by N. M. Silber
“Colonel Sanders!” Lily replied quickly.
“Colonel Sanders? I said it was a real person, not a logo for a chicken joint!”
“He was a real person! If you don’t believe me look it up!”
“Whatever! Not Colonel Sanders though. Humor!” he said urgently.
“Steve Martin!” She clapped her hands with joy, obviously believing that they had finally gotten one right.
“No, uh …” He searched for another clue.
“Wait! White suit and humor but not Steve Martin?” She looked crushed.
“I just said no!” He yelled. “Hannibal!”
“Um, uh, Dumbo …” she said with a deeply pensive expression.
“Dumbo?! What the fuck?!”
“Hannibal! Elephants! And before you say it he was real too, you schmuck!”
“Guess again goddamnit!”
“Anthony Hopkins!” Adam threw down the card and looked like he was going to cry.
“Halley’s Comet!” he growled.
“Halley’s Comet?! What in hell do you mean Halley’s Comet?”
“Time!” Braden informed them gleefully, wiping tears of laughter out of his eyes.
“Mark Twain! You’re an author Christ’s sake!” Adam bit out.
“Oh, right! He was from Hannibal, Missouri! What in the hell did Halley’s Comet have to do with Mark Twain?!”
“It appeared on the day he was born and the day he died! Duh huh!” Adam said.
“This isn’t Trivial fucking Pursuit!” Lily shot back. “Why didn’t you say Mississippi or riverboat or frog jumping contest or something besides Halley’s Motherfucking Comet?!
“Because they’re all forbidden motherfucking words! Miss ‘like a human’!” he yelled. I could just picture them as an old Jewish couple for some reason. Okay, maybe with fewer uses of the word “motherfucker.”
“Okay guys! Let’s hit the hot tub!” Cam interrupted. Adam and Lily stood up and promptly crashed into each other while attempting to walk in opposite directions. They were stuck between a couch and a coffee table and neither was willing to back up so they literally climbed over one another and headed for their rooms. They really were very entertaining.
CHAPTER TWENTY
We were back downstairs and in the hot tub with cocktails and music in fifteen minutes. Let me point out that none of us were really heavy drinkers. It was an occasional thing we did to let loose, like visiting conspiracy clubs and going on UFO hunts.
Our group had varied musical tastes but most of us were eclectic. The guys all preferred classic rock but we girls liked our 80s music and it was our turn. While they weren’t thrilled about it, they sat there tolerantly listening to us do our really bad sing-along Karaoke versions of Blue Jean by David Bowie and A- ha’s Take On Me. Somewhere in the middle of Tonight is What it Means to be Young I looked up and saw something weird. It was a light. Up in the sky. Oh, no way, man!
“Look!” I pointed and mentally tried to calculate how many vodka and cranberries I had drunk. Everyone turned to look up in the direction I was pointing.
“What is that?” Cam asked, squinting.
“It looks like it’s just hovering over the trees,” I said.
“Wait, it’s moving!” Braden joined in.
“It looks kind of like a cigar-shaped object,” Lily said, sounding awed.
“How in the hell can you tell at this distance, Agent Mulder?” Adam asked derisively.
“Because I can!” she retorted and splashed him. As Braden mentioned, the object had begun to move and then suddenly it seemed to dart off and soon it was out of sight.
“Whoa. That was wild!” Cam said excitedly.
“You don’t think it was …” Jess said, not finishing that thought.
“Well what was it then? A weather balloon?” Lily asked. Lily had been taking notes during the afternoon lecture about Roswell. She wanted to believe.
“It could have been a lot of things. Willow Grove army air force base is somewhere around here. Maybe it was something they’re testing,” Adam said.
“Or chasing,” Cam muttered. “You know, after those lectures …”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It was probably some kind of plane or helicopter though.”
“Yeah!” Adam seconded. “That’s all it was.” Cam started whistling the X-Files theme and we all laughed nervously.
“Did it look like it was trying to land?” Jess asked, sounding rather apprehensive.
“We’re in the middle of the woods,” Braden reminded her.
“It supposedly landed here before,” Lily pointed out. “They must be pretty good drivers if they made it here from another planet.”
“Yeah, but landing in the woods would be harder than parallel parking in Center City on Saturday night,” I threw in.
“Maybe they have autopilot,” Cam suggested. “They must have kick-ass GPS.”
“Maybe we can ask the little green men if they saw your stalker,” Adam said.
“Gray, they’re gray,” Lily corrected. “Weren’t you listening this afternoon?”
“You seem to know an awful lot about this. I’m starting to think that you’ve been anally probed,” Adam said with a suggestive smile.
“It’s interesting!” she replied, giving him a fierce look. Adam’s sarcastic expression melted and for one second I saw a much softer humor underneath it. I started to suspect that he liked pushing her buttons sometimes because he thought she was cute when she got mad. He actually shifted a little closer to her under the pretense of getting a better view of where the object had been.
Just then I heard voices somewhere in the distance and they sounded like they were getting closer. They seemed to be coming from the woods. Eventually, I could make them out better and Raoul’s accent and Mathew’s high-pitched voice came through clearly.
“Uh oh, I think the hunt is coming this way,” Braden noted. And indeed it was. Earl and Stew came crashing out of the woods followed by the rest of the Not Ready for Sanity Players.
“Hello there!” Earl called out. “You guys had better run in and get ready or you’ll miss all the fun!” They came tramping over to where the six of us sat in our hot tub sipping our cocktails and listening to Michael Jackson sing Thriller. Appropriately.
“Come on! Did you see the light?” Mathew enthused and he came running over excitedly. “Maybe we’ll make contact!” Personally, I thought that Mathew should make contact with a psychiatrist. We looked at each other, realizing that the decision had been made for us. We were going on a UFO hunt.
After determining where we were supposed to meet up and setting our GPS we changed into warm dry clothes and sturdy shoes, grabbed some flashlights and set out to meet up with the rest of the Truth Seeker gang. We had been tramping through the woods for several minutes when Cam stopped.
“Okay, it should not be taking us this long to find them. Check the GPS,” he said.
“Uh oh,” I said, taking it out of my bag. “It’s not working. It mustn’t be able to get a signal out here.”
“Oh great!” Adam laughed. “We’re in the middle of the woods in the dark and we have no way to figure out where we’re going?”
“It’s not like we’re in the middle of the Pine Barons or anything,” Braden said. “Most of this area is developed. If we keep walking in any direction we should run into civilization before too long.”
“We haven’t gone very far. Maybe we should just turn around,” Lily suggested. That sounded like a plan so we all turned around and started back but it wasn’t really clear that we were, in fact, headed back toward the lodge. After another fifteen minutes or so I thought I heard something in the distance.
“Listen! It’s like a humming sound, coming from that direction.” I pointed. We altered our course and started walking toward the hum. In a few minutes we saw lights, but they looked strange. They seemed to be up in the air. There were several in a row and one above that was blinking on and off. They were stationary, above the
treetops.
“Do you see that?” Lily asked excitedly.
“Obviously we see it. We’re standing right next to you,” Adam answered.
“What is it? It looks like it’s floating,” Jess said.
“Maybe we should go closer,” I suggested. Nobody moved.
“I’m sure it’s not a UFO,” Braden said finally. Five voices agreed with him enthusiastically. “So what is it?” Silence.
“It just seems to be hovering. What kind of aircraft can hover?” Lily asked.
“Helicopters,” Cam answered.
“It wouldn’t be that still though,” I said. “Okay I think we need to do it. We need to go and see what that is. On three. One. Two. Two and a half…”
“Three!” Braden said and started walking forward. The rest of us followed our leader. The lights looked brighter as we got closer and we could make out what looked like a triangle shape attached to them. Like a pyramid maybe! I could feel my heart pounding as we got closer.
“There’s a clearing up ahead,” Adam said, sounding tense.
“Let’s hold hands, everyone!” Jess said, sounding panicked. We all reached out and formed a human chain. We kept walking like that together, closer and closer until finally we broke through the bush to the clearing and looked up silently at the sight before us.
“Well folks, looks like we’ve had a close encounter with a radio tower,” Cam said.
“This has been such a fun trip,” Adam chimed in. “We really have to do this more often.” Just then we heard voices somewhere close by.
“Hello!” Braden shouted. “We’re over in the clearing. Anybody there?”
“Hey there! It’s Forrest, man! I’m with Rain and a few of the others. We’ll be right there.” And that’s how we were rescued from the woods by two aging hippies, a pudgy accountant, a gay waiter, and Raoul.
We were all back by noon the next day and since both Mark and Beth were curious to hear about the weekend, Game Night and Girls’ Night were both a go. Tonight Bruno was hanging with the boys, so it was just Jess, Lily, Beth and me along with various varieties of crackers, cheeses, and a couple bottles of wine. For the rest of my life, that combination would remind me of Mr. Hughes with the shopping cart pants. Clearly, I was emotionally scarred.
“So after all that you didn’t get to confront him?” Beth asked, taking a bite of her brie-covered Melba toast and washing it down with a sip of Chianti.
“Nope. But we did confirm that Braden and I are not just imagining things. Some schmuck is actually following us,” I answered, biting into my Triscuit.
“I learned some fascinating things about political assassinations,” Lily added.
“Yeah, and she talked about them all the way home. I now know way too much about what John Wilkes Booth was doing the day Lincoln got shot, and don’t even mention the Grassy Knoll,” I said, spraying crumbs in my general vicinity.
“The truth I’m seeking is what she and Adam were really doing when that intruder showed up,” Jess said, giving Lily a suspicious look.
“Adam?” Beth asked, sounding intrigued, as she poured herself another glass of wine.
“Oh come on!” I agreed. “All that tension wasn’t about Goofy.”
“Goofy?” Beth asked, raising her eyebrows.
“We were playing that board game ‘Say My Name’,” Jess explained, cutting a piece of brie and spreading it on a cracker.
“I’m sorry I missed this!” Beth said with a big smile. “I want to know! What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Lily said, rolling her eyes and blushing furiously.
“You didn’t sleep with him that night?” I asked, spearing an olive.
“Gabrielle!” Beth said with a laugh. “You sound like Drew.”
“Drew and I are actually quite alike in many ways,” I pointed out.
“If you mean did we have sex, then no we didn’t. If you mean literally, as in did we sleep together in the same room, then yes.” She explained to Beth how after the intruder freaked her out, Adam offered to just sit in her room until she fell asleep, but he fell asleep first.
“So you haven’t had sex with him.” I continued with my interrogation. “Have you kissed him?” Inquiring minds wanted to know. Now that Cam and Jess were a done deal, I might be in the market for another project.
“No,” she answered, and after hesitating for a moment she went on, “but we came close that night you’re talking about. We really were talking, but there seemed to be this tension, a different kind than usual. Anyway, I think he was going to kiss me. Well, I’m sure he was going to kiss me, but the intruder interrupted us.” I started making squee noises and kicking my feet. I really had no shame.
“But he didn’t kiss you later, when you two were alone in your bedroom?” Jess asked curiously.
“No. After all the adrenaline had left our systems, we were both exhausted. It was like four a.m. anyway. He sat on the other side of the bed and read, but I could see he was about to pass out. So was I for that matter. The fact that he and I were able to sleep in the same bed together should tell you how tired we were.”
“But he didn’t even mention the almost-kiss? Not at all?” I asked, surprised.
“He said something kind of weird right before he fell asleep. He said ‘I’m not ready.’ He could have meant anything though. His eyes were closed. He might even have been asleep.”
“So, what are you going to do about all this?” I asked excitedly.
“What do you mean?” She looked confused.
“Don’t you want to get together and turn the almost-kiss into something more?” I elaborated.
“He’s a womanizer. I have nothing against casual hook-ups in general. I just couldn’t be casual with him.”
“I said the same about Braden!” I insisted. “No offense,” I said glancing at Beth.
“He was a womanizer before he met you, Gabrielle!” she said with laugh.
“Well, see when we got together, he stopped being one.”
“I had a feeling he had met somebody he at least liked even before you guys started dating though,” Beth said, “because I hadn’t seen him out nearly as much as I had in the past for a couple of months before you got together.”
“Mark says that Adam hardly goes out clubbing anymore. He’s been spending more time just hanging out with the other prosecutors than picking up chicks,” Jess shared.
“Well, I’ll bet that Braden has had girlfriends before,” Lily argued. “I’m not sure, of course, since we didn’t go to college or law school together, but I have a feeling that Adam’s never been willing to limit himself to one woman.”
“Braden has had girlfriends,” Beth answered, “but those relationships didn’t even come close to the one he has with Gabrielle. We’ve never seen him act like this before with anyone.”
“And Adam acts differently with Lily than he does with any other woman,” I pointed out. “Jess and I stand up to him too and there’s not all that tension there.”
“It still doesn’t mean that he and I could be a couple. We’ve been arguing since we were four years old.”
“What kind of stuff did he do when you were four?” Jess asked.
“Let’s see, he locked me in the boys’ bathroom. He put paste on my chair. He licked my fruit Roll-up and he stole my red crayon. And that was just the first day of pre-school. It went downhill from there.”
“Mmm hmm!” Jess and I shared a knowing look.
“And what did he do when you were older?” she asked.
“Um, mostly he teased me. Like, for example, once in biology the teacher asked for an example of an asexual organism and he said Lily Adler. He used to say things like, I was only hostile because I wanted him. Actually, he still says shit like that.”
“I think he’s in love with you,” Jess concluded.
“You must be kidding.” Lily looked at her like she had two heads. “Torturing and teasing are indications of deep affection?”
“Th
ey are when you’re four and when you’re fourteen. And apparently in your twenties too if you don’t know what else to do in a particular situation,” Jess replied.
“And if he’s never had a serious relationship then he wouldn’t know what to do,” I added.
“I agree,” Beth said. “He’s probably really attracted to you but you make him feel off balance because you don’t throw yourself at him like so many other women. He doesn’t know how to handle it.”
“He’s always laughed at me and made fun of me,” Lily argued.
“Humor is often a defense mechanism,” I pointed out. “I think he wields that sarcasm like a sword and uses it like a shield.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’m up for that battle. I could become a casualty. I could just picture him yelling at me in bed, or worse, laughing at me!”
“I think neither one of them is ready yet,” I said to Jess and Beth.
“So what’s up with you romance-wise,” Jess asked Beth, changing the subject. Beth told us about the guys she had been on dates with – none of whom she had found terribly impressive. Then talk turned again to my rapidly approaching engagement party.
“It’s going to be gorgeous!” Beth gushed. “My mom and I just bought our gowns and we’re so excited. We have family coming from all over!” Family. The word that struck terror into my heart.
“Are all of your relatives coming, Gab?” Lily asked.
“Yeah,” I said weakly. “Unfortunately.”
“Oh come on honey! They can’t be that bad!” Jess laughed.
“If you don’t believe me, ask Braden. Luckily, there aren’t all that many of the weird ones. I mean, my dad’s side of the family is pretty normal. It’s my mom’s side that worries me. Her brother Ira lives and breathes dry cleaning. He’s got a chain of shops in Queens and Brooklyn and it’s all that he thinks about, which is good in some ways, because whenever he talks about anything else he says the most tactless shit you’ve ever heard.”
“More tactless than Drew?” Beth asked, sounding surprised.
“He makes Drew seem suave,” I answered. “But even he is not as bad as my grandmother, who will be blessing me with her presence the day before the party too.”
