The Dutch Couple

Mori's mistress died in her sleep, in the space between one heartbeat and the next that never came. Her nurse and lover listened to her go, then rose and called for an ambulance, and returned to kneel by the bedside until the hour struck morning and he reached out a soft hand to nudge her awake.

Breakfast simmered on the electric stove, the scent of sweet rice porridge beckoning at each door in the small apartment, as he helped his mistress to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet behind the privy screen as he stripped the bed, folding the soiled sheets into piled squares before placing them in the hamper, his gloves paired atop them. If he felt any distaste at this duty it did not show in an unlined face the texture of worn velvet.

He drew a bath into the square tub, steam flailing about and latching onto his bare arms, depositing itself in heavy beads across smooth skin as he lowered her into a seated position. In the dining room, as he set out bowls on the low table, he heard the water rustle against the textured tile sides as the reverberating ripples overlapped and subsided.

The terrycloth nap of the towels in his arms padded and wrapped the wrinkled skin wrapped in loose folds about brittle bones, caressing the water from the folds and wrinkles. He dressed her for the day and carried her to the table to sit for breakfast.

When she didn't eat, even at his gentle suggestions with an outstretched spoon, he assured her of the taste and nutrition. His own bowl remained untouched, and after the appointed hour he gathered up the settings and washed them down the disposal, rinsing away the remainder of the morning meal before setting the machines to wash and dry.

He left her in the care of the computer, its quiet voice telling her tales of her grandchildren and reading her their letters from years long past. The door locked behind him and he rode the elevator to the lobby to begin the day's shopping, nested plastic boxes nestled in his arms.

A taxi stopped for him and he punched in his destination and account number. He passed long rows of low greenhouses flickering past on either side of the road. Automated arms of suction grips popped meaty-capped mushrooms from loam beds, clipped ripe red berries from helical vines, and snipped leaves of lettuce from around seeding stalks of tiny yellow flowers.

At each stall, he stopped and pointed at the heaps of mist-washed produce. His plastic containers soon bristled with textured reds, greens, yellows and tans behind frosted sides. The sack of rice he set the containers down to accept with both hands, tucked underneath one arm as he made his way out of the silent bustle to the cab awaiting his return.

A harlot, decorous dress doing little to hide her figure, nodded at him as he walked past, plucked eyebrows remaining in place as she opened her eyes wide in time with her beckon. Mori smiled at her and bowed back, as he would to any woman of any station, and placed his groceries in their antiseptic containers on the seat beside him.

The computers read to his mistress as he went about making the afternoon meal, washing and rinsing each piece of fruit and vegetable without bruising a one. As the light soup cooked, he took her again to the bathroom, holding her in place with firm arms as she started to slip. When she didn't move he washed her, keeping up a one-sided conversation on the weather to keep her mind from her shame.

She didn't eat again, and he made note to call her doctor if it persisted until tomorrow. This loss of appetite worried him, so far as such a thing was possible.

He lay her out for bed, tucking her frail frame beneath the sheets across the futon and cleaned the apartment, collecting the other set of linen from the compact dryer, putting away the two sets of dishes, shutting the screen across the monitor. When he was done and ready for the day to come, he lay in bed beside his mistress recharging, heat radiating from his pliant skin warming her cooling body.

Mori found her dead the next morning, again, and once more called the ambulance which once more failed to come. When it did not, he rose and set breakfast cooking on the two-burner stove before nudging her awake. The sheets this morning were caked with more stiffening fluid than the day before, but if he could smell the rank odor he gave no indication as he folded them to deposit in the wash.

The harlot at the market greeted him again, his imperturbable face a daily occurence in the recent months. He returned her greeting again, the picture of politesse as always, and she took his familiarity for interest, as she was wont to do to coax out the shyest of her clients.

"Good afternoon, sir," she said.

"Afternoon, madam."

"Are you well this day?"

"Very, thank you. As for you?"

"The day is beautiful, I am untroubled and conversing with a handsome man. It is wonderful."

The cab behind Mori sounded a gentle chiding chime, and he bowed his head at the compliment, in embarassed acknowledgement.

"Farewell," he saluted her.

"See you later," she replied.

While caring for his mistress's hair, clumps of scalp pulled away, tugged by streamers of ash white entangled around the tines of the brush. Mori burst forth with a torrent of apologies as he massaged ointment onto the spot, wondering how he could have forgotten his own strength. Her body felt lighter now, perhaps from her diminished appetite, and he had left several messages with the physician enquiring after a cause and a treatment, thanking the secretary with her cadenced tones each time he hung up in failure.

She soiled the sheets every night now, although improving as of late. The strain of repeated washings wore on the sheets as each cycle stressed the weave, rough solvents battering threads as they pulled out the putrescence.

A park lay three blocks south of the apartment building, and when Mori saw that the spring had brought the blossoms to the cherry trees, he helped his mistress into her walker, strapping the motorized frame to her lower body and entwining her arm around his to keep her upright. Together they walked to he elevator and out the front door, the only sound the soft whine of servomotors and electropneumatic actuators.

The tree limbs stretched down to meet them, and when his mistress didn't reach up to take a flower as she had in the past, he reached up for her, hand hesitating a second as he had to decide which bloom to pluck. Twirling it in front of her face, he saw no reaction in raisin-wrinkled eyes. He applied drops of moisturizing fluid from his small carryall and then spun the blossom between the fingers of his free arm, peering into the depths of the petals for her to appreciate from afar.

Others stood around him, all maintaining a respectable distance from each other as they took in the day. None spoke. A few had elderly charges - in worse shape than his mistress, Mori thought without malice, and not long for this world - but most stood alone, men and women as statues underneath the tented duvet of gentle red.

As he washed her that night, he found cracks and tears in the skin at her joints where the walker had manipulated her body. He wrapped these in soft bandages over ointment and apologized for the ordeal, neither needing nor expecting acknowledgement.

The changing seasons forced him to adjust his shopping. Stores in the market were out of rice, shoppers queuing up to each receive the news that the warehouses had not sent shipments, the stocks all were depleted. Strawberries, melons, fruits and vegetables grown on the manicured orchards, in hydroponic gardens and packed and sorted by gentle caresses under the tireless eyes of trinocular vision - those still piled high atop the wooden boxes at each stall. Meats were in short supply as well, down to the last cuts and steaks kept frozen in chests and available by special order.

Mori didn't mind the latter, for his mistress had not eaten meat for ten years. His skill with a knife and impeccable timing for various temperatures allowed him to keep the daily menu varied and nutritious.

He could have called down to the market and requested a delivery be made twice-weekly, but the routine had become a part of both of their lives and it would not do to vary it now.

The harlot greeted him at the curb as she would an old friend, and the scarcity of selection had left him standing there for some minutes before the cab was due to arrive back.

"Good afternoon, sir."

"And a good day to you as well, miss."

She smiled and dropped her eyes at his familiarity.

"I am glad that you remember me."

He looked at her face, every pore perfect and eyelash glued in place, pupils dilated in calculated attraction, and said -

"It would be impossible to forget one such as you." He spoke the truth, said what he would have to any other woman. The attachment to his mistress he had as the core of his being was at last fading, shifting the priorities of his mind below the calm pool of his consciousness.

She blushed, red rising on opposite sides of her face, turning her head away to the side but flitting her eyes back to catch his.

"You are too kind, sir."

The cab arrived with a whir of braking wheels and chimed. Mori bowed and bade goodbye.

"See you later."

"See you later," she replied.

The next morning when the time came to wake his mistress, Mori found her absent. The change had happened overnight, and if he had been watching her instead of lying next to her, he might have forestalled it, at least observed it, but he had not.

A pile of jointed bones lay underneath the covers, dessicated skin stretched over gnarled tendons like a cooked turkey. The stomach collapsed, face fallen in, sheets forming circus canopies sagging between limbs. He puzzled over the disappearance of his mistress, and believed that the pile of garbage on the futon to be familiar, but was unable to generate the feeling of recognition.

It may as well have been the body of an animal he disposed of. Meat and bone - he could tell that - so it could not go into the compost bin. He picked it up, observed the flakes of skin and dried fluid falling off as the body bent, and wrapped it in the sheet. While he would sweep the floor every night after his mistress, it was against his nature to allow dirt to fall during the chores themselves.

The corpse was too large for the rubbish bin, so he stood on the sidewalk and bent it double, face motionless as the sharp crack of breaking bones sent splinters through the sheets. He pushed it into the bin, then returned to the apartment for a small broom to whisk the last remnants of Mako Yoshikawa from the walkway.

After cleaning the apartment and leaving message with the police department concerning the disappearance of his charge, Mori sat at the table. With nothing else left to do, he went to the market and purchased the day's produce.

The harlot emerged from her alcove by the mall entrance and greeted him with great affection.

"Hello, sir."

"Greetings."

She dilated her pupils, flushed her skin, raised her temperature. He reacted in kind, displaying on his face the subtle signs of interest. Long years out of practice had done nothing to diminish his capacity, as perfect as the day he awoke.

They shared the cab back to his apartment, where he took her coat and placed it in the closet before showing her to the living room. He had cleaned for most of the morning, removing the last trace of humanity's mortal coil from the apartment, and night was falling. While she sat and took imperceptible sips from a spotless glass of water he cooked dinner.

They sat at the table and stared into each other's eyes over untouched plates of food. He had dimmed the lights - they needed none. She complimented him, and he her. Interests were brought up and shared and forgotten as useless remnants. He cleared the table as she went to the bedroom.

There, they fell together onto the bed, amidst the covers, one leading, then the other, made for each other. They had no other purpose now but each other, designed as the perfect companions and freed now from their duties to be found anew in themselves.

As the robots made love, an automated garbage truck pulled up by the curb to take away the corpse of the last human in Hokkaido.

Don Norum lives in Virginia, where he writes things. Less often than not, they are published.