Adult Children of Alien Beings Page 3

  I break the news. “We have to cross Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, a bit of Texas, and half of New Mexico, and we’re there. Twenty-one or -two hours if we don’t stop too often, though we need to give the dogs a proper walk sometime, or they’ll drive us crazy.”

  We got a late start. It took a little doing getting Avatar and Myrna installed in the backseat where they seem to have worked it out. Our stuff is crammed in the trunk. The abundant caffeine Katyana’s downed in a myriad of forms is starting to fade, and she’s about to crash. She revives a bit when the ice cream arrives. She digs in for a while. I pick at mine. One binge is enough for me. The sweetness is cloying, the fat, toxic. I let it melt.

  “How come you never hit on me?” she asks, seemingly changing the subject. She’s finished her bowl and accepts mine, stirs it into a dark purple swirl I remember from childhood. She sucks on the spoon with each bite.

  “I’m twice your age,” I say.

  She shrugs a shoulder, takes another bite. “That doesn’t stop Dave. That doesn’t stop Bill.”

  “Bill? I didn’t know he had it in him.”

  “Oh yeah. He started talking tantric with me one morning early when it was just the two of us, if you can imagine. But back to you. I’ve seen how you look at me. Are you a perfect gentleman? I’ve heard of those.”

  She’s teasing, flirting a little, but I know what she’s asking. “Have you read The Sun Also Rises?” I ask.

  “That’s Hemingway, isn’t it? I read the other one. A Farewell to Arms. Why?”

  “I was looking for a delicate shorthand. You’ve heard of prostate cancer? I had surgery five years ago. They warn you that there are risks, but the percentages look terrific, and if there are any problems, they tell you, we have these great drugs now. I know you’ve heard of Viagra. Didn’t work, horrible side effects. I’ve been a perfect gentleman ever since. Just recently they released a study saying surgery like mine wasn’t maybe such a great idea after all.”

  I’ve never made this speech to another person on Planet Earth before.

  She holds my gaze. She takes my hands. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  I shrug. “The cancer’s gone.”

  “Whenever you’re ready,” the waitress says, laying down the check, giving Katyana a dazzling smile. Surely, she must be thinking, this old man is her father. Little does she know we’re only passing through on our way to another dimension where Katyana’s nearly twice my age.

  Out in the parking lot, Katyana gives me a daughterly hug, and we get in the car, me behind the wheel. Before I put the key in the ignition, she asks, “Can we afford a night there?” pointing to a Quality Inn a few parking lots over. “They usually take dogs.” We means me. She’s totally broke, her last credit card in tiny pieces. She made her fingers little scissors when she told the tale last night.

  When they hear the word dogs, they come wide awake. Avatar’s long and curly snout thrusts forward, Myrna beside him, peering out the windshield, like they’re reading the marquee: Welcome Chris and Kristin. Can’t disappoint the flock.

  “No problem,” I say, feeling a little more like “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” than The Sun Also Rises. Everyone should read Hemingway for a dose of lean despair when the AARP card comes in the mail. The Old Man and the Sea, however, is just exhausting. I’ve never been much of a fisherman.

  All they have in a dogs-allowed room is a king-size bed. After we feed and walk the dogs, who’ve bonded and feel refreshed, they break into a crazed play session chasing each other all over the tiny room while Katyana and I cower and laugh on the bed. Avatar rolls over on his back and lets Myrna climb gleefully all over him. Her breath heaving, her tongue lolling, Myrna smiles at me in delirious gratitude for this Great Adventure, and she’s sorry she ever doubted me.

  Make no mistake. If I were not an impotent old man, I’d throw myself at Katyana’s feet, on top of her, into the abyss—whatever would serve to woo her, but that’s not how the world works, is it? Not this one anyway. But it’s okay. It really is. It makes things so much simpler in a way.

  I lie awake and listen to her sleep, what I can hear over the dogs’ companionable snores. They’re piled together between us. I listen to her dreaming—troubled murmurs, then something like a whimper and silence.

  When I finally fall asleep, I dream I’m living a new life. I step out of a shower into a steam-filled motel bathroom and wipe the condensation off the mirror so I can see the new me. I look exactly the same. The scar runs from an inch above my cock to a couple of inches below my navel.

  * * *

  In the morning, Katyana’s sick, and she says not to let her order any more ice cream, and she dines on mostly salads and toast all the way to New Mexico. There’s lots of time. The radio’s broken. We talk across four states as we watch them glide by. I tell her how it was my third wife, the engineer, who came up with the system I use to produce accurate recipes from a chaotic intuitive process by weighing all the ingredients before and after, so I don’t have to keep track along the way. I tell her how I fell so hard for my second wife I went crazy, crazier still when we split up ten years later.

  She tells me when she was twenty-two, the age she was when she was renewed, as she calls it, she was terrified to live a new life, had hung on to her old one for way too long and was afraid of being young again—she’d made so many mistakes the first time. She didn’t step outside for two weeks, and only then because she’d run out of food.

  “Why didn’t you just call for delivery?”

  She laughs. “I was more scared of who might show up, the face to face. Like they might spot me right away, you know?” She does a gruff voice: “You’re alien, aren’t you?” She laughs again. “Got over it though, as you can see. I was going to get it right this time, not make the same mistakes.” She looks out at the desert landscape, and the smile quickly fades, and her eyes are sad and creased with worry. We’re close. The closer we get, the more worried she becomes. We just left Texas.

  “Tell me about your friend. Jack, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. He’s just a guy.”

  “Nice of him to let us stay with him. He knows we’re coming, right?”

  She doesn’t answer right away. “Sort of. He sort of knows I’m coming. I—I didn’t tell him about you exactly. I’m sure it will be okay.”

  I look in the rearview at Myrna and Avatar leaning up against each other like mismatched bookends, listening to our conversation. ACAB dogs are fluent in their owners’ languages and often communicate telepathically when the need is great. Myrna lays her head on Avatar’s heart and assures me everything will be all right. This abyss plan is my best yet, even better than moving back into Mom and Dad’s house, rooting around in my roots. Look how great that’s worked out. I adopted her from a shelter after the prostate surgery, when I was healed enough to stand a young dog straining on her lead. We’ve been through a lot together. I trust her judgment completely.

  Katyana looks back from the desert. “Jack’s not alien, okay? He doesn’t know about us. We can’t talk about any of that crazy shit around him, is that clear?” She hears herself and shakes her head. “Sorry. I’m being a bitch. I just don’t know how he’ll react. I’m sure it will be all right.”

  That’s twice she’s sure, so I get the picture. She hasn’t a clue, with the stakes a lot higher than taking some foolish old man to the abyss, and she’s scared shitless. I’ve been there plenty of times, but not today for some reason. I’m perfectly happy to be here. You may be like my brother and think I don’t know how crazy this is. Don’t worry. I do.

  She tells me the story of Jack. He’s a musician who travels a lot, so he’s not here that much, but he likes to be home for the holidays. The travel gets too crazy then. He got stuck in a blizzard once for three days. Jack, she confesses, is her ex.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” she says.

  “I figure if you’re going to drive across the country to see a guy, it must be somebody like th
at. When did you see him last?”

  “October. He played a gig in Charlottesville. He called me.”

  I hope she didn’t drive that fucking truck of hers to Charlottesville, but I don’t ask. “So does he know you’re pregnant?”

  It takes a while for her to answer. I’m not who she thought I was. That happens when your hair goes white and strangers start calling you sir. She has a lot to sort out. “No. He thinks I’m coming to visit, that I’ve gotten a ride. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You are coming to visit, you have gotten a ride. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. The abyss is about ninety minutes from Jack’s place according to the GPS. I can go on my own. Maybe I’ll stop off to see where D. H. Lawrence is buried. That was the last place Mom and Dad visited, apparently, before they took the plunge.”

  “Stan, don’t—”

  I hold up my hand. “Or I’ll wait for you in town, if you like, in case it doesn’t go well with Jack. We can talk about me later. You should probably think about what you’re going to say to Jack.”

  But she has one more revelation.

  “Simon Deetermeyer’s my dad,” she says. “That’s how come I know so much about ACABs. I’m not really an alien. I’m knocked up and thirty-three and desperate. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “He was so excited when you came in. It’d been a while since anyone had found him.”

  “How’s your dad doing? He hasn’t been answering my emails.”

  “His funding was cut. He’s taken it pretty hard. Nobody knows where he is. The house foreclosed. That’s why I have to move out. It was only supposed to be temporary anyway. I’m not worried. I’ll figure it out. He’s done this before, totally lost it. Dad’s crazy.”

  “I sort of figured that. Lots of brilliant men are crazy.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’ve never been better.”

  She accepts that. It must show. “This’ll be good,” she says, “knowing you’re waiting. It’ll force me to get to the point.” She gives me directions to Jack’s place like it’s no big deal. She’s just going to see a guy about her life.

  * * *

  Jack’s place is one of several lavish homes carved into the foothills near Taos for rich musicians, artists, and the like. I’m sure there’s a celebrity chef or two on these winding roads. I let her off at the gate with Avatar and a backpack, and Jack buzzes her in.

  “Hey,” I say. “If it doesn’t work out. I have plenty of room.”

  “You’re too nice,” she says.

  “My dad told me there was no such thing, but he was an alien.” I wonder how he’d have felt about it if he’d lived to be my age. I imagine him feeling pretty much the same.

  As we watch Katyana and Avatar walk up the drive, Myrna whimpers with regret, but I tell her not to worry. Katyana said it herself, Jack is no alien.

  I wind around the hill and park on a curve off the road with a nice view of the night sky. Myrna sits in the front passenger seat, still warm from Katyana, and wonders what’s up. I turn on my phone so Katyana can call me whenever she gets the chance. I’ve left it off as we’ve crossed the country, enjoying the silence. It’s stuffed with messages I ignore.

  I told Katyana I would wait in town, but what’s in town? Just more trouble for my credit card. This place is a lot different from last time I was here thirty years ago when there were adobe huts where Jack’s house sits. I wait under a myriad of stars. The more I look, the more there are.

  My phone lights up. It’s Ollie.

  “Thank God,” he says. “You’re alive. I’ve been calling and calling. Don’t you ever check your fucking messages?”

  “My phone was dead,” I lie calmly. “What time is it there? Must be late.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m almost there. It’s just up the road, but I plan to wait until sunrise. No sense trying to find an abyss in the dark. You should see this place, Ollie. The stars are fucking unbelievable, just like Mom always said. It’s an incredibly beautiful mystery.”

  “She said that sort of thing to you, Stan.”

  “She said it to you too, Ollie. You just weren’t listening.”

  “Mom was crazy, Stan.”

  “We’re all crazy. Pick your crazy.”

  “So you still with this young girl?”

  “That’s up in the air at the moment. She more than likely will need a place to live. I’m waiting to see.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “I have plenty of room. She’s broke and pregnant. She wants to keep the kid. She hasn’t said so, but it seems likely.”

  “Jeez, this is your kid?”

  “Right, Ollie. It’s my kid. Somehow the vasectomy and being gutted like a fish didn’t do the trick.”

  “I’m sorry. I was forgetting.”

  Fucking incredible. I laugh out loud, electrons dancing in the midst of the Milky Way, inconclusive evidence of intelligent life. Another call comes in. It’s Katyana.

  “I have to take this,” I say.

  “Listen to me, Stan.”

  “Later, Ollie.”

  I answer.

  “Come get me,” she whispers. “I’ll be by the gate.”

  I don’t have to ask how it went. I wind back around the hill to where I left her. Avatar sits beside her like a good soldier. They get in and settle into place. I let her have a moment. Myrna showers Avatar with kisses.

  “Abyss or home?” I ask.

  Make no mistake. The abyss is real. It’s a new life either way.

  “Home,” she says, and smiles at me, almost like she’s happy. Shelter from the storm. Maybe that’s why the aliens came in the first place. It was all an accident. There was no mission. They found themselves here far from the turquoise skies of home and had to make the best of it.

  * * *

  This time we drive straight through, swinging by her garage apartment to pick up a few things. We want to make it home by Christmas, and we make it just in time to watch It’s a Wonderful Life and cry, the both of us. I set my phone up on the TV and we pose for a photo, the four of us, teary-eyed, smiling, and wagging, and send it to Ollie with our Christmas greetings to let him know we’re okay, to maybe cheer him up a little. He’s alone these days. Nobody wants to be alone on Christmas. We’re holding Katyana’s Paint by Number between us, lifted from her dad’s collection of alien artifacts, as a reminder of where we came from.

  The baby—she does want to keep it—is due around Independence Day. Make of that what you will. No fireworks, however. They scare the shit out of Myrna. Next week is the New Year and fifth Tuesday, a serendipitous synchronicity we plan to celebrate in the ACAB way.

  See you down by the riverside.

  About the Author

  Dennis Danvers has published seven novels, including Circuit of Heaven (New York Times Notable, 1998), The Watch (New York Times Notable, 2002; Booklist 10 Best SF novels, 2002), and The Bright Spot (under pseudonym Robert Sydney). First novel Wilderness has been re-issued with a sexy new cover. His short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, F & SF, Realms of Fantasy, Electric Velocipede, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Lightspeed, and in anthologies Tails of Wonder and Imagination and Richmond Noir. He teaches fiction writing and science fiction and fantasy literature at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright ©
2015 by Dennis Danvers

  Art copyright © 2015 by Chris Buzelli