“Marty,” says Joe, clapping me on the shoulder. “Joe,” I say, clapping him back. We always start off that way. “What’s new?” says Joe. There’s a lot new. He can probably see it written on my shit-eating grin of a face and that’s why he’s asking. “Well, you’ll never guess,” I say, wanting him to guess a little. Joe is one of the few people who treat me like a regular person. I think he’s a great guy, in case you haven’t figured that out. Actually, all the Joes I’ve known are good guys. Probably a coincidence. Carl puts a Michelob in front of me, because that’s what I always have, a Michelob and a pretzel with extra salt. I take a slug. It’s good. “One of those alien people came to the shop today, a scientist,” I say, because I can’t wait for Joe to guess, this is just too neat to hold on to. “You don’t say,” says Joe. “Yes, and I asked him, you know, about the color, whether it was peas or spinach, remember, when we were arguing? And the scientist said it was more like peas.” But Joe’s not really listening. I can’t believe it. The news about the alien doesn’t grab him, he just says, “No kidding.” He’s got something else on his mind. What a disappointment. It turns out that the Rangers lost and he’s bothered also because of Jim Ahern’s new contract. I don’t even know who Jim Ahern is. Joe and Vinny start talking about the Stanley Cup, and they’re both dissatisfied but for different reasons. This evening’s going to be a bummer like the day was, I can see that. I don’t follow the Rangers myself, I like football better. Hockey is too fast for me. You blink, and you don’t know where the em-effin ball is. Where’s the fun in that? Football takes its time, and if you miss anything, they play it back in slo-mo and at a lot of different angles.
Dave comes over and starts in. “So Dog Man’s all excited about the green space man,” he says, at my shoulder, and gets confidential or pretend-confidential. “You know what I think, Dog Man? You ought to go over there to Shoreham and have a heart-to-heart with him. I really do. Because you two have a lot in common, you and the alien. No, really. What do you have in common? You both like to talk, and no one can understand you.” Dave laughs at his joke, and a couple of other guys laugh with him. I know they’re laughing not because the joke is funny but because they don’t want to get on Dave’s shit list. He carries a gun, even though he doesn’t have a permit. You can see it sometimes when he stretches. It’s under his sweater, just above the belt. And he has that long mean-looking scar on his forehead, too, that goes up into his hair. No one in his right mind would want to get into a fight with Dave, not even Joe, who was in the Marines and is plenty tough. Joe doesn’t take anything from anybody. But I can see I’d better keep the sweepstakes business to myself tonight. If Dave gets on to that, he won’t let go of it.
I move over to Doc, who’s hunched up at a table. “How’s it going, Doc?” I say. He holds up a finger. Doc’s always sick. For a while we were sure he was going to die, he was in the hospital for two months and had surgery a dozen times at least, but he keeps coming back somehow, even though he’s all hunched over now. We call him Doc because he’s seen more doctors than all the rest of us put together. “I ran into one of those alien people,” I say, “and asked him about the color. I don’t know if you were here when we were arguing about how green, whether it was peas or spinach.” But I see the pained look on Doc’s face, like he has gas, so I stop, say I’m sorry, get up, and leave him be. I go over to Howie, who’s complaining about his wife and his car, and listen to him complain for a while. He likes it when you listen. I have another Michelob, then another after that, and try Joe again. Maybe he’s finished talking about the Stanley Cup. I don’t understand it. I mean, we have hockey every year, don’t we, but an alien from outer space is something really unusual. Or am I crazy? It never happened before in history, did it, at least not that we know of. I suppose an alien could have landed in the mountains somewhere and no one noticed. We have no idea where he’s from, but some are saying it could be a whole different galaxy. Galaxies are one hell of a ways farther away than solar systems. Ed was trying to explain it to me, it’s astronomy. Not that I really know anything about it. It’s true that there’s been no news in the papers about the alien for more than a year now. Unless the scientists are holding something back, but I don’t think so. They look so discouraged whenever they’re on television. There’s no communication yet, and the alien won’t let them touch him too much, so they can’t run a lot of tests like they do in the hospital. So maybe that’s the reason: people are tired of not hearing any news. The way I think: America’s the kind of country where everything has to be new. If it’s not new, forget it.
Dave latches on to me again. “Dog Man,” he says, “tell us about the alien.” “I don’t know anything you don’t know, Dave,” I say. “Aw, come on,” says Dave. “You were talking to some scientist, weren’t you? I heard you.” “A guy came into the pet shop today,” I say, wishing I could be somewhere else. “He was trying to find Oscar’s German Deli.” Dave breaks up at that, and I start boiling inside, I can’t help it. I feel like punching him, but if I take a swing, he’ll kill me. I understand that he wants me to take a swing, so he can kill me. People like that are always looking for an excuse to kill you. “Dog Man,” Dave says, “you’re so fuckin’ funny, I swear you ought to be on the Leno show.” “It’s the truth,” I say, feeling so stupid, I could sink into the ground. Dave makes you feel like an idiot no matter what you say. It’s that look he has on his face. I say: “He really did want to find Oscar’s German Deli.” “Yeah,” says Dave, “and he asked for a hot dog, didn’t he?” A lot of hee-hawing at hot dog. “Wading River Dogs and More is running a hot-dog sale,” says Dave. And then he says to me: “Do you charge extra for the bun? You put mustard on your dogs? Do you, Dog Man?”
Joe takes me by the arm and says, “Here, Marty, I wanted to show you something.” He’s saving my ass, that’s what he’s doing, because I’m so boiling now, I’m within an inch of hauling off and punching Dave no matter what. I don’t like it when people make fun of the pet store. We do an okay business, and it’s Susan’s bread and butter. If she doesn’t pay me much, it’s because she can’t afford to. Anyway, it’s not like I’m that employable. “You just reminded me,” Joe says, taking me away from Dave, so I won’t be killed. I have trouble listening to him for a while, but then I realize he’s talking about the alien. “Look at this,” he says, taking out a piece of paper. It’s a clipping. Joe is always carrying around clippings from papers and magazines and showing them to people. That’s one of the things I like about him. “It’s from Scientific American,” he says. “What does it say?” I say, looking at the clipping, because there’s no way I’m going to be able to read something from the Scientific American, you need a college degree for that. Joe has a college degree. He gets more and more interested as he talks. “They think the reason the alien picked Shoreham,” he says, pointing at a photograph in the clipping, “is because of that huge heat cone overlooking the water. They think it might have reminded him of something from home. If you think about it, it’s a very conspicuous feature from the sky, that structure, and being on the shore of the Sound like that too.” The best look I ever got of the cone was when I was fishing once with the Andersons. Even before the alien, when it was going to be a nuclear power plant but didn’t make it because LILCO couldn’t put together an evacuation plan to get people off the Island in case of a meltdown, even then you couldn’t really get much of a view of the cone from the land side. They always had all these high fences up while they were building it, because of the demonstrators. I look at the photograph and have to admit that it does seem a little alien. I never thought of it that way before. As Joe talks, I imagine a lot of green aliens all living inside a giant cone like bees. They’re cozy and singing. Maybe our alien misses that. I guess I would too.