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Someone was at the back door, and from his frozen position in the kitchen, Louis thought he could make out Melissa Banks’ head through the regrettably large windows in the door. He stuffed the giant ruby into his pocket and ducked behind a counter. She rapped briskly on the glass.
“Yoo-hoo!” she called in her piercing contralto. “Looooooouis! Open up; I know you’re in there!”
He planned on letting her give up and go away but had forgotten the door was unlocked. She let herself in. “Loooouis!”
He popped up, pretending to have been looking for something he dropped. “Can’t find it,” he muttered unconvincingly, while checking to make sure the ruby was still in his pocket.
Then he noticed that Melissa was not alone. She had with her a small, softly attractive woman with brown hair piled up on top of her head and wearing large, dark framed glasses. The woman looked as uncomfortable as he was.
“We were passing through the neighborhood, and I thought I’d introduce you to May here. You didn’t answer your front door, but your car is in the driveway. She’s going to take over George’s classes while he’s on sabbatical. May Cronin, this is Louis Pickett. Louis… May.”
The woman nodded in a stiff but not unfriendly way. Louis liked that she hadn’t forced him to shake hands as his own were in his pockets, one fondling the gem.
May said, “You teach calculus and statistics, right?”
“Yeah,” said Louis. Should he offer them something to drink?
“Well, we’ve got to get going,” blurted Melissa. “You two will see each other at school on Monday. I just wanted you to meet now. Maybe you can show May around the math department then, Louis?”
Louis forgot the ruby for a moment and took a long look at May. He liked her pointy little chin and the way she appeared so cool and collected. The very opposite of Melissa, who emoted sloppily all over the place. Her eyes were a muddy green color and lined with long, black lashes. He felt his face growing hot.
“Sure,” he said. “Monday.” Later that night, he would find himself picturing this May Cronin’s serious face and wonder why he couldn’t stop thinking about her — why he felt something prying at his heart, his very guts. It seemed as if he knew her already somehow.
The two women filed out, Melissa twirling her hand good-bye, and Louis, about to bolt the door, stopped instead to look out at the wintry yard. A crow pecked at something beneath the thin layer of snow, and he noticed how beautiful and shiny were its wings. A squirrel was busily eating from the bird feeder, but for once he did not mind. He took the ruby from his pocket and held it up to the light. Was it real? Was anything real?
He thought he might store the gem in his safety deposit box at the bank. For now.
Things went on as what had become usual for one more week, during which Louis showed May Cronin the ropes at school and helped her deal with one or two exceptionally badly behaved students. Helping her made him feel unusually masculine. He noticed that he was thinking of her during his classes, which proved distracting, but pleasantly so.
One odd time, Nineed actually walked out into the backyard with him (it was early morning and the alien stood in the shadows) and remarked on the cold and pleasurable aroma of the air, the delicate shade of the sky and the beauty of the dark trees silhouetted against it. Louis thought that possibly they were making friends, if that was possible.
But that night, both creatures materialized suddenly in his bedroom, once again setting his heart pounding. “What the — ?” he demanded, scrambling to sit up.
“Louis,” said Leegar, “we are leaving. We have appreciated your cooperation during our stay.”
“What?” Louis almost shouted. “I thought you were staying longer!”
“We planned to,” said Nineed, stepping forward, “but things have changed.”
Louis couldn’t understand his feeling of dismay. “What things have changed?”
“It is you,” said Nineed. “You know, we have very sensitive instruments and by now, know you better than you know yourself. You are about to experience a change in consciousness. I am referring now to a personal level, not the general condition of humankind. As we explained before, we chose you and this house because you were a solitary man. We will need to move our work somewhere else now.”
Louis gasped in surprise and opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. Tears sprang to his eyes, such a mix of emotion he was feeling. An understanding of everything the alien meant filled his mind at once and his emotion, oddly, was gratitude. All these years of being alone and not understanding how to change that.
Nineed reached out his long, bony hand and touched Louis.
“Changes of consciousness are good,” he said.
About Margaret Karmazin
