Virgin Territory by James Lecesne Read Free Book Online

asks.
    “That?” I ask, pointing at the mailbox on the corner. “No.”
    Doug is hunched over the steering wheel, on the lookout.
    “I’ve heard stories about people who are abducted by aliens,” I tell him. “Maybe Marie was abducted by aliens.”
    I’m careful to keep my voice flat and even. I don’t want him to think that I’m trying to get his attention by saying stupid stuff like I used to do when I was a kid. I’m just relaying facts as they were reported in a psychology magazine I found in the dentist’s waiting room last month.
    “Just keep your eyes open,” he says.
    “It can happen,” I reply. “One day a person goes out to buy a quart of milk or something, and
pfft
, they get sucked up into a spaceship for observation. But according to reports, they’re always returned to planet Earth.”
    “What is this? Something that happens in one of your online gaming rooms?”
    “No,” I tell him. “I’m talking real life. I read it in a magazine.”
    “Yeah, well, in real life, Marie doesn’t drink milk,” he reminds me.
    Doug doesn’t even look over at me. His eyes are glued to the streets and sidewalks. He’s like some kind of suburb-dwelling animal doomed to search for its lost mother. I feel sorry for him, but it’s once removed, like watching the Discovery Channel without the sound.
    “It’s a well-known fact that baby zebras can pick out thestripes of their own mothers in a herd of a hundred other zebras.”
    “You’re full of all kinds of good news today, aren’t you,” he says to me. But this is not really a question, so I choose not to respond.
    Marie isn’t in any of her usual spots—the marina, the taxi stand, the bus shelter, the park—but we aren’t that worried because she always turns up—eventually. Most of the time she’s found wandering the halls of Crestview. She never remembers where she’s been.
    “I’m thinking that maybe you
know
where she is.”
    Doug looks over at me, terrified. His eyes are bugged, and there is a glob of spit gathering in the corner of his mouth; it’s threatening to balloon into something impressive. If only he could see himself. “What?” he asks as though he hasn’t heard me right.
    “I mean, maybe you’ve got a hunch, or a feeling where she is. Maybe you should just go with it.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s different from being able to pick out her stripes in a crowd.”
    “Whatev,” I say, indicating that if he doesn’t want to take my advice, then he’s on his own.
    We drive for a while in silence. It’s dinnertime, and the houses shimmer in the early evening light. Except for the grass that is being automatically watered from spigots embedded in every lawn of every house, there are no signs of life. I imagine thatinside each house, a family is sitting down to a meal together, saying grace, and talking about the day. No one has been abducted by aliens, and everyone at the table is recognizing everybody else’s stripes.
    About five years ago, the doctor diagnosed Marie with Alzheimer’s. At first, Doug refused to believe that it was true; he maintained that older people are naturally forgetful and that if Marie got lost every once in a while, it was no big deal. If the cops found her down by the marina or sitting alone at the Dairy Queen, they’d try to figure out where she lived, but she never remembered. Instead, she gave them a big speech about how it was a free country, and everyone was entitled to have a bad day. Never mind that she was in her bathing suit and flip-flops; she had a perfectly reasonable explanation for wandering around at two in the morning looking like that—if only she could remember what it was. The cops took her into protective custody, she resisted, there were tears, and eventually Doug came down to the police station to rescue her. That was the drill.
    After Marie was settled into her assisted-living situation, Doug said that we couldn’t just abandon her and move back to New York. Not yet. Then