“Harder.”
“You heard her,” the junkie cries. “Give it to her harder.”
“Will you shut the hell up,” I snap.
Although it feels all kinds of wrong, I grab her ass and push. Sharon squirms sideways, and in a flash, rolls forward out of the holding cell, somersaulting onto the floor.
“There,” she says. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Oh,” the junkie cries, unable to contain his laughter. “I’m pretty sure it can’t get any harder than that!”
I could hit him, but instead I grab her clothes and rush them over to her. It’s strange, but in the moment, I’m more concerned about her being clothed than being caught. I guess being caught is a given.
“No time,” she says, grabbing only her shirt and jeans. “I’ve got to move fast. I’ll be right back. I’m going to sneak in there like a commando and get the keys.”
“Oh, you’re going commando, all right,” the junkie says, seeing me standing by the bars still holding her bra and panties.
I throw a shoe at him.
He ducks to one side, roaring with laughter. I must admit, this whole situation is so crazy it really is funny. And yet, it worked. There she is on the other side of the bars.
Sharon creeps down the hall.
I pick up her shoe and stand at the door to the cell, ready to leave when she gets the key. This is actually going to work.
The junkie reaches out and touches my arm for no particular reason other than to determine if I’m real. I am, but he doesn’t look convinced. For him, this is an acid trip of epic proportions.
My heart pounds in my chest.
I like Sharon.
I like her a lot.
Actually, I’m not sure ‘like’ is the right word. There must be a better word to describe the way I feel about her. Not love. I couldn’t say I love her. I lust her. That’s the word I’m looking for. Nah, lust is too—sheesh, it just doesn’t fit. Not like. Not love. Not lust. I don’t know what it is, but I was actually a little horrified seeing her naked. Sure, I enjoyed the show. But there was something perverse about seeing her strip in a police cell. Pleasantly perverse, but perverse all the same. I feel as though I did something wrong by enjoying the spectacle, as though I’ve sullied myself. But, hey, on the bright side—no tentacles.
From her perspective, being an alien, I can’t help but wonder if there were any sexual connotations at all? Certainly, she seemed very matter-of-fact about the whole thing. What do aliens think of human sex? Is there an alien equivalent? And I don’t mean the reproductive act, I mean the sense of intimacy, vulnerability, privacy. For us, sex is a sensual act, consuming and overwhelming us in a moment of ecstatic release.
How would I describe an orgasm to an alien? It’s a serious question in my mind. The best way I can think of as I watch Sharon disappear around the corner in bare feet, is to lose yourself in a moment of pure, unadulterated pleasure, but I suspect words can never convey the reality of sex. It’s a bit like explaining red to a blind man. Strange how something so wonderful can be so intensely personal and private, so difficult to describe. Why is such an exciting, indulgent, shared pleasure often a source of guilt? I wonder what that says about us as a species. Our particular form of intelligence seems naturally predisposed to seek sexual pleasure, and yet we either hide from that instinct, or take it to extremes.
Do aliens have porn? Or is porn a particularly human invention?
And what is porn but to surrender to our instincts?
Dunno.
Charles Darwin spoke of both natural selection and sexual selection, with the latter, at least in part, describing why birds like the peacock have such stunning plumage. Are we like peacocks and peahens?
Sharon comes creeping back down the hallway, tiptoeing as she slowly builds to a run. She has a set of keys in her hand. Her shirt is tight-fitting and semitransparent, not leaving much to the imagination. I try to ignore the hypnotic bounce of her breasts, wanting to make up for my previous indiscretions as though someone’s keeping score. Perhaps a good deed cancels out the bad? If it was bad.
“Got them,” she says with a grin on her face.
I feel like a kid skipping school.
Sharon opens the cell door. The junkie gets to his feet.
“Not you buddy,” I say, holding Sharon’s jacket, along with her shoes, socks, and underwear, all neatly folded and stacked. I’m trying to appear industrious rather than sleazy. Sharon puts on her jacket, zipping it up and hiding her breasts from sight. Finally, I can think clearly again.
“Awww,” the junkie says, not arguing with me. He slumps against the wall and slides to the floor. The glazed look in his eyes tells me he doesn’t think any of this is real. His subconscious delusions are scolding him, and he’s resigned to sitting there numb.
“What about the cameras?” I ask, pointing at a dark dome on the roof, wondering about the angle that captured Sharon’s exotic, nude, rain/soap dance. It would grab millions of hits on YouTube.
“Mark deactivated them about twenty minutes ago,” she says.
“Ah,” I say as she closes the cell door behind me.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask, following her down a corridor leading away from the cells.
“There’s an access tunnel leading to the morgue in the next building. All we need to do is steal Mark’s old body.”
“That’s all,” I ask, being facetious, but apparently sarcasm doesn’t register with extraterrestrials.
“Yeah, easy, huh?”
Sharon leads me into a storage area and then down a dimly lit corridor.
I feel a little stupid, but I have to ask.
“And why are we doing this?”
“We can’t let them examine his brain.”
“Ah,” I say, as though I understand, but followed quickly by, “Why?”
“You humans have a hundred trillion neural connections. We have close to five hundred trillion.”
“Ah.”
Someone rattles a key in a door, inadvertently giving us the chance to duck into a room and hide behind some shelving. A janitor wanders in, grabs a mop and bucket, and then turns and leaves.
“And it looks different?” I whisper, still crouching behind the shelving.
“What?” Sharon asks, taking her shoes and socks from me and putting them on.
“Your brains?”
“Only under an electron microscope.”
“Ah,” I say, realizing this is the third time I’ve started a sentence with that pearl of a word. “You know you don’t need to do this, right?”
“Do what?” she says, tying the laces on her shoes.
“Steal his body.”
“Why do you say that?” she asks, taking her bra and underpants from me. I’m intensely curious as to whether she’s going to strip down again to get dressed, but she shoves her lacy panties in her pocket.
“They shot him,” I say, struggling not to lose my train of thought. “In the chest. Point blank. If the police even bother with an autopsy, it’s going to focus on the damage to his heart and lungs. They’re not going to open his skull.”
“How do you know that?” Sharon asks, unzipping her jacket briefly and lifting her shirt a little. She fastens her bra just above her waist and moves the bra around and under her breasts without lifting her shirt. With a deft motion, she slips her hands out of her sleeves, into the bra, and then back into the sleeves again without removing her shirt. Damn. That was like watching Cirque du Soleil.
“Joe?” she asks, catching me distracted by her contortionist routine.
“Oh, CSI Miami,” I reply.
“Sea-sided Miami?” she asks.
“The TV show,” I say. “You do watch TV? Don’t you?”