Mosquito
The tracer could be removed with tweezers; but its itch, counterpointing that which I felt in my loins, made me reluctant to destroy it. I wanted him; and he, it seemed, wanted me. Did I ask myself why? No, my darlings. Mosquito has an extravagant heart. Closing my eyes, I beheld the blazing lines of Mr James dancing across my retina, like the afterimage of a fierce summer’s day your aching eyes have forestalled on. I saw him, incandescent among dark, London streets, a lean man dressed in light, window-shopping for automata. His cold eyes appraise their wonderful, jewelled forms, as he walks down Piccadilly and into Bond Street. And there, in a Cartier showroom, he sees me, and falls hopelessly in love.
I heard Harry throw aside his paper, the scrape of his chair. “Make hoochie-coochie with a customer again,” he said, “and I’ll break your arms.”
That’s Harry.
That evening, back at my condo, I prepared for work. Seiko mechanettes (they of the regenerative maidenhead) had recently been decanted for bars in the Silom Road and Harry wanted a report. On the heat-ruptured surface of my dresser I placed my creams, paints, and powders, my unguents and emollients; then, laying out my she-clothes, I sloughed off my daytime skin and became The Doll. My alias winked at me from the other side of the mirror. She has a delicate, childlike face, my sister, with vestiges of puppy fat about the cheeks. Bobbed hair gives her an appearance of delinquency, as do the eyes, crescent and puckish, burning like black suns. The lips are set in a pout, communicating both desire and disdain. And the complexion—the faultless, lacquered flesh of the gynoid—proclaims her synthetic. Her sartorial ensemble? A leopard-print body stocking and six-inch stilettos. The genitals, of course (always a problem) have to be secured with Scotch tape, giving the appearance of a distended mons veneris. I smiled, checking my fangs. Perfect.
I lay on the bed and browsed through some physical culture magazines while the radio murmured of love lost and found to the indifferent whup, whup, whup of the fan. The microscopic transmitter throbbed, caterwauling across the city to Milord. I pressed it to my lips. Instantly, the imperative of that evening’s work was subverted by a premonition that he would call, not tomorrow, not next week, but tonight. And I preened myself, again and again, jittery as a girl preparing for her first date. My deceptions were unrivalled, if incomplete. Harry, who had paid for my implants and other, more radical, surgery, had insisted I retain a flow of testosterone in my veins. Only a man could imitate a doll. Women, it was said, were too real. For dolls are not women; they are man’s dreams of women. Made in man’s image, they are an extension of his sex, female impersonators built to confirm his prejudices, sexual illusionists. I too was practiced in sexual sleight of hand, my womanhood as unreal and as pathologically exquisite as a doll’s. So exquisite, it was almost grotesque.
The intercom buzzed. “Someone to see you, Madame,” said Zip. “A Mr–” But Zip was given no time to complete the formalities. Instead of “James” (my heart lurched, telling me it was so) came the announcement of electromagnetic crackle and bar-brawl sound effects. I rolled off the bed, nauseous with anticipation. The hallway stank of roasted Bakelite. Mr James had been unnecessarily heavy-handed; Zip was a valet, not a security guard (though his cosmetic musculature and barrel chest often led people to conclude otherwise). I breathed deeply, trying to remember my lines, quell my stage fright, ignore the anxious clickety-clack of my high heels on the teakwood parquetry. I made my entrance.
Milord stood over a broken coffee table, silk jacket ripped, Panama askew, his leather-gloved prosthesis smoking; and Zip, horizontal amid the debris, scorch marks either side of his shaven head, looked up at him dead-eyed with a demeanour as hard and vulnerable as the Mapplethorpe portraits that lined my walls. Hands on hips, lips quivering like a spoilt, refractory child’s, I cued in: “You want kill me too?” His eyes grazed my body like the feather-light tips of rapiers. It was a good body, I reassured myself; an expensive body; a body I always regretted having to camouflage by day. Exaggeratedly feminine, it was grafted onto a small-boned, somewhat adolescent infrastructure, like a piquant allegory of innocence burdened by desire. “You very naughty, Mr James. Just look at poor Zipper!”
“Mosquito?” I curtsied in acknowledgement. “Good God, I’ve seen a lot of he-shes in Bangkok and some of them were fantastic… but you… Seems you might be worth all this trouble.”
“I think Trouble your middle name, Mr James.”
“Sorry about Man Friday.”
“Not organic. Not modern doll. Backed up. Running in an hour.” He straightened his hat and fumbled in his pockets. “Chocolates? Flowers?” I asked, mock expectant.
“Seem to have lost my cigarettes.” I bent down, retrieving a silver cigarette case lying beneath a scree of broken glass. I helped myself.
“Light me.” Like a tiny, nervous dragon, a Dupont flickered and withdrew. “Nice lighter.”
