Ellen Datlow - Alien Sex

“Fine,” I said again. “Let’s get out of here.”

My best friend Darla had been divorced twice. She recommended a Mrs. McNabb.

“Oh, God,” I said. “It’s going to be so expensive. Is it really going to help?”

“What do you care about help?” Darla said. “This is step one in getting rid of the creep. The rest gets easier. Believe me, it gets easier. My second divorce was no worse than, oh, say, being in a body cast for six months.”

I sat in front of the phone for a long time Monday. I was weighing the good and bad in our marriage, and I was throwing anything I could find onto the scales. Everything on the good side had to do with money—the house, Richard’s insurance, financial security. It wasn’t enough.

I got us an appointment for the next morning. When I told Richard about it Monday night he looked surprised, as if he’d forgotten the whole wretched scene. Then he shrugged and said, “Okay, whatever.”

We left Emily at the sitter’s house. It was hard to let go of her. Richard kept looking at his watch. Finally we got away and drove downtown, to a remodeled prairie-style house off of East Grand.

Mrs. McNabb was five-eleven, heavy in the chest and hips, fifty years old with short hair in various shades of gray. No makeup, natural fiber clothes, neutral-colored furniture. A single, ominous box of Kleenex on the table by the couch.

When we were both settled she said, “Now. Are either of you involved with anyone outside the marriage.”

I said, “You mean, like, romantically?”

Richard was already shaking his head.

“That’s right,” Mrs. McNabb said.

“No,” Richard said.

“No,” I said.

She looked at Richard for a long time, as if she didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe him either. “What?” he said. His arms had been folded across his chest from the moment he sat down. “I said no, there’s nobody else.”

After a few minutes she split us up. Richard waited in reception while she asked me questions. Whenever I said anything about Richard she made me preface it with “I think” or “it seems to me.” I didn’t mention Lili or my suspicions. Then I sat outside for half an hour, reading the same page of Newsweek over and over again, not able to make any sense of it.

Finally Richard came out. He was pale. “We’re done,” he said. “I paid her and everything.”

We got in the car. Richard sat behind the wheel without starting the engine. “She asked about my parents,” he said. He looked out the windshield, not at me. “I told her about how my father always made my mother bring him the mail, and then he would open it up and throw what he didn’t want on the floor. And then my mother would have to get down on her knees and pick it up.”

He looked so lost and childlike. I suddenly realized that the only other person who could understood what we were both going through was Richard. It was hard not to reach out for him.

“She asked me were they happy,” he said. “I said no. And then the weirdest thing happened. I found myself explaining all this stuff to her. Stuff I didn’t know I knew. How I’d always believed it would be so easy for my father to make my mother happy. That a marriage should work if you just didn’t throw your trash on the floor for the other person to pick up. I don’t remember Mrs. McNabb saying anything, it was just suddenly I had this flash of understanding. How I’d spent my life looking for an unhappy woman like my mother, to prove how easily I could make her happy. Only I was wrong. I couldn’t make you happy after all.”

That wonderful, brief moment of intimacy was gone. I was now an “unhappy woman.” I didn’t much like it.

“I feel all wrung out,” he said, and started to cry. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him cry. “I don’t know if I can go through this again.”

“This was just the start,” I said. “We haven’t gotten anywhere yet.”

He shook his head and started the car. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if I can go on.”

And that was the end of counseling. The next time I brought it up Richard shook his head and refused to talk about it.

By that point he “worked late” at least two nights a week. It embarrassed me to hear the shopworn excuse. I pictured him in his office, his corduroys around his ankles, some exotic olive-skinned wanton sprawled on her back across his desk, her ankles locked behind his waist, her mouth open in an ecstatic scream, the rest of the department shaking their heads in shame as they passed his door.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I lay awake at night and tortured myself. One morning in August I was so far out of my head I called Sally. “This woman Richard is supposed to be seeing. Lili or whatever her name is. Describe her.”

“Can you spell slut, dear? What more do you need to know?”

“I want the details. Like you were doing it for the police.”

“Oh, five-six I guess. Wavy brown hair, just to her shoulders. Deep tan. Makeup, of course. Lots of makeup. Did I mention armpit hair?”

“Yes,” I said, “you did.”

During summer sessions Richard taught a two-hour class from one to three every afternoon. Assuming he was not so far gone that he’d given up teaching entirely. At 1:15 I climbed the marble stairs to the second floor of Dallas Hall, looking for the woman Sally had described.

There was nobody in the common room. I got a cup of coffee and found Robbie in his office. “Hi,” I said awkwardly. “I’m looking for one of Richard’s students? Her name is Lili something? He had this paper he needed to give her and he forgot it this morning.”

He didn’t buy my story for a second, of course. “Ah, yes. The redoubtable Lili. She was around a while ago. I could give it to her if you wanted.”

“No, that’s okay. I should try to find her myself.”

“Well, you can’t miss her. She’s only about five-one, with olive skin, blond hair to her waist, and… well, you know.”

“And great tits,” I said bitterly. “Right?”

Robbie shrugged, embarrassed. “You said it. Not me.”

The descriptions didn’t exactly match. I suspected Robbie was not seeing her with much objectivity. For that matter, neither was Sally.

The offices faced out into a central room that was divided into a maze of cubicles. I wandered through them for a while with no luck. On my way out I stopped at Taylor’s secretary’s office. “I’m looking for a student named Lili? She’s short, with…”

“I know, the most gorgeous black hair in the world. I would hardly call her short, though—oh. There she goes right now.”

I turned, hearing heels click on the polished floor. “Thanks,” I said, and ran into the hall.

And froze.

She looked at me for no more than a second or two. Afterward I couldn’t say how tall she was, or describe the color of her hair. All I saw were her eyes, huge and black, like the eyes of a snake. It must have been some chemical in her sweat or her breath that I reacted to on such a blind, instinctive level. I could do nothing but stare at her with loathing and horror. When her eyes finally let me go I turned and ran all the way back to my car.

I picked Emily up at the sitter’s and took her home and held her for the rest of the afternoon, until Richard arrived, rocking silently on the edge of the couch, remembering the blackness of those eyes, thinking, not one of us. She’s not one of us.

That Friday Richard came home at four. He was a half hour late, no more than that. Emily was crawling furiously around the living room and I watched her with all the attention I could manage. The rest of my mind was simply numb.

Richard nodded at us and walked toward the back of the house. I heard the bathroom door close. I put Emily in her playpen and followed him. I could hear water running behind the bathroom door. Some wild bravado pushed me past my fear. I opened the door and walked in.