Seven Women: An Erotic Private Investigation

Chapter 20…

The night is ruined. Lisa and Cara call a cab and leave. Plans are made to meet next Thursday, same place and time. I don’t think I’ll be there. I don’t belong there, and I don’t belong here.

But I need another drink before I get on my way, and so do Tasha and Sheila.

“Will you be okay?” Tasha asks Holly.

“Yes, thank you,” Holly says.

“I’ll stay here tonight if you want me to,” Tasha says.

“He’s behind bars,” Holly says. “I think I’m safe tonight.”

Amelia and I look at each other. She smiles, almost shyly, and looks away.

“I’ll call us a cab,” Sheila says, picking up the phone.

*****

I’m in the front seat with the driver. I feel odd, and the driver gives me a look, and then glances at the three women in the back of the cab.

“I still can’t believe that really happened,” from Amelia.

“The world,” Sheila sighs. “People can really be fucked up at times.”

Amelia says, “We were lucky Leonard was there.”

“Yes,” Sheila joins in, “weren’t we?” There’s no mistaking the edge in her voice.

The driver wants to know who’s going home first and where, or are we going to the same place? I turn to the three women, realizing that we are all still pretty much riding on adrenaline and not sure what we’re doing, where we’re going. But it’s late and home is the place to go when it’s late.

“I guess I live the closest,” Sheila says with a shrug,

*****

“The funny thing about being pregnant by an alien,” Amelia says, “is that it didn’t feel any different. I guess that’s a silly thing to say since I’d never actually been pregnant before, so I can’t really make a comparison. What I mean is that it didn’t feel like I was pregnant by something from another world. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. How can I best describe it? It felt natural, that’s all. It felt like the most natural thing — and I was happy, believe it or not. I was happy even if my alien lover had left me on earth and gone back to the stars, left me with a baby growing inside. I kept wondering if the gestation period might be quicker, like a couple of months, but it was nine months, just like a normal pregnancy.

“But how did Nick react to all this? Well, after the encounter with David, it’s pretty obvious, you know, that the relationship — if you can really call it a relationship — was kaput. But especially now, since I had been abducted by The Astronaut that very same night, made love to him and conceived. It was the end of one thing and the beginning of another. It was like I was another person now, a new person, a person with no history or past. I knew my name was no longer Amelia; it had been changed to Amnesia.”

Silence in the cab, an odd silence. I wonder what the driver thinks of Amelia’s monologue, if it’s unusual for him to hear something like it. Then again, he’s a cab driver. For him, we’re all just another group of people in the city moving from cab to cab like Bedouins in the desert of what we think is the human heart.

I feel as if Amelia is waiting for someone to prompt her to continue. I’m not sure if I want her to. I don’t think I care. Her voice is rather soothing, a distraction from my own thoughts and memories. I’m thinking of Veronica.

Veronica should be here with us.

Maybe Veronica is somewhere with aliens.

“While I was pregnant,” Amelia says, “I wound up living with David and his wife for a while. His wife Eileen. Can you believe that? I know it sounds weird. It was weird, but I did it. It was almost like I became a part of their family.”

“So,” Tasha says, brushing the hair out of her eyes, “how did this come about? His wife had to know there was something going on between the two of you.”

“She knew,” Amelia says, nodding. “In fact, she’d always known. I wasn’t the only extramarital affair David had. There had been others, and even I knew this. David was a great guy — I still love him — but he was incapable of being faithful.”

Perhaps like Slater, I think.

“He was a pussy hound,” Sheila says.

“Maybe, but it wasn’t that superficial. Eileen knew about it and tolerated it, I suppose, because she loved him so much. Maybe like Lisa’s mother — she knew of the infidelities, but knew the affairs were only for the moment. David loved Eileen, and however things went, he always went back to her. He went back home because home was safe and warm.

”But now I was in their home. I had showed up at their door. It was like I was outside myself, like I was watching myself. Because I didn’t know who I was. I said to them, when they answered the door, ‘Who am I and why am I here?’ I was drawn to their home, like it was a magnet, like I could go there to find the answers I was searching for.

“I really can’t say what happened from there,” she adds. “I know Eileen wasn’t happy about it.”