Aliena (3 page)

“Not yet,” he said quickly. “No until you are sure you want it.”

“I am as yet unsure,” she agreed. “But I believe I will want it before long.”

“When it is your choice, I will be ready.”

“I do have emotions. They do not connect well with the expressions of the body, but I am trying to align them. Love is new to me; I must learn that whole. I think that with you that is possible.”

“Like one of the encrypted quotes games in the newspaper,” he said. “Every letter is false, but with insight and patience you can find the pattern and correct the alignments. As for love, it is new to everyone, the first time. I’m not sure it even is an emotion by itself; it’s more like a combination of emotions, with the whole being more than the sum of its parts.”

“I do not know this game, but it may be a suitable analogy. Please, show it to me.”

Brom fetched the day’s newspaper and opened it to the games page. “This is a sentence, but as you can see it is garbled.”

“I do not see. These marks are significant?”

He glanced at her, surprised. “You can’t read?”

“I have not yet been taught that. I am still learning language and other things.”

He was taken aback, but it did make sense. First she had to learn to speak and understand English, then how to translate it into the written word. “Then it is a bad analogy. I did not mean to embarrass you.”

“Please, teach me reading.”

“Aliena, that is a long, slow, difficult process that takes years to master.”

“I am a fast learner.”

He would have to show her. “I will read this headline aloud while I point out the words.” He spread the newspaper flat and pointed with his forefinger. “HURRICANE BLOWS TOWARD CITY. SCHOOLS CLOSED. POWER OUTAGES EXPECTED.”

Aliena smiled. “Marvelous! Speech is recorded in symbols. I must learn this. Please read more.”

He read the full article to her, and she followed his moving finger raptly. Then when he stopped, she looked at another article, and read out those words that duplicated the ones in the first. She was getting it!

“Aliena, I am amazed! I identify a given word once, and you have it.”

“Is this not how it is learned?”

He laughed. “It took me years to learn, and then it was by a different system. Instant sight recognition is something else.”

“Read me more.”

They went through several pages together, and soon she was able to read most of new articles by herself. Overwhelmed by her instant proficiency, he leaned close and kissed her on the cheek. In this respect, she was a genius!

“This is favor?” she asked.

“Yes. I am pleased by your progress and just had to express myself.”

“I like this expression.”

Brom got up and went to the door again. The winds remained high, and there was no sign of the return of anyone next door. “It seems it’s a long haul. We had better eat something.”

“Eat,” she agreed. “I was distracted. Now I know I feel hunger.”

He rummaged in the defunct refrigerator. “We can have milk, and bread and jam. And there’s some ice cream that’s melting; we had better eat that first. It’s not much, but without power we have to scramble.”

“I prefer to do this with you than to have an elaborate meal by myself.”

“I echo the sentiment,” he said, gratified. They smiled at each other, and hers seemed increasingly genuine.

“I am curious,” he said as they ate. “Your language syntax obviously differs from mine. When you get disturbed, you revert to it. I am not objecting; I think it’s cute. But I wonder: how would you say something like ‘Honey I shrunk the kids’?”

“Flying insect vomit, self diminished the young goats,” she said immediately.

Brom laughed so hard he spewed jam on the table. “I love it!” he gasped.

“It does not annoy you?”

“Not at all. It’s
you.
But I agree that you should speak like us ordinarily, so as not to attract attention.”

“I will do that,” she agreed.

“Your toothbrush is locked in your house,” he said as they finished. “I think Lucy had a clean one.”

“I will use that.”

“And there’s another problem. With no running water, we also have no drainage. We can’t use the sink or the toilets. We will have to use buckets for natural functions, and dump them in the garden out back. Do you understand?”

“Can I sit on a bucket?”

“Maybe we can frame it with a toilet seat. Will that do?”

“Show me.”

“Um, suppose I pantomime it in my clothing?”

“Seeing me do this would disturb you?”

“Yes. It would be a phenomenal violation of your personal privacy. As a general rule, men can do such things in the company of men, and women with women. But only long-married couples do them together, and many don’t then.”

“Pantomime,” she agreed.

He fetched a bucket, set his spare toilet seat on it, and carefully sat on it in his pants. “Bare your ass. Shit and piss as in a toilet.”

“Ass? Shit and piss?”

“Your posterior portion. Defecate and urinate. I used vulgar terms that people do in private. I thought they would be clearer.”

“I will learn vulgar terms.”

“I will tell you all of them. But do not use them to others.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

“Now I will set up my own bucket in another room, and leave you to yours.”

In due course they accomplished their missions, and Brom dug a hole in the garden and buried the deposits. The winds remained fierce, buttressed by fits of rain, and he was glad to get back inside.

“You are wet,” Aliena said solicitously. “May I dry you?”

Brom discovered that he was soaked through, and cold. “You really don’t need to. I can strip down, dry off and put on new clothing on my own.”

“You have done much for me. I would like to do things for you.”

She meant well, and he did not want to reject her. “Here is the problem: if I were to strip naked in your presence, I would suffer the masculine reaction, embarrassing us both.”

“I do not understand.”

“I would show my readiness to mate with you.”

“But I am not yet ready to mate.”

“Exactly. Naturally I would not force you, but you would not want to see my state of arousal.”

“Please, I want to see. I do not know this state.”

What the hell. “I fear I am doing the wrong thing, but I will show you.”

They went to his bedroom, where he stripped off all his wet clothing. Sure enough he had a full erection on display.

“This is different from my body,” she said, seeming curious rather than repulsed.

“Men do differ from women. To mate, the man inserts his stiffened member into the woman. At other times it is not stiff, and he urinates through it.”

“Where in her body does he put it?”

“She has a hole called the vagina—cunt in the forbidden vernacular--between where she defecates and where she urinates. He puts it in there. As the poet William Butler Yeats put it, ‘Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement.’”

Now she laughed. “I think that poet knew my language.”

Brom washed with a damp washcloth, and put on dry clothing. “I am decent again. Please do not speak of this elsewhere.”

“I will not. Thank you for showing me. Now when I am ready to mate with you, I will know what to expect.”

“Yes.”

“Please, read to me more. I have many written words yet to learn.”

This time he fetched a paperback novel and read her the first chapter.

“This happened?” she asked.

“Not really. It’s fiction. Pretend narrative. A romance. But it is meant to simulate real life, so that the reader can vicariously experience the story.”

“Vicarious?”

“It gives you the feeling that you are doing it, even though you know you are not. That extends your horizon, at least emotionally.”

“Feeling. I must learn feeling.”

“I’m sure you will get there.”

The day passed. The storm did not abate, the power did not return, and neither did Martha. “I what do to not know.”

He tried to reassure her. “You can stay here tonight. You can use Lucy’s room. I promise not to molest you.”

“Here is the problem,” she said, emulating him. “At my house there is always light, and a person nearby. I am a stranger here. I fear being alone in darkness.”

“You don’t want to sleep alone,” he said.

“May I sleep with you?”

Like a child, she feared the unfamiliar dark. He could not turn her down. “In our idiom, sleeping together often means mating. But we can sleep without mating.”

“Thank you,” she said, relieved.

As night closed in, there was nothing to do by turn in. They went to his bedroom, changed to pajamas in the darkness, and lay down side by side. Brom pulled the covers over them. “Sweet dreams, Aliena.”

“Please. May I hold your hand?”

He found her hand and held it.

She dropped off to sleep almost instantly. Brom lay for a while, holding her hand, pondering. Aliena was a strange woman, and not just because of the brain transplant, but he liked her very well. Tomorrow things would probably return to normal and she would depart. So this was temporary. But it was marvelous.

In the morning they got up at dawn, washed with the damp cloths, and dressed in work clothes. The storm had eased somewhat, but the power had not returned. Neither had Martha. They had breakfast, then went out to check the neighborhood.

Branches were down everywhere. They hauled them to a pile at the edge of Brom’s yard, then knocked on his neighbor’s door. Mrs. Green was old and retired, and surely in need of help.

“Mrs. Green,” he said when she answered the door. “I am your neighbor Brom, and this is my friend. Please let us clean up your yard.”

“You dear boy,” the woman answered, gratified. “I have some cupcakes that will spoil if not eaten soon.”

“This is usual?” Aliena asked as they worked.

“Neighbors take care of neighbors, just as friends take care of friends,” Brom said. “This is usual in a crisis, such as this storm.”

When they had the yard cleared, they joined Mrs. Green inside her house to eat the cupcakes. “I am so glad to see you have a friend, Brom,” she said. “I know you have suffered.” She looked at Aliena. “My dear, you are adorable.”

“Thank you,” Aliena said. Brom was relieved, having feared she might say something inappropriate. But of course thank you was her standard response.

“She is my neighbor on the other side,” Brom said. “She got locked out of her house by the power outage.”

“It’s awful,” Mrs. Green agreed. “I am missing all my programs.”

After that they went on to the next neighbor, the Roberts, a middle aged couple. They had cleaned up their yard but were uncertain what to do about a smashed-in front window. “I have a leftover piece of plywood,” Brom said. He fetched it, and they propped it over the window. They thanked him for his help.

“This is nice,” Aliena said as they returned to his house.

“It’s a nice neighborhood. Very little crime here. That may be why your friends put you in your house.”

“Yes. They want me embedded in a good place so that I seem ordinary. So that I will be accepted.”

“You should have no problem.”

“Brom, please tell me: what is it you do, whe there is no storm?”

“That’s tricky to explain. Do you know what movies are? Television?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought. A movie is a projection, usually on a big screen, that shows a story, like the one we were reading. Television, or TV as it is abbreviated, is a small screen people watch in their houses, showing similar things.”

“I would like to see this.”

“When the power returns, I will show you. I’m surprised that your friends did not turn on your TV.”

“They said there is so much to learn, I could not take time for entertainment.”

“But entertainment is part of life! We need to play as well as to work.”

“Play?”

“Oh, Aliena, there is a whole world of things I want to show you when I can! Play is something you do for fun, just because you want to.”

“Like holding hands?” she asked, taking his hand in hers.

He laughed. “That, too. But it’s more like the reading. You may be doing it to learn the words, but ideally it should be because you enjoy it.”

“I enjoy it with you.”

He let that pass. “At any rate, I work in the entertainment industry. A significant part of it is cartoons, which are funny caricatures of people and animals who do funny things to make people laugh.”

“Why?”

“Because laughing is generally fun. It makes people feel good.”

“I want to laugh.”

Brom realized that he had never heard her laugh. “That happens when a person is pleasantly surprised, or amused, or relieved. I laughed when you translated ‘Honey I shrank the kids,’ because it was funny.”

“I remember.”

“This is like an emotion. You are not yet tracked into it. But maybe by chance we’ll find something that makes you laugh. It has to come naturally.”

“Naturally,” she agreed.

“Anyway, although cartoons are not intended to be taken seriously, it helps if they are realistic enough to help a viewer forget that, to get into their mood. So I take existing cartoons and modify them slightly, not enough for the average viewer to notice, to make them more realistic. To subtly encourage belief. It’s one of those generally unknown specialties; I work under the radar.” Then, before she could ask, he clarified it. “Radar is a form of radio wave that detects airplanes in flight. To be under it is to be beneath notice. That’s important, for me: to have the viewer not realize that that he’s being managed, so he doesn’t react against it. I’m good at it, and have regular work. But I can’t work while the power is off. I do get an incidental benefit from my work: reading people. I pick up on nuances, on whether folk are happy or sad, excited or bored, telling the truth or lying. You intrigue me because your reactions are not normal.” Again he forestalled her question. “That is not bad. It’s just that you don’t react the way I would expect. As if, if I tickled you, you would not laugh.”

“Tickle?”

“That’s a very light touch in a sensitive spot that incites a reaction that is not pain, not unpleasant. Some folk love tickling; some don’t.”