The Spaceship Next Door

⁶ GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER

The conversation at the bowling alley soon devolved into an exchange of some of the gossip Annie picked up earlier that day, some of which Rodney even cared about. Then there was a pin jam on some far lane that needed immediate tending-to, and he was back to work.

They were on the road shortly after.

“Geez, Vi, I wanted you to engage in conversation, not act like a crazy person.”

“Sorry. You know I’m not good at this. I just thought it was interesting.”

“Yeah, well now I’m freaking out over zombies, thanks. Vampires I can handle.”

“Neither one is real.”

“I appreciate that, but if I’m going to be afraid of something that isn’t real I’d rather it be vampires. At least some of them are a sexy kind of not real. Zombies are just gross. Plus, what does the ship even have to do with any of this.”

“Nothing! I just thought… Never mind. I thought if this Rick fellow was going to make up something that happened in a certain place, he picked an interesting place.”

“It’s not that interesting. I can think of two other cemeteries and one pre-colonial burial ground around here, and I could pick almost any street and draw a straight line going from one of those sites, across the road I’d picked, ending at the ship. I mean I guess if I’m a zombie, and I really, really want to see the spaceship, I’d rather be buried in Peacock than Winterhill, so that’s smart thinking by Mr. Granger.”

“I doubt he had much say in it.”

“I’m kidding.”

“Oh.”

Annie’s phone vibrated. She pulled it out and discovered she’d been missing some texts.

“Oops, mom’s looking.”

“Is she all right?” Vi asked.

“Yeah, she just wants me home. No emergency.”

It was ten minutes from the mall to the end of Main, and another twenty to the house. Violet went by way of Patience and Liberty instead of taking Spaceship Road, even though the route that took them past Shippie was largely clear of traffic by nightfall on most evenings. That may have been because it was harder to see the ship at night. The army had spotlights on it, but those didn’t help as much as they should have. Plus, sightseeing in the dark just wasn’t a thing.

It would have been faster, then, to take Spaceship Road, but Violet preferred the second route, or perhaps was just on automatic, since it also went past the road that led to her house. Vi’s default excitement level in regards to the ship was also much lower than Annie’s.

When they pulled up to the house, the spot behind the family Honda was taken by a black SUV.

“You sure, no emergency?” Violet asked.

“We have a code worked out, you know that,” Annie said. “And that doesn’t look like an ambulance.”

“No, that’s a government vehicle. Look at the plate.”

“Yeah,” Annie agreed. “Army car. I don’t really like this. Wanna come in?”

“No. Text me later.”

“You’re not curious?”

“I’m very curious. Text me later.”

Annie jumped out of the car and waited for Violet to release the trunk so she could extract her bike. The driver of the SUV—military man in plain clothes, she didn’t recognize him but he had the Look—was standing next to the car. He noticed her and pretended not to. She wondered if he called anyone indoors to notify them of her impending entrance.

She got the bike out after some amount of work and wheeled it to the front porch, which was where it lived. The inner door was ajar, but this was hardly unusual. They lived far enough from proper civilization that they rarely locked up.

Annie’s house was on a small street that got a decent amount of traffic only because it connected the northern side of a bowl valley to the southern side of the same valley. In the center of the bowl was farmland. The house was on the lip, so from her bedroom window on the second floor (above the front door) she could look down on the private farms of six families. It looked a whole lot prettier than it smelled, because someone was always spreading fertilizer down there, and the wind always seemed to blow it toward her room.

It wasn’t the sort of place Annie would intentionally bring a guest. This was the first thing she thought of when finding Edgar Somerville in her living room. He and the army man who had picked him up that morning at the diner were both there, drinking coffee, and talking to her mother.

Annie didn’t quite know what to make of this peculiar arrangement of humans, but she was pretty positive she wasn’t okay with it.

“There you are, honey,” her mother said. She got up and gave her daughter a hug, which got her close enough to whisper: “What have you been up to?”

Annie smiled and shook her head, to say I have no idea.

“Mom, you should sit down. Are you feeling okay?”

Her mother was the kind of thin that looked unhealthy, because it was. Carol Collins was not in any real sense a healthy woman, physically, and her mind was nearly as suspect at this stage. She was dressed in an assortment of scarves and a loose caftan and standing in a living room that smelled of pot smoke, which—if Annie’s somewhat acclimated nose could smell it—meant she’d had a joint recently. It was not a good time for the military to drop in unannounced. Not that there was ever a good time for that sort of thing.

“Oh I feel fine, Annie. Don’t worry. She worries.”

Edgar and Army Guy nodded politely. Annie could only imagine what they had been talking about before she got there.

The couch the guests were sitting on bore some similarities to the way Annie’s mom was dressed, in that it was covered in blankets and sheets—plus a couple of towels—and was maybe even being held together by all of it. Most of the couch springs had surrendered all of their potential energy years ago and were just there to keep a little space between the top and the bottom of the seating area. Despite this, it remained superbly comfortable, although perhaps not the best thing to be sitting on should the need to rise quickly present itself. It was no coincidence, then, that a fire extinguisher was bolted to the wall next to it: if there was a fire it might take less time to put the fire out than to get off the couch.

The rest of the room was a collection of mismatched electronics verging on antique status, two floor lamps losing a battle with gravity, and an embarrassingly vast library of old movies on videotape. Every surface—the fireplace mantle, the end tables—was decorated with two or three porcelain tchotchkes, a drink coaster, a pen commemorating something, or an ashtray.

It wasn’t the kind of place meant for guests, but when they had them it was the guests who tended to act embarrassed, because this was a room that suggested privacy and intimacy, and not for public consumption.

“These men were just here to, well, I guess to offer you a job of some kind, isn’t that right?” her mother said with something close to a smile. It was impossible to tell if she was incredibly amused or if Annie was in a lot of trouble.

“It was her suggestion, actually,” Ed said, somewhat louder than he meant to. “I just decided to take her up on it.”

“I wonder, um...” Annie looked at Army Guy. “I’m sorry, we haven’t met have we? You are?”

He stood—this took some effort—and offered his hand. “Brigadier General Morris, Ms. Collins. A pleasure. Your reputation precedes you.”

“My reputation? Okay. Okay, can I…? General, I wonder if you could keep my mom company for a minute while I talk to… Mr. Somerville in private? Would that be all right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Great. Ed, if you could just… no, not my room, let’s go outside.”

She led him out onto the front porch.

There were a great many reasons not to hold this conversation anywhere else in the house, because despite the inhospitable nature of the living room to all but close family and friends, the rest of the house was possibly even worse. About two years earlier they’d discovered dry rot in some of the floorboards on the first floor, and her father—who didn’t live with them in any real sense—decided to tear out the floorboards to stop the rot from spreading. This was a good idea provided those floorboards eventually got replaced, and they hadn’t been. He was due to return in October, at which time he would hopefully finish the job, but given she and Carol had been saying that every six months for two years, there was a reason to think it wasn’t going to be happening.

What it meant was that navigating the house to get to just about any other room aside from the kitchen (which had a direct exit from the living room) meant going down a corridor that opened directly to the root cellar in three different places.

Annie took Ed down the creaky wooden porch stairs and past her bike, and around the side of the house. The entire time, he looked either confused or embarrassed, or something in the middle of both.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, you showed up at my house?”

“I’m really sorry. I promise you, I didn’t… look, I didn’t know your mom was sick.”

“Didn’t know? It’s none of your business. It’s not anyone’s business unless I…”

“I know, all right? I screwed up. Look, I mean… it’s kind of your own fault, really.”

“I didn’t invite you here, how is this my fault?”

“You suggested it!”

“I suggested you hire me to show you around, I did not suggest a house call.”

“Right, and I’m the idiot who’s going to put a sixteen year old on the payroll without getting her parent’s permission first. In this day and age.”

“On the… wait a minute, you’re going to pay me?”

“No, the army’s going to pay you.”

She shook her head and stepped back like he had just whipped open his pants. “Whaaaat is going on?”

“I can’t really tell you.”

“You gotta tell me something. Like why you’re seriously about to turn me into a government agent.”

“Don’t get carried away, you’ll just be drawing a stipend.”

“I don’t know what that means, does it mean I get paid money?”

“Yes, that’s what it means.”

“All right, so I’m in, but let’s keep talking anyway and pretend you need to convince me, because I’m not necessarily going to be all that helpful if I don’t like what I hear.”

“All right.”

“Why don’t you tell me who you really are?”

“I gave you my real name.”

“Super, but you’re not a reporter.”

“No, I’m not. That’s my cover, though.”

“A cover. You’re a spy!”

“No, no I’m not a spy. A spy would be better at this.”

She laughed.

“I agree. You work for the army?”

“I work for the U.S. government. I’m an analyst. I do things called threat assessments and action plans.”

“Sounds boring.”

“It kind of is. But it means I’m sort of an expert on Sorrow Falls.”

“That’s an interesting distinction. Sorrow Falls, and not the spaceship.”

“I’m sort of an expert on both, but yes, I made that distinction deliberately. I’ve spent about as much time studying the town in nearly every way I can as I have the ship itself.

“All right, all right.”

Annie was pacing. This was partly because it helped her think, partly because she was in shorts and a t-shirt and the bugs were starting to discover her existence. Walking kept them guessing.

“So what I’m hearing is, something changed,” she said.

“Yes. I can’t tell you what.”

“Right, but it was something. But why me? You aren’t a reporter, and that was my whole pitch.”

“Yes, but… look, Annie, I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but the reason I’m here instead of someone else is because I’ve been arguing for a while that there’s something… different about Sorrow Falls. There are things here that don’t fit together right. I can’t pin it down, but it’s something. And now… well. I need to talk to people, get my ear to the ground, that sort of thing. I have a good reason for doing it, and I can’t tell you what that reason is. But based on everything I’ve heard about you in the past few hours, you’re something like the local Tom Sawyer. I’m not sure why or how that’s true, but it is.”

“I’m not sure if I like the comparison, Tom Sawyer was only like twelve, and I’m—”

“Sixteen, I know. You have a tendency to mention it every few minutes. Why is that?”

She laughed.

“I’ve spent my life in this town, and I know a lot of people. All of them are friendly and most of them are much older than I am. Around when I started hitting puberty I noticed some of those people were looking at me a little differently, so I got in the habit of reminding them how old I was. It’s nothing personal.”

“I guess that makes sense. What will you do when you turn eighteen?”

“I’ll start reminding them how old they are instead. So what are you looking to find out? In general.”

“Anything unusual, basically.”

“How unusual?”

“I don’t know how to qualify that.”

“All right, we’ll work that out later. How long?”

“As long as it takes, I guess.”

“School starts in a month, so I may need a note or something.”

It was hard to tell, but he might have been blushing.

“You know, it actually didn’t occur to me school would be an issue. I obviously can’t get in the way of that.”

“Sure you can. This sounds way more fun.”

“I… okay, we’ll figure that out if we need to. You’ll, um… you’ll also need to keep my cover, which will mean a little… lying. I already feel uncomfortable asking you to do that.”

“Your cover as a reporter.”

“Right.”

“Let me explain something right off. Nobody’s going to believe you, especially if you went and saw the ship today like you were supposed to. Not that it will make a huge difference.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If you build up a good, solid lie, you’ll be fine. They won’t believe you, but they’ll answer your questions anyway. You just can’t half-ass the lie or they’ll think you’re insulting them. Who do you write for?”

“Well I’m not really writing for anyone.”

“You’re never going to pull this off, Ed. Good God.”

“Ahh, okay. The New Yorker?”

“Noo, no. Nobody’s going to talk to someone from the New Yorker in Massachusetts. Follow baseball sometime. Try again.”

“I, um…”

“Okay, here’s what you say: you’re writing a feature article on spec for the Atlantic Monthly. General Morris is your… let’s go with uncle. He pulled some strings to get you onto the base and up close and personal with the ship.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, how did you know we were doing that?”

“Edgar, everyone knows everything in this town. So you’re using your connections with Morris to get the kind of story nobody’s written before, and that’s why the Atlantic is interested in a spec piece from somebody who has no bylines in their own name. You’re probably going to have to come up with a plausible backstory on how you’re a thirty year old writer with no credits, too.”

“You make it sound like I have to prep for a background check.”

“That’s exactly right. I checked up on you already. Took me about ten minutes to decide you weren’t a reporter.”

“You got my age wrong.”

That’s because I’m guessing, because you have no public profile, and that’s exactly my point. You can either build that profile tonight—it won’t stand up—or come up with why you don’t have one. Why, how old are you?”

“Thirty-four, but you had me looking younger, I’ll take the compliment.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, I’m only sixteen.”

“When do you turn seventeen, exactly? Just so I know when I can stop hearing you say that over and over.”

“Not for another four months. Are you gay?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll probably keep saying it, sorry.”

THEY WENT BACK inside to rescue General Morris from Annie’s mother, or perhaps the other way around. Both appeared reasonably uncomfortable to have been left alone, especially when they probably could hear Ed and Annie arguing.

Morris had a number of documents for them to sign. According to the general, it was the same basic documentation the army used when putting translators on the payroll on foreign soil. This actually made Annie laugh out loud.

The whole thing took about an hour, which taxed her mom, a lot more than she let on. By this time she was usually lighting a joint and picking a movie to relax to, before either passing out in her recliner or staggering off to bed.

When it was all done, everyone shook everyone’s hands, and Annie took over hosting duties for long enough to escort them out while her mother excused herself.

“Again, I’m really sorry,” Ed said quietly as the general walked ahead to the car. “We didn’t know. Is it cancer?”

“Yeah, it’s… yeah. It’s not going to get any better. The weed’s for pain, and to help her whole ‘power of positive thinking’ thing. Look, I don’t know if she even has a legal prescription for it. We grow it ourselves.”

“Don’t worry about any of that.”

They shook hands again.

“I’ll be by in the morning,” he said.

“Yeah, hold up. Are you planning to go around in one of those?”

He looked at the car, then back.

“I was. Comes with its own driver, too. It’s all right, right? That cover story of yours has me related to the general, so…”

“No, that’s not going to work. Like I said, don’t insult them. You parked a rental at Betty Lou’s, you should take that.”

Ed laughed. “You know where I’m staying and what I drove into town in. I’m starting to think none of this was actually my idea.”

“Now you’re learning. See you in the morning.”

Inside, her mother had settled back into her chair and was searching her layers for a lighter.

“Well, he seems like a nice boy, dear,” she said.

“Stop it. He’s thirty-four.”

“I can’t wait to tell your father his little girl is working for The Man and being courted by a boy in his thirties. He’ll be thrilled.”

Annie held up a throw pillow as a threat. “You are not allowed to tease me about this.”

“Oh, come on, this is the only fun I get.”

“Did you eat today?”

“I did. Twice.”

“Liar.”

“All right once, but it was a big meal.”

Annie put down the pillow and threw herself on the couch.

“You have to eat, mother.”

“Yes, I know, I know.”

“Oh, and don’t worry, I made sure nobody’s going to say anything about the… you know.”

“The dope? Honestly, who cares any more?”

“Some people do! The army does, I bet.”

“I grow my own plants in my own yard for use in my own house. Let them come. I’ll call the ACLU.”

“Hippie.”

“You are correct. I am too young to be one, but you are still correct. Now, I believe North by Northwest is already in the machine. Will you be joining your mother for a Hitchcock, or would you prefer hiding in your room and writing Eddie Loves Annie on all your notebooks?”

“I swear to God, I will hit you with this pillow, lit joint or no.”

“Ah, such violence. Find me the TV remote, would you?”

Annie started rummaging through the nearest collection of afghans, as this was the most obvious place to check. As she did, a thought occurred.

“Hey, mom, silly question: did we ever watch Porgy and Bess?”

“That’s Gershwin, right? I don’t think so. If we did, it would have been a network airing. I’m sure we don’t own that. Why, did you want to?”

“No. I was just curious.”