Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy Page 3

  It relieved some of the tension in the classroom and the twenty-odd officers at the desks, as well as the three other performers grouped in a corner, chuckled. A bit.

  Paul Winograd, fortyish, with dark, kinky hair and a bold mustache, strode to the head of the classroom. “Good, Bill, thanks,” he nodded perfunctorily to Tuggle, who shrugged “Ain’t nothing,” and meandered back to his seat. In referee position, Winograd put his hands on the shoulders of both Fancy Delancey, the Newcomer actress, and Matt Sikes, and squeezed each reassuringly. To Fancy: “You did good, kid. A little heavy on the dramatic irony, but good. Back to your corner.” Turning to Sikes: “As for you, remember, the motto here is no shame. You’re supposed to fail in here so you don’t fail out there. Back to your desk.”

  Matt obeyed, grumbling all the way.

  The class was a seminar on dealing with crisis personalities, a requirement for rookies but, with the introduction of Newcomers into L.A. society, required again for experienced cops as well. Most of them were surly and resented it (“Logging Slag-time,” they called it), despite the assurances that this was not a refresher course so much as a follow-up—to disseminate new, previously uncodified information. Recently the course had begun to integrate the services of an organization known as P.A.C.T.—Performing Artists for Crisis Training. Contributing actors would study case histories of crisis personalities under the guidance of a so-called director, who was, in truth, a psychiatric expert in such matters. Then in classroom situations the actors would improvise crisis scenarios along with cops who might face similar—but dangerously real—situations on the street.

  Paul Winograd was the director for this unit.

  “Now remember, boys and girls,” he cautioned the class at large, “by the book for humans is not by the book for Newcomers. The differences are mind-bogglingly subtle, but they are, literally, killers. Matt, you back in control?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Grudgingly, impatiently, not happy about it.

  “You know what you did wrong?”

  “Forgot to call in sick.”

  A bigger general laugh erupted from the group. Winograd shook his head, didn’t reprimand, but deliberately chose not to join in the merriment. The point was lost on some, but Matt caught it. Winograd turned to the Newcomer actress.

  “Fancy, tell him.”

  Looking at her director, she began, “He said that the gods—”

  Which was as far as she got before Winograd’s hand went up, the voice as flat and forceful as the palm that silenced her. “—Fancy, I know the drill. Tell him.”

  Fancy Delancey, dutifully and clearly under protest, spun on her heels to face Matt Sikes. Sikes forced himself to return the gaze.

  Not fun, not pleasant, not easy.

  “You said that the gods would forgive. To a Tenctonese in that state, their forgiveness is yet a further loss of self-esteem because it implies that the victim is to be pitied. It is perceived as a negative. What the crisis personality wants to hear is that the gods would approve—”

  “Approve?” Matt thundered. “She killed her goddamn kids, for chrissake—”

  “Enough!” Winograd snapped. Burning his eyes into Sikes. “Matt, get with the program. The woman is already irrational. The trick is to key into her logic, not bring her around to yours. Or, for that matter, to your human notion of a forgiving God. Save lives first and save practical philosophy for later.”

  “Ahh,” Matt muttered under his breath. Winograd, who’d seen the reaction before, and knew it to be cop-natural, turned back to the class.

  “Ain’t we got fun, people? Who’s next?”

  The memory of the classroom performance played over and over in his head, like a loop, all through Act One, all through intermission (during which his companions took his sullen preoccupation for interest in the drama, and just as well; he was happy not to have to explain himself before he was sure there was anything to explain), and continued through Act Two.

  He kept imposing the classroom performance—in the role of the psychotic killer mom—over the onstage performance—in the role of Ibsen’s repressed housewife, Nora; they were different in detail, each a different creation, yet there was something fundamentally the same at the core: tics, nuances, and inflections that beggared coincidence into impossibility. It was definitely the same woman.

  The final scene, in which Nora finally tells off her husband, rang bells too. It was less a performance than an echo of real life. He’d been on the receiving end of that temper; he’d done his time as her Torvald—

  —and at the famous door slam that ends the play (though hardly famous to Matt, who’d never seen the play before and thought it, frankly, hokey and quaint), he was up on his feet with the rest of the audience for Fran Delaney’s standing ovation. But the applause and whistles he contributed were not really for art.

  They were for Auld Lang Syne.

  And when the houselights bumped up again, he turned to Cathy and said, “Can you wait for me. I gotta get backstage,” and, not pausing for an answer, dashed off.

  Leaving the Franciscos and Cathy to marvel that, wonder of wonders, Matthew Sikes had been the most affected by the play of them all . . .

  Cathy caught up with Matt in a narrow corridor leading to the dressing rooms, jammed with well-wishers. She was pleased to see him craning his neck over their heads for a glimpse of Fran Delaney, shifting from foot to foot like a star-struck kid. She wondered idly if she should be jealous.

  “Hey,” she said, touching his shoulder lightly.

  He flashed her a cursory, preoccupied smile.

  “Hi.”

  “George and Susan had to get back. For the kids, they said. But I don’t know, I think they’re just shy about waiting around backstage. For that matter”—she laughed—“I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  That seemed to have an effect on him. He blinked, smiled at her sheepishly, scratched the back of his head, and said—

  “Uhh—look, I hate to disappoint you, but—it’s not what you think.”

  A beat followed. Then she asked, “You didn’t like the play?”

  “No, no. Hell, I liked it fine, but. . .” He gestured vaguely past the milling, buzzing throng . . . “What if I told you I know her?”

  “Who?”

  “Nora.”

  “Fran Delaney? You know Fran Delaney?”

  “Yeah, but see . . .” He ran a hand through his hair. “This is nuts. But—bear with me, okay?”

  “Sure . . .”

  “All right. You’re an actress. I mean, suppose you’re an actress. A Newcomer actress. Playing a human. What kind of makeup would that require?”

  “Same as when Earthers do it in science fiction movies, I guess. Prosthetics, that kind of . . .” It dawned on Cathy in midsentence where Matt was headed. “Awfully expensive process, Matt.”

  “Yeah, especially for a low-budget outfit like this. That’s what I was thinkin’.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that when I knew Fran Delaney, she was Fancy Delancey, Tenctonese, and a huge pain in the ass.” He gave a short shrug. “Okay, tell me it’s impossible.”

  A terrible sadness and apprehension gripped Cathy.

  “Let’s go, Matt.”

  “I wish I could tell you I was joking, Cathy. I know it sounds impossible but—”

  “It’s not impossible, Matt, but you don’t understand. If it’s true, it’s—”

  The babbling of the crowd suddenly rose to an appreciative roar as Fran Delaney stepped out of her dressing room in civilian rags, sweater and jeans, makeup so removed her face was pale, but still indecently pretty. She began to make her way through the well-wishers in the front, and Matt broke away from Cathy to bull his way through the crowd from the rear.

  “Matt—” Cathy called, but he was out of reach or hearing, sucked into the mass of babbling bodies.

  Whatever damage he did, she hoped it would be minimal.

  They met in the middle. She didn’t see
him at first; she was almost past him, chatting with others—

  —and so he flipped his shield right where her peripheral vision would be distracted by it.

  “You’re under arrest, lady,” Matt said.

  Her eyes widened, she turned, bewildered, saw the shield first, then his face.

  And gaped.

  Recognition.

  Unmistakable.

  Matt smiled, to let her know it was all a joke.

  “Hey, Fancy. Congratulations.”

  She faltered before her voice came. “I’m—I’m sorry, you have me confused with someone else.” That said, she began pushing through the crowd with the force of a small tank. “Excuse me, excuse me.” The words were tinged by desperation, and then she broke free of the crowd, off and running, past Cathy who looked after her with an expression akin to sorrow. Or pity.

  Matt ignored the hostile glares from those close enough to have witnessed, now deprived of the star’s good graces, and made his dazed way back to Cathy.

  “She recognized me.”

  “I know.”

  “What the hell happened? She recognized me!”

  Cathy took him firmly by the shoulders. “I know.” A beat. “I saw.” A beat. “Come to the car. We’ll talk.”

  They started to move out when, from the street beyond the stage door, they heard a collective cry of dismay.

  Matt exchanged a look with Cathy and they hustled out, Matt in the lead, reaching for his police special.

  Outside, a group of ten, maybe twelve, people were huddled in a circle. Matt broke through. “Police. Move aside, people, move aside.”

  The voice commanded authority, but the gun commanded speed, and they parted very fast to reveal Fran Delaney, collapsed on the sidewalk.

  “All I did was ask for her autograph,” said a young man, “—and she just twitched—and fell . . .”

  Cathy, just catching up, was pushing onlookers aside. “I have some medical training. Let me through . . .”

  Matt reholstered his gun, observing with uncomprehending fascination as Cathy knelt by the comatose actress, gently lifted the head, brushed the hair back, peered at details Matt could not begin to discern . . . and then touched the ears lightly. Stroked them. Made them bend.

  Then she looked up and said, “Matt, you were right. Call an ambulance.”

  C H A P T E R 2

  GENTLY, A BEROBED George lowered Vessna into Susan’s grasp. The baby’s eyes were closed, but with unerring baby instinct, it knew: body warmth, mother skin, feeding shape—that last being Susan’s left breast, freed from her slip and waiting. Vessna greedily encircled Susan’s nipple with her mouth and worked her gums vigorously against it, squeezing out Yespian, the milk.

  “Ow,” sighed Susan affectionately. “Ow, ow, ow, ow . . .”

  She looked up at George from the bed, on which she leaned her back against a pillow propped against the headboard, suffering the needs of her youngest. Her expression was both blissful and helpless.

  “I know,” George said soothingly. “I know.”

  Susan’s breasts were especially sensitive, rare in Tenctonese women, and for her the sensual pleasure of breastfeeding was an elusive myth. It had less to do with the baby’s vigorous gumming than the sensation of Yespian squirting, which was unsettling and, when she was very full, even painful.

  There’d been a day not long ago, George remembered, when Susan had read in a magazine that some human women experienced similar pain upon breast-feeding. He remembered, too, her touchingly triumphant realization that she was not alone in the universe. The profound difference was that human females could opt to feed their babies with cow’s milk or specially prepared formula, easily obtainable in any drug store. Not so for a Tenctonese mother. A Newcomer baby’s very survival depended upon a steady infusion of mother’s milk.

  And so Susan bore the feedings stoically, with love and kindness, but always behind the eyes, that little tension flashing the message: This is torture. I can handle it. But torture.

  George empathized as best he could—which was, in fact, pretty thoroughly. He had taken into his body each of their three children as unborn pods and carried them to term. He remembered vividly the exquisite yet excruciating pain of birth all three times.

  The consolation Susan held to was that after Vessna was weaned, she would never again have to endure the loving agony. She and George had decided to stop at three children.

  There were pragmatic reasons: Their income was already stretched to its limit. George had gone through an early riana, making more children unlikely. But these reasons paled before the fact that they felt fulfilled. Their house and their lives had long been full with children, and at long last, three were enough.

  “George,” Susan said, stroking Vessna’s soft, smooth head, “would you bring me my portfolio?”

  “Of course,” George replied, and padded to her dresser, against which the portfolio leaned.

  “I want to check out the sketches for the new ad campaign again.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Uhm. Apprehensive. The product is a very tricky one to advertise tastefully. I have to remind myself that my proposal is really as good as I think it is.”

  Probably that was true, thought George as he placed the portfolio beside her on the mattress and dutifully unzipped it. Just as likely, though, she was looking for any excuse to distract herself from the tiny agonies of Vessna’s feeding.

  He pushed the portfolio open and it fell forward, revealing the sketches. Susan reached for them and—with admirable dexterity, considering how fully occupied she already was—spread them out.

  “What do you think?” Susan asked.

  “Ah,” George hemmed.

  Looking at them.

  “Em,” he hawed.

  Susan looked at him.

  “You hate them.”

  “No,” he said quickly, “not at all.”

  A pause.

  “But—” she prompted.

  “It means much to me that you wish to ask,” he said carefully, “but . . . it has been brought to my attention that I have no talent for appraising art.”

  She blinked. “Who told you that?”

  Embarrassed, he paused a bit before answering. “Uhm . . . Matthew, actually.”

  “Is this the same Matthew who never heard of Ibsen?”

  “There was a . . . contextual application.”

  “Context or not. What a mean thing to say.”

  “No, no, he wasn’t being mean. In fact, he didn’t exactly put it that way.”

  “What way did he put it?”

  “Well, we were on our way to question a witness on Sepulveda Boulevard when we passed a street vendor who had a row of paintings for sale.”

  “And?”

  “And I paused to admire them.” George smiled in recollection. “Oh, they were really quite something. Children and cats with big, round eyes. Colorful circus clowns. One especially striking canvas showed a man in a white spangled outfit, with full lips set in a rather pouty sneer . . .” George tried to assume the expression he was describing. “. . . hair in a kind of pompadour . . .”—he gestured vaguely at the top of his bald forehead, then touched his cheek—“. . . and long sideburns. He was speaking into a microphone.”

  “Sounds almost . . . regal.”

  “Interesting you should say that. Apparently it was a picture of a . . . a king of some sort.” His expression became wistful. “But my favorite was this very amusing canvas. It featured a group of canines in a smoky room, seated around a table, playing a card game. Poker, I think.”

  George looked down at Susan’s face. She was smiling broadly, the discomfort of Vessna’s feeding almost forgotten. Encouraged, he continued.

  “The pictures weren’t terribly expensive, not by the standards of fine art, anyway, and I thought to buy the dog piece for the living room.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because Matthew said that people would regard us less serio
usly if we hung it in the living room. He claimed, in fact, it had kitchenesque connotations.”

  “Kitchenesque?”

  “Yes, I recall quite clearly. He said that the canvases were just a lot of kitchen.”

  “Oh.” She mulled that over for a while. Then said, “You know what I think, Stangya . . .”

  He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, pleased that she had used his Tenctonese name.

  “What?”

  “I think I want your opinion anyway.”

  Touched, he turned his full concentration toward the sketches. And as he did so, Susan extracted Vessna from her left breast and repositioned both slip and baby to give the child access to the right. “Come on, Neemu,” she purred, “that’s right. Come on . . .”

  And they were both immediately distracted by a rhythmic pounding from another room.

  Thump-thump-de-thump.

  A short pause and then . . .

  Ka-flump.

  Thump-thump-de-thump.

  Ka-flump.

  “What in the world . . .” muttered George. The sound seemed to be coming from Emily’s room, and the repeating pattern made it seem purposeful. He exchanged a glance with Susan, whose expression read, I don’t know any more about this than you.

  “No doubt Emily is engaged in some sort of physical activity,” George surmised.

  “Think you should stick your head in and see?” Susan asked.

  Thump-thump-de-thump.

  Ka-flump.

  George briefly considered Emily’s right to privacy; briefly considered too how hard it had been to talk to Emily about the necessity of staying up late, as it was not good for Tenctonese youngsters to get too much sleep. If she was happy and occupied, he didn’t want to disrupt her . . .

  Thump-thump-de-thump.

  . . . rhythm . . .

  Ka-flump.

  . . . and it might be just as effective to speak to her in the morning.

  But then the decision was taken out of parental hands—the thumping suddenly stopped and an argument ensued. Buck, their eldest, was shouting at Emily and Emily was shouting back, the words unclear and muffled through the walls, but the emotions obviously high.