“There’s something sexual about that fear,” Ursula said, “I’ve gotten that same feeling when I was about to have sex.”
“Are we about to have sex?” I said.
“You’ll only fall madly in love with me and be driven insane by your cousin-lover—”
“Ursula, quit. I’ve always been madly in love with you.” I stared at the movie. I felt her take my hand beneath the covers and pull it to her lap, the heat like a fever.
“I tremble, okay?” I said. “My muscles are weak, that’s all.”
“I’m trembling too,” she said. “It’ll never work, will it, we’ll never work?”
I was about to ask her why not when I felt myself getting hard, heard the Sanctus bells chiming in the pleasure center of my brain responding to the one person in the world who I most desired, but there was also an unfamiliar stretching pain as if the growing erection were caught on something.
“Eventually you’ll get tired of me,” she mumbled, unaware of my discomfort, which only made me harder, made more stinging and stretching. “Then where would we be?”
“I don’t think I ever would get tired of you,” I said, the pain not stopping. I closed my eyes to make it go away, but when I did, I suddenly knew what the date was, new what the time was.
“Hey,” she said, “you’re squeezing my hand.”
“Sorry.”
My heart palpitated, but before letting her hand go I lifted her arm so I could see that rubber watch she always wore, dangling on the bottom of her wrist. Its time and date confirmed what I already knew. Worried about my impotency, I had asked Randolph when I would get an erection, and he’d told me, and now here I was. Now here I was tumbling, falling forward in time again.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, putting my hand to my chest, my breath taken away.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” but I had felt my life leaping to that moment my penis was burning. I rolled to try to inconspicuously shift the erection.
I went quickly to the bathroom.
By the time I got the door shut, I heard her shout, “Are you okay?”
“Fine!”
I undid the drawstring and pushed the pants down, inspected everything, which, miraculously, didn’t have blood on it, and I pulled my pants up and made myself breathe. In the mirror I looked more hollow eyed than ever. It seemed only a second ago that I had been alone in my room and had forced Randolph, once again, to answer a question about the future. Now here I was. Jesus, would more of these moments just pop into my life, throw my life forward?
I went back and slid in bed beside her again.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said. Glancing at the television, I said, “Good, I didn’t miss it.”
In the movie it was daylight on the river. A group of young people were having a party on a bluff, which was the scene with my grandmother, Harriet Raye, Victim 1. Dance music came from a transistor radio on a rock, and I could only think about how most of these actors were dead now, their lives gone in probably what seemed like a couple of blinks.
Ursula whispered, “I’ve seen this movie so many times. . I swear I’m getting that same feeling I used to get when we were kids. This shit freaked me out, okay? Now it’s an extremely corny movie to me, but I still get the same feeling. . ” She held her breath, then let it out. “Here it comes,” she tensed and relaxed, “and there it goes. It comes in waves. I want to hold onto it for a second but can’t completely do it.”
We both had our backs against the headboard, and at some point I realized she was watching me.
“What?” I said.
She stretched her knee until it touched me.
On the screen, Harriet Raye, my paternal grandmother, Ursula’s great-aunt, unbuttoned her shirt and revealed a black bathing suit.
“See you on the other side!” Harriet Raye says in the movie. The movie cut to a longer shot from across the river and she dove perfectly from the bluff. This was really my grandmother diving.
The Creature’s theme came up loud.
Right then, as our ancestor was becoming “Victim 1,” I felt the same fear and excitement The Creature from Outer Space had given me when I was a kid, but like Ursula said, it was there, then gone, and even though it was a kind of fear, you wanted it back, and when I looked to tell her this, she had turned away. While Harriet Raye was pulled down by the Creature, claw around her ankle, struggling through the crystal-clear water, Ursula’s watch beeped and then there was her gentle snoring.
CHAPTER 29
Ursula slept. The Creature was eventually killed by spear guns.
I slowly lifted her hand to see the numbers twirling on her stopwatch as she slept. She was trying to somehow quantify real sleep time versus lost time if the aliens came to take her away.
I turned the television off and put my back against her back and tried to sleep, but the bed covers were loose and frustrating.
I had no choice but to get up, but I didn’t get in the other bed. I put on my red tracksuit and went down to the empty nighttime lobby. I shut myself in the phone booth on the end and waited. The sign on the phone said:
1) STOP!
2) Listen for tone.
3) Deposit coins.
When it rang, like I knew it would, I snapped it up without speaking. It was the old favorite “Viva Las Vegas,” and it did seem like the best song ever—“. .and I’m just the devil with love to spare. . Viva Las Vegas. .”
I glanced outside to the lobby but saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the lobby at low staff, and I closed my eyes to relax. The tight confines of the phone booth was wonderful, slouched with knees braced against the metal wall, but then my leg tingled — tingling, tingling? — but I realized that my phone was vibrating in my tracksuit pocket. The message was from “UNKNOWN,” which meant Randolph:
You are very happy tonight.
How do you know? Why can’t I show this conversation to anyone?
At the right time everyone will know. They aren’t ready.
You are from another planet.
:)
And I need Raye’s help.
You know what he has found?
Yes.
Do you have something to do with the noise?
Is the noise your planet?
No.
No, but. .
But that is where I want to go.
I am going to have to locate the dog again. He didn’t look after the dog. There will be a slight delay.
The dog? I looked at the world outside the phone booth as if I would see a dog among the late-night check-ins. On the concierge’s desk, a small sign apologized for the inconvenience of her not being there.
Forgive me if there is a long period of silence.
I must search and solve problems for the dog.
I fell asleep in the comfort of the booth, one of those deep, paralyzing sleeps from childhood, and dreamed of being back in the hospital bed beside Mr. Leggett. I happily waited for Rose Epstein to call her name and tell everyone she wanted to go home. I wanted Mr. Leggett to tell one of his stupid jokes even though I had always agreed with my father about jokes being the shallowest form of human conversation.
In chapter 9 of The Universe Is a Pair of Pants, “Mediocre Men,” Van Raye ranked them:
3) Talking about sports.
2) Talking about television shows.
1) Telling jokes—“Did you hear the one about. .?”