A Memory Close to Her

by Michael Fowler

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

“But I know your son is enjoying the ten-foot tall octopus couples strolling along the white sand with interlinked tentacles, and the giant crab ride,” said Walt. “My partner and I enjoy swimming with the boat-sized rays in that sparkling blue water best of all. And don’t worry, they’re toothless and barbless.”

This was the first Ed had heard of Walt’s partner, who now joined them. At first glance Ed and Ada assumed this was a doddering older man wearing a body brace. Walt, however, introduced the creature as Tharl, calling him a sentient mammal-crustacean from the inland waterways.

“I recommend the clams,” Tharl joked as he folded his hard, pinkish exterior into the chair between Walt and Ed, his segmented shell squeaking. Ed nodded his head, finding all this interesting. But Ada was unprepared for the stranger. She turned queasy when she saw that what she had taken to be two whorls of gray hair hanging from Tharl’s jaws were actually extendable helical tusks, clearly useful for penetrating the flesh of softer animals. Her appetite abandoned her.

“Forgive me, madam,” Tharl added, seeing that Ada was not amused. “Walt taught me English, but he failed to tell me any jokes suitable for an Earth lady, particularly a first-time guest here. He’s a cad, you see. And in bed, certainly no top.”

“As if you’re a top,” replied a grinning Walt.

“I acknowledge that my appearance and table manners may shock a first-time witness from Earth,” Tharl went on, elongating his tusks into a bowl of murky broth a trained Host placed before him without having been asked. It must have been Tharl’s usual order, and he drained the bowl in one quick and noisy slurp.

“Tasty indeed,” said Tharl, his tusks now flaccidly dripping broth. “But I get my favorite treat when I perform lipo-suction on tubby Walt here. Lift up your shirt, dear, and show Ada and Ed where my proboscises have entered your tender tummy and sucked in pounds of your yellow lard, yum yum.”

Ada froze in her chair.

“And I re-inject that lard in the form of the most delirious aphrodisiac, right into Tubby’s neck.” Tharl added. “See those little red marks? It’s more powerful than even the Hosts’ mammary squeezings. Walt thinks he’s fucking Dracula.”

Ada stood up and retired to her and Ed’s room.

“Not to worry, Ed,” an unabashed Walt told his old friend. “She’ll find chilled bottles of our elixir in the room fridge. One of those and she’ll think only of your best times in the sack together. Everything else, including the remarks of Tharl here, who has been most unforgivably mischievous, will be forgotten.”

Smiling but silent, Ed ordered a drink. Handed a menu by a Host, he ticked off with a tiny pen, at Walt’s suggestion, a Tingler, not bothering to ask what it contained but hoping not a drop came from Tharl’s fangs or Walt’s paunch. Whatever the Tingler’s ingredients, Tharl gave Ed a claw’s-up, saying “Ada will appreciate it. And tell her I’m sorry if I offended. I was only trying to be informative.”

Alone in her and Ed’s room, Ada took a shower in clear, hot water, and as she dried herself looked through the room window onto the dark green swamps below. Host families were frolicking in the discolored muck, and human families and indescribable aliens were cavorting with them. It was a communal mud bath, she decided, enlivened by the omnipresent grins and comical antics of the tuxedoed Hosts, both the large older ones and the smaller, equally well-dressed young.

That such an outlandish zoo had become profitable amazed her, but she gave Ed credit for getting in and cashing out, leaving the upkeep of the revolting slime, however lucrative, to Walt and, presumably, to that crass crustacean who was his partner. She was aware of sounding narrow-minded, but she couldn’t forgive that crab or Ed for bringing her here, apparently to revel in her discomfiture. Was this his way of showing that they were finished at last, and to announce a divorce or separation? If so, it was hardly necessary. She was tired enough already of his coldness and aloofness to agree to a parting without this insulting sojourn. Any notion of getting back with him she now completely dropped.

Dried and robed, she explored the contents of the mini-bar against the wall. All the standard liquors were on display, in little bottles, including many exotic blends unknown to her. She checked the mini-fridge, wherein lay several shelves of additional small bottles, nice and cold. The pearl-hued ones seemed to call out to her, and she handled one, reading “Elixir for Our Human Guests” on its beaded front. She also looked at a pink-hued one, with a label that, for her, required a translation, though the color suggested too well the stiff exterior of Tharl. She decided to go with pearly. If it happened to kill her, maybe Ed would be blamed. So much the better.

When Ed returned to the room minutes later, still under the effects of his Tingler, he let himself in quietly, and then gazed at his wife’s apparently sleeping form on the inviting bed. On his walk through the hotel corridor, and on the elevator ride to his room on the third floor, he had reappraised Ada and his marriage and could now hardly recall their difficulties, though he tried. What the hell was in that drink? But, of course, he had a pretty good notion. He hadn’t felt this attracted to his wife in five years. But she had been right to walk out on the crude Tharl, and Walt, though a friend forever, seemed complicit in Tharl’s bad taste.

Ed was in no mood to feel ill will toward anyone and, disrobing down to his briefs, slipped into bed beside Ada. He snuggled up against her curved back, recalling vividly their most intimate times, the years before he began to feel estranged from her because of — what were his reasons again? — oh yes, her profligacy with money that plunged them into debt, and her not backing his decisions, and her terrible family, or something along those lines.

He focused on her naked flesh, the broad back and tender shoulders, feeling them warm under his kisses and caresses. He allowed himself to become carried away, though no so far, at first, as to forget that this must be the Tingler at work, playing a romantic trick on his mind. Thanks to the Tingler, he realized, he experienced not the actual Ada, but a memory of Ada, one close to her.

Awaking from her frustration and Elixir-induced nap, Ada at once responded to her husband’s touch. She needed only feel his body beside her, and inhale his aroma, to feel removed from the horror of this marshy place. Ed’s faults, his habitual coldness and aloofness, his superior air and disparagement of her, all melted away, as if he no longer owned them.

She took the old Ed in her arms, the one she had first loved, and rocked with him to a familiar rhythm, reaching complete satisfaction. Suspecting that this new Ed was not Ed as he really was, but an Elixir-Ed close to the real man, disturbed her not at all, or she didn’t let it. Not yet.

When Ed gently rolled away from Ada, she again fell asleep. He heard a sigh and then her soft snore. He had not managed to come and felt restless. He had been close, completely engaged in a memory of Ada, but a comment Tharl had made at table had returned to visit him at the crucial moment. The armored lout had suggested a four-way with itself, Ed, Walt, and Ada, and Ed could not keep his mind from picturing an orgy of pierced flesh and dripping tusks. He got out of bed and, seeing from the window the lagoon below now shaded by dusk and illuminated along winding pathways by pole lamps, decided to talk a walk. He dressed and went out.

He soon stood by the lagoon. Few guests were outside in the closing dark, though two young Earth couples occupied the well-lighted deck of the nearby clear-water pool. He remarked that, for all the development around it, the lagoon had changed little in the five years since he had last seen it. Same old murky, uninviting place.

He saw no Hosts either, and perhaps they were home with their families now. How did they live, anyway, those odd creatures? He had never taken the trouble to learn much about them. He guessed they slept in the water like dolphins and penguins, or maybe they had shelters somewhere on land.

Pausing at a turn in the footpath along the water, he sipped the small bottle of Elixir for Our Human Guests he had removed from the mini-fridge in the room and slipped into his trouser pocket. He had known immediately on getting out of bed that the Tingler had largely worn off and, when he returned in a few minutes to Ada, he wanted to complete what he had begun with her. He desired her more and more fiercely, and burned to end his fluster and unfulfillment. Finishing the tiny bottle, he chided himself for letting this investment go. The Elixir, he knew, or a synthesized version of it, was manufactured and distributed galaxy-wide from a plant in Europe.

Placing the empty bottle back in his pocket, he beheld a Host arise from the dark water before him, a large one that seemed to be attracted to him. As he watched it grow closer, wondering if it was real or an illusion brought on by the Elixir, he soon recognized the towering, red-bearded animal. Yes, surely it was Redbeard, as he had always thought of him, the Host who, five years ago, had fixed him with a baleful glance at the celebratory party with Walt and Tina.

Redbeard, if it was he, came up onto the path by the muddy bank and seized Ed by flippers and teeth, bending him to the ground. The Host then opened wide his unsmiling mouth and began eviscerating Ed’s craning neck. Ed, however, in the full rush of elation brought on by the Elixir, experienced only the other’s giant smile and welcoming embrace. The Host, for the first time, spoke to him.

“I love you,” said the creature. “Thank you for coming here.”