The Everborn (32 page)

It made Melony wonder what Matt McGregor actually saw of Nigel’s death as a boy so long ago, an event which Max’s pursuits were clearly indebted to, indeed.

It made her wonder about a great many things.

It also made it all the more easier to distance herself from the husband who dispirited her so.

Enough was shared by Andrew to erase Melony’s fears of the otherworldly unknown and to replace them with an unknown of a different kind...the sort of
unknown,
which attaches itself like a parasitic leech to the evening of a first date in the home of a man Melony increasingly found herself wanting.

Wanting
?

Yes, it was okay to admit that she wanted him by the conclusion of their conversation, just as long as she could impose most of the blame upon the brandy and nothing or no one else.

Anything to smother the guilt, which such feelings often tended to resurrect, burdening any married woman upon the verge of infidelity.

***

Andrew had taken Melony’s bathroom break as his cue to begin to clear the table, and Bari appeared to him fully as soon as it was safe. He couldn’t believe how close to the truth Melony and her husband’s findings actually were about him, and he couldn’t believe how dishonest he was in defending that truth behind preplanned lies and half-truths. He had done very well with the bullshit and Bari commended him on a bullshit job well done. Though she didn’t put it that way, Bari understood his feelings and attempted to console him by reminding him of the implications of telling Mel the truth...of how the truth could lead into a potentially harmful new frame of mind for Melony, and how it could upset Andrew’s anonymity in society, which Bari insisted was a necessity kept sacred.

Bari was quite the bullshit artist herself, wasn’t she? Andrew truly wished he could have told Mel everything, for Andrew himself never totally understood what his life was all about. Bari had been forever elusive towards the more painfully enlightening subjects, the specific subjects, which would ultimately disclose to Andrew the nature of who or what he was.

***

Melony emerged from the bathroom to find Andrew at the kitchen sink washing the dinner dishes. He appeared to be tilting at an awkward angle to the left, but then she realized that it was in fact
she herself
that was leaning a little too much over to one side. She didn’t say a thing. At first. Except a raspy
achem
to clear her throat.

Andrew turned and saw her, his hands immersed in water and Dove dishwashing liquid and a sponge.

“Hi,” he said to her, then, continued with his preoccupation.

Melony approached him in a mismanaged stride and met him at the kitchen counter, on the way, retrieving the microcassette recorder she’d absently left, since the course of the interview, still recording upon the table surface. She depressed its tiny black flip button, then, lazily brought it into the living room as Andrew turned off the kitchen faucet and dried his hands, abandoning the dinner dishes to soak as he followed after her.

Reaching into her purse on the black leather recliner she exchanged the recorder for her Nikkon. Andrew halted momentarily as she raised the camera, situated the flash, and snapped his photograph.

Andrew stood back and flinched from the bright light.

Melony took a few snapshots of his living room, turning this way and that. She was such the journalist, but then again her imposing was rather rude. It brought Andrew back to why he lied to her in the first place.

He studied her for a moment, edgy and uncomfortable with this. He slumped against the archway between the kitchen and the living room, wiped his hands free of dish soap and scratched the back of his neck. “So.....um....you know, my home is not a tourist attraction,” he said to her calmly. Irritability was, with few exceptions, the closest Andrew had ever been able to come to anger or outrage. He was simply much too passive. “I got the feeling that your recording the interview and all was enough, Mel. I can see it all now: your husband’s going to scrutinize those pictures and discredit everything I’ve told you because of my father’s movie poster. And you know, I have way too many
Playboys
for an Earthling....”

Melony stopped and turned to face him, so suddenly apologetic that it was almost enough to discredit her. “I’m sorry, Andrew, I didn’t mean to take advantage. Oh, God this is difficult, because I still have an obligation to my husband for tonight. I’m ashamed of it, but I’ve been honest with you about it and I didn’t have to be. You know, he’s going to have a hard time with how tonight went, with what you told me about yourself. If I could catch a few glimpses of how you live, it’ll only reinforce the issue. To be honest with you, I’m very afraid of how he’s going to handle it all. It’s kind of like his life’s work....”

“From what you’ve told me, it is his life’s work,” Andrew replied, “and it’s okay, I guess. I still have a hard time swallowing why anyone would be obsessed with my life like that, but I understand....”

I understand a lot more than you know
, he found himself thinking.

Mel was approaching him casually, arriving directly before him, her gaze inches away from his, too close for comfort, unexpectedly and enough to make him nervous. Her eyes looked into his, but it was difficult for Andrew to read her. Then she blinked once, twice, and he began to notice how much her head was tilting further and further backwards until she caught herself and regained her footing before she could stumble on her ass

“Are you all right?” Andrew stepped forward, reached out in effort to assist her lest she managed to successfully fall the next time. She was obviously way more intoxicated than he’d first suspected. It was comical, in a way and Andrew was at once amused and concerned. “Want to sit for awhile, watch a movie? Want any aspirin?”

“You got me drunk....” She couldn’t believe she said that, it simply came out that way.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to....”

“It’s not your fault, I just don’t know how to handle you.” She couldn’t believe she said
that
, either. And she hoped he didn’t understand. It was time to gather her senses together and go, get. Before something serious happened. But as soon as she knew it, she toppled over to him. Well, it wasn’t exactly
toppled
, and she was certainly sure she didn’t
want
to do it, that it must’ve been because she was drunk, but somehow the, next moment she found herself in his arms.

And she was still gripping her Nikkon.

That brought her back to reality, the realization of how she better
not
drop that camera. A silly excuse to distract oneself, but nevertheless, it worked.

More than a little embarrassed, she lifted herself from her view atop Andrew’s shoulder only to discover the delightful embarrassment she beheld from within his own eyes as she faced him yet again, yet again merely inches away. Before he felt safe to release her, she detected that he was trembling. She’d always found this sort of vulnerability attractive in a man. It was an honest reaction to the suggestions of intimacy, it showed that true feelings stirred from within, for when has anyone ever heard of a man who purposely
trembled
in the arms of a
woman
to
impress
her?

On second thought, maybe it was she who was doing the trembling.

Remember your Nikkon, Mel. Politely put it in your purse, compose yourself, bid him farewell, and leave.

Andrew prepared himself for a kiss, for they together were in the position to do so, their predicament calling for it, the sudden closeness, the mutual attraction, the unspoken fascination for one another, and in downright spiteful defiance of the unwonted conditions of how all this came to be. Though from the unexpected immediacy of it all, he’d be damned if he was to be the first to act upon it. And he’d be damned to be the one to take advantage.

Just in case he was reading her wrong.

He had no desire to be the one to dare and he did not want to be the one to be said ‘no’ to if he
did
dare.

He felt himself trembling.

And he was embarrassed and nervous and....

Melony withdrew, took a deep breath to calm herself, stood reserved upon her feet, and in a millisecond it was as though nothing between them had happened at all. She went for her purse upon the black leather recliner and inserted her camera inside. She lifted her purse, readying to bid Andrew farewell.

“You should really stay for just a little while longer, let me fix you some coffee. You shouldn’t go like this. You don’t have to up and go right away...Mel...,” Andrew told her, concerned, though self-conscious of his pleas.

Melony set her purse down upon the recliner and sighed, indecisive if but for the moment. Then she lifted her purse once again, shouldering it. This time,
Andrew
sighed.

“It’s getting late, I’m sorry,” Melony told him, summoning the sort of blind determination the intoxicated often get when they truly want to ditch the scene but know damn well it’s inadvisable to drive. And part of her didn’t want to ditch the scene, anyway. “I’m fine, really. And I’ll be seeing you again. Soon. I promise. Thank you for a wonderful evening, Andrew. You were very understanding.”

“Didn’t you just tell me that I got you
drunk
? Come on, stay just a half hour, at least for some coffee....” Andrew was pleading again, and aware of this as he was suddenly, he began to adjust to the idea that he might as well let her go. Though he sincerely didn’t want to. “Oh, all right. I’m just....”

She was suddenly kissing him.

I’m just...confused
...,
Andrew was about to say, but Melony cut him off by lunging forward, and at first he prepared to catch her for fear she was falling out of drunkenness.

But instead she kissed him. Upon his lips and fully, savoring the eternity she’d created of it in a moment’s time, feeding the unspoken desire for passion, all the while fueling it by dismissing the dangers of doing so.

How she longed to dismiss those dangers still and keep kissing him.

She let go of him, and he appeared to her as though he hadn’t noticed that he had been held by her at all, just kissed by her; his face was arched forward, his eyes shut...he presented the appearance of being
enraptured
, until his eyes flickered wide like window shutters snapped open and he did it so convincingly that it was almost not comical.

She backed away from him and observed him curiously, and the fact that she’d actually made the move to kiss him did not overwhelm her until she turned for the front door.

Then she stopped in her tracks. She turned back to him, looked at him bashfully, and after a brief stumble backwards with a reverse recovery afterwards found herself in his arms again.

They both looked at each other in encumbered disbelief.

“I guess you should make me some coffee,” Melony said.

28.

Climactic Introductions

There was an acutely adolescent charm about the way Andrew and Melony initiated sex. They both would be the type who’d insist to each other later that they hadn’t planned on doing that, both knowing full well that they had longed for it in the back of their minds all along.

Little did they know that there was a certain degree of influence involved, also,
Bari
style.

At one point, Andrew and Melony were together on the living room carpet, lying face to face with the sides of their elevated heads cradled into their palms in attention to the card game of UNO they played between them.

At another point, Melony rose for the kitchen to refill their glasses with just a little more brandy with a cranapple juice chaser, and to telephone her husband with an
I’ll be staying later than I expected
message for his answering machine and ending with an
everything’s going. remarkably fine, I can’t wait ‘til I fill you in
salutation.

At a further point, one of them commented jokingly to the other about an offhanded reference to kissing, the other slow to get the point. When the point was bashfully realized, Melony made the bold initiative to scoot her body across the sea of UNO cards and to embrace the young man on the other side...

...and then one thing led to another....

Later on, Melony would never admit to have been the instigator of this; she would claim listlessly that she really didn’t
know
who was.

Melony never would have done any of this if she suspected Andrew was still, indeed, an alien.

***

Not very long after midnight, Andrew lay beside Melony beneath the covers of his bed. They remained nude, the two of them, and Andrew could still feel the warmth of her sleek and flawless skin, still feel the remnants of her own perspiration adhering to his own as she clung to him, as they sweated even despite the chill of the opened bedroom window beyond the security of the bed’s comforter. Andrew was tempted to shut that window --Mel had opened it for fresh air-- but he dared not disturb the beauty at rest within his arms nor break away from the sweet bliss of having her there.

Stunningly sweet bliss.

Andrew was more than astonished at how events had led up to this, and so speedily. He’d been telling himself that Melony had not been
totally
influenced by Bari when she’d gone for him the way she did. He wanted to believe that Mel would’ve gone for him out of her own conscious will with or without a Watchmaid whispering in her ear. He was positive this was the case, that Mel had truly wanted him regardless. What disturbed him knowing Bari’s ways and all, was that he didn’t really know
how much
Bari had influenced Mel. Such speculation could pave a roadway into scary territory, for Andrew was beginning to truly care for her, enough perhaps to inevitably love her. He was pathetically susceptible to love, for he had easily fallen for each of the handful of bimbos that ultimately got him laid courtesy of Ralston and Ralston’s happenin’ parties. And he’d been easily hurt with every promising outlet for love all his life just the same. Bari had told him that he always expected too much too soon from a woman.