I find myself standing on the bed, straight and proud, my wife Edna Bradshaw’s face turned up to me in wonder. We consider each other for a long moment.
Then my wife says, “Desi? Are you all right, honey? What do you want right now?”
“I want what I cannot have. More time. I want to listen to our guests.”
“I can fix that, honeybun. Please. Sit down.”
And I do. I sit before my wife, my mate, my spouse, my old lady, my better half, my helpmeet. Though my mind is careening on. I sit.
Edna Bradshaw says, “We should have a nice fancy sit-down supper for everybody. You can talk with them all and you can see how they are together.”
I grow floppy with appreciation at my wife. “This is a very good idea,” I say. “But there is so little time.”
“Have you forgotten who you’re married to, Mr. Spaceman? I’ll have things ready in plenty of time. It’s only right, anyway. You wouldn’t want our guests to sleep through this special New Year’s Eve.” And the wife I clearly remember marrying, Edna Louise Bradshaw, bounces off the bed. “If the dinner’s a big success maybe you won’t have to go down there after all.”
I do not have the heart to argue this point with her. Perhaps her want has turned into a yearning. Not that creatures on this planet — or any planet in the universe — can get even all their wants, either. But I want to obey the powers that sent me to this world, even if I do not want to do the thing they ask of me. And I must obey. But I do not speak these thoughts to my wife, and at this moment I am grateful for the barrier between our minds.
“My mind is on the job already,” she says. “Don’t ask. Don’t ask. It’ll be a surprise. You’re in the hands of an expert at this, if I do say so myself — and I just did — though I hope you won’t think I’m being too prideful. But you do have a choice to make. It must be chicken. Without knowing anything else about this mixed group we have here, you can go wrong with all other main dishes except chicken. Chicken is safe. That’s not the choice I refer to. I just want you to consider two things right now, however, Desi. Chicken Lickin’. Or Chicken Wiggle.”
She pauses as if the salient qualities of these two things are already apparent to me. Since her earlier observations about my physiology, I find myself inordinately conscious of my mouth. It has drawn tight, I think. Edna observes this.
“Silly me,” she says. “Chicken Wiggle. We’re talking boiled chicken cut into chunks. Onions, canned English peas, Worcestershire sauce, pimento, mushroom soup, chopped bell peppers, a dash of Tabasco. All mixed with egg noodles. And then with Chicken Lickin’ it’s baked whole chicken dipped in milk and creamy peanut butter with paprika and Accent and … wait a minute.” Edna slaps her own forehead. “Stop right there. We don’t know if anybody has a peanut allergy. That can kill you dead.”
She looks at me. I am still stuck on boiled and cut and baked chickens. Perfectly innocent birds, it seems to me. Perhaps with their own feelings and their own language rivaling Eddie the yellow cat’s in complexity. My wife would never consider boiling, cutting, and baking Eddie.
“So it’s Chicken Wiggle,” Edna says. “That settles it. I may have to get you to beam me up some Worcestershire sauce, but I think I’ve stocked up on everything else.”
And she disappears into the bathroom to dress. I can hear her whistling.
“That is a happy tune,” I say.
“It’s ‘Dixie,’” she calls from the bathroom. “Happy and sad, really.”
“Happy and sad,” I repeat, but low, only for myself. There is a sound of water running now. I wish there were a chicken before me, to apologize to. But that is not the true issue, I realize. The sad things are complex, too complex for me to deal with at this moment. And yet, I am happy at the wonderful plan that my wife Edna Bradshaw has presented to me. We will have a nice big supper before I descend to the planet Earth. If it is a success, I will know what to do, what to say when I go down there. I will ask all my guests to put their heads together to help me.
I feel bloated with weariness. I am so weary I cannot even hear the music of sleep beginning to shape in me. I am that weary. And it is all right now, to sleep. Edna will wake me for the supper and until then I can sleep. Still, something in me wants to hear another voice. It is not so easy to abandon the pattern of my professional life, no matter how weary I am. And I am weary. I should sleep. I should sleep but I rise up from the bed and I go to the door that leads into the corridor and before I move to open it I can feel that there is someone on the other side. I know this as surely as if a member of my own species were standing there, waiting, placing his presence in my head, placing his consciousness there. Her presence. I realize there is a female on the other side of the door. I imagine that it might indeed be a member of my own species. A supervisor come to give me last-minute instructions or to fortify my courage.
I move my hand.
The door opens.
And it is Claudia.
I look instantly to her hands, though I know I have her weapon in my Hall of Objects. But I also had her in her sleeping space, unconscious. Anything is possible. But she simply opens her empty hands before me.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to speak with you,” she says. “Please.”
“I was just coming to get you,” I say, and that certainly could be true. I was in fact going to get someone and she is a legitimate choice.
At this, Claudia turns on her heel and moves off down the corridor. I follow. She goes straight to the interview room and the door opens for her and by the time I step in, she is sitting in the appropriate chair, a shaft of light illuminating her.
I sit before her. She closes her eyes and without my even having to wave my hand her voice starts and mine starts with hers and we speak and I am Claudia Lambert. I feel like I should give you a formal welcome. I worked for NASA for nearly a decade. But other things overtook me. I worked for NASA but now I work for myself with my name on the door and a payroll of a dozen and nobody above me who I can turn to for appreciation. I had a daughter but now I have a twenty-one-year-old friend, such a good friend that she can tell me only the truth when I’m being stupid or a fool. I had faith in the institutions of the city of Houston and the state of Texas but now I carry a pistol in my purse, since concealed weapons in Texas are suddenly legal and I’m afraid of accidentally cutting somebody off on the interstate and them taking out a gun and trying to shoot me. I’ll be able to shoot back at them. Road rage enrages me. I hate the instant and harsh criticism of drivers trying to feel self-righteous over petty little things and I feel self-righteous hating them. I had a husband but now my body is my own and I can’t find anybody I’d even want to hold hands with after an hour’s conversation much less choose to take to bed.
God I loved the space program. Especially the two Voyagers. I love the Voyagers even more now, I think. They’re carrying these electronic records of who we are, the people of Earth. They’ll carry them for millennia and millennia, out into the stars. Not that I ever bought the hodgepodge image they’ve got of us. But it’s something. Among the music selections, they’ve got the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth flying out there and right alongside is Chuck Berry doing “Johnny B. Goode.” There’s an image of a traffic jam in India next to a tree toad next to a demonstration of human sex organs. And there’s fifty-five different speakers in fifty-five languages giving greetings. Mostly, Hello from earth. Peace to you. That sort of thing. But each one’s a little different. The Zulu speaking Nguni calls the spacemen “great ones” and wishes them longevity. The Turk co-opts them right away, addressing them as “Turkish-speaking friends.” The Indonesian seems to be the host of a TV talk show. He says, “Good night, ladies and gentlemen. Good-bye and see you next time.” And the young woman doing the Swedish refused to step out of the bounds of her own little life. She says, “Greetings from a computer programmer in the little university town of Ithaca on the planet Earth.” What are the spacemen going to think? Ithaca’s in Sweden, I guess. I don’t know why I should give a damn. I can’t send a verbal greeting that can be adequately comprehended across a lunch table in River Oaks to my own daughter once a week.