Little Green Men (20 page)

At any rate, the response to the first show was, as WASPs would say, gratifying in the extreme.
The Washington Post,
tail between their legs, phoned to ask meekly if they might send a photographer. Banion instructed Renira to tell them he was "too busy." The headline nonetheless told the story:
new banion show scores record ratings.
Banion's office phone, silent for so many months now - other than with calls from the more lurid of the tabloids - began to ring again. Amidst the torrent of interview requests came this:

"Someone named Roz to speak with you, from
Cosmospolitan
magazine? Says she met you at the Austin thrash."

"I'll take it." Banion dove for the phone.

"
I
hope I'm not bothering you," Roz said. "I had to tell you how fantastic the show was." "Where are you?"

"As a matter of fact, I'm in Washington." "Really? Can you have dinner with me?" "I'd love that."

What had come over him? He felt like a teenager. He was grinning, his pulse was racing, he felt, he felt. . .
wonderful.
"Renira!"

'Are you all right?"

"Fine! Great! What am I doing tonight?" "E
ight o'clock dinner at Le Chat e
norme, with that alleged scientist Falopian was so avid for you to meet, the expert on swamp gas." "Cancel it."

"
I
didn't want to make the reservation in the First place." 'Are there any romantic restaurants in Washington?" "I assume."

"Where? What's a romantic restaurant - the
most
romantic restaurant?"

"Well,
I
suppose it rather depends." "Don't give me that WASP shit, Renira." "I beg your pardon?"

"Romantic! Don't you speak Eng
lish? Not tragico-comico-histor
ical-pastoral. Romantic!"

"There's Swann's Way. It's a bit far, and you usually have to book weeks ahead, but -"

"Call them. Offer them - how much do
1
have left in the bank? Offer them all of it. Renira - get me a table."

"Will you be . . ."

"What? Out with it."

"Spending the night. It
is
an inn."

"Yes! Maybe. I don't know. See if they have a room. A suite. With a Jacuzzi."

"It's not Las Vegas. It's a quaint spot in the Shenandoah foothills. The chairman of the Federal Reserve got married there. I gather the food is -"

"Ask."

What had gotten into Mr. Banion? So unlike him. She wasn't hugely looking forward to asking them if (a) they had a room, in a hurry, and (b) did it have a Jacuzzi? But it was good to hear Mr. Banion sounding happy. It had been a while. In fact, Renira couldn't really think
when
she'd heard him like this. Maybe she could help make it more romantic.

If Roz had looked good back in Texas at the alien corral, she looked dazzling standing outside the Hotel Importance when Banion pulled up in his foreign convertible. She was wearing an iridescent blue-green silk dress suit, cut high on the thigh, and Manolo Blahnik stiletto heels at the end of endless long legs. Within seconds of her getting in the car, her perfume filled the inside. It was all Banion could do not to begin baying like a bloodhound as they crossed over the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, heading west. He must get a grip. But it was so good to see her.

It was good to see him, too.

What brought her to town?

Sales conference. Had to meet with marketing people. Trying to reposition
Cosmos.
Going more upscale. The advertisers, of course, still balked at the abductee market, still stuck in the old demographic model. Yawn. Sorry, long day. Smile.
Really
good to see you again.

How long is the conference?

Wrapped up today.

Oh.

Um
.

What time was she leaving the next day?

No particular time. Thought she might stay on a day or two, see the Basquiat. The what?

Art show. Might as well. Didn't get to Washington that often. Smile. "Roz?"

"Yes, Jack?"

"I'm so glad you called." "Me too."

"In Austin, when we met, it was
...
I was married and
...
But that's over now. Not technically yet, but -" "I know. I read about it. I'm sorry."

"No, it's - she's really better off without me at this point. She wasn't cut out for life as Mrs. Prominent Abductee."

"It's so difficult. Our readers tell us that all the time. Imagine if your spouse came home one day and said, 'Hi, honey, I've become a Jehovah's Witness. So, what's for dinner?'"

"Roz?"

"Yes, Jack?"

"Are you
..."

"Yes?"

"Are you seeing anyone?"

Roz leaned over and kissed Banion on the ear.

A moment later she said, "Jack, you're going eighty-five."

They sat at a corner table, a few feet from a warbling caged finch, sipping champagne out of flutes and eating caviar and scrambled eggs out of eggshells nestled in cups. The room had been extravagantly decorated by a London stage designer: florid Edwardian wallpapers, velvety chairs, tasseled lamps casting soft, focused light on the culinary prodigies that emerged, dish after dish, from the kitchen. The room was hushed, the diners emitting a collective
uuummm
as they gave themselves over to the food. A fire burned. A large bust of a splendid Nubian noblewoman perched majestically on a marble mantel. A Dalmatian lay at the entrance, forepaws dangling over the step, as decorative as a porcelain figure. Waiters and
sommeliers
glided by silently, like synchronized swimmers.

Banion felt himself being borne aloft on a mist of well-being. Normally he would be inwardly fretting. Did enough people in the restaurant recognize him? Did he have as good a table as the chairman of the Federal Reserve? Was the service sufficiently deferential? But now all he could think of was this exquisite, unlikely creature before him, editor of a magazine for the female abductee, delicately spooning Caspian beluga onto her tongue in a way that made his heart and other organs swell and ache. Through his tunneled vision, she appeared as an eighteenth-century cameo -perfect, voluptuous, luminous. All else was excluded.
Stay this moment. . .

She almost startled him when she spoke, as if the jewelry had come suddenly to life.

"Do you think it might have been a hallucination?" "I think I
am
hallucinating."

Two waiters arrived simultaneously with the next dish on the tasting menu.

"This is the monkfish in a pistachio crust, on a puree of whipped parsnips with a suggestion of coriander."

"I hate to admit this," Roz said, "but I've sort of started to wonder if some of my readers really were abducted. Visions, hallucinations, whatever, can be a reaction to some kind of trauma. Or, you can just want it to happen. The Germans have a word for it.
Wundersucht.
It means a thirst for miracles."

"The Germans," Banion said, dabbing at his lips, "have a word for everything. How's your monkfish?"

"Delicious. Do you think everyone you've met in the UFO world is on the level?"

"Do we have to talk about aliens tonight?"

"No." She smiled. Their fingers interlaced across the tablecloth. Did the Germans have a word for
this!
He wanted to take her into bed upstairs, remove her silky netherthings, and ravish her until the cows mooed.

"Let's talk about you," he said. My God, what
had
come over him? No Washington alpha male had ever uttered those words to a woman. "Who are you, Roz? Tell me your story."

She reached across and caressed his cheek with a finger. Her hand smelled of perfume. Roses.
Heaven; I'm in heaven
....

"I'm a government agent sent to seduce you."

"I knew it. How's your mission going?"

"Contact is established. It's not a difficult assignment. I've had tougher."

"I could make it harder." "I bet you could." Banion blushed.

"Maybe I'll have to go to Plan R." "Plan R?" Banion swallowed dryly. "It's very extreme." "How does it work?"

"You lean forward across the table, like this, look the target
right in the eye, and whisper, “
I
don't think I can wait any longer. I've got to have you
now.'"

Banion had to shift in his chair to release certain pressure. "That's some plan, your Plan R." "It never fails."

There were still five courses to go. If only he hadn't ordered the tasting menu. More waiters arrived with more exquisite food, all of it now wasted on Banion, who yearned only for dessert.

"Venison
mignonettes,"
the waiter announced, "in blackberry
reduction,
accompanied by truffled risotto."

"What," Banion asked in a businesslike way, as if he were doing a TV interview, "would the ultimate purpose of this seduction be?"

He looked up from his truffled risotto to a pair of golden dimples.

"To replace one obsession with another. You see, Jack, you are making the government very worried." She leaned forward, her breasts almost grazing her venison - oh lucky venison! "You know too much."

"Ah," Banion said, swirling the remains of his Chateauneuf-du-Pape in the glass, plum-colored vortex, "then there's no use struggling, is there? What can one man do, against the power of the entire government?"

"It's no use. We have you surrounded. Surrender."

"Yes," Banion croaked. "I guess there's no way out."

They sat. finishing their wine, unspeaking, playing fingertips until the waiter arrived, carrying what looked like a chocolate cake with a little plastic dome on top and legs sticking out underneath.

"This," he said as he set it down with quiet flourish between them, "is from Renira. Normally we would call this our Chocolate Decadence. But tonight we're calling it an Out-of-This-World cake. Renira said you would understand. She also sent this." The
sommelier
arrived with a bottle of vintage champagne.

"And she said to tell you that she didn't want you driving all the way back after dinner, so if you want to stay, she's reserved a room for you upstairs. One of our nicest ones, with a Jacuzzi."

"That was smooth," Roz said after the waiter had left.

"I . . . honestly . . ." Banion flushed.

"I'll take the Jacuzzi. You get the couch."

Scrubbs returned to his room at the majestic having failed to achieve aesthetic epiphany, and with indigestion from the two half smokes he had consumed al fresco at a hot dog stand on Constitution Avenue.

The Basquiat exhibit brochure, gravid with proclamations of the painter's importance in the scheme, strove to make it sound as though dying of a heroin overdose at age twenty-seven had been a sacramental act, yet Scrubbs still scratched his head. But the visit to the Fripps Gallery had not been altogether a failure, for there, standing amidst such perplexing genius, Scrubbs had experienced an epiphany of another sort. He had resolved to get out of town and start anew. A little plastic surgery, a new Social Security number, new surroundings. Miami, he thought. Yes, Miami was a good place for exiles. What better shade for the shady than palms? Warmer climes, employment opportunities for the creatively inclined. Why wait? He could be there this very night.

He turned on the television as he gathered up his possessions. There was a report on the big
Celeste
launch a month from now. The president would of course attend, and would personally press the ignition button to launch the crown in the jewel of America's space program, leaving his opponent to rail on about how it was more urgent for America to build high-speed trains. The campaign had boiled down to:
My millennium is brighter than your millennium.

Take your millennium and shove it. Scrubbs would take his to Miami. He felt good for the first time in weeks. On hands and knees, he pried up the floorboard over his wad of cash. He stared incredulously at the unlovely sight.

His wad of cash was no longer the tightly rolled little log of hundred-dollar bills. Now it resembled sofa stuffing. Crisp currency of a proud nation had been ignominiously used by rodents - a family of them - as a gnawing post and litter box. Scrubbs peered dismally at a shredded visage of Ben Franklin - thrifty Franklin! - embedded with pellets of rat crap. Over two thousand dollars, and not a single bill presentable as legal tender.

Scrubbs indulged in the kind of release of emotions that modern therapists say is healthy. When rats have dined on your life savings, why keep it in? Cursing violently, he ripped up a few more floorboards. The rats, of course, had retreated elsewhere to digest their rich meal in peace. He gave the wall a kick that made the mirror over the sink fall off and shatter.