Down With Einstein!

By John McDonnell

Larry was eating breakfast in the kitchen one day when Horst, Willow's very large, hairy, tattooed boyfriend burst in the back door with tears running down his face.

"She's gone!" he said, plopping into the chair next to Larry and covering his bearded face with his hands.

Larry was in the form of a First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, complete with a white uniform with gold trim and brass buttons, and a fancy hat with feathers on it.

"Tut, tut,” he said. “Ships sail all the time. There'll be another one before long."

"I'm not talking about a ship!" Horst said. "I mean Willow. She's gone."

"What?" Dolores said, coming into the kitchen. "Willow's gone? Where is my daughter?”

"It's that crazy cult she joined," Horst said, sobbing. "She's off on a protest march for it."

"Blasted cults," Larry said. "Just when you think you have life all figured out, here comes a cult to bally well upset everything. They ought to keelhaul every one of them."

"What is she protesting?" Dolores said.

"Einstein," Horst said.

"I knew a Freddie Einstein as a young girl," Edna said, waltzing into the kitchen in a gauzy white nightgown. "He was quite the dancer. Father didn't like him because he drove a Stutz Bearcat and always wanted to get me into the rumble seat."

"No, no," Horst said. "It's Albert Einstein. The relativity guy. Willow's cult thinks that Einstein was an agent of Satan. All this stuff about Time being relative, they say it's evil. People spend too much time thinking about time travel and black holes, they say."

"What ho!" Larry said. "On my ship we have a rule: ‘Beware of southern winds and black holes!’”

"But you’re always time traveling," Dolores said. "You must use Einstein's theories to do that."

"Rummy thing, Time," Larry said. "Always making you feel late for something. Had my way, I'd rather do without it."

"Promptness is such a tedious thing," Edna said. "What’s the point of always being on time? I’ve never understood why everyone gets so upset about it."

"Don't you understand?" Horst wailed. "She's gone. She's left me. I want her back!" He collapsed in tears, his heavy body shaking with every sob. He was crying on Larry's shoulder. It was not a pretty sight, and it put you mind of a large sea animal struggling to digest a meal.

"Buck up, man," Larry said, pushing him away. "You're wrinkling my uniform. Oh, bother, I'll go see if I can do something.” There was a shimmering in the air, and Larry vanished.

"Do you think that ever makes him dizzy?" Edna asked. Nobody answered her.

In seconds Larry was back, holding Willow over his shoulder. He dumped her on the floor and she came up screeching.

"How dare you!" she spluttered. She was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue, and she had a sign saying, ‘Down with Relativity!’. “Take me back this instant!"

"I can't," Larry said. "That instant is gone."

"Take me back NOW!"

"‘Now’ is such a relative term," Larry said. "It’s hard to fathom isn’t it? I bally well can’t figure it out."

"It's like trying to nail Jello to a wall," Edna said. "Not something you want to try on your mother’s Louis 14th wallpaper, let me tell you."

"Baby, come back to me," Horst said, his large arms outstretched to Willow.

"Down with Einstein!" Willow said.

"It's okay," Horst said, coming over and putting his arms around her. "I can live with that. He doesn't have to mean anything in our lives, babe. He's nothing to me. Albert who? See, I forgot him already!"

"Well, maybe you're right," Willow said. "It was cold on the picket line. I was freezing!" She snuggled closer to Horst. "Let's go in the other room and turn on the artificial fireplace."

"Well, that was interesting," Edna said, watching them leave. "I think protest is a good thing, generally speaking. My mother used to protest everything. Of course, she thought calculus was immoral, you know. She used an abacus.”

"I'm going back to bed," Dolores said, shaking her head. "My brain is tired already, and it's only 10:00 in the morning."

"Rummy thing, Time," Larry said. "If it weren't that you need it to figure out when your tea is ready, I'd as soon the blasted thing wasn't invented."




THE END

 

Tiger Valentine

 By John McDonnell

“Do they have a Valentine’s Day on your planet?” Murphy said. He was mopping up some spilled beer on the bar, and he shuddered as if the phrase, “Valentine’s Day” was hard to get out.

Larry was curled up in a corner in the form of a full grown male Bengal tiger, all 500 pounds of him, and he was idly toying with a tennis ball, rolling it with one enormous paw and stopping it with the other.

"No Valentine's Day," Larry said. "We don't have flowers on our planet, and we're allergic to displays of affection, so it doesn't work for us."

"It doesn't work for me either," Murphy said. "Once a year I have to act romantic with Dolores, spend money on some gift that she won't like, make myself presentable, and listen to her talk about all the romantic things we did when we were younger. It gets me depressed when I realize the whole conversation is in past tense. It's all about how much promise I had. I hate the word 'promise'. Anything promising about a 22 year old man should never be held against him."

"Did you know that male Bengal tigers are some of the most solitary creatures on earth?" Larry said. "They only get together with females to impregnate them."

"Sounds like my father," Murphy said.

"My father didn't believe in Valentine's Day," Edna said. She had come by to join the weekly game of dominoes at the bar, and was taking a break from beating all comers. She was wearing a riding outfit, complete with tan jodhpurs, black knee boots, and a black riding helmet. "He was a captain of industry, don't you know, and was too busy for that kind of lunacy, as he liked to call it. On Valentine's Day he'd have his secretary send Mother a box of chocolates, although Mother never ate them, because of her figure. I used to sneak a few myself, but of course chocolate makes me talk too much, and--"

"Remind me to lock up the chocolate at our house," Murphy said. "Now, as I was saying: What am I going to do? Dolores expects a present for Valentine's Day, and I'm terrible at guessing what she wants."

"How about a nuclear magnetic resonance machine?" Larry said. "She could get a look into her heart with that. I mean, the holiday is all about cardiac issues, right?"

"Father was one of the first to get a heart transplant," Edna said. "Of course, he always thought they gave him a chimpanzee's heart by mistake, because after the operation he grew very fond of peanuts, and he couldn't stop scratching himself."

"Have you ever been in love, Larry?" Murphy said.

Larry blinked once, snuffled, and then roared. "Yes! There was this android girl named Unit 53K90. We were in space colonization school together. She really filled out an artificial skin, if you know what I mean. We always said we'd go invade a planet together and take it over. It was not to be, however. She was sent to invade a planet with a civilization that was so evolved they hadn’t had a bruised ego in 500 years. Me? I failed my final exams, because I couldn't land a spaceship without burning out the anti-gravity gears, so I was exiled to this backwater planet."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Murphy said. "I remember this little black haired vixen in school." He whistled softly. “Now she had the nicest--"

"Delivery for Mr. Murphy," a voice said, and in the doorway was a blonde Amazon, a girl who looked like she could power slam the Green Bay Packers defensive line with one hand, dressed in a brown UPS uniform. Her legs were like tree trunks sticking out of her brown shorts.

"Over here," Murphy said.

She brought over a large bouquet of roses and handed them to Murphy. "Sign here," she said, whipping out a clipboard and a pen. Murphy signed and she started to leave, but stopped when she saw Larry. "What a beautiful animal," she said.

"Thanks," Larry said. "Usually people are too afraid to say that to me."

"I'm not afraid," she said. "I used to be a lion tamer in a circus."

"Really?" Larry said. "No kidding? Well, I bet you were a good one. If I may say so, I've never seen a more imposing physical specimen than you, Miss. . ."

"Hortense. Just call me Hortense."

"Yes, Hortense. If this isn’t too personal, did you ever train tigers?”

"All the time,” she said. “Although never one like you. You would be a pleasure to train, if I may say so."

"Oh, I don't know,” Larry said. “My listening skills are not that good, and I don’t focus well, and--”

"Stand up NOW!" she bellowed, and Larry sprang to his feet, standing on his hind legs, all 9 feet of him in a vertical position with his paws on her shoulders. "Now, sit!" she said, and Larry sat down heavily.

"That was amazing!" he said. "You had such command, such power, such presence!"

"Thank you," she said sweetly. "I'm a little hoarse today. Throat cold."

"No, no, you were amazing," Larry said. "I'd follow you anywhere."

"Well, then come on," she said. "I have several more deliveries to make, but you can wait in the truck for me." She turned on her heel and walked out.

“Rawwr,” said Larry, and padded after her.

"You know, if William Blake hadn’t already written a poem about tigers,” Edna said. “I might write one myself. However, there’s a domino game calling me.” She went off to the back room intoning, “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/In the forests of the night. . . “

Murphy didn't comment, because he was busy reading the note Dolores sent with the flowers. It read, "To the love of my life. Our many years of happiness will only be surpassed by our bright and glorious future."

"What do you know," Murphy said, a tear in his eye. "The old girl loves me after all."

THE END

Larry Goes To The Future

By John McDonnell

Word gets out when you have an alien living with you who can time travel, and Dolores started getting phone calls from a man named Mr. Smith, who said he represented petroleum interests and wanted to talk to Larry about where the next drilling accidents would occur, so his Big Oil clients could plan their blame-everybody-but-us PR campaigns early.

Mr. Smith offered Dolores a lot of money just to get an introduction to Larry, so Dolores took him to the bar one Saturday afternoon. She brought Edna, who had cooked up a pot of clam chowder and wanted Murphy to sample it, in the hopes that he would put it on the bar's menu.

"This is our time traveling friend," Dolores said, introducing Larry to Mr. Smith. "By the way, Larry, why don't you ever travel to the future?"

"I don't like the future," Larry said. "It upsets my stomach." He was in the persona of  Matteo Ricci, a bearded Jesuit missionary from the 16th century.

"The future is overrated," Murphy said, taking a spoonful of the clam chowder. "In my experience, it only brings trouble and the taste of ashes in the mouth."

"I much prefer the past myself," said Edna. She was dressed as a Busby Berkeley chorus girl from the 1930s, with gold lame tap pants, a tuxedo jacket, a sailor hat, and tap shoes. "By the way, how do you like my clam chowder?"

"It's not bad," Murphy said. "I'm not fan of clams, though."

"I like clams," said Larry. "Although it's interesting that there are no clams in the future."

"No clams in the future?" Dolores said. "Why not?"

"They die out in about a hundred years," Larry said. "Some ecological reason, I forget why." He stroked his beard thoughtfully.

"Aren't they important in the food chain?" Murphy said. "Seems to me I heard walruses eat them."

"My deceased husband looked something like a walrus," Edna said. "People often said so. He had the same bristly mustache, the same mottled skin, and he was a dead weight on the dance floor. And, come to think of it, he was partial to clams."

"The simple clam," Larry said, a quaver in his voice. "Nobody appreciates the simple clam." He had a tear in his eye, and he began to recite a verse from "The Walrus and the Carpenter".

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

And then the air shimmered, there was a smell of seaweed and salt water, and Larry was in the form of a bull walrus, who lunged for the pot of clam chowder, knocking it to the floor. Larry licked up the chowder and then galumphed off in that peculiar undulating movement walruses have.

"I didn’t know he was so sentimental about clams," Edna said.

Mr. Smith turned to Dolores and said. "Now, about that million dollars I was going to pay you. . ."

"I was quite the dancer in my day," Edna said, striking a pose. "Would you like to see my rendition of the Lindy Hop?"

Larry undulated back and said, in a gravelly walrus voice: "Million dollars? You'd pay us a million dollars? For what?"

"If you could tell us the location and circumstances of the offshore oil spills for the next 20 years."

"I'd have to go to the future," Larry said. "It gives me too much anxiety."

"Well, no million dollars, then."

"Okay." The air shimmered. Larry disappeared, then came back with a three foot tall, hairless human named Qwex, who communicated by telepathy. He immediately gave everyone a splitting headache because he was using thought waves to shout directly into their brains. "Where are the clams?" he blared. "You told me there were clams here!"

"I ate them," Larry said. "Sorry."

“I think you misunderstood me,” Mr. Smith said. “He’s from too far in the future. I only meant the next 20 years.”

"Oh, you don’t like where I’m from?” Qwex said. “The hell with you. I'm not talking about your silly oil spills, then. I came here to eat clams, but if you don't have any, I'm gone." And he disappeared.

"I hate the future," Larry said.

"Yes, the past is much better," Edna said, breaking into a tap dance routine. “It has better musicals, for one thing.”

THE END

Larry And Pastor Tommy

By John McDonnell

It was another aimless Saturday afternoon at the bar, and Murphy was washing shot glasses and serving beers to a motley collection of patrons who were watching a ballgame on the battered TV.

Larry was practicing time jumps, and kept disappearing and reappearing with souvenirs from different eras. So far he'd brought back a dinosaur tooth from the Cretaceous era, a whalebone corset from 16th century England, and a five course Thanksgiving dinner from the future that was the size of an aspirin. He was dressed like a Turkish pasha, complete with a scimitar in his belt. 

The serenity was interrupted by a portly man who burst through the door wearing a blue silk suit, a black pompadour and rings on each of his fingers.

"Tell me, brothers, have you seen The Light?" he said, walking over to Larry and Murphy.

"Light?” Murphy said. “My customers don’t like much light in here.”

“Actually, light is an interesting phenomenon,” Larry said. “When you get to the quantum level--”

"I’m talking about The Light of Salvation," the man said, slapping the bar for emphasis. "My name's Pastor Tommy Bogus, and I'm here to offer you eternal bliss. Have you seen my TV show?"

"Yes I have," said Edna, who had just been dropped off by Dolores while she did her Saturday errands. "You're that nice man whose show comes on between my soap opera about handsome doctors and the other one about cheating wives. Or is it cheating doctors and handsome wives?"

"There will be no room for cheaters in the Kingdom," Pastor Tommy said.

"I often wonder about religion," Larry said. "Interesting sociological phenomenon. Does it describe reality, or is it just the brain's way of explaining what it doesn't understand?"

"Why, it's as real as this solid wood bar," Pastor Tommy said, slapping the bar again.

"That’s actually vinyl," Murphy said.

"I think religion is such a comfort," Edna opined. "Why, I don't know how people can do without it."

"There are some civilizations in the universe that think it's nonsense," Larry said.

"There's nothing wrong with nonsense," Edna said. "The world needs more nonsense, if you ask me. It would improve our dispositions."

"As I was saying," Pastor Tommy said. "There's only one truth in the universe, and my religion has it."

"Truth," Larry said. "What is truth? When you ask someone to tell the truth, what are you saying?"

"You're saying he's screwed, if he’s married," Murphy said.

"Would any of you care to make a donation?" Pastor Tommy said, holding out a tin cup. "It takes a lot of money to keep that TV show going."

"Take a look at this place," Murphy said. "Does it look like I'm wallowing in money here?"

"I have a trust fund, and I'd be glad to dip into it for a donation," Edna said. "The only thing is, Father set it up so I don't get any of the money until I reach 65. I can’t imagine what he was thinking. You’d think I was the world’s worst spendthrift!” She readjusted her black taffeta cocktail gown and pillbox hat, looking at herself in the mirror behind the bar.

"How about you, son?" Pastor Tommy said to Larry.

The air shimmered and Larry disappeared. In a matter of seconds he reappeared with a small birdlike dinosaur, covered with feathers and sporting a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. It was blinking as it stared around the room. It locked eyes with Pastor Tommy, flapped its wings, said “Auk!”, then cocked its head, waiting for a response.

"Good God, what is that?" Pastor Tommy said.

"A Bambiraptor,” Larry said. "From about 75 million years ago. Cute, but beware of those teeth. I thought you could sell it to a zoo and get some cash that way."

"Not if you paid me a million dollars," Pastor Tommy said. "Son, there’s only one word for that. . . ‘unnatural’!”

He bolted for the door, dropping his tin cup on the way. It clattered to the floor and rolled around, but Pastor Tommy paid no attention to it. He was headed for the light. 

"Funny, he looks taller on TV," Edna said.

THE END

A Viking In The Kitchen

By John McDonnell

"The neighbors are all getting their kitchens redone," Dolores said. "Why can't we?"

"I’ll be leaving now,” Murphy said, hoping to get out the door before Dolores told him for the 100th time that he needed to make more money.

"Did you know that the British actor Michael Caine was teased because he had a habit of reciting inane factoids and then saying, 'Not many people know that?'" Larry said. He was eating fish and chips at the kitchen table and wearing a mackintosh raincoat. Dolores did not know where he got the fish and chips, certainly not from her kitchen.

"I like Michael Caine," Edna said, coming into the kitchen in her nightgown, which had a raised collar and a long train, and looked like something Liz Taylor might have worn to the wedding of a close friend. "’To be or not to be, that is the question.’ Wasn't he terrific in Hamlet?"

"I don't think he played Hamlet," Murphy said. "You couldn't play Hamlet with that Cockney accent he has."

"Oh, dear," Edna said. "That must have been my father I'm thinking of. Yes, he played Hamlet in 1949 at the Stratford Festival in Canada. I remember it well, because we had to share a bedroom with Charlie Chaplin."

"Fascinating," Larry said. “In a parallel universe sort of way. Now, as I was saying, you could fix this kitchen up in a jiffy."

"Would you?" Dolores said. "I mean, you seem to be able to do anything, Larry, so--"

"I wouldn't recommend that," Murphy said.

"Why not?"

"Because Larry might come up with something different than what you're expecting."

"Nonsense, Murphy,” Dolores said. “Why Larry has the most wonderful taste--"

There was a shimmering in the air and everything seemed to go foggy for a second, and then the room was transformed into a Viking castle kitchen, with a stone floor, a huge oak table, pots of boiling chicken entrails cooking over a roaring fire in the hearth, and a whole hog roasting on a spit. The place stunk of cabbage, moldy cheese, blood and seaweed, and Dolores’s stomach did a somersault in response to it.

What smelled even worse, though, was the very large hairy man wearing ill-fitting clothes made from animal skins who was standing in the center of the room and blinking. He was carrying a large axe, and he looked like the type of fellow who settled the finer points of philosophy by using it.

"Larry, who is that?" Dolores said.

"I think his name is Athelred the Disemboweler," Larry said, "and I would say he's ready for his supper."

"By Thor, I need a hog's haunch and a mug of ale now!" Athelred said, and chopped off the corner of the table for emphasis.

"My, he's a bit high-strung," Edna said. "Although I do admire a man who knows his mind. The last time I met a man like that it was 1953, and I was introduced to my future husband at a barn dance. I had on a red pleated dress and a sky blue petticoat. Of course, you'll want to know why I had that color petticoat on--"

Athelred threw his axe at her head, but it missed and clanged off one of the pots on the fire, sending scalding grease and water all over the kitchen.

"I'll be leaving now," Murphy said, making for the door. "I’m not a fan of angry Vikings."

"By Odin's beard, I'll not miss again!" Athelred said, picking up his axe and hefting it in his large hands.

"Do we have any herbal tea?" Edna said. "If ever anyone needed a cup of tea it's this poor fellow."

"Larry, do something!" Dolores said, correctly surmising that Athelred was about to throw his axe again.

Larry went on calmly eating his fish and chips, but he stuck his foot out and tripped  Athelred, causing him to fall hard on his head on the stone floor. The Viking got up quickly, but seemed to have misplaced his higher mental faculties.

"Now, that's better," Edna said. "Let's go in the other room and watch some TV." She took the dazed Viking’s hand and led him away, saying, "Do you have game shows where you come from?"

“Thanks, Larry,” Dolores said.

“No problem,” Larry said. “How do you like this layout? Of course, the ventilation is not great, and you get a lot of smells from the carcasses in the storehouse next door, but--”

“Larry, I’m fine with the kitchen I had,” Dolores said. “Could you change it back?”

“Are you sure? I know I didn’t include utensils, but they didn’t really use them back then--”

“Larry, change it back.”

“Yes Dolores.”

And Dolores decided her kitchen was not so bad after all.

THE END

Larry Wins A Million

By John McDonnell

“I hate the winter,” Dolores said one day. “I need a vacation at the beach, but we have no money.” Larry had gone into hibernation mode and he was asleep in the corner of the TV room in the form of an 800 pound male grizzly bear.

“I remember when Father used to take us to our winter home in Florida,” Edna said. She was watching a game show in a sequined pink tulle gown, bedecked with jewelry. “We’d spend our winters playing in the sand and watching the alligators maul deer that wandered too close to the lake. I missed a lot of schoolwork those years, but Father said with a mind like mine it wouldn’t matter.”

“You never had a house in Florida,” Dolores said.

“Didn’t I?” Edna said. “Oh, well, it must have happened to somebody else.”

Then there was a knock at the front door and when Dolores opened it a TV announcer smiled at her, temporarily blinding her with the glare from his teeth. 

“Is this the home of Larry the Alien?” the man said, shoving a microphone in her face. He was smiling so hard it looked like his face might crack, and his eyes were bulging with manic energy.

“Who wants to know?” Dolores said.

“I want to tell him that he won the ‘You Can Be Fabulously Wealthy Marketing Sweepstakes’, and he’s won a million dollars!!!” the man shouted. Dolores had the sensation that the oxygen was being sucked out of the neighborhood every time he opened his mouth.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Edna said, from the couch. “But you’ll have to come back in several months. Larry is taking his winter nap.”

“That’s not possible!” the man said, whipping a poster-sized check out of a briefcase. “He needs to take his check today! I have TV cameras waiting!” He pointed to a group of people behind him, and they did indeed have a battery of cameras pointed at the house.

Before Dolores knew what was happening the group had brushed her aside and were inside the house.

The announcer found Larry in his corner, and said, “Here he is, boys! Make sure you get a good angle on my teeth!”

He started shoving Larry, prodding him to wake him up. Larry snorted once and tried to keep on sleeping.

“Come on, Mr. Larry,” the man said. “Wake up to the wonderful fact that you’re a winner! Did you hear me? You’re a winner!”

Larry growled once, but did not open his eyes.

“I’ll bet he’s dreaming about salmon,” Edna said. “It’s a lovely dream for a bear.”

The announcer picked up a pepper shaker from the kitchen table and poured some into his palm, then threw the handful at Larry’s big wet bear nose. Larry scrunched up his nose, snuffled, and then sneezed loud enough to rattle the windows. He opened his eyes blearily and looked at the announcer.

“There’s the sleepyhead!” the announcer said. He turned to the camera, grinning even more broadly. “Folks, we’re here at the home of an average Joe extra-terrestrial who just happened to sign up for the ‘You Can Be Fabulously Wealthy Marketing Sweepstakes’, and he won! How are you feeling right now, Larry?”

He shoved the microphone in Larry’s face, there was a pregnant pause, and then there was a blur of activity involving Larry, the announcer, and the camera crew, who abandoned their equipment and ran like a herd of stampeding buffalo through Dolores’s house and out to their van, where they drove off without saying goodbye. Larry roared and chased the announcer through the house, cornering him as he tried to climb a crystal chandelier in the entryway, and the man’s sobs and shrieks could be heard in the next ZIP code.

Dolores finally got Larry away from the announcer by offering him several pounds of salmon steaks from the freezer, and Larry went sleepily back to his corner in the TV room and curled up with his snack, after emitting several more thunderous roars.

“I’m so sorry,” Edna said, helping the announcer down from the chandelier. “He’s not very pleasant until he gets his coffee. Would you like to stay for some tea?”

The announcer seemed to have lost the ability to speak, and he simply picked up his microphone and hightailed it for the door, where he made a run for the high ground.

“Well, dear,” Edna said, picking up the check and handing it to Dolores. “I guess we can take that Florida trip now. I can't wait to see those alligators again."


THE END

Do Aliens Facebook?

By John McDonnell

“An old girlfriend looked me up on Facebook,” Murphy said. He was tending bar, and the  blue slanting rays of the TV screen at the end of the bar gave his face a pensive, wistful look. Larry was sitting across the bar in his rumpled scientist persona, working out an advanced particle physics formula on the back of a napkin.

“On whatbook?” Larry said, without looking up from his work.

It’s a social networking site. You post pictures of yourself and network with people. You look up friends from years ago.”

“Not for me,” Larry said.

“Why not? Think of all those people that passed through your life and you lost track of them. Well, now you can reconnect. It’s a great thing."

Larry shuddered. “That’s horrible. I wouldn’t want to know what my classmates from space colonization school are doing. I bet I’m the only one who hasn’t conquered even the barest sliver of a planet. I bet some of them have taken over whole solar systems. Meanwhile, I can’t take a rubber chew toy away from a cocker spaniel. Why would I want to look up anyone from my past?”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Edna, coming up to them. Dolores had dropped her off at the bar while she ran some errands, and Edna had been whiling away the time beating all comers at darts, which amazed everyone because she wore glasses with lenses that looked like they’d come from the Hubble Space Telescope. Larry had a theory that she navigated through life using echolocation, like dolphins and bats.

“What is the point of the past, anyway?” Edna said. “Who wants to remember their childhood? Or encounter people one went to school with? Ugh, it’s too odious to think about!” and she went off in search of a pool game in the back room.

“She’s probably right,” Murphy said. “Take this old girlfriend. I have fond memories of her, and they can’t possibly match up with reality 35 years later, right? I mean, how could they? She sent me a friend request, but I don’t know if I should accept it. I don’t want to see if she got fat and old.”

“Oh, because you haven’t changed at all?” Larry said. “You look like a 55 year old man, but in theory I suppose you could have looked this way for years. Are you saying that you always had thinning hair and that paunch?”

“Certainly not,” Murphy said, drawing himself up to his full height. “I was a handsome devil in my youth. I had to beat the girls off with a stick.”

Larry looked puzzled. “Why would you want to do that?”

“It’s just an expression,” Murphy said.

“That’s the trouble with you humans,” Larry said. “You use all these expressions that just complicate things.”

“Oh, and your civilization just tells the simple truth, I suppose.”

“Actually, no. If one of us ran into someone we hadn’t seen for 35 years we would never point out that the other was old and fat. We’d shower them with compliments as if they looked exactly the same. It’s considered bad taste to hurt anyone’s feelings, so we never say what we mean. You have to be an expert at reading between the lines.”

“In this world you learn that skill when you get married,” Murphy said.

“Marriage is different for us. We have queens, and some of us mate with them and then die. Similar to what your ants do.”

“The ants are the lucky ones,” Murphy said glumly.

Just then Dolores arrived to pick up Edna. She said, “Murphy, look at this place. It’s 4:00 on a Saturday afternoon and you have six customers. You’ll never make a go of this miserable excuse for a bar if you can’t draw more people than this. Honestly, I don’t know what makes you think you’re a businessman. . .”

And then Murphy had the strangest experience. He saw Dolores’ mouth moving but he couldn’t hear a word she was saying. Instead, his mind was filled with a sweet, unearthly music and visions of waves on a beach, palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze, and a slight tang of mango in the air. He didn’t know how long Dolores went on with her rant, but then she finished and took Edna home, and Murphy returned to what passed for normal consciousness in his world.

Larry was scribbling away at more calculations on his napkin, but Murphy thought he saw a glint in Larry’s eye.

“Did you do that?” he said.

“It’s a defense mechanism the males in my species have evolved over many generations,” Larry said. “Selective deafness. Comes in handy sometimes.”

“You’re a gentleman and a scholar,” Murphy said. “The next beer’s on me.”

THE END