Ellen Datlow - Alien Sex

“Richard’s been talking to Tony about this new grad student. She’s supposed to be from Israel or something.”

“So?”

“So Richard was apparently just drooling over this girl. That doesn’t sound like him. I mean Richard doesn’t even flirt. ”

“Is that all?”

“Well, no. Tony asked him what was the big deal and Richard said, ‘Tony, you wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.’ Those are like his exact words.”

“Does this mystery woman have a name?”

“Lili, I think he said it was.”

I tried to picture Richard, with his thinning hair and stubby little mustache, with his glasses and pot belly, sweeping some foreign sexpot off her feet.

Sally said, “It may not be anything at all.”

One new associate professorship would open up next year. Richard and Tony were both in the running. Richard was generally thought to have the edge. “I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “I’m sure it’s nothing at all.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t want to cause any problems.”

“No,” I said, “I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

The next Wednesday Richard called to say he’d be home late. There was a visiting poet on campus for a reading. I looked it up in the paper. The reading was scheduled for eight.

At 8:30 I put Emily in the station wagon and we drove over to the Fine Arts Center. We didn’t find his car.

“Well, Tater,” I said. “What do you think? Do we go across Central and check the hot sheet motels?”

She stared at me with huge, colorless eyes.

“You’re right,” I said. “We have too much pride for that. We’ll just go home.”

There was a cookout that weekend at Dr. Taylor’s. He was department chairman largely on the strength of having edited a Major American Writer in his youth. Now he had a drinking problem. His wife had learned that having parties at home meant keeping him off the roads.

The morning of the party I told Richard I wanted to go. By now he was used to my staying home from these things. I watched for signs of disappointment. He only shrugged.

“You’d better start trying to find a sitter,” he said.

After dinner we began the slow, seemingly random movements that would inevitably end with the women in one part of the house and the men in another. Already most of the wives were downstairs, clearing up the soggy paper plates and empty beer bottles. I was upstairs with Jane Lang, the medievalist, and most of the husbands. Taylor had made a pejorative remark about women writers and everyone had jumped on him for it. Then Tony said, “Okay, I want to see everybody come up with a sexist remark they believe is true.”

Taylor said, a little drunkenly, “Men have bigger penises than women.”

Jane said, “Usually.” Everyone laughed.

Robbie Shappard, who was believed to sleep with his students, said, “I read something the other day. There’s this lizard in South America that’s extinct now. What happened was another species of lizard came along that could perform the mating rituals better than the real females. The males all fucked the impostors. The chromosomes didn’t match, of course, so no baby lizards. The whole species went toes up.”

“Is that true?”

“I read it in the Weekly World News, ” Robbie said. “It has to be true. What I want to know is, what does it mean?”

“That’s easy,” Jane said. “When it comes to sex, men don’t know what’s good for them.”

“I think men and women are different species,” Tony said.

“Too easy,” Robbie said. “They’ve just got conflicting programs. When we were living in caves we had these drives designed to produce the maximum number of kids from the widest range of partners. The problem is we’ve still got those drives and they’re not useful anymore. That’s what did in those poor lizards.”

Tony said, “Okay, Ann. Your turn. Be serious, now.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I subscribe to the old business about how women are more emotional.”

“Emotional how?” Tony said. “Be specific.”

“Right,” Robbie said. “Be brief and specific. It’s fifty percent of your grade riding on this.”

I looked at Richard. He seemed distracted rather than contentious. “Well, men always seem concerned with exactitude, being able to measure things.” There was some laughter, and I blushed. “You know. Like they don’t want to say ‘I’ll love you forever.’ They want to say, ‘At current rates our relationship could reasonably be expected to continue at least another six months.’ Whereas I would appreciate the gesture. Of saying ‘forever.’ ”

Tony nodded. “Good one. Rich?”

“You want one? Okay. Here’s what Robbie was trying to say earlier, only without the bullshit. Men want women and women want babies.”

Everyone went quiet; it wasn’t just me overreacting. The first thing I thought of was Emily. What did Richard mean? Did he not want her anymore? Had he never wanted her? I’d heard that people felt this way when they were shot. No pain, only a sense of shock and loss, the knowledge that pain would surely follow.

“Speaking of babies,” I said into the silence, “I should call home. Excuse me.” I walked out of the room, looking for a phone, wanting most of all to be away from Richard.

I found a bathroom instead. I washed my face, put on fresh lipstick, and wandered downstairs. Sally found me there and raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“I assume you’re here for a look at her.”

“Who?”

“Lili. The mystery woman. All the men in the department are in love with her. Haven’t you heard?”

“Is she here?”

Sally glanced around the room. I knew most of the women in the den with us. “I don’t see her now. She was here a minute ago.”

“What does she look like?”

“Oh, short, dark… sexy, I suppose. If you like eyeliner and armpit hair.”

“What’s she wearing?”

“Is that more than idle curiosity I hear in your voice? A tank top, a red tank top. And blue jeans. Very tight.”

“Excuse me,” I said, finally seeing the phone. “I have to call home. “

The sitter answered on the second ring. Emily was asleep. There were no problems. “Okay,” I said. I wanted to be home with her, to blow raspberries on her belly and feel her fingers in my hair. The silence had gone on too long. I said thank-you and hung up.

I couldn’t face going back upstairs. It would be a boy’s club up there by now anyway. Fart jokes and cigars. A sliding glass door opened up to the backyard. I walked into the darkness, smelling summer in the cut grass and the lingering smoke from the grill.

Richard found me there when the party broke up. I was sitting in a lawn chair, watching the Dallas sky, which glows red all summer long. Something about all the lights and the polluted air.

“Nice move,” Richard said. “Just walk right out on me, let the entire fucking party know our marriage is on the rocks.”

“Is it?”

“What?”

“On the rocks. Our marriage. Are we splitting up?”

“Hell, I don’t know. This isn’t the time to ask, that’s for sure. Oh no. Don’t start. How are we supposed to walk out with you crying like that?”

“We’ll go around the side of the house. Taylor’s too drunk to know if we said good-night or not. Answer my question.”

“I said I don’t know.”

“Maybe we ought to find out.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let’s do whatever it is people do. See a counselor or something.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? That’s all? Just ‘okay’?”

“You’re the one pushing for this, not me.”

“Fine,” I said, suddenly giddy. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. Would I actually do something irreversible? Only Emily held me back. Then I looked at Richard again and thought, do I really want this man as her father?