How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend (10 page)

W
e all used to go to the villa together, Mom, Édouard, Malou, and I. That was a long time ago, before they kicked Malou out and started sending me to Cornouaille for the summers.

I love the villa. It has a swimming pool with a wooden deck and a terrace that gives you a view all the way to the Saint-Tropez bay. There's a large olive tree with a swing. I used to spend hours on that swing.

There's always black currant sorbet in the freezer in the pool house. Every time I taste something with black currant flavor, I think of summertime, Malou, and swimming pools.

The villa is just a few miles away from Saint-Tropez in a fancy-pants lot of villas called Beauvallon. Édouard's so proud to own here. Normally, only celebrities and absurdly rich people can own a villa in Beauvallon. Édouard is not a celebrity, and he is definitely not absurdly rich (Mom's the big earner). He just inherited the villa from his parents.

Pela drops us off in front of the villa. She's going to hide the police car far away. We climb over the gate as she drives away.

“I didn't remember it being so small,” I say, walking toward the main building.

In my memory, Édouard's villa is like a bright white castle surrounded by a park, not this little gray bungalow in the middle of a messy little garden. There's no swing in the olive tree anymore, and the tree is actually so small, I don't see how it ever could have carried a swing anyway.

“I can't believe it. Even the swimming pool has shrunk.” To be honest, it's just a glamorized bathtub, empty and filled with dead leaves.

“Everything always looks better in memories,” Malou says, getting the pool house keys from a loose brick in the wall.

She goes to get the main house keys from inside the liquor cabinet, and I check the freezer in the pool house. It's turned off, totally empty, and smells stuffy. No black currant sorbet. How horribly disappointing.

It's Vahalalian opera night in the living room. As dozens of African statues and masks from Édouard's collection gaze down from the walls, Tena and Pela take turns singing to Lena while Malou lounges on the gigantic white sofa by the old fireplace, emptying a bottle of rosé wine. “This is better than a rave,” she says, closing her eyes and moving her hands to the strange melody.

“Quiet!” orders Pela, taking her turn singing.

I leave them to it and go to find Zelda. She has set up camp in my old room. The door is wide open. She sits on the bare mattress like a sexy Buddha, her legs crossed lotus style, her eyes closed, her
palms turned skyward. I feel like I'm disturbing something and try to walk away silently.

“We're back where we started,” she says without even opening her eyes. “You're staring at me strangely, and I still don't know why.”

She opens her eyes. They're still beautifully green, but maybe not quite so mean.

“What were you doing? You looked like you were meditating.” I walk hesitantly into the room. The walls are still covered with large framed posters of my favorite Marvel heroes: Wolverine, Nova, the Silver Surfer.

“I was praying to Zook,” she says. “I'm trying to understand what she wants from me.” She gets up from the bed and takes a step toward me.

“Do you want me to leave?”

She puts her hands on my shoulders. “I'm done. I've already made up my mind.”

“About what?”

She smiles faintly and checks her key tattoo. “About this.”

“What about it?” I get closer to see for myself. You can hardly see it now.

“I believe Zook wants me to wait a bit longer,” she says calmly, like running out of time and fading tattoos are no longer burning issues.

“How?”

She looks up at me. “You'll know in time.”

“You're so cryptic.”

“You look so tense.”

Is it me, or is the space between us reducing at breakneck speed?

“I…well…you…um…”

I have totally forgotten why I came to see her and what I wanted to ask her.

“What?” she asks.

Oh, I remember: “There's a place I want to show you.” I take her hands off my shoulders and pull her gently toward the panel window.

She resists a little. “We cannot go out, Pudin. We will be seen.”

“It's going to be all right, I promise,” I say, pulling up the blinds and opening the sliding window. I look up at the sky. I love this time of day at Édouard's villa. The sun's gone, but there will still be hours of dreamy, warm blue twilight.

She follows me to the terrace hesitantly, looking around for possible spies.

“All we have to do is run across the garden and into the woods.” I point at the pine trees on the other side of the empty swimming pool. “Once we're in the woods, it's like we're invisible.”

She studies the garden and then nods. Okay, we're on.

We run silently along the swimming pool and slide down a small slope into the woods. We land on the path left by a dried-up river. She stops to look at the beautiful surroundings and closes her eyes to smell the air: sun-baked ground, pine trees, and the sea. The insects are buzzing their own opera around us. The crickets go at it wildly in the warmth. You can hear kids laughing and splashing in the swimming pool of the nearby campground. If I wanted to stage this whole scene, I couldn't make it any better.

“This way,” I say, taking her hand and leading her down to the dry riverbed. The path leads to a place that's out of this world. My own dreamland. I push a last pine branch out of our way, and we're on the beach. Unlike the house, this is exactly the way I remember it. A tiny stretch of white sand cut off from the rest of the bay by a thick layer of pines and bushes.

I sit down on the warm sand and point at the sea. “Ta-da!”

“Why are we here?” Zelda asks.

I spent my entire childhood dreaming of this—bringing some-one special down here to share my loot of black currant sorbet. “Isn't it beautiful? I love this place. It's probably my favorite place in the world.”

“What do you do here?”

“You rest. You lie on the sand. You dream. You…you swim, of course! Don't you like swimming?”

She shakes her head. “All nonsubterranean bodies of liquid on Vahalal will either melt you or boil you. We don't swim.”

“What about nonmelting, nonboiling swimming pools?”

“Water is holy for us. It's a sin to use it for leisure.”

“Zelda! Here comes another Earthling treat! Maybe even better than vanilla ice cream.” I peel off my T-shirt and start unlacing my sneakers. “And since you always walk around in a swimsuit, all you really have to do is kick off those boots.”

“Your body,” she says when I stand up wearing nothing but my boxer shorts.

“Yeah, I know.” I shrug helplessly. “I'm too skinny, right?” But that's nothing she hasn't seen before.

“It's not that,” she says, reaching for my hips and touching a bruise.

“Oh. The dogs,” I say, tensing under her touch. “I hate dogs.”

She grabs my hand and twists my arm to get a better look at the other dog bites on my arm. She presses and squeezes one of the bruises.

“OUCH!”

“Does it hurt?”

“Only when you pinch it!”

She laughs! I've never heard her laugh before.

“Where else did they bite you?”

“On my head.”

She pulls me to her. She twists my neck, bends my head in all the directions of the compass—south, north, east, west—looking for the bites. A mother gorilla searching for lice wouldn't put less heart into it. When she's done looking, she
launches into physical contact,
hugging me really tight.

I put my arms around her. That's it. Nothing can ever break us apart. Until…she pushes me away hard, and I fall on the sand. She grabs a piece of driftwood, getting into her war stance and turning toward the riverbed.

A group of little kids stands there silently. They all have wet hair. They're all wearing swimsuits. They all have this expression, like, “What are you doing on our secret beach with your pants down?”

“They're just kids, Zelda,” I say, standing up and taking the piece of driftwood away from her before she decides to Space Splash it in their faces. I throw it back into the sea and pick up my clothes and shoes.

The kids get out of Zelda's way as she pushes a branch aside and walks back up to the path. I put my T-shirt back on and follow her. I stop midway to put on my pants and shoes. The kids are following us silently. I slowly lace up my Converse ultras, waiting for the kids to go away. They finally disappear into the woods toward the campground.

I turn toward Édouard's villa. Zelda's gone. I wonder if she's furious about what happened down on the beach. Or if she's just like me, wishing those kids had never come to interrupt us. “Next time, we swim!” I say to myself, running along the path to catch up with her.

We're finishing dinner at the kitchen table. Spaghetti and canned tomatoes à la Malou. I haven't talked with Zelda since the beach incident. I slurp my spaghetti, trying to make eye contact with her, wondering if she's mad at me.

“I don't like this place,” Tena says, helping herself to more pasta.

“It's really beautiful when the blinds are open,” I say, grabbing the platter from her.

The Valks won't let us open the blinds to air out the house. They don't care about the stuffy atmosphere, the sea, or the spectacular views at dawn. They only care about the surrounding geography and the absence of a good escape route in the event of a police raid.

“This house is a trap,” confirms Pela. “Reminds me of the time we got cornered in that whorehouse during the Babylonian wars.”

“What a beautiful bloodbath!” reminisces Tena, licking her fork. “Remember that big guy? What was his name? Ugo something. He used to wear human heads on a necklace.”

“Ugo the Chopper. He had this trick with two axes.” Pela demonstrates with her fork and spoon. Chop! “He would cut off a head in one single, neat move. Even the mother liked him.”

“She was different back then.” Lena uses her fingers to scrape up the sauce left on her plate. “She could still appreciate a male if he had a talent for mass murder.”

“Those were the days,” Tena agrees, pushing her empty plate away. “Good pasta, by the way.”

“Thanks. And thanks for all the heartwarming head-chopping stories.” Malou stands up, looking exhausted. “I'm going to rest my eyes a little,” she says, leaving the table. “By the way, Zeldie, you'll find plenty of clean swimsuits in the master bedroom. And regular clothes, too.” She walks out to the terrace like a zombie. She's going
to sleep in the pool house. She always used to claim it as hers, once upon a time.

“There are plenty of other bedrooms if you want to sleep,” I tell the rest of the gang.

The Valks leave the table and Tena and Pela help Lena walk out of the kitchen.

Zelda and I are completely alone. Everything is quiet except for the buzzing in my head.

“I'm sorry for what happened down there.” I point vaguely toward the secret beach. “It was totally my fault. I shouldn't have dragged you there.”

She shrugs, like it doesn't matter, and looks at me from across the table. She smiles faintly. “Come here, Pudin.”

“Why?”

“Unfinished protocol.”

I carefully walk around the table. She's way less careful. She grabs my T-shirt, drags me down, kisses the top of my head. Then the tip of my nose. Then my lips.

The bald guy with the broken nose was right: I'm losing my mind for her. And I don't care if it means having my eyes turned into black balls, blowing up like a water balloon, or being changed into a singing donkey. “I'm crazy about you, Zelda,” I whisper, kissing her back.

She's not listening. She's all action and no words. She stands up and drags me to the living room, still kissing me. She reaches for the sofa and snatches the wolf fur blanket Mom likes so much, then puts it around us and pulls me down to the floor.

I'm about to speak again. She doesn't want me to.

“Quiet,” she says. “Listen to me.”

Silence.

“Sometimes you need to do something very wrong to accomplish something very good,” she says.

Silence.

“When you'll wake up, I'll be gone.”

“Where's Zelda?” Malou asks, coming into the living room and scratching her messy hair. She's wearing one of Édouard's long-sleeve shirts as pajamas. “Where's everyone else?”

It's early morning. You can see a deep blue sky through the sky-lights. The sun will be up any minute. Everyone's gone. The Valks. Zelda. It's just me and Malou left.

“I don't know. Leave me alone.”

“Why did you sleep on the floor?” Malou asks, squatting beside me. “Wait a second. Are you, like,
naked
under there?” She lifts the fur blanket and takes a peek. “Omigod! You're totally naked!”