Jill

by Jay Hughes

"Inside," the short, stocky one grumbled. He looked like he was in charge, but all of them were a notch ahead of me in the day's pecking order. I wasn't sure if "inside" meant I could go there to piss or whether I should just go there.

  Inside, I looked around for a door that said MEN.

  "Down the hall, to the left," a taller cop said. He followed me.

  "Is she all right?"

  "The captain will talk to you."

  I wondered if the captain would be waiting in the men's room.

  I felt awful, considering I hadn't brushed my teeth, and was wearing yesterday's socks and underwear. I found what I could on the way out.

  "I left my dog alone," I said on the way down the hall with the tall cop, who pointed to a row of offices off the main lobby.

  I followed his finger and stopped at a door that said CAPTAIN. I went in.

  A gray-haired guy with an anchor tattooed to his left arm looked up. "Sit, Mister Hughes. I'm Captain Lundquist."

  "Is she all right?"

  "What is she?"

  "Cheeliol is new in town," I said, wondering how much I could tell this guy even if I knew more.

  "We found her tearing up trees in city park a couple of hours ago. Two of my officers are in the hospital and another one has a cut over his forehead."

  I shrugged. "I guess you interrupted her breakfast."

  Lundquist looked at me. "I have to report this to some higher authorities."

  I gulped. Cheeliol was in bigger trouble than just misdemeanor foraging. "Can I see her?"

  The silence told me all I needed to know. Others were on their way.

  Welcome to Earth, Cheeliol.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jill sat up and stretched. Her headset had put her to sleep. Even when she isn't awake, she's working. Somehow, these folks had put together a decent process for learning languages. In this case, Ukrainian. I guess she plans to visit Kiev.

  "I have to get back to the ship," she said. "Let's go someplace soon and get a new couch. This one is awful."

  I looked down at Klinger, who was asleep on the floor. "Blame him."

  "You could house-train him."

  "He's a dachshund! Anyway, what's your hurry?" I didn't have to ask that question. Jill has a hectic schedule. On Thursday, she flies to Houston for another meeting with the space agencies. She's only been there five times since December.

  I have no idea what she learns, or teaches. The entire concept has me mesmerized. I just fill out forms and answer the mail.

  Tons of it.

  Fan letters, special requests, surveys, invitations to television talk shows, university gatherings. It's a full-time job.

  I watched Jill pour herself into the winter parka. The temperature outside was just above freezing. To her, it was hell. To Klinger, it was a pecker nightmare.

  "It's snowing," she muttered as she opened the front door.

  "It's winter," I said. "Want me to walk you to your escape hatch?"

  "What on earth are you talking about?"

  "Is it on earth?"

  She smiled and zipped up her parka, pulled the hood over her head and struggled to get her gloves on. "Help me zip up my boots."

  "You could have done that before you put on your gloves."

  She smacked me on the side of the head. "Zip them up, Jay."

  I wasn't ready for a fight.

  She disappeared around the house, toward the alley, toward a place she always goes when she ... goes.

  I've followed her, even gauged her footprints in the snow. Somewhere, near the sycamore tree, the trail gets hazy. If she has a ship parked in the neighborhood, it's a small one.

  My guess is she gets "lifted" onto it somehow. Either that, or she has a trap door. I try to watch her expressions when I use the term, but I get noplace.

  Someday, she says. Someday.

  I filtered through the mail, still debating on whether to accept the Letterman program. I had become the space woman's spokesman, not quite a marketable product in my own right, but the doorway to what everyone else wanted ... profit.

  One company offered to produce a line of fragrances that Jill could promote. Movies were in the future, I was told.

  To most of it, we said no. Jill didn't have time to become a consumer icon and I didn't have the stomach for it. The $5,000 fee we'd established for a guest lecture went into an account for her. It was money she never intended to spend.

  By now, she was worth about sixty grand.

  Not bad for six months of being green.

  I chuckled to myself when I thought about my banter with the folks at the door. Performing oral sex on her is a step up from my official title: human liaison.

  The answering machine tape also fills up fast. Jill's sudden "illness" had caused a thread of panic along piss-vial row. Will she be in Tuesday? Is she all right? Is there a threat of contamination? Have you heard from the others?

  Yes, yes, no, no, maybe, wouldn't you like to know? Yeah, she's good. Mean, green and the best damned piece of ass in the Milky Way.

  And Klinger likes her.

  I hit the reset button on the machine and replaced the message tape with one that said: SHE AIN'T HERE.

  And could somebody, anybody, explain to me just how the Immigration and Naturalization Service has determined that Jill is living in the United States illegally?

  I tossed that letter onto the "stupid letters" pile and opened the blue one from the National Institutes of Health.

  Confirmation of the check for two grand. Jill had donated a drop of plasma.

  The term "blood money" does take on a new connotation.

  The other exciting offering of the day was my opportunity to join the music club, buy only one CD at regular prices and get eighty more ... free. I made a mental note to ask Jill about that. The letter said it was my last chance to take advantage of this mighty offer.

  I tossed the three extortion letters and five death threats onto the "hate mail" pile to be delivered to the authorities. Routine day for that.

  And in the box next to the table, I flipped the eleven fan mail letters. Jill said she'd read them eventually. So far, she had no grasp of the concept.

  The beeper went off at eleven, as usual. Sometimes, she doesn't want to chat.

  "Kawee-na-cho."

  I love you too, baby. Stay out of trouble.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  She is to trouble what Klinger is to couches.

  Once I realized she wasn't your standard fuck-em-and-forget-em babe, well ... it started with storm doors and peaked three days into our relationship.

  There I sat, staring back at this ex-Marine police captain, who said only what he wanted to say and that, only for emphasis.

  He handed me the police report. In a shaky script, it went on to say the "subject became beliggerant when asked to move away from the trees." Isn't belligerent spelled with two L's? Yep, they had her color right. Green. "Subject assaulted officers with the branch of a tree."

  "She was probably just scared," I told Captain Lundquist.

  "What is it?"

  "Green woman."

  "She ain't human."

  I nodded.

  "You're in serious trouble, Mister Hughes."

  "Why? I didn't beat up a woman and drag her off to jail in the middle of the night."

  "Harboring an alien, breaching national security. There are a lot of questions here."

  "May I see her?"

  He shook his head. "She's dangerous."

  "She ain't harmless, but she ain't dangerous."

  "She live with you?" Lundquist spun his pen in the air and dropped it on the way down.

  "No."

  "She come here from another planet?"

  "She said she did. What do you think?" I was feeling warm. I also wanted to measure my words. It was clear Lundquist had called in some heavyweights. I also still had to deal with the matter of Cheeliol having apparently disabled at least two police officers. "Let me see her or let me call her a lawyer."


  "Hughes, tell me what you know!"

  "I know nothing!"

  "She kept calling your name in the middle of all the jibberish. Why'd she do that, Hughes?"

  "Maybe she wants to see me."

  "In a few hours, after the feds get here."

  I coughed. The feds. Here comes hell.

  Lundquist interrupted our chat for a phone call. He got up. "Follow me."

  I followed the burly guy down a hallway, past a few nondescript offices, out a door, down a corridor and into what I assumed was the cellhouse. In the distance, I could hear yelling and banging.

  "Cheeliol!"

  "Heeeeeeee-yow!"

  Through a set of doors, down another hallway ... there she stood, in the corner of a cell about eight feet by six feet, panting. Her eyes were glazed over. She was in a rage.

  "Get back!" The little guard was pounding on the bars with his night stick.

  "Cheeliol," I said more in the form of a plea than a command, "relax."

  "Jay, help me."

  "So," Lundquist said at the cell, "she does speak English."

  "Of course I speak English!"

  "Cheeliol, calm down. We'll get you out of this." I had no clue if I could do that, but she was alive and in apparent good health. "I won't ask what happened. I heard enough."

  "They put handcuffs on me and kicked me," she said. "Now, this man wants to throw cold water on me."

  "It's a cup of water," the little man said. "I was just offering her a drink and she started screaming in some weird language."

  "She's afraid," I said. I looked at Lundquist, whose face had turned to rubber. "Let me in."

  "Not until we finish our report."

  "What report? You have it. The feds will be here soon and fuck everything up. At least, let me calm her down."

  "She'll kill you."

  I laughed. "What she might make me do would be more fun to watch."

  Lundquist stalked the area in front of the cell. He looked at the little guard, who looked at me. "I ain't gonna go there."

  "Just let me in. Unlock it, please."

  The little man coughed and looked at Lundquist, who nodded affirmation. He opened the door. "Stay back!"

  Cheeliol stayed back and rushed for me when I entered. Our embrace was convincing.

  "You're in for some interesting times," I said, patting her head and kissing her forehead.

  "You a space alien?" the little guy asked.

  Cheeliol stared at him. "Don't call me an alien!"

  I rubbed her shoulders and tried to calm her. "Please be quiet. Relax. You won't be hurt but there are a lot of questions."

  She looked at me as if that was the biggest question. "What have I done?"

  "Eating trees on public property."

  "I don't understand."

  "You will. I have to go. I'll see if I can get you some more comfortable arrangements ... if you promise not to kill anybody."

  "I never tried to kill anyone. I was just taking some food."

  Lundquist cleared his throat. "Lady, that's not what our report said."

  I turned to Lundquist. "There's a lot you don't understand. Don't make it worse by terrorizing her."

  "Hughes, come out of there. She stays in custody, right where she is. Can I get you anything, lady?"

  "My name is Cheeliol."

  Lundquist motioned me from the cell and we waited as it clanked shut.

  "I'll get you out," I said. "I hope."

  The three of us said nothing on the way back toward Lundquist's office. I wasn't going to tip my hand on anything, and the two of them seemed more frightened than frazzled. Having a space alien locked up in your jail isn't standard fare in Coffee Creek.

  Neither is the onslaught of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NORAD, the CIA, the FBI, the Hazmat team and a bevy of clerks, bottlenecks, pencil-pushers and the local newspaper.

  Of the lot, the least predictable was the local newspaper.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I was not prepared to face the icy day. Line seven had betrayed my intellect and the phone call at a little past eight confirmed that I should have taken the job at the Tibetan monastery when it was offered.

  "Mister Hughes, this is Francine."

  Francine, the wart-face.

  "You want me to fill out a report, I suppose."

  "This is a new development. Can you come in around ten?"

  "Why don't you just ask Jill?"

  "We have others working on that. I'd like to get your personal opinions, if you don't mind."

  I twirled the phone cord. Personal opinions about what it was like to unravel a woman four times in the space of four hours. I needed to brush up on my moo-pa, and in a hurry.

  I got dressed, shoved down a roll and a cup of coffee and headed out into the six inches of new snow. Winter sucks and being called out into it to discuss oral sex with a wart-face makes it even worse.

  I'd have discussed the issue with Tammy, the other piss-vial lab technician.

  Piss-vial operations in Coffee Creek are catch-as-catch-can. They've sprung up like weeds in the past six months, all of them designed to do one thing: use Jill.

  Some of them even have nifty names, like Cheeliol Street. I never go there and since nobody calls her Cheeliol anymore, who cares what they do there? I think Jill told me it was a daycare center for the piss-vial people's brats.

  I pulled into the parking lot a little past ten, cussed at them for having plowed the snow into a big pile in the middle of the lot and looked for Number Five.

  I tapped on the glass wall and a rough-looking woman about thirty looked up. "Hi, Jay."

  She knew me.

  Who didn't?

  She pointed to the left and I went that way. I was here to discuss, in apparent detail, ways of the flesh. The women wandering around in white jackets all gave me the once-over, then scurried here and there. Jill was somewhere in one of these rooms, I supposed. Fat chance I'd see her.

  "Jay," the woman said.

  I turned. "Hi, Tammy. Francine called and wanted to see me."

  "She's been called into a meeting. I guess I get to deal with you."

  Well, if you have to talk about sex, Tammy's your gal. She's petite, blonde, cute dimples, nice little set of peaches, pretty eyes. In another world, I'd screw her lights out. Wait, which world was I on?

  Infidelity is one thing with a woman. I don't even want to guess what the consequences would be if it happened to Jill.

  Come to think of it, we hadn't even discussed the issue. Maybe that would come up now.

  "Walk this way."

  "I can't. My butt's not that cute."

  "Fake it." She turned into a little office that had a desk, two chairs, a lamp and a row of filing cabinets.

  "I can't believe this entire complex is filled with stuff just about Jill," I said, finding one of the fake leather chairs and plopping down like I owned it. Klinger would have a field day with this monster.

  Rubber rat, goodbye.

  Tammy offered me a sexy smile.

  "Francine seemed all bonkers about this," I said. "I can't believe something else came up."

  "When it deals with money, it's important," Tammy said. She sat behind the desk. "Mind if I turn this on?"

  "If you want to tape it, go ahead. How brutally honest do I get to be?"

  "How open are you about the issue?"

  I guessed her at twenty-five. She seemed sweet and innocent but, on the other hand, she was a piss-vial manager. Anything I threw at her, she deserved. "At last report, somebody here wanted my input on the matter of having done a number on my extraterrestrial girlfriend's vagina. Is that still part of the topic?"

  Tammy nodded. She didn't turn red.

  "You want me to tell what I did or what reactions I experienced?"

  "Everything."

  I smiled at her. Hey, Jay ... let's play a game. "Well, she sat on top of me and let me suck her tits ... like ... this." I puckered and ran my tongue around my lips. "I got her nipples all
hard. She liked that."

  Tammy sat back and rocked in her chair. She looked official considering she was only a substitute for Francine. Or was she?

  "Anyway, I moved her back and started nibbling on her cleavage, down and ... you know ... in between her tits." I ran my tongue around my lips again and wiggled it for Tammy's inspection.

  "Yeah."

  "I sucked on her belly button. You ever have anybody do that to you, Tammy? No? A lot of women say that drives them wild. Me, I just suck on it and get it all full of saliva, then lick it out. Then, after I did that ... you OK here? ... I started kissing on her fuzzies. She has a real soft beaver pelt. You know what a pelt is, right, Tam?"

  "I know, I know ... go on!" She rocked again in her chair, moving her hands along the edge of the desk.

  "Anyhow, I like to chew on the hairs a little, lift them up with my teeth ... like so." I gritted my teeth for effect and ran my tongue across my lips again. "Then, I move in for the kill. Slow, at first ... like, just kiss it and run my tongue around the edges. Jill seems to like that part the best."

  "I bet." Tammy was breathing a little harder now, not that I noticed. Her hands were moving along the edge of the desk a little faster, though.

  "If a guy does a chick right, and I'm good at it ... he finds the sweet spot right away ... but he doesn't act on it. Just lets her know he knows where it is. It makes her edgy ... like, when's he gonna really start licking? With her, I know right where it is ... and I tease the hell out of it. Nibble at it, move away ... in and out, off and on ... just enough to drive her bananas."

  "Does she get real, like ... wet?" Tammy's hands were moving on and off the desk now. She was touching herself in some places I couldn't quite see.

  "Oh, not too wet ... just damp ... I mostly use my tongue to get her wet ... after I start eating her for real, that is. Once I get my tongue on that sweet spot, I just rock back and forth on it ... slow, slow ... easy ... back off, then suck on it ... you know the feeling, right?"

  She nodded. Her hand was in her lap now.

  "You gettin' hot, Tammy?"

  "Yeah."

  "Want me to change the subject?"

  "No ... no ... g-g-o on."

  "Anyhow, when I eat Jill, as I do most women, I try to get her clit real hard and stiff ... then just touch the edge of it with my tongue. I never actually lick it real hard, mostly just ... get her ... so fuckin' crazy ... I like to make it last a long time. Ever have that happen, Tammy?"