"Urn," Banion lied through a spoonful of tepid butternut squash soup. Gracklesen's craven refusal to hold hearings, two hours of aural torture, and now a dinner conversation with the third Mrs. Hinckley Epperson - oh, for a quick death.
"Hard to believe Ives refused to attend performances of his own composition," Banion said. "Think what he missed."
Speaker Meeker, for whom the Second Symphony had lasted almost as long as it had for Banion, heard the remark and chuckled. Bitsey, looking relaxed, even radiant, here in her element, teased the Speaker that Maestro Slava, seated at the next table with the vice president, might overhear. Surely the Speaker, who was doing so much to promote the sale of American goods abroad, could hardly object to honoring an American composer. Bitsey excelled at this sort of Washington hostessing: inject a quick, knowing comment, then let the men go back to giving you their opinion. On cue, the
Speaker extolled American composers. He liked Aaron Copland "especially." meaning that he had just, thank God, thought of the name of another American composer. Copland is of course big in Washington. Both political parties routinely introduce their nominees at their conventions by blasting "Fanfare for the Common Man." In a pinch,
"Also
Sprach
Zarathustra"
will do. Anything with trumpets.
Having now exhausted his store of musical knowledge, the Speaker praised Hinckley's "magnificent" gift of the new acoustics, causing a murmur of hear hears. The Speaker was hoping to hit Hinckley up later for a contribution to his political action committee, the modestly named Fund for America's Future. Tyler Pinch, curator of the Fripps, had his own designs on the Epperson mother lode - he was after Epperson to buy the gallery a Vermeer entitled
More
Light
Coming Through
the
Window
on
the
Left,
which was about to come on the market for a Ve
r
mere $28 million. For some time now he had been cooing like a pigeon into the bejeweled earlobes of Mrs. Hinckley Epperson about the enormous status that such a "gesture" would convey. The eager Durleen had been working on Hinckley, but it was uphill going. He was preoccupied with trying to build a pipeline through a particularly bellicose part of Armenia and Urgmenistan, and a recent refinery deal in the Netherlands had fallen through, souring him on things Dutch.
The dinner was going well, each of the men satisfied that he had done most of the talking, when Durleen said to Banion, in a voice that carried clearly across the $25,000 table, "Jack, my daddy lives outside Austin, and he says it was in the paper that you're going to a
UFO
conference there this weekend?"
Durleen's remark had the effect of dumping a large, hairy, long-dead animal onto the table. Eyes drifted to the floral arrangement, seeking refuge therein.
Jack looked furtively at Bitsey. For a moment, it looked as though she would pull through, but then Durleen followed up her innocent query by asking, 'Are you going
too,
Bitsey?"
A look of horror came over Bitsey, as if she had just discovered that the dollop of sour cream in the soup was in fact a fresh bird dropping.
"Good heavens no," Banion said, attempting a cheery tone. "Bitsey doesn't go
in for aliens. They're not PLU.*
She thinks the lower orders should be seen and not heard. Not that your father. . ."
Tyler Pinch tried to repair the damage by announcing that he himself was hoping to get to Austin at the first opportunity. A cousin of Frida Kahlo, wife of the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, had lived there briefly. One night Rivera had gotten drunk and painted a mural on her garage walls, a rather "bawdy," as Tyler put it, allegory of U.S.-Mexican relations. Hardly suitable for the Fripps, of course, but he wanted to have a look-see for himself.
Durleen, unfortunately, was not about to be diverted by talk of murals.
"Daddy's a
big
believer in UFO's," she said. "Because of his business, he's up all hours, and he says he's seen all
kinds
of strange things in the sky."
Hinckley Epperson, unhappy with the conversation drifting toward his newest father-in-law, who for a living drove chicken trucks, ventured that he would like to see even
more
American composers on future symphony programs, assuming someone knew their names.
It was a quiet ride home.
By now Bitsey had passed from the loud, viscerally remonstrative phase of her anger to frigid disdain. She had never been a hurler of objects; the slammed door was her most strident form of protest. Many
*
People Like Us.
WASPs are reluctant to throw things for fear of having to explain afterward to the insurance company.
In the bedroom, Banion made his plaintive case that it wasn't he who brought up the subject of UFO's. How absurd he felt. He, bearer of cosmic knowledge, millennial gnosis, secrets of the universe, reduced to pleading on the other side of the bathroom door.
By the time the door opened, Banion was in his pajamas reading the latest issue of
Foreign
Affairs.
Bitsey's humor had not been improved by her half hour's unsuccessful struggle to undo her evening dress by herself.
Banion tried a last attempt to mollify, but unhooking a smoldering wife trapped inside an evening dress is, Banion considered as he fumbled like a member of a bomb squad with the abominably miniature clasp, an inherently ludicrous proposition.
NINE
Banion arrived at the UFO convention in the middle of a raging controversy over whether the U.S. government had cut its Faustian deal with the Tall Nordics aliens or the Gray Hooded Ones. His opinion on this urgent matter was sought the moment he stepped off the plane.
He had been to dozens of conventions in hotels, always as a (highly) paid speaker. He had always been well-received, but he had never been welcomed at the airport by an enthusiastic crowd waving banners. At first he thought they must be waiting for a movie star who had also been on his flight. Then he read the banners. He was engulfed by the adoring mass.
Dr. Falopian and Colonel Murfletit, on either side, tried to shield him from the crush. They too received kudos and loud huzzahs, for they had brought home this spectacular bacon. The UFO world had never be
fore had a celebrity like John O
. Banion, and the faithful had turned out to give him a conqueror's welcome. They even tried to lift him onto their shoulders, a benison Banion found both alarming and unseemly. He managed to pull himself back down, accidentally using Colonel Murfletit's large ears as grips.
He was hustled into his car, TV lights glaring, photographers snapping, women shrieking for his autograph. Through a cracked-open window, a glowing Dr. Falopian announced to the eager horde that Mr. Banion would answer all their questions after his lecture tomorrow.
On the ride in, Banion sought guidance from the doctor and colonel on this obviously radioactive business of the Tall Nordics versus the Gray Hooded Ones. First of all, he needed to know: were the Gray Hooded Ones related to the Short
Ugly
Grays? Dr. Falopian stroked his goatee and explained in a professional way the nuances of Gray taxonomy. The answer was: the Hooded Ones were an entirely different kettle of fish from the Short Uglies, and make no mistake about it. As to the controversy, Dr. Falopian and Colonel Murfletit urged Banion to take a middle position. Caution was the watchword here. There was evidence to support U.S. government collusion with both Nordics
and
Hoodeds, but there was no smoking gun as yet.
Another boisterous crowd awaited him at the Hyatt. He was escorted by husky World UFO Congress security people up to his room, which as Renira had promised did indeed have a majestic view of Lake Austin and the bridge that he was told was home to
1
.2 million bats. He contemplated it in the gloaming. What a stupendous amount of guano they must generate. Surely some enterprising Texan had devised a means of collecting and packaging it as fertilizer.
Banion poured himself a restorative Scotch from the minibar, that watering hole of the lonely, and stared down on the city that he sensed was, in some ineffable way, his.
The phone rang. A woman, an admirer - a fellow abductee! -wanting to come up to his room right now and "talk." He politely begged off. But she must! No, thank you, see you tomorrow. He considered: his first groupie.
Again the phone rang. Another importunate female voice gasping to meet him, right now, immediately. She had pressing business - a message from the chieftain of the Planet Deltoid. Banion declined, then asked the operator to hold incoming calls. They were certainly more demonstrative than your average crowd at the Council on Foreign Relations, he reflected.
He ignored the repeated feminine rappings on his door. When they turned into desperate thumps, he alerted Colonel Murfletit, who posted a sentinel outside.
Steady, Banion told himself.
Don't
let
it
go
to
your
head.
For all the clamor and attention, he felt lonely in a way that he had not been before. He and Bitsey hadn't been having much in the way of normal relations lately, not that sex had ever played a huge role in their relationship. Still . . .
Here he was, the John Lennon of the UFO world, sitting on top of an entire hotel full of women, eager - panting - to be probed in the Martian fashion.
No,
no, no,
no.
He was a married man, he loved his wife, and that was that. End discussion.
Anyway, he told himself, the women he'd glimpsed at the airport and during that rush through the lobby were not exactly Miss America runners-up. The Girls of WUFOC, as
Playboy
magazine might friskily put it, tended to be a bit on the chunky side, with enormous hair and chewed fingernails - well, he thought with a chastening stab of sympathy, poor things, look what they've been through.
As a reward for not messing around with any of his groupies, he would watch an adult movie on the hotel TV while he went over his speech. Why not?
Vegas
Vixens,
starring Kimberly Kum? Well, why not?
Banion fell asleep to the sound of Kimberly's insincere moans of rapture with three Elvis impersonators. He woke up with a start when someone on the screen began shouting, "Deeper, oh God, deeper!"
Banion spent the morning viewing the exhibit halls and attending a few workshops. Bart Hupkin, author of the best-selling abduction study
Plucked,
was giving a talk about his latest hypnotic "regressions" of abductees. It was Hupkin who had done the pioneering regression of Kathy Carr - Scrubbs's abductee. His techniques had been denounced by the American Association of Professional Hypnotherapists for being "suggestive." True, some of the questions he put to abductees once they were under might be considered leading, such as
"Were you abducted by
f
our speckled, tentacled
creatures f
rom the Planet Farble? Yes or maybe?"
Banion slipped in quietly just as a pallid multiple abductee - the poor man had been snatched no fewer than thirty-seven times and pumped bone dry of reproductive juices - was telling Hupkin that he had reached the end of his tether. He had taken to masturbating every hour in order to deplete his supply of sperm. He might not be able to stop them from taking him, but he would be damned rather than supply them with one more drop of his sperm. The audience applauded his ingenious resolve.
Another of Hupkin's regressees shared her breakthrough of wrapping herself copiously in cellophane, which, like panty hose, made it more difficult for the aliens to drive home their vile phallic probes. She noted that this also helped with weight loss. Another abductee announced that she was depressed because she missed her alien children. The father had, contrary to their joint custody arrangement, taken them off to the Pleiades with a "slut" from Aldebaran. Hupkin said that she should not take this personally. Aliens were notoriously problematic when it came to commitment.
Banion left the workshop unable to shake the feeling that there was something lacking in these people's lives. He had yet to meet someone - well, someone like him, to be perfectly frank. Even Dr. Falopian and Colonel
Murfletit
, with whom he had now spent hundreds of hours, were hardly ideal dinner companions. They might be lions of their own savannas, but in any other setting, they were rather odd ducks. Banion had to keep reminding himself that the early Christians must have been an odd bunch, too.
He thought he should at least drop by the cattle mutilation seminar. The subject revolted him, but Dr. Falopian said it was key to UFO's, so please at least do a drop-by, especially since it was being conducted by Linda Moulton Howe, Ph.D., the grande dame of bovine mutilation. Wherever a barnyard animal was found with its innards removed, there soon would follow Dr. Howe with her camera and scientific instruments. Falopian said that her latest work on the subject was nothing short of breathtaking. Banion had seen it. a coffee table book (if you please), crammed with the most repulsive photos, and in full color to boot. Banion wondered who - on earth -would plunk down fifty bucks for a book filled with pictures of cattle with their rectums. tongues, and other delicates removed. How perfect it would look, on anyone's coffee table, next to the one on Matisse.