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(One year later)

 

A "Captured by Aliens" story

 

 

 

 

I decide it wouldn't be so bad to go home.

 

To see her one more time.

 

She'll think I left her.  She'll think I stayed away all those years on purpose.

 

It doesn't matter.

 

To see her face, even hardened with hate.

 

Just once.

 

 

 

 

It's noon.  I walk into the office.  I forgot what they do.

 

She's on lunch they say, after I scrawl her name on a piece of paper.  Can I help you?

 

No!  You can't help me!

 

I want to shout, but nothing comes out.  I heard once if you don't talk for a long time, you lose the ability.  Maybe I have.

 

Good.

 

I make myself comfortably on the chair they have out in the hallway.  I'm not leaving until I see her.

 

The thought crosses my mind that she's avoiding me.  She saw me coming on the security.  She told the staff to tell me she was on lunch.

 

That's ridiclous, of course.  She wouldn't even recognize me.  Of course I won't recognize her either.  So much time has passed.  Why do things have to change.

 

The minutes drag by.  Finally, a woman comes out, a quizzical look on her face.

 

She's sinewy, and wearing a blue skirt.  Her eyes are suken and a dull blue gray; her hair long, red and held back by a blue scrunchie.   She seems to be some kind of leader, the boss of the company maybe.  She's missing one finger.

 

I can't help do a double take.  ... Missing a finger!  It's her!

 

But she seems so much older than the last time I saw her.  One hundred years older.

 

But she doesn't recogonize me.

 

"Can I help you?" she asks, pleasent enough.

 

I hand her an envelope.

 

She used to recieve it in the mail, all up until a year ago.

 

I suspect she already knows what inside.  She barely opens it.

 

"Who are you?" she demands.  Then her eyes grow wide.

 

She knows.

 

"Oh my god!  Where -- I mean why -- I mean how -- I mean ... oh my god."

 

Suddenly her eyes begin to narrow.  A flame seemed to dance angrily behind her eyes.

 

"It was you!  All those year!  If I have known, I'd have burnt all the money!  I don't need your help!  Say something, for God's sake!"

 

I shake my head gently.  Even if I wanted to ... but I don't dare try.

 

"Take the money.  Take it back!  I don't need it!"

 

She's so angry.  I don't blame her.

 

Unexpectidly, she shoves me against the wall, pinning me by my shirt.  "You just disappeared!  Not even a note!  I had no idea what happened!  The police questioned me!  We thought you were dead!  And then those letters -- no, not letters!  They were just envelopes with money!  I knew they were from you.  No one believed me -- they said you were dead.  Oh, but I knew better.  I just don't know why!"

 

She tips her head upwards, taking a long breath.  Are those tears she's holding back? 

 

"And why did you come back?"

 

All I can is put my hand in front of my throat and shake my head once more.

 

She rubs her eyes, and then sighs.  "Do you need a place to stay?  For a couple days?  You know you're welcome."

 

So she goes back to work.  And I go back to ... to what?  To nothingness?

 

Should I stay at her house?  I assume, even after all the years, she still lives in her little, rundown condo on Z Street.  But is there anything more to say?

 

 

 

But I do wait, on the stairs in the hallway.  I try to talk.  I try to sing.  Something, anything.  It seems a long time before even the tiniest sound comes out.  It's weak, barely audible and my throat hurts so bad.  But still I try.

 

Soon after the sunset, she come home.

 

Without a word she lets me in.  She picks up a bit and then begins making dinner.

 

The walls are painted in a soft amber, broken up with sheer, springtime green curtains on the windows.  Sweet fragerence reminded me of incense.

 

I look at all the pictures on the wall, the frames sitting over the fireplace.  I've been back a year, but I've hardly seen any pictures.

 

I can even name most of the people in the pictures.  People from her work, mutual friends.  Everyone's changed.

 

There's a man in lots of the pictures, sitting next to her, with his arm around her.  But I already knew better.  It doesn't surpise me.  The only surprise is who it is.  I know him, actually, I think.  His name is Henri, I think.  A French man who she'd met through a mutual friend of a mutual friend at a picnic.

 

But she says nothing about the man in the pictures.  She says hardly anything at all.  Occasionally, she'll comment about the recipe, and how she knows that I don't like this prepared this way or that.

 

Nothing spectaular.

 

We eat and go to bed.  I sleep on the floor and the living room.  I hate sleeping on the couch.  It reminds me to much of home.

 

But when did it become home?

 

 

 

 

"I still have the money," she says, over a cup of coffee, early the next morning.  "If you want it back."

 

I shake my head.

 

"I was saving it for Peter.  To send him to college."

 

Peter was her son, who lived with his father in a nearby city and visited on the weekends.  He had just celebrated his seventh birthday the last time I'd seen him.

 

"He wants to be a quantum mechanic.  Can you imagine?  I remember how when he was little, you used always tell him stories about the Einstien Polksy Rosie paradox."

 

Einstien Podolsky Rosen paradox.  Of course.  I'd forgotten that.

 

"But you ought to have the money back.  I'm sure you need it."

 

Again I shake my head, but she ignores me.  She rises and lifts up one of the couch cusions, digging into the hide a bed.  There is a little box hidden in there, painted red and blue.  Was that mine?

 

Thousands of dollars fill the little box.  Thousands upon thousands, all one hundred dollar bills.  I can't help but wonder how the all fit.

 

And then I almost chuckle.  It looks as though she robbed a bank!

 

 

"Why did you send me the money?" she asks.

 

"'Cause didn't need it."  My voice is still rapsy, but not as bad as it had been.  "It was the right thing to do."

 

She looks surprised.  Surprised that I spoke, or surprised at my answer?

 

"To say you're sorry?  For leaving me, without even so much as a goodbye?" Her voice is full of snarls.

 

"Didn't mean to leave you.  Didn't have a choice."

 

"So you say."

 

"Look.  Can't tell you what happened.  But am sorry.  Money, though, it's not an apology.  It was the right thing to do."

 

"Take your money back.  I don't need it."

 

"Then burn it in your backyard.  Don't care.  It wasn't an apology, it wasn't pity.   It was because knew you needed the money.  That's all."

 

She's not satisfied, I can tell.  But she just sighs and looks out the window.

 

"Where will you go?"

 

"Don't know.  Canada.  Always wanted to be a fisherman."

 

"Yeah," she says softly.  "Listen, I just want you to know, I don't know where you were, or why you can't tell me, but ... I'm not angry at you.  Not anymore."