by Rachel Ford
“Excellent.”
“We’re also running a sale, buy one pair of pants get one half off.”
“Oh. What a charming idea.”
The saleswoman regarded the pair of them for a moment, then smiled. “Well, if you need any help, let me know. Fitting rooms are in the back.”
She, mercifully, returned to the front of the store, and Alfred sighed in relief. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s find you a few shirts and pants, and then get out of here.”
“I believe we should pay first, Alfred.”
“What?”
“I believe we must pay after we acquire our merchandise. Before we go.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Of course. I just mean, we shouldn’t waste time.”
“Oh, I see.”
They wandered the store, and it seemed Li was drawn to any and everything that sparkled. Sequins were a particular downfall for the alien, and they spent many minutes ogling displays of shimmering tops. “That’s not very practical,” Alfred would urge. Or, “Where would you wear that?”
Finally, he managed to steer their steps toward the turtlenecks, already set out for winter, and the last t-shirts of the season. “This is on clearance,” he’d point out, and “What about this one? It’s half off.” It wasn’t that he meant to be cheap, or that he couldn’t afford the clothes. But he had invested rather a lot of money in the alien so far, and if his appetite the night before was anything to go by, he’d be spending a lot more before the mothership returned.
In the end, Li chose a turtleneck and a discounted t-shirt. But then, like a moth to flame, they returned to the shimmering blouses. They stood in front of a draping top with bell sleeves, its floral print speckled in silver gems. “I really like this one, Alfred.”
“Fine,” the taxman sighed. “Let’s get that one too.”
Pants presented a similar dilemma. The alien could be prevailed upon to grab a practical set of jeans, but not to forget the embellished pockets and extravagant prints. Four pairs of pants ended up in the pile: a paisley print that nearly made Alfred’s eyes bleed, two pairs of jeans heavy on embellishments, and a solid, practical pair of blue jeans – picked by the taxman.
The clerk smiled as they neared the counter. “Do you need any lingerie, ma’am? Our bras are forty-percent off this week.”
“No,” Alfred said quickly. The sales associate grimaced, ever so slightly, and he added, “We’re good.”
The bill came to just over four hundred dollars. The taxman was appalled. For the same amount of money, he could have got three or four times as many clothes, had he been shopping for himself. Not for the last time, he found himself wishing Nancy could have fixed Li up to look like a man. The cost of being a woman was too rich for his blood.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Shopping for groceries should have been less of a challenge, but the taxman found that it was not. Li was hungry by time they reached the store, and the alien quickly proved the adage about not shopping on an empty stomach.
Everything appealed. “Oh, what about potatoes?”
“Have you ever even eaten a potato?”
“Yes, last night. Not very high in nutrition, but they have a remarkable crunch.” Alfred shivered, trying hard not to imagine the alien downing a bag full of raw potatoes.
“Oh, we should get apples.”
“What’s sushi, Alfred? It looks very interesting.”
“Tomato sauce? I don’t believe I’ve ever tried tomato sauce before.”
By time they reached the dairy aisle, the cart was full. “Oh dear,” Li said. “I think we’ll need another grocery vehicle.”
“Why?”
“We need to stock up on eggs.”
Hundreds of dollars later, they left the grocery store. Alfred spent fifteen minutes packing everything into the Mustang. It drove like a dream, but the vehicle certainly was not intended for grocery runs for an alien whose appetite rivaled an entire high school class of teen boys.
Finally, though, he fit it all in. Li grabbed something from the back then settled into the passenger seat beside him.
“Alright,” the taxman said, “let’s head back home.”
“Right-o.” This was followed up, almost immediately, by a loud crunch and slurp.
Alfred glanced over, and immediately regretted the decision. Li was holding an opened egg carton, and chewing eagerly. There was one egg missing.
Bile reached the back of his throat, and he had to fight to prevent himself from vomiting in Josh’s car. “Oh God,” he gagged.
Li swallowed his mouthful, and asked, “What’s wrong, Alfred?”
“You’re eating raw eggs.”
The alien nodded. “Yes. They are very good. And high in protein.” He reached for another, and tossed it into his mouth.
Alfred barely made it out of the car and into the parking lot before the vomit escaped. Li followed a moment later, the eggs still in hand.
“What’s wrong?”
The sight of the carton, two eggs conspicuously absent, turned the taxman’s stomach anew, and he upchucked a second time.
When the alien understood that it was the sight of them ingesting those raw eggs that caused Alfred’s gastronomic distress, the apologies were profuse. “Oh, I’m a nosebleed. A complete chucklehead.”
The taxman had no idea what that meant, except in the general sense that it was not intended as a compliment. “It’s fine,” he said. “Just…hold off on the raw egg eating around me, okay?”
Josh was in a better humor when they returned with food. He laughed out loud as Li retold the egg incident. Still, he was a bit surprised by the sheer volume of groceries. “Thirty dozen eggs? That’s going to be hard to fit in the fridge with everything else.”
The alien promised to assist, and absconded with six cartoons for the living room. In a few minutes, Li was back for more.
“You really like eggs, I guess?” Josh observed.
“Oh yes. They’re very high in protein, and the shells are a good source of calcium.”
Alfred could feel himself turning green again, and the marine just laughed. “Well, that’s good, I guess. But tell me, Li, all this stuff…how long do you think it will last you?”
Considering for a moment, the alien said, “Oh, two days at least.”
The taxman waited until they’d gone back to the living room, more food in hand, leaving him and the marine in the kitchen, before confiding, “Two days? Jesus. I’m going to go broke feeding him. Them.”
The other man laughed. “Yeah.” Then, he grew more serious. “Actually…have you thought about going out to eat?”
“How does that help me?” As far as he could tell, that was just an express ticket to the poor house.
“There’s quite a few all-you-can-eat buffets around here.” Josh grinned. “With Li, you can put that to the test.”
Alfred frowned, saying, “That’s actually not a bad idea.”
“Be a lot cheaper to buy a single meal ticket for each of you than taking her shopping for each meal.”
“Them. But, I agree.”
Li was entirely amenable to the proposition. “Killer-diller idea. I should enjoy visiting your establishments of eating.”
Josh smirked into his mug of coffee. “Really killer-diller,” he agreed. “Downright groovy thinking.”
“Groovy?” Li’s eyes lit up. “What is groovy?”
“Well,” the marine said, “it’s like killer-diller, only cooler.”
“Your human slang fascinates me,” the alien said. “This is a new term for me. Thank you, Josh Stevenson. I shall incorporate it into my repertoire.”
Alfred tried to hold back his groan.
“No sweat. I thought you’d dig it.”
Now, the taxman glared at the marine. But Josh seemed to be enjoying himself too much to notice.
“Dig it? Oh! I like that as well. Tell me, Stevenson, do you know more of these human terms?”
“Well, as it happens, I do. You might say,
I’m in the know. Being human and all myself.”
Alfred slipped away, retreating to the kitchen while Josh worked at catching Li up on decades of English language slang. His stomach was settled enough for hunger to return, and he set his mind to breakfast.
Eggs were out of the question. If the taxman was ever going to be able to eat them again, it would not be any time soon. Oatmeal it is, then, he thought.
He was about halfway through his meal when Josh returned to the kitchen. Alfred frowned at him. “Run out of ridiculous phrases?”
“Oh no. We’re still working on making Li woke.” He grinned. “But I need a refill.” He lifted the coffee cup. “And they want to try some ‘mud’ and ‘canned heifer.’”
“What?”
“Coffee and creamer. Milk, actually, I guess.” The marine was smiling, as if he was quite pleased with himself. “They taught me those ones.”
“I wish you wouldn’t encourage that,” Alfred said.
“Why? It’s harmless fun.”
“Not when you go shopping with them. They asked the sales lady for ‘threads’ and ‘duds’ instead of clothes.”
Josh laughed. “Well, just wait until you go for grub. Li’s very excited about trying new chow.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
This was very true. Nancy stopped by after work, and redid Li’s makeup. “We’re going to a buffet,” the alien declared.
“Really?”
“Yes. It is all-you-can-eat.”
“That sounds…fun.”
“Oh yes. I can’t wait. As soon as you have put on my face, I will get changed. We bought new clothes today, Nancy. I shall look chrome-plated.”
They chose the paisley pants and turtleneck, and disappeared to change. When this was done, the trio agreed that Li did, indeed, look chrome-plated, and the Geejayan beamed.
“Well, Nance,” Josh said, “now that that’s done, shall we get going? Leave these two young things alone?”
Alfred grimaced, and the marine smirked. Nancy frowned at the comment, but said, “Alright. You need anything before we go?”
“We’re good.”
“Okay. See you later.”
“Where are they going, Alfred?” Li asked when the pair had departed.
“I don’t know,” the taxman said. “On a date. To a movie, I think.”
“Ah. Well, never mind that. Our grub awaits.”
For the night’s meal, Alfred had selected a western-style buffet. It was a kitschy place, with plastic cowboys inside the entrance to greet diners, and a collection of southwest décor more remarkable in scope than anything else. The walls were plastered in pictures, in trinkets, in mass-produced horseshoes and faux-wood signs.
The taxman wrinkled his nose at the tackiness of it, but Li was enchanted. “What a groovy place.”
The alien’s attention, though, quickly shifted from the décor to the food. The buffet was divided into five stations, with a salad bar at one end and a dessert bar at the opposite. Between these were entrée and sides stations, with a steak grill in the center.
Li stopped at the central three stations first, and Alfred served as a gopher during this first pass through. He would ferry the alien’s full plates to their table, returning in time to run another set back.
Before long, their table was laden with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, shredded beef, grilled steak and chicken, and fried shrimp. Li had transferred an entire pan of cornbread and a basket of dinner rolls to separate plates, which he ran back next. Then came the sweet potato fries, the stuffing, and half a pizza. By time the taxman returned from depositing this latest round, the Geejayan had piled plates with various types of fried fish.
Finally, Li moved onto the salad bar, piling one plate with shredded cheese, and another with sour cream. “There, I think that’s a good start.”
They returned to the table – there was scarcely any table surface left – and the alien began to eat. Alfred found his own appetite gave way to mere fascination.
Meanwhile, a nervous young man in waitstaff uniform approached. “Excuse me,” he said, “the, uh, buffet rules say, uh, you can only take what you’re going to eat. So, uh, there’s food for, uh, other people.”
Despite himself, Alfred grinned. “Oh, believe me: we’re going to eat this.”
The boy – his nametag read Dylan – looked skeptical. “The thing is, we don’t like people to take, uh, more than they can eat. You can always, you know, go back for more.”
The taxman fixed the youth with a hard gaze. “I promise you, Dylan: we’re going to eat every bite.”
Dylan glanced back toward the kitchen nervously, then nodded. “Alright. Just, uh, don’t take more please unless you do.”
Li had been too busy eating heaping spoonful after heaping spoonful of sour cream to pay much attention to the exchange. Now, that plate finished, they moved onto the cheese. This was consumed in fistfuls.
Alfred watched in a kind of awe as the alien moved on to the beef, and beef made way for shrimp. Plate after plate was cleared, empty except for a few flecks of breading or puddles of gravy, and stacked neatly to the side.
Awe, though, gave way to horror when it was the fried chicken’s turn. Li popped an entire drumstick into their mouth, masticating away on skin, meat and bone alike with a horrible grinding sound.
“Not the bones,” Alfred gasped.
“What?”
“You’re not supposed to eat the chicken bones.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Well, they’re…bones.”
“Bones are an excellent source of protein and calcium, though, Alfred. Why would you not eat them?”
To this, the taxman had no good answer. He settled at last for, “They’re hard to chew.”
“Ah, this is a limitation of your human teeth. I have no such difficulty.” As if to prove the truth of the statement, the alien returned to eating, downing entire pieces without batting a fake-eyelash in the process.
Li made it through the entire table full of plates. Dylan collected the spent dishes, surveying them with a mixture of horror and surprise. When the boy had gone, Alfred asked, “Well, are you done? Or are you still hungry?”
“Oh, I saved room for dessert.”
Much like the first time, they took their time going down the food bar. Li transferred a blueberry pie to a plate, then collected all the remaining slices of cheesecake, and a plate full of cookies. It was the chocolate fondue fountain that really captivated the extraterrestrial, though. “What manner of food is this?”
“It’s like a chocolate sauce.”
“I like chocolate.”
“Yes. You dip fruit in it, or marshmallows.”
Li, though, had other ideas. Alfred returned from running back a platter of cake to find the alien filling mugs with fondue.
They drank their fondue first, sipping it as if it was tea. “This is remarkable, Alfred. I like it better even than your coffee. Are you sure you don’t want a cup?”
The taxman was very sure.
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Much, it seemed, to the restaurant’s relief, they departed shortly thereafter. “Do you know what I was thinking, Alfred?”
“No. What?”
“We should catch a movie.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, isn’t that what humans do for entertainment?”
“Well…sometimes.”
Li nodded. “And I have never been to one of your theaters. I should like to do that.”
The taxman repressed a sigh. “Fine,” he said. “We can catch a movie.”
The alien clapped excitedly, declaring, “It’ll be a gas.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
In some cruel twist of karmic irony, Alfred found himself subjected to Fire Fell – the same movie Nancy had wanted him to see so recently. And yet, it seemed, so long ago.
Li had seen the posters in the lobby and been captivated by the bright colors and powerful superhero figu
res; and that was that. They bought tickets to the next showing.
The movie was every bit as bad as the taxman feared it would be, full of silly costumes and cheesy dialogue, and featuring a simplistic, cliché plot of good defeating evil. And all the while he endured it, the thought lingered in his mind that he might have seen it with Nancy at his side. The film would have been no better for her presence – nothing could save it, he feared – but the experience of sitting shoulder to shoulder with her would have been a treat in and of itself. But he’d passed that up. And for what? To focus on work, on the job – a job from which he was now suspended, and might be terminated.
The phrase chucklehead popped up unbidden, and he scowled – at himself, for his own stupidity, and at Li, for planting such nonsense words in his mind.
The alien’s experience was entirely different. Alfred left the theater sad and deflated, feeling a fool of the first order. Li left thrilled and grinning, recounting favorite moments from the film.
They traveled back to Josh’s house in this fashion, the taxman silent and sullen and the alien talkative and animated. Only seeing Nancy’s car in the driveway brightened Alfred’s mood, and then only a little – she was there, he knew, for Josh, not for him.
They were nestled into the beanbag chair together. Something was playing on the television, but it seemed their attention was more focused on one another than the show. Alfred cleared his throat tactfully to announce their presence.
“Oh, you’re back,” Nancy said, getting to her feet.
“You’re early, aren’t you?” Josh added, somewhat pointedly.
“Yes,” Li nodded in answer to the first question. “Our meal was very good, and then we caught a flick.”
“Really? What’d you see?”
“A wonderful movie, about a human male with extraordinary powers. What was it called again, Alfred?”
The taxman felt his face flush, and he mumbled, “Fire Fell.”
“What?”
“Fire Fell,” he said, this time more clearly.
He felt Nancy’s eyes on him, and there was an expression – was it hurt? – he didn’t like in them. “Fire Fell? Oh.”
