The Starry Sphinx

by V X Lloyd

  The truth was, both Moony’s and Celia’s moans during sex were not loud (more soothing than shocking), and while a handful of tenants had heard them through the nearly-hollow drywall, they were not troubled by them and on a few occasions were inspired to summon their loved ones and create some competitive moaning of their own. The tenant living below Moony was Josh, who had no loved one, yet was a fairly accomplished masturbator. He fantasized about Debbie Harry and listened to Blondie when he jacked off.

  If there was truth in Deb’s story, it was accidental. She believed her story would allude to the sex she and Celia had in Moony’s bed while he was away. Deb wanted to create social tension. Many abusers of alcohol thrive on social tension, because this drives them to drink.

  The scene was interrupted by the sound of scraping at the back door. No one had bothered to check it to see whether the snow had also drifted there. It had not. Some may say that wind is fickle, but it is not. Wind is merely unpredictable, especially for those who pay very little attention to any natural forces.

  Perry unlocked and opened the door, which swung outward with ease. Sunlight flooded into the bar and caused the crowd scatter like roaches deeper into the bar's interior of darkness.

  *

  In through the open door stomped Julio, the maintenance worker, carrying a snow shovel. He wore a tuxedo and a scarf, his hair parted with oil so thick it must have mimicked the protection from elements that ducks receive from their feathers. When the door clanked shut behind him, everyone returned to their barstools, drinks, and conversations.

  “Hola,” said Julio to the candlelit room. He was well aware that it annoyed both Perry and Deb to hear him speak Spanish. Though they were his bosses, he knew he did his job just well enough to never get fired.

  “I hope I am not late for the second movie,” he whispered. Taking a moment to look around, he realized the situation.

  Moony returned the “Hola,” and curled his upper lip, trying to get his skin to feel what it was like to sport a mustache. Julio decided to have a ballena of Pacifico and sat next to him. The room’s activity had dispersed somewhat after the exposure to light and what that might signify as to their duties to the outside world.

  Julio raised his voice so that his conversation with Moony might reach the entire room. “The damndest thing happened on Friday.” Deb recoiled at hearing the word damndest as if it were a viper. “I was minding my business cleaning the bathroom in the gym and I found this.” He whipped out a little white camera, insect-like with several antennae. “It was on the ceiling tile. Somebody has been taking photographic images of people in the gym bathroom, I suspect.”

  As is the case for any statement not clearly sincere or sarcastic, at first, no one reacted. Celia giggled. She looked down at her drink. She was very pretty, so people took a moment before they averted their eyes.

  Julio sat the camera on the bar. At the tic of plastic on wood, people eyed it as they would a rare gem.

  “Anyone need a refill?” asked Deb. She gave herself a refill. She was having a margarita. She decided that Celia would also have a margarita.

  Jon-Jon asked for a refill of his Tom Collins. Deb happily obliged. Jon-Jon, a meth user, hence addict, paid Deb for his drink by telling her a story about the time he had forgotten to zip his fly after returning from the men’s room at McDonald’s when he got the Ronald clown gig there. He had gotten fired for that. Deb said that sounded terrible. Jon-Jon said that he’s always been extra careful since then. Deb said “No kidding” and returned to her conversation with Celia.

  Perry sat alone at the far end of the bar, shivering like a homeless man and smelling like a wet property manager. Moony gave him his leather jacket.

  Perry thanked him. “Ladies, get a load of ‘em,” he said, envying how easily the two women were getting along.

  Jon-Jon, returning from the bathroom, paused next to the two men. “You ever hear the one about the lady and the giraffe?”

  Neither of them had.

  “There was this lady in Africa who was poor, so she asked her parents how she could become rich. Her parents said they weren’t wise enough to be rich, and that maybe her grandfather would know, since he was very old and wise.”

  Perry leaned close to Jon-Jon, eager to hear the joke. Moony didn’t lean, but looked charmed nonetheless, toying with his imaginary facial hair.

  “She asked her grandfather what a classy lady like she could do for money around the village. Her grandfather didn’t know, because poor people couldn’t think since they had to work all day. He was wiser than young people but he wasn't wise enough to figure out how to be rich. Only rich people had the time to be wise.”

  Perry was chuckling already.

  “So her grandfather said she should go out into the woods and ask the giraffe, since the giraffe never worked a day in its life and was very tall and so could see things in a better perspective. So the girl goes and asks the giraffe.”

  “Giraffe, huh,” Perry said.

  “The giraffe in all his wisdom was shy. He looked down at the girl like she was a tiger and backed away because he was scared.”

  “Uh-oh!” Perry said.

  “She says in her most non-tiger voice, ‘Excuse me Mr. Giraffe, but would you please tell me how to be rich like you are?’ The giraffe relaxed when he realized she was a girl, and he shook his head and said, 'I will tell you how you can become rich.’ Do you want to hear what he said to her?”

  “Yeah!” said Perry.

  “‘All you have to do to get rich is become a giraffe like me! People are born into their position and that can’t be changed. But if you're lucky, you might get to be a giraffe someday.’”

  At this last line, Perry completely deflated. He looked a dozen years older.

  Jon-Jon checked his fly to make sure it was still up, giggling exactly like Bozo would, if he had told the joke.

  “Yeah. That’s pretty cool.” Moony paused, ate a peanut. Truth be told, Moony found the joke to be an unfortunate yet accurate portrayal of the world’s economy. A few people (such as Moony) had been born into bottomless wealth, while the vast majority of terrestrial humans struggled among each other for the remaining scraps.

  Perry put his head in his hands. Moony noticed that his shoulders moved up and down, which signified that Perry was crying. Moony put his hand on Perry's back and said “What the hell is wrong with this guy?” All through his life, Moony often said things aloud which he didn’t intend to, but because of his ability to navigate thoughts, things usually turned out in his favor anyway.

  No one else saw Perry cry as he cried for the second time that day. Everyone else was engaged in the story Julio was telling about the time he tried to race his best friend on horseback. Julio used to own horses. His grandfather was a rancher in Sonora. Julio, it turns out, lost the race but his friend’s horse split two of its hooves. So the way Julio figures it, he won in the long run.

  Perry wiped his eyes, shivering. “Getting back together with Deb isn’t easy.”

  Moony nodded blankly. In his current non-telepathic state, he just didn't know enough cerebral specifics about the two of them to be able to show Perry that he cared.

  “I keep thinking she’s into you.”

  “She’s banging Celia.” Moony figured he would do what most terrestrials did when easing into things and wait until later to confess that he, too, was on occasion sharing a bed with Deb in a sexual way.

  “Such a very affectionate person. I mean, look at her.” Moony took the opportunity to check out Deb’s body, wondering if he himself minded when onlookers gazed at him with the kind of dull lust he was directing at Deb. He usually didn’t mind, but he was a Caucasian male, and so enjoyed a great deal of privilege when it came to how he was regarded. When Deb turned away, he sat on his bar stool and flirted with the possibility of being a no one on a path to despair and darkness. Actually, a part of him understood very well that he looked just like an ordinary such-and-such who sat next to some flickerin
g candles in a rapidly cooling bar. He knew this, though he couldn't quite sense how that felt.

  *

  After his anxiety to have a smoke had grown past his threshold of tolerance, Moony climbed upstairs onto the roof of the Frog Regal. Perry decided he would have a cigarette too, even though he had finally quit smoking months ago after an embarrassing twenty-year struggle to quit.

  Moony offered him an American Spirit, assuring him with a wagging eyebrow, a wink, and an obscene pursing of the lips that since they were all-natural he could be comfortable in enjoying just this one. Perry eyed Moony like a curious dog, sniffed at his cigarette -- tobacco reminded him of when he was young. Moony squinted further, gnawed on the inside of his mouth and pushed out his lips, like a snow shovel, he imagined, but honestly he looked more like a primate than a tool.

  The snow, wet and heavy, had drifted up against the door and would last for days. The sunlight from the briskly white sky was bright -- Moony was unable to open his eyes more than a millimeter, and objects weren’t registering much detail. Luminosity existed in place of a landscape. The streets were a memory -- snow had laid a two-foot thick blanket over anything recognizable. White puffs had drifted into mounds so tall the world was entirely unfamiliar. The city stayed silent under its little billows. He caught the impression that there was something strong and unavoidable hidden beneath the rounded shapes made by the drifted snowfall, as if he had hidden a stone in a past life and was just now about to stumble across it. He couldn’t see anything specific, though, so he shook off this impression.

  Moony, following the documentation for acting a gentleman, lit Perry’s cigarette first. This particular snowdrift was so tall, they might be able to walk right off the roof of the building without falling.

  Across the parking lot on the third floor of the Q complex was Moony's balcony. His collection of miniature flags from the countries he had visited were still visible, weighed down by thin sheets of clear ice. There were thirty-two of them dragging their silky rayon heads toward the ground. The men watched, comfortable in not exchanging words. Moony noticed silently that Perry thought to ask which country was the most beautiful, but he also thought better of it, since he weighed that a discussion about world travel was out of his league.

  Amidst the shapes in the parking lot, Moony thought he made out a black Infiniti, which reminded him of the Gypsy, since that was the kind of car she drove.

  He had come across this woman with the mysterious name in the strangest of circumstances. A few months ago, he had met and subsequently gone home with the Gypsy's younger sister, a woman who called herself by an even stranger name, Hello Kitty, though, she explained, everyone else called her Kitty. Kitty was stunning and enchanting. She carried with her an exotic smell something like cedar --- seemed, even, to exude the smell. Celia had a similar strange natural ability, except that she always managed to smell like new Gap clothes. Had he given himself the chance, Moony could easily have fallen in love with Kitty just as he had fallen for Celia.

  And that’s when he realized: Kitty was who the Sphinx reminded him of. There was something about her. They both exuded the same ineffable golden quality.

  In his memory he pleasantly recounted the episode of the two of them making love that night.

  After their lovemaking had finished, the Gypsy walked into the room. She was much shorter, much older. The room grew cold when she entered.

  She looked at him with recognition and held him in her gaze.

  In that long moment of eye contact, he experienced what felt like a psychedelic episode.

  “This is your reawakening,” she had said. She explained to him that he was an alien human and that he had forgotten his telepathic abilities. She said it often happened, even to those such as Moony who had done a great deal of traveling. Now that she had reawakened him with her gaze, he was once again free to exploit this new ability, and that had proven to be true. Since that night, Moony had availed himself to many of the thought-streams of others in his vicinity and had accessed hoards of useful data in the form of documentation files that hovered in the mental vicinity of many objects and events.

  Standing on the roof, he was hit by a strange tingling sensation somewhere in his chest. He wondered if it was because he was smoking menthols.

  Big realization: He was not smoking menthols.

  An even bigger realization: From above his head, the sensation of milky light. Then another burst of light, a hazy light that seemed somehow opaque. Very different from what he had experienced from the Sphinx.

  The wheels of time slowed to a halt. He witnessed himself mid-exhalation, the smoke plume rising to join the white of the sky. For him, time seemed to pass. But for the world, nothing happened. He didn’t breathe, and his heart didn't beat. In fact, nothing physical about him made any move. Yet, something within him was active.

  The light expanded outwards from him in a cross-hatched network of lines stretching for miles and miles all around him. He sensed the outward-branching of the lines like something had struck a great bell and the sound spilled outwards, resounding in all directions. At intervals, the line met with something -- another alien human, he somehow knew -- and the line blinked brightly, and continued on.

  Moony didn’t have a great understanding of the internet, but what he was experiencing felt like he was being linked with other forms as if his mind was pinging various nodes on a grand connection between beings.

  Someone was making a lot of discoveries. At first Moony thought it was him. He felt really, really smart. Hoards of information passed through him, the bandwidth growing wider and wider. But the thing was, the information was merely passing through him. He barely glimpsed it as it transited through his consciousness.

  After a few moments of this, some part of him felt exhausted. He felt exposed. Naked, stripped bare, and not loved for what was seen about him. Used.

  If there really was a force of darkness in the world, as the Sphinx had said, then this feeling must be somehow connected to it. Unable to separate himself from it, he plunged his consciousness into the rapid stream of data and worked to comb it for anything pertaining to his quest for a potion.

  He quickly came to know many things, but only partial things.

  In the background of his mind, he had the notion to locate various chemical compounds. He accrued chunks of random data about his query. Some were important, some weren't. He didn't know why. Amidst this, he had a strong sense that soon, a strange woman would be showing up at his door. She was an important hub between alien humans. She was hard at work on some project. He would be able to help her.

  The nodes and lines blipped away.

  And like that, time resumed its incessant course. Moony finished exhaling. As he exhaled, he felt like something essential within him had been completely exhausted. He could sense how cold it was outside.

  “The hell is going on?” Perry asked, his cigarette, stuck to his lower lip, bouncing with each movement of his mouth.

  Moony, dizzy from all the information and also due to the whole thing about time stopping, looked high into the sky where Perry pointed. At first he didn’t notice anything more unusual than what he had just experienced when all time had stopped for him.

  He glanced at Perry to see if he was just messing with him. Perry’s eyes widened and he took a step back and gasped.

  Nearly directly overhead, two faint red lights blinked in unison, growing fainter and farther away. He heard a faint beeping not unlike the backup warning of a large truck, maybe a garbage truck. That’d be about right, Moony thought. A garbage truck in the sky was about to drop a load of junk onto the area. That’d make as much sense as anything.

  Then the lights vanished. He was comforted by the feeling that his telepathic ability had returned to him.

  “Strangest thing I've ever seen,” Perry said, eyeing Moony carefully as if Moony had any idea what had quite possibly just happened.

  Moony shook his head and made sure not to give any indicatio
n that he had seen anything more than Perry. He carefully engaged a special configuration of his cerebral faculty that made his facial features blank and relaxed, his cranial cavity dense with what any cursory scan would indicate as resoundingly normal. This configuration was a specialty of his, and it had come in handy for him more than anything else in his life.

  He wanted to avoid arousing any suspicion. Judging by recent events, he seemed to be in the middle of a galactic drama that for all practical purposes remained invisible to the rest of the world.

  It would be nice to have someone to confide in, some companion to help him understand what was happening.

  Maybe that person could be Perry.

  But what if Perry worked for the enemy? He couldn’t risk endangering his mission, could he? At least now he had some idea of what awaited him. Soon, a visitor would come to his front door. He would get some answers from her.

  He scanned into Perry’s thoughts and found that he was able to penetrate very deeply without much effort.

  Perry's was a mind without walls. He was a man who let who he was be more or less visible. Beneath it all, he sensed that Perry would have amazing skill at telepathy once he was awakened. Engaging a cursory scan for anything relevant to a checkered potion, he did manage to uncover something. Something about the person who dwelled in apartment A112. Perry had strong misgivings about this person and there was actually something there about a “blend” or “potion.”

  Moony made a mental note to look into that.

  Finished smoking, the two men returned inside, down the sewer-smelling spiral staircase to the sound of Celia and Deb each singing a different song at once. Citrus light-flecks from candles danced over their faces and people at the bar laughed raucously. Behind them, paper cutouts of cartoon happy faces swung lazily on a string like fluorescent shrubbery in an aquarium.