Clockwork [final]

Four

It was mid-afternoon when Derek gave up on his feeble attempts at sleep and Adette decided it was probably a wise decision to bring him something to eat. She walked in with some leftover soup.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, still half asleep. As she neared him, her foot caught on the carpet and she spilled hot soup all over his lap. “God damn it, that fucking burns!” he howled angrily. “Can’t you watch your step?”

“I’m sorry,” she squeaked, hurriedly trying to clean up the soup she’d spilt on him. Fortunately, it had only been hot enough to lightly scald him.

“No, I’m sorry,” he sighed wearily, “I’m just so god damn angry all the time trying to get off this crack.”

“It’s fine, I understand.”

Once he was cleaned up, Adette disappeared to get him something else to eat. She returned a large bowl of trail mix and sat down next to him, putting the bowl between them as an unspoken gesture of “help yourself”.

“So, don’t you have a job or something like that?” Derek asked, raising an eyebrow. “I might be a crackhead but I can still work out it’s a weekday.”

Adette giggled a little at that. “I make a living selling my robots. They sell for quite a bit and I come up with new ideas all the time. I just think of would be useful to me and make it for everyone else.”

Derek nodded . “Must get pretty lonely, being shut up in your house all the time slaving over some robot or the other. Is that why you adopted yourself a homeless crackhead? Because I tell you what, girl, we ain’t great company, in case you hadn’t noticed already.”

Adette laughed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it were part of the subconscious reason, in all honesty.”

There was another pause.

“Hey, when you said that your robot thingy made the highest pitched tone you’d ever heard it make when you walked past me… wouldn’t your tone be even more high pitched?”

Adette raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

“You took in a homeless crackhead, let him use your shower, fed him, clothed him, gave him a place to sleep, helped him with his crack addiction and even mopped up his puke. How exactly does that not make you a good person?”

Adette gazed out the window, her eyes clouding over. “There is a lot more to true goodness of heart than external acts of kindness.”

He looked at her for a long moment, intrigued by that reaction and wondering how to reply. It seemed like a sensitive subject, somehow. “Seems pretty internal to me, not external,” he said eventually.

“What?” she muttered, frowning at him.

“Well, we seem to be really close already, which is pretty fucked up if you ask me, but whatever. Doesn’t that make it internal?”

Once again, Adette laughed. “You’re funny, Derek.”

“I’m not making jokes.”

“Yeah, that’s why it’s funny.”

More silence stretched between them.

“Don’t you need something to keep your mind off your addiction? A hobby or something?” Adette supposed aloud.

“What? Where the hell did that come from?”

“It helps to keep your mind off crack if you keep busy. Can’t have you being irritable all the time, you hurt my feelings earlier,” she said with a dramatic sniff.