The Special Promotion

by Jane Seaton

"It was a joke," Dr Taylor said awkwardly. "Just one of those things you say on the spur of the moment."

"I daresay you didn't expect to be taken seriously," the gentleman in the suit agreed in a pleasant tone. "But you have to understand, I'm a businessman. I have to make sales to make a profit. So when a customer is heard to say she wants just exactly what I'm in business to provide, well, you can't expect me to ignore it, can you?" He grinned toothily. "I have exactly what you're looking for outside in my vehicle. Why not take a look? No commitment. I could even arrange a test drive... so to speak."

The stranger had an English accent, which made him somehow easier to trust. Dr Taylor tried to concentrate on mental pictures of Jeremy Irons, but the desire to know just what the gentleman had in his vehicle that so exactly met her requirements had caught light and was burning nicely.

"A domestic partner," the salesman said over his shoulder, already leading the way down the path to the street where his white truck stood, the engine still turning and grey fumes puffing intermittently from the back. The man's suit trousers were frayed at the heel.

"You're not the only modern couple in this position," he continued reassuringly. He used the word modern to somehow suggest an era of bakelite radios and novelty all electric kitchens. For a moment, Dr Taylor imagined that when he opened the doors of his van, a copper boiler with integral mangle and washboard would await her grateful approval.

The handles of the doors were linked with twine. The salesman went on with his pitch while he fiddled with the knots.

"You ladies come out of school, ready to conquer the world, full of notions your mothers wouldn't begin to comprehend, and of course, keeping house doesn't look any more attractive to your husbands than it did to their fathers. So you buy gadgets..."

The twine fell to the road, and he stooped and picked it up, coiling it neatly and putting it into his jacket pocket. She noticed that a button was missing from the front of his jacket. It had been torn off. There was a little ragged slit, half an inch long, through which the interlining peeked whitely.

"Gadgets that make dough and bake it into bread, gadgets that grind coffee and brew it up and keep it warm while you're too busy to drink it, gadgets to save your TV programmes until you have time to watch them, not that you ever do, because you have to go out and earn the money to buy the clothes to put in the washer-drier so that you can take them out and wear them to the office and..." He put his hand on the handle then, like a misdirecting conjuror, turned and wagged a finger in her face. "What you need is someone to just 'be home' for you. Am I right?"

"I already told you, I was joking."

"Many a true word is spoken in jest, Dr Taylor," the salesman told her firmly. "Many... a true... word." The handle was broken. It turned without engaging the latch. He rattled it.

She noticed that there were cigarette burns in the sleeves of his suit, which was odd, because no smell of tobacco hung about him. His fingers weren't stained either. The nails were bitten to the quick.

The door suddenly opened and a body rolled out. The salesman tut-tutted. He climbed up into the van, his knees creaking audibly. Dr Taylor stared at the corpse, a scream half formed in her throat. Before she could open her mouth and let it out, the 'corpse' stirred. It blinked. It was a young woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, wearing a floral patterned apron which was lightly dusted with flour. She held a rolling pin in one hand and a lemonade jug in the other. She sat up and smiled. The lemonade jug was full.

"Oh, no, no. I don't think so." The salesman was frowning at both women. "Not at all. You're not trying to recapture the past. I've something much more appropriate."

"Just what are you selling?" the doctor demanded. "Reject Stepford Wives?"

"No, no. You've got it all wrong. There's no... no brainwashing, nothing distasteful. Well..." He smiled uncertainly. "Only as distasteful as you want. We can cater for that. We can suit almost any requirements. Which brings me back to..." He vanished into the very dark interior of the van.

Doctor Taylor stepped around the aproned woman, who caught at her arm and held out a tray of steaming muffins which had exuberantly overfilled their paper cases. The doctor shook her head firmly and leaned into the darkness. There was a muffled grunt, as if the salesman was struggling to move something heavy... or awkward... or something that was fighting back. Someone cursed indistinctly.

"Tell me," she asked, "who exactly was it who suggested..?"

As the salesman turned to answer her, his eyes caught the light. There was an odd, red gleam to them. The air in the van smelled faintly of sulphur. "A Mrs Seaton." He smiled, but as her eyes adapted to the gloomy conditions she made out that he was holding a handkerchief around his left thumb. "A satisfied customer, you see. My ladies often direct me on to their friends. I'll just be a moment."

He turned away, and the darkness in the van somehow thickened, so that she could no longer see him. Then he emerged from the gloom, backwards, bent nearly double as he dragged his burden across the floor of the vehicle. His jacket rode high, revealing a short, scaled tail with an arrow tip emerging from the rear seam of his suit pants.

"Here... we... are."

The 'product' was now sitting on the tailgate of the van. He blinked at the light. He held a bottle of Cajun hot sauce in one hand and a packet of twelve Verithin Tuscan Red pencils in the other. He smiled.

"Well," Doctor Taylor said. Then, "Well." She could feel the blood heating her cheeks.

"I thought you'd like him."

"What... exactly... is he?"

"He's a 'Chekov', but the domestic model, rather than the military. Without the hand to hand combat skills and advanced tactical and navigational options, which is why I can offer him at such an exceptionally affordable price. Good with dogs, and children, of course, although that might not interest you. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, returning library books... oh, and Mrs Seaton thought you'd particularly like this. He can grade papers. Well, he can't really grade papers, but he can perform a statistical analysis of student records and award grades and make comments that are unlikely to provoke unwanted enquiries."

"I'm not sure my husband..."

"Fix cars, mend roofs, walk dogs, fetch newspapers, answer the door to trick-or-treaters, saw logs, light barbeques, keep the icebox stocked with beer, mow grass..."

"Price. You said something about the price."

"Interest free credit. Buy now, pay later."

"But how much would I pay, later?"

"And our current special offer, which Mrs Seaton was so happy to take advantage of when she purchased her 'Chekov'..."

Doctor Taylor frowned. "How much?"

The salesman licked his index finger and fished a leaflet from the breast pocket of his jacket. A couple more fluttered out after it. "If you were to introduce another customer, and that customer were to purchase a model of equal or greater value than the 'Chekov', or whatever model you eventually choose... We also do a 'Bashir', well suited to the typical hypochondriac, a 'Mulder' for the paranoid, a..."

"Just tell me how much. Straight. We can discuss the special offers later." Taylor glanced at the 'Chekov', who had broken a crayon out of the packet and was doodling on one of the salesman's leaflets. The tip of his tongue protruded as he concentrated and the sun glinted off the top of his head. The female model belatedly offered him a muffin, which he ate with a great many crumbs and washed down with a glass of lemonade before returning to his drawing.

"And as you can see, this line is particularly designed to be totally self-sufficient. If you're busy with something else, he'll find plenty to occupy himself until you want him again."

"I think I know what the price is," Doctor Taylor said, noticing that two of the highlights in the whorl of chestnut hair were in fact the tips of small horns.

"But you can postpone paying it for quite some time."

"Quite how much time?"

"Oh... well, if you were to take part in our special promotion, as your friend Mrs Seaton has..."

"With, and without, the special promotion."

The salesman smiled. "With, a minimum of fifty years. Without, just your natural life span. Which, of course, I can't offer any guarantees for."

Doctor Taylor thought, briefly. The 'Chekov' was wearing a pair of high waisted, tight pants and an off-the-shoulder shirt with slashed sleeves and an open-air attitude around the midriff. She recognised the design as her own.

"I can, however, guarantee my product. It won't give you a moment's worry. It won't wear or become obsolete. If any of our competitors should -- although I can't imagine it's possible, but if they should -- come up with a more attractive product, we will offer you an upgrade at no extra cost."

"Competitors?" the doctor demanded, distracted by this theological novelty.

The salesman shrugged. "This is America. So, you'll want to take advantage of the promotion?" Suddenly he had a pencil and notepad. The pencil broke the instant he pressed it to the paper. He leaned over and helped himself to a Tuscan Red. "So the name of your friend is?"

"Slater," Doctor Taylor told him, rescuing the rest of the crayons, which were sliding out of their packet and joining the cake crumbs on the pavement. The 'Chekov' stopped drawing and retrieved the two that eluded her. He held them out for her and she accepted them, noticing that his fingers felt humanly warm. "Susan Slater, 239 East River Drive, Pomona, California..."