by Tom Upton
We were flying down the street so fast that even though the four-wheel drive was engaged, the four by four kept slipping on the icy pavement, threatening to spin out.
“You think they’ll chase us?” Eliza asked.
“I’m pretty sure that clacking noise it made was a distress alarm, but there’s no telling if any others heard it,” I said.
“Because we’d be really easy to track, with our headlights being the only thing in the dark. We’d stand out like a sore thumb. And we can’t turn them off, no way-- we’d be running blind.”
I tried to calm myself, at least enough to reason things out. “I don’t think they’ll follow, even if they heard the alarm and knew what was happening.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I wouldn’t make much sense for them to come after us. We’re only so much value in chemicals. They know we have a weapon, and can hurt them. There are just too many other things available for them to salvage-- steel, copper, tin, aluminum-- from the buildings, the streets, the cars, and a lot of other things that don’t shoot back. No, I’m pretty sure we’re safe. It just wouldn’t be worth their while to chase us down.”
“All right, good, that makes sense,” Eliza said, as if to herself, as if trying to calm herself down. “Geez, did you see the size of that thing? There’s never been a foot big enough to step on that sucker…. Geez, the gun was loud; my ears are still ringing. Am I talking too loud? Are you saying something? I’m not really hearing too well….Hello?”
“Yeah, I was just thinking.”
“Thank God, for a second, I thought I went deaf. So you think it’s safe?”
“Yeah, and the farther we get from the downtown area, the better. I hope we have everything we need, because there’s no way we can go back. They probably know we’re here now. They’ll be watching now.”
Feeling more secure, Eliza reduced speed. “It’s crazy,” she said, then, “I know we’re safe-- I really believe it-- but my heart is still beating so hard it feels like my ribs are going to crack.”
“Me, too. It’s the adrenalin,” I told her.
“Whatever it is, I’m feeling so pumped up. It’s not a bad feeling, though-- not at all.”
“No, it’s not,” I agreed.
There was a pause, and then we both, at the same moment, broke out in giddy laughter.
“All right, I’m laughing and I don’t even know why,” she said.
“Happy to be alive, maybe,” I suggested.
“Yeah, that’s it. I feel so alive. Maybe you always take it for granted, until you have a close call. I hope I never stop feeling this way,” she said, and paused thoughtfully before she asked again, “You sure we’re safe now.”
“Yeah, positive.”
She slowed down, then, and pulled over to the curb.
“What are you doing?” I asked, wondering whether something was wrong. Did we have a flat tire or run out of gas or what?
“Shut up,” she said. She said it in a forceful yet not unkind way.
She shut off the headlights and wipers, and slipped the gearshift into park. It was pitch dark in the car now, and the snow quickly began to blot out the window. I heard her pull down the long zipper of her snowsuit. Her hand searched in the dark to find mine. When she grabbed it, she pulled it toward her and laid it flat on her breastbone. “You feel that, Travis? Feels like my hearts going to break right out of my chest.” It was true; I felt the heavy thudding beneath my palm. She shoved my hand away. She stirred in the darkness as the motor idled and the heater hummed and warmed the windshield enough to melt the falling snow. I couldn’t see exactly what she was doing; I thought she was resettling into her seat, getting ready shift in gear and continue home. Then she lunged out of the driver’s seat at me. I was startled at first. The move seemed so abrupt and violent that I didn’t know what to think. She had her arm round my neck, as though trying to get me in a headlock, and our faces were pressed together. It took a moment for me to realize she was kissing me. She wasn’t kissing me on the mouth, though, but just under my eye, right aside my nose, as though she’d aimed and missed in the dark. When she corrected the mistake, and her lips found mine, she was relentless. It felt as though she was intent on setting a new record for the world’s longest kiss. Even as she climbed over the gearshift, so that she could straddle my legs and sit in my lap facing me, she wouldn’t take her lips off mine. I realized, then, that she had slipped out of her snowsuit and boots. She was just wearing her shorts and her feet were bare. My hand naturally came to rest on her thigh. Her skin felt hot, as if she was running a fever. When she finally pulled back some, I could hear her release a shuttering breath. Her hands slipped forward, and gently held my face.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be doing this now,” I told her.
“Oh, Travis, don’t think,” she murmured. “Please don’t think-- not now. In fact, don’t even talk.”
Her hand sneaked down, then, and unzipped my snowsuit. She reached inside and ran her hand across my chest. She pressed herself against me. I felt the warmth of her body, and her head dipped down to nuzzle my neck. She blew her warm, quivering breath in my ear, and tingles ran through my entire body. I was trying really hard not to think about things, about what a truly awful idea it was for us to be doing this right now. I found my reasoning beginning to drift away, like an abandoned beach ball going out on the tide. Even when I had some small grasp on better judgment, I couldn’t convince myself that what we were doing was entirely wrong. It all seemed so natural, so… fated-- that was it-- fated; it was all as though it was meant to be and could be no other way, as though it had already happened and was happening again and there was no way to stop it because fate had carved it all in stone…. Her head slipped down and she started to do something to my neck; I couldn’t tell whether she was kissing it, or licking it, or softly sucking it. She worked her way down and round to my throat, and it finally happened: I reached a point where I wasn’t thinking about a thing, nothing at all, not that the world was all messed up, nothing that there might be alien around looking to kill us, nothing. All there was, was us and how we felt, and everything else was a blur.
***********
The problem with truly and completely not thinking while something occurs is that afterward you cannot remember everything in great detail. I couldn’t, for instance, remember just how I got my snowsuit off. In the cramped quarters of the four by four, it couldn’t have been easy, but I could only imagine contorting to pull my arms out of the thick, bulky sleeves. The only thing I knew for sure was that we’d had sex. The actions involved in accomplishing this feat-- monumental for a guy my age under any circumstances-- remained vague and disjoined in my mind. Thankfully I couldn’t recall the awkward moments, and there must have been a few. I did retain the more salient impressions of the experience. For one thing, I was an amazed at how quickly it had been over. I’m sure that in actuality, it had last longer, but it just hadn’t seemed that way. I remembered at one point, right in the middle of the event, that I had suddenly felt funny-- I mean totally ridiculous. The act of intercourse had always seemed grand and solemn-- imagination and a healthy flow of hormones making the idea of sex sublime-- but I had suddenly been struck by the absurdity of what you have to do physically to accomplish the feat. At that moment, I was probably very lucky that I didn’t give in to the urge to laugh aloud, because, without a doubt, Eliza would have taken it the wrong way and gone homicidal on me. Another thing that I was surprised to discover was the degree of actual pain relating to the act. I found that downright disturbing. I had to keep assuring myself that it was normal because it had been our first time and all. But still there lingered doubts in my mind, doubts that would lead me to consider seriously the dismal possibility that maybe we had not done it right. The one thing of which I was absolutely certain was that I really did love her. I had never loved a girl before, and so I hadn’t been sure. Maybe I hadn’t even wanted to admit it was true. But now I knew
. It had nothing to do with the sex itself, really, but maybe with freeing myself, allowing myself to feel without the constraint of reasoning.
After we finished and were again dressed, with Eliza back behind the wheel, we sat quietly in the dark for a long while. Neither of us said a word, and I wondered what she was thinking. Then she made a choking sound, followed by a muted sniffle. When I realized she was crying, I got a sick feeling in my stomach. I dreaded the notion that what we’d done was making her sad.
“It’s not like that, Travis,” she said, and I really believed that she’d read my mind. “Sometimes people cry because they’re happy, you now. Oh, you wouldn’t ever understand. You’re a guy. Guys are different. After something like this, a guy goes around feeling indestructible. He gets together with his friends and mouths off, and then they all toss a football around and butt heads together or something. Girls never feel indestructible. They just feel loved. They feel accepted, and if you’ve been alone for a long time, it’s quite a relief to feel that way. Sometimes people cry when they’re relieved, too.” She turned on the headlights and wipers, then, and I could see her vaguely by the dim light of the speedometer. She was looking straightforward at the wipers as they gradually wore away the blackness of the snow that had accumulated on the windshield. She kept staring ahead, as though she was afraid to look at me. “I can’t look at you,” she said then, again with the mind reading. “Everything is always written on your face-- you never have to say a word-- and I don’t want to see what’s there if it’s not good.”
“You have to look at me sooner or later,” I said.
“Do I? Yeah, I suppose I do. At least tell me, tell me so I know what to expect.”
“We’re good,” I said simply.
“For real?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Then we should go home.”
She shifted into drive, and pulled the four by four into the street, its tires crushing on the fresh layer of snow. She drove slowly as though we had all the time in the world.
“I’m just thinking,” she said. “Do you think we could ever have a normal life?”
“What do you mean?”
“Every which way you look at things, we’re headed toward weirdness. Now we’re trapped in weirdness, big time. If we can’t set things straight, we could be here forever. We’ll end up being like Adam and Eve. We’ll have to repopulate the world. How does that work, anyway? I’ve never understood that. We’ll have kids, and then what? How does it go from there without us running the risk of having grandchildren with two heads or webbed feet? The more I think about it, the more I think, Ewe! But then if we do set everything right, we’re back to the beginning, where it looks like we will never meet in the first place. I couldn’t stand that-- especially now. I think I’d rather die, really, than return to a life where I never meet you, never know you even exist. You’re not saying anything, which really makes me nervous. What do you think?”
“I think you think too much,” I said.
She burst out laughing, that wonderful gurgling laugh. “Great,” she said, “I finally get him to stop thinking, and now look at him. Terrific!”
When we turned into the driveway, I could see the front door was open. Doc was standing behind the screen door, a dark figure with its fists on his hips, its head tilting slightly as it watched us moved up the driveway and toward the side of the house. I couldn’t say for sure how long we had been gone. Probably longer than it had seemed. Doc had probably been pacing floors, wondering whether we had broken down or run out of gas, and were stranded or frozen in a bank of sludgy snow. I really couldn’t say at the moment that I had any sympathy for him, for the worrying we had put him through. My opinion of him as a human being was ever changing. He was a decent enough guy, sure, but on the other hand, if it hadn’t been for his curiosity and arrogant disregard of the possible dangers of fiddling with the artifact, the world would now be intact and everyone would be where they ought to be and doing what they ought to be doing. I hardly knew what to say to him now, and looked at him with the sort of pity reserved for young children who do wrong, get punished, but never quite understand why.
As we walked round to the front door, I dreaded facing Doc. It wasn’t that he would complain about our prolonged absence, or that he would harp at us how lucky we were to return-- especially after we informed him of the presence of aliens. It was also because I had to look him in the eye, those dull dark eyes, with the secret knowledge that while we’d been away, I had defiled his daughter. It wasn’t that I was guilty about what Eliza and I had done-- and actually, when you get down to it, she had done as much, if not more, defiling than I had-- but rather that it all complicated my ability to deal with Doc on the simplest of levels. Every time I spoke to him now, I would always wonder if he knew, or even suspected what we had done.
We trudged up the front stairs, and Doc was already swinging open the screen door for us. He was frowning and pursing his lips, and when he got a good look us in the brightly lighted living room, he shrieked, “My God, what have you two been up to?”
The first thought to cross my mind was that he, like his daughter, had suddenly acquired the ability to read my mind.
“You should see yourselves,” he went on, to my relief. “It looks like you’ve been wallowing in crude oil.”
I looked at Eliza under the bright light, and sure enough, her snowsuit was badly stained with black gunk. She had smeared splotches of soot on her face, on the bridge and side of her nose, across her forehead, on her cheek and chin. She looked as though she’d been sweeping chimneys for weeks without the benefit of a bath. There were no mirrors in the room, but I knew I had to look even filthier; I had been outside in the dark snow more often than she, and probably most of the dirt now on her had rub off me while we’d been intimate.
“Well, I hope you got everything you need,” he grumbled at me. “I’m just glad to see you made it back home,” he added, although he seemed anything but relieved. “Let me go back down and monitor the radio. I’m up here waiting on you two to get back, and the whole while I’m wondering if I’m missing something.” He started to leave, and then stopped abruptly, and again gave us the once over. “And, please, the two of you, go upstairs and hit the shower. You look awful. You might as well toss those snowsuits; I doubt that junk will wash out.”
While he was stomping down the basement stairs, we headed upstairs. My legs felt achy and weak as I climbed the carpeted stairs behind Eliza. She was already slipping her arms out of her snowsuit. She had it half off before we reached the hallway. In the bathroom, she turned on the light, and kicked off her boots, which were zipped down, and stepped out of the snowsuit. She kicked everything into the corner.
“Take your suit off, and just pile it on top of mine. I’ll bag it later, so that junk doesn’t start rub off all over the place. Doc deplores a dirty house,” she said, reaching into the shower to turn on the water, which came out of the faucet in a steady hard stream. It wouldn’t take long for the bathroom to start steaming up pretty good. “I take it you’d rather have a hot shower, since there’s no reason for you to take a cold one,” she said, grinning. “Go ahead, jump in,” she said. “I’m going to find a garbage bag and this soap Doc has that makes it easier to get off grease and oil. I think he keeps it in the garage.”
After she left, I got undressed and stepped into the shower, sliding shut the door whose pebbled glass was adorned with pictures of colorful butterflies. The water pounded my body and I found it so relaxing that I would probably be lucky if I didn’t doze off standing up. I had splotches of back oily stuff all over-- on my hands, arms, chest… everywhere-- even in places that defied logic, and made me wonder, How did that get there? No matter how hard I scrubbed, the black gunk stubbornly clung to my skin. It only wore off gradually, so gradually it probably would take hours to get it all off. I hoped the soap Eliza had mentioned would work better, or else I was going to be dirty for a long time.
She finally retur
ned, and I could see her distorted form through the shower door, as she bagged the grimy snowsuits. When she had finished tying the bag, she turned to the shower, and called over the hiss of the water, “Here, bubba, try this.” She tossed a plastic bottle over the door. I didn’t have a chance to catch it, and it conked me in the side of the head, and then fell and landed with a wet clunk in the tub. I picked it up, and squeezed some of the soft soap into my hand. It turned out to cut right through the black stuff, which seemed to dissolve, and turned the water black as it rushed down the drain. Whatever the black stuff was, the soap was doing I great job on it. While I washed, wondering if I could use the soap on my hair, I wasn’t really paying attention to what Eliza was doing, so I was somewhat startled when the shower door shot open. She stepped into the shower so naturally it seemed bizarre. To me showering had always been a solitary activity, one that you could perform in peace and quiet and contemplate whatever was troubling you at the moment. If nothing was troubling you, then you could just meditate, clearing your mind of everything. Now, with a naked female standing in front of me, I had to consider refining the routine.
“Hand me that soap,” Eliza said, and when I did, she looked up at me and laughed. “Don’t look so shocked, bubba. I’ve never been shy, you know. It’s just not in me. Besides, we’ve already had sex; you might as well see what you had sex with. You can even gawk if you like-- it won’t bother me at all. I don’t think there’s anything shameful about the human body, do you?” she asked, rubbing the soap over her shoulder and neck. She passed the bottle of soap to me. “Do me a favor, will you? Spooge some of this on my back, and lather it up.” At that moment, I thought I was the luckiest guy in the world-- which, considering Doc and I were probably the only two guys, didn’t seem to mean much. I suddenly remembered when Raffles and I had been up in the tree house-- it seemed a million years ago-- and he accused me of spying on Eliza as she lathered up in the shower. I wondered what Raffles would think now, if he could see me. Frankly I sort of missed the guy, annoying as he could be. When I tried to picture him, I couldn’t even see his face. I was alarmed to realize I couldn’t even remember his first name. It was Richard or Russell or something, but I’d always called him plain Raffles. I really wished that he was here now-- not here in the shower-- but just in this reality. I was willing to bet that he could solve everything, and the world would be back to normal in no time.