Parts and Labor

K groaned with my lips at his throat and let me in on a little secret after his show at the Metro. I had asked what happened to his sometimes-girlfriend. “Mel skipped town,” he said. “Went back to Detroit to find out what happened to Humvee, I guess.” The alley reeked of wet garbage and his bassist stood a few feet away taking short, awkward drags off an e-cig.

Humvee: an aggressively average post-hardcore band that had vanished the week before, last seen by someone’s twelve-year-old sister smoking spice out of an apple bowl behind Walgreens, wearing all black (as usual) save for the frontman’s ascot, which was magenta and supposed to be ironic in a way no one understood. He was the Fred Jones of the group. Why did Mel care what happened to those loons?

I pressed a final, fleeting kiss to K’s lips and left him shouting after me. Something about a handjob. The bassist let out a low laugh.

#

Mel had a smile like a taunt and a head full of wonder. Childish fascination like a fever, perpetually asking questions with her eyes. In her Demonias, she enacted a gravitational force that I was bound to even now.

The problem was that, like any red-blooded American, I pined for the status quo. Change made me nervous. Loss made me restless. Interruption fueled desire; desire fueled disappointment. Some days I screeched into the ether for comforts long lost: looking up from my book to catch her glancing away; the backs of my fingers against her neck as she slept.

In truth she was only here in Chicago for a few whirlwind weeks. Felt like mere hours. The longest and shortest of my life. The ones I’ve felt the most.

#

I woke up ambivalent the next morning. A dirty blonde with a black hole mouth who had tried to consume me the night before was now a heap of flesh with drool at the lips. I had a headache. Hardwood beneath my feet, my hands poured water into the automatic drip and there was a single egg boiling after a while. Life sustains life. Pale blue everywhere. The walls, the shabby rug in the living room.

An hour later there remained one sweet centimeter of my coffee at the bottom of an ART INSTITVTE mug which had somehow come into my possession within the last eight months. There was a knock at the door. I opened it and found myself eye to eye with a girl in a blue uniform.

“Hi! I’m Katie. I’m doing an investigation? You’re… Beep DeVille?” she asked. She twirled a lock of brown hair that had fallen loose from the aggressive ponytail atop her head.

I blinked. She wasn’t a day over fifteen.

“Mhmm. What can I help you with?” I said. I leaned against the door frame.

“So, you know a band called Humvee? They’re from around here?” she asked.

“Heard of ’em.”

“They’re missing. All five of them? Including the tour guy with the, uh…?”

“Blow-organ.”

“Yeah. That.” A pause. “Just wondering where you last, like, saw them?”

“Humvee? Can’t remember. Been a while,” I said. “They played a show two weeks ago at Crisco in Detroit, but I didn’t go.”

The girl pulled a blue notepad out of her blue pocket and a blue pen from behind her ear. She then scribbled something down and frowned at it as though I had provided information that called for scrutiny.

“And that's where they're from. Detroit,” she said.

“I don’t remember, but I don’t think so. Is there a problem?” I said.

“What kinda problem?” she asked without looking up.

I shrugged. “No idea,” I said. “Seems like you don’t believe me.”

“Yeah, well, thing is—?” Another pause. “We have a pretty reliable source saying that you were at that show, in the left-central mosh pit, with a broken arm and this guy K.”

“Mel. You’re thinking of Mel,” I deadpanned. “She broke her arm falling off a jungle gym at three-thirty in the goddamn morning. Screamed like crazy.”

“She a short brunette with a broken arm? About five-four?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

“And Mel’s short for…?”

“Dunno. Melanie or Melissa?”

I had never considered the possibility of her full name. Part of me doubted she even had one. She was Mel—a name like warm milk for a girl who carried herself like a washed-up debutante. Broken parts all over—nails, glasses, the arm. I took a sip of my frigid coffee for the sake of having something to do with my hands.

“But you’re also a short brunette,” she said.

“So are you.”

“And your arm’s not broken?”

“My bones are made of aircraft-grade titanium.”

Confusion played at her features and she nodded, lips pursed, frowning at the notepad out of what suddenly resembled stage fright. She was just a kid. All the cops were kids now. Crusader children with no capacity to solve anything, no experience. Just naïveté and fear and a whole lot of nothing.

#

Fred with Ascot gently roused Black Hole Mouth from the depths of slumber. Black Hole played bass for Humvee, and by that I mean he never got any girls except for me, probably, and even then it was only because I was bored. He awoke quite suddenly and started, tugging a lump of comforter into his lap. “Whathafuck…?”

“Rise and shine,” I said. The rest of the band was slowly joining the land of the living. The thing was: not one member of Humvee was dead, as the crusaders were likely beginning to think. They were, simply put, no longer detectable to the human eye.

Blow-Organ groaned from the floor, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and muttered, “Christ.”

“Mm. Breakfast?” said the guitarist, who had a layer of sweat or oil on his cheeks, plus a Cobain-y mop of hair.

The drummer had not indulged to the brink of oblivion the night before and had therefore required the luxury of a wadded-up towel beneath her head before passing out on the carpet. “You gonna rail me with your strat?” she vocal fried in Guitar Hero’s general direction.

“Fuck off, Gingy,” he replied.

“Crusaders are looking for you guys already,” I said, plopping onto the foot of my bed.

I suppose anyone who came about as a result of my particular origin could still see them. I knew I wasn’t the only one, but we were rare. Production was expensive.

“Whatever, Betty Boop. Did you tell ’em?” said Fred.

“‘Them’ is actually ‘her,’ for now, and no.” I fixed him with a blank stare. “It’s Beep. You know that.”

“You’re a bot,” he said with a shrug. “All the same.”

“You know that’s basically a slur, right?” said Gingy.

“What, ‘bot?’” said Fred.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I really don’t care.”

Gingy huffed.

#

Being the only entity who could see, hear, or smell the cluster of mediocrity that was Humvee, I felt responsible for acknowledging their existence. I suppose a part of me understood what it was like to live on the outside looking in, being only half-human myself. There was a time when I was entirely of the homo sapiens persuasion, but since the incident with the folding chair and with the dirty old fortune my parents had inherited in the late nineties, I’d been, as they say, “botted.” Fitted with a handmade pair of eyes, a solar-powered heart, et cetera—upgrades that made me technically superior to purely organic life forms. Unless, of course, you considered death and decay blessings. It would be three years of my transhumanism this December.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer, piecing the shards back together, creating something more functional and valuable than the original thing. Sometimes I told myself I was like that, fixed with metal that made me ageless, stronger, golden.

But gold-lacquered or not, I was suddenly a chip that didn’t quite fit the mosaic of humanity. It was difficult to think of myself as one of them, a part of them, when I would no longer age or die the way they would. When most everything was meaningless in the yawning stretch of my immortality. My permanence marred me in a way that made me question if my soul made it through the procedure.

But then there was Mel. A fascinatingly unhappy person who didn’t care what percentage of me still belonged to the human race. She was fiery and mercurial and the first person I’d wanted since the incident. I couldn’t forget it. Her rare smiles, her vast knowledge on the care and keeping of exotic reptiles. Bliss.

That messed up batch of spice that made Humvee invisible was still floating around. Next thing we knew, she’d go the same way. One hit of the stuff and you were already translucent, and Mel would try anything once or twice.

#

So it seemed the only way to find and warn her was to pile all five invisible members of Humvee into my Kia and set off for Detroit. One could feasibly take I-94 all the way there, and that was the plan until a fast food craving struck Blow-Organ hard. We veered off the beaten path in search of a Burger King. In the time it took to find the damn place the rest of the band prepared overly complicated orders, and so I found myself ordering six meals at the drive-thru for myself and what I assumed looked like tens of disembodied articles of clothing. The band’s orders were topped off with diet drinks. The cashier merely glanced at the back seat and sighed.

#

When Mel was here we used to haunt a 24-hour Waffle House on Randolph that had seemingly been there forever. In our minds, it had seen absolutely everything: the dawn of mankind, the fall of the Roman empire, Andy Warhol, and all the rest. It was sacred as any house of worship; it held that same quiet of blessings. The chairs were the same polished wood of pews, the humiliatingly battered Afghan the exact size of a prayer mat. Our altars were waffles stacked in humble offering to whichever goddess smiled upon the consumption of carbohydrates past midnight.

I was still able to enjoy food the way a human might. We treated the Waffle House as home base, a shelter for our post-show meetings that let us ride out the last of the high that came with music you felt in your ribcage. The restaurant held us for a while, miraculously satisfied our hunger, and then eased us back into the world with gossip well-exchanged.

“I don’t even care if you’re a bot or whatever,” said Mel one night, matter-of-fact. She popped a French fry into her mouth and chewed slowly, thoughtful eyes averted. “We make a good team. You see the way Ashley was looking at us?”

Ashley was the bassist for whichever sub-par band we had witnessed a few hours prior. He had hair down to his hips and an infected brow piercing.

“Looking at you,” I corrected.

“Us.” She took my hands and smiled, sharp and bright as a Ka-Bar. “Us.”

#

The road sprawled. Pink horizon, dark blue sky at our backs. The radio played “Carol of the Bells” though it was only October, and somehow this was not only all right but welcome as we crossed highway miles. Silent, the band listened.

#

Unlike Chicago, Detroit had no flair for the dramatic. No Gothic spires, no wind slicing off the lake in vicious sheets. Just rows of streetlights and straight roads clear as sweet water, not a car or cloud of mist or single shadowy figure lurking in the corner of your vision. I liked it. To the point, and, ultimately, functional. The articles of clothing marched in a loose cluster around me.

“What a dump,” said Blow-Organ.

Black Hole scoffed and said, “Detroit. What did you expect?”

“Not much, I guess,” said Blow-Organ. “Not… much.”

At the end of a dead-end road stood a grime-and-neon edifice, pitiful against the night, withering beneath the waxing moon. The pink façade was peeling, a rotting porch nearly in pieces. Massive letters flickered: BYZANTIUM (VACANCY). I wondered about the implications of naming a hotel after an empire. I wondered if either one was built to last.

“Guess this is fine,” I said. Guitar Hero, Fred, and Blow-Organ all hummed their agreement. The T in BYZANTIUM flickered one last time and then fizzled out for good. Gingy sniffled.

#

We got two rooms: one for Blow, Guitar Hero, and Fred, one for Black Hole, Gingy, and I. Both had cracks in the bathroom tiles and yellowish stains on the ceilings. The bathtub in Blow’s room looked as though a Transformer had punched its base to expose the cement below, which was still wet from its last use.

The view from our room was of the rundown donut shop next door, which had two broken windows replaced with duct tape on the side closest to us. The brown paneling was chipped in places. By the front door lingered a Labrador retriever in a blue crusader vest. As guests came up to the shop, they offered the dog their IDs, glanced at each other in confusion, shrugged, and then entered the building. I watched this process occur several times before I realized the shop served alcohol.

“Wild,” said Blow.

“I never want to see booze again,” said Gingy.

“Yeah,” I said. “Wild.”

I thought of Mel. She had a knack for finding establishments that were just clean enough to ensure a good time while you wondered if you ran the risk of catching a plague by brushing against the bar. At least, that’s how she described it. She was fascinated by dirtiness. Something about the aesthetic of it, the imperfection.

#

The following morning, we indulged in continental breakfast—a pale, colloidal substance somewhere between hash browns and mashed potatoes, plus eggs only slightly less watery than the milk served in plastic cups. We suffered the stares of ragtag guests who had seemingly never before come into contact with invisibles. They snuck glances our way, stuffing dry toast into their mouths, goldfish-eyes opening and closing. Gingy was self-conscious, forever adjusting her patent leather skirt, which I thought was excessive. The others were still in their pajamas, as was I.

Mel never said goodbye; she just vanished. I knew she didn’t mean to leave me. She would never.

#

The Labrador expressed no discontent when I entered the donut bar with my posse. Black Hole’s hand brushed against mine and I recoiled to ensure the point got across: I was here for Mel, not for fun. It was dark like the inside of a freezer. The night seeped in through clouded windows, ashen moonlight on every grimy surface. Fred, Black Hole, Blow-Organ, and Guitar Hero ordered beers. Gingy stood behind them, tapping her toe and looking as though she was considering a drink herself. We were the only people in the bar save for a huddled form in a booth I recognized as K.

“Beep,” he said with a grin as I slid into the seat across from him… “Hanging around with invisibles now?”

If only he knew it was Humvee in the flesh.

“Why are you here?” I said.

“For a donut,” he said.

“No, I mean—”

“Oh, in Dee-troit?” He leaned back in his seat.

“Yeah.”

“No reason. Just hunting down my girl,” he said.

“Mm. Best of luck.”

As long as he wasn’t here for me (or for Humvee), all was right with the world. He’d never find Mel. She knew how to evanesce from K’s radar. When she wanted him back, she’d seek him out herself. I stood to leave.

“Wait,” said K. “If you’re here to find her too, here’s a word of advice: don’t.” He paused. I did not ask him to continue. “Heard she’s in with some weirdos around here. Ex-crusaders too old to be on the force anymore. Saw a few LARPing at a show last night. You’re better off forgetting all about it. They’re into that rough shit, you know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You know, that rough shit. Fights. Street fights. Drag races. Stealing paintings and shit.”

“Nothing you’re saying makes sense.”

“I’m saying you should leave it to me. I can handle those types.” He belched in a self-indulgent way. “You know, Mel’s a klepto. And the ex-crusaders know all the spots, where celebs live and shit.”

“Celebrities don’t live in Detroit, K.”

“Yeah? How about that gal on Food Network? Mina Garden? And that guy with the magic tricks, card tricks and shit?”

“I’m going to go now,” I said.

“Suit yourself.”

#

The next day: Blow and Gingy lingered around a battered old newsstand for several hours before a girl on rollerblades approached them. Allegedly she stopped to chat Gingy up and to ask why she was invisible, and also to invite her to the roller derby, to which Gingy replied, “More into races, actually…” to which Rollerblades said, “Really? I got a date and time, if you know what I mean,” to which Gingy said, “Do you… You mean you know when-slash-where a race is gonna be?” to which Rollerblades said, emphatically, “Yell heah!”

There was almost certainly a more efficient way to acquire this information, but I was beginning to feel ill, and someone at the bar had said the newsstand was the place when I asked around about drag races. I was getting tired. There was something leaden settling into my veins. I spent half the day reading the paper and playing Rummy with Guitar Hero and Black Hole. I would recover soon—I was certain, even if every day seemed more of a trial than the last. This effort would be rewarded.

And Gingy was taking an active role in the search, thank Whoever. The rest of the band seemed more interested in eating crepes and tormenting the hotel staff for odds and ends. Forgotten toothbrushes, forgotten prayer beads. A place to purchase fresh fruit.

I was loathe to admit that our only lead had come from K. I did not mention this to the band. I had told them I had a hunch about the racing, and at the aforementioned when-slash-where we found ourselves at a secluded intersection beneath a flickering streetlight.

Patrons milled about with wine glasses and high heels; the wait staff served cubed cheese in plastic quarter plates. Several gold-lacquered Mitsubishis were parked haphazardly on the street, emo rap loud from one of the stereos. It reeked of exhaust and the collective feeling of having nothing better to do on a Saturday night. The dress code was bright: lime and violet and turquoise, fast fashion athleisure. I could picture Mel in green leggings, some flashy purple t-shirt with a gaudy silver cross around her neck. We were in our usual black, standing out like porcupines in a bathtub of oranges.

Rollerblades skidded to a stop before Gingy, who I presumed she identified by the ever-present leather skirt. “Hey, you made it!” she said. “Did you see the race?”

“Wine and cheese?” said Gingy.

“Yeah, help yourself!” said Rollerblades.

“Is there a bathroom somewhere,” said Fred.

“Probably,” said Rollerblades.

“Have you seen Mel around here?” I said, a tinge of hope creeping into my tone. There was a silence as the band shifted. Black Hole coughed.

“We’re here to have a good time, but Beep here’s looking for this girl,” he said. Did he have to state it like an apology?

“Mel… Brown hair, glasses, eyes like a gunshot?” said Rollerblades.

“Mhmm,” I said.

“She’s not really into this scene anymore. Got caught up with normie stuff: working at a bookstore or a library, that sort of thing. Walking dogs for the one percent.” Rollerblades shrugged. “Not judging her or anything. Sometimes you gotta do that do, I guess? Pretty sure she still smokes a bowl on the weekends, though.”

“We must be thinking of different people,” I said quickly.

“Nah, doubt it. She’s from Chicago, yeah? Came up for a Humvee show a couple weeks ago? I met her stupid boyfriend. Kevin? Kyle?”

“Stupid. Damn. That’s her, then,” I said.

“Have you seen Humvee? What’d you think?” said Fred. I kicked him as subtly as I could.

“Yeah. I was at that show, too. Super average, I guess? That’s where I met the boyfriend. All three of us went to Terabyte after and got real fucked up.” She paused for a sip of wine. “You been? Smells like homicide in there. They don’t even care if you do lines on the tables.” She laughed lightly at the memory. Jealousy swept through me.

“Small world,” I said.

“Totally. After that, we went back to their hotel and got room service; that bougie shit is in around here, I guess? So we got steaks, had some champagne, didn’t sleep much. It was good coke. In the morning, Mel and the boyfriend were gone, and I went home. Nice and chill; spent a while just coming down. A few weeks later, Mel’s back in town without K and going to races and fights and then, in a hot second, she’s off working for fuckin’ Book Clutter.”

“And then?” Gingy said.

Gingy had no reason to do all this for me. It was touching, the way she dragged the guys around to find out what happened to Mel. She was kind. There was some kind of authority in it, and for me, it was a relief.

“I don’t know,” said Rollerblades. “Maybe she’s still there.”

#

I set off immediately. Book Clutter was open twenty-four hours a day every day and located fourteen blocks south of the race site. As I approached, fear gripped me hard, an icicle to the mechanical heart. The structure was massive and alight. A white brick building transformed into a house of Literature by an orange sign tied to pillars. She was close—impossibly so. I felt her gravity, dark and huge. Suddenly I could not picture her face, and she was chimerical.

Heart pounding, I hurried away.

I told no one what I’d done.

#

A roiling, grasping fury lapped at my edges. I no longer fit inside my skin. I wanted violence, for the world to pay. A sunburst of ire that could ruin me from the inside out if I let it.

Then, quite suddenly, gloom.

Melancholy that lasted for days, during which I fell deeper into my cowardice. The band had no problem lingering in Detroit with me, exploring the terrain, going to shows—that is, “partying while invisible,” as they called it. I sat very still for hours at a time. I stared at the ceiling and wondered about my broken self, again worrying that in becoming what I was, I had lost some sacred human trait. I caved in, those artificial parts damning me to isolation like the fabled wall of Pink Floyd. I didn’t want to be seen.

In the mornings I woke on the verge of some great despair. By night I was silently anguished. Everything felt cold on my human skin. All of me felt like a malfunction. I would have to go to the fleet of doctors and engineers who crafted me to get fixed, like a lawnmower or a Toyota.

A week went by, and there appeared a small article in the local paper about invisibility—what caused it, that sort of thing. I read it twice and absorbed nothing. In a fleeting moment of clarity, I knew it was time to go on. I got out of bed, pulled jeans and a shirt and a sweater on over my limbs. This wretched world, with its useless child-police. Alone, I entered Book Clutter to a rush of air conditioning.

I made my way down a winding, white corridor to the reading room, which was also white. Everything white, mysteriously pristine: carpets, tables, chairs, bookshelves. Lofty ceiling constructed to look as though it floated several tens of feet above the rest of the structure. Somehow they managed to stock exclusively near-identical, alabaster volumes, spines bearing dark gray text, a primordial snowstorm.

I could feel Mel’s presence. Like a desperate dog, I thought I caught the scent of her perfume—cherry almond, basically Robitussin with a nutty overture. An atavistic familiarity hit me hard.

There was a woman in a wedding gown flipping through a magazine at the massive desk, which was shaped like a donut. She sat inside it, skirt all poofed around her like a balloon.

“Hello. Is Mel here?” I said, trying hard not to sound frantic.

“Mel?” she said.

“She works here,” I said.

“I don’t know any Mel.” She turned to her side toward a man sitting at the other side of the desk, who did not turn around when she called, “Hey, you know a Mel? One of the newbies, maybe?”

“Mel?” There came a laugh. “She hasn’t come in in days. A shame, too; she was so quick with the shelving. Took her off the schedule yesterday.”

“Well, where is she, then?” I demanded.

“Hell if I know. Sorry,” he said, swiveling back to the desk.

#

That night I tore the sheets and mattress from the hotel bed and let out a scream, a feral screech I didn’t know I had hiding in my depths. The turbid fury. I punched a wall like a jilted boyfriend, leaving a fist-shaped indentation in the plaster. My invincible hands felt no pain. The band watched, silent. It was nearly dawn. Would anyone stop me from ripping state-of-the-art technology from my body? Would anyone hear the chaos of my rage and come running?

I stormed out of the room and down the stairs, the band’s steps pitter-pattering after me. In the corner of my vision I saw Black Hole recording with his flip phone. You want a show? I used my full strength to rip down the hotel’s double doors. Debris everywhere. A shout. I didn’t care. There was only Mel: my confidant, my one true self. I saw her face on the paling horizon. When I blinked it was gone, and it was all I could do to venture toward where it had been. She was in this damn city, but in my heart a small voice spoke in a language I barely understood: you’re too late.

I walked and walked. A great brown plain stretched out before me, the band marching onward, I, their deranged leader. They lingered a few paces behind but I knew they were there, whispering amongst each other as though I couldn’t hear.

“Is she okay?” said Blow.

“Totally lost it,” said Black Hole.

“Not okay,” said Gingy.

“Def,” said Guitar Hero.

“I’m fuckin’ starving,” said Fred.

Forget them all. I went ever forward. I would find Mel as the sun rose. I would accept nothing else, nothing less.

But the miles stretched on, and I wondered at Humvee’s ability to keep up with me. My legs would never tire, but theirs should. I stopped, though not for their sake. I screeched again and those do-nothing nobodies were the only ones there to hear. Everything seemed synthetic: the sky in eggshell blue, the cracked soil beneath me, my four perfect limbs. I was a metal outline of a person.

I fell to my knees. Gingy approached, breathing hard, drawing in the morning air with that mortal need I would never know again. I went silent, still. She leaned over and covered my body with hers. The tears on my face were not mine.

Then Guitar Hero, in a stoic few steps, came to cover me as well. Then Black Hole, with a bit of distaste. Then Blow-Organ, impassive, and finally, Fred Jones. The weight bore down on me, breathing into me, filling me. I squirmed and tried to speak but my voice was lost beneath them. We stayed like that for a long while.

A cool breeze swept past and Mel said my name from somewhere, some impossible where. I thrashed but Humvee held fast. She was close. I knew it, could feel it in the center of my brain with a certainty that came to rival every natural law. Beneath them, I began to question the endurance of my bones. I shoved and roared but my strength had vanished. Crushed from above, I belonged to neither Hell nor Heaven. Bots are for Earth. This barren earth! My fingers dug into the dirt.