Day Thirty-Seven
Norman spent the better part of two weeks at his desk on a desperate hunt for meaning.
He was right in recognizing that the pet psychic’s reading could have easily been the origin story of them as the origin story of everything.
Collision, stars, father. It mirrored how they met on the beach, crashing into each other, Jesse’s first word to him (“Dad”), and the story Jesse shared about racing the Chicken total darkness suited neither of them now.
“Where’s Liam Neeson when you need him?”
Norman ignored the quip. “Just sit tight. We’re almost there.”
“What I do have is a very particular set of skills,” Jesse mumbled in his best Irish brogue.
Jesse made jokes like this when he was uncomfortable.
Norman knew it was not the first time his husband wondered if he hadn’t come back quite right.
It wasn’t just the forced hospital visit or the barrage of medical tests.
It was a strange look in the kitchen, or the way Jesse would monitor what he ate, or once in the night when he rolled over to find Jesse, eyes wide open, staring, the whites of his eyes all that could be seen in the dark.
Even Norman himself continued to spend time in front of the mirror looking for signs that he might have been swapped for someone, or something, else.
Alas, everything he saw was far too human—a body falling prey to age.
“What are you doing?” Norman asked when he saw Jesse adjust his mask.
“I’m counting the number of turns the Jeep makes in case I need to describe to the police where I am.”
“Really?” Norman asked.
Jesse adjusted the mask again. “No, my nose just itches.”
Their Jeep turned off the main road, crunching over gravel, before coming to a gentle stop on soft dirt. Norman killed the engine and everything fell quiet. “Okay, we’re here.”
Jesse swiveled his head to the side to look directly at Norman, who laughed. “I look like an idiot,” Jesse complained.
“You look adorable,” Norman corrected as he squeezed Jesse’s thigh. The door opened and closed, and Jesse sat still as Norman ran around to his side. “This way,” Norman said as he opened the passenger door and, not being able to see, Jesse had no choice but to take Norman’s hand.
“This is just like Phantom Thread.”
“Star Wars?” Norman asked. “I said no peeking.”
Jesse groaned. “That’s Phantom Menace. Phantom Thread is the Daniel Day-Lewis movie where he plays a tortured dressmaker. Vicky Krieps poisons him to keep him dependent on her, and therefore nicer.”
“Vicky who?”
Jesse wriggled annoyingly as they took their last few steps over uneven ground. “Krieps! Sounds like creeps. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW VICKY KRIEPS?” He shimmied, trying to shake the mask off. “We watched the Criterion Collection.”
That all sounded vaguely familiar, but Norman was near his wit’s end. “Okay, fine. Just remove the mask.”
Jesse hesitated, suddenly afraid of what he might see.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want to.”
Norman growled and flipped the mask up on one side, exposing Jesse’s left eye. At first Jesse stared straight ahead like he thought this must all be some sort of trick; there was no way he could actually be seeing what emerged from the ground.
He pulled the rest of the mask off like Sam Neill clumsily removing his sunglasses in Jurassic Park, blinked a few times to adjust to the sun, shook his head to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, and sure enough, he wasn’t. “Oh, you’re a fountain of atrocious ideas.”
But it wasn’t Norman’s idea, it was Jesse’s, and so Norman didn’t want to hear any of his contempt. Instead, he jumped up and down like a schoolkid, gazing in awe. “It looks even better than it did in the photos!”
The bright orange saucer was named the Area 55 Futuro House, one of fewer than a hundred Futuro houses constructed worldwide from the designs of Finnish architect Matti Suuronen, who in the late 1960s wanted a design that would commemorate humans conquering space; it looked not unlike a flat pumpkin.
The structure was perfectly round with oval windows dotting the circumference and appeared to be levitating off the ground (but was supported by a metal infrastructure underneath that looked not unlike a child’s jungle gym).
Large boulders were neatly arranged around it, adding to the illusion that it had just landed.
Behind it, nothing. The house sat on five acres of land.
Norman ran up to the front and punched in a code on a hidden keypad, and stairs descended with a soft hydraulic hiss, attached to the back of the aerospace door.
It looked so much like a UFO from a movie, it was a miracle steam didn’t pour out, followed by little green men. We come in peace.
“Can you believe it?” Norman exclaimed. “Right here in our own—” He stopped short of saying backyard to avoid the PTSD of it all. “Right here in Joshua Tree.”
“Oh, I can believe it,” Jesse replied, doing his best to mask his own personal horror. He approached the structure with caution, as if it might be hot from reentering the atmosphere, if not downright radioactive.
Norman ran back to Jesse, gripping him by the shoulders and shaking him.
“You showed it to me some time”—Norman proceeded carefully—“before. And you were right. How fun! It’s ours for the next two nights.
” Jesse looked stricken, and Norman feared he had horribly miscalculated, so he quickly explained his reasoning.
“It’s an olive branch, okay? You and me.
I’m not going anywhere again without you. ”
“You don’t get it,” Jesse said, shaking his head sadly. “I don’t want to be dragged aboard the mother ship while you go off on your next adventure. I want to have faith that you’ll stay here with me.”
Norman accepted Jesse’s words as the uncomfortable truth, but childlike enthusiasm won out. “I am staying here with you. For two nights.” Norman smiled, then sprinted for the door, bounding up the steps two at a time.
Inside, the house was even more bonkers.
Where benches didn’t line the curved walls, a round bed did, waiting for characters from an Austin Powers movie to shag.
Chairs were placed throughout, decorated with colorful throw pillows, beaded with alien faces and one with a large eyeball.
The whole thing was run off solar panels, and Jesse flicked each switch and tested the outlets half expecting them to be dead; instead, a soft pink light bathed the open room, and the coffee maker blinked twelve o’clock.
The bathroom was outdoors, something he threatened to make Norman pay for, saying he couldn’t imagine lowering the hydraulic door to descend the stairs into the night just to pee—he’d never be heard from again; they agreed to piss in the sink.
There was no TV, but there were Bluetooth speakers and shelves with old books and games.
He mused that this might be a trap, that maybe this was the mother ship and just as Norman lulled Jesse into a false sense of calm by making him a martini and promising to stay, the whole thing might whir to life.
But once he rapped his knuckles on the wall and got a hollow response, at least that one worry was put at ease.
“They have Wingspan!” Norman exclaimed, pointing at a shelf.
He peeled open the box and studied its contents.
“The directions are gone.” They both laughed, as anyone who tried to play this game without the directions was truly fucked.
“And some of the wooden eggs are jelly beans. That’s…
disgusting.” It had been six months since Easter.
Jesse agreed to play anyway, mumbling that a game seemed safer ground than any other activities Norman might have planned, especially given the way Norman was eyeing the round bed. “But I want credit for playing.”
Norman cocked his head, confused. “What do you mean, credit?”
“I don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of this weekend, but I don’t want to be blamed when it goes south.”
Why would it go south? Norman desperately wanted to know, but he kept his mouth tightly shut.