“Francis told me. The president knows,” I said.
She picked up a bunch of pencils and casually snapped them as she paced some more. I was glad she didn’t ask me how I knew. I sat back down and hid my face in my hand.
“I feel . . . used,” she said.
She walked back over to me. “Stand up and look at me.”
I did, and she instantly slapped me hard across the face, harder than before. I paused, closed my eyes, and let the pain run over my flesh.
On instinct, I slapped her face in return, knowing I had zero chances in a physical contest with her, but it was the only way for her to take me seriously. Calmly, she picked up a cup of water off the table, stood in front of me, and dumped the water on my head.
I did not retaliate.
She marched outside to the Rose Garden with her hand palmed over her skull. I picked up paper towels to feebly dry myself off and then overheard Samantha speaking viciously to the president. Under most circumstances, it would be unreasonable for the secretary of defense to call the leader of the free world a ‘shitty bitch’ and a ‘devious cunt,’ but in this case, tolerance is required.
When she was done, she walked back into the Oval Office, red-faced and lost.
“Sorry,” she said.
There was a bottle of red wine by the door. She bent over and grabbed it. In short order, she took out a Swiss Army Knife from her purse, released the corkscrew, engaged it, uncorked the wine, and took one gulp. She silently offered the bottle to me, placing the mouth of the bottle near mine. I took a swig while my brain told me not to, then put back the cork.
“Why are humans such secretive assholes?” she asked.
Before I could answer, a phone on the desk rang.
The president has dedicated phone lines in the Oval Office. One is direct to the Kremlin, created after the Cuban missile crisis. Another is direct to Beijing, and it was ringing. Samantha picked up the phone immediately.
“Samantha Weingarten speaking.”
It was Ralph. I moved closer to Samantha and put my ear next to hers. I took a tiny pleasure in the tickle of her blond hair against my cheek and took extra pleasure when she did not pull away.
“Hello, Samantha. It is pleasant to hear you. Is Markus there?”
“Yes, Ralph. Your friend, Markus, is here, listening with me.”
“Hello, Ralph.”
“Markus . . . Markus, I’ve been talking to people. They called to talk. I was talking to Tricia Tanaka on TV. My voice was on the television. I gave out my phone number, and people called me.”
“We heard.”
“I talked to a man from Maryland. He called me. I’m sure he was an African American. He used slang and called me his ‘nigger.’ It was wonderful. I was thinking about what I said, about the president, to Tricia Tanaka. He wanted to have sex with the president too. And a woman called me. She was a lesbian American, and she wanted to have sex with the president. I’m glad because I thought I said something bad.”
“Ralph,” Samantha started, “I’d like to get to know you better. Can I ask you some questions?”
“So . . . inevitable,” Ralph said.
“What’s inevitable?” she asked.
“Me, talking to the military. I was trained for this, but I’m nervous.”
“Trained by who?” she said, but Ralph’s response was laughter. “Ralph, don’t be nervous. I just need to know that . . . We have nothing to fear.”
“Samantha, I like you. This is where I ask how to convince you I’m not dangerous. Then, we discuss it. Then, you realize there’s nothing I could do to convince you. All that matters here is what I don’t do. Do you agree?”
“Agreed. So stop hiding in the cylinder.”
“I’ll be out shortly, but you need to understand, if something bad happens to me, your planet will be blacklisted.”
“Blacklisted?”
“Meaning you won’t be visited by anyone benevolent, and if someone nonbenevolent comes, Earth will be alone . . . bloody hell,” Ralph said as he, apparently, tripped over something. “Listen, I’m gonna come out in about five minutes. I gotta get the music ready. This is gonna be awesome.”
He hung up.
Samantha and I got up and rushed outside.
VIII
ENTRANCE
As Samantha and I ran to the cylinder, Secret Service agents were backing away from it. Samantha pointed ahead to Francis and we darted to him. When Francis saw us, he rushed to meet us. Worry covered his face.
“Strange noises . . . coming from inside the cylinder,” he said, slightly winded. We stood halfway between the cylinder and the Oval Office.
A murder of crows had gathered atop the cylinder. Hundreds of faint caws and cackles fluttered high above as the crows left their slippery perch and flew south. Eyes were drawn in to watch the lid of the cylinder propping up, as if opened with an invisible can opener.
“Stand by,” Francis said, speaking on a black walkie-talkie to the head of Secret Service, who, in turn, relayed commands to agents throughout the White House grounds.
A tinny ping reverberated through the air, and everyone froze in place with their palms stuck over their ears. Harsh, electronic breaks of speaker distortion and microphone feedback sliced through the air and pierced our nerves.
“Microphone check: one, two, what is this?” Ralph’s voice boomed into the air with an excessive degree of bass. His voice reached the distant pedestrian onlookers easily, and they cheered passionately with blank expectation, thrilled to have their schedule interrupted by the bizarre.
“HELLO. WASHINGTON! D! C!” Ralph screamed slow and loud to his new crowd. The cheering response from the distant throngs of spectators was overtaken as music radiated from the cylinder in a blaring auditory assault.
I only had to hear the first few toots of triumphant horns to recognize the theme song from the movie Rocky. I urge the reader to listen to Bill Conti’s original score ‘Gonna Fly Now,’ at top volume, to best conceive this uncanny and unbearably loud event.
As the drama of the music increased, so did the height of the lid. Through my binoculars, I saw two tiny, dull, and silvery objects creep out over the edge of the lid from inside. These were Ralph’s Earth mittens.
“TRYING HARD NOW. IT’S SO HARD NOW. TRYING HARD NOW.”
As the trumpet-accompanied guitar solo launched, Ralph pulled himself up, slowly, floating, until his feet stood on the edge of the lid. Using binoculars, he was completely visible, in his Earth suit.
The suit was a dull silver color, like his mittens. If kindergarten students made a space suit for an alien, it would look like this. There were small words, in different styles, colors, and fonts, all over his suit—but I couldn’t read them from afar. Pumping his fists in the air, he turned around to reveal the numeral ‘23’ covering a large portion of his back—right under the name ‘JORDAN.’ And there were long, lustrous rainbow tassels on his arms and legs, glittering in the morning sun as he strutted like a rock star to the rhythm of the encouraging music.
He danced dangerously near the edge of the cylinder—but he had to be seen—not by the public bystanders, who could barely see him at all—but by us. A Secret Service agent close by couldn’t resist smirking beneath his binoculars when Ralph pulled out from the cylinder an oversized American flag on a glowing white pole.
The flag was ten feet high and twenty feet long, dwarfing Ralph as he fought to wave it back and forth over the edge of the cylinder. As the tempo of the music increased, I heard Francis shout into his walkie-talkie the order to release safeties on weapons. I glared at him. He repeated the order three times, each time yelling into his walkie-talkie to compete with the deafening music. He pulled me close and yelled directly in my ear, “He’s doing this on purpose. The music is so loud we can’t communicate.”
“GETTING STRONG NOW. WON’T BE LONG NOW. GETTING STRONG NOW.”
The ludicrous behavior of this alien hid well his more truly alien features. The pink
glow emanating from beneath the black-tinted visor of his helmet was inexplicable, and it weakly permeated his entire suit. Ralph, in his suit, stood about five feet tall, and though he wore his human-shaped suit well, he was not humanoid.
He bumbled about like a skilled clown, his movements abnormally exaggerated. It was like watching an astronaut on the moon. He did not walk so much as float and bounce, and he struggled to wave the gigantic flag, which yanked him wherever he waved it.
There was desperation in his movement as he tried to please his audience with questionable flag-waving. Watching him, one could infer that Ralph, even in his Earth suit, weighed little. I realized this just as Ralph started to crouch. When he did, he did not bend at the knee; rather, the entire leg of his Earth suit crumpled straight down.
“GONNA FLY NOW. FLYING HIGH NOW. GONNA FLY. FLY. FLY.”
Ralph sprang up like a rabbit, shooting himself into the air, flag in hand. At the apex of his jump he was directly above us, halfway to the White House. He used his large American flag as a perfect parachute to glide downward toward the Oval Office. Midflight, the music ended.
Francis was about to say something into his walkie-talkie. I took the large, black walkie-talkie from his hand, threw it to the ground, and stomped on it with both feet, crushing it. Francis rolled his eyes and huffed, but he understood my fear. He grabbed my arm and got us running. Samantha trailed behind.
“Stand down! All units, stand down,” Francis shouted in all directions as we ran to the White House, and Ralph wafted gently above us. He glided so slowly I reached his destination well before him, and well before Francis and Samantha.
I slowed my pace as I neared the Rose Garden. Francis’s order was obeyed by everyone, except for the young Secret Service agent in front of me with his service pistol drawn, aiming skyward, directly at Ralph.
I approached him slowly, waving my hand in a soft up-and-down pattern to indicate he should lower his weapon. His hands only clenched his handgun tighter as I approached. The agent, red-faced, stressed, and sweaty, took his aiming eye off Ralph to size me up.
Within the speed of a glance, he knew I had no business telling him anything. He took his left hand off his pistol and stuck his arm out at me with his palm up. This Secret Service agent was the soon-to-be infamous Brian Summers.
“You are a civilian and have no authority. Back away,” he said.
I ignored the gravity of his tone, stepped a foot closer, and asked, “Did you hear the order to stand down?”
“I am a Secret Service agent. I do not take orders from you or him.”
“But—”
“Back off.”
I could hear Francis yelling behind me, but Agent Summers did not listen. I looked around to see everyone on the lawn staring at us and moving in our direction. Luckily, the public was too far off to view what was about to happen.
We would only find out later what motivated his anxiety, and mine was growing as Ralph was twenty feet in the air and descending on us. With a firm aim on Ralph, Agent Summers glanced at me again.
“What the hell is that thing?” he shouted. “Someone tell me what the hell is going on here, or I am going to blow this thing out of the sky. I want a goddamn explanation, and I want one right now.” He put his hand to his earpiece, listened, and shouted, “No.” He then took out his earpiece and let it tumble to the ground, not once sacrificing his aim on Ralph.
I looked around for help, but no one was near enough. I was compelled to say something but couldn’t think. Francis and Samantha were getting closer, but I couldn’t wait.
Samantha had circled around and was sneaking up behind Agent Summers in his blind spot. I wanted to distract him with some deception, but the creative part of my brain had shut down.
All I could think about was the truth.
“He is an extraterrestrial, an alien. His name is ‘Ralph,’” I said.
Agent Summers’s head and aiming arm drooped abruptly when I said it. I broke his concentration, and he could not resist glaring at me with furious curiosity.
“Are you mentally retarded?” he asked.
Before I could respond, Samantha grabbed his arm, took his gun, and shoved his face into the ground. The subdued Agent Summers was instantly embarrassed and did not resist. In fact, he was delirious. The cold grass barely muffled his pained laughter.
Agent Summers would be sent home for the day, but the White House should have permanently released him for his behavior. However, his confusion was understandable, and dismissing a Secret Service agent in the wake of the cylinder’s arrival would only increase scrutiny. The whole event would still need to be explained to the outside world, and at this point, I had no idea what story the White House would concoct.
While Samantha guarded Agent Summers, Francis and I got below Ralph’s trajectory and caught him softly in a nest of arms. Ralph greeted our successful catch with the first hug of many I would receive. On the upper chest of his suit, right where a human heart would be, ‘RALPH’ was imprinted with a blockish angular font over a small American flag.
“Markus . . . Francis,” Ralph said, “I need rest.”
I realized something, and it stunned me. I looked at Francis.
“We didn’t say anything to him,” I said. “How did he recognize us?”
“Did you tell Samantha?” Francis dodged.
“Yes.”
“Did she believe you?”
I looked at him, looked at Ralph, looked over at Samantha gawking at Ralph, and looked back at Francis. He smiled.
When I looked at Ralph’s head to find a face, all I saw was an impenetrable pink glow beneath his visor. Around the edges of the pink liquid glow were thousands of thin tentacles of light, as thin as angel hair pasta. They seemed to reach out to me.
I hesitated to let go.
IX
HUNGER
Ralph bounced slowly into the Oval Office and said, “Francis, I have needs.”
“Tell me what you need,” Francis said, strangely subservient.
“Canisters of helium and a class O visa.”
Ralph’s race primarily breathes helium. He can survive with oxygen, but he preferred helium respiration. Though a mixture of helium and other gases is often used in deep-sea diving, breathing pure helium will asphyxiate a human in minutes.
“I am very happy with how things happened,” Ralph said, quietly exhausted. “I enjoy not being shot and must rest. Francis, it is good to finally see you. Enjoy your lunch.”
Ralph then went silent and supine on a couch.
When Francis and I caught Ralph in our arms near the Rose Garden, I discovered the words all over his suit were commercial brand names of various companies. Ralph looked like a short, bulbous, race car driver with his sponsors all over his suit. Wonder Bread, Old Spice, Coca-Cola, Goodyear, and others, all prima facie sponsored Ralph.
He communicated and heard others through a device on the front of his helmet. On closer inspection, the device had the brand name ‘Fender’ written on it. Of course, I didn’t believe the device was made by Fender any more than I believed OshKosh B’gosh designed his Earth suit.
I continued to wonder how Ralph recognized Francis and me before we spoke. Francis was making multiple phone calls: to get helium, to make sure everyone was off the South Lawn, and to update the president. Samantha and I drew the rarely drawn, heavy drapes over the windows to help hide our new guest but left some window exposed for the sake of natural light.
“How did Ralph recognize Francis?” I asked Samantha. She looked at me and answered by pursing her lips, tilting her chin down, and staring at Francis while he talked on the phone with the president.
Besides Ralph, the other unexpected thing in the room was the fresh pizza on the table. Initially, the pizza was not mysterious. Thinking little of it, Samantha and I began to eat.
Samantha had been subdued by the situation. At this point, I think, she was just leaving everything to Francis and trying to keep her head straight. Fran
cis, on the other hand, was comfortable with the situation beyond explanation.
“Who ordered the pizza?” Francis asked after getting off the phone.
I shrugged, took another bite, and paused when something on the table caught my eye. A small note card, the type that comes with a bouquet of flowers, stood next to the pizza. The outside of the card had one word written in script: ‘Francis.’
I looked at Francis, noticed that he saw it, and he looked at me. With my free hand, I picked up the card and read the interior aloud.
“I hope you like pizza,” I read. “Love, Ralph.”
Heads swiveling, our sights spun to Ralph, still sleeping. There was no way Ralph could have written the note since he came in the room.
Samantha and I looked at each other and put our slices down.
I thought I had missed something and needed sleep, but that was no explanation. The more disturbing possibility, too insane to suggest aloud, was that Ralph had made the pizza materialize out of thin air. Right then, none of us knew what Ralph was capable of.
With a weak smile, Francis picked up the house phone, called the kitchen, and put it on speakerphone. The executive chef, Jules, had a slight French accent.
“This should be interesting,” Francis said as the other end picked up.
“Jules Marrant, speaking.”
“Hello, Chef. This is Francis Holliday. Can you tell me who sent up the pizza to the Oval Office?”
“Is there a problem with the pizza? I made it myself.”
“No, Jules. Thank you. There is no problem with the pizza. I just—”
“I can make another if you like,” Jules interrupted. “I am not Italian, but I can make pizza, you know. I learned from the best. Dominic DeMarco himself taught me how to make the pizza.”
“The pizza is fine, Jules, really,” Francis said, “but who sent up the pizza to the Oval Office?”
“Eh, the usual people are not here. I had Secret Service bring it to you. The pizza is okay, no?”
“I don’t care about the fucking food,” Francis said. “I just want to know—”
The Book of Ralph Page 5
