A Parallel Life (14 page)

“That's pretty amazing,” Linda says. She can still see a small orange speck out on the water. Bright orioles catch the light as they fly to the palm trees behind the trailer.

“It was a very wealthy court. I was on speaking terms with Merlin.”

“Really? Merlin?”

“I've named my dog after him. Merlin.” The dog, hearing its name repeated, looks up expecting something.

“Loyal,” Linda says. The east is almost dark now; the rock with the pelicans is a black spot against the sky.

“And then I was Charlotte Corday,” the woman says, putting down an empty bottle.

“You always seemed to run with a fast crowd.”

“Yeah, that's me. Maybe we have some tequila at our place. No. No, we drank it up last night. It goes down too easy. Margaritas, you know. I make a mean margarita.”

“Well, tell me more about that stuff,” Linda says. Her own beer tastes better than ever. She doesn't even want tequila. “I wonder why I've never been interested in all of that. I never even read Jeane Dixon.”

“I find that hard to believe. I can't believe anybody's not interested!”

“Well,” Linda says, “maybe I should be. Who knows?” She drinks more beer and looks out at the water. She now has a slight buzz. Mexican beer is stronger. Who ever knows?

“I've always been fascinated. Past lives are only one interest of mine.” The woman settles back. Her voice has an agreeable harshness. “Great blondes in history. That's another interest I have. The night Marilyn died I had this terrible sense that something was wrong. I felt very connected to her.”

“But do you really believe it? I mean, what makes you so sure that some part of you isn't just inventing it to
please some other part?” Her beer is no longer sitting well. She feels an itching annoyance now.

“Honey, I have read hundreds of books, but mostly it's gut feeling.” The woman says this and pounds her stomach with a fist. “Gut feeling!”

“Oh,” Linda says. “Well, I just don't feel it—anywhere.”

“If you want to be that way, go on and be that way,” the woman says.

“It's not how I want to be,” Linda says. “I'm not how I want to be. Wanting has nothing to do with anything.” She pulls up her loose blouse and exposes her specially made brassiere. “Look!”

The woman looks with a puzzled, fuzzy expression.

“No, that isn't it,” Linda says, and pulls up the brassiere. Beneath it lies a too-pink scar—as if nobody has even tried to be neat. “They didn't get it. That's what the doctor said. Like getting a joke or something.”

“Wow,” says the woman slowly. “I've never seen a scar like that before. It's not pretty.”

“That's just the surface. The really ugly stuff is going on inside of me.”

“Well, they have all kinds of places here in Mexico—like the place where Steve McQueen . . .”

“Died,” Linda interrupts, lowering her blouse. In the silence she can hear the orioles rattling around in the palms. She must have forgotten to rewind the tape.

“Don't take it so hard,” the woman says. “Look at it this way. You're going to come back.”

“As a famous blonde, perhaps?”

“That, I don't know.”

“Well, neither do I,” Linda says, and sighs. “I think I need to be alone.”

“I hear you, honey. Sure, take it easy. It's time for me
and Merlin here to toddle on home anyway. My companion will be looking inside the refrigerator trying to figure out how to turn stuff in plastic packages into food. Cheers!”

“Cheers!”

When the woman is gone, Linda goes into the trailer for another beer. She feels foolish, mean spirited, downright rude. The woman was only trying to be friendly. She shouldn't let things get to her so. Past lives, coming back over and over again—somehow it seems to miss the point.

On the counter is her tattered
Field Guide to Western Birds
. She leafs through it, looking at all her neat notes in the margins, all the small black check marks on the Life List pages. It is becoming quite a good list. Just yesterday she had walked up a dry riverbed, stepping carefully over the rounded stones, and came upon a wild confusion of hummingbirds sipping at the white trumpet-flowered bushes. She saw black-fronted hummers for the first time, and the familiar rufous ones she fed in her garden at home. Then last night Bob suggested that they take the ferry across to Puerto Vallarta so that she could look for parrots in the jungle there.

She closes the book and takes out a beer, then rips open a bag of corn chips. She used to love corn chips. Now they make her queasy. She crunches one between her teeth anyway. Pretty soon she'll probably have to give up beer. She decides against music and goes outside to sit.

The orioles in the palms gradually quiet down. The only sound comes from the road up behind the beach, where an occasional truck shifts gears for the next upgrade. A flattened circle of moon appears. The pelicans on the rock are still—turned to stone for all she can tell.

In a while she hears the sound of the engine. Then it
quits and she sees the dark shape that is Bob wading through the surf, dragging the boat onto the sand. There is such a happy energy in his movements. He is so alive. She finds herself angry with him. For the bounce in his step. For his enthusiasm for fishing. For his relentless cheerfulness. When he has the boat beached, he comes trotting up to the circle of light outside the trailer door. He is holding a large fish on a gaff in front of him.

“Get the charcoal ready!” he says. He grins and waves the fish in front of her, then kneels beside her and grabs her around the waist with his free arm.

“Get that thing out of my face!” she says, but he continues to dangle it there. He leans to her and nibbles her neck and kisses her right below her ear, and then on her shoulder. She finally laughs because she knows how much he wants her to. He tightens his grip on her and brings the fish even closer. It shines silver, with the iridescent blue and brilliant flecks of gold. It is so bright and his breath on her neck is so warm. She can't tell him how hard he is making it for her.

T
HE MAN BEN
and I had come to meet was busy swimming laps through the fluorescent green water of the motel pool. Above that glowing rectangle, the night sky glowed too, neon orange fading to neon pink. Barstow, Hub-of-the-Mojave.

After ten minutes or so, Chuck pulled himself out of the pool and made his way toward us, which was a relief since Ben had almost shattered the glass top of our table, knocking one of its legs with his impatient, jerking knee. Each time the table wobbled I glared at Ben, and each time he looked back, surprised and apologetic, and began polishing his head with his stubby fingers. At sixty, Ben was as chubby, pink, and hairless as a baby—and as trusting.

“You'll tell your great-grandchildren about this night,” Chuck said before either of us had a chance to say anything. As he spoke he rubbed his chest with a towel as if trying to massage the huge bald eagle tattooed there, a wing spread over each of his hairy pectorals. His words, aimed at Ben, dropped as neatly as a caddis fly on a stream and Ben rose like a trout.

“Yes, Ben,” Chuck intoned, “I'm glad you made it. I'm not sure if you realize it, but only a few minutes from the very place where we now sit Dwight David Eisenhower met with the leader of an alien force from outer space. The leader assumed a human form for the occasion, of course. It was historic but, you understand, Ben, that Ike couldn't tell anyone, or mass hysteria would result. Only now can the truth be told.”

Ben nodded, taking a final sip of his vodka and Mountain Dew, a drink the exact color of the water in the pool and motioned for another. “Drink, Chuck?” he asked.

“Dr. Pepper,” Chuck said, patting a place on his bulging abdomen that could have been either his liver or his stomach. “I'm off the hard stuff.”

I ordered another wine cooler.

“My landlady,” Ben said, introducing me. “Carol, this is Chuck.”

“Nice-looking landlady,” Chuck said without really looking at me. “Never had any like her.”

I smiled politely.

“Can you believe, Carol, that Chuck was in the service with me—on the same old tub?” Ben asked. “And now he's into this. Amazing.”

“Hell, I've been into this for years. You should see my files,” Chuck said, stroking his goatee. “But if I hadn't run into your ex and gotten your current address, you'd never have known about tonight—and, boy, would you have missed out!”

“Hey, I'm hip,” Ben said and I winced. Ben had probably smoked dope all of two times and he'd practiced the language by the Berlitz method. I didn't have the heart to tell him that hip was over—dead. But hip or not, Ben was okay, the best roomer I'd had. Just before he arrived, I'd thrown out an old friend who never washed a dish in the half year she lived with me. She stuck me for two months rent and a $386.24 phone bill. Ben was a godsend. Navy and clean. With Ben, I was actually making house payments on time. Except for his radio—one talk show after another—he was fine.

Chuck popped open his Dr. Pepper. “Yes, sir, Ben, it was a great event! The aliens had a message, too. It's all
documented. All of it. It's all in my newsletter. Hot last issue, huh, Ben, old boy? ‘UFOs to Land in California!' How's that for a headline?”

“You betcha! Fantastic stuff! I mean, you got me where I live now. I'm going in for the heavy stuff now. After the Navy and my wife, I'm ready for the deep stuff. I know that the mind of man is just beginning—”

“Hey, Carol,” Chuck interrupted, fixing me with his large colorless eyes. “Are you into the spiritual? Outer space? Other planes of existence? Astral travel? Is that why you're here?”

I started to say that I was here because Ben had paid me to drive him—his license having been suspended for driving while under the influence—but I caught Ben looking at me. “Well,” I said to Chuck, “I don't rule any of it out. You know, I was even thinking of opening an astral travel agency. If it gets to be really popular, they'll be booking problems out there like everywhere else.”

“UFOs are documented,” Chuck said without batting an eye. “Our government has known about them for almost half a century. The alien leader told Ike they've been monitoring us since we tested the first A-bomb!”

“Amazing,” said Ben.

“You've got it. Well, I'll go get dressed. Meet you two here in a bit. I've got to get Verna. She's a psychic. She thought she should come in case they don't want to talk. Telepathy's one of her things.” He rushed off.

“Hey,” said Ben, putting his hand over mine. I began to wonder if he'd already had too much to drink. “You're not sorry you came, are you? You heard what Chuck said. You could be on the spot for one of history's big events.”

“We'll see,” I said, pulling gently on my hand. “I want to make a phone call.” I really wanted a break.

“Who are you calling? Some fellow?”

“My mother, Ben.”

“Say hello to her for me.”

“Okay, but she's got a boyfriend.”

“Just hello.”

Actually my mother has a boyfriend about as much as I do. Not much. I found phones between the lobby and the bar and stood in front of them. Suddenly, I did want to call someone. But who? Not my mother. If I told her what I was doing, she'd only say, “I'd rather sit home with egg on my face.” My ex-husband? He's good to call about some things—like business. He's a CPA. I put him through school. I could call and say, “Hi there, Rick, I'm in the Hub-a-Tel in Barstow, Hub-of-the-Mojave, with the man who rents a room from me. No hanky-pank. We're waiting for a spaceship to land.” No. A girlfriend once gave me the number of a man she phones. He's a foreigner and he'll accept collect calls from anywhere in the U.S. so he can practice his English. She says it's very soothing. You can talk to him about anything. I stared at the rows of buttons, then headed into the bar.

About a dozen men—from their clothes and conversations probably hunters, the kind who go into the desert and shoot small animals—were sitting around talking. I ordered a white wine and two of them turned up, one on each side. Bars are too easy. “Whoa!” I said when the wine came, “I'm a nun!” The one on my right laughed. I took the wine out to the pool.

When I got back to the table, Ben was sitting, head thrown back, eyes fastened like suction cups onto the sky. “See anything?” I asked.

“It's very moving,” he said softly. “A night we'll always remember.”

Chuck arrived wearing Bermuda shorts, a white shirt, and a bolo tie with a turquoise the size of a small child's fist. A tall, thin woman with a face like Trigger's and a tangle of graying blonde curls was with him.

“I read auras,” said Verna, settling into the backseat of my Datsun and taking time to arrange yards of some bulky Third World fabric she was wearing. Ben got in back beside her, leaving Chuck to get into the front seat with me.

“That's great,” I said. “You must have very good eyes.”

“Turn left at the first light,” Chuck said as I pulled out into the traffic. “After that, keep going.”

“I'm getting nervous,” Verna said.

“Picking up any vibes?” Chuck asked.

“Oh, I'm beginning to. There's this whirring sound.”

“Hang in there, Verna,” Chuck said, sounding like the coach at the rivalry game. “Now, Ben, as I was telling you back at the motel, the aliens warned Ike that we had to knock off with the atom bomb. Too risky. They'd already had to clean up our waste out in space.”

“They sound like intelligent beings,” Ben said.

“Highly intelligent. They told Ike that they could show us how to live without work, never run out of gas. The good life, but we weren't ready yet.”

“Too much good news would be hard to take,” I said.