Michael Hemmingson: Seven Women: An Erotic Private Investigation

“Don’t think about it at all,” Lisa tells her. “If you dwell on what might’ve happened, you’ll go nuts.”

“It’s hard not to,” Holly says.

Sheila looks at me and says, “The man of the hour.”

I wave a hand. “Can I get a drink?”

“Whatever you want,” Holly says, and she’s at the bar.

“Tequila tonic,” I say.

“Me, too,” from Amelia.

“Whatever you want,” Sheila says. I don’t know what she’s getting at.

“I don’t understand how that sonofabitch got into my place!” Holly says.

“He’s a hacker — a good one,” I say. “He got past the doorman — not always a hard thing to do. You have a keycard slot — he knows electronics. How he got in is no mystery, and he’ll probably tell the cops. He’ll want to brag.”

“You come across a lot of this in your profession?” Lisa asks me, the writer at work.

“Actually,” I say, “no.”

“In any event,” Holly says, “I’m glad you were here. I’m grateful, really.” She hands me a drink.

“I’ll bill you,” I say seriously.

She looks at me.

Smile. “Kidding.”

There’s a tense silence, the tension from elsewhere. Then they all laugh — hollowly.

The night is ruined. Lisa and Cara call a cab and leave. Plans are made to meet next Thursday, same place and time. I don’t think I’ll be there. I don’t belong there, and I don’t belong here.

But I need another drink before I get on my way, and so do Tasha and Sheila.

“Will you be okay?” Tasha asks Holly.

“Yes, thank you,” Holly says.

“I’ll stay here tonight if you want me to,” Tasha says.

“He’s behind bars,” Holly says. “I think I’m safe tonight.”

Amelia and I look at each other. She smiles, almost shyly, and looks away.

“I’ll call us a cab,” Sheila says, picking up the phone.

*****

I’m in the front seat with the driver. I feel odd, and the driver gives me a look, and then glances at the three women in the back of the cab.

“I still can’t believe that really happened,” from Amelia.

“The world,” Sheila sighs. “People can really be fucked up at times.”

Amelia says, “We were lucky Leonard was there.”

“Yes,” Sheila joins in, “weren’t we?” There’s no mistaking the edge in her voice.

The driver wants to know who’s going home first and where, or are we going to the same place? I turn to the three women, realizing that we are all still pretty much riding on adrenaline and not sure what we’re doing, where we’re going. But it’s late and home is the place to go when it’s late.

“I guess I live the closest,” Sheila says with a shrug,

*****

“The funny thing about being pregnant by an alien,” Amelia says, “is that it didn’t feel any different. I guess that’s a silly thing to say since I’d never actually been pregnant before, so I can’t really make a comparison. What I mean is that it didn’t feel like I was pregnant by something from another world. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. How can I best describe it? It felt natural, that’s all. It felt like the most natural thing — and I was happy, believe it or not. I was happy even if my alien lover had left me on earth and gone back to the stars, left me with a baby growing inside. I kept wondering if the gestation period might be quicker, like a couple of months, but it was nine months, just like a normal pregnancy.

“But how did Nick react to all this? Well, after the encounter with David, it’s pretty obvious, you know, that the relationship — if you can really call it a relationship — was kaput. But especially now, since I had been abducted by The Astronaut that very same night, made love to him and conceived. It was the end of one thing and the beginning of another. It was like I was another person now, a new person, a person with no history or past. I knew my name was no longer Amelia; it had been changed to Amnesia.”

Silence in the cab, an odd silence. I wonder what the driver thinks of Amelia’s monologue, if it’s unusual for him to hear something like it. Then again, he’s a cab driver. For him, we’re all just another group of people in the city moving from cab to cab like Bedouins in the desert of what we think is the human heart.

I feel as if Amelia is waiting for someone to prompt her to continue. I’m not sure if I want her to. I don’t think I care. Her voice is rather soothing, a distraction from my own thoughts and memories. I’m thinking of Veronica.

Veronica should be here with us.

Maybe Veronica is somewhere with aliens.

“While I was pregnant,” Amelia says, “I wound up living with David and his wife for a while. His wife Eileen. Can you believe that? I know it sounds weird. It was weird, but I did it. It was almost like I became a part of their family.”

“So,” Tasha says, brushing the hair out of her eyes, “how did this come about? His wife had to know there was something going on between the two of you.”

“She knew,” Amelia says, nodding. “In fact, she’d always known. I wasn’t the only extramarital affair David had. There had been others, and even I knew this. David was a great guy — I still love him — but he was incapable of being faithful.”

Perhaps like Slater, I think.

“He was a pussy hound,” Sheila says.

“Maybe, but it wasn’t that superficial. Eileen knew about it and tolerated it, I suppose, because she loved him so much. Maybe like Lisa’s mother — she knew of the infidelities, but knew the affairs were only for the moment. David loved Eileen, and however things went, he always went back to her. He went back home because home was safe and warm.

”But now I was in their home. I had showed up at their door. It was like I was outside myself, like I was watching myself. Because I didn’t know who I was. I said to them, when they answered the door, ‘Who am I and why am I here?’ I was drawn to their home, like it was a magnet, like I could go there to find the answers I was searching for.

“I really can’t say what happened from there,” she adds. “I know Eileen wasn’t happy about it.”

“But I wound up living with them,” Amelia says. “For a while anyway.”

The cab stops before a brownstone building; this is Sheila’s stop. She begins to open her purse and get money, but I wave at her and tell her I’ll pay for the cab. She looks uncertain, then nods, an inaudible “thanks” on her lips.

“Well, guys,” Sheila says, “it’s been fun.”

“Take care,” from Amelia.

“You too, hon. Later,” she adds, to Tasha, and Tasha nods. As Sheila gets out, she slyly slips me a business card. I watch her as she goes up the stairs, takes out a set of keys, and goes in. The cab begins to move to our next destination.

“I wish I was more like Sheila,” Amelia says. “She seems to have control of her life. She figures out what she wants and then goes out and takes it.”

I think about the deception of appearances; I want to say something about it, but I have neither the inclination nor the words.

“I’ve never really had control over anything,” Amelia says. “Seems like all my life others have been calling the shots. They’ve had more control over my destination than I’d rather admit. Like The Astronaut, for example. I had no intentions either of sleeping with him or carrying his baby, but he had it all planned. He said it was destiny, but it was really about power.

“When I was living with David and Eileen, I began to understand the strange motions of power. I wasn’t myself, I was Amnesia, and I didn’t know anything other than that I was living with a married couple and my belly was getting bigger. At first Eileen was completely against having me in their home. That was understandable, of course. But David told her, ‘We can’t turn her out to the world now that she doesn’t know who she is.’ Eileen was a really sweet, and weak, person, and she gave in, and I was put in the guest room and, as the months went on, my stomach got big with the alien’s child.