“No, I’m not, I . . . ” hemmed Fletcher, fiddling with the skin between his nostrils, a nervous habit.
“And quit picking your nose,” said Revlor.
“I’m not!”
Charmat’s homely android face suddenly moved in a swirl of color. Fletcher yelped in surprise; everything was in motion, transmogrifying into bends and turns of yellow, pink, lavender, and red. He closed his eyes, feeling nauseated.
When he opened them, he was on top of a mountain. He squinted his eyes at the bright sunlight that was reflected in a wide swath of sparkles on the hard white snow. Feeling the tickle of a light breeze against the back of his body, he looked down and saw with horror that he was wearing nothing but ski boots and skis.
“Oh, my gosh, I’m naked!”
Shouts and whoops of laughter resonated through the canyon like a round of fire, and Fletcher realized with even deeper horror that he was not alone.
At least a dozen skiers appeared from the crest of the hill, all of them dressed in regular skiwear.
“Way to go, Fletcher baby!” shouted a woman whose nose was white with a triangle of zinc oxide.
“Talk about your hot dog on skis!” shouted another woman.
Fletcher was in a zone of mortification so deadly he was certain death by stroke or coronary was close at hand. What was he doing under this dome of blue sky, on skis at the top of a mountaintop, naked? Who were these strangers applauding him and calling him by name?
None of these questions was answered as some demon possessed Fletcher. He lifted his chin up and after howling like the lead wolf in a partying pack, bent deep, pushed down hard on his poles, and was off.
Wind and flying snow pelted him with force and song—or was it his motion, swooshing, soaring, flying that made the music that was filling his head? Music that sang of a hundred thousand reasons to be happy, that yodeled a million assurances that he was utterly, thoroughly, deeply alive.
Pine trees passed him in a blur of green and then, with an innate sense more attuned than any ear, he heard them say, “Wow” and “Bye” and “Good ride, neighbor.” The pine trees spoke to him! Fletcher had never known the speed that was pushing him down the mountain like a projectile, didn’t know that snow could be sky, could be a place where one could fly.
“Oh joy!” he shouted above the noises of nature singing, above the bliss of his naked body gasping with sheer, awed pleasure. His skis angled through the snow in tight zigzags.
“Way to go, Fletcher!”
He became aware of the voices of his fan club as he twisted to a stop at the bottom of the hill, the edges of his skis throwing up tiny avalanches. He fell sideways and his naked body, hot as a race car engine, sizzled as it met the cold shadowed snow.
Fletcher opened his eyes.
“Good, wasn’t it?” asked Charmat, sitting next to Fletcher on his boyhood bed. He turned to his fellow aliens. “I don’t mean to brag, but that was good.”
“Although an après-ski drink would have been nice,” said Revlor. “Something along the lines of a buttered rum?”
“Ooooh!” said Fletcher. “No fair—take me back! Take me back to that mountain!”
“If you went back you’d be arrested for indecent exposure,” said Charmat. “We want you to be a goof-off, but avoid entanglements with the law whenever possible. They’re usually not fun.”
Fletcher leaned against the headboard, his eyes glassy with the memory of what had just transpired.
“That really happened, didn’t it? It wasn’t some kind of mind-control thing, was it? I really skied in the buff, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” said Charmat. “You really skied—Aspen, as a matter of fact—and yes, you were in the buff.”
“It was . . . transcendental,” whispered Fletcher, using a word that never had occasion to pass his lips.
“That’s what we mean, Fletcher. Our way is but one way . . . one fun way. Welcome to the Lodge, brother.”
Fletcher felt a sudden rise of pain, as if an out-of-season bee had lowered itself and sunk its stinger into his chest. He unbuttoned his pajama top, wanting to squish the venomous insect, but imbedded in between his sparse growth of chest hair was not a wasp or bumblebee, only a small shiny medallion that read Lodge 1212.
“How . . . how am I worthy?”
“Actually,” said Revlor, “you’re not. We drew your name out of a hat.”
Throwing Revlor a scolding look, Charmat said, “Fletcher, we’ve long admired the way you got through your childhood—not the toughest, by any means, but not the easiest either.”
Fletcher stared at the alien as if unconvinced.
“You have a certain . . . quirkiness that drew us to you. We’re great fans of your vivid fantasy life.”
Fletcher gulped.
“Sometimes a person’s only retreat is their imagination,” said Tandala softly.
“You mean you’ve been able to spy on my fantasies?”
“On occasion we would tune in to some of your childhood ones,” said Charmat. “I’m quite a fan of Vince Shark and Hip Galloway, I must say. But your adult fantasies, umm, generally not of interest. They so often trade mystery and delight for simple-minded sex.”
Fletcher breathed a sigh of relief. He would have been mortified to think the aliens were aware of some of his more simple-minded fantasies featuring Cindy Dahlberg.
“When you used to dance by moonlight in the wheat fields . . . ,” said Tandala, with a little sigh.
“Could we get on with things?” asked Revlor. “There’s that galactic cannibalism party—we’re betting on what planet gets eaten—”
“Silence!” bellowed Charmat with such power the room shook and a Chicago Cubs pennant lost most of its mooring, swinging alongside the wall by one remaining thumbtack.
Fletcher had no idea Charmat was capable of such temper, and his shocked gasp was followed by first silence and then the humming laughter.
“Oh, you were kidding!” said Fletcher. “You were just kidding!”
“Of course I was,” said Charmat. “Bad temper is something we’ve been able to excise out of our benetic code.”
“Benetic code?”
“As opposed to your genetic code. You see, we’re not composed of genes but beans.”
“We’re full of beans!” chorused the lodge members.
Fletcher joined the laugh spree not because he found the word play so amusing but because the aliens’ delight was irresistible to ignore.
Finally, Charmat hummed a high C, a gesture Fletcher assumed similar to clearing one’s throat. The room was quiet.
“Fletcher,” said the alien leader, “we feel privileged to have made your acquaintance and welcome you as our honorary lodge brother, but the saying, ‘All good things must come to an end’ is not only applicable to earthlings.”
“We haven’t quite gotten our oxygen calibration down pat yet,” explained Tandala.
“You’re leaving?” asked Fletcher, his voice as desolate as a canyon wind.
Charmat nodded. “Yes, we have to make tracks, as they say.”
“We don’t want to miss curfew,” joked Revlor.
“But you haven’t explained anything!” said Fletcher. “What am I supposed to do—”
There was an odd flurry then, a convergence of unseen matter. Fletcher’s heart raced as most of the aliens shimmered into disappearance, leaving only the three spokesaliens. They were, Fletcher noticed, becoming a little too transparent for his liking. Their green skin, or covering, or whatever it was, had begun to blur and vibrate.
“Please don’t go!” Fletcher begged, scrambling off his bed.
“Have faith, Fletcher,” said Charmat. “We’re goof-offs, but serious goof-offs. We wouldn’t send someone on such an important mission without believing he can do the job.”
“Mission—what mission? And what job? I can’t do the job! I don’t even know what the job is!”
“All will be revealed, Fletcher,” said Charmat. “We hope.”
r />
“What do you mean, hope?”
The alien forms were nearly erased in an indistinguishable shining blur.
“We were given instructions to find someone who embodies our beliefs,” Charmat. “That person is you.”
“But for what purpose?” shouted Fletcher.
“We believe the universe is at a crossroads,” came Charmat’s faint voice. “Traffic’s heavy and there are no signal lights.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The green shimmer sounded like a power plant. The noise ground into him and Fletcher thought he might faint from anxiety and fear.
“Don’t go! Don’t leave me!”
Feeling lightheaded, Fletcher was on the verge of making one final plea or passing out (he couldn’t tell which) when Tandala’s voice was in his ear. Or her presence was in his head. Somehow she communicated to him.
“Fletcher, it will be all right. It will be more than all right. I’ll help you.”
“You will? How?”
But his questions were never answered because the vibrating green shimmer was gone, leaving in its wake a light wind that rippled through the rickrack-trimmed curtains and over the newest member of Lodge 1212, who was lying in a heap, passed out cold.
What on earth? thought Fletcher as he woke up on the floor, with a crick in his neck and his right arm numb and prickly from having been slept on. He stayed prone for a moment, gathering his thoughts, which were as scattered as the seeds of a wished-upon dandelion.
Let’s see. He had weatherstripped the windows, and then there was that dream about Cindy Dahlberg he wanted to remember, and then, oh yeah, the alien visit. Fletcher eyes opened wide. The alien visit.
He got up off the floor as if a bomb had been planted and any false move would set it off, looking behind his shoulder as he tiptoed to the bathroom.
He studied his reflection in the mirror, pulling his lips to check his gums, lifting his eyelids to examine his eyeballs, bending his ears forward and his nose upward. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for—clinical incisions? Recording devices? The mark of depravity?
No. They weren’t here to hurt me.
As if to slow his racing heart, he held one hand to his chest and then, feeling a small rise underneath his palm, he yanked up his pajama top. His breath stopped as he touched the puckered disc of skin that, if one didn’t look too carefully, looked like a vaccination scar. On closer inspection, however, one could see in the sheen the tiny imprinted numbers “1212.”
“Oh, my,” said Fletcher, and not knowing exactly what to do with the proof of an alien visit, he scratched it.
5
Fletcher felt jittery as he got off the elevator on the third floor and stepped into the small maze of cubicles in which Mid Summit American Life had situated its Upper Midwest office. Had he been a coffee drinker, he would have attributed his nervousness to one too many milligrams of caffeine, but Fletcher drank nothing but grapefruit juice in the mornings, with the exception of V-8 on the weekends.
“Well, look at you,” said Cindy Dahlberg as he skittered by her desk. “You look like something the cat brought in.”
Fletcher smiled weakly and gave what he thought was a jaunty little wave, which from Cindy’s vantage point looked like he was scratching his eyebrow.
Weird-o, thought the receptionist, and then noticing Mike Finnegan coming toward her, she straightened up, patting her frosted blonde hair. She was determined that this be the day the handsome up-and-coming underwriter asked her out.
Into his middle drawer Fletcher put the bagged lunch he’d made the night before, just hours before his life had been turned upside down by aliens, and, as was his habit, lined up any desk accessories the cleaning crew might have jostled. A thousand butterflies were battering around in his stomach, and running a finger along the inside of his collar, he felt a thread of sweat.
“Gee, Weschel, you look terrible,” said Marv Gates, popping his head over the cubicle wall they shared.
“That seems to be the consensus,” said Fletcher.
Marv took a sip of coffee from a mug that read, “Accountants Go Forth and Multiply.”
“Say, Weschel, I was wondering if you could help me out with the Stephenson account—I can’t seem to make the numbers jibe.”
“Sure,” said Fletcher. “Put it on my desk.”
Marv Gates’s trouble with numbers was well known to Fletcher, who was called on with great regularity to help him make his figures jibe. Although he often worked overtime to unsnarl the messes Marv created, there was little compensation given for his good deeds, other than Marv’s gratitude, which manifested itself once a year in the form of roasted nuts, presented to Fletcher at Christmas. Marv’s wife worked for the Greely Nut & Candy Company, and Marv passed out dented tins of cashews and almonds to anyone at Mid Summit American Life who had been or might be of service to him.
Fletcher plunged immediately into work as Marv, relieved of his burden, ambled off to join the others at the water cooler, eager to recount how the Vikings had creamed the Packers over the weekend.
His concentration was scattered, a rare occurrence for Fletcher, who added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided with a sharp, precise mind that locked out all wandering thoughts and wisps of daydreams. But now he stared at the columns of numbers before him, tapping his pen against his desk and his feet against the floor. He pulled at the skin between his nostrils. He probed at a back molar with his tongue, wondering if it was loose. He licked his forefinger and tried to flatten his whorled cowlick.
His ticker, which pre–alien visit had been as steady as Big Ben, was again racing in his chest, and Fletcher thought he was going to pass out and throw up; he just hoped it wouldn’t be in that order.
“Oh, my,” he said, standing up. Just as quickly he sat down. Anxiety was a bug, an army of bugs, crawling up and down his pant legs, his sleeves, under his shirt, and into his scalp. Fletcher clapped a hand over his mouth, certain he was about to scream. He sat back down in his chair and on the stiff plastic runner rolled backward toward the cubicle wall and forward toward his desk, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“Waschel!” barked a man with a brush cut as he poked his head in the doorway. “You’re going to melt that chair mat!”
Fletcher’s old finger-snapping boss had recently retired to McAllen, Texas, replaced by Ralph Rockman, who never snapped his fingers at anyone, believing he commanded attention and respect because of his size. He was of average height, but he spent a lot of time in his garage with his barbells (his wife suggested he try to bench-press her once in awhile), and he had the upper body and swagger of Popeye.
Fletcher got out of his chair to greet his boss.
“Sit down, private, sit down,” said Rockman, who had never served in the military but had adopted its lexicon in his workplace.
“Not to worry, ace,” he continued, “I’m not here checking up on you—I wish all my employees had the dedication and company loyalty of Fletcher Wischel—”
“—Weschel.”
“Whatever, boy. Whatever!” Rockman slapped him on the back. “I’m only here, you son-of-a-gun, to introduce the latest enlistee to our platoon. Fletcher, meet Ms. Tandy!”
Ralph Rockman stepped aside to allow into the small doorway a woman whose outrageous curves threatened the integrity of her dress fabric. Ever the gentleman, Fletcher rose and stepped forward to greet the female, whose dark skin and braided beaded hair branded her as “not from here.”
“Oh, Fletcher!” the woman gushed, pronouncing his name “Fletch-aire.” “I am so thrilled to get this assignment!” She played with vowels in a way a Midwesterner did not and pronounced this as dees.
“Well, then, I’ll let you two get acquainted,” said Ralph Rockman, dashing off and karate chopping the air in a salute. “Let’s all bivouac in my office at 10:00 hours.”
Immediately after his boss’s departure, the woman clamped her arms around Fletcher in a fierce
bear hug and the hugged man quickly realized that flabbergasted was to be the emotion of the day. His arms pinned against his sides by her iron grip, Fletcher wondered how he could possibly extricate himself from a woman he wasn’t sure was merely excitable or a tiny bit nuts.
“I’ll assist you any way I can!” said the woman—at least that’s what he understood her to say. Her face was buried in his neck and her words were slightly muffled. “We shall make the greatest team!”
Worried that the woman’s grasp was getting tighter, and exhausted from trying to hold in his stomach, Fletcher peeled her arms off him and scrambled to his chair, behind the safe haven of his desk.
“Miss . . . Tandy, isn’t it?” he said, scraping his desk blotter with his thumbnail, afraid to look at her. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but please refrain from such displays—”
“—oh, put a sock in it, Fletch,” said the woman in her Caribbean accent. “Don’t be so uptight.” She began to approach him, not so much by walking as by slinking, and Fletcher couldn’t help noticing that if she were in a race, the first thing to cross the finish line would be her very large breasts.
“I assure you, Ms. Tandy . . . ,” he began.
“And who is here for assurances? I seek bigger things.”
Fletcher wished desperately for an alarm button under his desk, one his knee could nudge against and summon security, or at least Ralph Rockman. His boss, after all, kept a saber belonging to General George Custer’s first lieutenant in a display case above his desk, and if ever Fletcher needed a weapon, it was now.
Miss Tandy must have seen the panic in Fletcher’s face, for she stopped abruptly and put her hands, heavy with jewelry, on her pillowy hips.
“Oh, Fletcher, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just so excited to be with you at the start of your brand-new life.”
“My brand-new life?” asked Fletcher and suddenly he understood who the woman in front of him was. He swallowed hard and whispered, “Tandala?”
The woman’s broad face was taken up in a dazzling display of gums and teeth.
“Tandy for short. You like it, mon? I had to think fast when I introduced myself to your boss.”