Machine Dreams

never broken? Birds outside, tick of a clock. Light on the big sink, dense weight of the pocked, scoured porcelain.
    “Don’t you want some breakfast?” he asked her, willing to say only conversational things, not change the feeling.
    “I’ll have some later, with Katie.” Gravity of the child’s name in the room. “She’s asleep?”
    “Sure. Tuckered out, fell off while I was talking to her. She keep you up all night?”
    “On and off. I should have waited until this morning to tell her about laying out of school, when you were home. She’s a little soldier when she thinks you’re watching.”
    “She cried about school?”
    “Yes, I suppose, but really she only cried about the movies. She said you’d promised to take her and her heart was set.”
    “Well, can’t she still go?” He sopped up the last of the eggs with the bread, drank the coffee down. “Wrap her in a blanket in the car, movie house is warm, keep her right in the side aisle by the registers.” He thought then of her face in the bed, how wan she’d looked, little girl like an old lady, and felt a stab of fear. “But if you think it would make her worse—” He lay his fork down.
    She took the empty plate and moved to the sink. “I don’t suppose, if she sleeps all morning …” And then almost to herself, “We can’t let her think she’s so different from other children or that she’ll always be sickly.”
    He wondered how much of her life was made of such strategies, tending to appearances, careful shelter of one influence and not another. “Will Katie be sickly?” he asked quietly.
    Bess didn’t turn or alter her movements. “Of course not. Her heart is weakened. It takes time. One of the main things is that she stay cheerful.”
    “Then I’ll take her to the show. The matinee.” He stood and gave Bess his empty cup.
    “It’s a Disney movie. Three cartoons and she’s told me about every one of them—the little Carpenter girl went a few nights ago. You must only stay for the first one. Take the blanket inside and keep her very warm.” Bess began washing the plate and the frying pan—that meant she didn’t expect Clayton up anytime soon. He’d really tied one on.
    “She’ll be fine,” Mitch said.
    “She’ll be so happy you’re taking her,” Bess said. “Katie’s your darling, I’m afraid.”
    He went upstreet to get the wax for the car and was back by ten. Automatic, this work, rubbing onto the long car a substancelike cold butter, filming the hard shine of the metal. Methodically, he did the car in sections, beginning with the long front hood, the broad snout of the machine. The deep blue they’d called “royal” was really almost navy, and as he rubbed, leaning into the circular motion of his effort, the color seemed to darken more under the whitish film. His own reflection distorted on the cloudy surface and he thought of unconnected things, no stories, remembered jumbled associations from last night. How in the dark barn, in the sudden sealed quiet before Mary Chidester laughed, pleased with herself and her trick, he’d been momentarily frightened.
    That anonymous black, dark like Australian dark, Sydney streets during the blackouts. A leave he’d taken alone soon after he and Warrenholtz had trapped that Nip pilot in the field west of the base camp. Above Coco Mission beach it was, but he wouldn’t think of that and remembered instead coming back from the cinema in Sydney where he’d seen
Gone With The Wind
for the second time during the war. Theater full of soldiers with girls from a USO escort service, and he’d gone alone, walked back ignoring the clipped voices of the drab prostitutes. Just as he got to his hotel the air-raid sirens had wailed, drawling their panicky scales. Interior of the hotel lit only with dim green-shaded lights, seemed nearly empty. Eight flights to his room; he counted the landings. The sirens would cut off before long; as he assured himself of this, he came to the eighth floor and the sirens stopped.
    He’d leaned against the wall, listening. No sound. It was late. He had the key in his hand but couldn’t see a damn thing. Had only checked in before he went out for dinner and they’d taken his bag, said they’d put it in his room and show him up later. He took his lighter out of his pocket and shook it; wet the wick, there, it caught and he held the small flame high. Numbers came up in the dark and he found his room, 808; he turned the key and went in,