Call of the Mild

 Paige went with the defense contract story this time. That one was always a safe bet. The poor leasing office clerk looked utterly baffled as to why the Department of Homeland Security would need robotic hippopotamuses to fend off enemy submarines. Still, no minimum-wage worker wanted to tangle with the federal government just to appease the crotchety man in 31B who couldn’t hear Wheel of Fortune over the tinny braying of a computerized ungulate. The freckled twenty-something shrugged and 31B stomped back to his living room, threw open all his windows, and turned his TV volume up to 100. For the rest of the night, Diana listened to the triumphant cheers of people who had successfully purchased a vowel warring with a surprisingly varied assortment of animal grunts and bellows. She didn’t mind the cacophony. She sat on her balcony with a cigarette and let it all wash over her until the silence of night finally descended and the only sound left was the occasional hum of a passing car.

It wasn’t as though she had anything better to do anymore, she mused, exuberant in her joy. After a lifetime of keeping her nose to the grindstone until she couldn’t recognize her face, she had nothing left to do except let the world entertain her with its endless eccentricities.

A few muggy summer days passed before anyone complained again. The artificial squawks and screams started every day at 5 PM like clockwork, but no one cared enough to protest until Friday night, when the couple in 36A had their grandkids coming over for a birthday party. Since they mentioned kids, they were treated to the toy company story - Paige told them she was working on the hottest new toy of the year, a robotic hippo that could walk and swim and eat swamp grass. The company was breathing down her neck to perfect the audio so that they could get it into production before the Christmas shopping season, so she was sorry but she couldn’t possibly take the night off. But she hoped their grandkids would enjoy the preview of the exciting new gadget that would no doubt feature prominently in their letters to Santa. The grandfather walked away muttering about why anyone would want a robot hippo that actually screamed, but his wife patted his arm and told him to thank his lucky stars that at least it wasn’t another tickle-me-Elmo.

On Sunday afternoon, Diana was sitting on her balcony nursing a glass of cabernet and browsing potential tattoo designs when she saw Paige dragging a large tangle of shining metal spindles and gears out onto her ground-floor porch. 

“Is that the famous hippo?” she called down.

Paige flashed her a sheepish smile. “Yep, this is what I’ve got so far. The body and limbs are mostly worked out. The face took months of careful tweaking, but I’m pretty happy with it now.” She swiveled the metal contraption around until Diana could see the rounded protrusion of the head. It was oddly realistic, she had to admit. The eyes, snout, and tusks all reminded her vividly of the beasts she had seen once in an Animal Planet documentary. Maybe she should add an African safari to her retirement itinerary, Diana mused as she stood and leaned her elbows on the railing.

“I have to ask, why a hippopotamus?”

“I’ve always really liked them,” Paige said. “I desperately wanted a robot hippo when I was a kid, but they didn’t exist. I had all the normal animal toys, the cats and dogs and birds and everything. I kind of challenged myself to make something different, a little more out there, so I started tinkering with this when I was in middle school. Now it’s something fun to play around with in my free time.”

Diana nodded. She watched as Paige circled the contraption again and again, loosening this screw and tightening that spring. She would turn it on, watch it walk a few steps, sigh in frustration, adjust some tiny bit of machinery, and then repeat. She was at it for hours, with only the faint clicking of gears and the occasional sizzle of Diana’s lighter interrupting the humid stillness. When signs of movement began to appear in the surrounding apartments, as neighbors began to open their windows and emerge into the relative cool of the evening, Paige grabbed her creation and dragged it back into the privacy of her home, sending one last grateful smile and wave in Diana’s direction.

Two weeks later, a new family moved into 38C. Diana had to carefully stifle her laughter as the middle-aged father stalked around the courtyard searching desperately for the source of the bizarre caterwauling. He checked the trees first, squinting up into the branches as though the local songbirds had decided to reinvent themselves as vocalists for a heavy metal band. When that proved fruitless, he marched out to the parking lot to make sure that the sound wasn’t coming from some deeply unusual vehicle malfunction. No, nobody’s minivan was being slowly devoured by a constipated velociraptor and its impatiently neighing pet donkey, Diana chuckled to herself. At that point, 38C took his search door to door, pressing his ear to each apartment’s entrance until he finally sniffed out Paige. He had the rare honor of getting the medical technology story - a major medical research firm was looking into alternatives to therapy animals for patients who were allergic to dogs and horses. They needed hypoallergenic robots to provide comfort and emotional support, and studies had shown that hippopotamuses were among the most reassuring animals for people who wanted to feel protected and secure. He asked if she could at least turn the volume down, but she said no, unfortunately the sound got distorted at lower volumes. She encouraged him to try to enjoy the therapeutic benefits of their rhythmic and unfettered calls.

He caught Diana giggling quietly in her customary balcony seat as he huffed back toward his apartment. “You know those things will kill you,” he called, jabbing an accusatory finger toward her cigarette. She responded with a dismissive wave. At her age, her lungs didn’t have time to develop cancer before some other organ broke down on its own. She had denied herself this pleasure until she could outrun the side effects, and now she would savor every nicotine-laden breath.

Over the next few weeks, Diana developed the bad habit of peering into Paige’s window whenever she went past on her way to the grocery store or the post office or the hip-hop dance studio. Usually, she saw Paige poised in front of her double monitors, scrolling through endless lines of code or entering lengthy notes into a spreadsheet. She ducked past extra quickly on those rare occasions when Paige had video conferences with her colleagues, her camera pointed directly toward the open window. She could never tell from a distance when a meeting was going on because Paige always wore the same well-tailored suits and slicked her blue-streaked hair into the same neat ponytail whether she was going to see anyone that day or not. It reminded Diana of her days at the bank - waking up at 7:00 on the dot every morning to squeeze herself into one of her 5 identical black pantsuits, pinching her hair into a bun, and slathering on a coat of nude-toned lipstick so that she could continue masquerading as a proper cog in the machine. She hadn’t been a square peg in a round hole, exactly, more like an octagonal peg that had learned to suck in its edges enough to look round as long as people kept their distance. 

One time, she didn’t scoot by the window fast enough and accidentally made eye contact with the guy who seemed to be Paige’s boss. He didn’t look anything like her old boss, given his wrinkled plaid shirt and multiple nose piercings and the indie band posters in his video background, but he had the same look in his eye. The one that said ‘Your worth to me is directly proportional to the labor I can wring out of you.’ Her impulse was to flip him off, but instead she hunched and smiled to look extra old and harmless and waved enthusiastically in the window at him. He stared wide-eyed for a moment and eventually gave a small half-smile and a limp wave while his colleagues looked at him askance. Diana giggled all the way back to her apartment. There was undeniable joy in harnessing her newfound elderly superpower of adorable irrelevance.

She noticed that she rarely saw Paige taking breaks to eat, so she started leaving cartons of instant ramen and packaged cookies and microwave macaroni and cheese on Paige’s doorstep after her grocery runs. She wasn’t the most nutritionally sound fairy godmother, but she had never learned to do much of anything with food and she figured Paige probably hadn’t either. She’d leave a little pink post-it note with her offerings just to make sure that Paige knew it wasn’t from anyone creepy. She signed her name the first time and drew a cartoon hippo for a touch of whimsy. When she got back from her guitar lesson, she found the note stuck to her door with an added speech bubble saying “Thank you!”, so she upped the ante from then on. Each note was signed from a hippo with an alliterative name and a signature accessory, like Hal Hippo who wore a huge hat and Hyacinth Hubertine Hippo who had a happy hedgehog on her head. She tried not to watch too conspicuously when her gifts were received, but every once in a while she just so happened look out the window to see Paige light up at the sight of a new care package on her doorstep and chuckle softly at the cartoon.

Diana was heading home from her weekly poker game on an unseasonably chilly Friday night when she saw Paige on her porch, hunched over a giant laptop blaring what sounded like an angry duck trying to shout down a flatulent buffalo.

“At it again, I see,” Diana called, detouring a bit to put herself within only-slightly-shouting distance. “You know, I’ve been dying to ask - at this point I’ve heard a million different stories about what your hippo robot is for, and I just have to know what you actually intend to do with the thing.”

Paige glanced down at her hands. “I mean, I think there are a lot of things it could be used for. How it ends up being marketed will depend on a lot of factors, but I could see it filling an important niche in a ton of different industries. People hear ‘robot hippo’ and think it’s weird and stupid, but people said that about Roombas and drones and automatic toilet flushers, and those things are everywhere now.”

“Sure, we’d still be huddling in caves rubbing sticks together if no one had ever tried to do something a little out there. Good thing there are people like you who are brave enough to make stuff that pushes the limits.”

“Thanks, but I don’t know if everyone thinks like that.” Paige’s voice wobbled slightly, and she took a steadying breath. “I know my dad definitely wouldn’t agree with you. He said a robot hippo was bizarre and off-putting and would freak people out. He said I should try to make something people would actually like, something cute and fluffy and happy. But I don’t really know how to do that, so instead I’m trying to prove him wrong.”

Diana sat down and pulled Paige into a hug without a second thought. The laptop jabbed her softly in the stomach and continued making muffled quacking sounds. “I think your dad sounds like a jerk with no imagination,” she declared. “I bet he’s one of those boring people who’s convinced himself that being ‘normal’ is good because it’s the only thing he’s got going for him.”

Paige returned the hug for a moment before leaning back with a sigh. “I think he never really got what I was going for. But I think other people will, if I can just perfect the design.”

“It seems like you’ve got it pretty much figured out, except for the sound,” Diana said, gesturing at the still-squawking computer. “Couldn’t you just use recorded hippo noises?”

“I tried that when I first started out, but I found that the playback never sounded quite realistic enough. They lose some of their unique, wild charm in a recording, so I’m trying to mix something together that really captures their raw energy. Besides, I know it’s already going to be a tough sell to get people to embrace a robotic hippopotamus, so I need to make sure that everything is just right before I try to put it out there.”

Diana nodded. “Well, I’m excited to see it when it’s done. You can test it out on me any time you want.”

“I’ve pretty much been testing it on all the neighbors by accident,” Paige laughed. “But don’t worry, you’ll be the first one I show it to on purpose.”

Two weeks later, a young couple moved into 33A with their brand-new baby girl. The night they moved in, the mother knocked on Paige’s door as soon as the regular ruckus began. Paige tried to give her the “aquatic search and rescue devices” spiel, but she was no match for a new mother’s sleep deprivation. 33A made several impassioned appeals for quiet, but when those efforts failed, she reluctantly deployed the nuclear option and called the police. A tired, mustachioed cop knocked on Paige’s door and told her that the Coast Guard would either have to live with silent hippo robots or wait until morning to hear them at full volume. She finally agreed to put her acoustic experimentation on hold when he threatened to issue a citation. 

“Good,” he grunted. “No one wants to hear that kind of horrible noise all night. You must drive everyone crazy with that awful racket - you’ve got to think about your neighbors and what you’re doing to them. I mean, if you wanna listen to animal mating calls or whatever all night, that’s your business. But at least get a pair of headphones and keep it to yourself.”

Peeking through her drawn curtains, Diana saw Paige flush a blotchy shade of scarlet as tears welled in her eyes. Diana’s fists clenched around the drapes. Why was that all the world ever seemed to tell people? Be quiet, be inconspicuous, allow other people to ignore your ideas and your passions and your very existence until you’re nothing but a banal piece of scenery in the backdrop of their lives. As soon as the cop was gone, Diana raced down the stairs and knocked gently but urgently on Paige’s door.

“It’s me, honey,” she shouted, louder than strictly necessary. “I thought you could probably use some company.”

“It’s open,” muttered a tear-filled voice from just behind the door. Diana opened it to find Paige sitting on the floor, her knees drawn up to her forehead as she hugged herself tight. “Is he right? Do all the neighbors hate me? Do they hate that I’m inflicting myself and my stupid hippo on them all the time?”

Diana lurched herself down onto the floor and put an arm around Paige’s shoulders. “Don’t listen to that stupid policeman, or the neighbors,” she insisted. “Your hippo noises might annoy an uptight fuddy-duddy here and there, but anyone with half a brain can see that you’re working hard on something creative here.”

“Be honest, you think a robot hippo is totally bonkers. Nobody believes it’ll actually amount to anything.”

“I think it’s exciting and original, and you’ll have a world of possibilities ahead of you once you get it off the ground.”

Paige sniffled and sobbed quietly as Diana squeezed her shoulder. After a long moment, she murmured, “You’re a goddamn robot hippopotamus.”

“What?”

“You’re a goddamn robot hippopotamus. That’s the last thing my dad said to me, the day he left me and my mom for good. They had all kinds of problems, but I knew she could always convince him to stay for me in the end. I was in the backyard making a prototype out of tinker toys when I heard the yelling inside finally stop and he went storming out to his truck. I ran after him, told him he’d miss so many wonderful things if he left. Didn’t he want to see my robot hippopotamus when it was finished? He said no, it’ll be ridiculous and freaky and no one will want it. I really tried to sell him on it, but he wouldn’t budge. So then I said, won’t you miss me if you leave? Don’t you want to see everything I can do, what I become? And he just looked at me for a moment and muttered ‘You’re a goddamn robot hippopotamus!’ And then he slammed the truck door and drove away.”

A current of white-hot rage shot through Diana, and she knew she couldn’t contain it for long. “Get your laptop,” she told Paige as she levered herself to her feet. She led the way out of the apartment complex and into a nearby patch of woods, far enough that they probably wouldn’t wake the baby in 33A. Paige put the laptop on a nearby rock and opened her audio mixer. When the red recording light went on, Diana started to scream. At the top of her lungs, with every muscle in her body vibrating and every nerve in her body pulsing with the sheer force of her cry. Paige joined her, higher and shriller but just as potently unrestrained, carried away on the liberating ecstasy.

Their calls were unique and wild and raw and energetic enough to give even the most unfettered hippopotamus a run for their money.