Kelly Link - Stranger Things Happen

Hold on a minute, I say to Jak. I untangle the phone cord as far as I can, until I am on the driveway outside my father's garage, closing the door gently behind me. My father never wakes up when the phone rings in the middle of the night. He says he never wakes up. The man in my bed, whose name probably begins with a C, is either still asleep or pretending to be. Outside the asphalt is rough and damp under me. I'm naked, I tell Jak, it's too hot to wear anything to sleep in. No you're not, Jak says. I'm wearing blue and white striped pajamas bottoms but I lie again and tell him that I am truly, actually not wearing clothes. Prove it, he says. I ask how I'm supposed to prove over the phone that I'm naked. Take my word for it, I just am. Then so am I, he says.

So what's your great idea for a sci-fi story, I ask. Blond women are actually aliens, he says. All of them, I ask. Most of them, Jak says. He says that all the ones that look like Sandy Duncan are definitely aliens. I tell him that I'm not sure that this is such a great story idea. He says that it's not a story idea, that it's true. He has proof. He tells me about the woman who lives in the apartment across from him, the woman who looks like Nikki, who looks like Sandy Duncan. The woman that he accidentally followed home from the subway.

According to Jak, this woman invited him to come over for a drink because a while ago he had lent her a cup of sugar. I say that I remember the cup of sugar. According to Jak they sat on her couch, which was deep and plush and smelled like Lemon Fresh Joy, and they drank most of a bottle of Scotch. They talked about graduate school – he says she said she was a second-year student at the business school, she had a little bit of an accent, he says. She said she was from Luxembourg – and then she kissed him. So he kissed her back for a while and then he stuck his hand down under the elastic of her skirt. He says the first thing he noticed was that she wasn't wearing any underwear. He says the second thing he noticed was that she was smooth down there like a Barbie doll. She didn't have a vagina.

I interrupt at this point and ask him what exactly he means when he says this. Jak says he means exactly what he said, which is that she didn't have a vagina. He says that her skin was unusually warm, hot actually. She reached down and gently pushed his hand away. He says that at this point he was a little bit drunk and a little bit confused, but still not quite ready to give up hope. He says that it had been so long since the last time he slept with a woman, he thought maybe he'd forgotten exactly what was where.

He says that the blond woman, whose name is either Cordelia or Annamarie (he's forgotten which), then unzipped his pants, pushed down his boxers, and took his penis in her mouth. I tell him that I'm happy for him, but I'm more interested in the thing he said about how she didn't have a vagina.

He says that he's pretty sure that they reproduce by parthenogenesis. Who reproduce by parthenogenesis, I ask. Aliens, he says, blond women. That's why there are so many of them. That's why they all look alike. Don't they go to the bathroom, I ask. He says he hasn't figured out that part yet. He says that he's pretty sure that Nikki is now an alien, although she used to be a human, back when they were going out. Are you sure, I say. She had a vagina, he says.

I ask him why Nikki got married then, if she's an alien. Camouflage, he says. I say that I hope her fiancЋ, her husband, I mean, doesn't mind. Jak says that New York is full of blond women who resemble Sandy Duncan and most of them are undoubtedly aliens, that this is some sort of invasion. After he came in Chloe or Annamarie's mouth – probably neither name is her real name, he says – he says that she said she hoped they could see each other again and let him out of her apartment. So what do the aliens want with you, I ask. I don't know, Jak says and hangs up.

I try to call him back but he's left the phone off the hook. So I go back inside and wake up the man in my bed and ask him if he's ever made love to a blonde and if so did he notice anything unusual about her vagina. He asks me if this is one of those jokes and I say that I don't know. We try to have sex, but it isn't working, so instead I open up a box of my father's Christmas tree decorations. I take out tinsel and strings of light and ornamental glass fruit. I hang the fruit off his fingers and toes and tell him not to move. I drape the tinsel and lights around his arms and legs and plug him in. He complains some but I tell him to be quiet or my father will wake up. I tell him how beautiful he looks, all lit up like a Christmas tree or a flying saucer. I put his penis in my mouth and pretend that I am Courtney (or Annamarie, or whatever her name is), that I am blond, that I am an alien. The man whose name begins with a C doesn't seem to notice.

I am falling asleep when the man says to me, I think I love you. What time is it, I say. I think you better leave, before my father wakes up. He says, but it's not even five o'clock yet. My father wakes up early, I tell him.

He takes off the tinsel and the Christmas lights and the ornamental fruit. He gets dressed and we shake hands and I let him out through the side door of the garage.

Some jokes about blondes. Why did the M &M factory fire the blonde? Because she kept throwing away the Ws. Why did the blonde stare at the bottle of orange juice? Because it said concentrate. A blonde and a brunette work in the same office, and one day the brunette gets a bouquet of roses. Oh great, she says, I guess this means I'm going to spend the weekend flat on my back, with my legs up in the air. Why, says the blonde, don't you have a vase?

I never find out the name of the man in my bed, the one with the stud in his penis. Probably this is for the best. My reading is coming up and I have to concentrate on that. All week I leave messages on Jak's machine but he doesn't call me back. On the day that I am supposed to go to the airport to pick him up, the day before I am supposed to give a reading, although I haven't written anything new for over a year, Jak finally calls me.

He says he's sorry but he's not going to be able to come to Virginia after all. I ask him why not. He said that he got the Carey bus at Grand Central, and that a blond woman sat next to him. Let me guess, I say, she didn't have a vagina. He says he has no idea if she had a vagina or not, that she just sat next to him, reading a trashy romance by Catherine Cookson. I say that I've never read Catherine Cookson, but I'm lying. I read a novel by her once. It occurs to me that the act of reading Catherine Cookson might conclusively prove that the woman either had a vagina or that she didn't, that the blond woman who sat beside Jak might have been an alien, or else incontrovertibly human, but I'm not sure which. Really, I could make a case either way.

Jak says that the real problem was when the bus pulled into the terminal at LaGuardia and he went to the check-in gate. The woman behind the counter was blond, and so was every single woman behind him in line, he tells me, when he turned around. He says that he realized that what he had was a one-way ticket to Sandy Duncan Land, that if he didn't turn around and go straight back to Manhattan, that he was going to end up on some planet populated by blond women with Barbie-smooth crotches. He says that Manhattan may be suffering from some sort of alien infestation, but he's coming to terms with that. He says he can live with an apartment full of rats, in a building full of women with no vaginas. He says that for the time being, it's safest.

He says that when he got home, the woman in the apartment on the fifth floor was looking through the keyhole. How do you know, I say. He says that he could smell her standing next to the door. The whole hallway was warm with the way she was staring, that the whole hallway smelled like Lemon Fresh Joy. He says that he's sorry that he can't come to Virginia for my reading, but that's the way it is. He says that when he goes to Ankara this summer, he might not be coming back. There aren't so many blond women out there, he says.