Staying On


We were schedule for another day of taping, but no one’s heart was in it.

Kerri tried to laugh it off, saying she had material for a whole new strip. Once she read through the dozen scrolls Nolan had promised her.

But frankly, I don’t think the two men could have forced that helmet onto Nolan’s head.

He wasn’t scared, not of being paralyzed. He just didn’t want to risk traumatizing his sylph any further.

So we spent the morning in the bookstore, then a big lunch at IHOP. Ray was quiet most of the time, though attentive to anything Pet wanted or looked interested in.

After lunch, he said he was going to go to the airport and back to DC. “I’m going to go get yelled at by Annie,” he said. “Get that out of the way.”

“Good!” Pet said. She was as angry as Pet ever gets, which meant every time she remembered to be angry, she got angry.

“The bags already in the car,” he explained. “Our flight’s in three hours, so say your goodbyes, Pet.”

She ran across the table to hug everyone. Conrad turned to Ray. “The remote equipment’s still at their place.”

Our flight. Their place. In the midst of all the drama, I took a moment to appreciate my owner. All owners that included their sylphs as members, not property.

Which meant I was distracted when they discussed the remotes.

“Oh, BOY!” Delli shouted.

“Huh? What?” I asked.

“This’ll be GREAT!” Magic said, nudging me in the ribs with an elbow.

“What will be? What just happened?” I asked, turning around and around. Ray shook hands with Conrad and Nolan, apologized once more, then pried Pet away from Kerri and went out to his car.

“CONRAD!” I shouted. He looked down. “Pretend I was distracted, thinking nice things about how you say ‘their place’ rather than ‘his place,’ and missed everything after ‘the remote equipment.”

“Oh. Ray said we could take the helmets and remotes back to Boise and wait for the convention.

“And, you know, use the remotes to our heart’s content.”

“Without anyone there who knows the emergency off,” Nolan added.

“Ooooooh,” I cooed.

“Wait,” Kerri said. “If no one’s watching you, will there be danger?”

“I figure,” Conrad said, “I stay on my guys’ good sides, so if I do start to have a fit, they’ll take a moment, center themselves, look from my still form to the remote, and then twist my head off.”

“I can do that,” Cher said. “Only because I love you.”

“For the chinchilla, I could kill you if you needed it,” Delli said. “For keeping it a secret, I could enjoy killing you.”

“I’d just channel the time you made me think I was just an intellectual shortcut,” I said. “I’d have LOVED to twist your head off that week.”

“Week?” Magic asked, scandalized.

“That’s my girl,” Conrad smiled. He turned to Kerri. “We’ll be fine.”

Nolan looked at Magic. She shrugged. “People in seizure can’t serve dinner.”

“You’ll be in good hands,” Kerri laughed.

-----

There was no using the remotes on the drive back home. None of us felt comfortable with the slightest possibility of a problem so far from home. Besides, who wants to help their giant explore a motel room? Look under the bed, Master! It’s been vacuumed twice in the last five years!

But we did read the manual. Read that puppy back and forwards. Read paragraphs out loud to Conrad as he drove.

And climbed down to the carrier on the floor to discuss what we’d do to him. I mean, with him, of course. With him.

There was a week and a half before the convention. We decided, with Conrad, to alternate days. One day working at the studio, including editing, scripting, any last-minute preps for the con.

One day with Conrad in a remote, and one of the sylphs in charge.

Cher won some rather vicious die rolling and got the first day.

Conrad got up, dressed in loose clothes, ate, went to the potty, and took the helmet into our bedroom.

The remote was down on the first floor. He shook himself and stepped down from the base.

We all stood around him in a half-circle as he looked us over, face-to-face. For most of the sylphs, this was his first time seeing them that way, ever. For me, it was sixteen years change all at once.

He glanced at all of us, then stepped forward.

He took Delli’s hand. “You’re even more lovely than I thought I knew.” She giggled like a freaking school girl. He squeezed her upper arm and turned.

Cher loomed over the remote. For today, Conrad had chosen the Elf figure. Tall and willowy, he looked like a twig beside his biggest pet.

His head tilted as he looked Cher up and down, twice. “Man, you’re huge,” he said softly. Then, when Cher smiled, he smiled back. “And that’s exactly the twinkle I always thought I saw in your eye.”

He shook Cher’s hand, then turned to Magic. She offered a hand and he shook that. He kept her hand and looked over her arm, clamp reaching out to lightly trace some of her bigger scars.

She looked uncomfortable for a second. “They don’t hurt, Conrad.”

“Oh! Oh, no, Magic!” he apologized. “I wasn’t feeling pity or sympathy. I was thinking I could never keep up with you, if it wasn’t for my sixty-four-inch height advantage!”

“What makes you think you can keep up?” she smiled back at him. “We ARE going to go boating on Anderson Ranch Dam next month, right?”

He sighed the sigh of the much put upon, but nodded.

“I can’t swim,” Delli said, “but I’ll be with you in spirit!”

“That’s an option?” Conrad asked.

“NO!” we all said. He sighed.

Then he smiled at Magic and turned to me. He stared. I stared. He started to reach for me, for my shoulder. Then his clamp dropped.

“What?” I finally asked.

“You, uh, you look exactly the same.”

“Liar,” I laughed.

“No,” he said. “I mean, really, if you were wearing your cheerleader costume from that day at Springwater High, you could be your own twin.”

“I can do that!” Delli said.

“Hush,” I told her. “I’m twice as old as I was.”

“And sylphing does you good,” Conrad said. Promised. I stepped up to kiss his screen.

Finally he turned away from me. “So, what’s first?”

“Me!” Cher said. “My day!”

“What are we doing?” Conrad asked. So trusting.

Cher led him into the Set, into the garage. Delli and I were supposed to go find something else to do, but this was too fascinating.

He moved in a very definite Conraddy way. I mean, I KNEW that step. That lean to grab door handles. But he also moved lightly, as sylphs do. Like gravity is something cooperative, not a punishment.

So we all ended up in the garage. Magic went to sit in Cher’s chair.

“What’s this?” our owner asked.

“I feel that you could use some time getting to really know your pets,” Cher said. “And, for me, there’s very little that’s more intimate than doing someone’s hair.” He pointed to where Magic was leaning back, to the sink beyond her, to the bottles arranged along the counter.

“Oh, no,” Conrad said. “I’ll mess it up!”

“I can fix anything you do today,” Cher assured him.

“I don’t mean style,” Conrad insisted. He held up his clamps. With some concentration, they parted to become individual fingers. They did kind of resemble the weaponized end of a nasty insect. “I mean, I’ll hurt her!”

“I trust you,” Magic said gently. “And if you pull a hair or two, I forgive you.”

He turned to me. “Did you teach her to fight dirty?”

“Like anyone here needs help!” I snorted. He looked at me for a long moment, then looked at every other face. He must have liked what he saw, because he stepped up to the chair, between the chair and Cher.

“Okay, what do we do?”

Cher directed him, demonstrating where necessary. They took it no more quickly than Conrad dared.

Magic was comfortable and relaxed as her hair was washed and conditioned.

She hates doing her own hair maintenance, mostly because it involves spending time on how others see her, rather than time spent entertaining herself.

And she never asks Cher to take care of it, because she feels it’s imposing. Silly. That’d be like asking Kirk to save you, or Spock for an explanation. Cher lives for this.

But she did enjoy being pampered this time. For Conrad’s sake, of course. Cher usually talks softly to the person in the chair, keeping them relaxed. It’s very nice.

I don’t know if Conrad knew about that, or if it was spontaneous, but he started talking softly to Magic.

He asked her if she was comfortable, how she was settling in to the new home, what decisions she’d made about her bedroom. Location, decoration, contents.

“I’m kind of leaning towards the guest room,” she said.

“That’s pretty isolated,” he observed. No judgement, just acknowledging her.

“Yeah, that’s what I wanted. No offense!”

“None taken,” he said. His screen scanned the room. “By anyone,”

Cher brought out the scissors and a comb. “She doesn’t like her hair very long, because it takes too long to deal with it.”

“I think…” Conrad said slowly. “She doesn’t want it long because she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. I think she’d be really beautiful with her hair long, done up right.”

He placed a clamp on her shoulder. “But not if she would rather not.”

“Thanks,” she told him. He nodded and carefully arranged the scissors in his grip. “So, buzz cut. What’s the first-“

“NOT BUZZED!” Magic shouted.

“So, you DO care about how you look!” he teased.

“NO!” she snapped. “I don’t want you cutting my hair shorter than my ears! I’ll lose something I’m attached to!”

“You said you’d forgive me!”

“For light TUGGING, not a deformity!”

“Everyone’s a critic,” he muttered. “Seriously, what do I do with these?”

She already tended towards short. Cher guided Conrad into short and spiky.

When she stood up and looked in the mirror, I thought it gave her a certain amount of visible energy.

Cher called it reflective of her personality.

Conrad judged it to be a warning.

“Is that a crack about my being a crazy redhead?” Magic asked.

“It’s a compliment on your contagious vigor,” he said, chucking her under the chin. That won a smile off of her.

-----

The next day was remote-free. Conrad spent most of his time on the phone, talking with convention attendees and guests, and made some arrangements with hotels in the city.

We snuck a few things into the carrier, dragging them up and down the hall while human workers refused to look down and see us.

We stayed home the next day, while Conrad went to the studio again. After a long day of, if I’m not mistaken, playing with video and trading puns with Glenda, he came home to find…

A dance hall. Or, almost.

He came into the living room, glancing at all the wires all over the floor.

We’d run the ear pieces of headphones out to circle an area of the floor there. They were all connected to his MP3 player.

He looked to see his laptop up on the table, with his music directory open. A data cable was plugged in where the MP3 player had been.

“Dare I ask?” he asked.

“We need a floor!” Cher called. He pointed. “I think that mirror in the hallway would work perfectly.”

Conrad obediently placed the mirror down, shiny side up, and helped arrange the ‘speakers’ around the edges. He looked at the splitters, clearly recognizing that they’d come from the studio.

“What’s this going to be?”

“A dance floor!” Delli squealed.

“I don’t dance!” he protested. “I mean, seriously. Ask Electra! She’s SEEN me at dances!”

“Two decades ago,” Delli said, waving to dismiss the excuse.

“It’s not your ass,” Magic said.

“Wait, what?” Conrad picked her up, holding her to his face. She stood in his palm.

“Conrad, everyone’s afraid to look stupid. But you’ll be driving a robot. The ROBOT will be dancing. No one will see YOU looking like you’re trying to figure out if you dare lift your foot, or if you can wiggle your butt to the beat.”

She demonstrated, shaking her booty with exaggerated boot.

He laughed and gently put her back down.

“Besides,” I said. “It’s Delli’s turn. You do NOT want to force her to use the puppy dog eyes.”

“If you wuv me…” Delli started. He laughed and stood up. He sorted through the suitcase full of remotes and picked one. None of us could see which one he turned on, not from the floor. And he left it in the case when he went upstairs.

“Who is it?” Delli asked. “I hope he didn’t pick Frankenstein. Stomping all over my toes all night…”

We all heard him come out of the bathroom and climb into bed.

“OOooh,” Delli started to bounce.

“The suspense is killing me,” Cher said in a dry tone.

“BOOOYAH!” A remote stood up on the suitcase rim, swinging down the side and dropping to the floor.

He stood there with cocked hip, hand on his belly. It was the Caveman figure, so called because they couldn’t use ‘Fred Flintstone.’ A chubby figure in outline, though the belly didn’t actually shake.

But there was something damned familiar about the way it, the way Conrad walked over to us.

“Why a fat guy?” Magic asked me quietly. “Was Conrad fat in high school?”

“He’s gained about five pounds since then,” I said.

“Ladies,” he said, walking past us to climb up on the mirror’s frame. Once there, he cocked his hip again, turned his face to me and winked. Then he went up on tiptoe to spin around.

“BELLY DANCER!” I cried. I hadn’t see the Dance Dance Reflex Action figure in YEARS! Not since we started having other sylphs in the house, now that I thought of it. I hadn’t recognized it without BD’s distinctive hair. Or parachute pants. Or gold lame cowboy boots.

Conrad did a little stutter-skip, fell forward, face-planting on the glass.

“He always did get punished for going on his toes,” I said. Delli laughed and ran over to his side.

“Who or what is that?” Cher asked from my shoulder. I quickly explained. “Oh, we have GOT to find that game console again, then.”

Delli spent time on the mirror teaching Conrad to dance Disco. His Belly Dancer alter ego, plus Magic’s idea that it wasn’t ‘really’ Conrad up there, made it easier for him to let go and follow her lead.

And he was at least familiar with what the dances were supposed to look like, making him a surprisingly quick learner.

After a few songs there, she moved to dancing on the arm of the sofa.

Then they stood on two coasters, dancing kind of at each other.

Finally, they danced on a record on the stereo turntable. Not to the record, but on it. Each standing on the label, holding the shaft, dancing as the record spun around and around and around…

Finally, he picked the song and led Delli in a sort of mutated waltz to the Blue Danube.

“He has classical music?” Magic asked. “Hell, he has MUSIC! Stuff that doesn’t have a punchline. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at more sophisticated stuff.”

“More to the point,” I explained, “he has this song because it’s on the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

“Oh. Of course,” she smiled.

He actually pretty well. He dipped Delli a few times and never bounced her head off the floor. At the end he gracefully swept her into his arms and carried her off the dance floor. She just about swooned in his hold.

Cher took her off his hands. Then Conrad turned to face me.

“I thought,” he said slowly, “we weren’t going to film MY remote for the show.”

“It’s not recording!” I said.

“Six cameras,” he said.

“Yeah, but, see, I THOUGHT you were going to make us leave the room so we wouldn’t see you dancing.”

“So you were going to run into the set and watch me on TV.” He shook his head.

“Pretty much,” Magic said.

“Cameras go back to the studio tomorrow,” he said.

“Don’t look at me!” I protested. “You’re the one who carried them home!”

He swore under his breath and turned to Magic.

Whatever he was going to say was lost when he fell forward, face down on the carpet. Rather than try to recover as we watched, he just reset the remote and got out of his bed.

-----

We made a production of collecting the cameras and loading them into the carrier, all where Conrad could see. He wasn’t worried about misappropriation of equipment. He was worried about being filmed surreptitiously.

“Would we do that to you?” Delli asked.

He lifted her up, dangling her by one arm, and asked, “Do you really want an answer to that?”

“Wuv ew….”

“I wuv ew, too,” he smiled. “Did you get the camera under the printer stand?”

“Saw that one, too, did you?” she laughed. “Shucks, dang, foiled again!”

At work, he released everyone as usual. Exactly as usual. He did not carry the carrier or the cameras and extra cables and junctions to the equipment room for us.

“You had the energy to reach the shelf and port them to the carrier, you can take them back.”

“Alright!” Magic said. “Another climb!” She grabbed a Y-splitter and ran to the slide at the end of the desk. Cher didn’t run, but he grabbed two cameras and followed her happily enough.

Delli hoisted a wrap of cable to her shoulder. “Is Lisa in, yet?”

“Conrad’d probably say we can’t use her,” I said, carefully lifting a camera in its case.

“Right,” Conrad snorted. “Like I have that kind of authority here. Lisa considers Electra to be the boss.”

“Really?” Magic shouted up from the floor. “Huh….”

“Now what?” Conrad muttered, but didn’t follow up on the interjection.

We stayed together on the returns, just like when we’d been collecting. Schlep everything to the base camp at the foot of the shelves, then lift everything one at a time with floss.

Delli volunteered to be the one on the ground, of course. No one complained. Magic just went ahead and climbed to the highest shelf.

Magic peeled off after everything was stowed, though. She had to ‘check on something,’ and would be back to Conrad’s desk before lunch.

We shrugged and went to where master and drinks awaited.

After about ten minutes, Lisa carried Magic in and lowered her to Conrad’s desk. “Was she bothering you?” he asked.

“Negotiating,” Lisa said.

“Okay, see,” Magic said quickly, “tomorrow is my day, but I wanna do it here, if we can? Please? Please?”

“Why here?” Conrad asked slowly. Kind of suspicious. I can’t imagine why.

“Well, the condo is pretty new. And the walls are aluminum siding. But this building is brick! And on the northern side, the ground cover goes up to the rain gutter!”

“Why is that…?” he started to ask. “You want to climb the ivy. With me. Up to the roof.”

“Yeah!” she said. Delli looked sick at the thought.

“And I’ll be the safety spotter!” Lisa said. “I know the remote can’t really get hurt, but it’d be a shame to scuff it. And I’ll keep a net free for Magic’s sake.”

“I can’t ask you to stand on the sidewalk for however long this’ll take.”

“It’s okay, Conrad, I’ll be compensated.”

He turned to look at Magic again. “What did you offer?” But it was Lisa that answered.

“My cousin is getting married to a guy with a sylph and several of us are going in on a new sylph house for them. I wanted some help looking over the available designs.”

“Oh, sure,” Conrad said. He looked at his watch. “We could go to Tiny Toys over lunch and they-“

“Actually, sir,” Lisa said. I think it was the first time she used the word ‘sir’ since her job application. “Magic and I were thinking I could borrow your sylphs, do the shopping, then take them home. So when I discuss their suggestions with everyone else, they’re on hand to answer any other questions.”

“Oh,” Conrad said, unenthused. “When did you want to do this?”

“Thursday!” Magic said, bouncing a bit on her toes. Shucks, I thought. Did she forget…?

“Thursday,” Conrad repeated. His eyes shot to me. “That was going to be the day-“

“Oh, you can still do the remote thing with Electra,” Lisa said. “I’ll just take the other three. I don’t need FOUR opinions.”

Conrad stared at her. “You want to… Um…”

“To leave you two,” Cher said, pointing at Conrad and at me, “alone in the house for a night.”

“Maybe we could start a tradition like that,” Delli wondered. “Sylph sleepovers!”

“But I was planning a bridge!” I said. Okay, some days I’m as slow as Conrad. “We were all five going to build a bridge out of Legos and cross from the table to the couch!”

Delli stepped over to take my shoulders. “Sweetheart. Look at me. You. And he. Will find SOMETHING. To do. If you put your…”

“Minds,” Cher suggested.

“Minds to it,” Delli said.

“Oooooooooooooh,” I said. I glanced up at my giant. He was breathing a little quickly. I probably blushed. I turned back to Magic and Lisa. “Okay, sorry, some days I’m as slow as Conrad.”

“As long as you catch up eventually!” Magic said.



-----
Index

151. Landing On

153. You’ll See On (N)