21

October

Robot had been playing ukulele when Sam came back to his hospital room. He’d taught himself some movable chord shapes, and he was running circle of fifth patterns with the shapes, choking off the chords in shorter and shorter beats, throwing in four- and five-finger flourishes with his right hand, flourishes that would have sounded pointless and showy-offy on guitar, like someone who had no idea what flamenco music was trying to imitate the flamenco feel and sound. But these little tricks, cut short by the relatively low volume and short sustain, sounded amazing on ukulele.

He was also learning how to play music while wounded, sitting up straight so his ribs did not twinge. Holding the instrument lightly against the front of his chest.

“Sounding great, Robert,” Sam said as she entered the room. She had her floral bookbag slung over one shoulder, and she slipped it off and put it on the floor against the wall. A half-step behind her was a stiff, scrubbed-looking older man. Robot set the ukulele out of the way, on the side of the bed closer to the wall. Sam approached the bed and put her hand palm up on the mattress where she’d held Robot’s hand before. He put a hand on top of hers and felt the soft warmth as he pressed her hand briefly into the mattress, then released it. The man stood stiffly behind Sam, his eyes on his shoes until their little hand-holding ritual was over. Then he stuck out his own hand for Robot to shake, and he introduced himself.

“I’m Ray,” the man said. He eyed the bandages on Robot’s head. “I’m this girl’s uncle.” He tilted his head in Sam’s direction. “I’m sorry about your mother’s condition,” he continued. “And I hope you have a speedy recovery, too.” He backed away from the bed in a formal manner, still looking Robot in the eye.

Robot nodded at him. “Nice to meet you, Ray,” he said. The man was halfway out the door before Robot could say a further word.

“Patricia,” Ray said. He looked at Sam and raised his eyebrows.

Sam nodded. “I know…I know when I’m expected home,” Sam said.

Ray disappeared down the hallway.

When Ray called Sam Patricia, Sam shot Robot a look of alarm. When her uncle left the room, she said, “I guess you’re wondering why he called me Patricia.”

Robot shrugged. He raised his eyebrows for a split second. “You’ve got a story,” he said. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

Sam looked suddenly irritated. “How do you know I have a story?”

“You’re living with your uncle. In a town you’re not from. You’ve got a secret name. You’ve got a bite scar on your hand. And it’s got a stick-and-poke at the centre of it, framed like a portrait. These are all parts of a story. Aren’t they?”

Sam stood up straight at the side of Robot’s bed, her lips pursed tightly together as though she were restraining them. Her head was tilted toward the door, listening to the sound of her uncle’s footsteps receding down the hallway. When they’d faded off, she unlocked her face and it slipped into a wry smirk.

“God bless that man,” she said. “He volunteered to care for me. He puts three meals on the table and gives me a roof to sleep under. But…”

“But what?” Robot said. He’d seen only legitimate concern in Ray’s face. He could not imagine what was funny.

“I don’t know.” Sam shrugged. “He just had to come in here and meet you.”

“He was not here to meet me,” Robot said.

“What?” Sam said.

“I’m not going to put you on the spot by asking you what he said about me. But if you told him the other day who you were visiting in the hospital… This is a small town. There was a publication ban on my name. But everybody knows what I did.”

Sam folded her arms across her chest and looked at him with some scepticism on her face.

“He did not come in here to meet me,” Robot continued. “He came here so that I could meet him. He wants me to know who you’ve got behind you. He wants me to know that you’re good people. And that good people have your back. That man’s handshake is like a cobra bite. It’s like having a heavy stone lowered onto your chest.”

Sam’s expression brightened as she reconsidered what her uncle had just done.

“Anyway. Enough of this,” Robot said. He turned toward the edge of his bed. He forced his legs over the side and pain shot from his hip bones up through his ribs to his armpits. The spasm of pain left him feeling weak, but he knew that if he just sat motionless for a moment, most of his strength would come back to him.

“What are you doing!” Sam came to his side, put her arm protectively around his shoulders. Robot winced, breathed slowly: in and out. He put his hands up in a gesture he hoped said give me a second.

“I have an idea.”

“You’re not getting out of bed!” Sam said.

“I am not trying to walk. Don’t worry about that. The nurses down the hall have made that clear. I can barely sit up here. Let alone walk.” He paused to get his strength back again, reached behind him and brought the ukulele around.

“Listen, now,” he looked at her with a big smile he could not keep off his face. “If you can get a wheelchair, maybe we can find a nice singing spot.”

Sam was only gone a minute and she came back pushing a wheelchair. Robot set the ukulele on the bed while he shifted his weight from the edge of the mattress and lowered himself onto the wheelchair’s grey vinyl seat. He left the gig bag near his pillow, and pointed at the door: “Forward!” he said. A reluctant grin cracked across Sam’s face as she fell into place behind the chair. She paused a moment by the door to pick up her bookbag and hoist it up on her shoulders.

Robot balanced the ukulele on his knees and put his hands in front of him as though he were holding a steering wheel. “Woo!” he said, but he said it at low volume, to avoid trouble. Sam was making a race car noise, roaring through the straight stretches of hallways “erring” around corners at a volume that only Robot could hear.

“Look!” Robot said. “This could be our spot.” Beside the elevators, at a junction where several hallways met, the orange-red exit sign that marked a stairwell. Robot shushed himself and Sam with a finger to his lips as Sam pushed the fire door back on its hinges, propped it back with a foot, and maneuvered the wheelchair into the stairwell.

There was a fire extinguisher on a hook and a flight of metal stairs down to the next landing. The space was bright, well-lit, with white, high-gloss paint over concrete blocks. Over their heads: the black undersides of more stairs.

“This is…” Sam began. The fire door had a big window in it, and the stairwell was bigger and airier than the one at school. So Sam did not hesitate at all to let the door close behind her and put her bookbag on the floor near the wall.

“Sh!” Robot silenced her. His finger still over his lips. He picked up the ukulele from his lap and made a dramatic moment out of plucking a single fretted note on the first string. A D note. It reverberated satisfyingly against the walls.

“I bet it’s even better down on that landing,” he said. “We could sit down there and face back up this way.”

Sam looked at him skeptically. “You’re not serious,” she said.

“I guess not,” he said. But he had been serious when he suggested it. “Maybe next time. Maybe when I get some strength back.”

The sound of his own voice saying the words had given him an idea, the rich resonance of the empty stairwell. “Okay,” Robot said. He began fumbling through some chords, bouncing through some funky rhythms. “Listen,” doop-doop dah. Doop-doop dah! Chord change: ‘When I get my strength back.’”

“What’s that?” Sam said.

“A song.”

“What song is it?”

“I’m not sure. No one has written it yet. It’s called ‘When I get my strength back.’”

“I won’t need this rolling chair.

I won’t breathe this indoor air.

You won’t find me crying here.

When I get my strength back.”

An uncertain-looking smile spread over Sam’s face.

Robot sang the verse again, settled into it more confidently. He listened into the stairwell and rounded out his voice to take advantage of the reverb.

He stopped singing and kept playing ukulele. Barely conscious of what he was doing or how he was doing it, he adjusted his playing to fill up the resonant stairwell with the short, choppy plunk of the chords.

After a few minutes of humming and strumming, lost in his own inner world, he remembered Sam was with him.

“Do you have, like, a paper and pen, so I can write this down?” he gestured at her bookbag.

She gave him a notebook and pen. He wrote down the lyrics. Wrote down the names of the chords. That would be plenty for him to work from in the future.

“Thanks,” he said. He handed her back the notebook and pen. “Maybe that’ll come to something later. I think that’s all I can do with it for now.”

Sam’s bag was in a corner of the landing. She closed the notebook, clipped the pen to its cover, set it on top of the bag. She leaned into the railing and looked down the stairwell. “When I get my strength back,” she sang down into the rich reverb.

“I have an idea,” Sam said when she turned back around.

“What is it?” Robot said.

“Actually, it’s more of a question.”

“What question?”

“Actually. It’s more of a favour.”

Robot rolled his eyes. “Well?”

Sam reached into a pocket, took out some folded paper, and handed it to him. He felt himself frowning as he unfolded the sheets.

“I want to learn to sing this,” Sam said.

Robot flattened the pages against the tops of his thighs. It was a six-page score, including French lyrics, for “La Vie en rose.” In G.

“Where did you get this?” He looked up at Sam. He could tell there had been a change in the expression on his own face. Sam was beginning to smile in response.

“The internet. This isn’t medieval Europe. People with questions don’t need to visit a monastery.”

“Ha ha.” Robot supposed he must have been underestimating Sam’s degree of interest in music. Singing a simple folk song had seemed a challenge to her and now she’d gone full-on Piaf. “Let’s talk about this tune.”

“I just feel a connection with it. With…her.”

“With Piaf?”

Sam nodded.

“That’s an interesting life, right there. Piaf.”

“I don’t know anything about her life, really. Maybe I’m picking that up somehow. Just from the song.”

Robot shrugged. “If I’m honest, I don’t know that much, either.” He looked carefully through the score. “Okay. We have to face a hard truth.” He paused dramatically, then said: “There’s a fourth chord.” He laughed and looked up at Sam. Her face, he could tell, was mirroring his: lit up with excited expectation. “Have you listened to this song much?”

“Ha ha. A lot. I’m a bit obsessed right now.”

“Have you tried singing it?”

“In parts. The main part of the melody. Laa, de da dah, da dee dee… Like that.”

Her voice was wobbly, but he could hear a melody in there. “How’s your French?”