by Amber Stuart
I was starting to get a headache. And I was thirsty. I realized I had left my water bottle at work, assuming I would end up ordering some non-coffee drink anyway from the coffeehouse. Maybe Eric was right. I made a really shitty German. At least I liked beer. And soccer. Lottie was just watching me. She probably thought I was trying to process all of this alien-body-snatching-space-travel-via-universe-folding madness she had just told me, but instead, I was ruminating about what country I fit in better with.
God, I could be so pathetic.
But really, when we had sat down in my car, I had expected answers, but answers that were logical. Answers that made sense within everything I knew to be true. I would have accepted “I’m a ghost, you dumb shit,” a hell of a lot easier than this. What else could I have done?
“Why even come here then?” I finally asked.
At some point, she was going to laugh at me, point at some hidden camera, mock my naivety. Rip off this Lottie mask and throw it in my face. I would take cruelty over incredulity.
“I was curious,” she said simply, like that explained everything, and I should have known that answer already. “Dietrich, I really do have to go. Lydia will be expecting me, and none of this is making it easier for you. I can tell.”
I looked at the clock. 8:33. How had so little time passed?
“Lottie, please, don’t.”
I wondered just how much she remembered about me. Hopefully enough to remember she hadn’t fallen in love with me for my conversational skills.
Those tears. Brimming again at the corners of her eyes. This time, she hastily wiped them away and cried, “I am so sorry, Dietrich. I would take this all back if I could. I never wanted to hurt you.”
I believed her. And I didn’t want her to leave me. If I had to play along with this story of alien abduction gone awry, then I would become a card-carrying member of Area 51 Conspiracy Theorists… even though I was almost positive there were no aliens of any sort at Area 51.
“So if not-Jamie is going by another name, what name are you using now?”
She examined her fingernails, picking at one where the strawberry red polish was starting to chip.
“I kept the name Charlotte. I still go by Lottie,” she said.
I caught my breath. Not-Lottie was still Lottie.
“And where do you live? Where do you have to go? The airport? I can drive you.”
Lottie shook her head. “No, I drove here. But I shouldn’t tell you where, Dietrich, and you know why. You’ll try to find me. You will. And I’m not her. I can’t be her. I will only hurt you again. You have no idea how much I don’t want to do that. I can’t do that. Or this. Ever again.”
Lottie crying had always felt like someone driving nails into my heart. It was a pain more visceral than any physical pain I had ever suffered. I couldn’t stop myself.
I reached out for her, pulled her into my chest, stroking her hair, murmuring softly, “Nein, meine Leibe. Das einzige das Ich nicht überleben kann ist dich noch einmal zu verlieren.” Which was true, I was certain of it. The only thing I could not survive was losing her again.
She didn’t push me away. She pressed her hands against my shoulders and let herself cry, and she let me hold her. I knew it wouldn’t change her mind. I knew she would still insist on leaving without telling me where she was going. I knew I couldn’t follow her. But I also felt it then, this sorrow and pain that part of me had mistaken for pity and guilt, was my Lottie’s sorrow and pain.
I wondered how much it tormented her, how often she also woke up in the early morning, from these dreams or nightmares, crying out for a man she’d never met but whose memory was somehow so deeply etched in her brain that the pain of his loss still haunted her.
I hated myself for that. I didn’t care who she was now. She was enough of my Lottie that knowing I was doing this to her made me hate myself in a way I never had before. I should have promised her then that I would move on. I would leave her alone. She shouldn’t worry about me. But she would know I was lying. She already knew there was no moving on; there was no life after the afterlife. This was it.
Chapter 3
So here’s another American idiom I never quite understood: giving it the old college try. I went to college in America and graduated in three years with a double major in chemical engineering and physics. But, apparently, this saying is supposed to have something to do with giving it your best shot and, usually, failing. This may have been the first time I had ever come close to being able to use that expression appropriately, then, because I had been trying to forget meeting my dead-fiancée-who-claimed-to-be-an-alien for nearly three weeks, and had been failing miserably. To be fair, I suppose a person really should give college more than three weeks before declaring himself a failure.
Eric was sitting across from me at my desk, watching me draw random shapes across a yellow legal pad. Maybe he would know how long I should I give this the ‘old college try.’ So I asked him. Without the weird parts about thinking I saw my dead fiancée who told me she was some sort of an alien just walking around in her body with a handful of her memories she shouldn’t have had.
“I don’t think that’s what that saying really means, Dietrich. I think it just means to do something really enthusiastically… like, going in all gung-ho about it.”
He glanced back down at my drawing. It was turning into a spaceship. I threw my pencil down on the desk and eyed him suspiciously.
“Are you sure? I’ve met a lot of college dropouts. Doesn’t seem like many Americans try very hard to me.”
Eric snorted and plucked his iced coffee up from the edge of my desk. It was leaving a circle of condensation behind. If there hadn’t been glass covering the top of the wood, I would have been pissed.
“What is it you’re failing at? Besides art school?” He motioned toward my spaceship. I didn’t think it looked that bad.
I tried to think of a convincing lie but despite having more than enough reasons, he hadn’t abandoned me in the past two years, no matter how many times I tried pushing him away. I was certain I was only alive because of him. And, somehow, impossibly, I had survived. Our friendship had survived. Eric had been by my side through moments of epic asshole proportions over the past two years, and he had never blamed me for them. He had never hated me for them or retaliated. Hell, I’m not sure he’d ever even really been mad at me in the nine years we’d known each other.
So I certainly didn’t want to lie to him now. But the truth? That couldn’t happen either. Crazy people didn’t continue working here, and without my job, Eric’s friendship could be in jeopardy, too. Eric and I were a team. We always worked together; it was expected. It had become such an accepted truth that when Eric was out of the field with an injury for a while, everyone just assumed I was too. And they had been right. I couldn’t abandon him now after all he had done for me by admitting that I was going crazy. So I decided on a half-truth.
“I met someone,” I said slowly.
I flinched as I said it. I anticipated his reaction. He wouldn’t congratulate me or tell me that’s great or it’s about time to move on. Eric knew better. But whatever he said, it would sting all the same.
“About three weeks ago?” he finally asked.
I nodded.
He sighed and continued, “I guess that explains it.”
We sat in silence for a while, me wishing I hadn’t said anything and Eric probably wondering what to say to a man who had repeatedly insisted he would never even consider dating again. When I sat there, stubbornly quiet and moody and obviously not going to freely offer anything else, Eric stepped lightly into the troubled waters he sensed around him.
“What happened?”
What happened? I went out for coffee, met Lottie, chased her a few blocks, found out she’s alive except she claims she’s some kind of energy life form from another planet who revives dead – apparently even dead and embalmed – bodies but apparently, got stuck with
a defective one because she remembers me when she isn’t supposed to, but she never wants to see me again. What’s been happening with you?
It was taking me too long to answer. Just lie, Dietrich. Sometimes lies are better than the truth. Especially if I thought this was the truth.
“I thought I saw Lottie.”
Goddamn it, I couldn’t even follow my own advice.
“Ok…” Eric said carefully.
He was waiting. I had said I had met someone, after all, not that I thought I saw someone and walked away. He knew there was more. I inhaled. Now what? Could I fuck this up much more?
“I talked to her.”
Yeah. I could.
“You talked to who?”
“Whom.”
“Dietrich.”
“I talked to Lottie.” How had he done that? I had been so sure that telling him the truth was the last thing I should do, and here it was, spilling out. Well, maybe not spilling out, but he was getting it out.
I put my head in my hands and half-moaned, half-laughed, “Oh God, I’m going crazy, aren’t I?”
Eric was quiet for a while. That’s ok, buddy. Take your time to think about it.
“Yes,” he finally sighed, and swirled his drink around his cup. It was almost empty. He was going to start making those slurping noises soon that I despised. For once, he surprised me. He put the drink back down on my desk instead.
“You haven’t told anyone else about this, have you?”
“Of course not.” I would have rolled my eyes but they were buried in my hands.
“Alright then.” Another pause. I peeked up at him to see if he was reconsidering his drink, but he was still watching me. “Well, what did she say?”
Holy shit. Eric 2, Dietrich 0.
He tried again. “You talked to Lottie, so what did she say? Did she talk about Heaven? A bright light? Did she just want to tell you she loves you, she’s worried about you? I mean, what?”
I had to look at him now. I mean, really look at him. I knew better than to think he was just fucking with me. Not about her. So he thought I was going crazy but was going to… what? Talk to me about going crazy?
“Um, no.”
Ghosts. It would be easier to play along with ghosts.
“Eric, it got… weird. Like, beyond seeing my dead fiancée weird.”
Eric’s eyes narrowed. “Dude, you didn’t sleep with her, did you?”
I sighed. Now he wanted to act like the Eric I expected.
“God, I hate you sometimes.” He knew that wasn’t true. “She’s alive, but… not really Lottie. She claims she’s… I guess kind of like an explorer. She said she was curious about Earth anyway. And she was really upset. I mean, I think I only saw Lottie cry like that once, when her dad died.”
Eric sat up straighter and looked like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. Me? My insanity? How he hadn’t seen this coming?
“Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers?” he asked.
I slapped my desk. “I knew that was a movie. Is it any good?”
“Yeah, the original. Tell me what else she said.”
And so I did. Fifteen minutes ago, the last thing I had wanted to talk about was Lottie and this bizarre encounter and now I was replaying the entire morning, word for word, action for action. And Eric just sat there, watching me, like a mystery he was trying to figure out.
When I got to the end, the part where she finally pulled away from me and opened my car door, pleading with me one last time to forgive her, before closing it behind her and walking quickly out of the parking garage, I emphasized that I hadn’t followed her because I knew she hadn’t wanted me to.
Eric had a tendency to rub his thumb and forefinger together when he was thinking, and he sat there now, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. I wanted to know if he was deciding on what institution to have me committed to, but that’s probably one of those questions that shouldn’t be asked. Ever.
“And what have you found out since then?” he finally asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Surely you’ve tried to locate her.”
When I just stared back at him blankly, he gave me one of those are-you-having-a-slow-English-day? looks.
“Shit, Dietrich, are you new at this?”
“She doesn’t want me to find her. Were you listening?”
Eric waved his hand at me dismissively. “Of course, I was listening. That’s why I want to know how to find her.”
I shook my head. “No, this isn’t a game. You didn’t see her, you didn’t see how…”
But he cut me off again.
“No, I know it’s not a game, Dietrich. Whoever you saw… Whomever?… Fuck, I don’t care. Whoever that was, well, there’s one of two things happening. Either she’s a damn good liar and impersonator, and don’t roll your eyes at me, I’m not done. I know, she wouldn’t have been able to fool you. So that leaves two: there’s some crazy shit going on and maybe I’m not buying her explanation, but something… I don’t know. I don’t know what it could be. But that’s why we should find her.”
“Wait, we?”
Eric narrowed his eyes at me again. “Are you sure you didn’t sleep with her?”
I threw the legal pad at him. I wanted something heavier, but I didn’t want to break my laptop.
“Ow! Ok, fine. I believe you. Goddamn, you throw hard.” Eric rubbed his shoulder where the corner of the pad had hit him. I couldn’t even feign sympathy. Or interest.
I was too busy thinking of the possibilities of what this could mean. What if I did try to find her? How hard could it be? I found people who didn’t want to be found all the time. And she had even admitted she was still living as Charlotte. Maybe her last name had changed, but I knew exactly what she looked like and I had a first name. I could do this. But she had asked me not to. So the most important question was: would she forgive me?
Eric was waiting for me, looking at me as if seeing all of those thoughts tumble through my brain. And he probably already knew it wouldn’t take much convincing at this point to reel me in. He chose his words carefully now.
“Daniel has been offering you generous time off for over two years now. And he’s offered to let me go with you if you wanted to get out of Houston for a while.”
I knew about the time off, of course. I hadn’t known about his offer to Eric. Before Lottie’s death, I had been convinced Daniel hated me. His reaction to her death, the way he had acted since then, had made me reconsider a lot of things about the man who had almost certainly only grown to appreciate what I could do for him over the years rather than any genuine affection for me. But he had liked Lottie. She was impossible not to like.
“This just seems wrong. I promised her. Sort of. I don’t know, even if it’s only partly Lottie, how could I betray her like that?” I was shaking my head again. What was I thinking?
“You’re not betraying her. Lottie’s dead, Dietrich. This woman… she told you. She’s not Lottie.”
But he hadn’t seen her. He hadn’t touched her or heard her voice or smelled her, that scent of pears and honey that not even death could erase. I knew what Eric meant. His belief in the metaphysical still baffled me; how someone so intelligent, so logical and reasonable could believe in something like souls and Heaven would always perplex me, almost as much as American idioms.
“She’s Lottie enough,” I finally offered.
Truthfully, it was a half-assed attempt to end the discussion and he knew it. He had won. He had me. I wanted to find her.
“Maybe. But there’s only one way to find out just how much of her is still there.”
And that was how he finally convinced me. If he had been holding onto that reasoning, that line of thinking that I would never know how much of my dead fiancée had been resurrected by this… whatever this was… then he could have saved us five minutes and just started there.
“Ok, Eric. Then here’s what we know. She looks just
like Lottie and is still living as either Charlotte or Lottie, and she made it sound like she was living with her friend Lydia, who looks just like Jamie. She knew she used to live in Houston, which is why she was visiting here, so she may remember she grew up in Baton Rouge and may even remember her mother moved back to Alexandria after her father died. She drove here though, and it also seemed like she was within a day’s driving distance because Lydia was expecting her. Personally, if I were trying to avoid anyone noticing me, I would avoid Louisiana altogether, and Texas, but Texas is a huge fucking state.”
Eric picked up his drink again and drummed his fingers against it. The circles of condensation had widened, forming overlapping circles of moisture. I shoved the box of Kleenex toward him and nodded toward the spreading wet pools on my desk.
“How do they get around? What social security numbers do they use?” Eric asked.
“I was talking to my dead fiancée. Do you really think I asked her about fake social security numbers? Wipe that up.”
Eric grabbed a few tissues and swiped at the puddles, but his mind was still reeling with the possibilities that any of Lottie’s story could conceivably be true.
“Think about it, Dietrich. What it would take for someone like that to just disappear in America.”
It certainly wasn’t impossible to live in the U.S. illegally, but I knew the complexities of it; how difficult it would be for someone to find herself suddenly in a strange world, not knowing the language or laws or customs and needing, somehow, not to draw attention to herself. Which meant if she was telling the truth, someone had already been here to help her and her friend adjust, to hide them, to integrate them into a new world.
“Holy shit,” I muttered. “How long do you think they’ve been doing this?”
