Steampunk Man by Phoebe Matthews - Mudflat short story by Phoebe Matthews

STEAMPUNK MAN, A SHORT STORY by Phoebe Matthews

STEAMPUNK MAN

Nicotiana turned in the driver’s seat, grasped the steering wheel for support, and stepped out of her car. At six feet tall she didn’t need heels and never wore them except on meeting nights. There was simply no way to find boots without heels that had the correct look. Boots were a necessity for the costume. They were third on the list after googles, and gadgets.

As she ducked out, she felt the car’s doorframe knock crooked the goggles perched on her hat. She thought a simple bit of magic into them and they straightened.

A deep voice beside her said, “Nice goggles. They really are the secret handshake, aren’t they.”

She turned, startled. Had he seen her straighten them without touching them? She forced her mouth into the small smile that she wore to greet the bereaved at the mortuary where she was employed. The man looked familiar, stocky, gray sideburns, weathered tan that etched nice laugh lines in his face. Her three inch heels made her half a head taller.

He was dressed in the usual khaki, a sports jacket with extra pockets. A miniature brass telescope hung from a leather cord around his neck. And of course he wore a brimmed cap topped with goggles.

He pointed at her wide-brimmed hat. “Very Truly Scrumptious, the whole outfit. I’m Ford. I should know your name. Sorry.”

“Nicotiana,” she said.

And then she remembered why she knew him, even if the name Ford sounded wrong. No, she wouldn’t mention it. Obviously, he had forgotten where they’d met.
“Love the name. Is it your real name?” he said.

He slipped his hand around her elbow, barely touching her, and turned her toward the coffee shop. She almost shrugged him off because she really did not like people touching her. And then her years of shaking hands with visitors clicked in.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” she asked.

“Some of the group make up names and so I thought maybe, well, anyway, let’s go in. I haven’t been here in ages.”

She knew why. “I only joined recently.”

“That’s why I don’t know you. A lovely lady like you, I would remember.”

Nicotiana had no idea how to respond. It was the sort of comment that her niece, Nicky, must hear all the time, she thought. It had been Nicky’s idea that she meet these people, and now, of course, Nicky was off with a new boyfriend, not the one who had originally introduced her to the group, and Nicotiana had to come alone.

She told herself to be fair. She didn’t have to come at all. However, she knew so few people outside of her own neighborhood. These people were different and Nicky kept telling her she was in a rut and needed a change. Unlike most groups she had visited, they were all very friendly plus they didn’t pump her for details of her private life.

He held open the coffee shop door and bowed her in. It was a slightly drafty place, very casual, and the management didn’t care how long they stayed and talked. The group had already pushed together chairs and tables and were busy comparing costumes and gadgets.

The man was right, the women tended to dress along the lines of the costume Sally Ann Howes wore in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, wide-brimmed hats with dust veils and goggles, leg-o-mutton sleeves, fitted bodices, colorful skirts that stopped at boot tops. They’d all grown up with that movie.

Some of them collected Jules Verne novels. All of them went to films like The Golden Compass, films featuring Edwardian costumes and steam engine technology mixed with science fiction surprises.

“Made for children, I know, but so much fun! And you’ll love the costumes,” they’d told her.

None of the men had the dash of Dick Van Dyke. They settled more for khaki jackets with extra pockets. Like the women, they wore goggles perched on hats or caps, the type needed for driving around in the open automobiles of the early 1900s. Or, as one explained, definitely required for a flying airship.

The waving crowd called them over to their corner. Nicotiana worked on keeping her smile in place and thought a little magic into her sleeves to make them puff up.

“Fordy, how good to see you!” they said a dozen different ways. “You’ve met our new friend already!”

As he headed to the serving counter to order coffee, one of the women nudged Nicotiana and whispered, “Aren’t you the clever one! We never thought he’d come back.”

“Oh, he’s not with me,” she said quickly. “We met outside just now.”

The woman laughed. “Well, he makes a perfect accessory for you. And we all need a male accessory. Come sit down, Helen is showing us these darling earrings she’s made from old watch parts.”

The men were accessories? Oh, that was meant as a joke. Nicotiana had trouble with jokes. She tended to take comments literally. The bereaved seldom joked and when they did, it was something so sad, the only proper response was a smile. If anyone laughed, the laugh could turn hysterical and then dissolve into tears.

Accessories were what these people made for their costumes, anything that had that machine look from the age of steam engines. Brass was the favorite metal.

“You can find it in all the fun places,” they’d told her, the first time she’d joined them. “We spend most our Saturdays rushing around to garage sales, digging through piles of broken jewelry and watches and tools, anything with old metal parts that can be used.”

That was much of their charm for her. They didn’t sew elaborate costumes. Instead, they put them together from old clothes and then hung metal bits all over. Nicotiana had never been a seamstress, but she liked handmade art projects. Going through her late mother’s old trunks, she had found brass keys, small brass knobs that might have once been drawer pulls, plus a broken clock case with a missing face but all sorts of wheels and springs in the back of it. She meshed bits together to create a tool belt.

When she first wore it the previous week, they all had gushed and told her how clever she was and they sounded sincere.

The man called Ford set a cup of coffee down on the table in front of her. “I forgot to ask, do you take cream or sugar?”

“Oh! Oh no, black is fine.”

Should she hand him money? Or would that be rude? Once years ago, she’d had a very short, very unhappy marriage and since that time, her relationships with men were limited to business. Obviously, she needed to ask her niece how she should respond to such a gesture.

She started to say, thank you, then realized he had turned away and joined the men. They were discussing boats. Typical Seattle, she thought, with the men it is either sports or boats. She knew that much from making polite conversations with the bereaved.

“You’ve done it again!” a woman beside her crowed.

She caught Nicotiana’s wrist and held it up. Another attic find was her grandfather’s upright typewriter. Nicotiana had dismantled the ink ribbon spool and chain-linked the four round metal ends into a bracelet, then dangled a couple of brass keys from the links.

Again, they all told her how clever she was.

Leaning forward and lowering her voice, one of women said, “Talk about clever, you did all notice who brought Nicotiana her coffee?”

“Nice of him,” Nicotiana agreed. “Is that his real name? Ford?”

She knew his face but couldn’t remember his name.

“It’s what everybody calls him. Oh gosh, what is his full name? Her name was Patty, oh right, Westford McDarlith, that’s it.”

“Married twenty years and then that tragic illness. I didn’t think he’d ever get over it,” another woman said.

Westford McDarlith. Yes. And Patricia McDarlith. Nicotiana had arranged a lovely viewing in the Flanders Funeral House chapel, very tasteful.

All right, now she had him placed and so now she could put him out of her mind. That’s the only reason she had noticed him, she decided, simply because he was familiar and she wanted to recall exactly who he was.

For the rest of the evening she admired everyone’s costumes and took careful notice of details as the women explained their latest craft projects. She tried not to hear his baritone voice but the tone was a pleasant note drifting over from the conversation at the other table.

People moved, switched chairs, shoved in between each other, and he brought her more coffee.

“Let me get you something else. They have pastries.”

“Oh no, I’m fine,” she said and found herself smiling into that pleasant face.

That’s why she hadn’t recognized him. When she had first met him, he had been polite, rather stiff, but he had never smiled. She hadn’t expected him to.

When the group broke up, they all headed out to their cars together. She didn’t see him again and knew she never would unless they both continued to attend the coffee shop get-togethers.

The next day she woke up worrying about that.

No, she decided over her morning tea, she would not worry. She would simply put the steampunk costumers out of her mind. They were a pleasant group but she had her job and her home to keep her busy.

Nicotiana’s great joy was her garden. She spent a happy weekend weeding, trimming, digging in fertilizer. Her niece, Nicky, stopped by, always a bonus. Long ago she had learned to nod and sympathize while Nicky explained her current problems with her current boyfriend.

Nicky was as tall as her aunt. They both had the family tendency towards dark hair, pale complexions, and a bit too much nose. Nicotiana knew the resemblance ended there. She was large-boned and plain, yes, she knew she was plain. Nicky was slender with lovely bones, a graceful walk, and the most beautiful face, a perfect oval with eyes so large, and lips so full, the family nose seemed in perfect proportion. Nicky looked exactly the way Nicotiana had always longed to look, back when she was a girl.

Occasionally, when Nicky was sobbing over a recent breakup, Nicotiana thought that perhaps life was easier without so much beauty. Nicotiana had only attracted one loser and that was over. Now her life was her own, comfortable and calm. Nicky’s life was never calm.

She was thinking about that as she knelt in her garden and scraped mud off her hand spade. Last night’s drizzle hadn’t lasted long, just enough to leave the soil damp. Now the sun shone warmly on her shoulders. She could even feel it through the crown of her gardening hat.

Setting the spade on the ground, she paused to peel off her gloves and roll up the sleeves of her cotton shirt. Too late, there was already a bit of mud on a cuff, but she would soak it in the laundry sink as soon as she went indoors.

“I do remember,” that baritone voice said.

She stayed perfectly still, kneeling by the flowerbed, her back to the gate.
“I kept wondering about you, even asked a few people. No one knew where you lived or where you worked. I decided to wait until next week to see if you came to another meeting.”

Then what are you doing here? she thought.

“Nicotiana, may I come in, please?”

She stood up slowly, turned and faced him.

He smiled at her, all the lines in his face in the right places, laugh lines at the edges of his eyes and around his mouth.

She said, “The gate is open.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“What sort of invitation do you need?”

He lifted the latch and walked into her garden, pushing the gate wide.

“Sorry. I don’t mean to upset you. What I wanted to say is that I remember you now and I remember why I like you. You are the very kind woman who arranged my wife’s funeral last year.”

She nodded. “I haven’t mentioned to anyone at the group that I work in a mortuary.”

“No reason why you should,” he said.

“Sometimes that information makes people uncomfortable.”

He nodded. “I know. And I don’t think I’ll tell people that’s where we met. Meeting in a coffee shop with our steampunk friends sounds so much better.”

All right. She had to know. “May I ask, why did you decide to have our mortuary handle Patricia’s funeral?”

“She grew up in this neighborhood.”

“She left when she went off to college and then she never came back, even to visit friends. Even to visit her great grandmother.”

“I know, and I can tell you, she felt very badly about that when her grandmother died. Very guilty. Patty loved this neighborhood. She just, she just didn’t want, how can I say this?”

“She didn’t want to be different. Did she tell you why?”

“Did she tell me that some of the families here have inherited magic? Yes. She had a little herself. She liked to make costumes. She could add glitter by snapping her fingers.”

“Really? I didn’t know that. I hardly knew her. We were a couple of years apart in school. Well, that’s interesting. About the magic, I mean. I don’t suppose you believed her?”

He stepped back and smiled up at Nicotiana. The sun lit his face. She had to admit to herself that the silvery sideburns were perfect.

“I believed her. She was a wonderful woman. I loved being married to her. I don’t like living alone at all. I keep getting introduced to nice ladies. But they don’t have any magic.”

She let out a sharp laugh, startled. “If you go around telling people your wife was magic, they must think you’re crazy.”

He grinned at her. “I’ve never told anyone but you.”

Nicotiana’s smile dropped into a frown and she knew what it did to her face and she didn’t care. She was not going down this road. She had accepted who she was long ago. She’d stayed in the neighborhood, worked in the neighborhood, probably made a big mistake thinking she could have friends any place else.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I really need to finish my gardening.”

He didn’t try to touch her. She could feel the thought in his mind. Or maybe she saw it in his face. She wasn’t sure which, but she knew he wanted to touch her, put his hand on her arm or something. She took a step back away from him.

“All right. I’ll leave. I’m sorry. I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to. But let me say one more thing and then I won’t bother you again. I know you have magic, Nicotiana. And I think that’s wonderful. You’re very lucky.”

She gave him a closer look. Was he making fun of her? “Why would you believe anything so absurd?”

That grin flickered at the corners of his mouth, deepening the laugh lines. “I saw you puff up your sleeves without touching them.”

She stood perfectly still, staring at him. Without her heels, she was only a bit taller. And he was heavier, such a solid man that he looked bigger.

He continued, “You looked charming in that dress and I do like those people. The only trouble is, I don’t like the clothes. Those narrow pants and that jacket, I feel like I’m wearing a tux. I’m not the tux type.”

“Oh!” She felt herself melting. “Oh. Of course you aren’t. You know what you should wear? A striped shirt and loose pants with cargo pockets large enough to conceal a ray gun and a deck of cards. Those cute brass binoculars you had? They must bump against you every time you move. You should hang them on a hook on your belt.”

“We’re talking about steampunk. The age of steam engines and dirigibles mixed with science fiction adventures.”

“The age of gamblers on every river boat, am I right?”

Now he was the one to snort. “Oh sorry, yes, a gambler with a striped vest would be a great accessory for your outfit.”

“Oh please,” she protested.
It was too late to deny her magic. He’d spotted it. She might as well tell him the whole truth. He could either handle it or he could run screaming.

She reached out a trembling hand and touched his arm. “I have more than a little magic. I am a witch.”

“Really? Can you turn this old frog into a young prince, do you think?”

“My skills are limited to warding my doors and adding extra bloom to my garden.”

“You underestimate your skills. I know that you can fluff sleeves,” he said.

“Oh you!” She slipped her hand around his biceps, oh yes, very nice firm biceps, she decided. “Would you like to come inside and have a cup of tea?”


Copyright 2009 Phoebe Matthews

For more about the Mudflat series, visit http://phoebematthews.com