by Greg Keyes
“So when you say you’ve met her, you mean you’ve seen her,” Jake said.
“Well, and there’s my dreams,” Charlie said. “I’m probably going to ask her out, like, tomorrow.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Jake said.
“You sound a little down,” Charlie said. “Something going on?”
“Actually,” he said, “Patricia is dropping out of flight school.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” Charlie said. “I…”
The line went silent.
“Charlie?” Jake said.
“Oh. My. God,” Charlie said. “You’ve been playing tonsil hockey with Patricia Whitmore, haven’t you?”
If Charlie’s only prominent quality was his almost eerie ability to cut right through what Jake said to what was percolating underneath, Jake would have probably strangled him years ago. Fortunately, he had other qualities—but it was still annoying.
“Ah. Sort of,” Jake said.
“Has Dylan beaten the crap out of you yet?”
“First off,” Jake said, “there is no universe in which Dylan Hiller can beat the crap out of me. But no, he’s not exactly happy about it. Not that it matters anyway, not with her leaving.”
“Think so?” Charlie said.
Jake had done almost nothing but think about the question Charlie was alluding to, and he was tired of it.
“You know what?” Jake said. “Tell me more about Amber.”
“It’s probably Isabella, the more I think of it,” Charlie said.
* * *
Jake met Patricia outside of the gate about an hour after he was off duty. He had been trying to imagine how the goodbye would go, and had settled on being heroically stoic and supportive. The other alternative involved him on his knees, begging her to change her mind, probably with a few tears thrown in.
Not a good look.
When he arrived at the rendezvous, he didn’t see her at first. Not until she honked the horn, and he realized she was inside a jeep.
“Come on,” she said.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Just get in,” she said.
He did as she asked, and after a second’s hesitation, gave her a kiss. Then she stepped on the gas and the base was dwindling behind them.
“This isn’t the way to the airport,” he noticed.
“Very observant,” she said. “I told you I would be done with flight school at the end of the week, not that I was leaving. I’m staying through the weekend.”
“Oh,” he said. “So where are we going?”
“We’re going to be alone,” she said. “No more sneaking around, no more pretending. I’ve rented a cabin up in the mountains.”
Jake felt as if his vocal cords were frozen.
Alone? In a cabin in the mountains?
“But I didn’t pack,” he finally managed.
“I didn’t want to spoil the surprise,” Patricia said. “I stopped in town and got you a few things.”
“If you got me lingerie, I can’t promise I’ll wear it,” he said. “I’m really, really self-conscious about my body.”
“You’ll wear it and be happy, or you don’t get the chocolates,” she said.
“Damn, woman,” he said.
“Damn what?”
“I’m the guy,” he said. “I’m supposed to be doing this stuff.”
“Okay, let’s assume that’s in the least way a valid point. Were you planning on impulsively taking me someplace for our last weekend together?”
“I was… there may have… not… been a plan,” he admitted.
“Exactly,” she said.
“In my defense, I thought you were leaving today.”
“Noted,” she said. “Now sit back and enjoy the road trip. Turn on the music there.”
He hit the start button, and Robert Plant’s “Big Log” began playing.
“No!” he said.
“Oh, it gets better,” she said. “We’ve got Stones, we’ve got Dire Straits, Hendrix, the Who—three hours of handpicked classic rock.”
“That’s awesome,” he said. “I love you.”
She looked at him, then.
“I mean, the music, I love—hey, you’re going to drive us off the road.”
She turned her attention back to driving. Robert Plant started singing.
My love is in league with the freeway…
“Patricia,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I do love you.”
She drove for a moment or two without comment.
“You know, Jake,” she said, “I’m starting to think I love you, too.”
He sat through the rest of the song, wondering what to say next. The Kinks came on.
“So how is this gonna work?” he asked.
She glanced back at him, a bittersweet expression on her face. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “I did the long-distance thing for five years, and it completely fell apart on me.”
“I’m not him,” he said.
“I know you’re not,” she said. “Look. Just set the long-distance thing aside for the moment, okay? Let’s treat this weekend like it’s our last. Like the world ends on Monday. After that, we’ll see. After all, we might not even be—you know—compatible.”
“Oh,” Jake said. “I’m compatible.”
“I’m just saying,” Patricia said.
“One hundred. Percent. Compatible.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
“Yes, we will,” he said.
31
APRIL
2014
David was in Lisbon for the tenth annual Xenology Conference when he bumped into Dr. Catherine Marceaux for the second time.
Literally. He was checking his phone messages and turning a corner in a crowded corridor when he tripped and ran into her from behind. It wasn’t much of a collision, and she seemed more-or-less prepared to ignore it until she recognized him.
“Director Levinson,” she said.
“We have to stop running into each other like this,” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s the only way I seem to be able to contact you. Your staff seems quite adept at screening your calls.”
“My staff sometimes doesn’t know what’s good for them,” David said. “I had no idea you’ve been trying to get in touch.”
She smiled a bit skeptically.
“I, uh, read your book,” he said. “One of them.”
“Oh, yes?” she said. “What did you think?”
“It was, well, very interesting,” he said. “Not entirely up my alley, even though the chapter on recursive feedback loops and computing language I found very interesting. It resonated with some of the things I’m working on.”
“Are you suggesting a collaboration of some sort?”
“What? No. I was just saying—”
“Look, I’ve frightened you again,” she said. “I was joking. What I meant was, would you like to discuss this someplace quieter?”
“Quieter?”
“The bar, perhaps? Over a drink?” She looked at him, somehow serious, sarcastic, and playful at the same time. She was also gorgeous.
A drink wouldn’t hurt, would it?
* * *
David made a face when he tasted his drink.
The hotel bar had a theme of some sort, although David had a little trouble discerning what it was. It involved a fair amount of vintage neon advertising American beer, old cigarette posters featuring a cowboy, an antique gas station sign with a green brontosaurus on it, and several stuffed armadillos… among other things. The bar itself was covered in pale blue Formica.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“I ordered a martini,” he said.
“Let me see.”
He handed her the glass and she took a small sip.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s what you have. A martini.”
“It’s just vermouth on ice,” he said.
“Oh, you wanted a
n American martini,” she said. “Shall I go ask for that?”
“Do you speak Portuguese?” he asked.
“Some,” she said, “but the bartender is French, anyway.”
“I’m okay with this,” David said, although he really wasn’t. “I’ll know better next time.”
“Shall we talk shop then?” she asked.
The question set him at ease, because he had begun to worry that he was on a date. He hadn’t dated anyone since Connie died, and he still wasn’t really sure he was ready. Not that it mattered—he was so busy there wasn’t any time for such nonsense anyway.
They talked for a while about her book and the theories she outlined in it. She wanted to know if he knew of any persons she might interview who had experienced alien contact. He did, of course—President Whitmore and Dr. Okun both came to mind. Okun, the former head scientist at Area 51, had been used as a mouthpiece by one of the aliens. It nearly killed him, and now, seventeen years later, he was still in a coma.
The president’s contact with the aliens was classified, however, as was Okun’s very existence. Still, he ventured to ask if she was aware of other examples of catatonia induced by alien ESP.
“Yes,” she said. “There’s a full range actually. Some died during or soon after their contact. Others were rendered catatonic for varying durations. Still others seemed hardly affected.”
“How do you account for the differences?” he asked.
“I can’t find a single consistent correlate,” she said. “It appears to have to do with the individual, how long the contact was, how intense. Here’s the interesting thing though.” She paused.
“Yes, what’s that?” he asked.
She leaned forward across the table, so their faces were much nearer.
“Some of them are regressing,” she said.
“Regressing?”
“Yes,” she said. “Many of my subjects report having experienced night terrors, difficulty sleeping, confusion and so forth for a short time after their contact. In most cases, this faded over time. They felt more normal. In the last few years, however, there seems to be a general trend of worsening symptoms.”
“Do you know why?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s quite frustrating. I was wondering if you might have a theory.”
“Nothing I can think of,” he said.
“The captive aliens—” she said “—have they shown any sort of change?”
He laughed. “They’re playing dead, all of them. Nothing new there.”
She sighed and leaned back.
“Would it be possible for me to examine them?” she asked. “The aliens?”
David had been as diplomatic as he could about her book. Although it did raise a few interesting issues, for the most part it didn’t seem much like science to him, but rather more a kind of storytelling that wasn’t easily subjected to testing or verification. He found he was liking her though. So instead of going with a flat “no,” he decided to be slightly more encouraging, in a way that wouldn’t actually be a lie.
“That’s a tough one,” he said. “We only allow access to them in drips and drabs. You’ll need to write a proposal, and it will need to somehow fit with the Earth Space Defense goals. I’ll see what I can do.”
She nodded. They went on to discuss the Umbutu situation, and David had to admit that he hadn’t made any headway there. The old man was utterly inflexible, and launching any sort of invasion remained out of the question. If the heavy hitters in the global coalition were seen to be behind something like that, it could be looked upon as a new form of colonialism—which could in turn weaken trust in what was at the moment a very popular organization.
He got his American martini, and then another, and three, and soon they were no longer talking business, exactly, but had spun off into a discussion of what consciousness really was. She seemed to hold with Hofstadter in saying that what people referred to as consciousness was actually a powerful symbolic system whose most potent symbol was that of selfhood, of identity. That led to whether any part of a person’s “self” survived death, and then somehow they were on the subject of old movies.
What he really noticed about the conversation, what really impressed him, was that while she asked about him—his childhood, his education—trivial details seemed to delight her—she never once brought up the big day, the Fourth of July, the trip to the mother ship, Hiller, the president—none of it.
She smiled at him a lot, and touched his hand when she laughed sometimes. He thought he was probably looking outright foolish, and although on one level he wanted the night to go on, on another he did not.
Another finally won.
“Well,” he said. “This has been really nice, but I’ve got an early morning.”
“Bien sûr,” she said. “I understand.”
“Good. Good,” he said. “Well, okay.”
She stood up and reached for him.
“Um—” he started.
Then she kissed him on both cheeks.
“This is how we say good night in France, yes?”
“Yes,” David said. “Right. Good night.”
He started to turn away, but four drinks were bubbling through his veins and he was feeling as if he ought to say something. He just wasn’t quite sure what it was.
So he decided to just open his mouth and see what came out.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Would you like to, I don’t know, get together or something?”
“Huh,” she said. She looked thoughtful.
“What about this,” she said. “I know a little about Lisbon. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll take you on a walking tour. You can buy me dinner.”
David nodded, feeling like he had some sort of obstruction in his throat.
“That sounds great,” he said.
* * *
Lisbon was nestled up to the sea, but most of the city sat on hills steep enough to make San Francisco—what had been San Francisco—look like a flat plain. One particular incline was impressive enough that, more than a century ago, the city had constructed a gigantic elevator—the Elevador de Santa Justa—to transport passengers up and down it.
“It’s a work of art as much as it is a machine,” Catherine said, waving at the iron neo-Gothic arches that climbed upward from their vantage point at its base. “It was designed by a student of Gustav Eiffel—you know, the man who designed the Eiffel Tower.”
Her expression took a melancholy turn, and he understood why. As he would never see the Empire State or the Chrysler Building—or the original Statue of Liberty—she would never again see the original Eiffel Tower, the Sacré Coeur, the Arc de Triomphe. When New York had still been a place, he’d thought of such tourist attractions as just that, too hokey to go see himself. Now, they were poignant symbols of a city and a way of life forever vanished.
They entered the elevator, manned by an old fellow with a rather stern expression. Inside it was paneled in wood, mirrors, and windows. The controls were brass, and for a moment David felt as if he was inside some kind of invention from a Jules Verne novel. The lift took them to a balcony and café, where they drank coffee and looked out over rust-red terracotta roofs toward the sea, and watched Sol sink nightward.
Soon thereafter they went to a fado club and listened to music that he could only think of as some sort of Portuguese blues. Instrumentally it was mostly guitar, played in a particularly percussive manner, and the vocals wailed, rose and fell like gentle weeping. Yet there was also a sort of triumphant thread in it. Although he understood none of the words, it made him feel sad, cathartic, and uplifted all at the same time. Part of this was probably due to the freely flowing red wine.
They snacked on sausages and cheese, and when Catherine deemed him drunk enough, they had a large bowl of tiny snails. He had eaten escargot before—this wasn’t that. Escargot were sort of rubbery gray balls slathered in butter and garlic. These things looked exactly like the small garden snails he remembered from growing up, an
tennae and all. They were steamed, and death had fixed their necks in a fully extended position, and they were eaten by using a straight pin to pluck them from their shells.
Once he gagged the first few down, he had to admit they were pretty good. Again, the wine helped.
They danced, which he had not done since God knew when. They talked, about everything and nothing. It had been a very long time since he had gotten to know somebody, anybody, to explore another person as they explored him. It was like being seventeen again, and it was quite honestly an experience that he had never really expected to come across again.
He was delighted and terrified.
Finally, he walked her to the door of her room and when she leaned up to kiss his cheek, he shifted his head and met her with his lips. She uttered a throaty little chuckle and then kissed him back. He took her in his arms and pulled her close.
After a moment, she took out her room key and opened the door. Then she took him by the hand and led him inside.
* * *
He woke to his phone alarm going off, and stirred, groaning a bit.
Then he realized where he was, and remembered. He slowly turned to look at the other side of the bed and found Catherine there, smiling enigmatically, her hair pleasantly mussed, her eyes not fully open. She looked beautiful.
“Oh,” he said. “Good morning.”
“Is that important, the sound your phone is making?” she asked.
“Sort of,” he said. “I’ve got a flight in about two hours.”
“So you’re just dashing away?” she said.
“Well, it’s an ESD transport,” he said, “and I’m the boss, so I don’t have to show up early for baggage check and screening. I have time for a cup of coffee, at least.”
“That’s not exactly what I was thinking of,” she murmured.
* * *
Afterward there was still time for coffee, some hard rolls and cheese. They exchanged contact information, and when it was finally time for him to go, they shared their most awkward kiss.
On the plane, he began wondering what he had done. He felt guilty, remembering the last time he and Connie had made love. He hadn’t known it would be the last time. If he had known, if he had seen it coming—if she had died of cancer, or something predictable—would it have made a difference? Would it be so hard to let go if he had been able to tell her goodbye?
