Seven Women: An Erotic Private Investigation

Chapter 21…

“But I wound up living with them,” Amelia says. “For a while anyway.”

The cab stops before a brownstone building; this is Sheila’s stop. She begins to open her purse and get money, but I wave at her and tell her I’ll pay for the cab. She looks uncertain, then nods, an inaudible “thanks” on her lips.

“Well, guys,” Sheila says, “it’s been fun.”

“Take care,” from Amelia.

“You too, hon. Later,” she adds, to Tasha, and Tasha nods. As Sheila gets out, she slyly slips me a business card. I watch her as she goes up the stairs, takes out a set of keys, and goes in. The cab begins to move to our next destination.

“I wish I was more like Sheila,” Amelia says. “She seems to have control of her life. She figures out what she wants and then goes out and takes it.”

I think about the deception of appearances; I want to say something about it, but I have neither the inclination nor the words.

“I’ve never really had control over anything,” Amelia says. “Seems like all my life others have been calling the shots. They’ve had more control over my destination than I’d rather admit. Like The Astronaut, for example. I had no intentions either of sleeping with him or carrying his baby, but he had it all planned. He said it was destiny, but it was really about power.

“When I was living with David and Eileen, I began to understand the strange motions of power. I wasn’t myself, I was Amnesia, and I didn’t know anything other than that I was living with a married couple and my belly was getting bigger. At first Eileen was completely against having me in their home. That was understandable, of course. But David told her, ‘We can’t turn her out to the world now that she doesn’t know who she is.’ Eileen was a really sweet, and weak, person, and she gave in, and I was put in the guest room and, as the months went on, my stomach got big with the alien’s child.

“In the end, Eileen and I became close. Very close. We could have been lovers — there was that tension. David now became upset because he felt distant from this friendship. The balance of power had tipped the other way; his meek wife and former lover were no longer strangers but allies.

“But I soon began to remember who I was. I wasn’t Amnesia after all, I was Amelia. Me. And I was knocked up and I remembered by whom and when one night David yelled at me, yelled at us both really, I decided I had to leave. I had to go. I had to be somewhere alone to have my baby.

“I remembered I had a little money left in the bank so I went to get it and left my new family and went solo to be a family all by myself, with the alien baby in my belly. I thought I could hide. But I knew I couldn’t hide from him. He found me.”

“Who?” Tasha says. “David?”

“No. The Astronaut. He came back for me, when I was ready to give birth. He took me back into his spaceship and there were doctors of his kind there. I had the baby — a girl — and The Astronaut took her from me. I couldn’t believe he was doing this! But he said it was for the best; the child would have special powers and would be very different from other children on this planet, and needed to grow up with her kind. I asked him to take me with him, with them — I didn’t want to be separated from my child, and maybe I was still in love with this spaceman. But The Astronaut told me this wasn’t possible. He said I had to go back to Earth and life my life. ‘How can I live my life,’ I asked, ‘when you’re taking a part of it away?’ ‘You will,’ he said. So I was put back in this world and tried my best to get on with the rest of my life. I told myself no more married men, no more meaningless sex. I went back to school and got my teaching degree and here I am now, trying to live the best way I can.”

Amelia looks out the window and at the sky, and says, “I wonder what she’s doing up there, my daughter. I wonder what life is like for her on that faraway planet. I wonder if she’s ever heard the loud ticking of a clock: tick-tock-tock tick-tock goes the clock.”