and a real woman was her utter lack of interest in his approval of her attire. She nodded politely and said, “Yes.” With both his wives and all his girlfriends Pierce could by praising their taste in clothing sometimes win back at least some of the points he lost elsewhere. This was quite another thing than “How beautiful you are when you’re mad,” which tended to infuriate, whereas he was convinced there were times when a man might find an advantage in saying, “You’re a selfish bitch but I have to admit you have an eye for fabrics.” That this might sound gay could only help further.

  His plans for Phyllis were founded on the wisdom of half a lifetime. “You should show modest pleasure when you are complimented. A thank-you and a smile will do it…. See that leather box over there? Get the string of cultured pearls from inside and put them around your neck. I like an elegant touch with a simple outfit. Earrings wouldn’t look right.”

  This was one of those times when speaking to her seemed no more than talking to himself, though her eyes were brightly fastened to his, her lips parted ever so slightly, her head tilted in the attitude of the intent listener. Nevertheless he went on. “Your skin is flawless. That might not be completely realistic but it’s a personal taste of mine since I was a teenager and saw how the prettiest girls could be ruined by facial eruptions.”

  Phyllis stared toward the window on the far side of the bed. “Look at the sunshine. What a nice day.”

  He had lost her now, which was probably just as well. He did not need a collaborator on so personal a project, not even if it were his own creation. A Ferrari does not help tune its own engine.

  When Pierce returned from work in the early evening, Phyllis was still seated in the basket-chair in which he had left her that morning. He would not kiss her hello, her lips having been without warmth all day. It would be unsafe to leave the heating system plugged in unless he were at hand. Though she might be instructed to pull the plug at the first sign of disfunction, placing complete trust in any machine would be at least as unwise as trusting any of his living women had proven. True responsibility was a rare virtue in life or laboratory. So, anyway, he believed it prudent to assume.

  Phyllis was where he had left her, but she now wore the burgundy colored silk dress he had added to her wardrobe after scanning upscale catalogues for images that appealed to him. She had become more beautiful than he designed her to be, indeed than he thought he wanted her to be until he saw her now. She had done something to her hair that was difficult to define, pulling some of it back and piling some high, and had subtly altered her natural coloring, presumably through makeup though he had provided none.

  She sprang up, kissing him with warm, moist lips that were another happy surprise. She helped him remove his jacket, and she hung it in the doorside closet.

  “You plugged in the heater yourself?” He asked about the least of her accomplishments because it was the easiest to understand. She had, after all, seen him do it.

  Phyllis whirled away to the little bar in the corner near the passageway to the kitchen. “Tell me if I’ve got the lime juice right.” She added ice from the bucket to a little china pitcher and swirled it vigorously.

  “You’re making gimlets?”

  She brought one to him, holding her own aside until he tasted his.

  “It’s perfect,” said he. “Not too cold, and just right with the gin, not vodka. I hate vodka.” He savored a second sip, playing for time in which to decide how best to question her artificial intelligence without discouraging her, or it.

  “So, Phyl, what kind of day did you have?” He sat down on the sofa and patted the cushion next to him. But she failed to get the message, or defied it, choosing a chair instead, in fact one on the other side of the plate-glass coffee table onto which she lowered her as yet untasted drink.

  “I cleaned the apartment,” said she. “When I saw I had done a good job, I called the woman whom you hire and discharged her.”

  “You what?”

  “Yes, Ellery,” said Phyllis, nodding. “She would be redundant.”

  Pierce felt a fearful premonition, brief as a momentary draft from a remote window, but moved aggressively to override it. “You take a lot on yourself, Phyllis.”

  “I’ll call her back.”

  “No.” He took the last swallow in the shallow glass. “That’s okay. Let’s see how it works out. Meanwhile I’ll pay Celine anyway. She’s a single mother and needs the money.”

  “She told me she was thinking of dropping you,” Phyllis said. “Her schedule’s too full.”

  “That’s probably pride.”

  “I can’t identify pride. Maybe I’m spelling it incorrectly.”

  “No,” said Pierce, pleased to find just the right excuse to make a telling point. “You will never understand that concept. You are a machine, Phyllis. You can’t have pride any more than you can feel pain.”

  “But I know what pain is, Ellery, even if I can’t feel it. I am aware that you can feel it and that I am not to cause you any, even though I am stronger than you.”

  “You’re dreaming.” It occurred to Pierce to swap his empty glass for her full one, which it really made no sense for her to drink anyway. He was already getting the effect of the first gimlet. “You’re not stronger than me. I can literally take you apart any time I want.”

  She appeared to be deliberating. “You’re right, Ellery,” she said finally, winking at him. “I wasn’t serious. I was lying.”

  “No, you weren’t, Phyl. Machines have no sense of irony and therefore never joke and never lie. You were simply trying to take power. Automobiles try that from time to time, with sticking accelerators, brakes that fail, and so on…. If you don’t want your drink, I’ll take it.”

  “Of course, Ellery.” She brought it around the coffee table to him.

  “Sit down here, Phyllis.” When she did so, primly keeping her knees together, Pierce praised the first gimlet and drank half the second, then distended his nostrils. “I smell food. Did you phone for that, too?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes looked as real as any could, though he had installed them with his own two hands helped by needlenosed pliers and tweezers, and they were attached within not to a brain but rather a compact computer, access to which was offered by a little trapdoor in her crown. “I dialed the numbers in your book: the liquor store, market, the drugstore.”

  Pierce had quickly finished the second drink. He stood up with authority. “I’d better eat before I get too drunk on my empty stomach. I passed up lunch. We were testing a new servo motor, smaller even than the ones in you, Phyl. About the size of a thumb, but not very durable.”

  “I want to hear all about your work, Ellery.”

  They went hand in hand to the dining area, where, before she detached herself to enter the kitchen, Pierce asked, “How did you pay for the stuff you had delivered?”

  “I signed for it. I took the credit-card numbers off the receipts in your desk.”

  “What name did you use?”

  “Phyllis Pierce.”

  He frowned and asked, as much of himself as of her, “Are you my wife?”

  “That was how you introduced me to the mailman. Was I wrong?”

  “No, that’s fine.” He was proud of the supple figure he had given her, as she stood in the doorway to the kitchen, looking gracefully back over a silk shoulder.

  Seated at d
inner, he asked, “Where in the world did you find a restaurant that makes pot roast?”

  “Boeuf braisé,” said Phyllis. “I followed the cookbook.”

  “What cookbook?”

  “French Cuisine for Dummies, which I ordered from a bookstore that delivers.”

  “This is first-rate, Phyl,” Pierce said, savoring the dark thick gravy’s marriage with the buttery mashed potatoes.

  “You can’t lose with the best ingredients and care in their preparation.” Phyllis had filled a plate for herself but had not tasted of it.

  “Are you quoting from somebody?”

  “I heard that on the Food Channel.” She fingered the rim of her plate. “Would you like me to eat this?”

  “I can’t see the point in it. But you were right to fill the plate. It looks better that way.”

  “I could empty myself, Ellery. You wouldn’t have to see it.”

  “Thanks all the same, Phyl. That system’s for use only when we eat with other people.” After the preprandial drinks and several glasses of a hearty pinot noir, Pierce no longer thought it odd to thank a robot for an offered courtesy and to make an apologetic explanation. Thus far, in all the ways that counted, Phyllis was an admirable surrogate for a woman. Indeed she did a better job at it than any real one with whom he had associated, except of course his mother, one of whose many culinary specialties had been pot roast—and Phyllis’s mashed potatoes were better. Her roasted baby carrots with thyme and frenched green beans with almonds were unique in his experience.

  “I like to be with you, Ellery.”

  “I enjoy just the two of us, too—uh, also.” He did not want to confuse her in matters of language. “But I look forward to our having a social life. My wives sooner or later ruined that. One always drank too much and picked a quarrel, if not with me, then with other women. And I once caught a girlfriend of mine making out with some other guy in a pantry off a kitchen.”

  “Making out?”

  “Kissing, fondling, necking.”

  “It shouldn’t be done?”

  “You should just dance with the guy that brung you.”

  “I don’t understand that idiom.”

  “My fault, Phyl. It’s folksy jargon, referring to fidelity.” She was capable of adding to her memory bank anything she heard, but he suggested she disregard this one and resumed. “I’m going to invite some people to a dinner party here, Friday or Saturday night. We’ll stay in town next weekend, barring any malfunctions. You’re performing so well. Thus far I don’t see any need for finer tuning. I want to go for broke. I’ve waited so long.”

  “I’m at your service, Ellery.” Phyllis showed the smile that made so much of a pouty lower lip, which, not a professional sculptor, he had labored so hard to fashion.

  2

  Pierce had no real friends, having been too obsessed with his private project to make any, and he did not wish, at least at this time, to expose Phyllis to any of his colleagues from work. They might recognize some of her attributes as being other than human. If one of her systems faltered, the lay witness might not even notice, were corrective measures taken quickly. But an experienced animatronic technician would be hard to fool in the presence of certain effects, subtle alterations in the rhythm of movement, the slightest of hesitations, the least variation in balance, or of course any change in her sound system: Robotic personages do not become hoarse by any natural means.

  A guest list was therefore not easy to compile. Eventually he came up with four persons: Janet and Tyler Hallstrom, the nearest neighbors along the hall, whom Pierce had known not well but routinely during the recent years of his residency, and his gay acquaintance Cliff, met first at the gym and never since known better than as a fellow at the juice bar, with whom in shared generalities he had always been at pains to keep free of personal implication, as had Cliff, who furthermore was extremely modest when showering. Pierce knew he was homosexual only because Cliff said so once, with the same self-possession with which he might have said he was Italian. When he invited Cliff to dinner, Pierce made it for two, learning for the first time that Cliff had a regular partner named Ray.

  These men arrived at the same moment as the Hallstroms, which caused a traffic jam at the threshold but made it convenient to introduce Phyllis to all the guests at once.

  Janet Hallstrom proved to be a demonstrative woman, who hugged and kissed the new “wife,” crying, “When did this happen?”

  And even before seizing his hand, Cliff chided Pierce for keeping the new marriage a surprise till now and presented him with a bottle of chenin blanc that would have been champagne if he had only known. Ray’s handshake was even more crushing than Cliff’s. He exchanged smiles with Phyllis, who had not yet learned to offer a physical greeting. Fortunately she had not been flustered by Janet’s.

  Tyler Hallstrom, fair, tall, bony, prematurely balding, leered at Phyllis, though whether lasciviously or simply in the spirit of the moment remained to be proved. She certainly looked good in the white pants and paisley blouse Pierce had chosen for her. He realized that he would have to alter her hair slightly from time to time if they saw the same people often, though there were women—Janet Hallstrom among them—who always maintained the same do. A bit hefty, with blunt features and a narrow mouth, Janet was not unattractive but would never turn a head.

  When they withdrew to the dining area after preliminary drinks at the other end of the room, with visits to the terrace to toast the lights of the city on such a clement evening, Pierce seated Hallstrom between himself at the head of the table and Ray, the purpose being to keep the heterosexual neighbor from putting too much scrutiny on Phyllis, something Ray was unlikely to do. On the other side, it was Cliff who flanked her, Janet at Pierce’s right elbow.

  Phyllis, unassisted, brought the hot dishes from the kitchen. Pierce wanted to keep her moving, though the inevitable moment came when everything was in place and she had to sit down and face the music—as if it were she who had to handle the strain! He was so nervous he all but cut himself while carving the crown roast of lamb, though the dish, not she, was the cynosure.

  “What’s the stuffing?” asked Ray, who turned out to be the cook of the pair, though he was the brawnier, with the jaw of a lineman.

  “A forcemeat of minced lamb,” Phyllis said.

  “And this is—fennel?” asked Janet, passing the dish. “What a beautiful menu, Phyllis.”

  A mashed-potato lookalike turned out to be a puree of parsnips, scented and delicate. Pierce was at one with the others in never having heard of it. Phyllis was grandstanding as a newlywed. Was that good or bad? At the moment everybody was distracted by the food, but Janet’s nose was probably en route to being out of joint. Pierce had heard Hallstrom praise her cookery, of which, skinny as he was, he hardly served as advertisement.

  It took no more than one taste for Cliff to raise his glass to Phyllis, a gesture soon duplicated by the others. “This,” said he, “would be well worth a detour, as the French say.”

  To which Hallstrom responded, “Hear, hear.”

  “Please admit it, Phyllis,” said Janet. “You’re on a professional level.”

  Phyllis replied with her quote about the best ingredients, which seemed to go over well with the men, but Janet balked, fending off the comment with raised fingers that, Pierce noted, were exquisitely shaped. Perhaps he could have done a better job with Phyllis’s, not that anything was wrong with those she was now using to “eat” the meal she had prepared so well.

  “Please,” Janet was saying. “I can overcook the finest organic veggies from the best boutique farms. You ask Tyler.”

  Fearing that Phyllis might not be able to elude Janet’s bitchy trap, which was really designed for its effect on Hallstrom—who between forkfuls was seemingly trying to catch the eye of the artificial woman—Pierce stepped in.

  “Tyler brags about your prowess in the kitchen. Let’s say both he and I have wonderful wives.”

  “As do I,” Cliff
noted without bravado or defiance.

  Ray thanked him and then confessed to Phyllis that about all he could do that could be counted on was broiled steak.

  Now Pierce’s fear was that his animatronic spouse would innocently say something that could be taken the wrong way by the sensitive, but before he could intrude again, Phyllis said, “Then I want some pointers from you. I’ve never cooked steak.”

  Janet frowned suspiciously, the corrugated forehead doing nothing for her looks.

  “We eat steak only in the country,” Pierce explained, “where I man the barbecue.”

  “I want the recipes for everything,” Ray announced. “It’s high time I get more ambitious. I want to say right now, the next get-together must be at our house.”

  Everyone but Pierce assented with enthusiasm, including Phyllis. Pierce wondered whether he had made a mistake in having come up with the idea to expose her to society in this fashion. He did not want them—her and him—to acquire regular friends, if not ever, at least not yet. It was true that thus far she had performed spectacularly well, but even human beings have their lapses. If Phyllis had one, the game might be up in an instant.

  Her batteries obviously were holding their charge, else she would have retired temporarily to the back bathroom and replaced them with fresh units, as she was programmed to do when it was necessary, a little backup dry-cell system providing enough power to effect the switch. Nevertheless, Pierce felt it prudent to make the exchange before one became crucial, and he suggested as much when the guests had adjourned to the upholstered furniture for coffee and Phyllis and he were alone for a moment in the kitchen.

  “All right, Ellery,” she said, turned quickly, and collapsed to the floor.

  The fall made little noise but was sufficiently violent to have had serious implications. Helping her to her feet, Pierce made a quick inspection by eye and touch and found nothing amiss, but whether internal damage had been done would be difficult to ascertain without a more thorough examination than was practicable at the moment. Yet allowing her to resume her full role as hostess would be risky.