Tabloid Dreams (11 page)

I snap a little bit. “Back off, Janis. I like my nipple the way it is.”

Her face clouds up and all the rings quake faintly. She turns on her heel and moves off and I follow her. The sun is bright in the garden. More radios are cheering here and there. Our friends have lowered the umbrella at our table and are leaning their heads back, catching rays. Janis plops down and I stop and I look up into the sky, half expecting to see the flame of entry beginning. But there is nothing. Not even a wisp of cloud. So I sit and I reach out right away and touch Janis's hand. “I'm sorry,” I say. One irony I don't want is for the meteor to hit while I'm cordial with my parents and arguing with Janis.

But she turns her hand at once and takes mine. This gets to me. Even more because of the meteor. She doesn't realize what's happening and yet she's quick to make up with me. And it was me who snapped at her.

I look around. Everybody's just going on with their business. I feel very tender for them as they drink their coffee and their beer and they eat their croissants and they chat and they read their newspapers (which have missed the biggest story in history). Then I turn to the four lifted chins and four sets of closed eyes in front of me and I look at Janis, her face turned a little away. We are still clutching each other's hands. I look at her rings. The one in her lip: I focus on that one. What is it I feel? The ring says she is soft, her flesh can part and yield to this tiny hard thing. It stirs me a little, too, that something is inside her. I want to be inside her. The ring carries me inside her body. And the ring says she is vulnerable. A thing can break through her, rip her open.

“You have to listen to me,” I say. Loud enough for the four chins to sink and the eyes to open. Janis turns her face to me. “Something is happening,” I say. They look at me blankly. The thing I have to say is too much
there
. It's just there. There's no angle on it. There's no in-between. No place to hide. But still I have to try. “I have something important to say.”

Then we're in shadow. It comes quickly over us and I know there are no clouds and Justin's eyes go up first and he lifts his face and his mouth opens, in wonder, and then Seth is looking and Peggy Sue and Liza and the shadow is cold, very cold, and they're all filled with awe and, I think, with terror, but Janis isn't looking. She's looking at me.

She asks, very gently, “What do you have to say?”

I squeeze her hand and I draw near and I lean to her and I kiss that place where the ring slips through her lip, I kiss that tiny point of entry, a single clear pixel in the image of her mortality. I pull back and her eyes are sad, I think, and perhaps she has peeked overhead, perhaps she knows what it is I have to say. So I turn my head and it takes all my energy. I lift my eyes.

And overhead is the Goodyear blimp. I can hear the bratty little hum of its motors and the shadow of it tootles by and we are in the sun again and the blimp heads off back to the Coliseum and the marching bands.

Now we are all facing each other once more. What I know is still what I know. The doomsday meteor is coming, like the man said. But I find that it's not what I have to say to my friends.

“So, yes?” Justin asks. “What is it, Linus?”

I look at them one at a time, my friends, my fragile, doomed friends. And I look at Janis and she is waiting. I say, “I want you all to know that Janis and I are going to have our left nipples pierced. It will be a sign of something very important.”

Janis's eyes fill quickly with tears and so do mine, and Peggy Sue says, “How romantic.”

“Help Me Find My
Spaceman Lover”

I never thought I could fall for a spaceman. I mean, you see them in the newspaper and they kind of give you the willies, all skinny and hairless and wiggly looking, and if you touched one, even to shake hands, you just know it would be like when you were about fifteen and you were with an Earth boy and you were sweet on him but there was this thing he wanted, and you finally said okay, but only rub-a-dub, which is what we called it around these parts when I was younger, and it was the first time ever that you touched . . . well, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, that's what it's always seemed like to me with spacemen, and most everybody around here feels about the same way, I'm sure. Folks in Bovary, Alabama, and environs—by which I mean the KOA campground off the interstate and the new trailer park out past the quarry—everybody in Bovary is used to people being a certain way, to look at and to talk to and so forth. Take my daddy. When I showed him a few years ago in the newspaper how a spaceman had endorsed Bill Clinton for president and they had a picture of a spaceman standing there next to Bill Clinton—without any visible clothes on, by the way—the spaceman, that is, not Bill Clinton, though I wouldn't put it past him, to tell the truth, and I'm not surprised at anything they might do over in Little Rock. But I showed my daddy the newspaper and he took a look at the spaceman and he snorted and said that he wasn't surprised people like that was supporting the Democrats, people like that don't even look American, and I said no, Daddy, he's a spaceman, and he said people like that don't even look ­human, and I said no, Daddy, he's not human, and my daddy said, that's what I'm saying, make him get a job.

But I did fall for a spaceman, as it turned out, fell pretty hard. I met him in the parking lot at the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart. We used to have a regular old Wal-Mart that would close at nine o'clock and when they turned it into a Super Center a lot of people in Bovary thought that no good would come of it, encouraging people to stay up all night. Americans go to bed early and get up early, my daddy said. But I have trouble sleeping sometimes. I live in the old trailer park out the state highway and it's not too far from the Wal-Mart and I live there with my yellow cat Eddie. I am forty years old and I was married once, to a telephone installer who fell in love with cable TV. There's no cable TV in Bovary yet, though with a twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart, it's probably not too far behind. It won't come soon enough to save my marriage, however. Not that I wanted it to. He told me he just
had
to install cable TV, telephones weren't fulfilling him, and he was going away for good to Mobile and he didn't want me to go with him, this was the end for us, and I was understanding the parts about it being the end but he was going on about fiber optics and things that I didn't really follow. So I said fine and he went away, and even if he'd wanted me to go with him, I wouldn't have done it. I've only been to Mobile a couple of times and I didn't take to it. Bovary is just right for me. At least that's what I thought when it had to do with my ex-husband, and that kind of thinking just stayed with me, like a grape-juice stain on your housedress, and I am full of regrets, I can tell you, for not rethinking that whole thing before this. But I got a job at a hairdresser's in town and Daddy bought me the trailer free and clear and me and Eddie moved in and I just kept all those old ideas.

So I met Desi in the parking lot. I called him that because he talked with a funny accent but I liked him. I had my insomnia and it was about three in the morning and I went to the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart and I was glad it was open—I'd tell that right to the face of anybody in this town—I was glad for a place to go when I couldn't sleep. So I was coming out of the store with a bag that had a little fuzzy mouse toy for Eddie, made of rabbit fur, I'm afraid, and that strikes me as pretty odd to kill all those cute little rabbits, which some people have as pets and love a lot, so that somebody else's pet of a different type can have something to play with, and it's that kind of odd thing that makes you shake your head about the way life is lived on planet Earth—Desi has helped me see things in the larger perspective—though, to be honest, it didn't stop me from buying the furry cat toy, because Eddie does love those things. Maybe today I wouldn't do the same, but I wasn't so enlightened that night when I came out of the Wal-Mart and I had that toy and some bread and baloney and a refrigerator magnet, which I collect, of a zebra head.

He was standing out in the middle of the parking lot and he wasn't moving. He was just standing still as a cow and there wasn't any car within a hundred feet of him, and, of course, his spaceship wasn't anywhere in sight, though I wasn't looking for that right away because at first glance I didn't know he was a spaceman. He was wearing a long black trench coat with the belt cinched tight and he had a black felt hat with a wide brim. Those were the things I saw first and he seemed odd, certainly, dressed like that in Bovary, but I took him for a human being, at least.

I was opening my car door and he was still standing out there and I called out to him, “Are you lost?”

His head turns my way and I still can't see him much at all except as a hat and a coat.

“Did you forget where you parked your car?” I say, and then right away I realize there isn't but about four cars total in the parking lot at that hour. So I put the bag with my things on the seat and I come around the back of the car and go a few steps toward him. I feel bad. So I call to him, kind of loud because I'm still pretty far away from him and also because I already have a feeling he might be a foreigner. I say, “I wasn't meaning to be snippy, because that's something that happens to me a lot and I can look just like you look sometimes, I'm sure, standing in the lot wondering where I am, exactly.”

While I'm saying all this I'm moving kind of slow in his direction. He isn't saying anything back and he isn't moving. But already I'm noticing that his belt is cinched
very
tight, like he's got maybe an eighteen-inch waist. And as I get near, he sort of pulls his hat down to hide his face, but already I'm starting to think he's a spaceman.

I stop. I haven't seen a spaceman before except in the newspaper and I take another quick look around, just in case I missed something, like there might be four cars
and
a flying saucer. But there's nothing unusual. Then I think, Oh my, there's one place I haven't looked, and so I lift my eyes, very slow because this is something I don't want to see all the sudden, and finally I'm staring into the sky. It's a dark night and there are a bunch of stars up there and I get goose bumps because I'm pretty sure that this man standing just a few feet away is from somewhere out there. But at least there's no spaceship as big as the Wal-Mart hanging over my head with lights blinking and transporter beams ready to shine down on me. It's only stars.

So I bring my eyes down—just about as slow—to look at this man. He's still there. And in the shadow of his hat brim, with the orangey light of the parking lot all around, I can see these eyes looking at me now and they are each of them about as big as Eddie's whole head and shaped kind of like Eddie's eyes.

“Are you a spaceman?” I just say this right out.

“Yes, m'am,” he says and his courtesy puts me at ease right away. Americans are courteous, my daddy says, not like your Eastern liberal New York taxi drivers.

“They haven't gone and abandoned you, have they, your friends or whoever?” I say.

“No, m'am,” he says and his voice is kind of high-pitched and he has this accent, but it's more in the tone of the voice than how he says his words, like he's talking with a mouth full of grits or something.

“You looked kind of lost, is all.”

“I am waiting,” he says.

“That's nice. They'll be along soon, probably,” I say, and I feel my feet starting to slide back in the direction of the car. There's only so far that courtesy can go in calming you down. The return of the spaceship is something I figure I can do without.

Then he says, “I am waiting for you, Edna Bradshaw.”

“Oh. Good. Sure, honey. That's me. I'm Edna. Yes. Waiting for me.” I'm starting to babble and I'm hearing myself like I was hovering in the air over me and I'm wanting my feet to go even faster but they seem to have stopped altogether. I wonder if it's because of some tractor beam or something. Then I wonder if they have tractor-beam pulling contests in outer space that they show on TV back in these other solar systems. I figure I'm starting to get hysterical, thinking things like that in a situation like this, but there's not much I can do about it.

He seems to know I'm struggling. He takes a tiny little step forward and his hand goes up to his hat, like he's going to take it off and hold it in front of him as he talks to me, another courtesy that even my daddy would appreciate. But his hand stops. I think he's not ready to show me his whole spaceman head. He knows it would just make things worse. His hand is bad enough, hanging there over his hat. It's got little round pads at the end of the fingers, like a gecko, and I don't stop to count them, but at first glance there just seems to be too many of them.

His hand comes back down. “I do not hurt you, Edna Bradshaw. I am a friendly guy.”

“Good,” I say. “Good. I figured that was so when I first saw you. Of course, you can just figure somebody around here is going to be friendly. That's a good thing about ­Bovary, Alabama—that's where you are, you know, though you probably do know that, though maybe not. Do you know that?”

He doesn't say anything for a moment. I'm rattling on again, and it's true I'm a little bit scared and that's why, but it's also true that I'm suddenly very sad about sounding like this to him, I'm getting some perspective on myself through his big old eyes, and I'm sad I'm making a bad impression because I want him to like me. He's sweet, really. Very courteous. Kind of boyish. And he's been waiting for me.

“Excuse me,” he says. “I have been translating. You speak many words, Edna Bradshaw. Yes, I know the name of this place.”

“I'm sorry. I just do that sometimes, talk a lot. Like when I get scared, which I am a little bit right now. And call me Edna.”

“Please,” he says, “I am calling you Edna already. And in conclusion, you have no reason to be afraid.”

“I mean call me
just
Edna. You don't have to say Bradshaw every time, though my granddaddy would do that with people. He was a fountain pen salesman and he would say to people, I'm William D. Bradshaw. Call me William D. Bradshaw. And he meant it. He wanted you to say the whole name every time. But you can just call me Edna.”

So the spaceman takes a step forward and my heart starts to pound something fierce, and it's not from fright, I realize, though it's some of that. “Edna,” he says. “You are still afraid.”

“Telling you about my granddaddy, you mean? How that's not really the point here? Well, yes, I guess so. Some
times, if he knew you for awhile, he'd let you call him W.
D. Bradshaw.”

Now his hand comes up and it clutches the hat and the hat comes off and there he stands in the orange lights of the parking lot at three in the morning in my little old hometown and he doesn't have a hair on his head, though I've always liked bald men and I've read they're bald because they have so much male hormone in them, which makes them the best lovers, which would make this spaceman quite a guy, I think, and his head is pointy, kind of, and his cheeks are sunken and his cheekbones are real clear and I'm thinking already I'd like to bake some cookies for him or something, just last
week I got a prize-winning recipe, off a can of cooking spray, that looks like it'd put flesh on a fencepost. And, of course, there are these big eyes of his and he blinks once, real slow, and I think it's because he's got a strong feeling in him, and he says, “Edna, my name is hard for you to say.”

And I think of Desi right away, and I try it on him, and his mouth, which hasn't got anything that look like lips exactly, moves up at the edges and he makes this pretty smile.

“I have heard that name,” he says. “Call me Desi. And I am waiting for you, Edna, because I study this planet and I hear you speak many words to your friends and to your subspecies companion and I detect some bright-colored aura around you and I want to meet you.”

“That's good,” I say, and I can feel a blush starting in my chest, where it always starts, and it's spreading up my throat and into my cheeks.

“I would like to call on you tomorrow evening, if I have your permission,” he says.

“Boy,” I say. “Do a lot of people have the wrong idea about spacemen. I thought you just grabbed somebody and beamed them up and that was it.” It was a stupid thing to say, I realize right away. I think Desi looks a little sad to hear this. The corners of his mouth sink. “I'm sorry,” I say.

“No,” he says. “This is how we are perceived, it is true. You speak only the truth. This is one reason I want to meet you, Edna. You seem always to say what is inside your head without any attempt to alter it.”

Now it's my turn to look a little sad, I think. But that's okay, because it gives me a chance to find out that Desi is more than courteous. His hands come out toward me at once, the little suckers on them primed to latch on to me, and I'm not even scared because I know it means he cares about me. And he's too refined to touch me this quick. His hands just hang there between us and he says, “I speak this not as a researcher but as a male creature of a parallel species.”

“You mean as a man?”

His eyes blink again, real slow. “Yes. As a man. As a man I try to say that I like the way you speak.”