Triptych

by J. M. Frey

  Gwen calls them hideous, touristy Hawaiian shirts, but Kalp enjoys the smooth texture of the fabric, the large hook-beaked birds, and the busy, bold colours, and Gwen’s protests are overthrown.

  The day has tired Kalp more than he has expected, the alcohol still weighting his limbs, and on the train ride home the steady chug of the engine and the soothing heartbeats of his companions lulls him down into his unconscious phase. He sleeps for nigh on two hours.

  He wakes a few moments before their stop to the gentle whispered conversation between Gwen and Basil and out of respect, does not listen to their buzzing words. The car ride back to the house is equally peaceful, music provided by Basil’s BlackBerry plugged into the vehicle’s sound system. It is the only sound above heartbeats and engine and lazy breaths. The playlist is all mellow music from a human who pretended to be from outer space to sell records. Kalp likes the irony that he is sitting on Earth listening to it. The music is simple and straightforward, yet the melodies are complex and the voice is emotive. He enjoys it far more than the techno or R&B music he has heard, with its painfully relentless bass lines and electronically generated noise.

  He finds there is a lot about Earth that he either really enjoys or really does not enjoy, all his experiences classified by the strict polarity of fond and longing memory. He has to think hard to remember if there was anything back home that he strongly did not enjoy. Perhaps there was, but nostalgia paints his memories with the veneer of perfection, and he cannot distinguish between pleasure and non-pleasure now.

  When they arrive at the house, Basil takes all the shopping in his arms, except Kalp’s, so Kalp takes his own and Gwen’s carry bag. She strides forward with the keys and opens the front door. They move together into the foyer in the same easy silence. Gwen bids them both good night with a pat on the arm for Kalp, and a kiss on the cheek for Basil. She heads up the stairs. Basil drops the shopping on the sofa, still in its bags, yawns, and bids Kalp pleasant dreams as well. He follows Gwen, his eyelids droopy but his gaze intent on something Kalp cannot see in the empty air before him.

  Kalp considers following them up the stairs and sleeping too, but after his fortuitous nap on the train he is not tired. Instead he decides to pull all of the shopping out of its bags and fold it nicely on the kitchen table to make certain the garments will not wrinkle. He retrieves the innocuous London Eye photograph and perches it on the mantle. Then he goes into the kitchen, and, as quietly as possible, cleans the dishes from the morning’s hasty breakfast and the clear carry bins that lunch had occupied. He stacks them carefully in the dish rack so they will not fall. He is just rubbing his hands dry on the tea towel when he hears the first thumping creak.

  It sounds as if someone is moving the furniture again, and he swivels one ear towards upstairs. Gwen and Basil are in their room, and their heart beats are worryingly fast. Their bodies sound the same as they do when they are angry, the rushing blood, the zapping nerve endings, the labouring lungs, but there is no shouting. Neither are they vocalizing, outside of some soft sighs and grunts, and there is the repetitive rippling feel against his skin of flesh slapping against flesh.

  They are fighting.

  Kalp knew that they were volatile species, quick to anger, but he never considered that partnered humans might physically beat each other like this; at least, not Gwen and Basil. Alarmed, Kalp runs up the stairs as quickly as he is able and rushes to their door at the far end of the upstairs hallway. Without announcing himself — for fear that it would cause one or the other of them more harm — he throws back the door.

  Basil has Gwen pinned to the bed, his hands pushing hard on her shoulders. Gwen is trying to throw him off by grasping his padded hips with her knees but appears to be unsuccessful. Basil rocks against her once, hard, and then stops, looking back over his shoulder at Kalp, blue eyes wide and startled.

  Kalp starts forward to wrench Basil off of Gwen, to demand that they settle their differences like civilized people with words, when he sees that Basil’s penis is erect and both of them are without clothing.

  Kalp stops and cannot help but stare.

  They are performing intercourse.

  They…are actually performing it. Logically Kalp knows humans pleasure each other for the sheer sake of orgasms. But to actually witness…They are leaking and disgusting and yet…

  The pornography literature did not describe how it would sound, but Kalp now feels horrendously incompetent for not guessing what the sighs and slaps meant before this.

  “I am…I am so sorry,” he says, walking backwards towards the gaping door even though every fibre of his being would like nothing more than to strip off his own clothing and lay beside them.

  He has not been invited and it is rude to include oneself without invitation.

  Gwen scrambles for the blanket and wraps it quickly around both of them.

  “I heard,” Kalp starts, and stops to swallow. He can feel his own genitalia sliding out of their pouch in interest and he is very thankful that his clothing is loose today. “I thought you were fighting,” he explains, and he is aware how pathetic the excuse sounds now. “I will go.”

  He backs out of the room because — and it is selfish — he wants to see as much of their nakedness as he can before he departs, even if their faces have gone white and their eyes and mouths round. Kalp shuts the door quietly.

  He stands in the hall with his forehead pressed against the wall for a moment, forcing his flesh to be distracted by the feel of electricity and movement in the house, instead of other things.

  Then, when his body is settled and calm once more, he flees to the little walled garden out back and stands among Gwen’s potted plants, and stares up at the moon.

  Somewhere, out there, in the dust of the cosmos, is what is left of Maru and Trus.

  And Kalp is here, on this planet, alone, breathing the cool night air deeply and shaking in the aftermath of denied arousal.

  ***

  Things are uncomfortable in the house the next morning, and Kalp cannot help but wonder if they will rescind their offer of the guest room and send him back to the Sleeping Place. He would not blame them if he did. He knows that on Earth interrupting people in coitus is considered the height of ill manners. The television situational comedies have taught him that, if little else really useful.

  He sleeps fitfully on the sofa, snatching brief strings of moments of unconsciousness, not daring to go back upstairs. He watches the sun rise quietly. When it has dawned fully, he fetches his breakfast quickly and silently from the kitchen and goes back out to the garden. He sits on the rough, humble garden bench and crunches his way morosely through an apple and watches the birds. His only comfort today seems to be the birds, and he reflects on his joyed and oblivious state of this time yesterday. Well, no. This time yesterday he was trying not to be sick in the humans’ amusement contraption.

  Still. Naïve.

  That seems to be his defining state of being lately. He wishes desperately that it were otherwise, that he could somehow transform back into the sure, knowledgeable, steady person that he used to be. Before. Employed, meaningful, loved. He remembers being that person — staid and reliable — but he cannot puzzle out how to become him again. It is humiliating and frustrating.

  Inside the house, through the thin pane of cheap glass that separates Kalp from Gwen and Basil, he can hear them talking. There is no shouting, no angry — or aroused — patter of beating hearts. Kalp can feel the electricity surging gently in a regulated rhythm into the coffee maker, can hear the kinetic energy of the water boiling on the kettle on the stove. When both machines complete their duties, Kalp can hear the pouring of hot beverages and the clink of spoons against ceramic drinking vessels. He pulls an apple seed out from between his teeth and pokes it down into the dark soil of a pot holding a sad little sprig of a tree.

  He is surprised when the glass wall is slid to the side and Basil and Gwen join him in the garden. Basil is carrying a
chair from the dining room, which he sets down opposite Kalp, and Gwen unfolds a worn stool that was leaning against the fence. They settle into their respective seats, fingers wrapped around steaming mugs.

  “Look,” Basil says slowly. “We wanted to apologize.”

  Kalp sits up straight. “You?” he says. “But it was I who — ”

  Gwen cuts him off. “We should have…I don’t know, told you not to come in, or something. Put a sock on the doorknob. It was perfectly reasonable for you to think that we were fighting, you don’t know anything about — ”

  “But I do!” Kalp insists, trying to cut the explanation short, both out of desperation to avoid the embarrassment of the retelling, and to keep himself from appearing ignorant; even more naïve. “I have read a pornography.”

  Neither Gwen nor Basil seem to know what to say to that.

  Gwen settles on “Oh,” and turns bright red in embarrassment.

  Basil clears his throat, takes a sip of tea and says, “What, just one?”

  Gwen smacks his arm, a comfortable and predictable response. Kalp feels his nervousness swing down, but that just makes him anxious again because he knows that he should not revel in this, this easy familiarity, because it is about to end. This is no longer his, but he cannot help basking in the glow of what is left of his friendship with his co-workers, to soak up whatever he can before they exclude him.

  Kalp taps his fingers together and screws up his courage. It is better to pain himself now, quickly rather than allow it to drag out and cause even more suffering. “I will pack my trunk today,” he says. “And send for a taxicab.”

  “What?” Basil asks, “Why? You don’t want to leave, do you? Because of…us? We don’t make you…I mean, that didn’t freak you out, did it?”

  Kalp tugs on his ears. He cannot decide how to answer that. He chooses not to. Instead he says, “You must wish me gone.”

  “No!” Basil says. “No, no no! It was all just…well, that stuff happens when people live together. Admittedly, usually roommates know what a closed door and a squeaking bed means, but, uh, now you do so you can just…I don’t know, now you know and you won’t do it again and we’ll be a bit more careful and…yeah,” Basil winds down lamely. His cheeks are now the same shade as Gwen’s.

  Kalp licks his lips while he thinks, scrubbing away the last of the apple’s juices, and asks, carefully, “Then you do not wish to send me away for witnessing your act of intercourse?”

  “Oi, a little louder,” Basil hisses, but counters his own imperative by speaking softly. “We’re outside and there are nosy neighbours.”

  “But the answer is no,” Gwen adds in the same hissing whisper.

  Kalp is torn. He is relieved that they do not wish to send him away. But they also have not invited him to join them. He is suspended in a limbo of confusion — do they or do they not want him? Surely, now that he has witnessed, things cannot go back to simple platonic cohabitation.

  Can it?

  Is that what is done here?

  Apparently it is, because that seems to end the conversation and the conflict, at least for Basil and Gwen. They all move back into the kitchen. Kalp is not hungry, his mind still reeling from the revelation that they would like him to remain a fixture in their domicile, but Basil makes an omelette for everyone. Slowly, as they recap yesterday’s adventures and discuss the small banal tasks that require their attention today, the uneasiness leeches from the room, leaving all three with the same comfortable atmosphere of the night before.

  Kalp is unaccountably pleased.

  ***

  Monday dawns grey and wet, and they must brave the heaviest downpour of precipitation Kalp has ever experienced on Earth to get from the parking lot to the Institute building. Basil alarms Kalp with tales of the season when all the precipitation will be frozen, and Gwen alarms him further by reminiscing a time in her native nation when, in her childhood, the piles of the crystallized water were higher than her own small head.

  Kalp thinks that it is very irresponsible for Gwen’s parents to allow her out into such a dangerous environment alone when she was so very small, and so easily crushed. Human parents seem to allow their offspring into all sorts of potentially fatal situations, with little regard for danger. Skateboarding, mock fighting, allowing an alien to feed the pigeons with them. Such things were unheard of on Kalp’s world.

  When they enter the office, it is to see that Kalp’s desk has finally arrived. They adjust the height of the legs to suit Kalp’s need and push it up against the end of Basil’s and Gwen’s to form a rough triangle. Now they are able to converse in comfort while working.

  They toil steadily through the day, their “stunt” of the week before already forgotten by the other Specialists in the wake of an ever-expanding world of wonders to translate, rebuild, theorize, and understand. Kalp enjoys his work acting as a go-between for Gwen’s translations of the blueprint schematics and Basil’s attempts to make a working scale model. Kalp finally sees what they’re building when Basil screws two pieces together — it is a solar energy converter that is several times more efficient than the ones the humans currently use, and probably far more inexpensive to construct. Mass production of this item could drastically reduce current pollutants on Earth, and Kalp takes a moment to bask in the notion that he truly is doing something to contribute to his new home. The planet and the people.

  Monday evening brings the joy of take-away pizza and the frustration of trying to make his fingers move quickly on a video game controller made for much smaller hands. Tuesday they skive off working on the solar panel once Basil has finished constructing the scale model. They spend the rest of the afternoon at the Institute watching “Star Wars” on Basil’s ridiculously oversized computer monitor with a bag of the microwave popcorn that Gwen keeps in her desk drawer for just these sorts of days.

  Basil holds something mechanical in his hand, tweaking this, poking that, holding pieces up to the screen of his BlackBerry, examining them against patterns on the device. The impossibly tiny screwdrivers appear and disappear out of and back into the case on Basil’s desk as he works in the thin bluish light of the computer monitor and the handheld. Kalp thought the work on the model was complete, and Basil confirms it. When Kalp asks what the man is making, Basil only grins, quick and sharp, and calls it a surprise. When they play with the video games later that night, Kalp finds that the small controller with its impossible, tiny buttons, has been replaced with a larger, more Kalp-friendly version.

  The rest of the week is more of the same. On Wednesday night, Gwen produces a small bottle of purple lacquer, and Kalp watches in fascination as she coats the small blunt claw-nails on her toes with the shiny liquid. When it hardens it sparkles and makes the skin around it look pale and delicate and even more attractive. He realizes that it looks similar to the flush of blood under the nails that signals mating. It is another cosmetic trick that females use to make themselves look more aroused, more physically attractive, like the donning of red lip paint that mimics the engorging of the genitals.

  The signal seems to work on Basil. In the middle of the night, Basil wakes in the room next to Kalp’s and his motion, as it always does, wakes Kalp too. Kalp waits for Basil to climb from his bed, relieve himself, and return to sleep, but Basil does not. He makes a noise and then Gwen wakes and makes a similar noise and Kalp realizes that they are staying true to their word and only having intercourse when they think he is asleep.

  Only, the frenetic motion of their bodies and blood would have wakened him anyway, even if he had not already been conscious. Intercourse cannot be performed while laying still. He cannot help but find the wash of tender motion arousing and this time when his genitals distend and slide into the open, he does not work to hold them back. He feels guilty for using his friends in this manner, in featuring them in his own private pornographic imaginings, but he feels such an aching fondness for both — their squishy skin, their oblivious generosity, their acceptanc
e — that he cannot help but want to be a part of their intimacies as well.

  He masturbates to the sound of them entangled together and finishes with them. Satisfied and perhaps less tense than he has been in months, Kalp cleans himself off and drops back down into his unconscious phase.

  It is only when he wakes the next morning, still feeling the positive effects of last night’s release, that he realizes how very on edge he’s been for so long. He comes downstairs and participates in breakfast and is surprised to find that without his input whatsoever, his mouth has seemed to mould itself into the shape of a smile, and it cannot be undone.

  On Thursday they fight.

  It is an inane domestic quibble, the likes of which he has had many times over with Maru and Trus, and it is comforting to discover that sexual partners all over the galaxy still get angry at each other for little habits that they cannot control. Gwen is at both of them for urinating with the commode seat up and then leaving it there after they have finished. Instead of being abashed, Kalp takes this as one more sign that he is being pulled ever more closely into the radius of this relationship, and resolves to remember to return the seat to its proper position when he has finished, even though the males now outnumber the females in the household and it seems an exercise in futility.

  On Friday, Kalp receives his first pay packet. He divides it up carefully and pays Gwen and Basil back for the food and clothing they have purchased for him, and adds twice that again to pay for the electricity, water, and heat he has used in the house. They protest that they are not charging him rent and he agrees — he is only paying for what he has consumed. They grumble good-naturedly and take the tender. Units share.

  Kalp requests that they return to the outdoor market so that he might speak to the vendor girl as promised and gather ingredients for another meal of his own making. Rudy the bigot averts his eyes when they arrive and Rudy’s lips turn white, he is pressing them together so hard to prevent unwelcome words. Kalp does not wish another confrontation, so he copies the man’s expression and passes by in silence. Basil is excited about the osap and this time they buy a whole tray from the cart. Kalp buys the required produce for dinner and speaks to the girl and they arrange a farm tour for the weekend after next, and then all three return home to prepare for the evening’s repast.