The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (68 page)

They were in that bar on 4th Street with the good homemade draft beer and the handsome Dutch bartender who speaks five languages.

The two Candelen sisters, Lia and Ramona (Ray), sat next to each other. The bartender, Menno, stood directly across the bar from them and leaned on it with both arms extended. As always, he was happy to watch the two women talking together. He liked them both. He loved one of them. A moment before he’d brought them beer in iced mugs. They’d waited for him to return before continuing their conversation. Menno was Ray’s husband.

After taking a small sip of beer Ray cautiously asked, “How many times did you kill him?”

“Two. The last time I shot him point blank. He was dead for like an hour, but then I walked into the kitchen and there he was—eating scrambled eggs.”

Menno snorted and shook his head. “Does that guy ever eat anything
besides
scrambled eggs?”

Both sisters made almost the same face—exasperated amusement. Amused exasperation. It was true—it seemed like Patrick ate nothing but scrambled eggs.

“That’s mainly my fault. It was the only thing I said he ate when I made him.” Lia sighed.

“Yeah but you’ve already shot him two times, Lia. That’s right on the border.” Ray turned to Menno and took his hand. Across the top of it was a tattoo of a bull terrier dog. He’d had it done for her because she loved the breed and he’d recently bought her a puppy. “What was the most times I ever killed you?”

“Two.”

She dropped his hand. “Get
out
! I never killed you two times. It never came that close.”

“Yes it did, Sweetheart. That was at the beginning. You were very hard to get.”

Ray lifted her shoulders and covered her mouth with both hands like an embarrassed little girl. “That’s
awful
! How did you put up with me?”

Lia interrupted, “Wait. We’re talking about
me
here, not you two love birds. A little help please.”

A customer sat down at the other end of the bar and Menno walked over to take their order.

Ray slid her beer mug back and forth between her hands. “Is there anything else wrong with him that you can blame it on? Say you can’t live with a tightwad—”

“No, I told you before—he’s incredibly generous. That was one of the first things I checked on the application form: Must be generous. Remember, this was just after Jason—”

Ray shivered and stuck out her tongue at the thought of that creature. “Blecch—Jason. No wonder you wanted a cloud after him. He was the world’s worst boyfriend
ever.
I’m sorry Lia, but good lord, how could you ever want to be with that man?”

“Because the sex was amazing. I told you a hundred times. End of discussion—next question.

“On the other hand, I don’t believe Jason ever paid for anything—Nothing. He’d have probably charged me for the sex if he thought he could get away with it even though he was living rent free in my apartment.

“So when I filled out the form for the cloud that was the first thing I checked on the list—MUST BE GENEROUS.”

“Well from what you’ve said, you obviously didn’t check GOOD SEX on that list.”

Lia hesitated and then said shyly, “I
did
.”

“But you just said—”

Lia held up a hand to stop her sister from speaking. “If there was one good thing Jason did for me, he showed me how good sex can be. So naturally I wanted a great lover to replace him. The problem is Patrick doesn’t ...
do
it for me. Know what I mean? He’s passionate, enthusiastic and knows all the tricks, but it’s not there between us as far as I’m concerned. And that’s not even talking about his smell. I just don’t like to go to bed with him, Ray. All the rest of the time it’s great; he’s the perfect guy for me.” She stopped talking when she saw Menno walking towards them, scratching his handsome chin. He was so good looking and such a nice, loving man. Ray was living proof that a person c
ould
make it work perfectly with a cloud if you just managed it the right way.

“I’m telling you I really have tried to make things work for us. But I’m thinking more and more that it’s useless; time to call it quits and bring in a Hate Writer.”

“I know Lia, but—”

Menno looked at Ray and said “Tell her.”

Ray appeared to know exactly what he was talking about. “
Really
Menno, are you sure?”

“Yes. I like Patrick very much. It’d be nice if they could work things out like we did. So yes, tell her.” He stared directly at his wife when speaking so there was no question he meant it. “Is it easier for you if I leave?”

Clearly embarrassed, Ray nodded and looked away. Menno left.

“What’s he talking about?”

Ray ran a hand through her hair. She obviously needed a moment to bolster herself before she spoke. That only piqued Lia’s curiosity because her sister was not by nature a reticent woman. “Ray, what’s going on? Tell me
what
?”

“Menno smelled too. It must be part of their chemistry.” Having said this, Ray blushed deeply. “He smelled bad and kissed like a twelve year old horn dog. I couldn’t stand him. That’s why I killed him two times. I knew it was two. I thought after the second time he’d get the hint and go back to his planet. Thank God he didn’t.”

That was part of the beauty of the cloud dating service. Before you met your prospective partner, the company issued both of you small flashlights the size and heft of a fountain pen. Press a button and it beamed a cerulean blue laser light. If you were unhappy with your partner, you “shot” this blue light at them and they disappeared. But if the other thought the relationship still had a chance of working, they were allowed to return up to three times. However if you “killed” them three times with the light, it was finished whether both sides agreed to it or not. The final separation had to be formalized by signing release papers in front of one of the company’s Hate Writers but that was just a legal formality. The most comfortable thing about it was that as soon as the final separation took place, both parties forgot completely about the other one and everything that took place. It was as if your time together had never happened.

Lia was flabbergasted by Ray’s admission about her earlier rough times with Menno. Her sister had
never
told her any of this. In fact it was Ray’s wonderful experience with the cloud that made Lia, despite many misgivings, sign up with the company. She’d tried everything else by then: So what if he’s from a different planet? Look at Ray and Menno. My sister has never been so happy or in love which was saying a lot because the woman was a fucking
grump.

No one knew the true history of the cloud because the company was very tight lipped about its origins. The story going round was some being in a distant galaxy that happened to be monitoring earth noticed all of the dating services popping up on the internet. Then they watched some of the many reality TV shows like “The Farmer takes a Wife” and “Partner Search.” Bingo—light years away the big idea was born—an intergalactic dating bureau! Earth was full of attractive unattached females. Space was way too full of unattached males, especially because of the slew of star wars in recent millennia that of course had decimated the vast armies of female warriors everywhere. The only problem was that these available males were not
human,
but Zorgs, Nelmac, Chymeaneans, etcetera. So adjustments naturally had to be made. Aliens had to be willing to give up their natural born selves and become human beings. That was no big deal for most of them though because they were from very advanced civilizations so that metamorphosis was easy. Life on many of their worlds was grim and getting worse; especially planets where there were no longer any females around to make things nicer.

Menno and Patrick were both from the same planet. On her application form, Lia had made sure to stipulate that. If she were going to go through with this, she wanted to start from the same place her difficult sister had found
her
ideal mate.

“But Ray, you told me everything was perfect from the beginning!”

“I lied. It was bad. I killed him the second night we were together.”

The second night! Lia wanted to strangle Ramona. All those glittery stories she’d heard and resented—about how perfect everything was from day one with Menno. How his touch sent Ray over the moon, that he was chivalrous, sensitive, funny ... All the things Lia never had with Jason or Guy or Steve or any of her former boyfriends. So what if Menno was from another planet where he might have had three heads or was some kind of unthinkable monster. On Earth he was one damned fine looking man who treated her sister like treasure and would have been a lucky catch for any woman.

Half a year after Ray and Menno got together, Lia couldn’t resist asking her sister, “I know you’re really happy and all that. But doesn’t it
ever
bother you even a little bit when you imagine what Menno was like on his planet? That he might be a sandworm or something else horrible beneath that beautiful exterior?”

“Nope.”

“Really Ray, never? Not once?”

“Okay—once. Once he was in the bathroom when I was passing in the hall. He was making these
really
weird sounds.”

“Like what?”

Ray shrugged. “I can’t describe them. Just
really
weird noises, like nothing I’d ever heard before. But you know me and Menno—we have no secrets. So I asked afterward what he was doing in there—what were those sounds. You know what it was? He was studying. He was memorizing out loud some things he’d learned about being human. Like those kids who study at the madrasahs in the Middle East. The ones who recite everything out loud again and again until they’ve memorized them? That’s what Menno was doing, only in his own language.”

“But don’t you think that’s kind of
creepy
? That when he’s by himself he goes back to being, like, a Martian?”

“Shut up, Lia. You’re just jealous.”

It was true. At that point, Lia Candelen’s love life was a fallen soufflé, a dull throb toothache that never went away, and a big fat zero in her emotional bank account. Jason had gone from being a muse to mucus in less than a year and there was no end in sight to her heart’s woe.

Then to add insult to injury, she watched her self-absorbed moody sister transform almost overnight into a joyous songbird of love because she’d hooked up through an online dating service with an
alien
masquerading as a human being! Lia’s initial pity at Ray’s shocking, desperate move turned fast into neon green envy when she saw the dreamy Dutchman and the enchanting way he treated Ramona. He even got a tattoo for her!

And maybe it was the tattoo that did it; the
foreverness
of it. That might have been the thing that finally pushed Lia over the edge and into contacting the cloud herself to ask for an application form.

On receiving the large envelope in the mail she took it to the kitchen table, laid it in the middle and simply stared at the mustard colored paper a while. Had her life really come to this? Good God, was she really so desperate, so squeezed dry romantically and emotionally that she was willing to let a space creature into her head, her bed and maybe even her heart?

Yes she was.

“What do they mean ‘asexual’?” She was on the phone to Ray for the third time that night to ask about questions on the application.

“I guess it means you’re not into sex and just want a companion.”

“If I only want a companion then why not just buy a
dachshund
?”

Ray, normally neither patient nor understanding, gentled her voice and said to her yelpy sister, “Just fill it out, Lia. Fill out the form the best way you know how. That’s what I did and it turned out okay for me, right?” She looked at lovely Menno as she spoke. He sat across the room making funny faces at her. It was all she could do not to giggle. He thought it amusing that Lia had called so many times about the stupid application form. “The thing’s a joke, can’t she see that? All they’re really asking for is her wish list. What kind of man do you want? We can become anything—just describe it. Tall dark and handsome? Check. Can dance like Fred Astaire? No problem. Tell us what you want and you’ve got it—Simple.”

Ramona shook her head, delighted by her smart boyfriend’s naiveté. “You’re so wrong, Sweetheart. You still don’t understand human psychology yet. We want there to be mystery in our romance, not a check list. We want this magical element of
chance
on a blind date. If we just make a list that we know is going to be filled, it’s like going to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. I go to the pharmacy for medicine. I go on blind dates hoping for a miracle.”

Menno considered this, his expression grave and thoughtful. “But you filled out the cloud application form too, Ray, so you couldn’t have been expecting miracles. From everything you’ve said about your state of mind then, you were looking for a sure thing.”

“True, at that point in my life I was. But I didn’t believe for a minute those cloud questions were anything more than window dressing. I thought it was like any other dating service: on every application form you check off the qualities you’re looking for in a mate. Then the agency matches you up with someone who has similar taste. But what they say on paper and what they
really
want is usually worlds apart.”

The telephone rang again and both of them knew who was calling.

Patrick walked into the bar grinning and rubbing his hands briskly together as if they were cold. His whole being radiated “I’m so glad to be here!”

His lovely Lia was sitting with Ramona and another woman he didn’t recognize in a booth at the back of the bar. Both Candelen sisters were attractive but as far as Patrick was concerned, Lia had it all over Ramona because she was so unpleasant. It showed in everything she said and did. Even when she was in a good mood Lia looked cranky. And when unhappy she looked like she hated the whole world but most especially you. Patrick loved that about her.