The Deed (18 page)

Jason frowned. “Why Kansas?”

“Or wherever.”

Jason quickly adopted a nasal monotone. “Take us to Stuckey’s,” he intoned.

“Don’t be queer,” said Amanda. “Seriously, if you were in charge of the country, what would you do? Aliens just landed.”

Jason thought about it for a few moments. “I guess I’d give them the benefit of the doubt and try to communicate with them. Unless they started hauling out laser cannons.”

Amanda’s face, in delicious profile, was animated by a skeptical smile. “But just because they act diplomatic doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have evil intentions.”

“I think any race that has intergalactic flight under their belts could probably wipe us out without a lot of pussyfooting around,” said Jason.

“But they wouldn’t just start blasting away,” Amanda objected. “Remember, they’d think of us as aliens, too. They’d want to know more about us, our strengths, our weapons and capabilities, before risking it.”

“I suppose,” he said, shrugging, wondering where she was going with this.

“I want to paint you a picture,” said Amanda, and Jason nodded acquiescence because he felt warm and sedentary, and welcomed the prospect of letting Amanda perform without his being called on to contribute. He closed his eyes.

“Let’s say the aliens come bearing gifts,” she went on. “Medicine. Technology. New kinds of foods and weapons. I mean, try and think of this in really concrete terms: Aliens land in Kansas and start passing out orgasmatrons and cures for cancer.”

“What’s the catch?” he said, smiling indulgently.

“Then, after they find out what our strengths and weaknesses are, they give the okay to the rest of the spaceships.”

“Hello,” Jason interrupted, opening one eye. “When did they become an armada?”

“Well, why not?”

“Wait, I get it,” said Jason, rousing himself. “I know exactly where this is going.”

“The Manahata used the same word for the ocean and the sky—isn’t that something?” said Amanda. “The border, the beyond. It’s not far from what space is for us today. We can go out in it, but only for a short distance, with an enormous effort and tons of supplies, and then we have to turn around and come back. Just like paddling out to fish in the ocean. There was no reason even to conceive of another side to the sea.”

“And then the first man-o’-wars came sailing in from Europe,” said Jason. “I hear what you’re saying, Amanda. But you can’t assume extraterrestrials would necessarily want to conquer us.”

She shrugged. “Exploring cultures always need something—raw goods, new markets—that’s why they explore. They’d settle among us, get a good foothold, start quietly trying to find out where we keep our titanium, or whatever it is they’re—”

“Why assume that a highly advanced extraterrestrial culture would be motivated by the same kind of greed as colonial Europeans?” Jason argued. “Right now, today, if we sent off a group of scientists in a rocket, they’d be perfectly capable, in principle, of establishing contact with another world and keeping the peace.”

“But we don’t put scientists in rockets,” said Amanda. “We put army pilots in them. All I’m saying is that the more technologically advanced culture always wins the head-to-head meeting, and takes what it wants.”

“Okay, sure,” he replied.

“And therefore,” she went on, “if we
should
ever detect intelligent life somewhere else in the universe, our best strategy is to shut the radio off and pray they don’t find us.”

“Are you serious?” said Jason.

Amanda shrugged. “We all learn our own lessons from history. Jason, this is the leap of faith I’m going to ask you to make: This UFO invasion we’ve been talking about is what quite literally happened to my people. We had the same exact…
fearlessness
your culture has today, the same unquestioned faith in our place at the top of the world. Losing that—that confidence—is devastating. You can’t just assimilate, join the victory party, after that. There’s a part of you that’s just…gone.”

Jason just nodded. He felt exhausted, and happily let the conversation fade to black as their car came around to broadside the east side of the island, where the Midtown Tunnel promised a return to the welcome anonymity of the city.

When they cleared the tunnel, Jason blandly offered to take a subway and save Amanda the trip to the Upper West Side, but she insisted on driving him home. She looped patiently around the one-ways and ultimately pulled up right before his door on 79th. They engaged in a bit of small talk at curbside, Jason with his door unlatched and slightly ajar, Amanda turned toward him in the car, one leg curled appetizingly on the seat.

“So what are you doing later?” she asked.

For someone who claims to have no carnal interest in me whatsoever, she sure hates letting me out of her sight,
thought Jason. “Are you asking me on a date,” he wondered pointedly, “or do you just want to root through old city documents?”

“Come on,” she said, smiling sweetly. “I’ll go home and dump the car; you can shower, do your résumé or whatever, and meet me out. I know a great place.”

“I’m not kidding, Amanda,” said Jason, shaking his head. “If you want to go out on a date, yes, I’d like that very much. I could use a big fat drink, to be perfectly honest. But I’m not digging for buried treasure anymore. I’m tired.”

“What does that mean—‘a real date’?”

There, see?
he chided himself.
Had to actually slam your weenie in the door, didn’t you?
“Never mind,” he said aloud, stepping out of the car. “Good-bye, Amanda.” Shutting the door firmly, Jason crossed the sidewalk, digging for his keys.

Not until he was actually pressing the key into the lock did she issue her reply. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

Jason turned, slowly, to find her standing on the far side of the car, inside the swing of her open door, looking incredibly uncomfortable. A maintenance man, walking by, chuckled conspiratorially and gave him two thumbs up.

“What?”
said Jason, squinting in confusion.

“If that’s what you mean.”

“Who asked you to sleep with me?”

Her face fell from brazen resolution to sudden embarrassment. “Well, I…didn’t know what you meant,” she replied.

Withdrawing his door key, Jason slowly returned to the car. “Amanda, I don’t want to date-rape you,” he assured her, shaking his head. “The guy in me,” he explained slowly, tapping his chest, “finds it really hard to accept that you only want me for my bloodline. No, let me finish. All I’m asking is for you to try to meet me halfway, okay?”

She met his gaze, nodding. “Okay. I just—”

“I just want to have drinks with you. Dinner…Broadway…anything. There’s a lot of things to do in this town, I’m told. And then if you’re repulsed, you can go home. But I’m holding my DNA hostage until you agree to my terms.”

“All right,” she said with a little laugh, looking away. “Don’t be stupid.”

Two hours later, they sat across from each other in the middle of a long table, shoulder to shoulder with an audience of strangers at a tightly packed, two-drink-minimum theater club, one giddy friend-of-the-poet table away from the stage itself.

Onstage, a backlit woman in black leotard had improbably assumed a fetal position on a battered stool, head bowed slightly, as if entranced by the mike stand before her.

“You sure about this? These things creep me out,” whispered Jason across the table, a little too loud.

“Sshh,” urged Amanda. “You want another drink?” She raised an index finger, turned a little circle in the air that brought a waitress over.

“It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” the poet began without warning, her voice clear and sonorous, stabbing like a searchlight into the darkened room. “Ram tough…like a rock. I feel like chicken tonight.”

Jason tried to examine the slick program in the dim light—“Elissa Waterston Presents: An Evening of Found Poetry.”

Christ,
he thought, looking to Amanda for support, but her eyes were turned toward the performer.

“Can you keep a secret?” Waterston wanted to know. “I like the sprite in you. The eye-opener, the original party animal. Made from the best stuff on earth.”

He sipped his Rolling Rock and wondered if Amanda had chosen this particular show specifically to mock his so-called career. She was shaping up in some ways to be a pretty cool chick, pain in the ass though she was.

As if sensing the attention, Amanda turned. “You surviving okay?” she whispered huskily.

Jason cupped his mouth and enunciated carefully. “I’m still smarting from the ass-kicking your mother gave me.”

Amanda grinned at this. “Sorry about that,” she replied, wincing sympathetically.

Jason shook his head. “Did you hear her, at the end? ‘Who are you? You’re nobody.’ I mean, no offense, but what the hell’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“I know,” whispered Amanda, nodding.

“Jesus Christ,” hissed Jason with a snort. “That shit hurts.”

“If it helps,” offered Amanda quietly, “I don’t think she meant it in any profound way. I think she was just saying she formally doesn’t recognize you as the owner of the deed, as the Haansvoort heir. But you never know; she’s forever trying to shape people, and she usually finds the sharpest tool for the job.”

“Well, please ask her to restrict herself to a light buffing and sanding,” whispered Jason.

She grinned. “Let me work on her.”

Beyond them, the poet’s opus was reaching fever pitch, and succeeded in recapturing their attention. “I love what you do for me,” the poet promised. “It’s a honey of an
O.
It’s not small…no, no, no. It keeps going and going and going…”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Jason drunkenly, too loud.

“Sssh!” said Amanda, still looking onstage. Then she turned. “What?” she wondered, warily.

“Let’s go find my family graveyard. I know right where it is…where it’s supposed to be, anyway.”

“Really?” she said, eyes bright.

He beamed boyishly. “Jesus, you’re like a ten-year-old. Yes, of course really. I’m hooked. Let’s take this thing as far as we can.”

“Why ask why?” said Elissa, with heart-wrenching sincerity. “Don’t be a paleface, the capitalist tool, totally nuts about payday. It just doesn’t ring true. Silly rabbit!”