by B. G. Thomas
Neither said anything for a stupidly long moment, and then she shrugged and got up to grab one of the small clipboards that served as a menu at The Shepherd’s Bean. A half sheet of brown (unbleached) paper stated today’s offerings, which could be different (and often were) from just the day before. “This first one looks good,” she replied matter-of-factly. “The Finca Aracatace?”
He shrugged.
“It is your turn to buy,” she said.
Was it? He couldn’t really remember.
“Sure,” he replied and went to the counter. The girl with the big glasses wasn’t there. The real reason Daphne told him it was his turn to order, perhaps? There was a cute boy barista today, one he hadn’t seen before, with lots of tattoos and wearing a wool cap. A tumble of dark curls spilled from beneath its edge.
Cute.
Not as cute as Shane.
Stop it!
He ordered the coffees and went ahead and got a plain doughnut for Daphne and a chocolate one for himself, then rejoined his sister at the table.
“So where is Shane?”
He shrugged, trying for a not-a-care-in-the-world look. “I assume he’s at home.”
“Which is where again?”
“Buckman.”
She gave a nod and took a bite of her doughnut. He tasted his own. Delicious as always.
“So why aren’t you with him?” she asked.
Adam shrugged again. “I wanted a weekend off,” he said, not meeting her eyes.
Another nod. Another bite. Another pause.
Then, “From the way you were talking, I kinda thought a weekend off was the last thing you’d want. I was hoping anyway. I liked the idea of you having someone in your life.”
“He was a distraction,” Adam fired back.
Her face was completely noncommittal. So Daphne. So police detective.
“And I was feeling guilty about skipping our Saturday mornings. I thought you’d want to see me.”
“I always want to see you, Adam. But we can see each other anytime. You can only see Shane on the weekends.”
“I wanted a weekend off!” He immediately regretted the force of it.
The cute barista brought their coffees. He tried to lock eyes with Adam, who refused to allow it.
Once Coffee Boy was gone, Daphne asked, “What happened?”
“Nothing!” Too strong again. He sighed. Took a drink of his coffee. Not bad. The special fermentation process the menu described must have helped.
“Sorry,” Daphne said quietly. “I don’t mean to pry.”
“You always pry,” he replied.
“Well someone has to!”
He looked up, surprised.
Daphne bit her lower lip. Like Shane did. Adam shook the image from his head.
“Sorry,” she said again. “But it’s like I said. I liked seeing you with someone. I liked the idea of you not being alone.”
“I don’t need to be with anyone,” he said and took another drink of his coffee. Not bad. It wasn’t bad at all. At least it was a distraction.
She said, “Of course,” and bit into her plain, boring doughnut. “But being with someone is nice. I know I’d like someone to come home to.”
“You?” He was taken aback both by the comment and the look in her deep dark brown eyes.
“Me.” He could barely hear her she said it so quietly. Then, louder: “I was getting kind of warm thinking about the two of you cuddled on the couch watching TV.”
For some reason this surprised him as well. “You were?”
She nodded.
He thought about it a second. He and Shane on the couch watching TV. Cuddling. Then he thought of the UFO books, and he blew a raspberry.
“That bad?”
“That bad,” he said with a sigh.
“The cigarettes get to you?”
He paused. No. Amazingly they hadn’t. Especially with all the care Shane had taken to always step away to smoke and to constantly use that breath spritz.
Adam could almost smell it. Felt a tiny pang of missing it.
He shook his head again.
But it wasn’t the cigarettes. Or the baseball games. Not any of that.
“He’s wackadoodle,” he said by way of an explanation.
“To fall in love with you, he’d have to be,” Daphne responded with a little smile.
In love? “In love?”
She gave a single nod. “I think he fell for you before he sat down on that blanket.”
Adam scoffed at the idea. “Please.”
“I mean it. That’s why I was so happy to see he was the reason you’d been skipping our Saturday mornings. Not just because you were seeing someone, but I’d been thinking he was another boy whose heart you were going to break.”
Adam looked at her in astonishment. “What?”
“You’ve left a string of them behind.”
“Me?” Even more astonished.
“Of course.” She drank her coffee. “You’ve always had trouble with relationships, with trusting anyone.”
“You psychoanalyzing me?”
“You meet them and see them once or thrice and then cast them aside. More than one has seen me out and asked me what they’d done wrong.”
Adam’s mouth fell open. “Huh?”
“I always wondered why you didn’t keep one. I’d love it if someone was interested in me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Casting aside? String of broken hearts? WTF?
“I mean, I can’t remember you seeing someone for as long as you were seeing Shane….”
Long? It was only, what? Six weeks or so?
“Does this mean it’s over?”
Over?
Shane’s image shimmered into his mind’s eye. So cute. Sweet. His heart felt a twinge. God. This is why he didn’t—
(fall in love)
—let himself feel for anybody. He could get hurt. They got power. He didn’t want anyone to have power over him.
Over? Was it over?
“I don’t know,” he said and looked through the big windows onto Main Street. God. His heart was still feeling that dull little ache. I miss him. God, I miss him. “He’s wackadoodle, Daphne! He believes in UFOs!” He froze. Looked around him. Coffee Boy was giving him an odd look. Adam looked away.
“UFOs?” One of her perfect eyebrows was high enough to near disappear under her dark bangs.
“UFOs,” he repeated. But quietly.
She shrugged.
“He thinks he’s been abducted!” He cringed and glanced at the barista, but he was busy with a customer.
He expected Daphne to look surprised. Instead, that eyebrow had dropped down to its customary place.
“Well?” he asked. “Is that crazy or not?”
Something funny happened then. Something in Daphne’s eyes. They seemed to grow darker. Strange. He’d read about dark clouds coming into a person’s eyes, but like never having seen someone laugh all the way to the bank, he’d never really seen those storm clouds in real life.
Until now.
Daphne looked away.
“Daphne…? Sis?”
She turned back to him. Shrugged. “After a while you see all kinds of weird things, Adam. What’s that thing that Shakespeare said? Something about there being stranger things under heaven and earth that you can dream of?”
Shakespeare? Really? Daphne quoting—or trying to quote—Shakespeare? Really?
“What are you talking about?”
Her eyes grew even darker. He actually saw it happen. Then after an infinite seeming pause, her eyes flicked back to normal and she said, “I’ve seen some weird shit the last year or two, Adam. Some really weird shit. So UFOs? Who am I to say?”
This only agitated him all the more.
“Well, what about this? He thinks I’ve been abducted too! How’s that for fucking freaky?”
14
“LET’S GO to bed,” Adam had said.
And then Shane had said, “Lat
er. If you still want to.”
He already didn’t want to anymore. Anything to end this conversation.
“I think maybe you’ve been abducted too, baby,” Shane had said quietly. “I think it happened to you on the way from my place last week. And maybe because you were with me.”
Adam had flinched at the comment. Flinched back as if he been burned or shocked.
But why?
The whole idea was ridiculous.
Abducted?
Really?
But the expression on Shane’s face told him that Shane wasn’t kidding. Wasn’t pulling his leg. He was serious. Serious as a heart attack. “How else do you explain your missing time? You were missing a lot of time, baby. How do you explain that?”
Adam willed himself to relax. He took a deep breath.
“Come on, Shane. You don’t really believe that, do you? That’s crazy.”
“Is it?” Shane asked. “Why?”
Adam laughed. It wasn’t very convincing. Not even to himself. “Come on, Shane! Aliens? You don’t really think that, do you? I mean that’s all fine and dandy for a movie like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Fun. But you don’t really believe that shit, do you?”
But Adam saw it. Shane did believe.
Wackadoodle.
The other shoe had not only dropped, it had fallen through the floor.
This is what I get. Never again.
He sighed. “Shane, it’s like I said. Simple as can be. I got hypnotized by the headlights of the oncoming cars. I was tired. It was a long drive. Anything could have happened. I could have driven over to the shoulder and slept.”
Shane gave him an incredulous look.
“It’s certainly more believable than aliens! And if it was, why can’t I remember?”
“People almost never remember,” Shane said. He picked up the book that had the word “captured” on the cover. “This book.” He pointed at the photograph of a white woman and a black man. “It’s all about the famous case of Betty and Barney Hill. No one has ever been able to disprove it. They couldn’t remember what happened to them either. So they were hypnotized to bring back their memories. And that proved they were abducted by aliens.”
Adam grunted. “That doesn’t prove shit. What’s been proven is that hypnosis can cause false memories.”
“But there are hundreds of cases, Adam. Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker in Pascagoula in 1973. The Walton Experience—they made that into a movie. Ever see Fire in the Sky?”
Adam jerked. Yes, he had seen that movie. The ending had given him nightmares for weeks. Of course he’d been a little kid when he’d seen it on TV. What kid wouldn’t have a nightmare after seeing all that slime and gore and scary shit?
Goose bumps once again rushed up and down Adam’s arms.
“Whitley Strieber wrote about it in Communion.”
God. That one. Another case of wackadoodle!
“He’s famous.” Shane placed a pointer finger on that book on the table. “No one has ever been able to disprove his story either.”
It was all Adam could do not to jump up and leave the room. That feeling was coming back. Chilling. He felt nauseated. “No,” he moaned. “I do not believe it. They were a bunch of crazies. Or attention seekers looking for their fifteen minutes of fame.”
“Adam! Who would want that kind of fame? Who would want the world to think they were crazy or liars? People lose everything when stuff like that gets out. Their jobs. Friends. Family. Lovers. Who would want that?”
Then Adam was standing up. He really did feel like he might throw up. “Enough.”
“You can’t believe we’re all there is, can you? The only life in the whole universe?”
“I never really thought about it,” he shot back.
“All those billions of stars? You don’t think we’re all there is, do you? You don’t think we’re the only intelligent life?”
Adam clenched his fists. Once more forced himself to calm down. Why was he acting like this? Feeling like this? It was silly. Calm down. He swallowed hard. “I suppose not. But flying saucers? Aliens taking people up in their spaceships and giving them anal probes? No. I don’t believe that. Not for a freaking second.”
“Since the 1930s over eleven million people have seen a UFO, or know someone who has. One study says that as much as five to six percent of the general population may have been abducted—”
Right then that high, piercing, ear-slashing, brain-stabbing noise came back. It was the first time in weeks, and Adam winced and cried out and covered his ears. But it wasn’t coming from his ears, was it? Even though it sounded so much like feedback from a huge set of concert speakers.
It was coming from inside his head.
And when Shane jerked in his seat, Adam knew that he had heard it too. But how was that possible?
Then as quickly as it had come, it was gone, leaving only a painful echo in its wake.
They looked at each other for a long time. Then Adam said, “And just what was that?”
“Implants,” Shane whispered.
15
THEY DIDN’T go back to bed that day. They didn’t have sex. They didn’t make love.
They went out for lunch at Hamburger Mary’s on Broadway, but Adam could hardly eat. He just wasn’t hungry. Still felt nauseated and didn’t know why.
They went and saw a movie, but Adam barely paid attention to it.
His heart wasn’t in it.
Wasn’t in anything.
And Shane left before he normally did despite the fact his shift at work had changed and he didn’t need to get to bed early.
Because implants.
Implants?
Shane thought they had implants!
Ruined.
It was all ruined.
Adam was relieved when Shane left.
16
AND THAT night he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to see Shane again.
17
“THERE ARE stranger things,” Daphne repeated.
“Than me being abducted? Than little green men—”
“They’re supposed to be gray,” Daphne said.
“—probing me and putting implants in my head?”
His sister lifted and dropped her shoulders in one quick move.
“Daphne,” he exclaimed. “It’s crazy!”
“And like I’ve said, I’ve seen some crazy shit. Experienced some crazy shit. Makes a believer out of you. Or at least made it so I can’t be so quick not to believe.”
“Oh, Daphne,” he said, disappointed. He’d called her—truth be told—knowing she’d add normalcy to what had happened. He hadn’t expected her to make things worse.
“Can I ask you something, brother? Isn’t it possible? Why isn’t it possible? Why couldn’t there be life on other planets? Why couldn’t they come here? Why wouldn’t they want to study us? Isn’t it possible?”
Adam shook his head. Daphne. Oh, Daphne. “What kind of stuff have you seen?” he asked aloud.
She looked away. After a long moment Adam realized she wasn’t going to answer.
“Daphne?”
She turned back. “I don’t care what he believes, Adam. I want you to think about if it matters. So he believes in little gray men. So he thinks he was abducted by them. So what if he thinks you were? He’s special. He cares about you. You care about him. You like him. I think you’re falling in love with him. Isn’t it possible that what’s really going on is that you’re using this as an excuse to run? That you’re afraid of getting involved?”
He shook his head adamantly.
“I think that’s what’s going on. And what I think is that you need to ask yourself if you really want him to slip through your fingers. Everybody has their flaws. No one is perfect. But I think he just might be perfect for you.”
Adam opened his mouth to reply… and then let it slowly shut.
Did he want lose Shane?
After that he and Daphne didn’t talk much.
18
Things she had seen that made her believe that weird shit was possible. His sister. The queen of practicality.
That she believed Shane might be perfect for him and he’d be stupid to let him go.
Because God, he had been thinking that Shane might just be perfect for him.
Couldn’t he allow Shane to believe in his UFO stuff? Couldn’t he just forget about it? Ignore it?
Was it any worse than the cigarettes? Than baseball?
Yet it was more than that. Much more.
The whole thing made him powerfully uncomfortable. Sometimes sick.
And sometimes scared.
Which made no sense at all.
But more even than that was the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about Shane. How much he missed him. God, how much he longed for him. Longed to be with him. To touch him. To sit with him. To make love with him—and yes, dammit, that was what it was. Making love.
More than ever, though, just to be with him.
They didn’t have to do anything sexual.
God.
Just to hold his hand.
And to see those eyes.
And that cute (wonderful) half smile.
It was more than missing Shane.
It was an ache.
Being away from his man hurt.
My man….
God. My man….
19
SO THE next day, unable to even concentrate at work—and working in billing for cancer doctors he needed to be able to concentrate—he made a decision.
Why not do a little research himself?
On the way home, he stopped at Half Price Books and asked if they had a section on UFOs. Not only did they, but they also had a surprising number of books.
He found almost all the books that had been lying on his coffee table.
He bought Communion by Whitley Strieber. And several more as well—after all, half price. The Alien Abduction Files, by Kathleen Marden. She was the niece of that famous couple who had been abducted. In fact, they had Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience as well, written by the same lady. They even had a beautifully bound collector’s edition of the original book about Betty and Barney Hill, The Interrupted Journey.