The Euclid house had always had a Common Address Book. It was not the yellow pages, but an old, thick, leather bound book, used for decades to keep track of everyone the family met with, knew or should have known.
He looked her up in the address book and dialed.
And it rang and rang,
and never stopped ringing,
so he clunked the phone,
and hung up.
Chapter Thirty
Laura
With no way of sharing what happened to him with anyone without being mocked and subsequently ridiculed, Frank went back to teaching and grading papers.
Telegraph Avenue.
Trepid and wild, the street always swarmed with unwashed hippies, peace and just about every culture, ever mixed into one big mess. One night, several weeks after, when he was walking down it to procure his dinner, a beggar on the street worked to try and deserve his spare change.
The sign that first appeared to read
WE COME IN PEACE
Actually said
WELCOME IN PEACE
This begged the question of how many others were aware of the presence of extraterrestrials who have lived in the core of this planet.
A seemingly complex civilization.
Cogs inside Frank’s head turned and turned until they clicked; another cog joined the other two.
He practically became a squid himself!
With getting absolutely nowhere near the meaning of the gray’s manipulation, the ability to get outside his body stopped working a few weeks later, over a mere three-day period.
It was then just a matter of time until he wondered whether he’d ever been outside his body at all in the first place, or whether it was some sort of psychosis, or even a vivid lucid dream.
Life had retuned back to the way it was but Frank didn’t care. He was obsessed with it.
His face had now almost permanently assumed the look of concentrated contemplation. Every day was, for the most part, addled with suspicion and odd behavior. His brain was basically really frying.
The human could not keep up with the gray, and now that he’d been shown a new way of thinking, this is exactly what it’ll do. And he knew it.
Several uneventful weeks later, after one of the first dreamless nights since everything happened, Frank slowly woke up one Thursday afternoon. He was in the habit of staying up late at nights, to record everything he was doing in as much detail as he could recall, which happened to be an awful lot. Even though he only wrote what he could say for certain and not how it may have seemed and impressions, that was enough to basically kill his career.
Being in the lab with Allen and Steve was less friendly. It was sterile. Even hanging out with Steve after work didn’t help him from being unable to stop thinking about it. The obsession became a depression and Frank fell out of touch with reality, and subsequently, people.
Several long weeks passed this way.
Frank meditated on the mediocrity of the human existence on earth.
Christmas eve was not at all the self-indulgent time of the year that Frank has gotten used to over the years. Even though he had money to spend on presents, even for himself, he no longer saw the point.
Outside, it was nippy and cold and probably about to rain soon.
Screw everything today. he thought.
He barely ever spoke anymore.
His life was all inside his head now.
Come the afternoon of Chrismas eve,
a food shortage at the Euclid avenue house.
He had nobody to share Christmas with, but that was his own doing. Both Steve and Allen invited him over for Christmas. Instead, it was easy enough to drag the TV in front of his bed and watch a marathon of holiday TV programming.
In the afternoon he got hungry and decided to walk to get some food and to stretch his legs.
The birds outside all screamed and shouted like angry hockey fans at the season finals.
The collective animalia tapped into its primal instincts. They were out for blood.
It was a wonderful sound, agitated and lively, even if it was just a tad too loud.
Oxford street was seasonally decorated as usual this time of year and provied a visual marvel, one of the few californian indications that Christmas is indeed coming. Frank walked down the street it to get to Telegraph Ave. The moment he turned on to Telegraph, he ran into Laura.
Laura from Conville he’d just tried to call.
“What a coincidence!” they said simultaneously.
Whether it was just circumstance of whether those ‘messengers’ responsible for the quality of his life so much had given him a break, or even a reward- it did not matter. He was cool with it.
She knocked the wind out of him with her umbrella and knocked him down.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” Laura said before she realized she bumped into Frank.
It was still her.
The very same Laura he used to escape Chida’s smoke-filled living room to play with many years ago. Back then they’d spend only a few hours together, mostly talking about how boring their lives were, at least to Frank, but that was almost two decades ago.
“What a surprise!” they said simultaneously,
Frank from the ground below.
“It’s lovely to see you.” She said, smiling ear to ear as Frank picked up his book from the ground.
Frank’s feathers got all ruffled and was slightly lost for words.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, looking totally perfect.
Last time he’d seen her he was a few inches shorter than she was.
There must have been a few sudden growth spurts that she must have missed.
She was as he remembered, but behind Laura’s eyes, a woman had taken the place of the girl.
Butterflies returned to his stomach in thousands, their wings fluttering against the wall of his stomach from the inside. Kinda nauseating.
It was a feeling he hadn't truly had in almost two decades; the closest he came was caused by indigestion and too much whiskey, or various combinations of the two. Something to do with whiskey.
Not even the presence of the fairer gender, despite a few failed attempts.
“I’m up over at Lawrence Labs,” she started when Frank was lost for all words.
“We should catch up.” She said. Fortunately, today Frank was able to take hints.
Her aura radiated a soft yellow hue.
“How about now? I was going to Telegraph to get dinner, if you wanna…”
Perfect.
That evening nothing was left unsaid.
The first place they could sit down in was a small down-to-earth restaurant on the corner of Oxford and Channing. They entered without hesitating or looking at the menu and sat down, despite the large “please wait to be seated” sign.
The restaurant was mostly empty. It was an undiscovered gem because it was tucked away several streets away from the busy district, but they served good salads, wine and cheese.
Most of their wine was store bought, but all the bottles were handpicked by the owner;
a kind wino or ‘kindo’ as Frank put it in conversation several glasses of good red wine.
“What are you really doing here?” he finally inquired, hoping to hear that she’s there to stay.
She was already a little drunk and hid behind her glass, one eye peeking out from between her hair.
“Ocean Conservation.”
Frank’s face lit up, and she kept on going.
“They tell me you’re quite the authority around here.
He didn’t need to speak, he would just adore.
“I heard someone refer to you as a ‘Squid Sheriff’. What does that mean?”
Frank skipped over to the compliment and hadn’t realized why the question was particularly swaying. “I have a nickname on campus?”
Everything was beautiful about her, whether the wine had taken its effect or not.
She had him at
hello.
When her eyelashes batted like the wings of doves, everything else went dark.
Their flutter produced rainbows.
He could almost feel the air move by them, their presence so smooth that he caught himself making up a proposal speech. By the time dinner was over and they almost caught up on each other’s happenings he was convinced. This wasn’t a coincidence.
They got to Frank’s car; put their seat belts on. Suddenly, the car rolled back quickly and then stopped. Nervous a and giggling, Frank pulled the car out and stopped, and admitting that he is too drunk to drive, he reared back into the spot.
Laura was just as lit. They laughed about it the rest of the way on the taxi up to Frank’s house to drink more wine and talk about everything. The cab driver’s car was shaking severely and on every other corner he opened his door, engine on, to spit out a gob of whatever mucus he currently had in his mouth. Delicious. After a while, Frank asked the driver to take him to the nearest corner, as with the dying man as the driver, they were convinced they should not die that night.
They gave the guy ten bucks and because they didn’t want to contract leprosy, didn’t even stick around for the change. They had a few good long blocks up the hill to get to Frank’s, but the wine from earlier kept them warm all the way there.
For the first time in a long time he felt like he wasn’t alone. She was THE woman of his dreams.
Could this really be?
Frank was more of a hard alcohol person of late, so the age-old red wines he got as ‘thank you’s and congratulatory gifts for various published papers and grants were in the downstairs kitchen.
If there ever was a time to break them out, it was now.
Now was the time, if ever.
He broke out the best he could find,
A 1978 Bordeaux. Someone must have spent a small fortune on this bottle.
Second glass of wine in, when they were having tremendous fun talking about how boring their lives were, Frank ran into an issue, and it wasn’t that his life wasn’t boring. His etheric body began to displace from his physical involuntarily.
At time he could see himself from behind and the side. The drinking had gone to his head and not in a good way whatsoever.
It left Frank startled and confused and Laura quickly took notice.
“What’s up Frank?” she said, half-worried. It took him several seconds to wobble back into himself and muster the inspiration to answer.
“Hey, sorry.” he said, appearing flustered.
“The vino working on you that well?”
“It would appear.” he said nonchalantly.
There was no easy way to explain what he was experiencing, not to mention how it all came about and that he can leave his body at will, well, almost.
“Let’s get you to bed.” she said when his head dropped as he was falling asleep.
There was nothing to argue with.
She walked upstairs with him. When she sheepishly emerged from his bathroom in his dinosaur pattern pajamas he bought but never wore, he already lied in bed.
She giggled and sat on the bed beside him.
“I think I saw you a couple of weeks ago.”
“Where?” Frank asked, slightly nervously.
Laura looked straight into his eyes and found exactly what she was looking for.
He could seer etheric body was framed square inside her physical shell.
“In a dream. I just had a deja-vu.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” Frank agreed.
“So how long has it been?” Laura was direct.
“Laura, whatever do you mean?” Frank asked with a male grin on his face, like a big smiling squid.
“No, I mean since we saw each other.”
“It would’ve had to been. . .in the neighborhood of. . .seventeen years.
Not since his brother’s funeral.
Moving her chair to sit closer, she seemed to have floated over like an angel and kissed him long and passionately. There were no lies in the kiss.
Their souls were connected. Apart for almost two decades, they finally found what neither of them knew they were looking for. After making love, they poured more wine and talked until early morning. Laura had started falling asleep midsentence, glass in hand.
Frank took the glass, placed it on the nightstand and looked at her, sleeping, peaceful, the most beautiful creature anytime, anywhere. Time and space.
He couldn’t keep his eyelids open at any cost and too fell into a deep slumber a minute later.
His ethereal body floated mid-air above him and he could continue to watch Laura who’s ethereal body floated beside him, but not looking at him. She was surrounded by enormous flowery-blue aura, like a bright sky, with millions of stars orbiting around her like silver glitter on the ocean. She seemed ecstatic and lively with the non-existent sun reflecting in her eyes.
She was dreaming.
She quickly saw Frank’s etheric energy and responded to it, but it must have looked different, fantastic to her. She might have had special feelings about him, which, if either of them remember, they could talk about in the morning.
He finally had someone he could trust, be with, perhaps live with. Someone to hold on to. He didn’t feel like he needed to particularly think it through, because it felt right.
It had only taken him all of two seconds to figure out where he stood on the matter,
and he’s done that a long time ago that evening.
His family was probably lost forever, and he didn’t want to die alone. He deserved this.
If it won’t work, it won’t work.
If it does, it was meant to work.
Suddenly, Frank felt the family cat brush up against him and felt the presence of his father and recalled a random night where they all sat on the couch watching some throw-away TV show.
What it was did not matter one bit.
There was nothing better than family. Kin. Someone to hold on to.
Laura.
As Laura slept, looking like a million bucks, Frank roamed around the house freely, while his body comfortably rested next to his dream-girl’s in the bed, where for the first time, truly, the bed had been warm. He saw her dreams form above her and could look into them, read their meanings and before he realized, her dreams intersected with his and they dreamt together, but did not know it. For Frank, the dream did not feel lucid. Not anymore. They were together outside, under the old umbrella tree, peeping at a second instance of Frank, who was pouring himself a stiff drink. Laura stopped paying attention and withdrew a small pill bottle and put a single blue blister-packed pill in an envelope Frank handed her. She wrote his address on the label in an unfamiliar hand.
They attached it behind the windshield wiper on his car, parked out front. In addition to the Prussian Blue pill, he also included a small piece of paper that said; “It’ll turn your pee green.”
Which was definitely in his handwriting, but neither him nor Allen ever found it in the envelope. Then he dreamt Laura and how they were in his kitchen and went into his fridge in hazard suits, Laura discovered the frozen puddle of alien and peeled it off the pizza box and into a refrigerated body-organ containment unit. The two then drove through to eastern California, the long way, hidden inside a giant Canopied Truck, toward the desert and right into the Groom Lake station in Nevada. When they arrived, the four tall grays that he remembered meeting earlier stood over him, their stares more frightening than anything. Because the deformed state of one of theirs arrived, they rose their hands in the air and transferred purple energy to recover the soul. The small gray once again hovered by in thin air. Laura watched all of this with fascination, not surprise. She was comfortable with the everything that was going on. Did she know? Then they were in the Groom Lake bunkers, about to get busy.
Then the rest of the dream was either a blur or got too personal to write about politely.
Chapter Thirty-one
The End of All Things
Many
mornings he’d wake up with his head being the ham in the pillow sandwich.
But this morning, Frank was woken up with a corked, half empty wine bottle landing on his head, not breaking. He was completely naked in his warm bed with no clear idea what warranted such a turn of events. On the nightstand, a half-empty glass of wine stood that Laura drank from the night before. She was there and he was just slightly more pleased than confused about it.
The blinds were drawn shut, but it looked like there might have been a gorgeous pink sunrise outside. For the first time in many years, sounds of a familiar voice echoed through the halls of the house in a strangely familiar fashion.
It was Laura, singing and making breakfast downstairs.
It wasn’t all a dream.
Frank sat up,squinted and winced until his eyes adjusted to the light and then sneezed.
At times the house was unforgivingly cold.
This was one of those times.
As fast as he could, he put on the first pair of jeans he saw and a t-shirt. He had company - he couldn’t just leave the bed unmade, so he shook up the duvets, doing a passable job at best.
The aroma of his dad’s favorite african coffee sent Frank all the way down where he didn’t really want to go- memory lane.
He hadn’t made coffee in years.
Unless he somehow managed to have slept through it, she didn’t grind the beans, which meant the coffee will have tasted like the fridge.
Right before Walter disappeared, they ran out and he bought a new bag, ground about twenty years ago. So it was now ‘vintage’ at best.
Halfway down the stairs the zest of the Ethiopian coffee met him with a punch.
“Could you throw more wood on the fire?” he heard Laura say when the stairs creaked beneath him when he headed for the kitchen. He turned on his heel to get to the living room.
A fire had been lit in the fireplace, and the curtains were drawn. As the long-past holiday tradition dictated, he threw a log from the small pile that was arranged on the right side of the hearth. The fire roared and the cracking of the burning wood reverberated through the hall, which was just beginning to reach ‘room temperature’ for the first time in years. Laura had just finished cooking breakfast and the coffee pot’s ‘ready’ light came on.
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