Being Alien (15 page)

I didn’t ask the Barcons about Alex. If I’d been his case officer, I’d have pulled him off planet.

“You’ve been ordered to socialize more,” Marianne said one day when she came over. She was dressed up, in heels and a slinky purple dress with bare cut-out ovals in back. I didn’t know if Alex’s weird distortion devices still gave the FBI some innocuous warped version of what we said or what. A task? Precisely. I felt…there’s no one word for it in English, socially convalescent, breaking a transitory maladaptation and feeling awkward about it.
Farisch.

“
Yeah,” I told her. I got the canned clams out of the cupboard and the garlic out of the refrigerator. 
Farisch
is an optimistic, word, though. After dinner…

“Put the stuff back. We’re going to a dinner party.”

“I just learned how to make this.”

“Tom, come on. Do you have good clothes?”

“Check the closet.” She went into the bedroom and came out with my corduroy suit.

“This will do.” She looked at the suit more carefully. “Someone taught you how to shop.”

“Alex, I think, bought them for me.”

“You should get one good wool suit, though, Italian with a vest. I love guys in vested suits.”

“It’s in there somewhere,” I said.

She went back to my closet and brought out the wool suit. “Okay. Now do you have black socks?”

“Black socks?”

“You need black socks with this.”

“Jesus, I have brown socks, I have dark socks, I have white socks. I don’t know if I’ve got precisely black socks or not.”

She rummaged through my chest of drawers and came out with black socks dangling from her fingers. “Here, these go with that.”

“Do I need a special color jock?”

“No, Tom.” Almost embarrassed, I changed in front of her. She came up to adjust things from time to time, then I tied my tie. “You look great.”

"Aren’t these clothes old fashioned for Berkeley?"

“Dr. Baseman loves retro.”

All dressed up, we got in her eco-deco mobile very carefully, brushing the front seats with our hands before we sat down. We laughed like kids about that.

Then up into the hills to a Berkeley I hadn’t seen: brick houses, stucco houses, huge shade trees, children riding bikes and adults jogging with Afghan hounds and Malteses in the late July sun. We parked and walked to a house with a steeply sloped roofline dipping down on the left side of the doorway and rosemary bushes in front on the brick-walled bank. It wasn’t a huge house, I noticed as we went up the walk to the door, but it was elegant—black iron frames in the bay windows, stained glass in the door, Marianne bounced the brass knocker off the strike plate twice.

I heard footsteps, then a blond woman opened the door.

“Hello, Cynthia. Tom, this is Dr. Cynthia Baseman.”

“Hello.” I realized I’d been expecting a man.

“Tom, Ree come in,” she said. She had an accent, not quite German. “We’re toasting
nori
now. Oliver caught an early salmon up north and flew it down on ice.”

Marianne asked, “Where’s Oliver?”

“Oh, he’s still fishing.” Dr. Baseman looked at me, and said, “Are you a student here?”

“No, ma’am,” I said, remembering a bit of Somerset Maugham, “I’m a remittance man.”

“How refreshing to hear someone actually admit it. Most of your fellow trust-fundies these days try to pass as aleatory music revivalists. Where did you get that accent?”

“I fell on a spoon and it scarred my mouth.”

She frowned at me, looked at Marianne. “Ree, I’ve heard there’s going to be a tenure track opening in linguistics at the University of South Carolina.”

“I don’t want to leave Berkeley.”

“Ree, you should visit the campus at least. Tom, Ree says you’re interested in Japan. Meiji? Modern?”

“How they handled technology without giving up their essentially Japanese culture.”

“You’d love talking to Mr. Sato then.” She wrapped her right arm around Reeann’s waist and grappled her elbow with her left hand.

She led us through the house into a walled garden half the size of a basketball court. On one side water gurgled down rocks into a small pool with three giant gold carp,
koi,
in it. In the other rear corner was a gas hibachi about three feet long, a foot wide, where the guests were toasting what looked like crumpled sheets of green cellophane. 

Beside the hibachi, a Japanese guy bent over a butcher’s block cutting raw slices out of a bloody salmon. When people finished toasting their
nori,
they went over to the salmon, wrapped the seaweed around raw fish, and popped the nuggets into their mouths.

A Japanese woman came out behind me with a silver cocktail shaker, saying, “Cynthia, I made them with just a touch of vermouth. And stirred, not shaken.”

Then Alex came stepping through the crowd around the hibachi, with a black teenaged boy following him. He nodded to Reeann and me.

“Do you know Alex?” our hostess said. “That’s Wallie with him. He’s trying to get Wallie a scholarship to Berkeley. Met him playing basketball in Oakland.”

Reeann asked, “How long have your known him?”

“Not long. He read my articles on zoosemiotics in
Brain and Behavior
and came by my office to talk to me about innate brain patterns and meaning matrices. A fascinating man. Wondered if one could actually have a holistic sense of language if the sound system involved was modified radar scanning.”

Alex brushed by me and said, “Circulate, circulate.” The young black guy looked really nervous in his jeans and running shoes among all the be-suited-and-tied academics. I wondered if Alex was really trying to get him into Berkeley. He clung to Alex the way I would have if I could have during my first days back on Earth, before I found out what an asshole Alex was.

“You want to go to Berkeley?” I asked him.

He stopped, looked at Alex disappearing into the house, and nodded. “Out of Oakland, anyway. Even to suit-life.”

“It’s different,” I said.

“I tol’ him I know Tagalog, Spanish, English, Samoan. But all street, you know. Street.” He sounded desperate.

“They’ll teach you proper,” I said, remembering something I’d heard black kids in Floyd saying about the Yankee schoolteachers.

“Oakland isn’t backassward, just…”

“Is it like here?” I waved a hand toward the hibachi and raw fish.

He loosened his shoulders. “No, it isn’t like here.”

Reeann just stood by listening. Then she said, “Have you had some salmon?”

Wallie said, “Not outside a taste in krill cakes.”

She made us neat little balls, rice around the raw fish, then
nori
around that. “Taste.”

“Like raw meat,” I said.

Wallie ate his without comment, then watched to see how to make the balls. He began moving around the hibachi, making balls, gobbling them, going away then coming back as if by shifting places he’d be less conspicuous.

I thought raw salmon was only okay, but I wasn’t starving.

Reeann whispered in my ear, “Alex trying to prove he isn’t a bigot about some people, just about S’um’s kind?”

Alex came back from the house just then and stared at Reeann as if he’d overheard her. For the rest of the party, he stayed about ten feet away from us, not getting conversationally close, not getting too far away. I sub-vocalized,
I’ve now had dinner with more than two Berkeley people.

His voice whispered in my mind, “Yes, I am listening.”

I wondered then if the FBI could pick up the transmission. Reeann said, “Cynthia wants you to meet Mr. Sato. He’s finished cutting the fish.”

We went over to the Japanese couple. Cynthia introduced him, and he bowed slightly. Remembering my reading, I bowed just a little farther down. His wife passed Marianne two full crystal martini glasses smelling of gin and ripe olives. Marianne gave me one.

“Gin goes excellently with sushi,” Mr. Sato said. “Cynthia tells me you want to know how we Japanese coped with Western intrusion.”

“Yes.” I saw Cynthia turn to other guests.

“We had a terrible time. Westerners thought we’d ruin ourselves becoming wealthy and raising six-foot-high boys.” He laughed and reached behind him. His wife put a cocktail in his hands. “One has no choice, really. It is more productive to become more productive, right?” He laughed and clapped me on my shoulder, then drained his martini and flushed.

Mrs. Sato tittered. Reeann looked from the man to the wife and tightened her lips. “I like what Japanese did with the Memphis furniture style,” I said timidly. “You make things over in your spirit.”

“Aw, we can’t help it. Now all things are looking functional, right. Japan was too poor to waste materials on anything rococo. So now, the whole world is Japanese styled. Hoopie shit.” He reached back for another martini, but Mrs. Sato shook her head and said something in Japanese that he didn’t like hearing.

“If you were an African, what would you do with Western technology?” I asked.

“Learn how to make lasers, fusion generators. Drive the children through school.
Banzai
learning. Like the black child your blond Kraut friend is dragging around—make them learn high tech. Any old crafts people you want to save, make them National Treasures and support them with tax money so nobody has to buy the junk.”

“Aren’t you being cynical?” Reeann asked. “There are low tech solutions, like the Urban Integral Homes.”

“I know those stupid Integral houses. You spend all your time fiddling with the four collection bins, the three compost piles, the bioenergetics of bunny and chick. You might as well live in the country and be poor. You have a job and run a house full-solar, recycling your shit? Or do you simply fritter your time on the fucking house?”

Reeann turned red. I tensed, ready to grab her if blood suddenly shunted from her face. Sparse-haired sapients with hemoglobin in blood, they get red or darker, it’s a warning. When they pale, they’re close to jumping. She slowly lost her color but didn’t go pale. Gently, I laid my hand on her arm. She said, “I want to leave, Tom.”

“Would it be rude?”

“Let’s tell Cynthia we really enjoyed it, but I’ve got to get resumes out.”

“Sato?”

“I’ve worked very hard, Tom, but he’s right. I do have nothing to show for it. Your offer…” She pulled her face into a beaming smile as we approached Cynthia.

“Loved it, Cynthia, but we’ve got to go. I’ll get some resumes out tonight.”

“I can call the departments and tell them to pay special attention to…”

“Thanks, Cynthia, but…”

“Consider the Carolina job, Ree. They’re much more progressive than you’d think. Really.”

“I think I’m going to do freelance fieldwork.”

“Ree, you finished the degree two years ago. The book we pulled out of your dissertation was lovely, but you need…”

“Cynthia, Tom and I may be leaving Berkeley soon. I’ll give you a forwarding address.”

“Ree, you’ve done some excellent work.” Dr. Baseman thought Marianne was being a fool.

I said, “I enjoyed it, Dr. Baseman.”

“Is she going wandering around the globe with you?” Dr. Baseman asked me. I didn’t realize how bony and tough her fingers were until she poked her hand into mine and squeezed. Not a handshake, a warning.

Alex stared at me across the garden, his large shoulder slightly hunched, watching as we left.

As she drove down to our neighborhood, Reeann said, “Come over tonight, okay?” She sounded whipped and little.

“Okay.”

“I love the academics, and yet…” She sighed. “It’s crazy to consider leaving with you. I got a letter from your brother.”

“So where is he?”

“Richmond, Virginia, in a halfway house.”

“Richmond.” Odd to think he hadn’t left Virginia. “We could fly out to see him.”

“You have the money?”

“Yeah. I had a $25,000 bank draft waiting when I opened my account.”

She sort of vibrated her eyes at me, being heavily involved in traffic problems at the Shattuck and Cedar intersection. Then she gunned us through the intersection and down Cedar into her garage. We sat in the car. “Tom, I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to go home?”

“No, talk to me.”

“Everything will be all right.”

“It’s crazy. Does your life really work for you?”

“I have to work at it. I tend to think of people like Alex as sort of like cats. They mean well, but they’ve got different motivations. Some maybe don’t mean well, but those, too, have different motivations. Yeah.”

“But, we can learn signals.”

“Yes, semiotics. Now I know why one of my mentors made me study that…”

Reeann shivered. “But, Tom, how do I know you don’t have some different motivations?”

“Mine are within human norm,” I said. “Test my DNA.”